‘Ah yes, I remember seeing him a couple of days before I left for Siwa; do you know who he is?’ Vespasian grimaced as the doctor began applying stitches to his shoulder.
‘All I know is that he arrived on a Judaean trading ship just over a month ago.’
‘What sort of trader?’
‘Tin, according to the port aedile’s records.’
‘Tin? Is the ship still here?’
‘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.’