“There, you see, you can sort through a crowd and spot possible problems. Now let us wander into the Souk and see if any or all follow us.”
Chapter XXXI
Pilate could scarcely believe his good fortune. One day he suffered the humiliation of house arrest in the depths of the Antonia Fortress like an ordinary felon, and the next he was fully restored to his position. True, the Tribune had qualified his return to the bright light of respectability with stringent conditions. He could not leave the Fortress. He could not speak to anyone outside his official duties. He had not been cleared of the charge of murder and because of that, assuming no evidence of his innocence would be forthcoming, he would soon be placed on a ship bound for Brundisium and thence, via the Appian Way, directly to Rome or, more likely, to Capua, Neapolis, Capri, and thence to the Emperor. Either way, his future did not look bright. But for the moment, he could revel in his restoration.
Any other man would have been humbled by this arrangement, but as he’d announced to Rufus after the Tribune left, he’d “marched down that road before.” He’d added, “After all, skirting compromising situations defined how politics at the highest levels usually played out in Imperial Rome.”
As a man trained in the military, he understood a flanking maneuver as well as the next. Somehow he would need to find a way around this current mess. Luckily for him, his enemies did not know his arsenal held a secret weapon, Gamaliel, the Hebrew with the genius for solving complex puzzles. That crusty old man would untangle his mess. He stopped short—Gamaliel. He wouldn’t know about the change in his status. He needed to get a message to the Rabban. Where was that boy? Where was Marius? By the gods if he found him he would give the ungrateful little….well, he’ll get a thorough beating when he turned up. In the meantime, he had to contact Gamaliel. But how? The Physician. What was his name? Procula would know. He sent for his wife.
***
Procula’s maid shook her awake. Lately, the Prefect’s wife had had trouble sleeping. That is, she could not find rest at night and because of that, dragged through the day in a daze, napping occasionally. When this happened and if the nap lasted more than an hour, she seemed barely sentient on awakening.
“Madam, the Prefect asks for you.”
“What?”
“You have been summoned by your honorable husband.”
“Summoned? By whom?”
“The Prefect.”
“Who?”
“Your—”
“Yes, yes, I know. Don’t be stupid. I know. Why does my husband want to see me? You do not know, do you? No, you don’t. Where is he?”
“He is in the Great Hall, madam. He is meeting a delegation from some foreign place at the moment. He says to come in the east portal and wait on him there. Egypt.”
“What?”
“The foreigners are from that place, Egypt, where they say there are huge horses that live in the rivers and will swallow whole boats if they venture too near.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“One of the new legionnaires told me, and he was posted there once.”
“And you believed him. Legionnaires lie, Drusilla. It is their nature. That reminds me…What am I thinking about?”
“Madam?”
“Never mind. It would be wonderful if my husband had left a hint as to why he wishes to see me in the middle of the night.”
“It is already the fifth hour, madam.”
“For you it may be, but for me it is the middle of the night. Very well, fetch me something to drink. Some fruit juice, and make sure it is freshly made. If you don’t consume it immediately, everything in this fly-blown country turns to wine or vinegar inside an hour.”
The servant scurried off mumbling about Equestrian women and their peculiar tastes and what was wrong with apple juice which had fermented a bit? It added a tang that most people found quite pleasing.
***
“Have any of the Hebrews tried to contact him?” The Tribune leaned against the cool stones of the Great Hall wall and watched as Pilate greeted the newly arrived envoys from Egypt. He had to hand it to the Prefect, whatever else might be said about this man, he did know his job.
“Not so far. Do we care? He is as good as dead for the murder. Will Tiberius care very much why this man is destroyed?”
“Yes, the Emperor will. You must understand the man, Cassia. His reason for dispatching us here may seem bizarre, but we are speaking of the current Emperor and when he gets a thing in his head, it will nag at him until it is resolved. Some new, more pressing concern may push it aside, but he will not forget. So, irrespective of the murder business, it’s best if we continue with the task he set for us initially.”
“The whole idea is absurd, you know. And if we fail in that?”
“Well, I do not plan on visiting Capri’s seaside rocks, and certainly not by falling on them from a great distance. If we must, we will invent something that will please the Emperor.”
“There remains the possibility that there is no substance to the accusation.”
“There is that. If we take that tack, it will be important we have incontrovertible proof.”
“How likely is that?”
“We will say he murdered Aurelius because he had the necessary evidence we were sent to find. We could find a witness or two who would, for a few denari, testify to that as instructed. I would rather find something certain here, as unlikely as that may seem, but either way, we cannot risk displeasing Tiberius.”
“Then we will have to keep looking. I have posted men outside to track that Jewish official. He may lead us somewhere yet. Did you hear the rumor that he murdered one of the horses stabled in the hippodrome? They say he called on that god of theirs and the horse just dropped dead in its tracks. These people do not approve of the races, I know, but that seemed a rash way to say so.”
“Nonsense, their King built the hippodrome. How can they not like the races? Which horse?”
