The Redemption of Pontius Pilate (26 page)

Most of the soldiers clustered inside the sheepfold, where the summer grasses had mostly covered the layers of dung and hay at the bottom of it. Several of the more experienced men joined Pilate and James in the largest hut, whose window openings faced out toward the road. He spoke to the men as they filed into the sheepfold.

“Sit quiet, eat some breakfast, and if you are tired, close your eyes,” he said. “But keep your gear on and your weapons at the ready. When we move out, we may have to move very quickly!”

“No worries, sir!” said one of the old-timers. “Give us a shot at the Zealots and we'll run like we were wearing Mercury's boots!”

Pilate favored the man with a grin and returned to the hut. James was staring wistfully out the window toward his home village. Pilate felt somewhat sorry for the poor country boy who had not asked for any of this trouble, but comforted himself with the thought that James would be back with his family within the next couple of hours. Meanwhile, the sun climbed in the east and the temperature began to rise. It was still quite comfortable, but gave the promise of being a warm afternoon. Pilate returned to his horse, tied behind the hut, and retrieved one of his most prized possessions from his saddle bag.

It was a Greek telescope, used by astronomers to study the stars and see places far off. Pilate did not fully understand how it worked, but it had been in the effects of his first commander, Flavius Sixtus, when he had died, and Tiberius had given it to him. It was a tapered bronze tube with two highly polished pieces of perfectly clear rock crystal mounted in either end. When viewed through the small end, it magnified far-off objects, making them appear only a few feet away. Pilate had carried it to every posting he had been to for the last fifteen years. Now he lifted it to his eyes and watched the place where the western road left the confines of Nazareth. The town was too small to have a fortified wall, but there was a low stone curb that separated the road from the yards that the small, stone houses sat in. He was startled, as he always was, by how the lenses caused him to leap across a distance of two miles and seemingly stand a few feet from the dusty road.

A woman came out of the house on the edge of town, water pot on her shoulder, and headed toward the well near the town square. Even in her long Jewish robes, Pilate could tell that she was young and lovely. Several young men apparently agreed with the governor's judgment, for they paused on their morning errands to watch her pass. She rounded the corner of a house and passed out of his sight, and a few moments later the young men returned to their chores. He watched a few other locals going back and forth on their morning errands—gathering eggs, heading to the well for water, and getting ready for a day of agrarian toil.

A few moments later, the “merchant caravan” came into view. The men looked suitably bored and disreputable, and Longinus was scowling as he urged them to get moving. He was wearing a fairly expensive robe of good Tyrian cloth, and had a bulging moneybag at his belt. The mule was laden down with two large saddlebags that were obviously quite heavy. In short, to a bandit, the group of disguised Roman legionaries presented a very tempting target. Pilate watched as they made their way out of town and westward down the road.

“Why are you staring into a bronze tube?” asked James at his elbow.

“It is called a telescope. Some say Archimedes invented it, others say the ancient Egyptians came up with the idea,” explained Pilate. “I am not entirely sure how it works, but it does make far off things look much closer.” He invited the Jewish carpenter to take a look. James peeked through the small end and gasped at the closeness of the images, quickly handing it back to Pilate.

“It seems like sorcery to me!” he said.

“I do not know if it is magical, or simply something to do with the shape and spacing of the clear crystal lenses,” said Pilate, “but it is one of the handiest things I have ever owned. Now, once our caravan hits that little bend in the road, I am going to allow you to walk back to Nazareth. Understand that I will be able to watch you right to the city gates, so there had better be no attempt to warn anyone! You are to return to your shop and resume your work there. Speak to no one outside your family. I imagine this entire operation will be concluded by midafternoon. Be wise, young man, and you and yours will be unharmed. Try to betray my plans to my enemies, and I will see you and your whole family crucified for it!”

Pilate snarled the last bit pretty convincingly, and the young Jew blanched and retreated to the opposite side of the hut. Pilate watched the caravan as it trudged down the road, and once it was past the bend and out of sight of the gates of Nazareth, he turned and nodded. James wasted no time taking off for the village. Pilate monitored his progress and saw him cut a straight course for the point where the road entered the village, and then head toward the main square.

