The Inquest (26 page)

Standing, uniformed and armored, with his scarlet general’s cloak flowing behind him, General Bassus drove Procurator Rufus’ handsome chariot, a vehicle decorated with scenes of beaten gold depicting Mars the Avenger. The general reined in opposite the questor. “Have you seen, Varro?” Grinning, Bassus pointed down the road, to a myrtle tree at the roadside. Two cross-beams had been nailed high on the trunk, and the two prisoners consigned to their deaths the night before for masquerading as the apothecary Ben Naum had been lashed up with arms outstretched. “Ben Naum trees,” Bassus said, with a roar with laughter. “The Jews make Ben Naum trees!” Then, with a lash of the reins along the backs of his steeds, he sent the chariot lurching off down the road again.

Members of the questor’s party were smiling at the general’s pun, but Varro was not amused. He looked away from the two crucified men, but he could not escape the sight of death. Close by, on the plain spreading before Macherus, lay the corpses of the Jewish men slaughtered two nights before, naked, bloated, and reeking. There they would remain until they rotted away. Their bones would litter the plain for ever more. Varro was beginning to tire of the useless waste of life. He wished that the Jews had never revolted and cost Rome and themselves so dearly. He wished that the rebels who remained at large surrendered and spared themselves and their families. Death was no answer. Surely, he thought, while a man lived he could always hope for
better times.

The line of advance stretched for two miles down the road when in the third hour the questor’s column finally began to move off. Varro remained at the roadside and watched his people file past. Behind the freedmen on their mules came Miriam and Gemara astride Antiochus’ horse. Miriam’s eyes focused straight ahead, but young Gemara looked the questor’s way. The child gave Varro a smile as she passed, a smile that warmed his heart. In the last cart of his baggage train sat Philippus and Saul ben Gamaliel. The cart had been repaired and Ben Gamaliel was chained to the side. He looked miserable as the cart bumped and jolted along. The Evangelist raised his eyes when the cart drew level with Varro.

“Do you expect your quest to end in the Negev, questor?” Philippus called.

“Possibly so,” Varro replied, easing his horse in beside the moving cart and keeping pace with it. “Once I have my report, you shall have your freedom.”

“My fate is in God’s hands,” the Evangelist replied, sounding much more congenial than in recent days. “Your investigation is progressing well?”

“With the help of Ben Gamaliel, your traveling companion there, I hope to soon locate a key witness, one who will cap my inquiries.”

“May God guide you,” Philippus returned serenely.

Beside him, the apothecary bore a hang-dog expression.

“Be of good cheer, apothecary,” Varro called. “Soon we should overtake your friend Ben Naum, and you shall have your freedom.”

“If it is so ordained,” the man gloomily replied.

Varro was about to kick his horse to the trot when he heard shouting to the rear of the column. Following the pointing arms of cavalryman of his rearguard, he could see a small group of riders galloping from the direction of Jericho. At their head he recognized Venerius. Varro turned his horse toward the rear, and went to meet the horsemen.

Several hundred yards behind the column the questor and Venerius came together. The junior tribune’s Vettonian troopers had a spare horse with them, and, as Varro converged on the small party he saw two bloodied bodies tied to the back of the animal. One body was clothed, the other, naked. Both hung head down.

“I found him for you, questor!” Venerius crowed. Jumping down to the ground, he strode to the horse with its double load. Around him, his Spaniards grinned down from the backs of their horses. “I found the scribe.”

“You found Aristarchus?” Varro also dismounted.

Venerius slashed the ropes holding the two corpses in place. They fell onto the road, landing with a fleshy thud, like sides of beef. There they lay, arms splayed, face up. The trauma of their last living moments was reflected by their wide eyes.

Standing, looking down, Varro did not recognize the clothed cadaver, a dark-headed man. Blood soaking his white tunic and a narrow horizontal rent at breast level indicated that he had died from a thrust to the heart from a bladed weapon. On the other hand, the round face of the bald, naked corpse was unmistakable. The mole on the right cheek provided confirmation. This was Aristarchus, the scribe of Emmaus. The flesh of his throat lay open in a deep incision which ran from ear to ear.

“I said I wanted the scribe alive,” said Varro with displeasure.

“He was already dead when we found him at the roadside, five miles outside Jericho,” Venerius advised, “throat cut, and denuded. The other man we came across a little later, walking the road. I recognized his tunic as the one that Aristarchus had been wearing. Obviously, this
rogue had been one of the robbers who killed the scribe, so I dispatched him on the spot.” He said it with an air that exuded a certain pleasure.

“He may have been a Roman citizen,” Varro remarked with a scowl. The execution of a citizen without the benefit of a properly constituted trial was illegal.

“He was no citizen,” Venerius confidently replied. “He wears a freedman’s plate.”

Varro knelt beside the second body. Sure enough, there was a small, round bronze disc at the end of the leather strip, a freedman’s proof that he was not an escaped slave.

Martius and Crispus now rode up. “So, the mole-faced scribe is dead?” said Martius, resting forward on a horn of his saddle to look down at the bodies.

