False God of Rome (15 page)

‘No, the records show that it left the day after the violence started.’

‘Right, we’d better crush this outrage tomorrow and then find that preacher. If he’s the cause of all this, I’ll send him to the Governor to have him nailed up.
Quintillius!’

‘Yes, quaestor?’ the clerk said, bustling in through the door.

‘A Jew by the name of Yosef will be asking for an interview; I need to see him as soon as he arrives.’

‘Yes, quaestor.’

‘And find out where that woman who came to see me, Flavia Domitilla, is staying; I would like her to come to dinner tomorrow, once this Jewish problem has been resolved.’

‘Yes, quaestor. Will that be all?’

Vespasian flinched as the doctor began cleaning the gashes on his thigh; he waved a hand, the clerk bowed and retreated.

‘Thank you, Festus, you’ve done well, return to your men; I’ll come down at first light to assess the situation before you storm the barricades. Have the Jewish elders arrested
and brought there to explain their people’s behaviour; I want to know if there’s any reason to show these rioters mercy.’

Vespasian strode through the atrium in uniform before dawn the following morning eager to quash the riot, as he was keen to turn a clear mind to the seduction of Flavia
Domitilla that evening.

Magnus was waiting for him, sitting on the edge of one of the clerks’ vacant desks. ‘Good morning, sir, how are you feeling?’

‘Much the same as you, I expect: stiff,’ he replied, rubbing his heavily strapped thigh. ‘But at least my shoulder’s stopped throbbing. What are you doing up? You
don’t have to come.’

‘And miss out on a nice bit of street fighting? Bollocks; I was in the Urban Cohorts, if you remember? We used to love it when the racing factions rucked with each other after the races.
They were the only fights we’d get; great fun they were, unless we had to lay into the Greens, in which case I’d ease off a bit, if you take my meaning?’

‘Well, there won’t be any Greens among this lot.’

‘Right, I’ll imagine that they’re all Reds then, the bastards.’

‘Quaestor,’ Quintillius said, coming through the main door, ‘that man Yosef is among the petitioners waiting outside.’

‘Good. Did you find Flavia Domitilla?’

‘No, quaestor, there wasn’t enough time last night but I’ll send some more men out as soon as it’s light.’

‘Do that.’ Vespasian stepped out into the cool pre-dawn air.

The crowd of petitioners immediately started waving scrolls in his face and calling out the requests and boons that they desired of him.

‘Wait here until I return,’ he shouted, brushing away the supplicating hands, ‘I’ll deal with you then.’ He spotted Yosef at the back of the crowd and pointed at
him. ‘Yosef, walk with me.’

‘Yes, quaestor.’ Yosef broke off from the crowd and fell in next to Vespasian as he descended the steps to the Forum. Magnus shoved away the last couple of persistent
supplicants.

‘Did this man to whom you were giving passage to Apollonia have a young woman with two children accompanying him?’

‘There was a woman with two children on the ship but she wasn’t accompanying Shimon; she was making her own journey to southern Gaul to escape the persecution she faced in Judaea at
the hands of the priests.’

‘Well, she seems to be accompanying this Shimon now; she’s been with him while he preaches his insurrection.’

‘Shimon wouldn’t preach insurrection.’

‘No? Then explain to me why the Jewish Quarter of this city is in uproar.’

‘That’s not Shimon’s doing; he preaches peace, as do I. We follow the true teachings of my kinsman, Yeshua.’

‘Was he the man who you said was crucified?’

‘Yes, quaestor. He was a good man who believed that we Jews should have love and compassion for one another because the End of Days is close at hand and only the righteous will be saved on
that Day of Judgement.’

‘Saved from what?’ Vespasian asked as they left the Forum; debris from the last three days of fighting littered the ground.

‘Eternal death; they will live forever, along with the resurrected righteous, in the earthly paradise under God’s law that will follow the End of Days.’

‘And this just applies to the Jews?’

‘Any man can convert, provided he follows God’s law as set down in the five books of the Torah and accepts circumcision.’

‘What’s that?’ Magnus asked as he stepped over a smashed market stall.

‘It’s the removal of the foreskin.’

