now that Rome has become master, no longer apply in every detail. Should
our Sanhedrin find this revolutionary Galilean guilty of base crimes and
sentence him to death, it would still be powerless to carry out its
sentence without the approval of Rome. I am here, O Excellency, to
petition the Procurator to approve our verdict and sentence. And I urge
you to do this quickly, in order that the man may be executed while it
is yet early and before all Jerusalem, and the Galileans in particular,
are astir. Then much commotion and bloodshed would be prevented and,” he
added with a suggestive smile, “there would be no necessity of any
report’s going to Rome.”
“But you wish me to condemn a man to death _before_ he has been tried?”
Pilate’s anger showed plainly in his frown.
“Indeed, no, Excellency,” the High Priest replied calmly. “We only wish
you to approve and order into execution the sentence of the Sanhedrin in
the event that _after_ he has been tried, he is judged guilty.”
Pilate shook his head. “No, I shall send no man to the cross or to death
by stoning until _I_ have tried him. To do so would be an unspeakable
breach of Rome’s system of justice.”
“But, Excellency, would you show your scorn of Israel’s highest court?”
“I would show only my determination to uphold Rome’s laws and
procedures. If you wish this man tried, then bring him before me at the
Procuratorium.” He bowed coldly. “And now, if the High Priest will
excuse me....”
The High Priest stood up as though to leave. “Indeed, Excellency, I too
am greatly fatigued,” he said, “but one more point detains me. A moment
ago, Procurator Pilate, did I not hear you say that on the morrow you
were sending Bar Abbas to the cross? If so, Excellency, have you not
already convicted him?”
Pilate’s smile was contemptuous as he, too, rose to his feet. “I did say
that, and I have no doubt that he will go to the cross. But not, O High
Priest, until he has been given trial, before he has been confronted by
witnesses who will testify to what they saw and heard as concerns those
charges that will be placed against him. I presume that many will appear
against this Bar Abbas and that he will be convicted. But I do not say
now that he will. I say only that he will be given a fair trial.” He
lifted a heavy fist and brought it forcefully down upon the surface of
his desk. “And so, by all the gods, will your Galilean!”
43
_... The knocking is insistent. Can it be that the Praetorian Guardsman
has been there a long time pounding on the door between the atrium and
the peristylium while I slowly awakened? Bona Dea, what can old Sejanus
want this time? Will he never cease hounding Longinus and me?_
_... Longinus. By the Bountiful Mother, maybe it’s Longinus returned
from Germania. Maybe he’s at the bedroom door opening on the
peristylium...._
“Just a moment, Centurion, until I get my robe!” Claudia sat up in bed,
rubbed her eyes, and shook her head to clear it. A narrow slash of
natural light showed through the not completely drawn draperies. It was
dawn. And burrowed in the pillow beside her was the close-cropped head
of the Centurion Longinus.
Now the knocking had begun again. But it came, Claudia realized, from
the other side of the door between her bedroom and Tullia’s. And though
insistent, the knocking was not loud. “Mistress! Mistress! Oh,
Mistress!”
She recognized her maid’s voice; Tullia was trying to awaken her without
making too much noise in the early morning stillness of the Palace of
the Herods. “Just a moment, little one,” she called out softly. At the
door she slid back the bolt. “But, Tullia,” she demanded, keeping her
voice low so that she would not awaken Longinus, “what are you doing
back so early? It must be hardly daylight. Why, little one....” she
paused, seeing the maid on the verge of tears.
“Oh, Mistress, he’s in grave danger!” Tullia burst out. “They’ve seized
him. We fear great harm may befall him. That’s why I have come back to
seek your help for him.” She was making an obvious effort to gain
control of herself; somewhat calmed, she continued. “I started from
Bethany at the first glimmering of light, almost as soon as we heard
that he had been taken. We’re so afraid, Mistress, that great harm will
come to him unless....”
“Let’s sit down”—Claudia’s tone was soothing—“and then quietly you can
tell me why you’re so afraid he’s going to suffer great injury. And who,
Tullia? You haven’t even told me his name.”
“The Galilean, Mistress; I thought you knew. Sometime during the night
some Temple guardsmen came and seized him in the Garden of Gethsemane;
he’d gone there with his little band to rest after eating the Passover
meal at the home of Mary of Cypress. They say it was one of his own band
who betrayed him, who told the Temple priests where he could be found
and arrested without there being a big stir. Of course there would have
been a great commotion if they had tried to take him anywhere near the
Temple; they wouldn’t have dared to do such a thing if....”
