The Big Fisherman (51 page)

The brusque command annoyed Voldi. He didn't like the idea of slinking away—like a dog that had been ordered home. He stood his ground. The Romans loved to boss people around: Felix too was learning to crow, the young cockerel! Voldi was sore; but so fascinated by the flamboyant pageantry on the wharf that he gave the spectacle his full attention. The Tetrarch's circus was moving away now and the crowd was disintegrating. As Voldi slowly advanced with the throng, two tall Praetorian Guards fell into step on either side of him, and the elder of them said quietly, 'Proceed, please, to your room at The Agrippa, and remain there until the Prefect gives you your freedom.'

'May I ask what I have done?' demanded Voldi testily.

'Nothing, sir,' replied the Guard, 'but the Prefect wants you to be kept under strict observance until Tetrarch Antipas has left the city.'

Voldi shrugged and scowled but did as he was told, feeling like a warmly spanked little boy who had better swallow his indignation if he knew what was good for him. As he ambled toward the street, with the Guards trailing him at a respectful distance, he had to admit to himself that Sergius had not dealt too severely with him, considering the circumstances. It had been very indiscreet of him to come here, and he cursed himself for his imprudence. Quickening his steps, he proceeded to the tavern and went at once to his suite. A few minutes afterward, a servant appeared and took his order for dinner.

'I understand you are to be served in your rooms, sir,' he said. 'Is that correct, sir? . . .' Voldi said it was correct. There were three whole days of this polite and luxurious incarceration. Felix did not appear; though whether he had been ordered to stay away or was disgusted by his friend's impertinence could not be cleared up at the moment. On the morning of the fourth day, the dining-room servant who had been bringing his meals said, as he put down the breakfast tray, 'I understand, sir, that you are dining downstairs at noon.'

'Yes,' said Voldi, as if he had been notified.

He was still eating his breakfast when Felix came in, glumly nodded, and flung himself into an easy chair.

'You certainly played hell with yourself by going down to the docks,' he growled. 'Now every move you make will be watched. And the Prefect will be annoyed if I am seen in your company. That's the worst part of it, as far as I am concerned.'

Voldi flushed a little at this rebuke and was on the point of retorting angrily; but, aware that he had no case, replied, 'It was a mistake, Felix. For your own protection, perhaps you'd do well to ignore me; at least until your father forgets about it.'

'My father never forgets anything,' said Felix. 'He has the memory of an elephant. . . . I'll go now. And if I don't show up for a few days, you'll know why.' He rose, and at the door, turned to remark, 'I hope you will be discreet now, Voldi. I'm going to miss you.'

Voldi nodded and smiled his understanding. After the door had closed slowly and reluctantly, he moodily contemplated the dismaying position into which he had so heedlessly placed himself. The companionship of young Felix had meant more to him than he had realized.

The fine spring days were interminably long and empty. Every morning early, sometimes at the break of dawn, Darik would be mounted for a fast ride on the coast highway to the south. By breakfast time Voldi would have returned to The Agrippa. He began to study maps of the surrounding country. In his desperation to ease Fara's mind about him and his interest in her, he began to consider a swift ride to Bethsaida. By getting away early, and urging Darik to his best speed, he might be able to make the round trip in three days. They would be out looking for him, no doubt, but he would be back at The Agrippa before they found him—he hoped!

With the plan for his reckless adventure well organized, he slipped past the sleepy night-watch while it was still dark, rode at a leisurely trot until he had passed through the southern outskirts of the city, pressed Darik to a gallop, and found an unfrequented road that angled easterly to Antipatris where he turned north on a weedy old donkey-trail. The day was hot and Darik was not conditioned for such a journey, but Voldi did not spare him. So far, so good. He had not been followed.

Late that night he applied for lodging at a filthy inn which befitted the remembered squalor of Megiddo. After giving the exhausted Darik a rub-down and a ration of grain, he tumbled down fully clothed in the straw, and slept.

In the morning, two mounted patrols arrested him as he was leaving the inn and conducted him back to Caesarea by the shortest route and put him in prison to await trial for violating the Prefect's orders. He was not manacled and his quarters were not too uncomfortable. The food was coarse but edible. The stoutly barred window was too high for him to see out. He had nothing to read.

