FIRST REPORTS came from a local magistrate and were (properly) discounted.   Then the regional superintendent of the guard also filed a statement, and there was a stirring of interest.  Then rumors began arriving at the capitol with merchants and teamsters—people usually sober and reputable.  It seemed we needed an investigation, at least on  a limited scale.  It does not pay, in my experience, to let transient local hysteria blossom into national obsessions.  It is too easy, in these unsettled times, for unscrupulous powerbrokers or ambitious politicians to exploit superstitious anxieties.  Often some tiny provincial sore in these outpost parishes can erupt into a gangrene which corrupts the whole body politic.

Let me reconstruct scenes in which I was a principal actor (though the gods know I am no threat to any current Roscius’ reputation).  It is one small role in the endless comedy into which a minor military administrator finds himself, willy-nilly, cast.

It began when an adjutant arrived, a messenger really.  He was a fool of a Persian half-breed recruited well before my administration. (I am burdened with whole barracks—nay, whole outposts—packed with these rascals, who though they call themselves “loyal Romans” have never seen the other side of the sea.  He burst into my office with a disjointed tale related at high speed in a barbarous accent.  I had to quiz him to reconstruct his narrative.

“A wizard, you say?  A great magician?”  I had learned long ago not to argue with or scoff at bizarre local legends and mores.  “What has he done?”

“Captain , sir, you will not believe.  You will laugh at me.”

“Come on, man—either you have a report or you don’t.  I am very busy.  I have no time for coy banter.  If you have come to waste my time and patience, I’ll have the skin flogged off your back.”

“Very well, O Captain.  It is a true thing, sir.  I believe.  But you do not understand these people and their ways.  At a village near here the people swear—good people, sir, not rogues and drunkards—they swear this wizard, this man, has brought people back from death.”

“So?  A healer.  A medicine man.  What is the cause for excitement?  He has saved a few miserable lives . . .”

There followed detailed quizzing.  I began to see the shape of the wild story:  another myth of life and hope springing from this dry desert land.

“Where is the magician now?”

“This was in a tiny village, Lord, a place of no consequence a few leagues away.  The people call it Bethany.  It is of no value.”

“I will be the judge of that.  If this is a rebellion or if these provincials start to riot again, it may be of consequence to us.  We can send a squad to investigate if the matter warrants.”

But I did not believe it required serious notice.  I dismissed the fellow with vague praises for his vigilance, loyalty, honesty, etc.  He left in the obsequious fashion of such synthetic Romans.  I prefer the natives who curse and spit on us in the markets.  They have spirit, these wild Jews, even if their religion is outlandish and their politics incomprehensible.

                                                                        2.

THE NEXT REPORT arrived a day later, with a delegation of these self-same haughty Jews.  Two old priests and two husky younger fellows came to me—the young men looking like good material for our frontier legions, proud and sturdy specimens unwilling to nod or bend a knee to my signs of office.  The priests gabbled together, and one of the young men translated (crudely) for me.

“We have come to beg your gracious aid, oh mighty all-seeing Lord.  A man goes among our people, stirring them to discontent and disbelief.  He travels with wicked, low people and incites our poor to rebel.  It is said he comes to the city soon for the holy days.  We have grave fears about wickedness he may work with the faithful here at the Temple for worship.”

I sorted this from innumerable cruxes, solecisms and hollow ceremonial phrases.  It seemed another routine complaint, and I was about to refer it to my sergeant when I caught the name “Bethany” in their conferring.  I enquired and they unleashed a cascade of jabber about wizardry and conspiracy.  One old priest muttered the word “Lazarus” repeatedly.

“What—or where—is this Lazarus?” I asked.

“A man, your munificence,” the translator said.  “He is an accomplice—the one said to be raised from the dead.  I have seen him.  He is a low scoundrel, and he connives to spread this Jesus’ name among the credulous.”

The fable took on clearer shape and specificity.  I made cursory notes, mostly for my own interest.  I collect quaint tales and lore of these peoples with an idea of weaving them into an amusing essay when I retire to Rome.  If I am not heartily sick of this place and its beggarly people then.  The name “Jesus” or “Joshua” was attached to the wizard. They also called him a “Nazarene” (whatever that is) and referred to a place named Bethlehem and its ancient king, one David.  Later I located the places on my campaign map—mere dots, crossroads.