Vespasian looked at Yosef in disbelief. ‘I’ll never understand you Jews; do you seriously expect me to believe that to become righteous a man has to slice off his
foreskin?’

Yosef shrugged. ‘It’s God’s law.’

‘Well, you’re welcome to it if it makes you happy but stop trying to force it upon other people.’

‘We don’t, we only preach to our fellow Jews who’ve lapsed. Yeshua was quite clear upon that subject: we shouldn’t take the word of God to the Gentiles or even to the
Samaritans who follow a heretical form of the Torah.’

Vespasian grunted and walked on in silence, down towards the lower city, wondering why these people thought that they had an exclusive insight into the will of God to the extent that they could
accept no one else’s point of view.

Turning right, off the lower city’s riot-damaged main street, as the first rays of the sun hit the high-altitude clouds with an orange glow, Vespasian saw the centuries of auxiliaries
forming up to the bawling of their centurions and optiones.

‘What a fucking shambles,’ Magnus declared as they passed by the ranks of the chain-mailed soldiers struggling to form a line in the semi-darkness, cursing one another as their oval
shields became entangled with their neighbours’ javelins and enduring the savage swipes of their centurions’ vine-sticks.

‘This’ll be the first action that most of them have seen,’ Vespasian informed him, wondering whether they would have the discipline to work methodically through the quarter,
rooting out the rioters.

‘And if they form a line like that it’ll be their last as well.’

‘Good morning, quaestor,’ Festus said as they came to the head of the first century. ‘The Jewish elders are waiting for you.’

‘Thank you, prefect, have them brought here.’ Vespasian peered down the street; in the dim light he could make out a substantial barricade about a hundred paces away.

Three old men with bushy grey beards and wearing long white robes and black and white mantles shuffled forward. Vespasian looked them up and down hoping that he might get some sense out of at
least one of them.

‘Who speaks for you?’ he asked.

‘I do, quaestor,’ the middle of the three replied, ‘my name is Menahem.’

‘So tell me, Menahem, what caused all this?’

‘A man preaching a heresy, quaestor.’

‘Shimon?’

‘You know him?’

‘I know of him. What could he have said that could justify all this destruction and killing?’

‘He has converted hundreds of our people to his way; they no longer follow our teaching.’

‘Ah, so that’s the problem, is it: you’re all scared of losing your influence?’

‘What he preaches is blasphemous.’

‘I thought that the teaching of Yeshua is for Jews to love each other and follow the Torah – what’s blasphemous about that?’

Menahem’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘You are knowledgeable for a Gentile, quaestor. You’re right, there is nothing blasphemous about that; however, Shimon claims that Yeshua
was the Messiah and the son of God. We cannot accept that.’

‘So you told your people to kill him and his followers.’

‘We didn’t tell them to do anything. There was an agitator in the crowd, someone we’d never seen before; he started it when Shimon made another even more blasphemous
claim.’

‘Well?’

‘That after Yeshua was executed he came back to life three days later as proof of the resurrection of the righteous.’

‘What nonsense. And you did nothing to try and restrain your people?’

‘After this claim the agitator addressed the crowd. He got them so worked up that they wouldn’t listen to us; he said that the shortage of grain and failure of the silphium was
God’s judgement on us for listening to Yeshua’s lies.’

‘But that’s been failing for years.’

Menahem shrugged. ‘They’re poor people made poorer by the failure of the crop and now can’t afford the high grain prices so they’re happy to blame any scapegoat. They
threw themselves at Shimon’s supporters while the agitator urged them on, shouting that they should get the woman and her children who are always with Shimon. She escaped with the children
while Shimon’s supporters held back our people, and since then there have been running battles in the streets as this agitator looks for them.’

‘And so now they’ve barricaded themselves into the Jewish Quarter until they find them, I suppose?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Menahem agreed sadly, looking towards the auxiliary centuries that had now managed to form up. ‘This man is a fanatic; he’s caused the deaths of a
lot of our people already and a good few more will die before the day is out.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘He’s quite short with bow legs and has half an ear missing.’

‘Well, we should be able to recognise him from that. But tell me, Menahem, what has this man got against the woman and her children?’

‘He said that in order to purify God’s chosen people in Cyrene, so that He would make the silphium grow again, Yeshua’s bloodline must be wiped out; he claimed that they were
Yeshua’s children.’

