Except for exceedingly thin and pale lips, his small unlined face had no distinguishing features and his pointed pure-white beard looked like many others I had seen in the lobby and the Temple. Across his chest was a tight-fitting vest, woven of gold and blue threads tied over a shirt of lustrous red-dyed linen above matching breeches. On his child-sized feet were gold mesh slippers. An ascetic in the garb of royalty.

When the clerk finally retreated from the room, Caiaphas Immediately resumed our conversation as if it had never been interrupted. A developed skill of the good executive. “How long is it since you have seen Vitellius?” he asked casually.

“Three months—four, perhaps.” I lied uneasily, wondering how I could change the subject before I trapped myself.

“He has been a fair and understanding governor to our people. It must give him great pleasure to know that the provinces under his command, including this one, will finally get the recognition they deserve throughout the empire, when your work is circulated.”

“I hope that I do not disappoint him,” I said.

“But Matthias, with all the great kings and warriors and prophets that fill this nation’s past, I cannot understand why a man like this Jesus is deserving of even a single word from your pen.”

I started to reply but hesitated. Joseph had taken me this far with his fictions about me; should I go the rest of the way? And would it work? I inhaled and said, with my best straight face, “It was at the suggestion of Vitellius that I initiated my inquiry about Jesus.”

“Vitellius?” His voice broke. “But why? For what reason? The name of Jesus is no more than a flyspeck beside the names of our great prophets.”

“Your excellency, I know that Vitellius values your opinions highly, but on this matter he apparently differs. He explained, when I last visited him, that always in the past, whenever a rebel movement got out of hand in this country, the most certain way to put an end to it was to hang its leader on a wooden cross. He said this had not happened when Jesus was executed; on the contrary, six years after Pilate crucified him the movement has grown so large that it even overflows this country’s borders and thrives in Antioch, beneath the governor’s nose. He said that any man who could inspire that kind of following, long after his death, may have been the greatest prophet ever born here, and so he suggested that I might want to include the Jesus story along with the others I write.”

For a fleeting moment I thought I saw a flash of fear in the eyes of my host. He leaned on the small onyx tabletop and asked, “What have you managed to learn so far about this … this Jesus?”