The Wolf and the Lamb Read online

  The Wolf and the Lamb

  A Jerusalem Mystery

  Frederick Ramsay

  www.frederickramsay.com

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2014 by Frederick Ramsay

  First E-book Edition 2014

  ISBN: 978146420 3299 ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  Contents

  The Wolf and the Lamb

  Copyright

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  A Few Explanatory Notes

  Schematic Map of Jerusalem, 30 CE

  Epigraph

  A Tale by Aesop

  YOM REVI’I

  Chapter I

  YOM CHAMISHI

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  SHABBAT

  Chapter XIV

  YOM RISHON

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  YOM SHENI

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  YOM SHLISHI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  YOM REVI’I

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXII

  YOM CHAMISHI

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  Chapter XL

  YOM SHISHI

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Chapter XLIV

  Chapter XLV

  SHABBAT

  Chapter XLVI

  YOM RISHON

  Chapter XLVII

  Chapter XLVIII

  Chapter XLIX

  Appendix

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Dedication

  To The Rt. Rev. Robert Wilkes Ihloff,

  Bishop of the Diocese of Maryland (Retired) and erstwhile Rabban

  Acknowledgments

  First, the usual and necessary thank you to the folks at the Poisoned Pen Press who make all this happen for me and for you. In an age of e-books and instant authorship, it is easy to forget that publishing is more than just a business. It combines art and craft in ways that are not often understood or appreciated. Readers sometimes forget that for a publisher to put a book into their hands involves more than checking for spelling, comma placement, and digitalizing. Book publishers must also judge whether you will like a particular piece and will buy it, whether the story needs to be told and, indeed, if either of those things even matter for a particular book. Sometimes a book will be released just because it is something that needs doing. Anyway, this is number sixteen for the Press and for me, and I want to make sure you know and they know how happy that makes me (and I hope you, too).

  Second, I want to thank all those people who, over nearly eight decades, stuffed my head with the facts, speculation, history, and outright lies, all of which is the primary source of what passes for what I call research. I could not write about Jerusalem in the First Century without them.

  Finally, to all of the folks—especially my patient wife, Susan—who have supported me in this giddy late-in-life career as a storyteller, many thanks.

  Frederick Ramsay

  2014

  A Few Explanatory Notes

  For those readers who have already experienced Gamaliel and his investigative skills in The Eighth Veil and Holy Smoke, the notes carried here and in the Appendix at the end of the book may be repetitious. For new readers, I hope they help clarify some of the complexities of life in Jerusalem during the early part of the first century. I urge readers to slip a paper clip back there somewhere for quick reference.

  Another note is in order for those who are reading this series in sequence; I have had to alter the map of the city. Gamaliel’s house has been shifted slightly to the west to make room for the hippodrome. (Yes, there was one in Jerusalem at the time. It was not as large as that depicted in Ben Hur, but it did exist.) The Antonia Fortress and its controversial placement is discussed in more detail in the Appendix.

  Days of the Week

  Yom Rishon = first day = Sunday (starting at preceding sunset)

  Yom Sheni = second day = Monday

  Yom Shlishi = third day = Tuesday

  Yom Revi’i = fourth day = Wednesday

  Yom Chamishi = fifth day = Thursday

  Yom Shishi = sixth day = Friday

  Yom Shabbat = Sabbath, seventh day (Rest day) = Saturday

  Chronology

  Given the number of events that had to take place, this author believes it unlikely the narrative as presented in the Synoptic Gospels could have occurred as written. If, however the Last Supper was celebrated on a Tuesday (Yom Shlishi ) with his Essene friends (their Passover), then, there is time enough for an arrest late at night with a flogging, a hearing before the Sanhedrin, two trips to the Prefect, one to the King, another flogging, and a march through the streets of Jerusalem to Golgotha and a crucifixion by nine in the morning.

  With these thoughts in mind, you will find a fuller explanation and resultant chronology in the Appendix.

  Schematic Map of Jerusalem, 30 CE

  Epigraph

  The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,

  and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;

  and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;

  and a little child shall lead them.

  Isaiah 11:6, King James Version

  A Tale by Aesop

  The Wolf and the Lamb

  The Wolf, meeting with a Lamb that had strayed away from the flock, resolved not to resort to violence, but to find some legitimate justification for the Wolf’s right to eat him. He addressed him:

  “Young sir, last year you insulted me.”

  “Indeed,” bleated the Lamb, “but I was not born yet.”

  Then the Wolf said, “You feed in my pasture.”

  “No,” replied the Lamb, “I have not yet tasted grass.”