“Are you sure that was wise?” asked one of the legionaries. “If he warns the Zealots, our entire plan would go for naught.”

“Sometimes you just have to take a chance with people,” Pilate said. “I want them to see that Rome can offer them the extended hand of trade and friendship—or the iron fist clenching a gladius! It is up to them which it will be. We will know if he tries to send out a warning—no one can leave Nazareth and go westward without our seeing it from here.”

They watched the caravan wend its way down the road for nearly an hour. Finally, as it drew so far away it could barely be distinguished, he ordered the men to begin quietly moving westward on the reverse slope of the ridge. He skirted the top, keeping his head just high enough to watch the caravan as it plodded down the road. About six miles from Nazareth, he saw a narrow defile full of rocks and scrub brush trailing off to the south of the road. It was just around a slight right-hand curve, which meant that it would be difficult to detect for anyone who was actually traveling along the road—only his considerable altitude advantage made it evident. There, he thought. That is the most logical place I have seen yet for an ambush.

He quietly gave word for his men to be prepared. They had brought six cavalry horses along with the mules that hauled their luggage, and Pilate and the six most senior warriors in the cohort mounted up. Then Pilate slowly directed the horse up the slope of the ridge until he could see over the top to where the caravan steadily marched westward. They were drawing nearer to the narrow defile by the moment.

The attack came so swiftly that Pilate simply watched it unfold for a moment, even though he had been expecting it at that precise spot. Suddenly the “mercenaries” were all sprouting arrows from their torsos and collapsing to the ground. Then about twenty figures came leaping down from the defile, blades flashing in the sun. He kicked his horse forward.

“Now, boys! Let's teach these Zealot dogs the power of Rome!” he cried, and he and the mounted men rode at the scene full tilt, with his legionaries jogging at double time behind him. Meanwhile the attackers suddenly found their hands full, as the six dead “mercenaries” leaped to their feet with blades in their hands. So focused were the Zealots on trying to put down this unexpected resistance that they did not see Pilate and his mounted escort until they were only a few yards away.

Pilate was holding his
pilum
high and launched it at a burly Zealot who was trying to kill Longinus with a wicked Persian scimitar. The spear caught the big man in the small of his back and he dropped to the ground screaming, clutching at the wound and trying to pull the spear out. Longinus silenced the screams by driving his gladius down the man's throat. Once Pilate was among the attackers, he leaped from his horse—the gladius was not a long enough blade to be effective from horseback—and launched himself at the first Zealot he saw. The man was wielding a pair of curved daggers, and obviously knew how to use them. Pilate's blade was longer, but the assassin could still parry his thrusts with one blade and counter with the other. The two of them fenced back and forth for a moment, and then Pilate managed to slash the man's left forearm so badly that he could no longer grasp the dagger with that hand. His enemy's dual wielding advantage gone, Pilate quickly overcame the Zealot and drove his blade through the man's chest. The Jewish rebels would not give up easily, however. They continued to press the attack against the caravan and Pilate's advance guard, and two legionaries were already down. Pilate managed to block a dagger thrust that would have disemboweled one of his men, and used his free hand to punch the Zealot in the face as hard as he could. The man staggered, dropped his guard, and Pilate gutted him with a slash of his gladius. Then suddenly the legionaries who had been approaching the scene on foot arrived and threw themselves into the fray, and it was over.

Fifteen Zealots lay dead, three managed to flee, and four were captured alive. Two of these were badly wounded, but the other two were only lightly hurt. Several legionaries had minor wounds, one was dead, and two were hurt badly. One of Pilate's men had taken an arrow through a joint in his armor, and it had penetrated into his chest. He was coughing up blood, but the wound did not bubble and froth, so Pilate thought his lungs had been spared. He might recover. The other, a veteran named Lucius Graccus, was not so fortunate. He had sustained a wide slash to the abdomen, and his lacerated bowels were protruding from the wound. Pilate had been on enough battlefields to know that even the best Greek physicians could do nothing for a stomach wound that severe. The man might live a few days, but he would die screaming in agony from blood poisoning. Pilate tried to figure out what to do as Longinus came up alongside him.

