Part 17

Then one day in late summer Cornelius appeared at the Procurator’s Palace. Pilate, it happened, had ridden down the coast to Joppa; Claudia and the centurion could talk freely. Hardly were they seated on the terrace overlooking the Great Sea when she confronted him, eyes solemnly inquiring, her forehead wrinkled.

“Cornelius, what can have happened to Longinus? I haven’t had a word from him or concerning him since he left here for the glassworks so many weeks ago. I can’t understand....”

“You’ve no cause to be worried,” he interrupted, laughing. “He is still at the glassworks, or at any rate he was when I was there recently. He’s been working hard. The plant had deteriorated considerably; he said it required more work than he had anticipated to restore its operation to normal. He’s been hoping all along to get back to Caesarea to see you, but he just hasn’t had the opportunity. And he thought it best not to send any written messages; unfortunately, there’s been no one coming this way with whom he dared entrust a spoken one ... except for me, of course. He gave me a message for you, but I’ve been delayed getting here. He thinks you heard from him weeks ago.”

“And what was the message he sent?”

“Just what I’ve told you.” He grinned. “That he was well, working hard, and hoped he would soon be in position to return to Caesarea.”

“That was all?”

“Should there have been more?” His eyes were teasing. “Yes, he said to tell you that as far as he was concerned, nothing has changed. He’s still looking to the future. Is that the message you sought?”

“Yes, and expected. And should you see him before I do, you may tell him that my message to him is the same. But, Cornelius”—her expression suddenly was earnest, almost pained—“things move so slowly; the future seems so far ahead, and the waiting is so long.”

“Maybe not, Claudia. Maybe just around the turn of the road you’ll....”

“But I can see no turn.”

“The situation out here just now is so explosive that any moment could bring great changes,” he insisted, “and overnight the problem you and Longinus have could be solved. Pilate and Herod both could lose their favored positions and, conceivably, their heads. And speaking of Herod reminds me that I was to give you another message, too.”

“From whom, Herodias?”

“Yes.”

“She wants me to return with you to Tiberias?”

“No, not that. But she does want you to meet her in Jerusalem in October at the Feast of Tabernacles. Pilate undoubtedly will go again this year, and Herod too; after beheading the Wilderness prophet and possibly involving Galilee in a war with Aretas, Antipas will surely want to go up to the Temple to worship the Jewish Yahweh; it’s the only way left—aside from dropping Herodias—for him to strengthen himself with his subjects.” He paused and leaned forward, smiling. “I’ll have to take my century up to Jerusalem, Claudia, as I do on all such occasions when multitudes of Jews assemble there, and I’ll try to bring Longinus over to Tiberias to make the journey to Jerusalem with me. If you’ll promise to join us there, I’m sure I can promise you I’ll have the centurion with me when I come.”

35

Almost overnight Jerusalem had been transformed.

Through the long drought of the summer months the ancient city had grown more drab with the deepening of fine dust upon its houses, its public buildings, and even upon the resplendent Temple itself.

But now, with the coming of autumn and the annual great Feast of Tabernacles, Jerusalem had bloomed into a veritable forest of greenery. As far as Claudia could see from her perch high on a balcony of the Tower of Antonia—down into the adjoining Temple area, along the terraced rise of Mount Zion, southward to sweltering Ophel and beyond the always smoking gehenna of Hinnom’s vale to the bluffs above it on the Bethlehem road, and eastward past the Brook Kidron and the Garden of Gethsemane up the slope of the Mount of Olives—stretched an almost unbroken canopy of green boughs now beginning to wilt. Balconies, roof tops, the grounds about the Temple walls, every unfilled small plot of the cluttered soil of Jewry’s holy city, were covered with these improvised, temporary dwellings.

The Feast of Tabernacles, Tullia had explained to her mistress, was the Hebrew festival marking the end of the harvesting season and the early beginning of the rains. It was an occasion of national thanksgiving to Yahweh, one that commemorated the Israelites’ years of wandering in the desert wilderness where, after their escape from Egyptian bondage, under the leadership of their great law-giver Moses, they had dwelt in booths—they called them tabernacles—made of branches hastily woven together.

“And to this day,” Tullia had concluded, “in accordance with the instructions in our sacred writings, every Jew during the Feast of Tabernacles must leave his house and for eight days live in a hut made of the branches of pine or myrtle or olive or palm.” The festival occasion, she further pointed out, was one of rejoicing for Yahweh’s deliverance of His children from slavery and His establishment of them in their promised land. To honor Yahweh, the celebrants would offer sacrifices each day and follow a prescribed order of worship and praise and thanksgiving. These ceremonies, Tullia declared, were carried out in great dignity and with reverence. Nothing she had ever seen in Rome, the maid was certain, would excel them in pageantry.

