by Tracy Groot
“I’ll bet he’s angry,” Orion said.
“Angry? Cornelius says he’s stalking the palace like the Furies on fire. Whatever that means.”
“It means I’ll be arrested and tried for treason. Exile seems particularly winsome right now. What of the stonemason?”
“Well, thank the Eternal, apparently Pilate was so infuriated with you he forgot about him.”
“Ah. That’s good,” Orion said rather faintly.
“What treason?” Rivkah’s voice came from down the hallway.
She stood at a curtain flap, one hand holding an ax at her side. Her face was newly aged with grief. Her voluminous black hair was disheveled, and the top of her head was coated with white and gray and black ashes. Ashes smudged her face where tears had been. Her outer tunic was torn down the middle, dusted with sooty ash.
He got to his feet, looking at the ax. The woman lost her son. Lost her battle with Rome. From of old came the usual working of his mind—though he knew it to be purely illogical, he wondered what he could have done to prevent the loss of her son.
What was this responsibility he felt for her? Part of the job, yes, to see to the matters of the Praetorium Palace. The day she put her petition before him, he became responsible. But protocol never demanded he should see it through to the end.
“Why do you put ashes on your head?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you tear your clothes?”
“Because we cannot tear out our hearts.”
He regarded the coating of ash on her hair. Yes, it would probably violate another custom. It would call down Theron’s god, and Orion would fry like a fish ball on a brazier. But there was nothing for him to do, with this lovely woman consumed in sorrow, but to push off from the wall and go to her, to reach and take of the ashes from her head and sprinkle them on his own.
She watched as he took and sprinkled, took and sprinkled, and tears flowed fresh down her cheeks, washing trails through the ashes. She took a fistful of his clothing and shook him gently, her face tight and her voice tight. “What treason does Marina speak of? What treason?”
“It’s not important, Rivkah,” he replied. “I can imagine what you’re going to do with the ax. Let it be.”
She regarded the ax and shook her head. “I have to cut it down.”
“Another custom?”
“No.” A tear splotched the ax head.
He took her shoulders until she looked at him. “Then let it be. They won’t harm it anymore.” He gripped her shoulders as if to give her strength.
She put her forehead on his chest and wept, and he put his arms around her and held her tight. “Let it live for him,” he murmured against her hair. “It’s still his tree. It’s still his tree, Rivkah.”
She moved her head back and forth. “I don’t deserve to have it stand,” she sobbed. “I don’t deserve it.”
Kyria came and put her arms around Rivkah’s waist, laying her head on Rivkah’s back. Orion couldn’t hear her cry, but could feel her shake with sobs. He met Marina’s eyes. It wasn’t until he saw tears in hers that his own eyes blurred. He rested his cheek on Rivkah’s hair, reached to pull in Kyria too.
The ex–chief secretary to the prefect Pontius Pilate held two crying women in one of the foulest places in town. In one grim recess of his mind, fear prevailed. If they caught him before he got to the port, he would be executed. In another recess, he tried to imagine a boy who looked like this woman, with golden eyes and a fiery temperament.
“I should like to die this loved,” Orion whispered.
At his words, Rivkah’s cries began to abate until finally she stood silent. Kyria’s weeping subsided too, and she pulled away, wiping her face. Rivkah blotted her face on Orion’s toga. She looked up at him, and he hardly heard her words for the rift of emotion at the sight of her face. She would never be lovelier than this, right now, with those damp golden eyes framed by dark wet lashes, strands of hair sticking to her face. He saw for the first time in the eyes a ring of green about the gold. Ashes and cosmetics made dark smears on her face. She pulled aside sticky hair as she searched his eyes, utterly unconscious of her messy loveliness.
“Don’t you have a palace to run?” she asked.
He smiled slightly. “Not anymore.”
“Orion,” Marina said, blotting her face with her head covering. “We must go. Cornelius has made new arrangements, and they will not last. It will be harder than ever to get you to the harbor.”
Kyria was against the wall, looking hard at Orion. “What is going on?”
“He must leave Caesarea,” Marina explained wearily. “He is wanted for helping the Jews.”