“But how do you know all this?” Claudia interrupted. “Maybe you’re
getting yourself upset without good reason.”
“No, it’s true, Mistress. Jesus and those of his immediate company,
along with his mother and certain other relatives, have been staying in
the Bethany neighborhood during the festival period,” Tullia revealed.
“Jesus himself lodged at the home of Lazarus and his sisters. But
yesterday afternoon the Master and the twelve men of his band went into
Jerusalem. That’s the last time Mary of Magdala saw him.” Her face was a
mask of pain and apprehension. “Then, early this morning, we were
awakened by several of his band who had come running back to Bethany in
great panic to report what had befallen him. All of them forsook him in
the garden when the soldiers appeared; even Simon, after he had slashed
out with his sword at one of the guardsmen, turned on his heel and ran,
too, they said.”
“But where did the soldiers take him?” Claudia asked. “And why have you
come to me?”
“They said there was talk that he was being taken before the High Priest
or else old Annas, Mistress. And we’re afraid that he may suffer a
terrible fate if he falls into the hands of the Temple priests. They’re
determined to kill him, Mistress.” She paused, eyes tearful. “I knew no
one else to whom I could turn for help, no one but you. I thought that
you might speak to the Procurator and he might rescue the Galilean
before they have him killed.”
“But don’t you know that they have no authority to execute the death
sentence until the Procurator has given approval?”
“Yes, but they’re so inflamed against him, Mistress, that they might
risk it. But if you could send a message to the Procurator....”
“He was probably up late into the night. To awaken him now with a
message might offend him, and that would be doing the Galilean more harm
than good. But Pilate usually returns to the palace before beginning his
morning duties; as soon as he does, I’ll lay before him this matter of
the Galilean’s arrest. Certainly no harm can come to him before Pilate
has had an opportunity to sit in judgment on him.”
44
This Passover season there would be only three burdened crosses on top
of the desolate Hill of the Skull, but they would be enough. The ugly
spectacle would provide a frightful ending to the Jews’ annual great
festival.
In other times in Palestine, Centurion Cornelius had been told, Rome had
moved swiftly—and with far more terrifying effectiveness—to dramatize
the utter futility of any province’s attempt to contend against the
mighty conqueror. In Galilee they still talked, though even now in
carefully guarded conversations, of that dreadful day at Sepphoris
hardly more than twenty years ago when the Roman general Varus had
crushed a rebellion and crucified two thousand Jewish insurrectionists.
Perhaps Pontius Pilate, who a week ago had sent him chasing the rebels
of the now leaderless Bar Abbas band, had tired of awaiting the
centurion’s return with more captives for the crosses; perhaps he had
already ordered to slow and agonizing deaths the revolutionaries’ leader
and the two followers captured with him. It might be that even now
countless pilgrims up for the Passover, drawn by a morbid fascination,
were gawking at the scourged, torn, and broken, unimaginably desecrated
bodies of the captured robber-Zealots. But Cornelius would provide no
additional victims for those crosses on the Hill of the Skull.
“And I’m glad,” he said aloud.
“What, Centurion? Glad?” Decius, riding beside him, had heard.
“I was just thinking aloud about this business of crucifying slaves and
depraved criminals. I was glad those four revolutionaries we cornered in
the Ephraim hills chose to fight to their deaths rather than surrender.
It’s better not having to take anybody back to Jerusalem to be nailed up
on a cross.”
“It’s not one of the most pleasant assignments a soldier gets, being on
a crucifixion detail,” Decius agreed. “I’ve been on three, and I’ll
never forget those poor devils, the first one especially, maybe just
because he was my first. He was a boy in Germania, hardly sixteen, but a
sturdy, strong fellow. I can still see him, Centurion. He was fair and
his hair was the color of ripened grain, and his eyes were as blue as
the sky. He had killed one of our soldiers, they said.”
“Probably after our soldier had killed the boy’s parents and raped his
sister.”
“I can’t say as to that; you could be right, Centurion. But our
commander ordered him to the cross, and I was put on the detail. We took
that boy and tied him to the low stake and scourged him until he was a
bloody pulp, Centurion. I can still see those bone-tipped whips slashing
that white skin and flicking off bits of flesh, and one of them got him
in the eye and knocked the ball out of the socket; it was hanging down
when we nailed him up.” Decius shook his head ruefully. “By the gods,
Centurion, do you know that boy even then fought us and cursed us as
long as he had a hand or foot loose, and when we got all four spiked
down he tried to butt us with his head. He was a strong one, that
fellow; I remember he didn’t die until well along in the second day, and
then he was spitting at us and cursing us almost to his last breath.”
