Finally, I spoke, my voice cold. “You have no chance, Cornuficius. None at all. I once asked you if I was going to have to kill you and as I recall, you said ‘Not yet,’ or something to that effect. Well, I suppose we've arrived at that moment where I must kill you in order to keep the 6th strong and effective. You've been undermining Fuscus for too long. I know all about what happened in the camp on the Nile, that you refused to obey not just his orders, but mine as well, since I was the one who gave them to Fuscus in the first place.”
“So you’re going to kill me because of his weakness?” Cornuficius sneered.
I could not deny that there was a grain of truth in what he said. Fuscus was indeed a weak man, weaker at least than Cornuficius, but he was still the legally appointed commander of the Cohort.
“No. First, I'm not going to kill you, at least not myself. As much as I may want to, that's not my place. I'm going to see you executed, but not before you confess that you ordered Publius to murder Joseph of Gaza, and that's the real reason you must die, not because of Fuscus.”
I glanced at Fuscus as I talked, trying to gauge his reaction to Cornuficius’ lacerating scorn. He was indeed shaking with rage, but he said nothing when I was finished.
“So, if I don't confess, then I'll live?”
It was a feeble joke, but I finally saw a hint of desperation in Cornuficius. His eyes kept shooting over to the two men who would be responsible for extracting his confession, standing impassively against the wall, acting like this whole thing was boring. I suppose it was to them; I did not want to think about all the things they had done and seen over the years.
“You will confess, Cornuficius,” I replied quietly. “Even if you didn’t do it, you'd confess by the time they're through and you know it.”
Suddenly, his body slumped, his head dropping to his chest as he closed his eyes tightly, muttering something to himself that I could not make out. At length, he raised his head, and I saw a man for whom all hope was extinguished, who knew that he had come to the end of his road. Despite myself, I felt a twinge of pity.
“He was cheating me.” He said it quietly, but it was silent in the room so we heard him clearly.
“How do you know?”
He looked sharply up at me, his mouth twisted in a bitter grimace, then gave a cough that I guessed was a laugh. “How does any cheat know he’s being taken? It takes one to know one, I suppose. He was playing with loaded dice.”
“Then why didn’t you call him on it and expose him?” Fuscus asked.
Cornuficius may have realized he was through, but that did not mean that he had any greater regard for Fuscus, the sneer briefly returning as he gave Fuscus a withering look. “If I could have, don’t you think I would have? He was too good, too clever.”
His mouth turned down into a grimace that spoke of the bitterness that comes to a man who has always thought he was the cleverest, but discovers that there is always someone better down the road, waiting for you. I knew then that this is a truth that extends to all things, that if I continued in the army, and continued to march for Rome, that one day I would run into that man who was better than I was. On that day, my life would end, but I still had such a belief in myself that I thought that there was a possibility that I was truly the best that lived during my time. Such is the vanity of youth. Now I was watching a man who was being forced to confront the reality that he had been bested at a game that he thought he owned, and I could see it was a bitter drink for Cornuficius indeed.
~ ~ ~ ~
In the end, Cornuficius confessed everything, without being tortured. If he were a slave of course, his confession would not have been valid unless he was tortured, something I never saw the sense in, but that has been the law since long before I was born and will be so long after I die. Caesar arrived at headquarters shortly after dawn, as was his normal custom, with Antipater and ben-Judah, along with a small group of other Jews who were not present at our first meeting arriving shortly thereafter. This was when I learned of Jews and their particular obsession about pigs. They had recovered Joseph’s remains, or what was left of them and they were clearly enraged. I handed Caesar the wax tablets containing the accounts of Publius, Genusius, and Larius, along with the signed confession of Cornuficius, which he read impassively, not bothering with the others’ testimony. He did raise an eyebrow at one point, shooting me a questioning look.
Turning so that the others could not overhear, he asked me, “Do you believe what Cornuficius says? About being cheated?”
As easy as it would have been simply to say “no,” I suppose that there is enough of an honest and fair man inside of me that prevented me from doing so.
More importantly, I knew that it would not really matter. “Yes, I do believe him. I think that Joseph was just better at cheating than Cornuficius and that made him angrier than losing the money.”
He considered what I had said then nodded, handing me back the tablet as he turned to address the Jews.
“We have a signed confession from Decimus Pilus Posterior Cornuficius admitting to ordering one of his men to murder Joseph of Gaza and dispose of his body. He will be executed immediately, according to the rules and regulations of the Roman army.”
I suppose it was too much to ask of the Jews to simply accept Caesar’s decision and leave it at that. Still, I was not prepared for the howls of anger and rage from the small group.
“That is not acceptable to us.” This did not come from Antipater or ben-Judah, but from another man that I had seen several times yet did not know.
He was dressed differently than the others, not wearing armor or carrying a weapon, wearing a simple but obviously expensive gown and a large conical hat that added almost a foot to his height. I thought he looked slightly ridiculous, but I could see even Antipater treating him with a respect just short of deference. The man continued speaking though his Latin was somewhat hard to understand because of his accent and his tightly clenched jaw.
“He has defiled a high ranking officer of our army, not to mention a well-respected member of our community. We demand justice according to our laws. The criminal needs to be turned over to us immediately so that he can be punished.”
Of all the people in the room at that point, I think that I knew better than any of them that this man, whose name I learned was Hyrcanus, had made a grave error. If he had phrased his short speech in the form of a request, I would not have been surprised if Caesar had turned Cornuficius over to them, but he used the word “demand,” practically guaranteeing that it would not happen. As great a man as Caesar was, he was still a man with faults and one of those was a stubborn streak that tended to surface at moments like this and I could see by the set of his jaw that Hyrcanus’ words had angered him.
“I understand your anger, but what does it matter how he dies? He's going to be executed in the same manner as if he had murdered a Roman citizen.”
“It matters a great deal,” Hyrcanus countered. “We have our own laws and customs by which these matters are handled and he should be punished according to those laws and customs. Our people demand no less.”
“Your people are in no position to make demands. They are subjects of Rome, and no matter what your laws and customs dictate, your people and you,” Caesar said pointedly, “are subject to the laws of Rome. And in this matter, the punishment is clear and will be carried out according to our laws, not yours.”
To any other people this would have been enough and stopped the argument, but as I was learning, the Jews are not like other people. Instead of accepting Caesar’s word, they continued to argue with him, and I could see that he was getting angrier the more they talked. Things were getting out of hand, and I did not know where this was headed, but it was not going to end well for anybody.