When he inquired of the rotund jailor how long it might be before he was brought to trial, the latter replied, 'You picked a bad time to get yourself into trouble with the Prefect. He sailed for Rome this morning, on
The Augusta.
However,' he added wittily, 'you're still young; and, besides, you may be better off where you are than where you might be later. Prefect Sergius, my boy, is not a man to be trifled with! He has had men beheaded for less than you did!'

The annual week of the Passover would begin tomorrow; and Antipas, who had always anticipated its games, processions and ceremonies with pleasure, was troubled by its arrival. His Roman house-guests at the Embassy, already bored to forthright rudeness toward their host, would find it a dull affair.

He now realized that it had been a mistake to invite so many of them. He might have managed comfortably with two or three, but—ignoring the warning of Herodias, who was not particularly chummy with any of the women of the party—he had brought fifteen!

There were Mark and Aurelia Varus and their daughter Faustina, recently divorced by Consul Narro for spending too much time with Prince Gaius; Julius and Paula Fronto, lately recalled from the prefecture in Crete; Senator Manius Cotta; Nerius and Drusilla Hispo; the garrulous Valerie Flaccus, a friend of Salome's; Proconsul Fabius Tiro, his gossiping wife Amelia and their restless and flighty young Flavia; Junius Manilius, a retired Legate and long-time crony of the Tetrarch; Tullius Fadilla, a wealthy, middle-aged bachelor; and the ageing but kittenish Julia Drusus, who was driving Fadilla insane with her attentions. Deep in his cups at a banquet, Antipas had invited everybody within sound of his voice to accompany him home on
The Augusta;
and now he was paying for his indiscretion.

Usually the month of Nisan, spent in Jerusalem, was thoroughly enjoyed by the Tetrarch. The Galilean Embassy, by grace of the immense sums Antipas had spent upon it, was one of the most beautiful public edifices in the city and spacious far beyond its needs. It would have gratified the Tetrarch if more attention had been accorded it—and him. He craved popularity. He had even gone to the length of announcing that the night patrols were welcome to assemble, when off duty, in the huge carriage-court, and had provided a wood-fire where, in chilly weather, they might warm themselves. As a further evidence of his hospitality, a midnight snack was served to the legionaries. But it couldn't be said that all this generosity ever did the foolish fellow any good. The soldiers nightly warmed their hands, enjoyed the Tetrarch's cakes and wine, and flirted with the servant-girls; but the Embassy was—for all that—a hissing and a byword, even in the opinion of its beneficiaries.

But the great man had pretended not to know where he stood in the public's estimation. For that one month every spring, he conducted his Embassy as if it really mattered. He had always taken pride and pleasure in playing judge. The cases brought before him were rarely of any importance; and, when they were, the losing litigant always appealed to Pilate, who, contemptuous of Antipas and his pompous little tribunal, customarily reversed the decision.

Undaunted by these embarrassments, the Tetrarch made a great thing of the trivial matters submitted to him, handling with ridiculous ostentation mere border brawls between the Samaritans and Galileans, involving such issues as their joint responsibility for the repair of a wooden bridge on an unfrequented donkey-trail at a cost of fifty shekels. Indeed the Samaritans and Galileans had often gone to law for less. They had hated one another for at least five centuries and relished the occasional opportunity of exchanging elaborately contrived insults in this atmosphere of ponderous dignity, even if a favourable decision cost more than it was worth.

During his many winter seasons in Rome, Antipas, when queried about his official duties as Tetrarch of Galilee, candidly admitted that his executive responsibilities while in residence at Tiberias were not onerous. There was, of course, the month he spent annually at the Embassy. That, he implied, was quite another matter. When pressed for details he always closed his eyes, shook his head, and waggled his hand, as if to say that it was too serious to be talked about. And he had foolishly allowed the growth of a legend to the effect that his court in Jerusalem dealt out horrible punishments to all manner of desperate criminals, seditionists and traitors.

Now the silly secret was out. There was no blood-letting to be had at the Embassy. The Romans had attended court, one morning, and had filed out presently, their shameless laughter echoing in the high-domed, mosaic-lined foyer. The Tetrarch's court, they said truthfully, was a poor show.

Antipas now had had three weeks of these insufferable people. He hated them all. There was nothing in Jerusalem that they wanted to do, nothing they wanted to see. Most of them had visited Greece, all of them had been in Egypt. As for architectural splendours and hoary antiquities, the Holy City had little to offer to anybody who had seen the Acropolis or the ruins at Karnak.