“My teacher, the revered Caiaphas—” a sweeping gesture at one of the rheumy-eyed old men—“begs you to find this wicked man, that you catch him if he comes to the city.  Caiaphas swears he will come, within days.  It is a holy prophecy.  We will deal with him in our Temple court if you help us capture him.”

The pronouncement became more religious and mystical, and I dismissed it as astrological rubbish.  It all might be another absurd rumor, but the story intrigued me.  The Jews left with more jabber and gesticulation.  I sent for a centurion in my command, a veteran with a dozen years more than I in this sector.  On desert patrol for years, he knew the country and its people and kept his eyes and ears open to local gossip and events.

                                                                        3.

THE TROOPER took a cup of the sour local wine.  He sat erect, friendly enough but aware he was on duty.  All instincts of the seasoned soldier showed in him:  he was direct but cautious, he listened and spoke measuredly. He was curious, I could see, to find out what I was after and careful not to commit himself blindly.  We spoke of difficulties of the command, of old campaigns, touched on officers we had both known, mentioned Rome with reverent nostalgia.  I poured another cup of the reeking wine.

“Tell me anything you’ve heard recently about a—a wizard working in the districts around the city.”

He looked slightly confused and incredulous.  But he knew it was not a jest.

“His name is—Jesus or Joshua.”  I referred to my notes.  “From Nazareth.  Or Bethlehem.  He has a small fanatical following hereabouts.  He was reputed, a few days ago, to have raised a man from the dead.”

At this the centurion’s face changed—he blenched or winced, went stiff and a little white under his windburn.  He wiped at his brow.

“A—a few days ago, you say, sir?  I think I may know something, but it happened—”

He told me that a friend of his, another centurion stationed at Capernum, had recited a marvelous tale about a holy man, a healer who had saved a dying family servant. He had also, stories said, raised a youth from the dead in a nearby settlement.  But that had been a year or so earlier.  The trooper looked puzzled, disturbed, as he finished his story.  He told it economically and exactly as an official debriefing report.  We sat pondering. A fly buzzed around the room like the very voice of this infernal heat, but we neither had more to say.  Something in the simple solemnity of his narrative had touched me.

“My friend had been—changed,” the centurion said as he took leave of me.  “He talks of leaving the service and settling here.  Not going home.  He has a deep concern for these people, when once he called them filthy cattle.  He has—gone soft, I guess.  But it’s not the usual thing.  He’s a good non-com, one of the best I’ve known.  And he hasn’t lost his courage or spirit or whatever or gone to women or drink.  It’s very odd—it’s as if he were always listening to something I can’t hear.  But that’s enough, sir.  It’s all foolishness on my part, I suspect.  Thank you for the wine.  I hope I was some help to you.”

I watched his broad back, the hip-broken stride of a man used to twenty-odd years of route marches in armor.  My impression was that he was an utterly reliable character.  He believed his friend’s tales. And thus I was forced to believe. 

Or at least to attempt belief.

                                                                        4.

I RETURNED to my steaming office and hunted down the magistrate’s report.  It was the usual semi-literate pastiche of rumor, complaint and bureaucratic jargon.  One page did contain a startling statement:  “This man has convinced all who saw him of his powerful magic and has become a disruptive influence in every village in the precinct.  Something about his character persuades folk of every station to listen and obey.”  The scrap of parchment then dwindled into another matter, wheedling over diminished salaries and raised taxes.  It was marked received less than a week earlier.

I decided then to go myself and discover the truth of the matter.  It was a firm decision, even if I did not myself understand exactly why I should spend valuable army time examining a minor disturbance in these petty communities.  There seemed no real threat to internal security and even less a threat to our government.  A small rash, a boil on the body politic, not the dreadful plague or gangrene I had imagined.  I carried with me some early reports by the Roman military geographer who had, a generation ago, surveyed the province and a few other official reference works.