Decius stared thoughtfully for a moment at the road unwinding ahead.
“Many times I’ve dreamed about that boy, Centurion, and I can still see
him plainly and hear his screaming and cursing. It’s not a pleasant
dream. I’d rather dream about those yellow-haired women in Germania.”
Cornelius nodded his head solemnly. “Yet we Romans call ourselves modern
and civilized people.” They rode on in silence for a few moments. “Maybe
we did well in being away from Jerusalem most of the week of the feast,”
Cornelius finally commented. “Maybe we escaped being assigned by the
Procurator to a crucifixion detail.”
“I hope so; I’ve no stomach for serving on one again,” Decius agreed.
“You know, Centurion, I’ve just been thinking that very likely many of
Bar Abbas’ cutthroats are right up there in Jerusalem in that Passover
crowd. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of them should try to rescue
those three Zealots.”
Cornelius nodded. “It wouldn’t surprise me either. I suspect that most
of them, in fact, doubled back that night and beat us into Jerusalem and
got themselves quickly lost in the surge of Passover pilgrims. And only
the gods know how many other Zealots are swarming all over the city with
their daggers sharpened for our throats.”
It was almost midday when they moved through the defile between the
boulders where a week before they had been waylaid by the Zealot
chieftain. This time Cornelius sent a scouting party ahead to
reconnoiter. But no marauder was encountered.
In the level beyond the rocks the century paused to eat and rest. But
not for long. Soon Cornelius gave the order to reassemble in marching
formation. The sun was straight overhead, and the air was warm and
heavy; a stifling stillness presaged a violent storm. “I’d like to get
into Antonia before it breaks,” the centurion observed to Decius, as
they mounted their horses. “Look.” He pointed off toward the southwest
where an immense angry black cloud hovered low. “By mighty Jove, it must
be already dark in Jerusalem.”
45
The tall Galilean arose from the steps before the Beautiful Gate and
bending over, caught the hand of the prostrate, frightened woman.
“Neither do I condemn you, my sister,” he said gently, as he helped her
to her feet and she lifted tearful, penitent eyes to him. “Go, and sin
no more.”
“He is truly a good man, Tullia, a noble man of warm heart, a generous,
forgiving, good man. But a god? No, little one.” They were watching the
woman as she neared the corner of the Chel toward the Fortress of
Antonia. “There are no gods.”
The woman went out of their sight around the Soreg. They turned to look
again toward the Galilean at the marble steps.
But the steps had disappeared, and the Beautiful Gate, and beyond it the
Great Altar. Only the man stood there, and his arms were bound behind
him now, and where the Chel had been was the Procurator’s tribunal.
Solemn but unafraid, he faced the judge. At his back the Temple leaders
who a moment ago had dragged the poor woman before him were shouting
execrations upon him and demanding of the Procurator his crucifixion.
“Crucify him!” they were screaming. “Crucify him!”
And in the magistrate’s chair ... by the Great Mother, there was Pontius
Pilate!
Pilate, his round face livid with anger, was remonstrating with the
priests. “But shall I crucify your King? Shall I crucify the King of the
Jews?”
Crucify Jesus of Galilee?
“No, Pilate! No! No!” She was running toward the Procurator to stand
beside the Galilean. “No, my husband, have nothing to do with this good
man!”
_... But Pilate does not see me or hear me. Nor does the Galilean. Am I
a disembodied spirit? But there are no spirits. Oh, Tullia. But Tullia
neither hears nor sees me...._
“Then take him yourselves and crucify him. His death be your
responsibility.” Pilate was speaking again. “I am free of his blood.”
“No! No! No, Pilate! You are sending an innocent man to his death! You
can never disavow responsibility! Oh, hear me, my husband! Hear me!”
But the Praetorium and its tribunal, the tall, bound Galilean, the
railing priests and their blood-hungry supporters were suddenly
vanished.
The great throne room of the Imperial Palace in Rome was strangely
darkened. She could hear the voice of the Emperor, but she could hardly
distinguish his features. Was he her stepfather Tiberius, incredibly old
now, or a younger Emperor? The voice was somewhat strange, too. “You
have failed miserably,” the voice was saying. “You have been rash and
stubbornly determined to govern in accordance with your own whims, you
have not only permitted, but you have, through your intemperate
governing, created much turmoil and insurrection within your province;
in short, your rule has been a travesty of Roman administration.” The
voice paused. “But I shall not order you executed, as you deserve.
