"'And on that day,' declares the Lord God,
'I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
I will turn your feasts into mourning
and all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth on every waist
and baldness on every head;
I will make it like the mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.'"
Amos 8:9-10
Claudia could hear them whispering at the door, little snatches of breathy wind muted behind cupped palms. Although she had, of course, brought along some of her own servi when traveling to Jerusalem, quite a number were permanently assigned to the Praetorium already. Those that had charge of her rooms and person while in the city, new to her, were the likely source of those tittering on the threshold. Her own were too used to her "illnesses."
She'd awoken less than ten minutes ago, drenched in sweat, having cried out in her sleep. She'd sat up immediately and thrust her head into her hands, sobbing. She could imagine the gossip that followed, the news dashing from slave to slave, how the master's wife had forced her way to come with him into the city and all she managed to do was fall ill with disease…or perhaps madness?
Turned on her side, Claudia rubbed at temples that wouldn't stop aching. The lantern burned low at her bed, but she kept her eyes closed, any flicker however feeble an additional increase to the pain. Such was always the case when she had one of those dreams as Pilatus called them, unwilling yet to admit the truth in what she had seen.
Claudia stiffened when a gentle hand lay along her shoulder. The tap of a stool being set down drew her eyes open to slits. A warmth encircled her heart. He had come. As much as he did not wish to believe, he came once more.
Wetness seeped into Claudia's eyes as her husband moved his touch to her hand. She grasped his own as a lifeline. "I'm a burden to you."
"No," Pilatus muttered quietly. "I was awake anyway. The wine from last night."
Claudia recalled the dinner feast. Not as raucous as some had been close to their arrival; this one more private, friends in the area joining them at table. Pilatus often imbibed a bit more when surrounded by close friends. To her mind, he must feel safer and freer in their presence. Less need to make a pretense of constant competency in case any word of his conduct made it back to Tiberius Caesar.
Claudia's grip on her husband's hand tightened. "It was him…again."
Pilatus' hold loosened. She opened her eyes further to scrutinize his expression. His mouth had settled into a tight line. He turned his head away.
"When he's there, the dreams mean something."
Pilatus didn't look back at her.
"Please believe me."
Pilatus turned slightly, enough for her to observe his faraway gaze, his mind in the past and surely hurting the same as she did multiple times a day. If she had dreamed of anything else but their dead child!
He had only lived a few months past the age of four. He had been her joy and his father's pride, a bright child, energetic and skilled. How he took to education and sport! They had delighted in his prattle around the dinner table and before bed. Then, in less than a fortnight, something had struck him down and he had slipped away from them.
She had first dreamed of him within a month of his passing, just a wave of his hand as her high-spirited Lucius stood by the pool of their home by the sea. His presence had been as vivid as if she truly stood next to him. She had awoken, comforted a little for a time. But then she had dreamed of him again and again and again.
She began both to desire and to dread her dreams…because some came to fruition.
The first was simple, Lucius knocking a bottle of wine from a table to the floor, cracking the jar and spilling its contents. Hours later she happened upon a slave at the exact table wiping up the exact spill of wine. The next saw her son beside a favorite horse, tears dripping down his chin at word of its lameness, and that very day a report of the horse's malady arrived. The dreams grew darker. Her son gazing down into a well, pointing, distress in his expression. And the news of a girl's death falling down a well came the next day. Claudia deteriorated when headaches began to torment her along with the dreams.
"What about…your accident?" Claudia quietly prodded.
Pilatus swallowed hard, and although he kept quiet, she read unease in his eyes. This dream had come but a few months ago. Her son sitting next to her husband in a carriage, at first laughing, then jerking to a stand and screaming. In the afternoon, Pilatus had returned cut and scathed by a carriage accident on the road.
Claudia tugged at her husband's hand, wanting an answer, some hint of faith in what she saw.
Pilatus laughed lowly. "You're superstition borders on that of the Jews."
She let go his hand, turning on her back, eyes to the ceiling. That he would equate her with that rebellious bunch whose insistence on one god dragged Pilatus and herself away from their home in Caesarea to this wilderness heap of a city. "There's nothing like them in this."
"They believe their god can speak in dreams," Pilatus drawled, raising his arms above his head and yawning as if his dealings with the Jews bored him to tears.