T
HE SUN HAD
burst over the horizon and there was now enough light to be able to see any ambushes that may be lurking up the
narrow alleys to the left and the right of the barricaded road. Looking ahead to the barricade of overturned carts, barrels and broken-up furniture, Vespasian could see a mass of men behind it; a
few heads peered over, back towards the Romans. The houses beyond them were more dilapidated than in the rest of the city, attesting to the poverty of the Jewish Quarter.

‘Order the advance, Festus,’ he called to the auxiliary prefect standing next to him at the head of the first century, formed up eight abreast.

Magnus handed him an oval auxiliary shield. ‘I can’t believe that they’re going to be stupid enough to resist us.’

‘They’re desperate – since the silphium started to fail they’ve been getting poorer and poorer. Now they believe this liar who tells them that if they kill two children
then all their woes will disappear as their god will restore the crop.’

A
cornu
blared out four, deep, rumbling notes, and the
signiferi
of each century dipped their standards; the attack began.

‘Shields up!’ Festus shouted.

Fifty paces from the barricade Vespasian heard the tell-tale hiss of a volley of arrows.

Vespasian tightened his grip on his shield and hunched down behind it so that he could just see over its curved rim; he felt the auxiliary behind him raise his shield over his head and prayed
that the man was experienced enough to hold it firm. An instant later came the staccato hammering of many iron-tipped arrows thumping into the leather-covered wooden roof above the century’s
heads. A few screams from within the ranks confirmed the lesser effectiveness of the oval shields in forming a perfect cover and the inexperience of some of the auxiliaries holding them.

The pounding of the soldiers’ hobnailed sandals striking the paving stones in step reverberated off the brick walls to either side and around the makeshift wooden box encasing them.

‘The fucking racing factions never shot arrows at us,’ Magnus grumbled loudly beside him as two barbs from a second volley slammed into his shield with a sudden, double, vibrating
report.

Vespasian felt the wind of a shot passing between the curved rims of his and Magnus’ shields; with a gurgled cry the auxiliary behind him collapsed to the ground, his shield striking
Vespasian’s helmet with a ringing blow as he fell. He shook his head to clear it; a moment later he sensed another shield being thrust over him as the file behind closed up to seal the
gap.

With twenty paces to go a third volley buffeted the century.

‘Javelins ready; aim over the barricade,’ Festus shouted as the last shots pounded into them. ‘Shields down!’

The auxiliaries hefted their javelins overarm, ready to throw.

‘Release!’

Seventy or so sleek missiles soared away from the advancing century, most clearing the top of the barricade, to rain down upon the unshielded defenders as they reloaded. Although not as heavy as
a legionary
pilum
, the auxiliaries’ javelins crunched through unprotected chests and skulls and skewered arms and legs, hurling men to the ground with bursts of blood and howls of
pain.

A ragged volley of arrows followed without doing any damage to the advancing Romans.

‘Charge!’ Festus yelled over the screams of the wounded.

Drawing their swords, the auxiliaries broke into a trot, hunched behind their shields held firm before them.

Vespasian closed his eyes with the shock of impact as his shield crashed into the barricade; the auxiliary behind thrust his shield into his back pushing him forward as the weight of successive
men down the file was added to the momentum. With a rasping of wood grating roughly over stone, the barricade shifted back a few feet, and then suddenly splintered apart as the century behind added
their impetus to the heaving scrum. Gasping for breath, Vespasian was hurled forward among the flying debris of the disintegrating obstacle; his feet became entangled with a plank, sending him
sprawling forward. He just managed to duck under the wild sword thrust of a bellowing defender and rammed the raised plume of his helmet into the man’s groin. Clattering to the ground,
Vespasian felt the auxiliary behind him thrust his sword into the exposed chest of his screaming adversary as he stepped past to fill the gap that his fall had created.

All around him Roman legs surged forward as he tried to regain his feet in among the chaos of the breakthrough. The yelling auxiliaries did not notice him in their eagerness to close with the
poorly armed defenders, and his arms and legs suffered kicks and stampings before he was finally able to heave himself up and then move on to rejoin the surge.