King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (16 page)

“Brother Joachim, I do not wish to add another faggot to the burden of your sorrow, but I suspect the hand of a Certain Man in this. If ransom had been the object of the abduction, why did the bandits release your daughter’s companion? Or why did they not at least rob her? It may be that at a time like this, when Messianic prophecies are flying from mouth to mouth, a Certain Man might not be pleased with a marriage between an elder of the House of David and a daughter of the Royal Heirs. It may be that he has ordered one of his Levite creatures to debauch her. You know the Law. Since the contract was not signed at the time of the abduction she was still a virgin, and the man who enticed her need now only offer her guardian the bride-money in quittance ; he is then free to marry her at his leisure.”

“If, as you suppose, the Man of Sodom has stolen my ewe lamb he will never escape my rage. I am an old man, but my hands are strong to strangle.”

Cleopas frowned. Lifting his hand in warning he said : “Be silent, fool! Is it not written : ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay’ ?”

Joachim’s lips writhed as he struggled with himself, but at last he had the mastery. “And it is written also : ‘He who hearkens to reproof gets understanding.’ I thank you, brother Cleopas !”

They passed on and entered the Temple at peace with the Lord and with each other.

I
T
was some months before King Antipater, who headed Herod’s embassy at Rome, finally persuaded the President of the Senatorial Court to pronounce sentence of death against Sylleus the Arabian.

This cost him twenty silver talents, for the President had been bribed by the other side to reserve judgement until the embassy had returned to Judaea—it was hoped that if none of them were present in Rome to remind the Emperor of the seriousness of the case he might be persuaded to grant a reprieve. All Antipater’s other business was finished, including that of submitting his father’s Will to the Emperor’s approval. The Emperor had expressed his satisfaction with it and entrusted it to the safe-keeping of the Vestal Virgins. But Antipater still could not sail home until he had secured an undertaking from the Commander of the Praetorian Guards that he would not postpone the date of Sylleus’s execution. This would probably cost another three or four talents.

Ten days later, while he was still negotiating with the Commander, Antipater was angered rather than alarmed by an anonymous letter, dated four months previously, which reached him from Jerusalem. He found it folded in his napkin at breakfast. It contained circumstantial news of the nationalist plot, the subsequent death of his uncle Pheroras, the torture of the Court ladies, and the criminal charges brought against his mother, Queen Doris ; but he could not believe that any of these events had taken place, because there had been no mention or hint of them in dispatches of later date which had regularly reached him from his father.

He showed the letter to two reliable members of his staff, expecting them to echo his disgust of anonymous libels. To his surprise, they did nothing of the sort. They confessed that the letter substantiated hints and rumours which had reached them from trustworthy sources in Jerusalem, but with which they had not cared to trouble him at the time. Antipater could read in their faces that the letter contained nothing that they had not already heard. They begged him to remain at Rome under the Emperor’s protection until he knew whether his father suspected him of complicity in the nationalists’ plot or the murder of Pheroras.

Antipater reproved them for their credulity ; he said that a clear conscience was the best possible armour against lies and malice, as his father himself had recently proved when he came to Rome unsummoned to answer Sylleus’s baseless charges. He would therefore return to Jerusalem as soon as Sylleus had been safely dispatched. He wrote immediately to his father to say that he hoped to sail in ten days’ time and meanwhile gave him an itemized list of his expenses at Rome, regretting that the legal expenses in the Sylleus case had been so heavy. They
amounted to nearly two hundred silver talents, sixty of which had gone in bribes to judges and court officials.

He then condoled with Antipater on the death of his uncle Pheroras, the news of which had reached him officially from Antioch in a recent quarterly dispatch.

“Oh, then it is true !” cried Antipater, and could not restrain his tears.

“A word to the wise,” said Augustus kindly. “Unofficial reports have also reached me that Queen Doris, your mother, is in disgrace. advise you not to champion her cause blindly, as a son of your generous nature might be tempted to do. Your father is easily vexed ; assume her guilty until you have clear proof of her innocence.”