My headquarters guard accompanied me—a dozen stout men—and we rode unobtrusively from the city at dawn the next day.  The markets were already crowded in the dusty half-light, and one man remarked that this was the beginning of the Jews’ greatest feast days.  People scuttled out of our way, but I was struck by the concentrated contempt and fury on many faces that turned toward us and our standard of Rome.

In my long—and I may say distinguished—career in the service of Rome, I have grown inured to the customs and prejudices of these other breeds of men.  The ruled seldom feel gratitude (let alone familial affection) toward their rulers.  We have had bad, bloody skirmishes on this soil, and the natives when not fighting us fight each other.  Little bitter bandit-style raids and ambushes take place as a fact of life on garrison.  I have seen far too many corpses of young first-hitch soldiers brought in, throats slashed in a moment of unawareness in a crowded bazaar or in a dark piss-smelling alleyway behind a brothel.

We cleared the city and rode into the rising heat of day.  This is a singularly blank and unattractive land.  I understand its strategic significance, but if it were not for its role as an anchor holding down the colonies at this end of the sea, I would heartily recommend that we leave it to the Jews and the bands of nomadic half-men to divide.  I thought this as we rode for two hot hours to the place named Bethany.

A ragged village of leaning huts, none bigger than my cramped office.  A few cattle standing stunned in the heat, fowl underfoot, small fields scratched shallowly around the clustered houses.  In the center a well, its brick lip crumbling away.  No one appeared as we dismounted.  Finally a boy teetering into young manhood crept from behind a house.  His eyes were big and shiny as he examined us, the horses, our regalia.  I have seen Roman lads thus struck at a parade of the palace guard, and I know I will see them a few years hence enlisted and training eagerly.  This dark-skinned, dark-eyed fellow was more like a Carthagenian ape than a fair Tuscan boy, but his eyes held the same fever.  Perhaps he would grow up to cut a trooper’s throat from ambuscade.

“Boy:  come here.” I bade.  He crept.  Then he straightened, took courage and came directly.  As if he realized he was the village spokesman.  “Where is everyone?  Are they hiding?”

“They are here.  They are all afraid of you.  They do not want to be in trouble.”

“But you don’t mind?”

“You . . . you don’t look bad,” he said.  I smiled.  He was studying my breastplate (I wore my best dress uniform to dazzle the provincials) and my sword-hilt.  Gently I drew the short sword.  His eyes strained open even wider.

“You want to see it?  Here, you may hold it if you’re careful.  Watch out—it’s heavier than you think and very sharp!”

I watched the houses behind the boy, while my men hauled water for the horses.  Figures emerged tentatively from the deep-blue shadows of doorways.  Women first, then a few more children, then men hanging back like wraiths or shadows.  The boy’s name was Isaac (I think I have it right), and he chattered about the village, himself and his family, interspersing questions about me, the army, the city, Rome, the faraway sea.  He was eager for adventure, travel, a wider world.

I spoke louder to him, so the timorous villagers would hear that this was a civil conversation—in sign language, broken Latin and my ragged gutter-Aramaic:  “We are here to help.  To protect you against bad men.  Robbers.  Evil men.  We keep your sheep safe.  Your cattle safe.  Your pigs safe—”  Then I recalled their silly injunction against the swine and winced.  But I struggled on gamely, waggling my arms like a heliographer at work.  Gradually the villagers shuffled up around the well, a shabby lot of scrofulous, overworn, skeletal peasants.  They could no more raise a revolt than I could raise Cleopatra’s Needle with one hand.

Finally a broken dialogue ensued, I coaxed a couple of the village headmen to tell one of my guards who had a grasp of the dialect about the wizard’s visit.  The guard relayed it in redigested portions:

“The man Jesus came about a week ago.  Two of his followers were here nursing their sick brother.  Two women.  They’re related—cousins, I guess—to this specimen,” he pointed to the best-preserved of the headmen.  “Their brother died, after they’d sent for the prophet—the wizard.  They buried him in a cave, after the custom, all spiced and wrapped in cloth.  Then this Jesus showed up, four days too late.”