  Again said the Wolf, “Well, you drink from my well.”

  “No,” pleaded the Lamb, “I never drank water yet, for my mother’s milk is both food and drink to me so far.”

  Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him anyway, saying, “Well! I won’t go without my supper, even though you refute every one of my imputations.”

  Moral: The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

  YOM REVI’I

  Chapter I

  He couldn’t remembe
r venturing this deep into the labyrinthine corridors and arbitrary passages of the Antonia Fortress. He’d never needed to. He took one tentative step forward and paused, put out his hand and felt the stone wall—damp. He inhaled acrid smoke, burning pitch from the torches. Why had Priscus asked him to meet in this dank and dreary hallway? Located as it was deep in the bowels of the building—the cloaca, he would have said—Priscus must have had a great need for secrecy—routine in Roman politics. Half the torches were dark and those that still glowed sent tendrils of smoke to the ceiling. Had they been extinguished recently? If so, by whom and why? Lighted or dark, they lined either side of the corridor and projected from sconces at angles as if to salute any passerby. He hesitated and peered into the darkness. Like one of his hunting dogs when it caught the scent of a stag in flight, he went into full alert, unmoving and listening. If he had shared the dog’s cropped ears, they would have been twitching this way and that. The only sound he heard was the beating of his own heart.

  He strained to see into the hallway’s depths. It was impossible to determine where it led or how long it might be. It could as easily disappear into an abyss as come to an abrupt halt a few cubits farther along. Then, it might end at an intersecting wall or continue for a half mile and out into the night air beyond the city walls to the north. He knew the last wasn’t the case, but this inky hallway with half its torches unlit created that illusion. Perhaps the fort’s builder, the first Herod, in assembling this monument to the late and, for most, unlamented Mark Antony, thought a siege inevitable or that Antony would retreat from Egypt to Judea with his Ptolemaic Queen to make his stand against Octavian. Or perhaps it was simply another manifestation of that King’s diseased and suspicious mind. Throughout the year the space housed a resident contingent of legionnaires with a Centurion in command. It could have served as well if half or a quarter its current size.

  Priscus’ message made it clear he wanted to meet at this place, that he had something important to tell him, and that it required privacy. The message had been vague and the legionnaire who bore it nearly inarticulate, but he’d no reason to suspect anything out of the ordinary so he’d come as asked. Priscus, after all, was a loyal member of his entourage and a serving officer. On the other hand, he knew that all Roman politics operated on intrigue and duplicity. He shuddered. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if he were afraid.

  He took another tentative step forward and reached up to free one of the lighted torches from its bracket. He held it aloft squinting into the darkness, straining to make out what lay further on. He touched its flame to the still-smoking pitch-soaked fabric at the end of a nearby staff. It burst into flame and a bit of his anxiety waned as the light penetrated deeper into the gloom. He lit another and moved on. As he leaned forward to light a third, he stumbled against a form lying at his feet. Startled, he jerked his foot back. He looked again and recoiled at the sight of a corpse. He took a deep breath, knelt, and rolled the body over.

  A dagger had been thrust in the man’s chest. Its gilded and stone-studded hilt protruded from his bloody short toga. The knife’s angle was all wrong. He lifted the torch to cast light on the dead man’s face. Aurelius Decimus’ lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling, the expression of shock at his unexpected demise still frozen on his face. None of this made any sense. He dismissed the notion that Aurelius Decimus had committed suicide. No one with that man’s enormous ambition would consider such an action. Furthermore, to fall on one’s dagger or sword took a measure of courage that he knew this man did not possess. Not suicide. That meant that someone had stabbed him, murdered him. It seemed so unlikely. A man murdered in the depths of the Antonia Fortress, the very symbol of Roman preeminence and a safe haven for its citizens. Yet, here the ambitious Aurelius lay in an expanding pool of blood.

  He regained his feet and glanced around, uncertain what to do next. And what had happened to Priscus? Footsteps scraped against the stones behind him—several pairs, in fact. He stood and faced about.

  “Priscus? Is that you? Come here.”

  “Pontius Pilate, Emperor’s Prefect of Judea and Overseer of the Palestine, tu deprenditur discurrent caede.”

  “I am to be arrested for murder? I only this moment arrived and found this man lying here. I did not murder anyone, Cassia.”

  “Yet our friend Aurelius Decimus lies dead at your feet, Prefect. The dagger in his chest is yours, I believe.”

  Was it? It was.

  “And I can see no reasonable explanation for your presence in this remote part of the Fortress other than an assignation with him in order to remove the one man who could have sent you back to Rome in disgrace.”