Instead, I decree that you be banished, forthwith and forever....”
The voice had faded out as the light came up, and she saw standing with
bowed head, old and bent and his once round face thinned and haggard and
hopeless, Pontius Pilate.
“No! No! If you had only listened....”
But no one heard her, and the great chamber was dark, and not a sound
came to her out of the stillness.
“Oh, by the Great Mother! By all the gods, great and small. Oh,
Galilean!”
Now as she stood immobile and weightless in the blackness and silence,
she began to sense a luminosity thinning the darkness below, and looking
down she saw a great way off a point of light that spread and lifted and
came up in ever widening circles to illuminate the heights about her.
For she was standing on the summit of a great mountain, higher even than
the sun-baked granite bluffs on which Machaerus sat above the Dead Sea,
and far below she could discern the imprisoned, restless waters of a
mountain-rimmed small lake.
Then, as she raised her eyes from the waters and looked across toward an
opposite peak, she saw him. He stood, bent and shrunken and old with the
weight of centuries, on a jagged thrust of rock that came out from the
mountain to overhang the agitated surface of the lake. He was looking
down at the waters; the light was reflected from a head completely bald,
and it played on cheek bones guarding cheeks long sunken, so that his
head even in life appeared to have dried away to a skull, and only long
dewlaps hanging down showed signs of animation.
“No! No! It cannot be!”
But she knew it was, though Pontius Pilate had shriveled into a pitiful
husk of the vain and pompous Procurator he had been.
In the same moment she heard voices, and looking around, she saw people
on the slopes of the mountain, coming up, pushing outward, swelling, and
growing until all the mountain was filled with people, and they were of
all races and times and colors and tongues. But strangely enough, she
could understand their words, Roman and Greek and Egyptian and the
tongues of the yellow-haired sons of Germania and the dark-haired women
of Gaul, and even the babblings of the barbarians in faraway Britannia,
and the curious utterances of the many unborn strange peoples of places
beyond the as yet uncharted seas. And each in his own way was saying
what all the others were saying.
The man on the precipice appeared not to see or hear the people; he
seemed preoccupied, fearful, oblivious of everything about him, and
struggling with the burden of some monstrous inner distress. He raised
his hands and held them before his face, and then it was that she saw
they were red to the wrists with the color of blood freshly spilled; he
rubbed them together, as though struggling fiercely to scrub the blood
away; he lowered them as if to dip them in a basin, then lifted them
again to study them, his bloodless face, in contrast to the hands, a
shade of ashen horror.
But the frenzied washing had done no good; the hands shone fiery red.
Despairing, Pilate dropped them to his sides and stepped to the very
edge of the yawning gulf. “I didn’t know!” he cried. “By all the gods, I
didn’t know.” He raised his cavernous face and with eyes wide looked
into the void. “O God of the Jews”—his shrunken head swayed on the
wrinkled neck—“had I but known. Had I but known....” His words whispered
into silence, and he closed his eyes.
“Don’t! No! No!” she screamed. “No, don’t!”
She forced herself to look down.
Pilate’s lean frame was dropping, slowly turning and twisting, toward
the angry waters; his bony arms and legs were thrust out stiffly from
the shroud of his too large toga, which streamed above the plummeting
body, flapping furiously in the wind. Rigid with horror, staring into
the abyss, she saw the body strike, heard the sickening blob, and
watched it gradually disappear.
But the waters would not grant oblivion. Angrily they flung the broken,
thin body back to the surface, and to Claudia, watching in frozen
fascination, it seemed to be twisting and eddying in continuous
agitation above the seething waters. Looking more closely, her eyes
rooted to the scene in morbid horror, she saw white arms thrust upward
and hands still reddened, cleansed not one tint by their plunge into the
watery depths. Now suddenly the hands seemed detached from the
stiffening arms, and alive; like wounded rodents seeking haven in a dark
fissure among the rocks, they were feeling their way along the ascending
stony slope toward her, and in that dreadful instant there lifted to her
also the babble of countless voices in many tongues blending once again
into a swelling chorus. The light breaking slowly above the mountain
showed the plain below and the steep rises teeming with a multitude
drawn from all races and nations.