The conversation became animated and complex.  The villagers followed it closely, nodding their heads in unison, like a flock of molting vultures eyeing food.  They reminded me of the North African Berbers I had helped subdue thirty-odd years before—the same apathy which can erupt instantly into fanatical assertion, same down-cast eyes, shrouded bodies and faces.  I sweat freely in my uniform and wished I had unpacked a cloak to swath me against this sun, too.

“This Jesus arrived and saw Mary and Martha—the women.  Then . . . then he went to the cave, rolled away the stone and called the man Lazarus out.”  The guard stopped and squinted at me.  I gestured him on.  He shrugged and continued his redaction:   “Lazarus came out—alive.  He was well and healed and lives yet.  He is here now.”

I felt the hair rising at the base of my neck, and suddenly my sweat felt cold under the ceremonial armor.  I spat to indicate my disbelief—but I am not sure that is what I truly felt.  Then the crowd surged and parted, and a small middle-aged man stood before me.  He was as filthy and nondescript as the others, and his eyes glistened with what I took to be fear.  A colonel of the Legions must have seemed as remote and awesome to these farmers as their own incomprehensible god.

“This is the man Lazarus,” the guard said.  The fellow made a little weaving bow upon hearing his name.  “He died of fever, they say.  And he lay in the tomb four days and nights.”

                                                                        5.

WE WENT TO THE TOMB—a dank hole drilled into a low hillside, with a big circular stone like a jar-stopper overturned next to it.  A heap of cerements stinking of unguents lay in the cave mouth.  The villagers repeated their tale.  The man Lazarus interjected comments.  He seemed shy and a little simple but no different from the others.  I looked into his face carefully:  there was simply no print of a miracle in it.  But, I thought, perhaps that is what a miracle is—the Marvelous which leaves no trace.

“He says it was cold and dark and shapeless,” my guard translated, “—death, that is.  He could see and hear nothing, but he was awake in some way.  He did not know time.  Then the voice shook him and he moved. He was very frightened when he felt the winding cloth over his face.  But he stood and walked toward the voice.  Then the shroud fell, and he saw Jesus’ face and the daylight and was no longer afraid.”

We went over the stories till dark but got little more.  The villagers gabbled in their excitement, and Lazarus recited the same tale stammeringly.  It was a glorious occasion, and they lost their fear of us, pressing in, sweating and stinking of various cooking spices.  They were all utterly convinced.  Their eyes blazed with belief.

“Where is the wizard now?” I asked.

Shrugs, smiles.  “No one knows.  He has gone with his followers, with Mary and Martha.  To the city, the Temple, perhaps, or to another village.  He never stays but goes where he is needed, they say,” the guard finished.

We left at dark and camped a few leagues away.  I make it a rule to beware of situations and places that could turn into traps.  At the campfire my secretary wrote an account from the guard’s dictation.  Interjected some official observation and analysis.  Then I unbent a bit and talked with the guard, whose name was Marcus, and my secretary Lucian.

“There is something in this,” I said.

“Surely you don’t believe this rubbish about magic?” Lucian asked.  Although still a youngish man, he has been with me nearly twenty years and is a confirmed skeptic.  He believes in the General Orders, the permanence of Rome, the sanctity of the Emperor and little else.

‘Not magic, perhaps.  But these people have been convinced.  Not rehearsed, but convinced by their own witness.”

“Or possibly they’re in a conspiracy,” Marcus said.  A steady twenty-five-year veteran, he speaks slowly, with stolid deliberation.

“No conspiracy is this well-drilled,” I said.  “These people cannot normally agree on the time of day and squabble over every idea that crosses their path.  No, they were quite excited and—happy.  It was no feigned performance for our benefit.  It was something real.”

“Real, sir?  A real man, I’ll grant you,” Lucian said, “but just sickly and scrawny like most of them.  Not dead.  A man dead in this forsaken climate turns black and swells in hours, not days.  Four days as worm-fodder, and this mighty wizard calls him out whole and hearty.  Pah!  It’s at best a delusion.”  Lucian spat into the fire.

“I don’t know.” Marcus sat gazing into the flames.  It was a deep desert-cold night, and we huddled in our cloaks. “You may be right, sir.  They could hardly get the ideas into words—not because they were lying but because it seems too strange to be told.”