Orion watched Rivkah’s face harden. Her jaw gained the set he knew well.
“You mean, for helping me.”
“You and another,” Marina replied. “And others and others. Orion, we must go. Now. Give us a chance to save your hide, will you?”
Anger flared in Rivkah’s face. She shoved Orion away. “What have you done?”
Orion staggered backward, staring at her.
She pushed him again, hard, until he hit the wall. “What have you done?” she demanded again.
“I—”
She screamed, “What—have—you—done?” With every word she hit him with her fist.
He seized her wrist and shouted in her face, “I don’t know! I don’t know what I’ve done! I’ve lost it all!”
She used her other fist, hitting with every word, shrieking. “Why didn’t you let them cut down the tree, you stupid fool of a—”
Kyria hauled Rivkah back. “Will you shut up so I can think?” To Orion she said, “What of treason, Roman? What’s the punishment for that?”
Orion was glaring at Rivkah, who glared back. He dropped the look and muttered, “Treason is a public offense.”
Rivkah tried to lunge for Orion, but Kyria hauled her back and twisted a handful of her sleeve to hold her in place. “That’s supposed to explain it? I’m a prostitute, Your Excellency. A harlot. A whore. We don’t get out much.”
Marina wearily stated, “Cornelius said Roman law is either public or private. Treason against Rome is public. It carries the death sentence.”
Kyria’s eyebrow came up. She looked Orion up and down approvingly. “What did you do to earn that, Roman?”
“I didn’t give an order,” Orion answered, returning a slight smile.
Rivkah lunged for Orion again, but Kyria held her fast. “Theron told me Pilate said to cut it down,” Rivkah hissed. She writhed and seethed in Kyria’s hold, clearly intent on killing Orion. “That’s the order you didn’t give, you slick-faced Roman dog of a—what does a tree matter? Are you crazy? It never mattered, you pagan pig! You—”
As Rivkah brought out her curses, Orion watched her struggle, oddly, all of the struggle gone out of himself. “No, Rivkah. For that, I simply had to flee. The treason is for something different.” A thought came, and he asked Marina, “Did Cornelius free Joab?”
“Yes,” she replied with icy patience. “And Pilate has a garrison looking for you. They are all over the harbor. Lucky for you they suspect you’ve already left, so they’re not looking too sharply. Cornelius is waiting at our place to bring you to the ship, and if we don’t leave now then everything he risked for you is in vain.”
“Where will you go?”
He had never heard her voice like that. Small and soft.
She had stopped her struggling. Kyria cautiously let her go. She looked as tired and disheveled as he felt.
“Are you going to hit me again?”
She shook her head, and the dark hollows of her eyes pulled at his heart.
“Wherever the ship is bound.”
Marina grabbed his arm. “It’s bad enough I’ll never see you again, you risk your Roman life dawdling. The vessel puts out at dawn, which is only a few hours away. It has already been searched, lucky for—”
“Marina,” Rivkah said in the same small voice
. “How did Nathanael die?”
Marina’s shoulders sagged. “Oh, child.” She reached to arrange a coil of Rivkah’s ash-covered hair. “There is time for that later. Joab has something quite remarkable to tell you. For now I must whisk our messiah away.” She caressed her chin, then turned toward the door and looked out both ways. She slipped out and beckoned for Orion.
He gazed on Rivkah.
Her look was loss. She had her ax and her ashes, her torn outer robe and no more pride. He thought he could not bear to look on her in her decimated pride, but now he could not bear to look away. And for the great heaviness stealing on him, he could say nothing. Not even good-bye. Marina caught his arm and pulled him out, shut the door.
The ax fell and gouged a chip in the hard-packed floor. Rivkah turned aside into her room, vanishing behind the long strands of beads. Kyria listened but heard nothing, save Rivkah falling on the bed.
Well, someone had to cry some more. Kyria settled on the couch and took the indigo pillow in her lap. Then she wept again, this time not for Nathanael but for Rivkah, and for the Roman, and maybe for herself.
