The sky had turned grey; droplets of rain had started to fall, diluting the blood that ran from the wounds of the three crucified men. It was now the ninth hour of the day; Sabinus and Longinus walked back down the hill of Golgotha. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
Sabinus looked back at Yeshua hanging on his cross; his head slumped forward and blood oozed from a spear wound in his side that Longinus had administered to hasten the end of his suffering before the commencement of the Sabbath. Six hours earlier he had been whipped up the hill dragging his cross, aided by a man from the crowd. Then he had endured, in silence, the nails being hammered through his wrists; he had seemed barely to notice the nails being pounded home through his feet, fixing them to the wood. The savage jolting as the cross was hauled upright, which had caused the screaming of the other two crucified men to intensify to inhuman proportions, had brought no more than a shallow groan from his lips. He looked now, to Sabinus, to be at peace.
Sabinus passed through the cordon of auxiliaries who were keeping the small, mournful crowd of onlookers away from the executed men and saw Paulus, standing with a couple of Temple Guards, gazing up at Yeshua; a bandage around his head was spotted with blood from the wound to his ear. ‘What are you doing here?’ Sabinus asked.
Paulus seemed lost in his own thoughts and did not hear him for a moment, then blinked repeatedly as he registered the question. ‘I came to check that he was dead and take his body for burial in an unmarked tomb so that it doesn’t become a place of pilgrimage for his heretical followers. Caiaphas has ordered it.’
‘Why were you all so afraid of him?’ Sabinus enquired.
Paulus stared at him as if looking at an idiot. ‘Because he would bring change.’
Sabinus shook his head scornfully and pushed past the malchus of the Guard. As he did so a group of two men and two women, the younger one heavily pregnant and carrying an infant, approached him.
The elder man, a wealthy-looking Jew in his early thirties with a dense black beard, bowed. ‘Quaestor, we wish to claim Yeshua’s body for burial.’
‘The Temple Guards are here to claim it. What claim do you have on his body?’
‘My name is Yosef, I am Yeshua’s kinsman,’ the man replied, putting his arm around the shoulder of the older of the two women, ‘and this woman is Miriam, his mother.’
Miriam looked pleadingly at Sabinus, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Please don’t let them have him, quaestor, give me my son so that I can take him back to Galilee and bury him there.’
‘My orders are that he is to be buried before nightfall.’
‘I have a family tomb, just close by,’ Yosef said, ‘we will put the body there for now, then move it the day after the Sabbath.’
Sabinus looked back at Paulus with a malicious smile. ‘Paulus, these people have the claim of kin over the body.’
Paulus looked outraged. ‘You can’t do that; Caiaphas demands his body.’
‘Caiaphas is Rome’s subject! Longinus, have that hideous little man escorted away from here.’
As Paulus was manhandled away, protesting, Sabinus turned back to Yosef. ‘You can take the body; Rome has finished with it.’ He turned to go.
Yosef bowed his head. ‘That was a kindness that I won’t forget, quaestor.’
‘Quaestor,’ the younger man called, stopping Sabinus, ‘Rome may be our master now, but be warned, the final age is approaching and Yeshua’s teachings are part of it; a new kingdom will rise, new men with new ideas will rule and the old order will start to fade.’
Recollecting the Emperor Tiberius’ astrologer, Thrasyllus, two years previously predicting the coming of a new age, Sabinus stared at the young man; he recognised him as the man who had helped Yeshua with his cross that morning. ‘What makes you so sure of that, Jew?’
‘I come from Cyrenaica, Roman, which was once a province of the Kingdom of Egypt; there they await the rebirth of the firebird. Its five-hundred-year cycle is coming to an end; next year the Phoenix will be reborn in Egypt for the last time and all things will begin to change in preparation for the End of Days.’
PART I
CHAPTER I
‘Have you got it?’ Vespasian asked as Magnus walked down the gangplank of a large merchant ship newly arrived in the port of Appolonia.
‘No, sir, I’m afraid not,’ Magnus replied, shouldering his bag, ‘the Emperor is refusing all entry permits to Egypt at the moment.’
‘Why?’
Magnus took his friend’s proffered forearm. ‘According to Caligula it’s on the advice of Tiberius’ astrologer, Thrasyllus; not even Antonia could get him to change his mind.’
‘Why did you bother coming, then?’
‘Now that ain’t a very nice way to greet a friend who’s travelled fuck knows how many hundreds of miles in that rotting tub at a time of year when most sailors are tucked up in bed with each other.’
‘I’m sorry, Magnus. I was counting on Antonia getting me the permit; it’s been four years since Ataphanes died and we promised to get his gold back to his family in Parthia.’
‘Well then, another couple of years or so ain’t going to make much difference, are they?’
‘That’s not the point. Egypt is the neighbouring province; I could have made a short diversion to Alexandria on my way home in March, found the Alabarch, given him Ataphanes’ box and made the arrangements for the money to be transferred to his family in Ctesiphon and still be back in Rome before next May.’
‘You’ll just have to do it some other time.’
‘Yes, but it’ll take much longer going from Rome. I may not have the time; I’ve got the estate to run and I plan to get elected as an aedile the year after next.’
‘Then you shouldn’t go making promises that you can’t keep.’
‘He served my family loyally for many years; I owe it to him.’
‘Then don’t begrudge him your time.’
Vespasian grunted and turned to make his way back along the bustling quayside through the mass of dock- workers unloading the newly docked trading fleet. His senatorial toga acted as an intimidating display of his rank, ensuring that a path was cleared for him through the crowd, making the hundred-pace journey along the quay to his waiting, one-man litter an easy affair.
Magnus followed in his wake enjoying the deference shown to his young friend by the local populace. ‘I didn’t think quaestors were normally treated with this much respect in the provinces,’ he observed as one of the four litter-bearers unnecessarily helped Vespasian onto his seat.
‘It’s because the Governors always hate it here and rightly so, it’s like living in a baker’s oven but without the nice smell. They tend to spend all their time in the provincial capital, Gortyn over in Creta, and send their quaestors here to administer Cyrenaica in their name.’
Magnus chuckled. ‘Ah, that’ll always help people to respect you, the power of life and death.’
‘Not really, as a quaestor I don’t have Imperium, no power of my own. I have to have all my decisions ratified by the Governor, which takes forever,’ Vespasian said gloomily, ‘but I do have the power to procure horses,’ he added with a grin as a dusky young slave boy led a saddled horse up to Magnus.
Magnus took the animal gratefully and threw his bag over its rump before mounting. ‘How did you know that I’d be arriving today?’
‘I didn’t, I just hoped that you would be,’ Vespasian replied as his litter moved forward, passing a theatre looking out over the sea. ‘When the fleet was sighted this morning I decided to come down on the off-chance, as it’s probably the last one of the season to arrive from Rome. Anyway, it’s not as if I had anything else worthwhile to
