IX.
In the apartment of Claudia Procula, Mary and the wife of the procurator
stood face to face.
The apartment itself overlooked Jerusalem. Beneath was an open space tiled
with little oblong stones, red, yellow, and blue; the blue predominating.
On either side the colossal white wings of the palace stretched to a park,
very green in the sunlight, cut by colonnades in which fountains were, and
surrounded by a marble wall that was starred with turrets and fluttered
with doves. The Temple, which, from its cressets, radiated to the hills
beyond a glare of gold, was not as fair nor yet as vast as this. Within
its gates an army could manœuvre; in its banquet-hall a cohort could have
supped. It was Herod’s triumph, built subsequent to the Temple, to show
the world, perhaps, that to surpass a masterpiece he had only to conceive
another.
To it now and then, for a week or more, the procurator descended from his
residence by the sea. He preferred the latter; the day was freer there,
life less cramped. But during festival times, when the fanatic Jews were
apt to be excited and need the chill of a curb, it was well for him and
his soldiery to be on hand. And so on this occasion he had come, and with
him his wife, Claudia Procula, and the tetrarch Antipas, who had joined
them on the way.
Antipas and his retinue occupied the Ægrippeum, the north wing of the
palace, while in the Cæsareum, the wing that leaned to the south, was
Pilate, his wife and body-guard.
And now on this clear morning the sweet-faced patrician, Claudia Procula,
with perfectly feminine curiosity was looking into the drawn features of
the Magdalen, and wondering whence her rumored charm could come.
“I will do my best,” she said, at last, in answer to an anterior request.
And calling a servant, she wrote on a tablet a word for Pilate’s eye.
Mary moved to the portico. The variegated tiles of the quadrangle were
nearly covered now. A flight of wide, low steps led to the main entrance
of the palace, and there a high seat of enamelled ebony had been placed.
In it Pilate sat, in his hand the staff of office. Beside him were his
assessors, members of his suite, and Calcol, a centurion. On one of the
steps Caiaphas stood, near him the elders of the college. Below was the
Christ, bound and guarded. Across the quadrangle was a line of soldiery,
behind it a mob.
The helmets, glancing mail, short skirts, and bare legs of the Romans
contrasted refreshingly with the blossoming garments, effeminate girdles,
frontlets, and horned blue bonnets of the priesthood. And in the riot of
color and glint of steel the Christ, bound as he was, looked, in the
simplicity of his seamless robe, the descendant of a larger sphere. Above,
to the left, Antipas, aroused by the clamor, leaned from a portico.
Opposite where the sunlight fell Mary held her cloak about her.
Caiaphas, a hand indicating Jesus, his head turned to Pilate, was
formulating a complaint. Not indeed that the prisoner had declared himself
a divinity. There were far too many gods in the menagerie of the Pantheon
for a procurator to be the least disturbed at the rumor of a new one. It
was the right to rule, that attribute of the Messiah, on which he intended
the gravamen of the charge should rest. But he began circuitously, feeling
the way, in Greek at that, with an accent which might have been improved.
“And so,” he concluded, “in many ways he has transgressed the Law.”
“Why don’t you judge him by it, then?” asked Pilate, grimly.
A servant approached with a tablet. The procurator glanced at it, looked
up at the man, and motioned him away.
“My lord governor, we have. The Sanhedrim, having found him guilty, has
sentenced him to death. But the Sanhedrim, as you know, may not execute
the sentence. The Senate has deprived us of that right. It is for you, as
its legate, to order it done.”
Pilate sneered. “I can’t very well, until I know of what he is guilty.
What crime has he committed—written a letter on the Sabbath, or has he
been caught without his phylacteries?”
“He has declared himself Israel’s king!”
“Ah!” And Pilate smiled wearily. “You are always expecting one; why not
take him?”
“Why not, my lord? Because it is treason to do so.”
Pilate nodded with affected approval. “I admire your zeal.” And with a
glance at the prisoner, he added: “You have heard the accusation; defend
yourself. What!” he continued, after a moment, “have you nothing to say?”
Caiaphas exulted openly. The corners of his mouth had the width and
cruelty, and his nostrils the dilation, of a wolf.
“My lord,” he cried, “his silence is an admission.”
“Hold your tongue! It is for me to question.” And therewith Pilate gave
the high-priest a look which was tantamount to a knee pressed on the
midriff. He glanced again at the tablet, then at the prisoner.