The Tetrarch was at his wits' end to find entertainment for his jaded guests. He had wangled an invitation for them to luncheon at The Insula, but it was a painful event, Pontius and Calpurnia Pilate making it plain that their hospitality was an official duty, and no pleasure. Besides, the very air was drugged with the long-festering animosity of Pilate and Fronto; and Calpurnia had no use for Herodias, whom she had publicly snubbed on numerous occasions. The Procurator, brusque enough when on his best behaviour, went to no bother to brighten the hour. The most interest he showed in any of them was when, after blinking solemnly into Fadilla's baggy eyes for a long moment, he muttered, 'Tullius, you're getting paunchy; probably drinking too much. You'll have a stroke, one of these days.'

And now the Passover was at hand. These pagans couldn't be expected to take much interest in that. Obviously the most prudent course now was to get them all out of Jerusalem before they disgraced him with their flippant comments concerning an ancient rite which—in the opinion of all Jewry—was no joke. True, it would be an appalling display of indifference, on his own part, to leave at this moment; but he would risk it. He tried the idea out on Herodias, who approved it with the not very reassuring comment, 'You may as well do it: you have nothing to lose.'

Customarily, at the end of Passover Week, the Tetrarch's family and retainers were escorted back to Tiberias by the Legion from Capernaum. It would have been foolhardy to attempt this journey through the bandit-infested mountains of Samaria without protection. Seeing that the gala week in Jerusalem was in the nature of a vacation for Julian's legionaries, it was doubtful whether the Legate would consent to leave the city on the very eve of the festival, even if Procurator Pilate had permitted the withdrawal for no better reason than to accommodate a whim of the Tetrarch's.

However, it was worth trying. Antipas stated his case to Julian, who, as was to be expected, flatly refused. In desperation the Tetrarch told the Legate that if he would release one company for this service every man of them should be paid thirty shekels per day. This was tempting bait. Julian said he would see. That afternoon he reported that a company of one hundred legionaries, under the command of a trusted Centurion, would be on hand early the next morning. And it was with a deep sigh of relief that Antipas saw his long caravan through the Damascus Gate and out into the open country. Now his malcontents, instead of fretting in the tiresome confinement of the Embassy, could amuse themselves as they liked. They could ride, bathe in the beautiful pool, tan their hides in the gardens; and, incidentally, relieve him of the responsibility to find entertainment for them.

But in a few days after their arrival it became apparent that the Romans were going to be as restless in Tiberias as they had been in Jerusalem. There were plenty of good horses in the Tetrarch's marble stables, but the visitors petulantly remarked that there were no interesting rides to be taken, nowhere to go. The girls inquired why no use was made of the lovely lake—ideal water for a pleasure barge; moonlight, music, dancing. It was queer, they said, that the Tetrarch had never thought of that. Well, it was too late now.

By the end of Nisan everybody was at loggerheads with everybody else. Salome had had a falling out with Valerie, who, to punish her, had transferred her attentions to the young Tiro girl, causing an estrangement between Salome and Flavia. At this juncture Amelia Tiro, championing her child, remarked—in the presence of half a dozen loungers beside the famous pool—that Salome was no fit company for a young girl anyway; and although this comment did not come as a shock to anybody, it did nothing to improve the climate of a house party, already at storm.

Julia Drusus, savagely scorned by the exasperated Fadilla, belatedly showed a comradely interest in Herodias who, resentful of Julia's earlier aloofness, would have none of her.

Antipas made pretence of busying himself with the planting of a new vineyard, and coolly despised them all.

Salome, now left to her own devices, sought consolation in the companionship of her step-father, making their mutual affection so flagrantly showy that everybody chattered evilly about them—and Herodias could have killed them both. Indeed, so hard pressed for attention was the unhappy woman that she took to visiting John the hermit in his cell, plying him with fruits, flowers, and flattery; and when it became evident that the grim prophet was too preoccupied with his own meditations to appraise hers correctly, Herodias threw away the last shred of her counterfeit decency and drove the hapless ascetic into a terrifying rage by attempting to caress him. Hot with such anger as she had never experienced, she slapped him on the mouth and slammed the cell-door behind her, screaming that he could stay there for ever—and rot—for all she cared. Her eyes burned with self-piteous tears as she stumbled along toward the new vineyard, muttering that things had come to a pretty pass when a shaggy, penniless ragamuffin from nowhere would dare to yell into her face that she was a common slut. That the accusation was true did not mitigate the indignity. She would see to it that the bug-eater was punished.