“I am not finished. Take this case. If you know for a certainty that the man found in the Holy of Holies had been placed there by some one—a true blasphemer, in fact—and you still insist that he died at the hands of the Lord, what would you call that?”
“What?”
“It is simple enough. If blasphemy is, among other things, lying to or about the Lord, and you tell such a lie in order to advance a theory about His reaction to anyone who invades the Most Holy Place, what have you done?”
Caiaphas’ face turned several shades of red and then, as if the plug had been pulled, the color drained away and he became as white as the marble bench on which he rather abruptly collapsed.
“You cannot mean…” he gasped.
“Loukas, pour the high priest some wine. He looks poorly.”
“High Priest,” Loukas said as he stepped to his side, “Put your head between your knees and take slow but steady breaths.”
Caiaphas did as he was told and moments later he seemed better.
“Are you experiencing any pain?”
Caiaphas tapped his chest.
“Gamaliel, the high priest needs to lie down for a while. Fetch that vial of hul gil we brought from my house and mix a small, a very small amount of it with honey and water.”
Gamaliel did as he was asked. They half carried him to a couch. Loukas administered the mixture slowly. Caiaphas relaxed and closed his eyes.
“High Priest, you must rest here for an hour or so. Then have your men fetch a sedan and carry you home. Take what remains of this week to rest and I will call on you within the hour. Under no circumstances should you exert yourself.”
“I have an appointment with the prefect in an hour.”
“Not today, not this week. Send a messenger with your regrets and have him say the high priest is ill and cannot attend him.”
“He will be angry.”
“He is always angry,” Gamaliel said. “He will get over it. You should know by now that no matter what you do to please or placate him, if he feels the need, he will chop you off at the knees and not blink an eye.”
Caiaphas rolled his eyes much as he had when reporting his blasphemy. Gamaliel wondered if, in the high priest’s mind, he thought speaking against the prefect equated with speaking against the Lord.
“Now rest,” Loukas said. “I will send someone to my home for my remedy box. There is a plant I learned about from one of my colleagues from the west the leaves of which he says works wonders with this sort of complaint.”
“High Priest,” Gamaliel said, “One last question for you. If this had been Shabbat, what should Loukas have done just now?”
Caiaphas groaned, but his color returned.
Chapter XLII
Gamaliel gazed at the retreating figure of Caiaphas as he disappeared down the street in a conveyance cobbled up by his servants—not quite a sedan chair and not quite a stretcher—serviceable if not elegant. He looked miserable.
“You must be careful when you bait the high priest, Rabban. You might have killed him.”
“Loukas, surely not. The man is impervious to criticism. Half of the time he simply doesn’t listen. The rest of the time he ignores you. He will live forever. Besides it wasn’t criticism, it was a critique.”
“Enough. You want me to believe that it is your wish he live forever?”
“Of course. I hope you are not suggesting I want him dead. If the high priest were to die, it would be a tragedy…no, a national disaster.”
“A national…I think you exaggerate.”
“Not at all. As much as we abhor his snug relationship with Rome, replacing him would result in an appointment sanctioned by a crazed Caesar and certified by an obnoxious prefect. Where is Elohim in that? It is a prospect no one could possibly want.”
“Then, I repeat my warning. You must not bait the man. I have seen the signs he displayed just now many times and, as often as not, collapsing like that—a cold sweat and chest pains—will end in the person’s death, sometimes immediately, sometimes after a few days. All I am saying is be careful when you push him like that.”
“Arguing with Caiaphas is one of my few remaining pleasures. Now you will deny me even that.”
“Yes, yes, I must be off to retrieve my bag and attend to the man. Whatever you had in mind for today’s activities will have to wait, that is if they included me.”
“In truth, I had not begun to plan how to lure our killer out, but I know that before we are done with this affair, that is what we will have to do.”
“What is the problem, then? Never mind, I haven’t time to listen. You can tell me later.”
“It has to do with motive.”
“Motive?”
“Yes, I can’t think of any. We have several men whose deaths I am sure are connected, but I lack a real clue how or why they are. You said it yourself, ‘a separation, that the dead man was involved in something. Separating him from any hint as to what or who that might be renders him isolated and you with no place to start.’ Or words to that effect.”
“You have given up on the goings on in the souk then?”
“No, but I can’t quite fit that part with the Temple man. It is maddening.”
“On that happy note, I will take my leave.” Loukas stepped through the door with Oren at his heels.
***
For the man who had been watching the house and Loukas and Gamaliel and now lay in wait across the street, the problem had become many times more complicated for him as well. He found himself in a deeper hole than he’d ever anticipated. While no one, or nearly no one, would miss a guard, an apothecary, or even a physician, the rabban of the Sanhedrin was a very public figure and therefore a poor subject for a murder. When public figures come to an untimely or a suspicious end, they tend to attract an excess of attention. He could only guess at what may have transpired between the rabban and the prefect the previous day, but if the two were now allied in the pursuit of the man responsible for any of the recent killings, then he was in more trouble than he’d bargained for. And if that weren’t bad enough, Loukas the physician, who he believed had no status except for his acquaintance with the rabban, now attended the high priest.