On the faces of some she read swift anger and deep hate, and their fists
were lifted skyward and their voices raised in execrations; others
revealed only indifference, and their words were but the prattled
monotony of chanted creed; but here and there on the level and along the
slopes she saw those whose words fitted without disharmony into the
growing chorus but whose faces as they uttered them revealed sorrow,
deep pity, and a forgiving spirit.
She closed her eyes against the vision of the myriad chanting faces, but
she heard their voices and she understood their many tongues ...
“Crucified by Pontius Pilate ... Crucified ... suffered under Pontius
Pilate ... suffered ... suffered ... Pontius Pilate....”
“No! No!” She opened her eyes to see the mountain cleared of the people,
the vision gone, the voices silenced. But there on the ledge at her
feet, rubbing one against the other, endlessly, eternally, fruitlessly
seeking to be cleansed, were the two gory, dismembered hands.
“No! Back! Back! Go back!” She whirled about to rid herself of the
frightening apparition, and burying her face, eyes shut, against her
crossed arms, she leaned down upon the cool hardness of the boulder
beside her. “No! No!” she sobbed. “Get back! Go! Please go!” Would those
hands, the horrible thought came suddenly to her, come closer? Would
they attempt to exact vengeance upon her? Might they even now be
creeping upon her to fasten cold, bloody fingers about her neck, to
choke the life...?
“Get back! No! No!” she screamed, as she freed an arm to beat frantic
fist against the stone. “Don’t touch me! Tullia! Longinus! Oh,
Longinus....”
“Claudia! By great Jove!” The centurion, sitting up fully awake, shook
her hard. “Claudia! Wake up, woman! Wake up! Come out of it! What on
earth....”
She opened her eyes. “Longinus! Oh, by all the gods, it was terrible,
terrible!” Nor was the terror completely dispelled; in her eyes, wide,
staring, her fear still spoke. Her shoulders shook in an involuntary
shudder.
He pulled her up into a sitting position and grasped her hand. “But it
was only a nightmare, Claudia. You’re all right. You were just
dreaming.” She blinked and ventured a thin smile. “You were screaming
like a wild woman and beating the bed with your fist.” His excited
concern gave way to a grin. “It must have been a bloodcurdling dream.”
“Oh, Longinus”—she clenched her eyelids tightly against the light
streaming in through the window—“it was the most horrible dream I ever
had, the most frightful thing anyone could imagine. I dreamed ... oh,
it’s too horribly near; I can’t tell you now.” Still shaking, she turned
to snuggle within the haven of his arms. “Bona Dea....”
A sudden light knocking on the door interrupted her. Tullia entered to
ask softly if anything was wrong.
“It was only a nightmare, little one,” Claudia answered, leaning back on
her pillow. “It was so vivid, so frightening. But I’m all right now.
I’ll call you when I need you.”
“Was it about what I told you, Mistress, the Galilean?” Her question and
tone of voice betrayed Tullia’s deep concern.
“Yes ... about him and Pilate; horrible, horrible. I....”
“Oh, Mistress, could it have been a message to you, a vision sent...?”
“From your Jewish Yahweh, perhaps?” Claudia affected an uneasy laugh.
“No, it was a dream, little one, that’s all. Get back to your bed; you
must still be weary.”
Claudia saw Longinus’ look of puzzlement. “Tullia returned late in the
night from Bethany and reported that the High Priest had schemed the
arrest of the rabbi of Galilee. She was afraid he might prevail on
Pilate this morning to agree to the crucifixion of the Galilean.”
“Crucifixion? By all the gods, on what charge?”
“That he seeks to overthrow Rome.”
“The Galilean? But he’s no revolutionary. Surely Pilate knows that.”
“Yes, surely he must.” She frowned. “But you know how Pilate fears the
High Priest and his Temple crowd, how he’s always afraid they’ll send
reports to Sejanus.”
“And you dreamed that he had sent the Galilean to the cross?”
“Yes. It was all confused, all horrible.” She sat up precipitately and
looked toward the window. “Bona Dea, it must be late. And Pilate begins
his trials soon after daybreak. Mother Ceres, I do wonder....” She
sprang from the bed and drew on her robe. “Tullia!” she called. “Fetch
me a wax tablet and stylus! Hurry, little one! I must send Pilate a
message.”
46
The sun was lifting above the Mount of Olives when Pilate’s orderly
awakened him from heavy sleep. “Sir, the High Priest Caiaphas and others
of the Temple leadership,” he said apologetically, “insisted that I
inform you that they have arrived with the prisoner about whom he spoke
with you last night. They said that they were most anxious for you to
proceed at once to dispose of the case.”