"And what of the Sybils?" Claudia well knew a number of her own people who sought out the divines for guidance and future omens.
"Those are not the same." Pilatus rose, pacing away to the window and drawing back a curtain to peer out.
"How?"
"They come from a different source."
"And how do you know the Jews' God isn't a source?"
Pilatus sent a sly smile her way. "Ah. You defend the religion of the Jews now, do you?"
Claudia huffed, drawing her knees up and glaring at him. Pilatus' smile grew and he returned to the stool, lowering himself and letting his gray eyes meet her own. "This is the wife I know," he whispered.
Claudia couldn't help but smile back. She well knew their intellectual back and forth had drawn Pilatus to her more than anything else. He had been impressed by her knowledge and her lack of fear in displaying it, no matter who occupied a room. For her part, she hadn't been quite sure of him when their marriage had been arranged. Pilatus had ambitions, which were good as far as they went, but his eagerness to prove himself wasn't always as tempered as it should be. Still, she had acquiesced to the arrangement, for although Pilatus remained himself, she found him gentle always to her and an encourager of her erudite nature.
Claudia took Pilatus' hand again and recited. "'For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfillment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them.'" She squeezed his hand. "Dreams of him come through horn."
Pilatus sighed and looked down.
"Even Plato knows the gods communicate through dreams."
Pilatus raised his eyebrows, peering at her from beneath the brown hair brushing his forehead. "And Aristotle leans upon the happenstance of human senses."
"So you deny the gods?
Pilatus' mouth hardened to a line once more.
"Are they not true?" Claudia pressed.
"Truth," Pilatus repeated with a huff and pointed at the window. "The Jewish Passover. That is truth to the Jews. One god. Rescuing them from slavery." He chuckled lowly. "And where are they now? Under the rule of Rome. A gift they can't even see through their stubborn loyalty to a god who led them from one slavery to another. They were born to be ruled."
"And our gods?"
Pilatus firmed his jaw and met her eye to eye, his gaze suddenly cold. "Took our son."
There it was. The real truth. The pain. If only Pilatus would see…
"When I see him…in my dreams…what those dreams show me…"
"Claudia," Pilatus hissed softly. He leaned forward, resting his head against hers. "It's grief that makes you see him."
"What about your accident?"
She didn't hear his answer as the pounding of urgent feet sounded outside the door and halted when a voice called out. "Prefect. Caiaphas is here. He asks for an immediate audience."
Pilatus groaned under his breath and pulled back from her, glancing at the window. "At this hour?"
"He's brought a criminal. We thought as you mean to keep peace in the city…"
"Yes, yes," Pilatus said, rising from the stool. "Inform him I will see him."
"He won't come into the palace. Their Passover—"
"I know," Pilatus snapped.
The messenger bowed his head and retreated.
"Cursed Jews and cursed god," Pilatus grumbled. He bent over to kiss the crown of Claudia's head. "I will order food sent." He turned on his heel, plodding across the room to the responsibilities under his care.
Claudia slowly rose from the bed, moved to the window, and drew back the curtain for the early morning air. How she missed the salty tint of Caesarea and the pool for swimming where she could lose herself until the headaches resolved. Food and water were her best remedies for times such as this.
She sighed. Instead, there was nothing within her sight but a bleak city overcrowded for the Jewish festival and dreary wilderness beyond. The only anomalous object was the towering Jewish temple, but it was dull and plain compared to those constructed by Roman hands. What a place for the center of a religion! Truth was, she hadn't forced her husband to take her to Jerusalem; she'd had no desire to spend extended time here. No, she'd seen her son in another dream talking of Jerusalem and so she'd decided to go. Encouraging Pilatus to break with tradition and allow his wife to travel at his side wasn't difficult. She'd only needed to ask.
As she heard the servants enter and begin setting food on a table, Claudia stared at the city's bluish hue in the early morning sun. She cared much for her husband, but considering his ambivalent views of her dreams, she hadn't told him of the one where Lucius spoke of Jerusalem. And she hadn't told him what she had dreamed just this morning, alone in the dark, a dream of a broken, bloodied body in her arms…their son…dead. But Lucius had died of illness, sweating in bed. So why did she see him in a way that sent such terror into her heart? What was a dream like this meant to tell her?