Antipater asked : “Of what is my mother accused, Caesar ?”

But Augustus would divulge no more. “The report was unofficial,” he said, with a smile of dismissal.

Sylleus was executed on the Ides of September, and on the next day Antipater and his staff sailed for home in a fast galley, the
Fortune
. In the Ionian Sea they ran into foul weather, and again in the Cretan ; but the weather was calm when they sighted the coast of Cilicia and were hailed by a packet-vessel from Caesarea. Among the mail which they took aboard was a letter from Herod addressed to Antipater at Rome, begging him to return at once, whether the Sylleus case were concluded or not, since his long absence from public business was being felt more keenly each succeeding day. Herod, who wrote in most affectionate terms, referred only incidentally to the death of Pheroras, which led Antipater to conclude that a previous dispatch had gone astray ; and also touched on a “slight difficulty” with Queen Doris, who after showing “a somewhat stepmotherly severity” towards his younger wives had not accepted his rebukes in as good a spirit as he had a right to expect. “Doubtless all will be well, Royal Son, when you return as a visible pledge of the love between your mother and myself ; and for this reason, as well as for the others upon which I have already enlarged, pray make no delay, but spread your sails wide to catch the West Wind.”

Antipater, a great weight lifted from his heart, showed this letter to the same two members of his staff. “Read for yourselves,” he said.
“The mysterious letter of warning came from enemies trying to foment trouble between my loving father and myself. No wonder it was anonymous. How glad I am that I rejected your advice !”

“May you continue so, Majesty! Pray forget what it was that we advised you to do.”

Antipater had noticed a mysterious group of Hebrew letters, evidently numerals, written small on the back of the letter. He had puzzled over a similar group on a letter which had reached him from Jerusalem some weeks previously. He now unpacked the files and searched for the earlier letter, which, he remembered, was a report from the steward of his Jamnian estates. He found it without trouble and compared the figures. This was the earlier group, reading from right to left in Oriental style :

1.	19.	17.
18.	18.	8.
12.	3.	27.

The latter group was :

5.	24.	9.
10.	11.	5.
6.	15.	32.

The handwriting was identical, but what could the figures mean? Were these cipher messages? Then they could not be addressed to himself, since he had made no arrangement to correspond in cipher with anyone. Perhaps they were intended for some member of his staff? Or were they merely registration numbers used by the packet-service?

He copied out both groups on a small scrap of parchment and studied them with the absorbed intentness that travellers often bestow on trifles during an uneventful voyage in calm weather ; but could make nothing of them. What puzzled him most was that they were written in the antique characters used in the earliest Scriptural texts, not in the modern Square script.

The ship sailed up the Orontes to Antioch, where Antipater went ashore to pay his respects to Quinctilius Varus, the newly appointed Governor-General of Syria, with whom he had long been on friendly terms. Varus welcomed him with a quizzical look, and invited him to a private audience, but when, instead of making some tearful confession or passionate appeal for help, Antipater spoke cheerfully about current affairs and mutual acquaintances, he grew impatient and at last asked him pointblank whether the death of Pheroras had not greatly complicated his affairs.

“No, Excellency : none of my business was in his hands. This is not to deny that the news was a sudden and bitter blow. I loved Pheroras well. He was more like a father than an uncle to me in the days when I was in exile, and I confess that I wept when I heard that he was dead ; indeed, I fasted in sackcloth and ashes for a whole day, as our custom is.”

“Majesty, why do you hesitate to confide in me? I am your friend !”

“What have I to confide ?”

“Your well-founded apprehensions.”

“I do not understand Your Excellency.”

“Nor I Your Majesty. Well, I can be as silent as yourself if I please, but I have this at least to say. Your father has invited me to Jerusalem on legal business—which he does not specify but at the nature of which I can guess—and I propose to travel there in a few days’ time by way of Damascus, where I have been asked to adjudicate in a boundary dispute. I shall be most happy if you will ride in my coach with me. Reason tells me that you will be assured a more honourable welcome as my friend than either as your mother’s son or as your father’s colleague and heir-at-law. Have I made myself plain ?”

