Chapter 22

Notwithstanding his weariness, Mencius was unable to sleep. Obsequious old Levi had waited up to conduct the Proconsul to what he asserted was the most comfortable bed in the house; the tavern was quiet, nobody astir; there was no vehicular traffic on the cobbled street. But Mencius lay wide awake, still listening to the bull-whip cutting into the bleeding shoulders of the defenceless Galilean.

It was not because he was unused to the sight and sound of cruel floggings. Roman discipline was harsh and punishments were severe. Three-quarters of the Empire’s population were slaves. To treat their infractions of the law with any lenience at all was to invite conspiracy and rebellion. Every free-born Roman lived dangerously, alert to the merest hint of insubordination. Corporal punishment, administered in public, was the best medicine for disobedience, far more effective than imprisonment. The brutal scourging of the young Galilean, therefore, would have been—for the Proconsul—just another brutal scourging added to all the brutal scourgings he had witnessed on land and sea throughout the Empire, but for the fact that the victim was a man of mystery, a man to be treated with dignity; imprisoned, perhaps; beheaded, perhaps; but not flogged.

Mencius readjusted his pillow and resolved to stop thinking about it. It wasn’t his problem, he told himself. It was none of his business. He would go to sleep now. But that whole affair at the Galilean Embassy needed explanation. The noisy prosecution was in the hands of a mob that had no respect for the court, although the baffled judge had utterly disgraced himself to humour the screaming riff-raff, who apparently had no warrant for the captive’s arrest, no formal charges preferred by any recognized authority, and, in short, represented nobody but themselves, which was the same as saying that they represented nobody at all.

It was evident that Pilate, who couldn’t help knowing of this shocking abrogation of justice, had decided to keep out of it. But that didn’t tally with what Mencius had heard of Pontius Pilate’s reputation as a self-respecting Prefect. No Provincial Governor could afford to ignore such an impudent flouting of the law. It would require some very potent behind-the-scenes pressure to persuade the gruff Procurator of Judaea that he must keep his hands off and let the riot run wild. That course, for any Roman ruler, was a direct road to ruin.

Pre-dawn light was breaking now. With an exasperated apostrophe to all the gods, for none of whom he had more than an antiquarian’s respect, Mencius rose, dressed, and went softly downstairs to the small patio hedged at the rear of the quadrangle by a rose-garden which extended almost to the high wall that enclosed the area. The roses were softly lighted by the oncoming sun. Mencius strolled toward the garden. A few yards ahead of him, and moving slowly with a furtive glance over his shoulder, was a tall, lean, ragged young fellow, who, instead of stepping aside, turned and waited at the wall, thrusting out a dirty hand for alms. Mencius chuckled.

‘You might have fooled me with your tatters,’ he said, ‘but I knew you were in the city. What’s all this about, Voldi, selling your horse to the Tetrarch and working as a hostler in his stables?’