The Inquest (7 page)

Varro nodded. “Yes, there it. So, there was a Naum who was apparently an ancestor of the Nazarene. Food for thought, certainly.”

“There can be no doubt now that your dream had a clear and potent meaning, my lord,” Artimedes declared.

“A potent meaning, Artimedes?” Varro responded. “That I will accept. However, a clear meaning? No, that I cannot concede. Was the dream intended to warn me, or to guide me? Do I avoid Naum, or do I seek Naum? This is far from clear, good secretary.” He became aware of Antiochus standing there, bearing the pained expression of a man anxious to relieve himself. “Thank you, Antiochus, that will be all.”

“Thank you, my lord questor.” Antiochus bowed slightly from the waist, then quickly withdrew.

“Perhaps, my lord,” said Artimedes as he returned the letter to its protective case, “this was only the first in a series of dreams. Such a circumstance is not unknown. The meaning may become more clear with each passing dream.”

“You mean I can expect more such nightmares?” Varro responded with a groan.

“What a lucky fellow,” said Martius with a chuckle.

Caesarea Pnilippi, Capital of the Tetrarchy of Trachonitis.
March, A.D. 71

The cities of Beirut, Sidon and Tyre all proved unprofitable for Julius Varro. He had held the highest expectations of Beirut, or Colonia Julia Augustus Felix Berytus as it had been entitled on its incorporation as a colony of retired veterans of the 10th Legion eighty-five years before. Varro knew the city from his annual tax collecting visits. And, eighteen months back, he had worked alongside Pythagoras here to organize a conference between his patron Governor Mucianus and Eastern potentates, a conference which prepared the way for the task force which Mucianus had led to Italy against the emperor Vitellius.

Varro had been hoping to find old soldiers of the 12th Legion here. Marcus Martius, a dedicated militarist with a thorough knowledge of the Roman army’s units and their stations, had told him that the 12th Legion had been stationed in Judea forty years earlier. As a legion colony, Beirut attracted a number of retired soldiers, and Varro had hoped to find a few old veterans of the 12th living there who had served in Jerusalem at the time of the Nazarene’s crucifixion. To his disappointment, despite posting notices throughout Beirut, no 12th Legion veterans had come forward.

As for Sidon and Tyre, the Nazarenes at Antioch had told Callidus that Jesus had visited both, but inquiries there seeking locals with connections with the Nazarene had brought no response. From Tyre, the column had left the coast and marched due east along the main military highway into Trachonitis, a region ruled by King Herod Agrippa II, to his capital, Caesarea Philippi, near the head of the Jordan River. Here, the questor hoped, his investigation would at last begin to produce results.

Outside Caesarea Philippi the expedition turned north and marched along beside the Banias River beyond the city wall, with Mount Hermon looming in the distance ahead. The column was heading for a camp site identified by junior tribune Venerius and the advance guard. Earlier, the advance guard had delivered the questor’s compliments to the king in his capital, and now the main column was overtaken on the road by a mounted military party led by the commander of the king’s army, General Philippus.

The general was a long-nosed, sallow-skinned man with his black, shoulder-length hair and beard in ringlets, a style fashionable among many foreigners in the East. Astride a large black horse, General Philippus welcomed Varro on behalf of the king and extended an invitation for the questor and all members of the Equestrian Order in his party to attend a banquet at the king’s palace in the city that evening. In doing so, the general reminded the questor that King Agrippa had himself been made a member of the Equestrian Order several decades before by the emperor Claudius. The king’s invitation only covered Varro, Martius, Crispus. Varro considered that his two secretaries would have been of more use to him in a meeting with the king than either Crispus or Venerius, but this invitation was more about protocol than pragmatism. Varro graciously accepted the invitation on behalf of his three colleagues and himself.

That night they attended the royal palace, and dined with the king and his senior advisers.

“Do you know, Varro,” said Ptolemy, treasurer to the court of King Agrippa, as he wolfed down a roasted dormouse which had been rolled in honey and poppy seed, “my wife almost died at the hands of the rebels.” Ptolemy considered himself more than the equal of any Roman
questor. “In Galilee, near Taricheae.”

“Is that so, Treasurer Ptolemy?” Varro responded, trying to sound genuinely concerned. “How terrible for her, and worrying for you.”

In the king’s winter palace, situated on a rise overlooking the compact city, a colonnaded banquet hall had been furnished with three curved couches around a circular table. In part of the arc the usual opening for serving and taking away had been allowed. Agrippa himself reclined at one end of the circle, while Varro occupied the other, on the opposite side of the opening. Along with Varro and the king, Martius, Crispus and Venerius reclined around the circle together with Treasurer Ptolemy, General Philippus, Sylla, commander of the king’s bodyguard, and the shaven-headed Bostar, a tight-lipped Cyreniacan Jew and eunuch who was chamberlain to the king’s sister, Queen Berenice.