“Your Excellency is most kind, but if my royal father has any suspicions of my loyalty, as you seem to hint, I should be unwise to increase them by placing myself under your protection, as if I knew myself guilty of some crime. Besides, he has begged me to make haste, and I cannot disobey him. I shall continue my journey by sea, and unless the wind changes I should be home in four days’ time.”

“You have a noble soul, Majesty, but this is not an age in which nobility of soul is often rewarded. Remain with me, and I will take full responsibility for the delay, and help you to the utmost of my powers should your father bring any charges against you. For hand washes hand, and when you are sole sovereign, you will doubtless remember your debt to me. Refuse my offer, and you may find yourself without a friend in the world to support you in trouble.”

“Your Excellency must forgive me. My duty to my father comes first.”

Varus lost his temper. “They say, Majesty, that nobody can persuade a fool that the rainbow is not his foot-bridge. I leave you to your own devices. When the bridge melts under your feet and you fall into the water, do not call on me for an oar or keg to buoy you up. Your father has other sons who may be more anxious than you are to secure my favour and friendship.”

“I do not fear drowning. As your admired Pindar writes :

If Heaven designs to save you, safe you are
Though wallowing in mid-ocean in a sieve.”

So they parted, and the
Fortune
, in which Antipater had re-embarked, stood out to sea again : but as she put in at Sidon she fouled a sunken wreck and sprang a leak. This delayed her for several days, and when she sailed once more she was caught by a violent North-easter, dismasted and driven to within a few miles of Alexandria. She had to battle back slowly, under oars, with many men injured and provisions running short.

It was the last day of October before she made Caesarea. The fine double harbour of Caesarea, carved by Herod at huge expense out of a featureless coast and dominated by a colossal statue of Augustus visible from miles away at sea, is as commodious as that of the Peiraeus. The long mole which breaks the force of the waves and encloses the outer
harbour measures not less than two hundred feet across, and the capacious wharves of the inner harbour are protected by strong forts. The city is magnificent, with temples, baths, market-places, gymnasia and an amphitheatre in the best Greek style.

The
Fortune
sailed into the outer harbour, the entrance of which is to the north, and her captain hailed the harbour-master : “Ahoy there! We are the
Fortune
galley, Firmicus Sidonius captain, two hundred tons, homeward bound from Rome. We have His Majesty King Antipater aboard and a consignment of copper ingots from Sidon. Clear of fever. A surgeon is needed for ten men injured in the recent gale. We propose to berth at the Royal Pavilion abaft Fort Drusus.”

After a pause the answer was trumpeted back by the harbour-master’s loud-voiced slave : “Your instructions are : tie up at the copper-wharf on the west quay and discharge cargo.”

The captain repeated : “Ahoy there! I repeat that we have His Majesty King Antipater aboard. We propose to berth at the Royal Pavilion.”

The reply came back : “Instructions repeated. You are to tie up at the copper-wharf and discharge cargo there. A surgeon will be sent to you.”

The captain apologized to Antipater. “Majesty, the harbour-master is a mad little tyrant and I dare not disobey him without your sanction. What am I to do ?”

“Perhaps the Royal berth is fouled by a wreck. Make for the copper-wharf as he orders. I will enjoy the walk along the quay to the city. My legs long for dry land.”

The
Fortune
drew in at the copper-wharf and immediately slaves ran aboard to help unbatten the hatches. “Back, dogs !” shouted the master, cracking his whip at them. “Let His Majesty disembark first before you tread filth into my decks !”

The gang-plank was put down and made fast to a bollard. Antipater’s aides covered it with a purple cloth, ran across and stood waiting officiously on the wharf to welcome him ashore.

One of them whispered to another : “This is a strange home-coming. Do you remember with what pomp we were sent off to Rome ?”