“Tell me, do you really claim to be king?”
“Is it your idea of me?” the Christ asked; and in his bearing was a
dignity which did not clash with the charge; “or have others prompted
you?”
“But I am not a Jew,” Pilate retorted. “The matter only interests me
officially. It is your hierarchy that bring the charge. Why have they?
What have you done? Tell me,” he continued, in Latin, “do you think
yourself King?”
“_Tu dixisti_,” Jesus answered, and smiled as he had before, very gravely.
“But my royalty is not of the earth.” And with a glance at his bonds, one
which was so significant that it annulled the charge, he added, still in
Latin, “I am Truth, and I preach it.”
Pilate with skeptical indulgence shook his head. Truth to him was an
elenchicism, an abstraction of the Platonists, whom in Rome he had
respected for their wisdom and avoided with care. He turned to Caiaphas.
The latter had been regretting the absence of an interpreter. This
amicable conversation, which he did not understand, was not in the least
to his liking, and as Pilate turned to him he frowned in his beard.
“I am unable to find him guilty,” the procurator announced. “He may call
himself king, but every philosopher does the same. You might yourself, for
that matter.”
“A philosopher, this mesîth!” Caiaphas gnashed back. “Why, he seduces the
people; he incites to sedition; he is a rebel to Rome. It is for you, my
lord, to see the empire upheld. Would it be well to have another complaint
laid before the Cæsar? Ask yourself, is this Galilean worth it?”
The thrust was as keen and as venomous as the tooth of a rat. Pilate had
been rebuked by the emperor already; he had no wish to incur further
displeasure. Sejanus, the emperor’s favorite, to whom he owed his
procuratorship, had for suspected treason been strangled in a dumb dungeon
only a little before. Under Tiberius there was quiet, a future historian
was to note; and Pilate was aware that, should a disturbance occur, the
disturbance would be quelled, but at his expense.
An idea presented itself. “Did I understand you to say he is a Galilean?”
he asked.
“Yes,” Caiaphas answered, expecting, perhaps, the usual jibe that was
flung at those who came from there. “Yes, he is a Nazarene.”
“Hm. In that case I have no jurisdiction. The tetrarch is my guest; take
your prisoner to him.”
“My lord,” the high-priest objected, “our law is such that if we enter the
palace we cannot officiate at the Passover to-night.”
Pilate appeared to reflect. “I suppose,” he said at last, “I might ask him
whether he would care to come here. In which case,” he added, with a
gesture of elaborate courtesy, “you may remain uncontaminated where you
are. Ressala!”
An official stepped forward; an order was given; he disappeared. Presently
a massive throne of sandalwood and gold was trundled out. Caiaphas had
seen it before, and in it—Herod.
“The justice that comes from there,” he muttered, “is as a snake that
issues from a tomb.”
His words were drowned in the clamors of the crowd. The sun had crossed
the zenith; in its rays the waters that gushed from the fountain-mouths of
bronze lions fell in rainbows and glistened in great basins that glistened
too. There was sunlight everywhere, a sky of untroubled blue, and from the
Temple beyond came a glare that radiated from Olivet to Bethlehem.
Pilate was bored. The mantle which Mary wore caught his eye, and he looked
at her, wondering how she came in his wife’s apartment, and where he had
seen her before. Her face was familiar, but the setting vague. Then at
once he remembered. It was at Machærus he had seen her, gambling with the
emir, while Salomè danced. She was with Antipas, of course. He looked
again; she had gone.
The Sanhedrim consulted nervously. The new turn of affairs was not at all
to their liking. The clamors of the mob continued. Once a fanatic pushed
against a soldier. There was a thud, a howl, and a mouth masked with
liquid red gasped to the sun and was seen no more.
Behind the procurator came a movement. The officials massed about the
entrance parted in uneven ranks, and in the great vestibule beyond,
Antipas appeared. Pilate rose to greet him. The elders made obeisance. The
tetrarch moved forward and seated himself in his father’s throne. At his
side was Pahul, the butler, balancing himself flamingowise on one leg, his
bold eyes foraging the priests.
Caiaphas formulated the complaint anew, very majestically this time, and,
thinking perhaps to overawe the tetrarch, his voice assumed the authority
of a guardian of the keys of heaven, a chamberlain of the sceptres of the
earth.