  “My dagger? Sent back? Cassia, what am I being accused of?”

  “Assassination, Prefect, as you well know. Sicarius.”

  YOM CHAMISHI

  Chapter II

  “The Romans call them the Sicarii,” the High Priest said. “Surely you have heard of them?”

  Everyone knew about the Sicarii, this new and dangerous political sect, the Dagger Men. They had begun to make themselves felt in the country by killing men whom they labeled as enemies of the State. Thus far, only one or two minor tax gatherers and a handful of men whom they’d determined to be משתפי פעולה, collaborators, had fallen to their knives. These killings worried the people, of course. They were inexcusable. What worried them more was the dangerous precedent they set. In a country occupied by an omnipotent Rome, what person could not be branded משתף פעולה? If you sold their legions salt fish, as the Galilean fishermen did by the barrel, and grew rich in the process, wouldn’t that make you a collaborator? Or wine merchants, or bakers? What about Gamaliel’s student, Saul, who came from a family of tent-makers? Legionnaires in need of a shelter light enough to be carried with their packs made up an important portion of the family’s business in and around Tarsus. How would that rigid Pharisee describe those transactions? Where does one, or more importantly, where would the Sicarii, draw the line when branding someone a collaborator?

  “The worst part, Rabban,” the High Priest continued, “is I have been told they consider me to be one of Rome’s allies. Me! It is an outrage. Do I have control over what Rome does? I don’t. Do I retain my position at the Emperor’s sufferance? I do. How else shall we keep the faith? Do these fools think that the Nation could survive even a month without a functioning Temple? Would the Lord allow it? No, I tell you, He would not. If we abandon Him, He will judge us harshly and these misguided men, these cowards who creep about in the night terrorizing innocent people, they will end by begging the Romans to return and save them.”

  The High Priest wore worry like his priestly vestments. Gamaliel had listened to his worried discourses on many topics—from the price of incense to the status of itinerant rabbis—one, in particular—for years. This sudden concern about the Sicarii opened a new chapter. He wondered what had inspired it.

  “You need not fear the Sicarii, High Priest. They only concern themselves with two things. They hope to terrorize Roman officials and thereby assume that they, in turn, will ease up on their oppressive practices and leave us in peace. That is no more than wishful thinking. Zealots thrive on wishful thinking. Yet, they are mostly brigands themselves and apply this patina of political activism to cover their acts of robbery and worse. Consider Barabbas. Shall we call him a patriot or a criminal?”

  “Barabbas? What about him? How can you possibly know about him or any of this? You spend your days disputing the Law with your students and scholars. Scrolls and musty sheets of papyrus are your companions. What can you tell me of the world around us?”

  “You do not do me justice, High Priest. You believe the pursuit of truth excludes one from the cares of the day? You may be correct, but I do not think so. I get out into the streets daily and I have contacts here and there. What I do not know, but should know, they will tell me. For example, did you know that this very Barabbas is currently raging away in a cell deep in the Antonia Fortress? Ah, I see
you did not. So, which of us needs to be out and about more? Now, unless you have something else to discuss with the Rabban of the Sanhedrin, I will be on my way. I have things to do that are far more pressing.”

  That statement was not exactly true. Except to finish parsing an Isaiah scroll sent up from Qumran, Gamaliel had nothing pressing, but he could only endure the High Priest’s company for short periods. Gamaliel nodded and started to move away.

  “Wait, yes. I do have another matter. Passover is upon us next week.”

  “It is fair to say everyone knows that, Caiaphas.”

  “Yes, of course. I am concerned about riots, Rabban, demonstrations, misadventures, and so on. What if these Sicarii decide to use Passover as an excuse to cause trouble? I tell you that of all our holy days…this one brings more people to the city than any of the others combined and is, moreover, the logical one to inspire a revolt.”

  “And?”

  “And, and what? Oh, yes, where was I? Yes, and it is ripe for the work of these dangerous people. They will say, ‘Moses led us to freedom. This is a new Passover and we must continue the journey,’ or some such nonsense.”

  Gamaliel started to respond but the High Priest rattled on. “That rabbi from the Galilee, for example, he is at it again, stirring up the people, instigating just those sorts of thoughts. Do you see? If this Yeshua comes to Jerusalem with his followers…no, not if, but when…he is always here for Passover. When he comes he very well could do something to provoke people. Riots could follow which would then require the intervention of the Prefect’s soldiers and that would inevitably turn deadly. I received an edict from the Prefect who says he will accept no disturbance of any sort this year. Anyone who engages in such things and—listen to this—anyone who even appears to countenance such behavior, will be severely punished.”