“Pegasus.”
“Ah, just a rumor then. I visited that beast this morning and it is fine. The keeper said it had an attack of food poisoning—ate a bad apple or something—but it has recovered. That is the problem with trying to rule these people. They are so full of myth and mystery, one can’t sort out reality from fiction.”
***
Procula waited for her husband to complete the formalities with the Egyptian delegation. When he looked her way, she motioned to him. He excused himself from the crowd and strode over to her.
“What is his name?” he snapped.
“Whose name?”
“That Physician who came to question you.”
“The Rabban’s friend?”
“That one, yes.”
“Let me think. It was a Greek name, I remember that. Lou…Lou…Loukas Something. Why don’t you ask the Rabban the next time you see him?”
“That’s just it. I can’t ask him. Not officially, and I need to get a message to him somehow.”
“Send that tiresome boy, what’s-his-name.”
“Marius has disappeared.”
“Send a legionnaire to the Rabban directly.”
“I am afraid all my troops are momentarily compromised. It seems this pair of hunting dogs the Emperor has set on me is relentless. I dare not use anyone from the Fortress.”
“Well, Loukas is all I know. He told me he lived outside the walls past the Sheep Gate, wherever that is.”
“That’s a start. Send one of your women to the Sheep Gate and have her ask around. When she finds the Physician, have her say that the Prefect’s wife wishes to see him.”
“But I don’t.”
“I need to send the Rabban a message, woman, and I cannot be seen contacting him directly. The Physician will come to you, and you will deliver it to him, and then he will deliver it to the Rabban.”
“Why not just give the girl the message to deliver and save the Loukas person the trip to the fort? Calling him in is not part of your Passover routine. It will
attract notice.”
“Very well, I will write it out. Send a servant who can’t read.”
“None of my servants can read. I can’t read. Are you certain the Physician can?”
“He must write all the time. If he writes, he reads. Send the girl.”
Chapter XXXII
As they turned the corner into the Souk near where three spice vendors plied their wares, Loukas stopped and stared straight ahead. Gamaliel pulled up and waited for an explanation.
“Now this is something new,” Loukas muttered. “We’ve been followed before, a great many times, if you recall, but this has to be a first.”
“As you say, we have been followed, many times. We have been followed, stalked, and observed, and by friend and foe alike. We could teach a short course in the art of being followed. If I didn’t know better, I’d say following one or both of us has become the National pastime. Beyond that, I am sure you just said something meaningful. Are you telling me that we are under surveillance now?”
“More than that, not only followed, but we are being anticipated.”
“Can we move along? If I am exposed to them for any period of time, some of these spices, especially the pepper, make me sneeze. What do you mean, we are being anticipated?”
Loukas stepped off. “We have someone who is not in our train, you could say, but rather he walks in front of us. I recognize him from the Temple Mount.”
“A coincidence, surely.”
“I don’t think so. If you think about it for a moment, what better way to seem uninterested in a person’s destination, than to walk in front of him?”
“I cannot see how that would work. Suppose we turned down this side street. How would our ‘anticipator’…um, anticipate such a move?”
“Wait.”
Loukas paused again and feigned an interest in some fabric hanging from a rack. He turned the material toward the light and glanced down the street behind them. He shook his head at the seller before he ventured out of the stall to negotiate a sale. He cleared his throat and resumed his stroll up the street.
“There is one behind who would take his place. We can test it, if you like. If we turn here, the one behind will work his way up to and then pass us. We will naturally assume he has had no interest because he has walked by. At the same time the one formerly in front of us will take up his position at the rear.”
“That seems to be an inordinately complicated way of keeping us in sight. Who would go to such lengths?”
“These men have been tasked with this sort of thing many times, if I am not mistaken. Shall we see if I am right?”
“We turn here.”
The two men made an abrupt turn down a side alley. Within moments a man brushed by them. He did not make eye contact.
“Not so skilled as I thought,” Loukas said.
“How so?”
“If I were that man, I would have at least glanced at us, excused myself for having bumped into you and so on. As it was, he made himself noticeable by not doing so.”
“You have become devious in your thinking lately, my friend.”
“It is the company I keep.”
“Aha. What else should I be seeing?”
Loukas repeated his act of inspecting some fabric. Gamaliel did the same.
“There, you see? The man who preceded us has now taken up the rear.”
“And there is more. Behind him appears another very familiar face. Who is that woman and what interest has she in us?”
“Where?”
“Opposite the potter’s stall. She faces away now.”
Loukas risked a quick glance down the street. “It is the woman from the Mount as well. This is very confusing. Why would she want to follow us?”
“Perhaps she doesn’t. Maybe her interest lies not with us, but with the men who follow us. Now, as long as we are busying ourselves with this dance of fools, is there anyone else in the mix? Where is your out-of-position legionnaire, for example?”
“That is a problem. Unless he is still in full regalia, I could not recognize him.”
“Why ever not?”