17
PROMETHEUS PEERED into his cup. He swirled it gently, watching the wine swell to the edge and sheet down into the goblet. He glanced at Pilate, but nothing had changed. Still lost in his dark incredulity.
“It makes you wonder what the Primipilaris would think of all this,” Prometheus mused as if to himself. As he expected, Pilate stirred a little at that.
“He knows Orion had Jewish sympathies,” Pilate muttered over his own cup, gripped hard in his fist. “That I told him myself. This will not surprise him.”
They were in the foreroom of Pilate’s private quarters, a place Prometheus had never been. The luxury, the spaciousness, were not lost on him. He simply acted as though the grave matter at hand were more important. The vase on the corner table could pay his wages for six years, and gods-up-in-arms the walls were finished in powdered marble stucco—all of them. What of Pilate’s inner room, was it finished in powdered gold? He tried to gain a surreptitious peek, but a curtain, an extravagantly brocaded curtain that could have been a tapestry itself, obscured his view.
“Clever of you to inform him, Excellency. What a perfect time for Orion’s deceptions to be revealed,” Prometheus said.
The prefect stirred again.
Prometheus could not stop the ensuing smile, so he made it into a smile respectful of Pilate’s cleverness. “Orion’s deceptions and his subsequent fleeing from Caesarea will underscore your warning to the Primipilaris.” He shook his head. “He will learn upon arrival that your first in command fled like a madman before a horde of noisome Jews, as you yourself had intimated. I think, then, that the import of the Jewish situation will be greatly impressed upon him.” Prometheus again shook his head in benign wonder.
For the first time, Pilate eyed him. “Yes. It will be, won’t it?”
His tone had gained a hopeful edge. Perhaps he would allow himself beguilement from his despondency. Prometheus pressed in delicately.
“Now if Orion didn’t flee Caesarea, and my sources are doubtful, well, that of course would be a gift from the Triad. His punishment would have to be very public. The Amphitheater, I would think. Or the Great Stadium, it would seat more. Caesarea would talk of it for months. The Primipilaris would see how you reward disloyalty to Rome.”
“He would. Wouldn’t he?” Pilate straightened in his chair and tugged down the sides of his toga.
“I do not envy you.”
Pilate glanced sharply at him.
Prometheus started, as if surprised to be caught breathing so personal a thought. “I—well, truth be told, Excellency, I don’t know how I would have ruled this province, these past several years. It’s clear why the Triad fixed your stars the way they did.” As if the thought just came, he lifted his cup to Pilate. “To Pontius Pilate, ruler of the Jews. No, this: To Pontius Pilate: he who conquered them at last.”
Pilate considered him with a faint smile and lifted his cup. He was ready to drink . . . then hesitation flickered in his gray eyes. The faint smile vanished. He still held his cup in the air, unaware of it. “I lost a good man to the Jews.”
The cup came down and wine sloshed over the edge, staining the linen tablecloth.
Prometheus barely prevented the sigh. He’d lost him again.
“He was poisoned to the core. What failed? Where do I lay the blame? On Orion himself, or on the Jews whose trickery . . .” He rose suddenly and resumed his restless stalking.
Prometheus groaned inside, settling in for another unending tirade. The mutterings worked into a growl.
“Why couldn’t he have been strong?” Pilate paced his apartment with blind hate, only his familiarity with the room keeping his course. “There is no excuse for his actions. Do you know the betrayal I feel, the humiliation? Do you know how I felt at the Tiberateum? Nobody knew what I was talking about. He was my number one. Do you know what implications that will cast upon me? ‘Pilate could neither handle the Jews nor his own men.’”
Prometheus rolled his eyes when he could safely do so. How could he get out of this? His position was too new to know exactly what was expected of him. Could he excuse himself, say he had duties to attend? Wouldn’t Pilate understand about duty?
He had been here a few hours now, listening to the rise and fall of the prefect’s moroseness. It was getting predictable. He’d slouch on the table in a stupor, then rise and bellow treachery. He’d stop in front of—yes, there he went now. Predictable as snot on an urchin’s face. He stopped in front of the golden standard fixed to the wall and stared up at the image of his beloved Tiberius Caesar.