Varro came to his feet. In his mind he pictured Aristarchus the last time he had seen him alive. “This was not the scribe’s tunic, Venerius,” he said. “It is similar, but not the same. This man was not Aristrachus’ killer. Not on the evidence of the garment.”

“No!” Venerius shook his head. “I will not have it. It is the same tunic.”

“If the questor says it is not so,” said curly-headed Crispus, “it is not so.

“It is not the scribe’s tunic,” Varro reiterated. “You killed an innocent man.”

“Well, when all is said and done, does it matter?” Venerius countered with a nervous laugh. “I probably saved him a life of pain and sorrow. Who would want to live the life of a freedman, after all? He would probably thank me, if he could.”

“You truly are a low, murdering piece of work, Venerius,” Martius growled.

The young man’s eyes flared. “I take exception to that, tribune! You, who slit the throat of the Vettonian, accuse me of murder?”

“I took no pleasure from it. Unlike you.”

“You have one rule for yourself, and another for everyone else!” Venerius spat.

“Take me on at your peril, boy!” Martius snarled.

“Enough, the pair of you!” Varro intervened with a glare. “The damage is done. Dispose of the bodies, Venerius.”

A faint smile came over Venerius’ lips. He called to the troopers with him, ordering them to fling the pair of corpses from the road.

“No, cremate them,” Varro snapped. “It is the least you can do.”

As Varro went to remount, another trooper came galloping up from the direction of the column. When he drew up he reported an accident in the column, and a fatality.

“Who?” Varro demanded. His immediate concern was for Miriam.

“The prisoner,” the soldier replied. “The apothecary.”

Leaving Venerius to make a funeral pyre at the roadside, Varro and his companions rode back to the column. Varro’s baggage train had come to a halt, and dismounted men of the rearguard stood around. Diocles the physician knelt beside the body of Saul ben Gamaliel. The apothecary hung from the chain attached to the manacle on his right wrist, partly over the right side of the cart, partly under the wheel. The chain, six feet in length, was looped around his throat.

“A broken neck,” Diocles pronounced, coming to his feet with the help of an assistant as Varro slid from his mount.

“How?” Varro queried testily.

“Suicide. Or so it would appear.”

Philippus sat in the cart with a disinterested look on his face.

“What took place, Evangelist?” Varro demanded.

Philippus shrugged. “I was beginning to doze off. The first I knew of it, your soldiers were
shouting all around me, and my companion was dead.”

“The apothecary appears to have wound the chain around his neck and then thrown himself over the side of the cart,” said Diocles. “I recommend that the other prisoner’s chain be shortened, to prevent a similar occurrence.”

“Agreed,” Varro returned absently. He looked at the dead apothecary, and wondered why the man would take his own life. With both Aristarchus and the apothecary dead, he had lost his two best informants. Even if he did locate Matthias ben Naum now, who would identify him?

Kingdom of Nabatea. May, A.D.71

In the darkness, Varro stood with General Bassus and a group of their officers on the camp wall, looking west toward the Dead Sea. During the day the army had marched out of Judea and into the kingdom of Nabatea, a small state bordering the south-eastern corner of the Dead Sea, a kingdom allied to Rome and dependent on her. Behind the Roman officers, the marching camp set up beside the highway twenty miles south of Macherus was full of life. Cooking fires blazed, thousands of troops dressed casually in their tunics moving about the tented streets, conversation hummed on the night air.

“Do you see it, Varro?” Bassus pointed into the gloom.

“I see it, general,” Varro confirmed. On a mountaintop on the far side of the lake, a light flickered, as faint as a distant star.

“Masada,” Bassus announced. “The Daggermen, advertising their presence.”

“You think they know that we are here?”

“They know we are in the vicinity. They have lit a bonfire up there on the fortress ramparts to taunt us, to rub our noses in the fact that they have held that place since they cut the throats of the 3rd Gallica garrison five years ago. I hope they enjoy their fire; they will not be up there for much longer. A month or two at most.” With an arm around the shoulders of his deputy, the twenty-eight-year-old military tribune Quintus Fabius, General Bassus gingerly made his way back down to the floor of the camp. Varro and the others followed. “I’m looking forward to that visit to the hot spring at Tiberias we spoke of, Varro, once the last rebel is dead or in chains,” Bassus resumed. “As soon as we deal with Judas Ben Jairus and his band, I will address our ‘friends’ over there at Masada.”

“We do know where Ben Jairus is?”

“My scouts are certain that he is hiding in the Forest of Jardes, in the Negev Valley, accompanied by between two and three thousand men. Tomorrow, we will march another twenty miles down this road. After that, Varro, we turn west, and it will be an overland journey into Idumea, to the Negev. Leave your heavy baggage behind at tomorrow night’s camp. I plan to divest myself of my carts and wagons, and of the prisoners. Those damned people make a speedy march impossible, dragging their feet the way they do. I will leave a thousand auxiliaries to guard baggage and prisoners, and take the remainder of the army after Ben Jairus. If you still intend keeping me company all the way to the Negev, be prepared to march light.”