“It is an axiom of observation that the most salient feature a person displays will be the recognition point. A beard, a hat, a limp, and so on. The legionnaire wore his galea, greaves, and baldric, for example. If he threw a cloak over that and left the helmet behind, I would not know him. A quick look in his direction back on the Mount meant I only saw the descriptors, you could say.”
“His caligae? I can see how he might discard his headpiece and cover the rest, but surely he would not have had time to shed his boots and change his footwear.”
“Point taken, but unfortunately in this crowd it is difficult to see feet. I will keep watch, though.”
“With this much company it will be difficult finishing our business here. Who do you suppose these people report to?”
“I would venture to guess that the skillful observers, the alternating front and rear watchers are from the Fortress but not sent by Pilate. That leaves the visiting dignitaries. Why are they interested in us?”
“Perhaps they are not. Alternatively, maybe we are the point for their visit in the first place?”
“Sorry?”
“Is it possible that we have this all wrong, Loukas? Maybe the visit and the murder of the Roman official are coincidental. Suppose their real interest is to investigate us…me?”
“You? With respect, Rabban, what interest would they have in you?”
“I admit, it is unlikely, but consider how Pilate’s problem plays out if we remove them from consideration.”
“I see…or perhaps I do not. Are you saying we are nowhere in our search for the man’s killer?”
“Not nowhere. We were nowhere before. Now we have fewer nowheres to consider.”
“Does that even make sense? Never mind. What you mean is, we have eliminated several suspects.”
“And more. We will rub out all sorts of plots and counterplots. Roman politics is about intrigue, Loukas. If we can steer clear of all that, perhaps we will have a clearer view of what really happened.”
“This assumes you are the interest the visitors have, not Pilate.”
“Maybe.”
“But you just said—”
“I didn’t say they were not interested in Pilate. I am sure they are. Why else would they be here? No, what I said was that the murder of Aurelius Decimus was coincidental, not part of the original equation. They are after Pilate for something. I just don’t know what and somehow I am part of that interest. If I am correct, then the murder came as much a surprise to them as it did to Pilate.”
“Very well. I will have to accept your assessment as I have no idea what you are talking about. Where are we going, by the way?”
“We were going to visit Agon again, but with this entourage of curiosity-seekers in our wake, it would be best if we find an alternate destination. Shall we visit the theater? I am certain that will make at least one of our followers very agitated.”
“It will? Who?”
“One of them. Perhaps more than one as I muse on it. Come along, Loukas. We have work to do. Not the task I thought to do initially, but this is better.”
***
The two men made their way through the Souk, still crowded with visitors, pilgrims and a few in the crowd who held less than honorable notions about what was to happen over the next few days. Loukas trailed Gamaliel out of the side street and toward the amphitheater. It would be something of a walk as they were on the opposite side of the city. Gamaliel, he thought, puzzled him. How could he have not grasped the intricate following arrangement he, Loukas, had uncovered and then intuit that the theater would disturb someone behind them?
“The theater? I have to assume you have a reason, beyond agitating one of our pursuers, for going there.” Gamaliel shrugged and smiled. “So, why did you ask me about Clytemnestra when you sent me there earlier?”
“I do not know much about Greek theater and less abou
t the Roman version. It all seems rather decadent to me. However, I have an interest at the moment. That play, it’s about a woman, isn’t it?”
“Yes…well, not really. It is about Agamemnon’s wife who murdered him and his prize, Cassandra, after his victory at Troy. According to the story, Zeus appeared to a girl, Leda, in the form of a swan, seduced and impregnated her. No easy task, but then it is a story. So, then she produced four offspring, Castor and Clytemnestra, and Helen and Polydeuces—”
“From two eggs. Is that right?”
“Ah…that sounds right. Greek mythology is a little complex and I don’t quite know if the eggs were actual eggs or simply signified twins or…Never mind. Agamemnon and his brother married the two daughters: Agamemnon wed Clytemnestra, and Menelaus, Helen. Then Paris—”
“Enough. I don’t need to hear the story, Loukas. I am sure it is fascinating in an absurd Greek way, only that Clytemnestra was a woman and there are other women in their plays?”
“Yes, certainly. Why would there not be? Women have a different status in Greek society than in ours. So, yes, there are many women in their dramas. Antigone, for example, is Creon’s daughter and—”
“Yes, yes, but what do all those women have in common?”
“Well, they are tragic heroines. Their stubbornness or hubris leads to…well, not all are tragic. Lysistrata is a comedy about women who—”
“That is not what I am asking. Who plays these women in the theater?”
“Who?”
“Yes, who?”
Loukas shrugged. Sometimes, he thought, Gamaliel could be infuriatingly obtuse. Who indeed? “Shall we try to lose our friends?” he said and nodded at the street behind them.
“No. I don’t think we want them to know that we know.”
“Then to the amphitheater.”
“Yes, but for a brief visit only. A comprehensive one will have to wait for another day. Let us take our entourage on a tour of the city. We will end at your house but by a circuitous route.”
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