Prometheus waited for the murmuring. Yes, there it was.
“I didn’t hate them before I came. This is where it all started. Right here.” He touched the golden incense pan on the shelf built below the standard. “Sejanus was right, but his words made little sense to me then. I was assembling my staff. Packing. Making arrangements for leaving my home. Would that I had listened to my mentor.”
Your mentor falls fast from the grace of Tiberius, my prefect. Let’s hope Tiberius doesn’t remember who Sejanus’s friends are.
Prometheus took a sip of his wine and put weary eyes on the medallion.
It wasn’t the full battle standard. The pole was probably in the sacellum, either in the barracks or in Jerusalem. The eagle was gone, the inscription of the legion was gone. Pilate only had the six-inch disk with the profile of Tiberius, bordered in a triumphal wreath, set on an ornately carved gilt charger and mounted on his powdered marble wall.
He broke tradition and burned incense daily to Tiberius’s image on the medallion, as if a battle victory were won every day; blackened pucks of incense in the tray told of the constant ritual. It made Prometheus uncomfortable, a little nauseated, to see Pilate’s adoration so clearly on his face. Adoration, longing. Devotion.
Or was it the sight of the dismembered standard that made him sick? Where was the eagle? Where was the inscription? Did the dismembered parts have battle scars on them? To Prometheus, a legionary soldier first, an appointee in Pilate’s administration next, the standard entire was sacred. It was a man’s unit. It was honor, fortitude, bravery, and strength. It was Rome, of course, though that was for the political prisses who never saw a day of battle: Rome and the gods be cursed, the standard meant the man on the other side. It meant survival.
So yes, Prometheus could understand a measure of Pilate’s devotion. He could understand why he displayed the standards on the walls of the Antonia Fortress in Jerusalem, gods, yes; any Roman soldier could. Prometheus had applauded the act, as Orion worried about offending the locals. And offended they were. The Jews woke to find the standards winking down from the wall, the image of Tiberius smiling on the courtyard of their sacred Temple.
Orion Galerinius Honoratus was never a soldier. He was the only one to wonder what implications might come. He was the one who consulted with the former quaestor
to Valerius Gratus, and reported the subsequent warnings to Pontius Pilate. They went ignored.
Prometheus remembered how they had called Pilate from his morning tea on his new balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. Remembered the shock on his face when the governor had to go out to the Jews, because they would not come in to him. How enraged they were, and how mystified Pilate was. It was his introduction to the freakish devotion to a solitary god. The beginning clash of misunderstandings between two cultures that could never be reconciled. It wasn’t their god who kept them safe from Pilate in those early years; it was their appalling zeal.
Speak of appalling zeal.
“In Tiberius speramus . . .” Pilate murmured, pushing about a charred puck in the incense pan.
In Tiberius we trust? Caesar he may be, but how far could you trust one who spent all his time dallying at Capri with winsome youths? Fetching as it sounded, it wasn’t a sensible way to run an empire, not when one left the Senate to itself.
“Me duce tutus eris . . .”
Prometheus choked back the laugh. Under your leadership, Tiberius will be safe? Great gods up-in-arms, who do you think you are, Pontius Pilate? Nobody will even remember you, save for a few indignant Jews.
He took his cup and lifted it again to Orion Galerinius for affording this opportunity, grim though it was at the moment. No, they wouldn’t remember Pilate, but with the luck of the gods and possibly the good work of Janus Bifrons, they would remember Prometheus Longinus. He drained his cup and looked to see if the amphora had more.
The big Roman soldier was ill at his ease, pacing the room, unable to sit for long. Theron watched him from where he sat at the kitchen table. He didn’t talk much, which was okay with Theron. Theron didn’t know what to say to him.
He’d heard mention of this man in the past few years, in certain circles in which Theron occasionally turned. Cornelius, the soldier who ran the gleaners’ project at the palace. He who was responsible for taking palace leftovers and doling them out to the poor. A curious act of kindness for such a big, burly . . . Roman.