of Days is at hand; he’ll proclaim himself the long awaited Messiah and lead a revolt against Rome and the Temple priests. Caiaphas is asking for the prefect’s permission to arrest him for blasphemy and to try him before the Sanhedrin, the religious court; this man has said that he will lead us to him tonight.’
Sabinus turned back to the other man. ‘What’s your name, Jew?’
The man carried on staring at him for a few more moments before deigning to answer. ‘Yehudah,’ he said, drawing himself up.
‘I’m told that you are a Sicarius.’
‘It is an honour to serve God,’ Yehudah replied evenly in near perfect Greek.
‘So, Yehudah the Sicarius, what do you ask for in return for betraying the man whom you’ve followed for two years?’
‘It’s for reasons of my own that I do it, not for reward.’
Sabinus scoffed. ‘A man of principle, eh? Tell me why you do it so that I can believe that it’s not a trap.’
Yehudah stared blankly at Sabinus and then slowly looked away.
‘I could have it tortured out of you, Jew,’ Sabinus threatened, losing his patience with the man’s lack of deference for Roman authority.
‘You can’t, quaestor,’ Paulus said quickly, ‘you’ll offend Caiaphas and the priests, who’ve asked you for help in apprehending a renegade. With more than a hundred thousand pilgrims here for the Passover, Rome needs the priests’ support to keep order; there has already been one riot in the past few days.’
Sabinus glared at the squat little Temple Guard, outraged. ‘How dare you tell me, a Roman quaestor, what I can or cannot do?’
‘He’s right though, sir,’ Longinus assured him, ‘and it won’t do to refuse a request for help from the priests; it ain’t how things are done here, especially as we owe them a favour.’
‘What for?’
‘Straight after the riot that Yeshua caused they handed over the murderers of the three auxiliaries to us; one of them, another Yeshua, Yeshua bar Abbas, is almost as popular with the people as his namesake. The prefect condemned all three upon his arrival yesterday; they’re due to be executed tomorrow.’
Sabinus realised that Longinus probably was correct: he had no choice but to acquiesce to Caiaphas’ request. He cursed Pilatus for having put him in this position by neglecting his duties through drink; but then reflected that it was probably the intolerable situation in the province that had driven him to it.
‘Very well then,’ he growled, ‘tell Caiaphas you may proceed with the arrest.’
‘He requests a Roman officer to accompany us,’ Paulus replied. ‘Without one we will be lacking in authority.’
Sabinus glanced at Longinus who nodded his agreement to that assessment. ‘Very well, I’ll come with you. Where should we meet?’
Paulus looked at Yehudah. ‘Tell him.’
The Sicarius raised his head and looked disdainfully at Sabinus. ‘We will be eating the Passover meal in the upper city, there is only one staircase up to the room so it would be easy to defend and was purposely chosen as such; but later we will be meeting new initiates outside the city walls. Meet me by the Sheep Gate at the start of the second watch; I will lead you to him.’
‘Why not grab him in the street as he leaves the room?’
‘It will be quieter at Gethsemane.’
‘You let the Temple Guards take this rabble-rouser,’ Prefect Pilatus roared at Sabinus, slurring his words, ‘to be tried by his fellow Jews. Then you let his armed followers wander off to cause whatever mayhem they feel like at a time when this filthy city is crammed full of the most militant religious bigots that anyone has ever had the misfortune to conquer.’
‘The Temple Guards let them go once they’d secured Yeshua; their captain had had half of his right ear cut off and they didn’t have the stomach for a fight. I didn’t have any other troops with me.’
‘Why not?’ Pilatus’ bloodshot eyes bulged with fury, his bulbous drinker’s nose glowed red like a branding iron; droplets of sweat rolled down his saggy cheeks. Sabinus’ report on Yeshua’s arrest had, to say the least, disappointed him. His three dinner guests sipped their wine in silence as he slumped down on his dining couch and rubbed his temples. He reached for his cup, drained it in one, slammed it back down onto the table, staring at Sabinus malevolently, and then turned to an elegant, middle-aged man reclining on the couch to his left.
‘Herod Agrippa, I need your advice. The quaestor has let this rebel outmanoeuvre us.’
Herod Agrippa shook his head, swaying his hair that hung in oiled ringlets to just below his close-clipped beard, framing a thin, firm-jawed face that would have been handsome had it not been for the large, hooked nose that protruded, like a hawk’s beak, from between his dark eyes. ‘You’re right, prefect,’ he said holding out his cup unsteadily to be filled by the slave waiting on him, ‘the priests walked into Yeshua’s trap without…’ He stopped as the slave poured wine over his shaking hand. ‘Eutyches! You’re almost as useless as this quaestor. Get out!’
Sabinus stood, staring straight ahead, scowling and making no attempt to conceal his dislike for Herod.
‘In our country a man would lose his eyes for the quaestor’s incompetence,’ the elder of the two men reclining on Pilatus’ right observed, stroking his long, curled beard.
Herod threw his cup at the retreating slave. ‘Unfortunately, Sinnaces, they don’t have the same freedom here to mete out deserved punishment to idiots as you do in Parthia.’
Sabinus shot Herod a venomous look. ‘I would remind you, Jew, that I am a senator, watch your tongue.’ He turned back to Pilatus. ‘The priests offered us the opportunity to have this man arrested so I acted on my own initiative as you didn’t wish to deal with it, being…otherwise engaged.’
‘I was not “otherwise engaged”, I was drunk and now I’m even drunker; but even in this condition I would have known to bring that madman back here into Roman custody and not let the Jews have him, no matter how many fucking priests I upset. Fuck ’em all, quaestor; do you hear me? Fuck ’em all.’
‘But the priests will try him and find him guilty; it’s in their interests to do so,’ Sabinus argued.
‘They’re already trying him and are keen to pass a death sentence on him; in fact, they’re so keen to condemn him that they’ve even broken their Passover Sabbath to try him overnight. Caiaphas sent me a message asking me to come to the palace first thing in the morning to confirm their sentence before they stone him.’
Sabinus looked at his superior uncomprehendingly. ‘So what’s the problem, then?’
Pilatus sighed, exasperated; he closed his eyes and ran both hands through his hair, pulling his head back. ‘You’re new to this dump so I’ll try and explain it in simple terms,’ he said with more than a degree of condescension. ‘By your own admission, in your report, Yeshua organised his own arrest; he sent Yehudah to deliver him up to the priests because he wanted
Sabinus suddenly saw the depth of his error of judgement. ‘Whereas if
‘Exactly,’ Pilatus said mockingly, ‘you’ve finally got there. So, Herod, I’ve got to defuse this quickly before Yeshua’s followers start rousing the people. What should I do?’
‘You must go to the palace first thing tomorrow.’
‘To overturn the sentence?’
‘No, you can’t let this man live now that you’ve finally got him. You’ve got to reunite the priests with the people so that they can control them.’
‘Yes, but how?’
‘By turning a Jewish stoning into a Roman crucifixion.’
‘This man must die,’ the High Priest Caiaphas hissed at Pilatus through his long, full grey beard. Regaled in his sumptuous robes and topped with a curious, bejewelled domed hat made of silk, he looked, to Sabinus, much more like an eastern client king than a priest; but then, to judge by the size and splendour of the Jews’ Temple, Judaism was a very wealthy religion and its priests could afford to be extravagant with the money that the poor, in the hope of being seen by their god as righteous, pumped their way.