Antipas ignored him utterly. He plucked at his fan-shaped beard, and
stared at the Christ. He could see now he bore no resemblance to Iohanan.
There was nothing of the hyena about him, nor of the prophet either.
Evidently he was but a harmless vagabond, skilled in simples, if report
were true; perhaps a thaumaturge. And it was he whom he had feared and
fancied might be that Son of David for whom a star was created, whom the
magi had visited, whom his father had sought to destroy, and whom now from
his father’s own throne he himself was called upon to judge! He shook his
head, and in the sunlight the indigo with which his hair was powdered made
bright blue motes.
“I say——”
Just beyond, where the assessors stood, Mary suddenly appeared. He stopped
abruptly; for more than a year he had not seen her. Pahul had told him she
had gone to Rome. If she had, he reflected, the journey had not improved
her appearance. Then for the moment he dismissed her, and returned to the
Christ.
“See here: somebody the other day told me you worked miracles. I have
wanted to see one all my life. Gratify me, won’t you? Oh, something very
easy to begin with. Send one of the guards up in the air, or turn your
bonds into bracelets.”
The Christ did not seem to hear. Pahul laughed and held to the throne for
support. Antipas shrugged his shoulders.
“He looks harmless enough,” he said. “Why not let him go?”
Caiaphas glowered, and his fingers twitched. “He claims to be king!”
At this statement the tetrarch laughed too. He gave an order to Pahul, who
vanished with a grin.
“He has jeered at the Temple your father built,” Caiaphas continued. “He
has declared he could destroy it and rebuild a better one, in three days
at that.”
“He is king, then, but of fools.”
“And he has called you a fox,” Caiaphas added, significantly.
“He doesn’t claim to be one himself, does he?”
“He is guilty of treason, and it is for you, his ruler, to sentence him.”
“Not I. The blood of kings is sacred. Pahul, make haste!”
The butler, reappearing, held in his hand the glittering white vestment of
a candidate. The tetrarch took it and held it in air.
“Here, put this on him, and let his subjects admire him to their hearts’
content.”
“Antipas, you disgrace your purple!”
At the exclamation, the Sanhedrim, the guards, the assessors, the
officials, Pilate himself, everyone save the prisoner, turned and looked.
On the colored pavement Mary stood, her face very pale.
The tetrarch flushed mightily; anger mounted into his shifting eyes. For a
moment the sky was blood-red; then he recovered himself and answered
lightly:
“It seems to me, my dear, that you take things with a high hand. It may be
that you forget yourself.”
“I take them from where I am,” she cried. “As for forgetfulness, remember
that my grandfather was satrap of Syria, my father after him, while
yours——”
“Yes, yes, I dare say. He is not in power now; I am.”
“Not here, Antipas, nor in Rome. I appeal to Pilate.”
The tetrarch rose from the throne. The elders whispered together. Pilate
visibly was perplexed. Remembering Mary as he did, he looked upon the
incident as a family quarrel, one in which it would be unseemly for him to
interfere, and which none the less disturbed the decorum of his court.
Caiaphas edged up to the tetrarch, but the latter brushed him aside.
“The hetaira is right,” he exclaimed. “I am not in power here. If I were,
she should be lapidated.”
And, preceded by the butler, Antipas passed through the parting ranks to
the vestibule beyond.
The perplexity of the procurator increased. He did not in the least
understand. To him Mary stood in the same relation to Antipas that
Cleopatra had to Herod. There had been a feud between the tetrarch and
himself, one recently mended, and which he had no wish to renew. Yet
manifestly Antipas was aggrieved, and his own path in the matter by no
means clear.
“Bah!” he muttered, in the consoling undertone of thought, “what are their
beastly barbarian manners to me?”
These reflections Caiaphas interrupted.
“We are waiting, my lord, for the sentence to be pronounced.”
The tone he used was not, however, indicative of patience, and in
conjunction with the incident that had just occurred it irritated and
jarred. Besides, Pilate did not care to be prompted. It was for him to
speak first. He strangled an oath, and, gathering some fringe of the
majesty of Rome, he announced very measuredly:
“You have brought this man before me as a rebel. I have examined him and
find no ground for the charge. His ruler, the tetrarch, has also examined
him, and by him too he has been acquitted. But in view of the fact that he
appears to have contravened some one or another of your laws I order him
to be scourged and to be liberated.”