Caution urged vacating the city and his assignment. The problems begun with Hana could be addressed later, after enough time had passed and the deaths forgotten. That would be the conservative move. He rejected it. He’d come to avenge a murder, reestablish his market, and to do a job. He would not leave until he’d finished it.
He moved off down the street, eyes and ears alert to any and all around him.
***
Gamaliel sat by the slit window and watched as first Caiaphas in his ungainly carrier and then Loukas disappeared into the growing crowds on the street. He, like the man in the shadows across the street, also considered his options. Somewhere out on that same street, figuratively speaking, wandered his murderer. He would like to devise a trap, but, as he’d told Loukas, to set a trap meant having knowledge of what bait would entice a killer to step into it, and that meant he needed to know what drove him. But the connection that could stitch all these bits and pieces together flitted in space just ahead of his ability to grasp them. It was maddening.
He rose and would have turned away except a movement on the street opposite caught his eye. A man, a very familiar man, stepped cautiously into the sunlight. He looked both ways and then stared straight at Gamaliel. In fact, he stared at the house. Standing inside with the brighter light outdoors, Gamaliel could not have been seen. Nevertheless, the rabban shrank back a step. He did not, however, take his eyes off the man who now turned and shifted his attention down the street in the direction Loukas had taken. Gamaliel tried to concentrate. He felt sure he knew the man—one of the many familiar manifestations he’d run across over the past few days. The false priest? The man on the street on Shabbat eve? Both? Someone else? Maybe, with his lower face covered, the man who claimed to be in search of Ali bin Selah. Any and all of these possi
bilities could obtain. Which? He turned and went to his study. He needed to concentrate. Whether by instinct or Providence he would never know, but one or the other caused him to pivot back toward the window in time to see a second man move out from the wall and take a position behind the other. Now this man he did know.
He squinted his eyes against the sunlight streaming through the narrow slit and watched the two men walk away. Then, his mind made up, he grabbed his cloak from a peg by the door and yelled to Benyamin.
“Benyamin, I am going to meet with the prefect. If Loukas comes back, tell him where I am. If anyone else asks, tell them I am in the Souk searching for fabric for a new cloak. If I do not return in two hours you may assume that Pilate has had me put away.”
“Yes, sir, and which of these stories will be the truth?”
“It doesn’t matter, just be sure you tell the right one to the people I’ve identified.”
Chapter XLIII
The Roman prefect had problems of his own, not the least of which was a wife, Procula, whom not a few of his acquaintances referred to as dementis, but never to his face. She wasn’t crazy, but she did have premonitions that unfortunately or fortunately, depending on the outcome, often turned out to be true, or near enough. It had been at her insistence that he’d made this tiresome trip to Jerusalem. He confided to his friends back on the peninsula that of all the places he’d been posted, it was the most tiresome place anywhere in the Empire. This morning Procula had burst into his anteroom and informed him that he should listen to the voice of God. Her words exactly, Listen to the voice of God. Not the voice of the gods, which would be the way any normal person would have put it, but God, as if there were only one and he rated special attention. Pilate wondered if living in this benighted land with its constricting monotheism hadn’t affected her mind and if he shouldn’t petition the Emperor Tiberius for a transfer to a more salubrious posting. He’d earned it. He also knew that this Caesar had slipped out of the realm of rational thought and would as likely order his execution as his transfer. He sat with these thoughts, worrying them like a dog with a bone, when the legionnaire assigned to monitor his door announced the presence of the rabban of the Sanhedrin.
The voice of God?
“Show him in.”
Gamaliel entered and greeted him with his usual courtesy, which Pilate felt bordered on the ironic, as if excessive politeness somehow satirized the relationship of Rome to its conquered nations and its citizens to their Caesar. In his more relaxed moments, which were admittedly few, he thought the rabban had it right.
“I will not tell you why, Rabban, but I have been expecting you. I can tell you that I have been thinking over what you reported to me earlier. I have made inquiries. I selected certain of my legionnaires who admitted to having acquired a taste for the stuff you described to me, and I have experimented. Aristotle taught us that the observation of phenomena while varying the circumstances around it can be extremely informative. It cost me six otherwise good men, but I have determined that hul gil, when taken in certain doses, will make a man useless for fighting. Furthermore, once they achieve a certain level of use it seems they require more of it and cannot willingly cease craving it. They will need the stuff and become quite unreliable unless they get it.
“Then you see the problem?”
“Indeed. What I do not see is the connection between it and the dead man or men, as you insist.”
“That is the twist, to be sure. Like you, I have been considering the drug and the connection. Unlike you, however, I did not experiment with it, although my friend the physician did apply it to relieve the high priest of symptoms he said might have been fatal. I don’t believe that, by the way. For any other man, they might, but the high priest is indestructible.”
“Probably. And what did you conclude?”
“This is highly speculative, Prefect. I could be completely off the mark.”
“I have it on reliable authority that you are not.”
