The Procurator’s Palace sat high on a promontory overlooking the harbor at Caesarea. A marble-paved esplanade led from the cobblestoned street up to the palace, and on its west side facing the Great Sea an immense terrace of colored, polished stones went out from the peristylium. In the days when King Herod, father of Antipas, determined to build here on the Palestinian coast a fabulous port city to honor his patron, the Emperor Augustus, the place was an insignificant town called by the unusual name of Strato’s Towers. Then there was virtually no harbor. But at tremendous cost in the lives of slaves and artisans and money wrung in taxes from his already poor subjects, Herod built of huge stones sunk in twenty fathoms of often rough water a tremendous mole that went out and around like a protecting arm to form a safe shelter for countless ships of every type. Quickly old Herod had transformed Strato’s Towers into a beautiful and busy city more Roman than Jewish. A stranger unfamiliar with the region and just landed from a trireme in the harbor at Caesarea, in fact, would hardly realize that he was in a Palestinian city. Not only were its great public buildings and lavish homes Roman—its Procurator’s Palace, its immense hippodrome for athletic sports and gladiatorial combats, its theater, its gleaming marble temples to pagan gods—but Roman, too, were many of its people. Its population actually was of varied nationalities—Roman, Today the newly arrived Procurator Pontius Pilate and his wife sat in the warming sunshine on the terrace and looked down upon the busy harbor and the Great Sea stretching westward into the blue haze. Obliquely facing them, so that he could see both the harbor and a portion of the maze of buildings pushing one upon the other from it, sat their guest, the Centurion Longinus. Claudia pointed to a large merchant ship being tied up at one of the docks below. “This is a tremendous harbor, rivaling Ostia’s, isn’t it? Look at all those vessels, and that one that has just sailed in. Judging by its size, I’d say it was an Alexandrian grain ship.” “It is a great harbor, and wonderfully protected. In fact, I was amazed to find Caesarea such a modern city.” Pilate smiled broadly. “I had feared that it would be another typical provincial outpost.” “On the contrary, Excellency, it’s quite a metropolis,” Longinus observed. “You’ll discover people here from every part of the world, and far fewer Jews, I suspect, than you had anticipated finding. Of course, you’ve hardly had time yet to learn much about the city.” Pilate laughed, but with little humor. “The fewer Jews the better. I’m glad the capital of the province is here rather than at Jerusalem; it would be galling, I suspect, to be forced to spend most of one’s time in that nest of Jews. Speaking of Jerusalem, Centurion, I plan to visit the city shortly and have a straight talk with that High Priest. I wish it known at the very beginning of my Procuratorship that I intend to demonstrate clearly and forcefully, if that be necessary, that Rome cannot be trifled with by these obstinate and pestiferous Jews. You, of course, have been to Jerusalem?” “Not since I came out this time. But on many occasions previously, “I have already seen enough of them for a lifetime,” Pilate said, scowling. But quickly he smiled again. “Centurion, I am going to the cohort’s headquarters; I wish to talk with Sergius Paulus.” He clapped his hands, and a slave came running. “Summon my sedan bearers,” he commanded. “May I take you to your quarters,” he asked Longinus, “or will you stay longer and entertain Claudia?” He turned to his wife and smiled warmly. “A familiar face, and a Roman one, is particularly welcome in this strange outpost of the Empire, isn’t it, my dear Claudia?” “Yes, indeed, Pilate.” She reached over and put her hand lightly on the centurion’s arm. “Longinus, do stay and talk. You can give me instructions on how to act out here in this strange region, strange to Pilate and me, at any rate.” In a few minutes the servant announced that the sedan bearers were awaiting him, and Pilate excused himself. When he was gone, Longinus moved his chair nearer Claudia. “I wonder why he invited me to stay,” he said. “Does he suspect us, do you suppose? Or,” he added with a wry smile, “is there no longer any occasion for his doing that?” “I don’t think he suspects us, although I haven’t yet learned how to weigh his words or actions. But what if he does?” She shrugged. “With me everything is just as it was before you left Rome. But maybe”—coyly she looked up at him from beneath her long lashes—“you have discovered some woman out here....” “No. And I haven’t looked. But I wonder how much he knows or suspects.” He told her of his last conversation with the Prefect, of the determination of Sejanus to keep her happily away from Rome, of that wily rascal’s invitation—in fact, almost command—to do whatever might be necessary, including the invasion of the Procurator’s bed, to detain her in contented exile. “But I don’t think he suspected then that we were planning to get married almost immediately. And I’m sure Pilate didn’t.” His forehead wrinkled in deep study. “By any chance, Claudia, have you let slip...?” “About us, to him? Of course not.” “To anyone... Herodias maybe, the gods forbid. I wouldn’t trust that woman as far as I could throw that grain ship over there. Could you, without realizing it, have let slip...?” “Yes, I did tell Herodias. She does know that you and I were planning to marry and come out to Palestine. But I’m sure neither she nor Antipas has said anything to Pilate about it ... if they’ve even seen him since. And certainly they haven’t talked with Sejanus.” “Anyway, Claudia, we must be doubly careful. So long as Sejanus thinks I’m simply keeping you ... satisfied, he called it, it’s all right. But should he get the notion that I might be planning to take you away from Pilate and back to Rome ...” he broke off, scowling. “And here there’ll be other eyes and ears watching and listening, too. But when Pilate goes to Jerusalem, can’t we arrange...?” “I’ll be going, too,” she interrupted. “And so must you. We can contrive some excuse for your accompanying us.” Her eyes were bright with smoldering fires, he saw, and her lips warm, he knew, and red and eager, and he remembered the taste of the Falernian upon them. But adamantly he turned his eyes away to look toward the great harbor. “And in Jerusalem, Longinus, beloved”—her hand had caught his arm and was squeezing hard—“we’ll find some way.” |