A morning breeze wafted over Claudia's chair, chilly and stinging but altogether welcome. She breathed deeply, unsatisfied with the staid wilderness air, but gaining a measure of relief all the same. She readjusted the wettened cloth that had been applied to her forehead and tried to concentrate on the comb being drawn through her hair and the soft humming of the skilled woman combing it.
Of course, she failed. Her mind wouldn't let her rest and her headache seemed to increase with every thought. The sun had risen on the desolate city, its noise rising in her ears. She'd eaten but the food had made little difference. Pilatus had checked in on her, both amused and annoyed at his interview with the Jewish high priest Caiaphas and the so-called criminal that had been set on his doorstep. He swore the priest brought this man simply to cause difficulty for him during a festival time.
Claudia was more interested in the identity of the criminal. Even she had heard tell of the man who had entered the city almost a week ago. She tried to remember the Jewish name that had reached her ears…Yeshosh something, wasn't it? Pilatus had taken note, only because rumor also reached him that the man had some kind of popularity among the people and had caused a disturbance in the temple; above all Pilatus did not want disturbance in the city. But the man had left soon afterwards, or so they assumed as no new rumors had reached them.
"And now here he is again!" Pilatus had exclaimed when he'd checked on her. He'd chuckled. "I thought he would look like a king. That's what they say he's claiming he is. But he's plain as any Jew." According to her husband, the man even confirmed the charge brought against him when he'd been interviewed. He was perhaps a bit dense in the head, but harmless. Caiaphas simply wanted to hand off his problem so Pilatus would take care of it for him. Instead, hearing the man hailed from Galilee, he had told the high priest to thrust him upon Herod. Let the Jews deal with their own headaches and be done with it. After all, Caiaphas had even more incentive to prevent a riot in the city. Pilatus had made it clear that any disturbance from the priest's people would be met with swift action.
Claudia let out a slow breath. Pilatus might have been less on edge if his position hadn't been precarious. Only two years ago, Sejanus, her husband's advocate in Tiberius' court, had been executed and his body dragged through the streets. Pilatus worried his own place was in question and thought the maintenance of order during the Jewish festival vital.
Claudia removed the cloth on her forehead and rubbed at her temples.
The elderly woman combing her hair stopped, addressing her softly. "Domina?"
A weak smile graced Claudia's lips. She raised her hand for the woman to take and squeezed it. "None of that, Thoösa."
"But here…"
"In my bedroom, call me as you always do."
"Yes, my agapoula."
Claudia let her hand fall into her lap, comforted some by the familiar Greek moniker, and closed her eyes. Thoösa moved her hands to her shoulders and began to massage them. The old woman's hands were sure and secure. As long as Claudia could remember, she had been Thoösa's "dear one." Thoösa, Greek by birth, had been a slave in Claudia's family from the time of her youth. And even when she had earned her own freedom, she had chosen to remain with the family—for Claudia's sake. Sometimes Claudia thought of her more like a mother than a servant, and she was certain Thoösa felt her a daughter more than a mistress.
Thoösa's hands stilled on her shoulders. "Perhaps you should pray at a lararium."
"You don't believe in the prayers offered there," Claudia spoke softly.
"But you do."
Claudia's heart skipped a beat. She did believe in the prayers to the gods, didn't she? Her dreams proved their existence or at least proved there was something beyond this life, some divine plain that narrowed the distance between her and her son. Otherwise, was she simply a grieving woman indulging in madness?
"What do you truly believe?" Claudia whispered. "If not our gods, then what?"
Thoösa kneaded at the back of Claudia's neck. "I have seen the worship of many gods, and many have fallen from worship into obscurity."
The woman was so old, Claudia was certain she spoke truthfully.
"A true god would last."
"But what if a true god lost all followers? A lack of followers wouldn't mean the god is not true."
"He would find a way to gather followers."
"What if he had but one?"
"One would be enough."
Claudia smiled in spite of her headache. "Have you found this god?"
Thoösa's hands paused in their kneading. When she didn't answer, Claudia turned in her chair to peer at the woman's wrinkled face creased in concentration, brown eyes thoughtful. "There is the Jewish god, perhaps."
"Oh, Thoösa!" Claudia exclaimed, turning back in her chair and readjusting the cloth on her forehead. "You can't be serious."