“Pardon?”
“Someone insisted I hear you out and, more than that I was to take you seriously. You do understand how difficult the last part is for me?”
“I suppose it must. I would apologize for your inconvenience but I doubt you would take it seriously.”
“As seriously as it is offered.”
“Yes, well then, there you are. Now, here is what I have so far. Something has changed in this material. Until this moment, it has been in the bag of every healer on earth. It sits in powders, poultices, vials, and blocks in hundreds, thousands of homes. To this point, no one has cared one way or the other about it. Some think it is a good palliative, others doubt it. Now, suddenly, it is the source of great attention. I have been reading, Prefect.”
“Stop. We are talking about hul gil are we not?”
“Exactly. Something has changed. Someone, or several someones, has cultivated a strain of poppy that produces a sap that is more heavily endowed with the active ingredient.”
“Or?”
“Sorry, what?”
“There is another possibility, you know.”
“I see, and what would that be?”
“Improved processing.”
“Oh, yes, that is a possibility.”
“If the latter, we will never get on top of this except by banning its use on pain of death.”
“And if the former?”
“We burn the fields and crucify the growers.”
“If I am correct, that will not be possible.”
“Not? Tell me why the Roman Empire with its legions cannot do exactly that?”
“Because it comes from a place beyond your reach. Your influence extends far to the east, I know, and you can even make people you have not yet subjugated bend to your will, but these flowers grow far away in the northern mountains beyond Parthia in Khorasan. The people there are gathered into warlike tribes and to date no one has successfully conquered them, not even the late great Macedonian, Alexander.”
“I know the place. It is on the border of the world.”
“That might be overstating, Prefect. I have no doubt here are countries beyond it which, if I’m not mistaken, supply the rare spices and fabrics you people covet. No, the problem is, and I admit I am not a strategist or familiar with the workings of armies, but it is more a matter of vulnerable supply lines and topography, I think.”
“For a man who spends his days with his nose on sheets of holy writings, you seem to have acquired a working knowledge of logistics.”
“I attribute it to some of my days in your company, Prefect. A man is a fool if he does not know his adversary.”
“Well put. As my adversary, then, why should I take advice from you?”
“Alas, in this case you must.”
“Because?”
“This new threat to the well being of your troops is like the wind. It blows where it will and knows no favor. That is to say it will blow on Roman and Hebrew alike. The problems it creates will affect us all.”
“I take your point. Now what?”
“The souk must be cleansed, the border to that far away province sealed, and warnings issued to your people and mine.”
“You shall be responsible for your people. I will attend to the souk and the Roman population. Anything else?”
“There is one more thing. The killer of several men is at the heart of this, I am sure. We must root him out.”
“For what purpose?”
“As I said at the outset, what I am suggesting is highly speculative. I said I could be completely off the mark. To be absolutely certain, we must find this man and question him. I have a feeling, which I cannot justify in my own mind, that the problem is more complex than I have just described.”
“More? In what way is it more complex?”
“I do not yet know. That is why we must find this man.”
“Do you believe that I can do a better job at that than yourself?”
“Modesty forbids me to answer. What I do know is you hav
e men, many men, who can be deployed wherever they are needed. They will do exactly what they are told. I have only myself, a few Temple guards who are otherwise occupied, and the physician.”
“You are not suggesting I put my legionnaires under your command?”
“Oh no, never that. What I suggest is that you assign a tribune or someone with authority to be in charge and that he consult with me as to where and how these men are to be stationed.”
“I will think on this. Call on me again in three hours.”
Pilate waited until the door closed after Gamaliel and then he began pacing. Was Procula correct? It was beginning to seem so. Where would this end?
Chapter XLIV
Gamaliel left the prefect’s apartment in the Antonia Fortress and made his way across the Temple Mount to his home. He had finished his prayerful soak in the mikvah when Benyamin announced the physician had returned. Gamaliel met him in his study.
“What have you been up to so early that warranted a trip to the water?”
“I have been to see the prefect again. We talked and planned. I acquainted him with the problem of the pain-killer and he informed me he had experimented with it and if his observations are accurate, it is worse than we thought. I feel like I have struck a bargain with Ba’al-Zebuwb. We are to be allies in our efforts to trap the killer.”
“And did the two of you in my absence decide to bait the trap?”
“We didn’t discuss bait or even the trap. I only asked him for men to set it.”
“And he will cooperate?”
“I will know in two hours. That is when I must return and get his answer. It was an odd meeting, Loukas.”
“When you and the official representative from Rome meet, it will always be an odd meeting, surely.”
“Yes, but that is not what I meant. He said he was expecting me and not only that, but he intended to listen to whatever I proposed. Does that sound like our Prefect?”
“Not even close. Perhaps he has succumbed to a mental problem. Madness seems to run rampant in the Roman hierarchy. It seems like one Caesar after another is either assassinated, thinks he’s divine, is demented, or all three. At least one of the two aspirants for Mad Tiberias’ mantle is, they say, well on his way to becoming non compos mentis, and the other is a boy with not much to recommend him.”
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