‘You don’t understand, Prefect,’ Symeon replied intensely. ‘We loved Jehoshua. We all did. But we loved Judaea more. We had to save our people. What is the life of one man, however much he is loved, when weighed against the fate of an entire nation?’ He paused and sipped from his glass. ‘So we prepared a message, telling the authorities where they could find Jehoshua. There was only one man close to us whom we could trust to deliver the message, the third friend in our circle that I told you of earlier. His name was Judas. Even so, we did not dare to tell him what was in the message. So Judas took the message to the Sanhedrin. Jehoshua was arrested, tried, tortured and executed. His followers were stunned. Too stunned to react to events. Before the day was out the Roman troops were on the streets arresting the ringleaders and disarming and dispersing their followers. I managed to escape, with Bannus, through the sewers. Once we got out of Jerusalem we split up. He went north to continue the struggle. I went south, to Petra. For a while I was desolated, too ashamed of what we did, to care about anything. But slowly, I built a new life for myself and began to travel, to rebuild my connections with the surviving members of the movement, like Miriam. I did not realise at first that I had changed. I had been young and inexperienced and had never seen a battle in those days. To think that I ever believed we could beat the legions!’ He shook his head. ‘The romance of great causes and the folly of youth just leads to death. Eventually I came to realise that Jehoshua had been right in the end; we could not defeat Rome with swords, only with words, with ideas. Bannus never accepted that.’

‘And Judas?’ Cato asked. ‘What became of him?’

Symeon bowed his head in shame. ‘As soon as he realised what had been contained in the message, he hanged himself.’ Symeon’s voice trembled. ‘I’ve never been able to forgive myself for that . . .So now you know my story.’ Abruptly, he rose from his couch, bowed his head and quickly walked back into his house.

Macro watched him go, then turned to Cato with a pitying expression. ‘This place is one endless bloody tragedy.The sooner we finish the job and get out of here the better. I’ve had enough of it. I’m sick of them. All of them.’

Cato did not reply. He was thinking of Yusef. Now he was more determined than ever that the boy must be rescued from Bannus and returned to Miriam. Only then could that small fragment of the cycle of destruction and despair be broken.