“Too strange.  Too good to be true.”  I spoke more to myself than to them.  I am fifty-seven years old, a few years shy of retirement.  I am arthritic of a chill morning, my wife died seventeen years ago in Rome, and I have nothing to anticipate. Granted, I am still game enough for long marches and all-night watches like this one, but my body creaks and complains as it never used to, the old wound in my left side (a Parthian arrow my first year in the field) twinges—everything aims me down a chute toward death and dissolution.

So the image of Lazarus haunted me. I tried to envision this wizard Jesus as Lazarus must have seen him—a face blazing with daylight after the abominable cold dankness of the tomb.  If it were only true—

                                                                        6.

NEXT DAY we rode on, making a circuit of villages I had marked on my ordinance map.  We seemed always in the track of this renegade prophet.  Villagers mentioned him with reverence or pride, while priests and teachers and petty officials denounced him.  We pieced together testimony into a fat dossier.  He traveled with a motley gang—working men, ex-petty officials, outlaws, runaways, loonies.  His place was with the poor, the peasants.  We collected a catalogue of tales, wonderful or scurrilous, depending on the sources.  But all agreed that he was a real man, a peripatetic teacher or prophet.  Some tales seemed outrageous fables—more raisings from the dead, healings, conjuring tricks.  Others were more mundane—money and food for the poor, sermons, exemplary tales.  He seemed a learned man, from the tales, or at least a shrewd orator and performer.

However, we found little of a politically subversive nature.  Certainly less liberal minds would see all his attention to the poor as a sly incitation to rebellion or at least a veiled criticism of Imperial beneficence.  Yet it seemed harmless enough, in fact constructive.  I was becoming oddly attracted to this figure.  I longed to see him. To slake my unreasonable curiosity.  Once we found him, I decided, I would return to the city and my pettifogging duties of managing XXI Corps HQ.  It was a pleasantly adventurous tour, now that my old body had adjusted itself to the bone-weariness of the saddle again.  I recalled countless old campaigns and regaled my staff with (I imagine) interminable anecdotes of army life.

Then in another of the tediously similar villages we found news.  We turned up a man newly come from the city.  He looked frightened out of his wits and refused to give his name.  Marcus kept a hand on him while he tried to untangle his story.  The man was deadly pale, shuddered and looked wildly over his shoulder as he spoke.  Marcus translated rapidly.

“He says he fled the city.  There were—disturbances.  He had been with the wizard, but the Jewish priests and our guard began harassing them.  There were fights of some kind, and the guard arrested Jesus.  Then this fellow took to his heels.  He insists he’s innocent of wrongdoing.  He’s going to his village, he says, to mind his business, and he renounces all knowledge of the wizard.”

I debated on holding the rascal.  He was hang-dog and thoroughly demoralized, like a soldier who has run from a fair fight. But I decided against encumbrances.  I asked about Lazarus.  The man’s eyes sparked a little. But he set his teeth and shook his head.

“He thinks we’re trying to trick him into incriminating himself,” Marcus said.  “He’s so afraid I think he’s wet himself.  Smells like it, anyway.”

I bade Marcus loose him.  He scuttled off down the dusty road without a backward glance.  I was troubled by the depth of his fear. It communicated to me, so I felt uneasy, as if tickled by some obscure physical urgency. I ordered the squad about, and we rode back toward the city.

                                                                        7.

WE HAD TO CAMP another night on the road to rest the horses.  The cold ground left me dreadfully sore the next day, but I gritted my teeth, and we pushed on.  As we reached suburban settlements, crowds appeared.  The high holy days were in full tide, and people wore their best robes.  Even so, they were a ragged lot.  We had to kick our way through the mobs, and it was well after midday before we saw the city gates.

There were more and denser crowds—swirling activity—at the city’s wretched execution grounds.  I recalled that it was customary for the local priests and constabulary to execute malefactors during the holy days for the entertainment and enlightenment of the mob—a custom both loathsome and incredible, to my way of thinking.  But this business was well in progress—a triple crucifixion.

