Together, they walked from the square toward the harbor and the boat waiting to take them to another place and time. Byrus trotted behind.
“Hey, so what was the outcome?” Jimbo asked.
“The decorations are up in the malls, and they just ran Charlie Brown’s Christmas on TV,” Chaz said.
“Fucking A,” Jimbo said.
50
New Sheriff in Town
Valerius Gratus was a broken man. The stranger, the white-haired foreign man who was the cause of all his troubles, never returned. The cursed man had been an imposter, his every word a lie. He had neither the authority of the legate nor the imprimatur of the imperial house.
His actions were not even sanctioned by the family Herod. And the damnable man did not return to Caesarea with more of the lovely morphea to help Gratus endure his own downfall.
The prefect of Judea was left without the warm embrace of the soporific that made his life tolerable. He was left to suffer the ordeal of seizures and chills that left him with a weakened heart and clenching bowels and, by far the worst of all, an unrequited longing for the welcome delirium of numbness the mystery draught offered him. He was abandoned now to the gnawing hunger for that which he could never have. Drink offered no solace. Lotus leaves were a poor substitute, offering only nausea and a burdensome ennui. Gratus was a vessel adrift, with no hope of ever reaching shore.
The worst of his terrible deprivation was over. The tide of agonizing want had receded to a constant ache leaving him a lesser man. His teeth were gone, except for a few blackened molars. He ran fevers. Sleep was restless and fleeting. His skin felt as though it belonged to another and was an ill fit. His flesh hung from his bones. His stomach roiled at the thought of food. Only honeyed fruit was tolerable, and even that tasted of vinegar to his ravaged tongue. The other pleasures of the flesh held no appeal to him. His cock shriveled to a flaccid member useful only for urination, which had itself become an increasing painful ordeal.
He had traded years off his life for a few days and nights of delightful delirium. It was a trade he would gladly make again were the elixir offered to him one more time. In truth, he would strangle without hesitation his most beloved for a moment’s sweet release. That is, if the prefect had a most beloved other than his own miserable self.
The requirements of his office were left to others to perform. His lictor handled all administrative duties and correspondence. Gratus became detached from all that was expected of him except symbolic appearances at ceremonies and affairs of state. Even at these rare official obligations, his participation was only to be seen and, if the mood struck him, to wave to others. Mostly he retired to his villa, where he entertained few guests and lacked the motivation to do much beyond moving from his couch to a hot bath and back again, all with the assistance of servants who were little more than substitutes for his own wasting vigor.
He opened his eyes at the urging of an irritating voice. It was his lictor speaking his name in an endless refrain to awaken him. The scribbler dared not lay hands upon the prefect to rouse him. Gratus enjoyed that much of what remained of his dignity. What was the man’s name again? Did it matter?
Lifting his head from the cushion took his entire force of will. Rising to a sitting position spent what remained of his store of strength. The room was filled with long shadows. It was late in the day or early in the morning. A zephyr touched the sweat on his bare neck, causing him to shiver at the icy touch. Waxing or waning, the sunlight through the shades failed to warm him.
The lictor, the chubby, oily excrescence, was still speaking his name, only more urgently.
“What is it, you foul issue of a donkey’s cunt?” Gratus meant to growl, but it came out a pitiable squeak.
“A visitor, lord prefect,” the roly-poly bastard stammered. “He comes with a guard escort under the banner of the Senate.”
“Fuck the Senate. Ass-licking parasites, the lot of them,” Gratus struggled to stand, realizing that he was stark naked.
“A robe! Get me a robe!”
The lictor held up a white cotton wrap with a yellow border. The prefect punched his hands free of the sleeves and gripped the robe closed about his waist with a fistful of fabric. He staggered barefoot to a terrace that overlooked his courtyard in time to see a group of riders trot their mounts through the open gate. The scuff of steel-shod hooves on the tiles made Gratus’s remaining teeth grate painfully.
The shadows in the courtyard stretched toward the seaward end of the house. It was morning. No surprise then that his visitors were of the military class. Only soldiers were mad enough to be up and about at this indecent hour. The men dismounted, including an aquilifer bearing the red banner of the Roman Senate topped with a brass laurel wreath and spread-wing eagle. The guard wore black leather smartly trimmed in white piping. The men stood whisking dust from their leathers with the fly swatters made from horse’s tails that were necessary accouterments for any who traveled this pestilent land.
The last to step from his saddle had a military bearing despite his simple dress. He wore a common tunic of hemp that left his arms bare and the kind of leggings favored by legion cavalry. Only his fine soft-skinned boots gave away his station as the leader of this delegation. The only other feature that made him remarkable was a gleaming scalp entirely bereft of hair. The man shaved his