With that he turned to the prisoner. During the entire proceedings the
attitude of Jesus had not altered. He stood as a disinterested spectator
might—one whom chance had brought that way and there hemmed in—his eyes on
remote, inaccessible horizons, the tongue silent, the head a little
raised.
“Scourging, my lord,” Caiaphas interjected, “is fit and proper, but,” he
continued, one silk-gloved hand uplifted, “our law prescribes death. Only
an enemy to Tiberius would prevent it.”
At the veiled menace Pilate gnawed his under lip. He had no faith at all
in the loyalty of the hierarch; at any other time the affection the latter
manifested for the chains he bore would have been ludicrous and nothing
else. But at the moment he felt insecure. There were Galileans whom he had
sacrificed, Judæans whom he had slaughtered, Samaritans whom he had
oppressed, an embassy might even now be on its way to Rome; he thought
again of Sejanus, and, with cause, he hesitated. Yet of the inward
perturbation he gave no outward sign.
“On this day,” he said at last, “it is customary that in commemoration of
your nation’s delivery out of Egypt I should release a prisoner to you.
There are three others here, among them Jesus Barabba.”
Then, for support perhaps, he looked over at the clamoring mob.
“I will leave the choice to the people.”
A wind seemed to raise the elders; they scattered through the court like
leaves. “Have done with the Nazarene,” cried one. “He would lead you
astray,” insinuated another. “He has violated the Law,” exclaimed a third.
And, filtering through the soldiery into the mob without, they exhorted
and prayed and coerced. “Ask for Barabba; denounce the blasphemer. Trust
to the Sanhedrim. We are your guides. Let him atone for his crimes. The
God of your fathers commands that you condemn. Demand Barabba; uphold your
nation. To the cross with the Nazarene!”
“Whom do you choose?” shouted Pilate.
And the pleb of Jerusalem shouted back as one man, “Barabba!”
At the moment Pilate fancied himself in an amphitheatre, the arena filled
with beasts. There were the satin and stripes of the panther, the yellow
of treacherous eyes, the gnash of fangs, the guttural rumble, the
deafening yell, the scent of blood, and above, the same blue tender sky.
“What of the prisoner?” he called.
A roar leapt back. “Sekaph! Sekaph! Let him be crucified.”
Pilate had fronted a rabble before, and in two minutes had turned that
rabble into so many dead flies, the legs in the air. He shook his head,
and told himself he was not there to be coerced.
“Release Barabba,” he ordered. “And as for the prisoner, take him to the
barracks and have him scourged.”
“Brute!” cried a voice that lifted him as a blow might from his ebony
chair. “Pilate, though you are a plebeian, why show yourself a slave?”
And Mary, with the strength of anger, brushed through the encircling
officials and towered before him, robed in wrath.
“Ah, permit me,” he answered; “you are singularly unjust.”
“Prove me so, and countermand the order that you gave.”
As she spoke she adjusted her mantle, which had become disarranged, and
looked him from head to foot, measuring him as it were, and finding him,
visibly, very small.
Already the prisoner had been led away, and beyond, in the barracks, was
the whiz of jagged leather that lacerated, rebounded, and lacerated again.
“I will not,” he answered. “What I have ordered, I have ordered. As for
you——”
There had come to her that look which sibyls have. “Pilate,” she
interrupted, “you are powerful here, I know, but”—and her hand shot out
like an arrow from a bow—“over there vultures are circling; in your power
is a corpse. What the vultures scent, I see.”
So abrupt and earnest was the gesture that unconsciously Pilate found
himself looking to where she seemed to point. He lowered his eyes in
vexation. Wrangling with a woman was not to his taste.
“There, there,” he said, much as one might to a fretful child; “don’t
throw stones.”
“I have but one; it is Justice, and that I keep to hurl at you.”
The procurator’s mouth twitched ominously. “My dear,” he said, “you are
too pretty to talk that way; it spoils the looks. Besides, I have no time
to listen.”
“Tiberius has and will.”
Pilate nodded; it was the third time he had heard the threat that day.
“There are many rooms in his palace,” he answered, with covert
significance.
“Yes, I know it. There are many, as you say. But there is one I will
enter. On the door stands written The Future, and behind it, Pilate, is
your death.”