I have spoken with military men who defend this mode of execution as relatively humane compared with strangulation, impalement or other mutilations.  It is still a slow, painful death by exposure, thirst, bleeding and—finally—suffocation.  Now I have marched down roads twenty leagues or more with a rebel tacked to a cross every twenty paces.  And I have seen our camps ringed with deserters nailed up moaning to die.  But I have never grown used to the sight—it is disgusting and degrading, a dying man strung up like a signpost in the sun.

We were impeded by the crowds and pushing slowly through when I heard a voice shouting “Jesus! Jesus!”  We stopped, and Marcus found out that the wizard was, indeed, one of the men being killed.  We pressed as close to the base of the hill as possible.  The mob swirled and babbled around us, while a handful of guardsmen struggled to maintain order.  I directed my squad to dismount and help with crowd control.  Marcus and I sent to find out which was our man and why he had been condemned.  I remained mounted and used my tired horse to buffer the foot soldiers from the bawling spectators. I was eventually pressed up the slope almost to the feet of the three crude crosses.

The horse was skittish, and I did not feel settled either.  A big storm was blowing up rapidly, the sky going as black as night in a few minutes.  Lightning played across the horizon, and atop the little hill I felt like a small, exposed target for the wrath of Jove.  The centurion in charge of the execution detail was paying little attention to the situation.  He seemed concerned only with the dying men.  I shouted at him, to call his attention to the various crowd problems, but a titanic roar of thunder blew my words away.  Then I realized the thunder was shading off into an earthquake, one of the sharp little temblors we get regularly in this end of the earth.

I dismounted quicker than I believed I could and held the horse.  He was my favorite old cavalry mount, a gentle gelding a dozen years old and he stood well.  My own legs rattled a bit, but the quake passed quickly.  I turned around to see if the crosses had been tumbled by the jolt—a final indignity, to be flung into the slimy mud on this hillock!

They stood, and a group of people at the foot of the middle cross had pressed in, weeping and shouting.  One man cried, “He’s dead!  Jesus is dead!”

I stood stroking my horse and staring. Rain was coming down now, in little sluicing gusts, and I felt a deep depression, a vast disappointment. I had come so far, so close, and now the last clue to the mystery was gone.  I stood watching. He was a slight man, frail, even, as underfed as the rest of the peasants.  He sagged on the rough beams, with only a rag of loincloth to preserve his dignity.  Blood streamed pinkly down his flesh in the rain, from his palms, his cut head, encircled by a cruel wreath of thorn, and from a stab wound in his side.  One of the soldiers had disobeyed the standing regulation and dealt him a merciful cut, to bleed him to death quickly.  The other two victims seemed alive but unconscious.  They would go slowly, in torment, as the method dictated.

While I watched, the crowd at the foot of Jesus’ cross began to take the body down.  The supervising centurion nodded his permission then walked away, slipping in the muck. He carried a javelin, and I suspected he must have broken the regulation, so I avoided him, lest I be faced with reprimanding him.  I sympathized with his act—but not officially.

The rain increased and with it a cold sea wind, unusual for the season.  I pulled my campaign cloak closer.  All I needed was a late cold, an ague, the summer pneumonia, then— I thought of Lazarus, his pale meek face, the wonder imprinted in his eyes.  I felt bitter.  Thirty-nine years of loyal service, and it could end on this wet hilltop, like a candle snuffed by a random gust of wind.  I watched the crumpled body, bruised, cut and limp, drained of blood and life, hauled down from the cross.  A bundle of inert meat, all animation and human elegance gone.  It was extraordinarily pale—almost translucent—in the uncertain dusky light.

What could it have been like to have talked to this man?  What had his face looked like as Lazarus saw it, rimmed with light and life?  I almost called out irritably, irrationally.  I wanted to say:  “You had no right to die yet.  Where is your magic now?  Who will call you out from the black cave of death?”  But I said nothing.  I mounted and picked my way down the rocky hillside.  I looked back to see the little group shrouding the corpse and carrying it tenderly after me.  The mob had vanished with the storm.

Ah, well, I thought as I rode back to the garrison, What is it to me, after all?  Just another dead Jew perished in a squabble I could never comprehend.

                                                                        ###