Pilate's Wife: The Gospel According to the Eyewitness

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III

Day before the Kalends of Martius. Second hour of the night. [Wednesday, February 28, c. 7:00 p.m.]

Florentina got me up before the first hour this morning, to see the warship come in. I dressed quickly and took a hot drink out to the pavilion. Sperata and Latona also came.

The stevedores waited on the docks, still bundled within their cloaks. A group of our soldiers had also gone up to meet the ship, bringing awnings and a carriage in the unlikely event that someone important was aboard.

Aglae came out, bringing her little girl. She told me that Mater would stay in.

The galley, which had drifted several stades during the night, began its short journey at dawn. The north wind had died, so the sea was not dangerous. When the ship had come inside the harbor, the oars were brought in. The stevedores threw their ropes to the crew waiting on the deck. We could hear the stevedores chanting at the windlass as they towed the galley to its berth.

As soon as the ship had been tied up, a group of six civilians disembarked without ceremony. They wore simple traveling clothes in the Greek fashion.

"You would imagine we have urgently summoned philosophers," I said.

"Look at those ones." Latona raised her shoulders and held out her arms, miming a Hercules.

Indeed, one could see even from the distance that several of the civilians were as burly as wrestlers. I presumed they were bodyguards -- which are not often found attending itinerant sages.

Florentina said to Sperata: "You stay clear of those people."

"Do you think they will abuse me with conversation?"

"Don't insult your mother," I said. "She knows what sort of conversation those gladiators will want with you. When they open your mouth it won't be to let you talk."

"Yes, mistress." This as sullen as she can be.

Four of the arrivals got in the carriage and two others walked alongside. I observed a boy running ahead of them along the mole. As I had not sent a runner, I presumed he was Mater's.

So he was. The carriage had not gotten halfway through the city when one of Mater's girls came up. "Lady, my mistress must see you right away."

I found Mater in her sitting room, in the company of her Egyptian physician. He was busy putting his cups and flasks back in his boxes and leather bags. The brazier produced a cloud of frankincense, penetrated nonetheless by a smell of medicine, similar to burnt shellfish.

Mater spit into a bowl, which she set back on the table beside her chair. She urged the physician to leave us.

"I sent a boy to the mole" she told me. "He says there wasn't even a courier or dispatch officer aboard."

I should have been relieved by this. But I remained ill at ease. Mater was playing a game.

She said, "Do you know Senator L. V--?"

It is strange that the name did not instantly strike me. Yet when I recognized it -- within the drawing of a single breath -- I imagined that a corpse had passed its cold hand along my back.

I am certain Mater saw this. Her eyes were like needles.

I said, "He was at Baiae. My father's wife knew him. I've heard little about him since. His brother of course is familiar with Sejanus. Does he have something to do with the ship in the harbor?"

Mater looked at me as though I had never told the truth in my life. "Yes," she said. "He has just come off it."

I was certain her messenger was confused. "You mean he has sent one of his freedmen."

"No. A man has presented himself as Senator L. V-- to our centurion on the docks. He has a letter of introduction."

"That can't be so," I said. "Your boy is mistaken -- the men I saw were dressed like Greek pedants. Except for a few legbreakers and secretaries, he has brought no-one with him."

Mater said, "It's possible the rest of his people are still aboard ship. Or arriving on another vessel. Evidently he has made the quickest crossing possible."

"I don't believe that a Senator has come on a winter crossing as though he were a courier."

"There are Senators who would cross the sea in January in an olive barrel if Sejanus wanted it."

"You don't know that Senator L. V-- is Sejanus' man."

Of course I should not have ventured this. Mater's eyes pricked me again. "How well did you know him at Baiae?"

"He came to our house."

Mater looked at me until I believed my lip would tremble. At last she said, "What was his reputation?"

I stood at the abyss of memory. "Not as good as the rest of the family. He'd had something to do with Quinctilius Varus' disaster. But everyone knew that this Senator L. V-- had made himself useful to Tiberius. He came to us only a month before Augustus died. By then everyone knew Tiberius would become Caesar. Certainly at that time he was welcome in my father's house."

"How was he useful to Tiberius?"

"Also something to do with the Germans. The punitive expedition Tiberius led. No-one could say exactly what. But it was always understood that L. V-- was Caesar's man."

Mater reflected on this for a moment. "What was your stepmother's connection to him?"

I saw an image: A man who seems like a boy to me now. A narrow face, so sun-darkened that his eyes, which are pale, appear almost white. Lights floating on the lake. There are no images beyond this, except gray faces in the dark.