In the background a slave orchestra played gentle tunes on lyre, flute and water organ, as swarms of male slaves in expensive purple tunics wafted around the diners. The meal met with Martius’ approval, consisting as it did of a conservative seven courses.

Crispus and Venerius were enjoying being treated as men of importance, after coming to the king’s palace with dampened spirits for their own differing reasons. The summary execution of Trooper Fulvus had not been mentioned to Crispus by a soul in the Varro camp since that bloody night outside Laodicea, and the prefect had continued to carry out his duties as usual, although he guessed that his men now despised him; not so much for having his penis sucked as being caught in the act and humiliated publicly by Martius. Yet the incident would not be forgotten by Julius Varro or his expeditioners. Like wise, no one mentioned that Venerius had been disciplined on the first night of the expedition and was under threat of court martial if he were to falter in his duties.

To the court of King Agrippa the members of the Varro party presented the facade of a happy family, and all the dinner guests had engaged in small talk as the groaning platters of the first few courses were consumed. At one point, Commander Sylla, a man with massive shoulders and a pockmarked face, had boasted that as a young man at Rome his king had helped Claudius claim the throne left vacant by the assassination of the emperor Gaius, or Caligula as he was more colloquially known, by addressing the Senate and negotiating with the Pretorian Guard and German Guard on Claudius’ behalf. Varro had taken this claim with a grain of salt, politely responding that he had not been aware of that fact. Inevitably, the conversation had turned to the Jewish Revolt, which was so fresh in all their minds, and in the course of the discussion Ptolemy had brought up his wife’s brush with Jewish partisans.

“In Galilee, you say, my lord?” said Crispus, eyeing off a platter of sow bellies.

“Near Taricheae,” the grotesquely fat, wheezing treasurer replied. “She was returning home from Jerusalem. This was just after the Revolt had broken out.”

“In that case,” said young Venerius, “if it was in Galilee, the men who attacked your wife, Treasurer, must have been under the command of Flavius Josephus.” Like many Roman colleagues, the junior tribune had no liking for the former Jewish general who was now the client and trusted adviser of Vespasian and Titus.

“Quite so,” Ptolemy agreed. “Had it not been for the fact that my wife is such an expert rider, those people would have cut her throat. As it was, they escaped with her baggage train, which contained her personal fortune! We never did recover it.”

“That was unfortunate,” said Varro after downing an oyster with the assistance of a small pointed spoon. “Of course, Marcus Martius here fought the rebels at Taricheae.”

“Is that so, tribune?” said General Philippus with interest. “You were with Titus at Taricheae?
It was my belief that he only employed cavalry in that battle.”

“I was Prefect of the Dalmatian Horse at the time,” Martius came back, smiling.

“Ah, but of course.” The general also smiled, falsely.

“Marcus was severely wounded at Taricheae,” said Varro.

“It was nothing,” said Martius.

“You still carry a Jewish arrowhead in your hip from that campaign,” said Varro.

Martius shrugged. “It does not trouble me. I had all but forgotten it.”

“His Majesty was wounded on the right elbow during the siege of Gamala,” Philippus remarked competitively. “A rebel slinger’s stone.”

“In fact, had it not been for His Majesty’s army,” said the swaggering Sylla, “you Romans would have struggled in Galilee. We played a key part in the campaign.”

“It was my understanding,” young Venerius countered, “that two thousand of your ‘elite’ cavalry not only capitulated at Jerusalem, they went over to the rebels! A cowardly betrayal which resulted in the massacre of a cohort of Roman legionaries!”

“Yes, but that was earlier,” said Sylla with discomfort.

“Yes, earlier,” General Philippus quickly added, “when matters were completely out of hand. Not even His Majesty himself was able to talk the revolutionaries out of the insanity of their uprising.”

Venearius let out a disdainful grunt.

“We know that His Majesty and his sister did everything humanly possible to prevent the Revolt,” Varro remarked, keen to smooth ruffled feathers. As he spoke, he threw a severe cautionary look in Venerius’ direction, causing Venerius to drop his eyes.

“Indeed, indeed,” Ptolemy earnestly concurred.

“Everything possible,” Philippus echoed.

Varro looked over at the king. Agrippa had hardly spoken during the meal. His mind seemed elsewhere. In fact, from the moment that Varro had greeted the king earlier in the evening, he had felt that Agrippa was a dispirited man. “Rome has always valued your loyalty, Your Majesty,” he said directly to the monarch.