"He has been their god for ages past and they have such devotion."
"A wilderness god for a hopeless race," Claudia said.
Thoösa ran a hand through her hair and whispered. "Is that your own thought or your husband's?"
Claudia's heartbeat fluttered again, and her headache heightened. She stifled a moan as she replied. "All Rome's."
"Agapoula," Thoösa spoke softly, rounding the chair and crouching down to take both her hands. "I have distressed you. Forgive an old woman the hopes of her old age."
Claudia smiled tenderly. "I could never not forgive you. I had no idea you thought of such things."
Thoösa's wide, infectious smile blossomed across her wrinkles. "The aged often have nothing to do but think."
Fear panged in Claudia's chest. She stood, removing the cloth on her forehead, and pulled the old woman to her feet to embrace her. "Do not leave me. Not yet."
Thoösa briefly returned the embrace then broke her hold. "Come," she encouraged, guiding Claudia towards her bed. "Try to rest."
Claudia slipped back under the blanket and closed her eyes. Thoösa's tender fingers began to trace patterns round her face. Claudia concentrated on the paths of the woman's fingers and the headache gradually lessened. Her mind lulled, the room darkening, and blessed sleep came upon her…for a time.
Visions awoke. Sounds out of the darkness. An indistinct conversation. The shouting of multiple voices. Then weeping that grew louder and louder until Claudia recognized the cries as her own, her deep seeded grief springing forth. She saw her son…her son… Lucius lay in front of her, battered and slashed with wounds. He bled most from his wrists and his feet; puddles widening from underneath them. She fell to her knees, snatching him into her arms, desperate to change what she was seeing. She wailed into his hair. He shifted. Her body went cold. Could he possibly be…alive?
She lowered him slightly, fearing to look, and all breath left her. She held a grown man. A man with long, dark hair. She ran her eyes down the naked body, finding the same wounds that had marred her son. But he was not her son, not even grown. His features were not Roman but Jewish. Pilatus' voice shouted out of the darkness. "Yehoshua, King of the Jews, crucifige!"
Fire ate up Claudia's heart. She stared on the man, the innocent man, as innocent as Lucius had ever been, and the same grief for her son overwhelmed her. She clutched the man to her chest as if she could protect him, save him. Pilatus' voice clanged around her, screaming "Crucifige!" A small hand alit upon Claudia's shoulder. She looked up and met the eyes of her son and…
"Agapoula!" Thoösa was looking into her face, a mother's alarm in her expression.
Claudia sat up and cried out, hands going to her head. The headache throbbed. Thoösa pulled Claudia into her chest, so similar to the way Claudia had held the man in her dream and her son had stood at her side looking at her and…
Claudia pushed Thoösa away, leaped up from her bed, and stumbled to the doorway. She grabbed the slave that waited outside, always at her beck and call. "I want my husband. Get Pilatus now."
The girl looked startled, and peered past her at Thoösa for help.
"Now!" Claudia shouted, pushing the girl.
Thoösa's hand gripped her arm. "Pilatus was called again. Caiaphas returned."
Claudia whirled round, eyes wide. "With the criminal?"
Thoösa nodded. "A crowd is gathering in the Agora. I fear that…"
But Claudia did not hear anything further. She staggered to the window, ripping back the curtains to sight the Agora not far away from the palace. She heard voices, a cacophony louder than the typical sounds that emanated from the marketplace.
Claudia felt Thoösa step up beside her. "What do you fear?" she prompted the old woman.
"There will be a riot if the criminal is not dealt with swiftly."
Claudia turned, grasping Thoösa's sleeve. "He'll execute the man."
"That might be best for the city," Thoösa said, appearing suddenly tired.
"No." Claudia shook her head. "No. It won't be. It won't."
She raced to the door again. The girl flinched when she appeared but she ignored the slight and commanded her. "Send me a messenger and be quick." The girl hurried off.
Claudia began to pace the room, headache still throbbing, and bile rising in her throat, and the dream playing over and over in her mind.
"Agapoula?" Thoösa questioned.
"He was pleading with me. Begging me," Claudia mumbled, continuing to pace and rub at her temples.
"Who?"
"Lucius."
"Agapoula…Claudia."