Perhaps his face is among them. I do not wish to see.

I said to Mater, "I don't know. It was my last summer at Baiae."

She waited. "Then perhaps he was involved in some business with your father and his wife. Something that was left undone when they put themselves away. His business here may be his own."

"After sixteen years?" I did not attempt to disguise my outrage at Mater's suggestion. "To come here on a winter crossing, in order to attend some forgotten detail that might have been done up years ago in Italy? And what business could he have that couldn't be settled by a freedman or a lawyer? It's absurd."

"Then instruct me as to why Caesar would send a Senator on a winter crossing, when he's too busy with his star-gazers and sissy-boys to even send a letter after all the Jew trouble last year. Why this purple-striped errand-boy now? Tell me that."

"Perhaps Caesar is dead."

"I should have the good fortune to live that long." Mater waved her hand to send me out.

After an hour Pilate's chamberlain came to my study. He informed me that Senator L. V--'s secretary wished to offer me the Senator's letter of introduction. I suppose that only on hearing this name from one of Pilate's people did I concede to myself that L. V-- has indeed come.

L. V--'s secretary is a native Italian (or so he appears), about my age. He was ruddy from the bath and shave he had taken upon arriving here. He wore his toga with some grace. His perfume is Cosmian, too liberally applied.

He presented the letter. Immediately I recognized the seal as Caesar's.

"Senator L. V-- did not want to abuse your hospitality without presenting his letter," the secretary said. "Of course it is addressed to the Prefect."

He said this to ensure that I would not presume to open it myself. Indeed I had no desire even to hold it and quickly set it on my table.

The secretary then handed me a wax tablet under a fresh seal -- one I did not recognize, but certainly his patron's. On the cover it was addressed to me. The secretary waited as though he expected me to open it and offer a reply. I did not want do this. But neither did I wish to appear unusually disturbed by his patron's note. I broke the seal.

I saw at once that the note was signed with L. V--'s full name and title. He addressed me by my full name. "I apologize for the inconvenience my arrival has doubtless presented," he wrote, thanking me for seeing himself and his party so promptly settled. He said he would "eagerly make use of our kitchen, having eaten little that was agreeable since going to sea." But he hoped he "will not be considered impolite" if he has dinner in his rooms and retires early.

From these words I might have concluded that the author did not know me. Certainly he suggested no business between us other than that of guest and host.

I told the secretary, "My husband and I know only too well the taxing effects of that voyage. I can well appreciate your patron's need to rest undisturbed. Assure him that his comfort is my only concern," et cetera.

When L. V--'s secretary had left I locked the letter in my strongbox and sent for a courier. I dispatched him to Sebaste, to tell Pilate that Senator L. V-- has come, with a letter of introduction from Caesar.

I have spent the remainder of the day in my rooms, going out only to bathe. Whatever the reason that L. V-- has come, I should avoid any appearance of undue interest in him or his party.

It is entirely possible, however, that L. V-- does not even remember me. I remember little enough of him.

Why won't Pilate's wife record the Senator's full name?

Clearly she had personal reasons to avoid identifying him, should her journal fall into the wrong hands. But she also lived in a climate of caution easily shaded into paranoia, where even a casual political or personal connection could have deadly consequences. Various clues in the commentarii suggest that L.V-- was Lucius Vitellius, a prominent and well-connected Roman Senator who appears in the histories of Tacitus and Flavius Josephus.

Wax tablets were used in ancient Rome for notes, personal correspondence, ledgers, and even some legal records. They usually consisted of two wooden leaves, surrounded by a shallow frame, upon which a thin layer of wax was spread; the writing was inscribed in the wax with a sharp metal or wood stylus (the stylus also had a flattened end for erasures). The leaves were usually hinged so that the tablet could be closed to protect the wax surfaces; several tablets might be bound together with leather cords, creating a rudimentary book.

Pilate's wife, however, wrote on papyrus paper (charta), which was relatively plentiful throughout the Mediterranean world and was preferred for personal letters as well as for books, which were comprised of volumina -- papyrus scrolls up to forty feet long, rolled up on wooden sticks. Roman inkwells were often bronze cylinders; pens were usually sharpened quills or reeds. Ink was made from soot, pitch, or the ink of the octopus.

The book as we know it was born around the time Pilate's wife wrote, when the Romans began binding together papyrus or parchment sheets in the fashion of wax tablets, creating the codex.

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