Well ahead of his caravan returning to the palace at Tiberias raced the startling and, to many, the highly provocative report of the Tetrarch’s beheading of John the Baptist in fulfillment of a rash promise made to his wife’s dancing daughter.

The delegation that had gone down to Machaerus to intercede for the prophet’s release had brought back the tragic news; quickly the story had spread to Jerusalem and to Ophel, the teeming Lower City into which countless poor were squalidly compressed, and beyond there on past the villages of Judaea and Samaria, all the way down into Galilee. Along the shores of the little sea and in many a huddle of modest homes, and here and there in the pretentious houses of the rich, Israelites were shaking their heads sadly and muttering imprecations upon the Idumaean ruler of Galilee and Peraea.

With the account of the Wilderness prophet’s execution went the story, too, of how King Aretas of Arabia had sent his couriers to Machaerus to threaten Herod Antipas with war because of the Tetrarch’s having divorced the King’s daughter and made her supplanter Herodias his Tetrarchess. Soon rumors began to spread that war with Aretas was imminent and that the Arabian ruler was likely any day to bring his army surging across the borders of Israel to punish his former son-in-law.

Even before the arrival at Caesarea of Claudia and Longinus, the stories from Machaerus had reached the Procurator Pontius Pilate. Their lateness, she explained to Pilate, had been unavoidable; they had waited to join a caravan journeying westward rather than risk the hazards of traveling with only two servants through a region frequented by robbers and zealot revolutionaries.

Pilate appeared to accept without reservation her explanation; he indicated in no way that he might be jealous of the centurion. His attitude exasperated Claudia all the more.

“He can’t be that stupid,” she fumed one day to Tullia, with whom she had long come to talk frankly and in utter confidence. “He surely knows about Longinus and me. Yet if he’s in the least bit jealous of the centurion, he’s careful not to let me know. It’s insulting, Tullia, his indifference to me. It’s humiliating. Why do you suppose he acts that way?”

“But you are the stepdaughter of the Emperor, Mistress. What could he do, even though he is the Procurator?”

“He could be a man!” Claudia snapped. “He could kill Longinus, or try to, and give me a lashing!”

The maid shook her head. “No, Mistress, not even a Procurator would dare lay a hand on you, or anyone for whom you held high regard.”

“But I’m his wife, Tullia.”

“Yes, but you are also the Emperor’s stepdaughter, Mistress.”

Immediately upon their return to Caesarea from Machaerus, Longinus had prepared a comprehensive report to Sejanus in which he related the unfortunate events that had come to such a dramatic climax at the Tetrarch’s birthday banquet. The message was dispatched to Rome on an Alexandrian grain ship that had paused for a day in the harbor at Caesarea.

In the several weeks that followed he saw little of Claudia. During that period he went on a mission for Sergius Paulus to Jerusalem and upon his return took command while Sergius was away at Antioch in response to a summons from the Legate Vitellius, who commanded the Roman forces in that entire eastern region. Sergius, Longinus was sure, had been ordered to Antioch because of the Arabian king’s threat to attack Herod Antipas. The Legate, he reasoned, was planning to have his forces ready for action in the event that Aretas should challenge Rome by sending his army against the Tetrarch. The centurion presumed that Vitellius had summoned all military leaders stationed in Galilee—and possibly even the Tetrarch himself—to meet him at Antioch. Longinus learned that his guesswork had been correct; the meeting had been held, and the Legate, Sergius said, had been blunt in his conversations with the Tetrarch.

Shortly after the Caesarea garrison commander resumed his post, a message from Senator Piso for his son arrived. It instructed Longinus to set out as quickly as he could for the glassworks. Production had decreased, and the quality of the ware being manufactured was deteriorating. Morale among the slaves, his father reported, seemed at its lowest point. Longinus was to do whatever might be necessary to speed up the plant’s production and improve the quality of the glassware. The Prefect, his father added, was in complete concurrence with these instructions. A fresh supply of slaves, said the senator, was being sent out to Phoenicia by the Prefect; the slaves were being shipped aboard a government trireme that was leaving Rome within a week after the vessel bearing this letter would sail for Joppa. Longinus, the letter suggested, might even go aboard this letter-bearing vessel when it put in at Caesarea.

Little had happened in Rome since his departure for Palestine, his father reported. The Emperor was still at Capri, and Sejanus was directing the government of the Empire. His mother sent her love; she was quite well, though of late she had been disturbed at the indisposition of her little Maltese dog. But the animal, thanks be to Jove and the patient ministrations of Longinus’ mother, was now recovered.

“Try to achieve as quickly as possible a new production record at the glassworks,” his father concluded. The Prefect was keeping an eye on the figures, and it would be good business to earn the Prefect’s early approval. “Don’t spare the slaves; they are the cheapest item in the operational cost; replacements can be made quickly available.”

His eyes scanned the letter, hardly seeing the words. Ever the patrician Romans, his parents ... his mother concerned with the indisposition of that pampered, silken-haired pet, his father thinking only of pleasing Sejanus and building up for the Prefect and himself more millions of sesterces. Don’t spare the slaves; the life of a slave is the cheapest item in the production of beautiful glassware for the tables of patrician Rome and Alexandria and Antioch and Athens. Work them until they fall dead, and heave them into the flaming furnaces.

Longinus thought of the old slave. What would Cornelius think of his father’s letter, his father’s philosophy? But Cornelius’ father, too, is of the equestrian class; perhaps he shares the views of Senator Piso. Cornelius, of course, would disapprove. He would say that men are not the cheapest items in the making of glassware or anything else. He would hold with the Galilean carpenter that every man, Roman senator or Gallic slave or black savage from Ethiopia, is a son of that jealous Yahweh of the Jews and possessor of an immortal spirit.

And I, suddenly thought Longinus, do I hold with my father or with Cornelius and the Galilean?

The day after Herod’s birthday banquet Cornelius had related to him in dramatic detail what he contended was the Galilean’s miraculous healing of Lucian, but Longinus had shrugged off his friend’s fervor with the observation that once more, as in the case of Chuza’s son, the clever carpenter from Nazareth had successfully judged the hour at which the fever would break.

Of course his urbane, affluent father, rather than his Jewish-influenced friend the centurion and the Galilean mystic, was right. Even without using a stylus and tablet one can prove that a slave is the cheapest of the several things involved in the making of fine glassware; his father’s statement to that effect was quickly demonstrable. And yet....

Longinus shrugged and put away the letter. The ship, he discovered some moments later, would be at the Caesarea port only long enough to load supplies and freight; it would sail for Tyre within four or five hours.

He packed quickly and sent his bags to the dock to be put aboard. Then he rushed to the Procurator’s Palace to tell Pilate and his wife good-by. Happily, the Procurator had gone out. But Longinus could have only a few minutes with Claudia.

“I won’t be up in Phoenicia long,” he reassured her. “It shouldn’t take many days before I get the operation of the plant reorganized. And even before I finish the task, if I find it takes longer than I now think it will, I may be able to board a vessel and come down here for a visit. Claudia, why couldn’t you arrange a journey”—his tone was eager—“over to Tiberias for another stay in the Tetrarch’s Palace? That is, if in the meantime”—his grin lightened the tenseness of the moment—“Aretas hasn’t driven him and Herodias away? But if they’re still around, well, then I could just by chance select that same time to visit Cornelius.”

When he could stay with her no longer she summoned the palace sedan-chair bearers and rode with him down to the dock. After he had embarked and the ship was moving across the harbor to gain the open sea beyond the long breakwater, she stepped again into the sedan chair and was borne to the palace.