“Hmmm? Did you address me?” Agrippa raised his heavy-lidded eyes from the floor, where they had lain for some time. The king, the forty-four-year-old great-grandson of Herod the Great, was a neat, swarthy figure. Raised and educated at Rome, where his best friend had been Britannicus, Claudius’s son and Nero’s stepbrother, he had adopted Roman ways. Even now he was clean shaven and kept his hair short, unlike his officials.

“I was saying, Your Majesty,” said Varro, “that Rome values your loyalty.”

“I suppose she does,” Agrippa sighed.

“It must have been a great disappointment to you, Your Majesty,” said Martius, “for the Jews to ignore you, only to bring about the destruction of Jerusalem.”

“Disappointment?” said Agrippa, sounding affronted. “My dear tribune, one can never be merely disappointed by a catastrophe. One is devastated by a catastrophe.”

With the king in such a morose mood, Varro decided that he had been making small talk long enough. He had come here to ask questions about the Nazarene, and ask questions he must, before Agrippa lost interest altogether. “Your Majesty, my colleagues and I are bound for Galilee and Judea, to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of a Jesus of Nazareth, some years ago,” he began.

“Oh?” A look came over Agrippa’s face which Varro felt suggested either suspicion or intrigue, but he could not tell which. “Why would you do that, questor?”

The question took Varro by surprise. “Well, to, er, set the record straight, Your Majesty. General Collega wishes to have the record set straight.”

“Is that so?”

“There is a story we are hearing, promoted by the Nazarene’s followers, that he rose from the dead following his crucifixion,” Varro explained.

“Yes, I had heard that also,” Agrippa said with apparent disinterest.

“Do you believe the story? Is there, to your knowledge, anything to support it?”

“What does it matter what I believe?” Agrippa sighed. He lifted a cup of wine, and took a brief, contemplative sip. “You will find what you will find.”

Varro decided to try to approach the subject from another angle. “Your father?” he asked. “Did he have an opinion on the Nazarene?” The king’s father had been Herod Agrippa I, briefly King of Judea, until his premature death two decades earlier.

“My father actively suppressed the Nazarene’s followers during the three years he ruled Judea. He had one of their leaders executed—Jacob bar Zebedee—and imprisoned another, a Simon Petra.”

“Simon Petra?” said Martius, with interest. He knew from the Lucius Letter that Simon Petra had been one of the Nazarene’s deputies. “Your father imprisoned him?”

Agrippa nodded. “The prisoner managed to escape. What befell him after that I could not say. I myself have been no friend to the Nazarenes, but I have not gone out of my way to persecute them either. I perceived my role to be that of a guide to the Jewish people, not a tyrant. I tried to advise the people, not impose my will on them.” A bitter tone now entered his voice. “But in the end many chose to ignore my advice.”

“So, you had little to do with the Nazarenes?” said Varro.

“
Very
little to do with them. I did once interview a Paulus of Tarsus, one of their advocates, ten or twelve years ago.”

“Paulus of Tarsus?” said Martius. “Yes, we have heard of him.”

“He had Roman citizenship, but also went by the Jewish name of Saul, if I remember. He had been placed in custody at Caesarea by Felix, the procurator, after being charged with blasphemy by the Great Sanhedrin of Jerusalem.”

“How did you find him, Your Majesty?” Varro asked.

“I found Paulus earnest and pious. A persuasive sort of fellow, a compelling orator. At one point he almost had me convinced that there was something in what he said.” A smile flitted briefly across his lips. “I considered him guilty of no crime. I believe that Felix’s successor, Festus, sent him to Rome, to have his appeal heard by Nero Caesar. Yet, when all is said and done, Paulus was no more than a fanatic.” His face hardened. “I abhor fanatics of any persuasion, Varro. Fanatics are blind to reality, fanatics are deaf to reason. Fanatics will be the end of Israel.”

Seeing the embittered expression which now possessed the king, Varro quickly tried to redirect the conversation to the man who was the focus of his investigation. “You never personally believed that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, Your Majesty?”

Agrippa frowned at him. “Have I not already said as much?”

“May I ask, what do you know of his background, Your Majesty?”

Agrippa shrugged. “One hears many things. As far as I know, his family had connections with the Pharisees, the largest Jewish religious community. The Pharisees believe in life after death, unlike the Sadducees, who dominated the Great Sanhedrin until its destruction. This Jesus of Nazareth was a cousin of Johannes bar Zecharias, who laid claim to being a prophet. Johannes’s followers—and I am told that thirty thousand men were at one time his adherents,
including his cousin Jesus—they called Johannes ‘the Baptist,’ because he baptized them in the Jordan River.”