The balcony was ten feet or so above the ground and only twenty yards away. My first reaction was to ignore his call, but there wasn’t very much stubborn bravado left in me after a sleepless night filled with self-pity and despair. They say that those who are drowning have their entire lives flash before them immediately before their death. I would have preferred it that way instead of the torturous hours I had spent dwelling on all the things I should have done and could have done with my life. I was afraid to die. I didn’t want to die! Was it Twain who had written that each person is born to one possession which outvalues all the others—his last breath?

“Matthias, can you hear me?” Pilate shouted once more.

I nodded in his direction.

“Tell me who you are and what you are doing here, and you will be punished and set free. Otherwise your blood will fall on the same stones that were red with the blood of your friend Jesus, and you will die on the spot where he was scourged!”

I walked toward the balcony, as far as my chain would allow, and yelled, “But if I win this contest, will I not be released? Under the laws of Tiberius, even slaves who fight in our Coliseum are freed when they are victorious.”

The sound of Pilate’s high-pitched cackle was drowned by loud guffaws from those legionaries standing close enough to hear our exchange. When the merriment subsided, Pilate rose and extended both palms in my direction. “We violate no laws of the emperor here, troublemaker! If you are victorious, you have my permission to walk out that gate behind you, and you may take your rabble-rousing friend with you.”

More laughter, suddenly interrupted by cheering from the opposite side of the parade grounds: Porcius had arrived, waving his arms and flexing his biceps for his comrades as he strutted confidently across the yard to his post and raised his fist in salute to his commanding officer.

The javelin sharpshooter never glanced in my direction as he stood, feet wide apart, and waited impatiently for the chain to be fastened to his ankle. Above his boots, laced with heavy leather straps to his knees, he wore only a loincloth and he seemed to be as large as Shem, God help me. Both his hair and his beard were long and unkempt, and when he smiled at one of the guards who had shouted down from atop the fortress wall, I could see, even from our distance apart, that he was almost toothless.