The Roman, goaded to exasperation, sprang to his feet. An expression which
Antipas had used occurred to him. “Away with the hetaira,” he cried; and
he was about, it may be, to order her to be tossed to the fierce wild
swine in the paddocks of the park when the prisoner and his guards
reappeared on the tessellated pavement, and Mary, already dragged from
him, was instantly forgot.
A tattered sagum, which had once been scarlet, but which had faded since,
hung, detained at the shoulder by a rusty buckle, and bordered by a
laticlave, loosely about his form. In his hand a bulrush swayed; on his
head was a twisted coil of bear’s-breech, in which, among the ruffled
leaves, one bud remained; it was white, the opening edges flecked with
pink, perhaps with blood, for from the temples and about the ear a rill
ran down and mixed with the purple of the laticlave below. And in this red
parody of kingship the Christ stood, unmoved as a phantom, but in his face
and eyes there was a projecting light so luminous, so intangible, and yet
so real, that the skeptical procurator started, the staff of office
pendent in his grasp.
“Ecce homo!” he exclaimed. Instinctively he drew back, and, wonderingly,
half to himself, half to the Christ, “Who are you?” he asked.
“A flame below, a soul above,” Jesus answered, yet so inaudibly that the
guards beside him did not catch the words.
To Pilate his lips had barely moved, and his wonderment increased. “Why do
you not answer?” he said. “You must know that I have the power to condemn
and to acquit.”
With that gentleness that was the flower of his parables Jesus raised his
voice. “No,” he replied, “you can have no power against me unless it come
from above.”
Again Pilate drew back. Unsummoned to his lips had sprung the words,
“Behold the man!” and now he exclaimed, “Behold the king!”
But to the mob the vision he intercepted was lost. They saw the jest
merely, and with it the stains that torture leaves. The sight of blood is
heady; it inebriates more surely than wine. The mob, trained by the
elders, and used by them as a body-guard, fanatic before, were intoxicated
now. With one accord they shrieked the liturgy again.
“Sekaph! Sekaph! Let him be crucified.”
In that gust of hatred Pilate recovered. He turned to Caiaphas:
“I have released one prisoner; I will release another too.”
“My lord, be warned by one who is your elder.”
“One whom I can remove.”
“No doubt, my lord; but suffer him while he may to warn you not to cause a
revolution on the day of the Paschal feast. You hear that multitude. Then
be warned.”
“But your feast is one of mercy.”
The high-priest gazed curiously at his silk-gloved hands. You would have
said they were objects he had never seen before. Then he returned the
procurator’s stare.
“We know of no such god.”
“Ah!” And the procurator drew a long breath of understanding. “It is that,
I believe, he preaches.”
“And it is for that,” Caiaphas echoed, “that he must die. Yes, Pilate, it
is for that. There is no such doctrine in the Pentateuch. We have done our
duty. We have convicted a rebel of his guilt. We have brought him to you,
and we demand his sentence. Pilate, it is not so very long ago you had
hundreds massacred without judgment, without trial either, and for
what?—for one rebellious cry. You must have a reason for the favor you
show this man. It would interest me to learn it; it would interest
Tiberius as well. Listen to that multitude. If you pay no heed to our
accusation nor yet to their demand, on you the consequences rest. We are
absolved.”
“He is your king,” the procurator objected, meditatively.
Caiaphas wheeled like a feather a breeze has caught. One hand outstretched
he held to the mob, with the other he pointed to the Christ.
“Our king!” he cried. “The procurator says he is our king!”
As the thunder peals, a roar surged back:
“We have no other king than Cæsar.”
“Think of Sejanus,” the high-priest suggested. The thrust was so well
timed it told.
Pilate looked sullenly about. “Fetch me water,” he ordered.
A silver bowl was brought, and borrowing a custom from the Jews he
loathed, he dipped his fingers in it.
“I wash my hands of it all,” he muttered.
Caiaphas looked at the elders and sighed with infinite relief. He had
conquered. For the first time that day he smiled. He became gracious also,
and he bowed.
“The blood be upon us, my lord, and on our children. Will you give the
order?”
“Calcol!”
The centurion approached. An order was given him in an undertone, and as
he turned to the guards, Pilate drew the staff of office across his knee,
snapped it in two, tossed the pieces to the ground, and through the ranks
of his servitors passed on into the great blue vestibule beyond.