As they were nearing the general’s tent, where they were due to dine, Callidus came hurrying up to Varro. “Artimedes had returned from his mission to Caesarea, my lord,” the freedman advised. “The secretary and his escort are just now dismounting at the
decuman
gate.”

Excusing himself from the general’s company, Varro hurried away, accompanying Callidus to the camp gate. As they approached, the double gates swung open. Artimedes walked stiffly in through the opening. Decurion Pompeius and six cavalrymen followed, leading the party’s horses. On seeing the questor, Artimedes gave him a wave.

“Welcome back” called the relieved Varro. Hurrying forward, he embraced his secretary and former tutor.

“Steady on, my boy.” Unaccustomed to such a display of warmth, Artimedes quickly pulled out of the embrace.

“I was beginning to think we had lost you, noble Greek,” Varro said, hurt that his display of honest affection had not been reciprocated.

“You are a hard man to track down, questor. At Jerusalem they told us we might find you at Hebron. From Hebron we retraced our way back to Jerusalem, only to be redirected to Macherus and the road to Nabatea, and here we are at last, exhausted and saddle-sore.”

“But safe and sound,” said Varro gratefully.

Artimedes rubbed his numb backside as they walked toward their tents. “I would not lead the cavalryman’s life for any amount of money.”

“Was your mission a success? Was Aristarchus telling the truth?”

“You are impatient, as always.” Artimedes used a scolding tutors tone. “To begin with, you should know that Terentius Rufus is no longer Procurator of Judea.”

“Rufus has left the province?”

“He set sail from Caesarea while I was there. His replacement Liberius has arrived, and has taken up the post.” He sniffed. “I rather think I preferred your odious cousin. Liberius has not a lot to recommend him.”

“He will not be a cause of concern to us. Come, come now, what of Aristarchus? You keep me in suspense, ancient Greek. Well, give me the answer! Or do I have to have it tortured out of you?” Varro broke into a grin.

The diminutive Greek frowned. “I do believe you would do it, too, young man, to repay me for schooldays punishments. Much deserved schooldays punishments, I might add.” This was as close as the secretary would come to sharing a joke with the questor. “Yes, the mission was a success. Prefect Pilatus did have an under secretary by the name of Aristarchus, and Pilatus granted him his freedom just before his return to Rome.”

“Was it the same man, the man we knew as Aristarchus?”

“It was clearly the same man. As it happened, the freedman in charge of the archives at Caesarea had been acquainted with Aristarchus; both were in the same profession, and both were servants of the province’s administrator. He was able to describe Aristarchus, right down to the mole on his cheek.” A frown formed on his brow. “Tell me, is there something I should know? You speak of Aristarchus in the past tense.”

“Aristarchus is dead,” Varro announced, with obvious frustration.

“Dead?” the shocked secretary came back. “How?”

“A long story awaits you over dinner, my dear Artimedes. Suffice it to say that we are heading for the Negev Valley in search of the man Aristarchus identified as Matthias ben Naum the apothecary. Last night we found a man, another apothecary, who could identify Ben Naum, but this morning he too died.”

“Another death? You have either been very unlucky or very careless in my absence, questor. What were the circumstances?”

“He took his own life,” Varro replied, sounding dispirited.

“Why would he do that?”

“That is what I have been asking myself. My fear is that there is no Matthias ben Naum, and that my witness chose to escape his punishment before he was found out as an inventive liar. He told me that he knew Ben Naum, and that Ben Naum had escaped to the south with the last of the rebels.”

“Where then lies the problem?”

“He began by claiming to himself be Ben Naum, so it is difficult to know where his lies ended and the truth began, if his lies ended at all. We must face the possibility, good secretary,
that this apothecary concocted everything.”

“The possibility exists, clearly, but why would he have lied? What could he have hoped to achieve?”

“Only he could tell us that, and the apothecary has gone to ashes.” Varro went on to confide his concerns. He still did not know why Aristarchus had run off, and had to assume that the scribe had feared being found out for some deception. Through Artimedes’ efforts he now knew that the Greek was who he claimed to be, but how much of his story could be believed? Did both the scribe and the apothecary lie, and was Matthias ben Naum nothing more than a figment of their combined imaginations? That being the case, Varro feared that in traipsing all over the wilds of Judea and Nabatea in search of a non existent Matthias Ben Naum he had embarked on a fool’s errand.

All the while, walking behind the pair, Callidus had been listening in to the conversation, and now he spoke up. “If I might remind the questor, there was the matter of his dream, and the name of Naum. You must agree, my lord, in the light of that it would be a considerable coincidence if there were no Ben Naum.”

“Callidus has a point,” Artimedes agreed. Coming to a halt at the end of the camp street containing their tents, he looked his former pupil in the eye. “Clearly, there is only one way to find out, questor. Follow it through to the end. All the way to the end. As I have always taught you.”