Claudia halted in her steps and stared hard at the old woman. "It was him. He was there." Tears rose in her eyes. Thoösa took a step towards her. She held up her hand, forbidding the woman to come closer. She could see the disbelief and she abhorred it. Thoösa stood still.
"Domina?"
The messenger was at the door. Claudia rushed at him, looking him straight in the face. "Deliver my message to Pilatus. Word for word or your punishment will be severe."
The messenger bowed his head. "Yes, Domina."
"Tell Pilatus: Have nothing to do with that innocent man; I have suffered greatly as a result of a dream about him today. Repeat it."
The messenger repeated her words and then she had him do so twice more for confirmation. She sent him off. Pilatus would listen to her. He would. He must.
Pilatus did not return to her, but the crowd in the Agora eventually dispersed, or so she assumed since the tumult of buzzing voices lowered to a normal degree. Her husband must have taken care of the issue with the criminal, let him go and the crowd had nothing more to stoke its fervor. Peace in the city once more.
Claudia rubbed at the back of her neck. The headache had lessened perhaps a smidgeon, and had moved from her temples to the back, near her neck. No headache had ever lasted this long after a dream. She looked down at the plate in her lap, the lunch that had been brought to her and that she had picked at only. She wasn't hungry, only so very tired, but she didn't want to sleep, didn't want to chance another torturous dream.
Claudia rose to her feet. "Take this away," she ordered. "I wish to walk."
Slaves Thoösa had ordered to attend her did her bidding, whisking away the uneaten food and accompanying her from a distance as she made her way into the gardens. Thoösa herself had been recalled to her other work, supervision of the female slaves that had been brought from Caesarea.
Claudia walked slowly, breathing deeply, trying to ignore the ever-present ache. The sun was shining, the breeze was a perfect chill, and the gardens bloomed with green. Here and there, she stopped to caress a particularly beautiful plant. She had thought a bit of outside air would invigorate her, stave off the horrors drumming her brain. She sat down on a bench by a low wall and closed her eyes, pretending she wasn't in the Jewish holy city, but back home in her own private garden with the sea breeze lilting across her skin.
Her mind drifted. Images of Pilatus at his desk, worrying over finances and appointments and political scandals, of Thoösa faithfully serving day in and out, of her friends back home feasting and letting her drink away bitter memories, memories of…of…
Lucius was there again in her mind. She couldn't see him, but she knew he was there, felt he was there, and…something was wrong. Very wrong. Fear crunched her heart. She wanted to look at her son, desperately wanted to hold him. But she knew, somehow she knew, even the barest glimpse of him would destroy her. She wouldn't look. She wouldn't. But she did. She looked up inside her mind and there he was and oh…
Claudia heard herself scream at the sight of her son, her beloved son, naked and nailed to a cross. She screeched and wailed. "Take him down! Take him down!" And they did. They took him down and laid him in her arms. She beheld his bruised and broken and bloodied body and she cried and wept. And then it wasn't him anymore. It was the man, the Jewish man with the dark hair and the burnished skin.
Suddenly, Claudia didn't hold the man anymore. She stood beside him and beside a woman embracing him, weeping. She was Jewish by feature as well. Claudia's heart tore into pieces, broken for a grief she knew so well… The woman was his mother. A mother grieving for a dead son.
Claudia scuttled backwards, horrified, head thrumming, chest aching. She glanced up at the brutal cross, and a wooden notification that had been nailed at the top shone as if channeling the sun. Flaming words stood out against the light. She read the Latin: Iesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews.
"Domina?" a voice hissed into her dream. "Domina?"
Claudia's eyes popped open and she sat up abruptly. The back of her head pounded.
"The sky, Domina," the slave girl urged.
Claudia looked up. The sky had darkened. There were no clouds that she could see but no sun either. "What is…?"
"You must come inside, Domina." Fear glistened in the slave's eyes.
Fear…grief. Claudia left the bench and hurried, faltering with her hand to her head.
"Domina! This way."
No. Not that way. To her husband. Her husband who had betrayed her.
Claudia fell into Pilatus' official office, barely catching herself on the stool by the door. A soldier was there, reporting. Both of the men snapped their attention to her, one appearing surprised, the other immediately guilty. She stared at the guilty one.
"Marcus, you may go," Pilatus spoke quietly.
The soldier marched out, averting his eyes when he passed her. Pilatus lowered a tablet he had been holding and looked at the floor.
