Claudia sat on a small stone bench facing one of the fountains in the garden of the Palace of the Herods. All about her the grass was a luxuriant green and the flower beds, fed, she had been told, with blood drained through subterranean pipes from the overflow of the Great Altar, were already ablaze with color. Birds skipped and twittered in the rich foliage, and now and then some venturing small animal would skitter across an open patch of bright sunshine to disappear beneath the branches of a flowering shrub. The bench, shaded by a gnarled great olive, was invitingly cool despite the day’s warmth and heaviness, and the gentle babble of the spraying water ordinarily would have lulled one sitting there into a mood of peaceful contemplation, if not pleasant slumber.

But this afternoon the wife of the Procurator felt neither peaceful nor pleasant. She watched the fountain’s waters lifting and arching and falling and draining away in an undeviating pattern of movement and allowed her own thoughts to wander with it.

... There is the picture of my living. Like the water that is the thrust-along prisoner of the pump, or the ram which again and again lifts it and sends it spurting upward only to fall back and sink down and be forced up again, I am the prisoner of some malign power that pushes me along through a dull monotony of days that I am powerless even to protest against; I am swirled about but held fast like that water in a routine of existence I dare not even challenge....

She leaned forward with her head upon her hands and glared, hardly seeing it, at the captive, dancing water. How, by Bona Dea and all the good and gentle gods, the kind and happily ministering gods, how, by Pluto and all his evil soot-begrimed and blackened imps, could she escape the treadmill of this deadening monotony, this unending, bedeviling frustration? Granddaughter of the great god Augustus, stepdaughter of the great god Tiberius, granddaughter of the almost-great god Mark Antony and the great great goddess Cleopatra, wife of the mighty Procurator of Judaea, daughter through Augustus of Jove himself, princess of the blood....

“Bah!” She said it aloud. But there was nobody near-by in the garden. She sat back against the coolness of the stone. “By all the gods, why couldn’t I have been a wench serving tables in a tavern, a strumpet down in the Subura, and had my freedom!”

... Why, by all the gods, can’t old Tiberius die? He’s past seventy now, and of what service is he to the Empire? And Sejanus, the old rake, must be past sixty. If someone would give the Prefect a neat sword thrust....

She stood up and walked over to the fountain, held out her hands to the spraying water and lifted wet palms to her flushed cheeks. The afternoon was still and depressing. She raised her eyes and saw above the trees and the turreted nearest corner of the great palace rounded soft white puffs of clouds, like newly lifted fresh curds in a deeply blue overturned bowl. “A storm,” she said to herself, “one of those swiftly arrived, quickly gone, fierce Judaean storms. But it will clear the air of this blanket of heat, and it will serve to break for a while the monotony of another fruitless day.”

But she did not go inside. She sat down again and watched the gathering puffs of clouds. Never had she been afraid of storms, even ominous thunder and the swift, sharp streaks of lightning. She remembered that once in her early childhood when a governess had warned her against staying outdoors and running the risk of being struck by one of Jove’s hurled mighty bolts, she had remarked, “If old Jove is clever enough to strike me with a bolt outdoors, why can’t he throw one right through the roof and hit me while I’m inside? I don’t believe he can hit me whether I’m outside or inside.”

Her blasphemous words had woefully shocked the governess, but Claudia had never seen cause to retract them. One thing had led to another; from denying Jove’s power she had soon come to deny his very existence, and with his, the existence likewise of the entire pantheon of lesser gods and goddesses.

She was still seated on the bench when a palace servant came out to announce that a soldier had arrived from Fortress Antonia with a message for her.

“Then bring him here,” she instructed the servant. Could it be, she wondered, that the man is bringing a message from Longinus?

But the legionary had been sent to her by the Procurator. Pilate, he reported, would not be returning to the palace either for the evening meal or to spend the night. He begged to explain to his wife that he had had a very trying day and that he would be engaged until late in the evening. He had agreed to give an audience to the High Priest Caiaphas, and their meeting might well be extended into the night. He had decided, therefore, to forego the privilege and pleasure of dining with the Procuratoress; he would have supper in his quarters and after he had ended his long day’s duties would spend the remainder of the night there.

Her first thought was of getting a message to Longinus. She would write it, seal it fast, and send it by the legionary.

“Thank you,” she said to the soldier. “I shall want you to carry a message to the Fortress.” She stood up. “I’ll go inside and prepare it.” But would it be a discreet thing to do, sending a message to Longinus by this legionary? What if by chance it should fall into other hands, even Pilate’s? “No, there’s no need of my writing it,” she said. “Just tell the Procurator that I thank him for informing me and that I shall see him at his pleasure tomorrow.”

But she would find a way of notifying Longinus. Tullia. Of course. Tullia was one person upon whose loyalty and good judgment she could always depend. When Tullia returned, she would send her to Longinus.