The Inquest Read Online Free PDF Page A

Priscus and his friend Plancus had removed all their stock from the Foursquare Market and stored it in a warehouse on the river, just days before the fire. Ultimately, their slaves gave them up; they confessed everything.”
    “What did the merchants hope to gain?”
    “It transpired that Priscus and Plancus were hugely in debt. So they conceived a plan between them to rid themselves of their creditors. They had their slaves set the fire in a section of the market which backed onto the city archives, and laid a trail of pitch all the way to the archives itself.”
    “What was the attraction of the archives?”
    “The building contained the records of every debt the merchants owed. Once the fire had swept through the records, Priscus and Plancus were debt free.”
    “Of course!” Martius threw back his head and laughed heartily.
    “Had Priscus not wined and dined his way into my sights,” said Varro soberly, “the pair might have evaded suspicion, and retained their heads.”
    “Not even Mercury will protect a felonious merchant. And now we go to Galilee and Judea to investigate a criminal of a different color. What do we know of this Nazarene? What was he? Nobleman? Slave? Priest? What was his crime?”
    “A wandering priest of sorts,” said Varro, “leader of an obscure Jewish sect, crucified for sedition. We have a letter written by one of his followers, Lucius, a physician, telling us something of the arrest, trial, and execution of the Nazarene. In addition, my man Callidus has questioned some of the Nazarene’s followers here in the city. They are a smug lot, he tells me, and make no attempt to hide their affiliation with the group.” He glanced over his shoulder to the freedman walking in his shadow. “Is that not so, Callidus?”
    “Yes, my lord,” Callidus came back. “Very smug. As if they are in possession of some special secret. They are despised by other Jews, for they introduce non Jews into their ranks. They even claim that one of the Nazarene’s followers, a fellow by the name of Cephas, converted a retired Roman centurion into their sect.”
    “I find that difficult to believe,” remarked a skeptical Martius. “A centurion?”
    “They said the centurions name was Cornelius, my lord,” said Callidus, “and he had come out of the 1st Legion on the Rhine to live in his retirement at Caesarea. They claim he later went into Asia to try to win more followers for the Nazarene. He went with Paulus of Tarsus, a Jew who first introduced the Nazarenes philosophy to Antioch.”
    “A Roman centurion would have more sense,” Martius gave a dismissive snort.
    “Tell the tribune what you learned about the subject of the inquiry from the Nazarene’s followers, Callidus,” Varro instructed.
    “Yes, my lord. This Jesus fellow, whose name in Aramaic was Yehoshua, or Joshua as we would say in Latin, was unmarried, and had four brothers and several sisters. His brother Jacob took on the leadership of the sect at Jerusalem following the Nazarene’s execution, but he was stoned to death by the Jewish authorities some time during the procuratorship of LucceiusAlbinus…”
    Martius was nodding as Callidus droned on, but he was not taking in the details. Varro was the detail man, Martius was a soldier, a career soldier, and all that interested him was soldierly subjects.
    “The Nazarene was thirty-five years of age when he was crucified…”
    “When was this, Julius?” Martius interrupted the freedman.
    “In the latter part of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,” Varro answered.
    “So, we have to pick up a trail that is perhaps forty years old?” Martius commented, raising his eyebrows.
    Varro nodded. “The witnesses to the events in question are probably dead, of old age, or else they perished during the Jewish uprising.” He sighed unhappily. “This will not be an easy task, Marcus. The crux of the matter is a claim by the Nazarene’s followers that the man rose from the dead two days after his