LEGIO X
tattoo on Telamon’s forearm.
“You imagine you interrogate me, peregrine. But it is I who have peered into the blackness of your heart. You can hide nothing from me. Those letters in ink upon your flesh? They are seared as indelibly into your soul. You will not efface them as easily as you think.”
The mercenary assimilated this with no overt reaction. He thanked the sorceress for her time and, setting two copper coins upon a flat stone before her, rose and departed before she could spurn this compensation.
For days after, this interview repeated itself in David’s recall. Was he too somehow included in the sorceress’s hex?
The youth recollected as well, and with equal foreboding, the final exchange that took place outside the Essene Gate between the man-at-arms and the garrison commander.
David had spent the preceding postnoon purchasing supplies and rigging out the two mules for the coming trek. He slept on the straw of the stalls provided by the Romans within the fortress. Twice during the night, alarms sounded outside in the city. Armed detachments, of cavalry as well as foot troops, responded. David could hear their tread, at the double, hastening to the sites of unrest. He heard cries deep in the city and saw flames in distant quarters.
The next morning Severus, attended by the same lieutenant of cavalry who had taken the man-at-arms into custody at the Narrows, saw Telamon and his apprentice off from the slope beneath the south-facing city wall. The young officer turned out to be Severus’s nephew, whom the senior clearly regarded as a protégé and even a confidant.
The lieutenant set into Telamon’s hand what his superior identified as an “intelligence packet.” This bundle, Severus informed the man-at-arms, held a lex de captis, a “license of capture,” issued under the tribune’s personal seal, which would protect the mercenary at sea and on land from any who would attempt to deprive him of his prisoner, as well as letters of safe passage addressed to the harbormasters of Tyre, Sidon, and Seleucia Pieria. The packet contained in addition a military map of the city of Corinth and its environs with notes indicating the last known locations of the Nazarene underground communities, including a roster with names and physical descriptions of the insurrectionists’ principal leaders.
The lieutenant addressed Telamon. “The ringleader of this rabble is a man, surname unknown, age unknown, calling himself ‘Simon of the Harbor.’ He is said to be the political commander, if such a term may be applied to a Messianic sect, of approximately thirty scattered factions, all secretive, located not only in Corinth but throughout the Peloponnese and as far afield as the island of Corcyra. He has a sister, Miriam, also a chief of these seditionists. The only other name we have is that of Josepha, surname and family name unknown, called Parthenos, ‘the Virgin.’ She seems to be the mystical leader. Of course, these names may be false or cover identities. One or all may also have moved on or been supplanted by others. The intelligence in this packet is months old and may not be unquestioningly relied upon.”
David stole glimpses, when he could do so unobtrusively, of the bundle itself. The scribed lines were so many scratches to him; he flushed despite himself at his own ignorant and unlettered state.
Severus picked up from his nephew, continuing to Telamon. “These three—Simon, Miriam, and Josepha, or whatever identities they may now be traveling under—are the individuals for whom the Apostle’s letter is intended. They will be waiting for it. It is they who will propagate its message abroad. They are to be considered enemies of Rome. Their eradication is of the highest priority to the emperor. Regarding the latitude of your assignment, it goes without saying that, failing to intercept, acquire, and destroy the letter or return it to us, if you can eliminate these three individuals or any others of their sect, Rome will look most favorably upon your enterprise.”
The morning was hot, and the commander shifted uncomfortably inside his lorica segmentata armor. He wore a plumed Gallic helmet, as did the lieutenant, along with caligas and bronze shin guards. Both carried gladii like Telamon’s—on baldrics with dagger-belts attached—and were attended by two decurii, ten-man detachments of heavy infantry.
Along both sides of the Gaza Road, which led south and west down the slope from the Essene Gate, could be seen fresh lines of crucifixes, upon which hung in excess of a dozen of the seditionists called sicarii.
“ ‘Dagger men,’ ” observed the garrison commander. “A new term for a new kind of warrior, if indeed such a title of honor may be applied. These are the Zealots,” he said. “Champions of the Hebrews, who lurk among the crowds of the city to plunge their steel into the backs and throats of soldiers of my legion . . . your legion too, peregrine.”
The tribune peered down the line of crucifixes. “How am I, or any commander, supposed to combat or control such agents of terror? I cannot permit a man of mine to so much as buy a pear in a Jewish market. Our soldiers may venture outside the fortress only in details of four or more—at arms and in armor. The Jews spit on our shadows as we pass in the street. This country will break out in open insurrection, if not this year, then next. What then? We will have to raze the city entire—and we shall.”
The mules could scent the blood and agony of the crucified rebels. Both began to stamp and balk. Severus noted the youth David clamp his own beast by the halter and draw it tight.
“This ‘apprentice’ you carry . . .” The Roman addressed Telamon but nodded in the direction of David. “He and his countrymen would eat our brothers raw in the night. Wouldn’t you, boy?”
He addressed David directly now. “Why can’t you Jews accept Roman order and Roman prosperity? What more can we do for you than build roads and bring fresh water and make your merchants and traders rich? Yet you slit the throats of our sons in the street. Do we proscribe the practice of your religion? Does Rome insist that you worship her gods, or even pay notice of them? No! Your temple is the greatest in all the East. Your scholars and priests secure fortunes via the commerce mandated and monopolized under your laws and our arms and protection. By heaven, I command the imperial garrison of Jerusalem, yet I cannot make a decision, so much as where to dispose of my cavalry mounts’ shit, without seeking permission of the high priests and the Sanhedrin, may hell take them all. This banquet of blessings Rome sets before you, asking nothing except peace, yet still you hate us!”
Severus turned now to Telamon and, with an expression of rue, proffered this estimation:
“For all our differences, mercenary, you and I have one thing in common: we live in this world. These Jews and Messianics do not. They abide in the next and may be reasoned with no more than a shade or a phantasm!”
The commander drew up, realizing he had given way to a fit of intemperance, and one moreover directed at an illiterate child. He reclaimed his self-command, with a smile to Telamon that was not unlike a grimace.
“See how these Jews drive you crazy? Rome has brought into subjection a hundred peoples, yet none remains so stiff-necked as these. Perhaps you were not so foolhardy, my friend, to take your discharge when you could.”
Severus set his palm upon the man-at-arms’ shoulder.
“Bring me the letter, brother. Bring the man and the letter, and I will double your bounty out of my own purse.”