Longinus wondered if by some chance Cornelius had learned of the Emperor’s plans for his stepdaughter and was trying now gently to probe further. “But the night you came to her house for me was the first time I’d seen her after returning from Germania,” he protested, laughing. “Wouldn’t that be a little fast? She’s the Emperor’s stepdaughter, you know.”
“Well, maybe I was imagining things.” Cornelius shrugged. “But she is a beautiful woman.”
“I agree, Cornelius. The Bountiful Mother was lavish with her gifts to the Lady Claudia.” He turned to lean against the rail. “What I’m wondering, though, is why Herod didn’t marry Herodias and bring her along.”
“Maybe he has married her. But I suspect that whether he has or not, he’ll be returning to Rome for her before many months. That is, after he’s made peace with the Tetrarchess and old King Aretas, her father.” He grinned. “I’d wager, too, that you’ll be coming back for Claudia.”
Longinus laughed but made no comment. His friend, he reasoned, did not know about Claudia and Pontius Pilate. Nor would he tell him yet.
Now the “Palmyra” was moving swiftly, its cadenced oars rising and falling rhythmically to propel the vessel much faster downstream than the current unaided would have borne it. They had come opposite the thousand-foot-long Emporium huddled on the Tiber’s eastern bank, its wharves crawling with slaves moving great casks and bales of merchandise into the warehouses or bringing them out to be loaded aboard ships preparing to slip down the Tiber and into the Great Sea at Ostia. Black Ethiopians and Nubians, their sweating bodies shining as though they had been rubbed with olive oil and naked except for brightly colored loincloths, straggled at their tasks. Blond warriors brought from Germania as part of some Roman general’s triumph, their skins now burnt to the color of old leather, and squat, swarthy men from Gaul and Dalmatia, from Macedonia and the Greek islands, captives of Roman legionaries ranging far from the Italian mainland, pulled and shoved to the roared commands of the overseers and the not infrequent angry uncoiling of long leather whips.
“Did you ever realize, Longinus, what a comprehensive view you get of Rome and the Empire from a ship going along the Tiber?” Cornelius nodded toward the stern. “Look at those marble-crowned hills back there, literally overrun with palaces, billions of sesterces spent in building them, hundreds, thousands of lives used up, sacrificed, raising them one above the other. The people in them, too, Longinus, and the rottenness—smug hypocrisy, adherence to convention, infidelity, unfairness, utter cruelty, depravity. Rome, great mistress of the world. Hah!” He half turned and pointed toward the Emporium. “Those sweating slaves over there would agree.” He gestured with opened hands. “Ride down the Tiber and see Rome, glorious Mother Rome, from Viminal’s crown to Emporium’s docks, eh?”
“You’re right,” Longinus smiled. “And it’s only because the gods have decreed for us a different fate that you and I are not over there heaving crates, or chained here pulling oars.” He leaned over the rail and studied the rhythmical rise and fall of the long, slim oars. “No doubt there are among these slaves several whose intelligence, education, and culture are considerably greater than the hortator’s, and I’m sure.... Look!”
Cornelius followed the direction of Longinus’ outstretched arm. One of the oars had come up beneath a floating object and sent it spinning and twisting in the churning muddy flood. Now another oar’s sharp blade struck the object, ripping apart its once carefully folded wrapping; as the oar cleared the surface, the wrapping unrolled, exposing the body of a tiny infant, chalk-white in the yellow water. It spun giddily for a moment, then sank.
“By the gods!” Cornelius shouted. “It’s an exposed baby girl!”