György Spiró - Captivity

Matthew advised Simon the Magus to invest his money in land; it was cheap now but prices were certain to rise. Plotius recommended something else: buy a share in a well-run bank, and he would then have a share of the bank’s profits, in proportion to the capital that had been put in, with the money accumulating much faster than if it were simply earning interest.

Simon the Magus shook his head: he was a bit old-fashioned and had no head for working out compound interest; indeed, he was not interested, he just wanted to put his money in the safest place, and that was the treasury of the Temple in Jerusalem. It was so well guarded that he could be sure the money would not go astray. Plotius conceded that he was right; as far as he was informed, private fortunes were also stored there, but then the treasury did not pay out any interest. That didn’t matter, said Simon the Magus, as long as the money was in a safe place.

Anyway, he had recently been trying to call in his outstanding debts, and to be sure he was sorry now that earlier on he had given loans at usurious rates, because if the interest had been lower he would have gotten the money back long ago. He had all the promissory notes; they were drawn up in three copies in the presence of two witnesses, as they should be, with a copy going to him, a second to the debtor, and a third to the records office in Caesarea, by the Druseion, but then again a records office could be torched at any time, or a promissory note filched and the debtor’s own copy destroyed, and then the money was as good as gone.

“The Temple’s treasury is safe, because the Jews will never let that be torched,” said Simon the Magus. “If I choose, I can reclassify a part of the money as a donation, and then I shall be putting into effect a deed that is genuinely pleasing to God, and who knows, maybe even the priests will leave me be and not try to curse me two or three times a year for helping the sick and driving out their demons.”

Uri was happy he could understand every word: how lucky he was that his mother tongue was Aramaic, and Greek only his father’s language.

He would never have thought that a sorcerer would have problems like that — exactly the same as any businessman. But there had been gossip about sorcerers back in Rome; they were good for nothing beyond the laying on of hands, it was said, and they cast dubious spells instead of studying Celsus.

“Has Pilate’s wife’s illness gotten worse?” asked Matthew. “Are you afraid that you’ll be kicked out?”

“She’s no worse than earlier,” said Simon the Magus. “She’s dogged by being chronically unloved, which breaks out in various forms on and in her body. I am able to converse with her, listen to her; I am a friend, a well-wisher, her spiritual adviser, but I am not her husband. She has no children, her relatives are a long way away, she can’t confide in the servants, her husband is preoccupied and restless, and the initial charm of my sympathy for her, which made her improvement so spectacular early on, has since disappeared. She has grown accustomed to me and has relapsed. I, in my turn, have grown accustomed to her; her ailments bore me. I know her too well, and for that very reason I can’t think of anything to say. She needs a new doctor — anyone, just not me. Someone in whom she can place unbounded trust. Healing is anyway mostly a question of faith. Pilate is a wise man; he knows that, but I am not waiting for him to terminate the arrangement.”

Uri listened in amazement. An intelligent man, this sorcerer. He might be a sorcerer, but he speaks like a philosopher. Maybe there will be surprises in store for me on the trip, after all.

“Are you also a healer for Pilate?” Plotius asked.

“No,” the Magus answered. “He has a Roman physician, and rightly so. He lets Pilate’s blood, controls his diet, prescribes the order in which baths should be taken. That’s what Pilate believes in, and who am I to undermine that belief? Me, a Jew. As far as his wife is concerned, he was able to admit that Greek medicine had been a washout, but that is not so for himself. I would not have taken him on anyway; I’m not crazy, I’m used to dealing with rural Jews and have no idea what troubles high-ranking Romans. Mediocre as the salves and pills of a Latin doctor may be, he certainly knows better than me what makes Pilate’s belly gripe. More than that, I have striven all along to know as little as possible about him: any time that his wife began to gossip about him I interrupted her and asked her not to go on. I’m sure she would have told this to her husband and in doing so I earned his confidence more than by my initial success in curing his wife. Well, it’s from there that I got this villa.” He gestured around him. “Anyway, it’s not actually mine, I only rent it. I don’t want property of my own; I never did have my own house, and I don’t intend to either. It only brings trouble.”

The members of the delegation carried on eating and drinking in silence. Except for Matthew, they were surprised by the magus; they had not imagined a Galilean quack would be anything like this. Matthew also kept quiet as he ate, but Uri could see that a serenely sardonic sparkle of triumph was glinting in his eyes.

Uri had never before met a man who was so forthright in the way he expressed himself. Roman Jews kept those kinds of ideas to themselves, if they thought them at all; they would never say them out loud. Was the Magus not afraid that someone might inform on him? He must be very sure of himself, and especially about Pilate’s affection for him.

“So, Pilate is restless nowadays?” Alexandros finally inquired in Greek.

“It would seem so,” Simon the Magus replied in Greek. “He was already wound up before the demonstration, though. Previously, he only sent a courier once or twice a week to Rome or Antioch, but in recent weeks it has been five or six, and there are as many coming the other way. I don’t know what’s afoot, but something must have happened in Rome.”

The delegates looked at one another. What on Earth could have happened in Rome? There had been nothing when they set off. The state couriers made the trip more rapidly than their delegation: with fresh remounts at relay stations, they were able to cover the Rome — Naples route in five days; then if they sailed straight via Alexandria to Caesarea, they might be able to make that in two weeks, though that was not significantly faster. It was unlikely anything had happened in Rome, because the news would have reached them in Syracusa through some loudmouthed courier on one of the ships plying the Ostia — Syracusa route; after all, news of the demonstration in Caesarea had already reached them in Messina.

Matthew asked about what had actually happened two weeks back.

Simon related that a crowd of a few hundred had come from Jerusalem and demonstrated for days in front of Pilate’s palace. Leaning out of the window, without regard for possible arrows or javelins, Pilate had politely asked them to go home, but they stayed. He could have had them dispersed by his soldiers, as there were three cohorts and an ala , a division, stationed in the barracks at Caesarea, but he did not; indeed, he issued the order that not a single hair be harmed on the head of any Jew, and he tried to bring the raving lunatics to their senses, telling them that the military insignia that had been taken into the palace in Jerusalem were not images, merely inscriptions with the names of the emperor Tiberius and himself, and anyway the standards had been furled when they were taken up into the tower of Phasael that Herod had built in the Upper City, as they had always done, ever since a Roman governor resided there. Nobody had taken any exception to that previously, so he was of the opinion that it was perfectly in line with Jewish law to carry them in like that.