The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

“So doesn’t it make you wonder,” Caligula said slowly, “why Grandpa would destroy two brothers in a family—and then, not long before he died himself, he’d turn around and appoint their youngest brother as imperial legate to Syria?”

“Lucius Vitellius?” said Claudius, raising his brow. “I suppose, like everyone else in Rome, I assumed his appointment was more of a … personal favor.” Then he added awkwardly, “Because of young Aulus, that is.”

“Well, really, who might deserve such high honors better than a father of someone like Aulus?” said Caligula sarcastically. “After all, the lad generously gave up his virginity to Tiberius when he was only sixteen. I should know, I was present upon the occasion. But that’s not my point.”

Caligula arose, came down the steps, and paced about the room, slapping his thunderbolt in the palm of his hand. Then he set it on a table and picked up a full pitcher of wine, poured some in a goblet, and rang a nearby bell. The taster, a boy of nine or ten, entered at once and drank the wine off, while Caligula filled two more goblets to the brim. Taking one and motioning his uncle to help himself to the other, he waited until the taster bowed and left the room. To Claudius’s astonishment, his nephew then unlocked a large box on the table and plucked out two costly pearls, each the breadth of his thumb, and dropped them into the wine goblets to dissolve.

“I’ve had Tiberius’s papers brought over from Capreae, and I’ve read them all,” Caligula resumed after having a swallow from the goblet and wiping his mouth. “There was one of great interest from Lucius Vitellius, written just after he took up his appointment in Syria more than a year ago. It refers to some objects of great value once belonging to the Jews, which were buried atop a kind of holy mountain in Samaria—objects that it seems the former protégé of Sejanus, Pontius Pilate, had been after. Apparently Pilate murdered a number of people in trying to lay his hands on them.”

Claudius, the only genuinely poor member of the royal family, privately wondered if he could fish out the pearl and rescue it behind his nephew’s back before it dissolved. But he thought better of it and took a sip of the rarely enhanced wine.

“What exactly did Vitellius say these objects were? And what’s become of them and of Pilate?” he asked.

“Pilate was removed from his post, but was held at Antioch under guard for at least ten months, waiting for a troopship that would be returning directly to Rome,” said Caligula. “It arrived here the same week Grandfather died, so I arranged to have Pilate detained here for questioning—though I didn’t really need to, for I’d been able to put a few pieces of the story together on my own some time ago, and make a few guesses. As you know, my first act as emperor just after the funeral was to release Herod Agrippa from prison, and I bestowed on him the tetrarchies of Lysanias and his late uncle Philip in Syria, as well as the title of king. I’ve instructed, when he returns there, that he perform a service for me.”

Claudius began to think his mind had really cleared a bit with that first sip of wine, for he’d just come to understand that this god-obsessed nephew of his might not be as mad as he seemed. In vino veritas, he thought, and he had another healthy swallow.

“One must recall,” Caligula said, “I lived six years with Grandfather at Capreae, where I saw and heard a good deal—not all of it mere debauchery. Five years ago something happened. Perhaps you’ll recall it. Tiberius had an Egyptian pilot brought here to Rome, then he met with the fellow himself out on Capreae—”

“You mean, the same Egyptian who appeared before the senate—the one who claimed he’d overheard, while sailing near Greece one night around the spring equinox, that the great god Pan was dead?” said Claudius, quite interested. He took another swig.

“Yes, that one,” said Caligula. “Grandfather was secretive about the meeting, and never discussed it. But I knew whatever he’d learned from the Egyptian had changed him. I spoke of this one day, with the husband of my sister Drusilla—”

“The goddess,” suggested Claudius with a hiccup, but Caligula ignored him.

“Five years ago,” he went on, “when my brother-in-law Lucius Cassius Longinus was consul here in Rome, his own brother—an officer named Gaius Cassius Longinus—was serving with the third legion in Syria. On the very same week of the spring equinox he was the duty officer assigned to Pontius Pilate, in charge of a public execution at Jerusalem. Something happened there he recalled as very strange.”

“You mean to say this rumor about the death of the great god Pan may have to do with these valuable objects Pilate was seeking?” said Claudius, a bit foggy from the wine. “And because of something you learned about them from your brother-in-law, you’ve let Herod Agrippa out of jail and appointed him king, so he can help solve the mystery of what’s become of them?”

“Precisely!” cried Caligula, picking up his thunderbolt and thrusting it high as if about to hurl it to the ceiling. “Uncle Claudius, you may be every bit the drunkard everyone believes you are, but you’re no fool—you’re a genius!”

Taking Claudius by the arm, he drew him back to the throne, and they sat on the steps together as the younger man leaned toward his uncle.

“As I say, five years ago, on the Friday before the equinox, Pilate ordered a rabble-rousing Jew to be crucified along with some criminals, knowing the bodies had to be taken down before nightfall by law, since it was just before the Jewish sabbath when they couldn’t be removed. The way to hasten death, I’m told, is to break their legs so the lungs collapse and they smother.”

Perhaps it was the drink, thought Claudius, but it