“We gave them a good walloping, didn't we, Prefect?” Graccus asked him.

“That we did, soldier,” said Pilate. “You fought very well.”

Graccus laughed grimly, blood running down his chin. “Not well enough, it seems. I'm a dead man and we both know it. I made the bastard pay for sending me to Hades, though!” He spat at his fallen foe, lying a few feet away. “Longinus, Governor, you know what needs doing. Make it quick, please, and Longinus”—he reached into his tunic and pulled out a coin purse—“give this to my girl Rebecca down in the village. Her folks disowned her when she took up with a Roman, and I don't know if they will take her back or not. Try to look after her as best you can. It's been an honor to serve under you—both of you.”

“I'll add a little something to that purse to make sure your woman is taken care of,” said Pilate, kneeling down and taking Graccus by the hand. He glanced at Longinus, who quietly got up and took position behind the mortally wounded legionary. “I will also see to it that you are properly burned in the Roman manner, with coin for Charon's passage. I am sorry to lose you, Lucius Graccus. Good soldiers are hard to come by.”

The dying man took Pilate's hand in both of his, and Pilate nodded. Longinus drove his blade straight down into the juncture of the man's shoulder and neck, penetrating the heart and ending his life in a matter of seconds. Pilate watched the life drain from his eyes, regretting the grim necessity. But now it was time for some deaths he could enjoy!

“All right, men,” he said. “I need four tall beams and four shorter ones for our prisoners here. Then gather enough wood for a pyre for our fallen comrades.”

Longinus scowled. “There are not enough trees here to make proper crosses,” he said. “This scrub brush will burn well enough, but we'll need some bigger beams than these trees can provide to take care of these dogs.”

Pilate nodded. “Take two of my men and go back to the shepherd's huts where we spent the night. I left our supply wagon there. Get the wagons and go into Nazareth, and you will find a carpenter's shop where a Jew named James son of Joseph works. Buy the beams from him, and pay him well—he helped make our ambush a success by guiding us to a perfect vantage point. Try to get back here by the fourth hour.” He turned to the rest of the men. “You fought bravely and well today, legionaries. We will camp for the night in that defile. But there are many hours till dark, so let's dispose of these bodies before they begin to smell, and build the pyre for our companions who fell. Get to work!”

That done, he went to survey their prisoners. One was a young man with a nasty bump on his forehead—Pilate suspected he had been bashed with the pommel of someone's gladius. The other was an older man, his beard shot with gray and his face scarred, who stared at the Roman Prefect with naked hatred in his eyes. Two were badly wounded—one had been stabbed through the gut and simply held the wound and groaned, the other had a ghastly slash across his throat that had severed his windpipe but missed the major blood vessels. None of them spoke a word as he interrogated them. He finally gave up and sat down on a nearby rock, taking a long pull of water from his leather canteen.

The men quickly despoiled the bodies of the enemy dead, dividing up the gold and weapons among themselves, and piling the bodies in a heap some distance off the road. They threw brush over them and then lit them up from the campfire that had already been started. It took a few minutes for the flames to catch hold, but soon the Zealot bodies were crackling and hissing, and the unmistakable aroma of cooking flesh filled the air. Under other circumstances such a smell might be appetizing, but the knowledge that the flesh was human made it nauseating instead.

The two fallen legionaries were placed on a pyre woven from several scrub trees. Pilate put two denarii in each mouth so that they could pay the oarsman's fee to enter the afterlife, and then arranged each man's clothes about them, laying the weapons and clothes of a fallen Zealot at their feet. He removed his helmet and bowed his head at the pyre for just a moment, in respect for their memories. Like most Romans, he did not believe in an individual survival after death—he thought of death as a long dreamless sleep for those who were accepted into Hades' realm. Only those who were deified by the Roman Senate, like the
Divus Julius
and the
Divus Augustus
, lived on in the individual sense of the word once they left the mortal world.