"You killed him," Claudia muttered through clenched teeth. "You killed him."
Pilatus slapped the tablet closed, and it clattered onto a side table as he jerked up his head. "What could I do? They were going to riot!"
"Even after I told you to leave him alone."
Pilatus coughed a harsh laugh. "You want me to set a criminal free on the word of my wife?"
Claudia lurched a few more steps, staring Pilatus down. "I dreamed of our son. He was in my arms. And then it was this criminal Jew. And then I saw him again. You crucified him. And even you called him King of the Jews."
The blood drained from Pilatus' face. "Who told you of the inscription?"
"No one. I saw it. In a dream."
Pilatus stepped backwards to a chair and slumped into it. Claudia relished the dismay that clouded his expression, a minute taste of the fear that had tortured her this day.
"You killed him," Claudia repeated. "As you killed our son."
Pilatus' jaw went taut, his eyes dangerously fierce. "Is that what you truly have believed all this time?"
"You took him to Rome and he came back ill."
"And how was that my fault?" Pilatus spat, voice tremoring.
"I told you he wasn't ready to travel. I told you—"
"Enough!" Pilatus shouted, rising to his feet, and turning his back to her.
"And I told you to leave the Jewish criminal alone. I told you—"
Pilatus whirled on her, grasping the cloth at her shoulders and yanking her towards him. "Lucius is dead! He's dead. I can't bring him back even if you order it, Claudia! He's dead. I didn't kill him and you didn't kill him. But we have to go on. Do you hear? We have to go on."
He let her go, shoving her as he did so. Claudia slid backwards, eyes wild in anger. "And the King of the Jews?"
"What King of the Jews?" Pilatus cried out. "The King of the Jews is Herod."
Lightning sliced through Claudia's head. She grit her teeth and tried to catch her breath. "He was innocent," she hissed.
"Innocent." Pilatus laughed again, but his gaze grew haunted. "Who can be innocent in a climate like this?" He threw up his hand. "A crowd was gathering. Caiaphas was down my throat. There was going to be rioting. And what would Tiberius say about that?"
Tears brimmed at the corners of Claudia's eyes. "You knew he was innocent."
Pilatus picked up the tablet, slinging it back open and letting his eyes roam over it. "I washed my hands of his blood. The blame is on Caiaphas."
"But—"
"No more," Pilatus ordered without looking at her. "It's done. The cause of an uproar is removed and the city is at peace."
Claudia's chin trembled. "I am not at peace."
"They're just dreams, Claudia."
"How can you say that? How can you—"
Pilatus' tone hardened. "They are. Just. Dreams."
He didn't believe it, Claudia thought. He couldn't believe it, not when he couldn't even look at her as he tried to convince her. "You…you…"
"Ah. Thoösa." Pilatus looked to the door and waved in Claudia's direction. Sure hands clasped her shoulders.
"Come. Come," the old Greek woman's soft voice beckoned her. Pilatus turned his attention back to the tablet.
Thoösa directed her back to her room. Claudia sat on the bed, refusing to be cajoled into lying down. The old servant sat next to her. Oddly, Claudia's headache seemed to be losing its hold, becoming as feeble as her spent body. Thoösa rubbed at her back. Claudia stared out the window that should have been full of light but was shrouded in darkness instead.
Time passed. How much, she didn't know. Thoösa stayed at her side, humming, holding her hand, now and then running her hands through her hair. Claudia briefly reflected how the servant knew her so well, knew when to speak and when to leave her to herself.
The sky grew even darker. The breeze from the window kicked up, spearing Claudia with a sharp chill. Shouts rang from the city. The bed rocked, shifting as the Praetorium shivered. Thoösa grasped Claudia's arm.
Claudia sat stiff backed and spoke with measured calm. "He's dead. Iesus the Nazarene. The Jewish God knows it. He's dead." And out there was a woman, a mother, soon to be grieving with her son's corpse in her arms. "Hold me, Thoösa."
Thoösa wrapped her arms around Claudia who kept staring out the window, at the darkness, at a world without her son and without a Jewish man named Iesus.
Author's Note: When Claudia quotes to convince Pilate of her dreams' validity, the quote is from The Odyssey, a text well known and respected at the time of the Roman Empire.
