György Spiró - Captivity

Matthew is a great man, but he ought to be pressing harder for us to set sail, he thought.

In Plotius’s opinion, they had only lost three days, and, since they had set off early, they were still safely within their two-week margin of error, even allowing for six Sabbaths altogether.

Hilarus proposed that they choose from among themselves a deputy leader who would give orders when Matthew was not around.

Alexandros, being a seasoned traveler, immediately volunteered, with Iustus taking his side. Valerius recommended Hilarus. Everyone now turned expectantly to Uri, and he sought eye contact with Plotius, who was staring into the distance.

The tension between them suddenly mounted; Uri did not understand it. If he were to come out for Hilarus or Alexandros, Plotius could do nothing to block the selection of a deputy leader besides plumping for the other, in which case there would be a tie and nothing would happen. But then why choose a deputy leader when he would have no more idea where to start than any of the others? Besides, Matthew would turn up soon anyway.

Plotius broke the silence: he announced that he was going off to think until the evening. Hilarus started yelling about what would happen if a ship were suddenly ready to leave; where would Plotius be found?

“There will be no ship ready to go by evening,” said Plotius, “because even if a boat arrives, it will have to be unloaded then loaded, and it will not leave before tomorrow morning.”

On that note, he left and walked off along the pier toward town.

They looked at Uri for the decisive vote. He sighed and said that he too wanted to think it over, and he hurried after Plotius.

Plotius was strolling slowly, as if he had been waiting. When Uri caught up, he nodded. They vanished together among the houses.

“It’s remarkable how many morons there are in the world,” Plotius declared as they passed through an alley. “One can’t give them their way on everything, but it’s best not to pick fights with them either. They can’t help being morons; the Creator, in His infinite wisdom, wills it so.”

Uri was amazed to hear such a thing from Plotius, the joiner, who had barely spoken a single word the entire trip, yet Plotius was speaking directly to him, who had likewise held his tongue for the most part.

They took a seat at the back of a tavern; they did not settle down on the street, like the locals, because the sun was shining fiercely. Plotius did not mince words. He came straight out and asked Uri how he managed to get himself squeezed into the delegation as a supernumerary at the last minute.

Uri told him frankly that the whole thing was a gift that his father had extracted from Agrippa in return for an immense loan, but he was glad about it because it suggested that his father still considered him his son, even though he had poor eyesight and was useless at everything. Plotius nodded. He had noticed that Uri did not see well but thought he could still make it as a joiner. Then Uri told the story about falling off the roof on his first day of work, at which Plotius chortled: only someone trying very hard would fall off. Uri protested, but Plotius brushed that aside. The mind knows what we want better than we do.

Plotius ordered wine and set down a pitcher, and again Uri protested: he didn’t drink. Plotius urged him on, so Uri took a sip. The wine tasted good; it was heavily honeyed.

“Have you got your own money?” Uri asked with surprise.

“Everybody has some,” Plotius admitted, “except you.”

Uri pondered for a moment, then he asked what Plotius had meant when he called him the supernumerary.

“The decision is made weeks in advance,” he said, “as to who will be in the delegation. Not a word was said about you till the very last moment. We couldn’t really figure out why a feeble young boy had been foisted on us.”

Uri quietly sipped he wine.

“This is a dangerous mission,” Plotius declared. “Never mind getting there, but on the way back we shall be carrying a lot more money. Enough to make it really worth killing for.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that going there we are only taking sacrificial money, but going back we shall be taking the money that our Elders use to grease the palms of the Roman authorities to give rights of Roman or Italian citizenship to the rich of Judaea. They come through too!”

Uri was dumbfounded.

It was not the Romans who distributed citizenship rights to the inhabitants of the provinces; members of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem and their families were legally excluded from the circle of potential Roman citizens. In principle, a subject of Judaea or Galilee could never become a Roman or Italian citizen, and that went for Syrians and Egyptians as well.

Yet there was a way nonetheless — and how else but with money!

How else but with money. That was the expression his father had used when he was obliged to enter the silk business.

Only half of their mission was exalted, then, and the smaller half at that, it appeared.

But how did the joiner know all this?

Uri gulped his wine and stayed quiet. It did not enter his mind to ask if they really were taking the sacrificial money as Plotius says, where it could actually be.

The joiner had a good profession: he could work anywhere at all in Rome outside the Jewish quarter, and because houses often burned down, there was always work and it paid decently as well. It was this prospect of a bright future with which his father had tried to persuade him to become a roofer, it being easier than joinery; it involved no more than placing tiles or slates onto and alongside each other. Plotius must have picked up several languages in the course of his work, as his employers might belong to any nation, so he must have heard all kinds of things along the way. He might be on good terms with individual Roman Elders, including bankers, having worked for them; these days huge houses were being built just to be rented out.

“Do all the others know about this?” Uri asked.

“I suspect they do,” said Plotius. “We get a small commission; after all, we earn it. We’ll be nicely paid off.”

Uri said nothing, just sipped his wine.

Plotius broke out in laughter.

“It’s not what you would call nice,” he admitted, “but if a delegation is carrying money over there, why let it go back empty-handed? On top of which we also have a safe-conduct.”

“Who gives us the money, then?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Plotius. “One day someone will come from the prefect with a fair-sized sack that jingles. We won’t be hard to spot, even in that colossal mass of people. We are an important delegation.”

“Why from the prefect?”

“Because he has been getting a taste too.”

Uri pondered: so that’s how it went.

“Have you done similar work before?” he quizzed.

“No, but I’ve heard that’s the way it’s done.”

“So does the person in question also hand over a list of who is to be granted citizenship in Rome?”

“I very much doubt something like that gets put down in writing. They’ll tell the names to someone with a good memory, and he’ll register them; there won’t be many names to learn — twenty or thirty at most.”

“I’ve got a good memory,” Uri said with pride. “If I read something once, then I have it down perfectly, word for word.”

“You’re exactly the sort I would expect that from,” said Plotius.

Uri picked up a note of sarcasm in his tone and felt a trifle ashamed of himself. Boasting again. Fat good it was his father warning him.

He appreciated Plotius’s candor. Maybe the Lord had arranged this delay in Syracusa so that Uri would finally learn something about his companions.