David Epperson - The Third Day

While the guards led Barabbas and his crew to their fates below, I focused my attention back to the Roman wounded.

Suddenly, I heard a loud shout. By instinct, I jerked my head up and glanced around in all directions; though a brief moment later, I realized the sound had come from my earpiece.

I heard the shuffling of feet, followed by what sounded like a pile of lumber crashing to the ground. I called out, but got no response. Instead, I heard Lavon’s sharp whisper.

“Lie down on the ground. Don’t move.”

This couldn’t be good.

“Damn it, I said don’t move! ” The voice was still a whisper, but it carried an insistent tone.

I closed my eyes in order to concentrate. I could hear footsteps — running men by the sound of it — but I had no way of knowing what had actually happened.

Then I heard Lavon speak again, just as quietly as before, but with even more urgency.

“You must pretend to be dead, which you will be if you don’t do exactly as I say.”

And that was all.

I opened my eyes to see a couple of legionnaires looking at me with odd expressions, though the awkward moment passed quickly. Moments later, the optio who had dismembered Barabbas’s hand called out and ordered them to fall back into formation.

Even I could see that whatever started outside the walls had now escalated into major trouble. A trumpet blew atop one of the battlements as another officer signaled for reinforcements, and I had a feeling that Barabbas wouldn’t be the only man dissected today.

I was right about that, too.

For the next hour or so, wounded Romans either stumbled or were carried back in through the north gate.

I treated them to the extent I could and discovered that my reputation had spread through the ranks. Soldiers I had never seen before made a beeline to me with the most serious cases, though for some of them, I, like their colleagues, could do nothing but hope for the best.

Shortly after the last reinforcements had gone out, the returning legionnaires began to drag in coffles of battered prisoners, whose faces and clothing were caked in dried blood.

I had no way to know whether these men had suffered their injuries in the fighting or whether they had been beaten by vengeful soldiers after their capture. Obviously, the Romans issued no Miranda warnings, and a phone call to a lawyer was out of the question.

Very few of the captives carried themselves with the firm bearing of hardened combatants, and none displayed the intense fury I had witnessed in Barabbas.

I shook my head at the madness of it all. They probably never had much of a plan. Instead, full of misguided enthusiasm, these young men had gone charging forth on a grand campaign.

It would end as anything but that.

Having my hands full treating the injured Romans, I paid less attention to the prisoners as time went on. As the legionnaires dragged in a later batch, however, I glanced up and noticed one face that stood out, though the sight was so unexpected that it took my mind a few moments to process what my eyes had seen.

I spat and muttered a quiet expletive.

Bound fifth in the string, with his right eye blackened and blood dripping down behind his ear, was Markowitz. His face reflected a mixture of both confusion and raw terror.

Just before the Romans dragged his line through the doorway leading down to the dungeons, he shouted out my name, and Publius’s — though he fell silent after a soldier slapped him hard on the face and barked at him to shut up.

I ducked behind a column as I considered what to do next. I called out to Lavon, but received no answer. I closed my eyes in yet another effort to recall a few tiny fragments of Latin, but it was no use. Even if I could remember more than a phrase or two, that was a far cry from being able to communicate properly.

I’d put it off as long as I could, but I knew that at some point, I’d have to make a decision: whether I had a realistic chance to save our reckless friend, or whether, by trying, I would share his fate.

***

I stewed over this for a little while; then to my relief, I heard Sharon’s voice. As Lavon had predicted, Herod’s servants had taken her to the baths, which were, unsurprisingly, a luxurious contrast to the Spartan, barracks-like facility in the Antonia.

“Can you tell me exactly where you are now?” I asked.

“I’m upstairs on the northwestern side of the compound. It’s like a big dorm.”

She described the chamber as being situated two floors above another caldarium . The room, about the size of a basketball court, had long cedar beams stretching across the ceiling that reminded her of her high school gym. Twin beds, spaced about four feet apart, lined the long walls. She counted sixty in all.

Once again, Herod’s engineers had been clever. Heat from the furnace below the baths flowed upward through vents in the chamber’s floors. At the far end, mounted to the wall, a two-foot diameter wheel rotated valves that permitted the heated air to flow through the room when the weather turned cold and shunted the excess to the outside on warmer days.

I couldn’t help but ask whether the women fought over the thermostat.

She chuckled briefly before turning serious.

“Have the others come back?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I replied.

I wasn’t about to say more. Though her mental state seemed to be holding up well, I was sure that at the back of her mind, she held to the certainty that once Lavon came back and we could speak to the Roman commander, we’d have her back in the fortress before anything untoward could happen.

How she would react once she realized she’d have to fend for herself, I had no way to know.

***

I returned to my duties and had worked for another hour when the gate opened and forty horsemen charged inside.

After the soldiers came to a halt, grooms rushed forward to claim their mounts and lead them to the stables. Like everyone else involved with the Romans, the stable-hands went about their tasks with a brisk efficiency.

One man stood at the center of attention. After he dismounted, he remained still while attendants removed his armor. It was only when Volusus emerged from a side entrance and saluted that I realized the likely identity of the new arrival.

I nudged a nearby soldier, pointed to the man, and shrugged.

He understood. “The prefect,” he replied. “Pilatus.”

Though I was too far away to hear what they were saying, from their demeanors, it appeared that the prefect and the fort’s commander were on reasonably good terms.

Pilate asked a few questions, but mostly he just listened to the officers’ accounts. His face reflected very little emotion, one way or the other.

I tried hard not to stare. My own mental image, derived from both the Gospels and Hollywood, depicted Pilate as a weak, vacillating figure torn between his own conscience and the demands of the howling mob. As with many of my other impressions, I began to suspect that this one, too, was wrong.

After hearing the reports, Pilate walked over to speak to a group of wounded soldiers. He told a few jokes, from the look of it, and then directed his attention to a final group of ragged captives who knelt on the stone floor, awaiting transfer to the dungeons.

“Who are these people?” he asked.

A junior officer responded. “We picked them up in the disturbance today. We’re in the process of questioning them.”

“Take them below and give them to Titus Labernius,” said Pilate. “He will know how to get the truth from them.”

A loud, blood-curdling scream wafted through the courtyard from below.

“Two men are there now, excellency,” said the officer.