“Mistress,” she pleaded, “why don’t you move from the Palace of the Herods for a day or two to the Procurator’s apartment in the Tower of Antonia? From there you could look down on the ceremonial rites being performed at the Temple, and no one would need know that you were watching. And though it would have no interest to you as a service of worship, it should prove entertaining in the same way that the theater in Rome is diverting.”

“It might be amusing at that,” Claudia had agreed. “And there’s nothing else to do in Jerusalem anyway. But how is it, Tullia,” she asked, and her expression clearly revealed her puzzlement, “that you know so much about these festival customs? Even if your forebears were Jewish, you were brought up in Rome, and surely you couldn’t have learned all this at the synagogue on Janiculum Hill.”

“But, Mistress, through the years I have read our sacred scriptures, and I have heard much talk of our laws and customs. And you must know that an Israelite, though he may never set foot in Israel, if he is a true child of the faith, is loyal to our one God.”

“I know little about Israelites or their Yahweh, and I care less about either”—she smiled—“except for you, and I have never considered you a Jew except perhaps by blood. But as for loyalty, by all the gods, little one, I know you are loyal to me, just as your mother was to mine. All this Yahweh and Temple business, though, confuses rather than interests me. To me it seems the sheerest nonsense. How could any being worthy of being called a god appreciate the sight of poor cattles’ throats being slit; how could he enjoy the smell of warm blood and broiling fat? Certainly it nauseates me.”

“I have wondered that myself, Mistress,” Tullia answered. “But I believe He is pleased because we are seeking to please Him, even though our form of worship may not be too pleasing. Do you understand me, Mistress?”

“Yes, but I believe still that your worship is nothing more than superstition, just as our worship of the innumerable Roman and Greek gods is superstition. But”—she reached over and gently pinched the slave girl’s cheek—“I’ll do as you suggest; I’ll venture to watch the ceremonial at the Temple, and you can tell me what they are doing.”

So they had gone up to Antonia and from the balcony had watched the busy movement of the priests and the assembled throngs, many of them pilgrims returned from every province in the Empire, as these earnest Israelites performed the traditional rites of the ancient festival of worship. On her first morning, Claudia had arisen early and had stepped out onto the balcony. The sun was just lifting above the Mount of Olives, but already the Temple was astir, and pilgrims in their many colored robes were swarming into the Court of the Gentiles, the nearer Court of the Women, and the other more sacred precincts permitted to them. In their hands they carried leafed branches.

Claudia stared in rapt fascination at the spectacle below. As she leaned out over the balcony, she scarcely heard Tullia’s footsteps approaching behind her.

“Good morning, Mistress.”

“Good morning,” Claudia replied, turning to greet the girl. She pointed downward. “You were right about this offering much in the way of entertainment. It’s nearly as good as our Roman games.”

Tullia laughed. “Who knows, perhaps you, too, Mistress, may become a convert to our ways.”

“Hardly.” Claudia shook her head with a wry smile. Then she turned and looked thoughtfully down again at the bustling crowds in the Temple courts. “There’s one thing in particular, you know, that I can’t understand about the Jewish religion, little one.” The half-smile had been replaced by a perplexed frown. “Unless I’m mistaken, the Jews contend that their Yahweh is all-powerful, that he’s the only god there is, and that he rules over all peoples; yet they call him the God of Israel and seem to believe that he has no interest in anyone else. Down there, for example”—she pointed toward the Temple—“there are signs warning foreigners not to enter, under pain of death, certain of the sacred places. How do the Jews explain that? It seems to me that they make their Yahweh a sort of tribal god, one having less authority even than our Jupiter. If Yahweh is the god of all the world, how can the Jews claim him as exclusively theirs? And on the other hand, if he is the god and father of all peoples, doesn’t that make all peoples brothers?” She shrugged. “I see little sense to ... all this.” She broke off with a quick sweep of her hand toward the procession of priests and pilgrims moving down the slope toward the waters of Siloam.

“They do say that such is the teaching of Jesus, that our Yahweh is the father of all peoples, even the pagans who have never heard of Him, that....”

“Jesus?”

“The Galilean. The carpenter, Mistress, of whom the Prophet John declared himself to be the forerunner, you know. He’s been teaching down there at the Temple; he came up from Galilee, though he wasn’t here at the beginning of the feast, it was said. The priests are bitter toward him, especially Annas and Caiaphas and the Temple leaders; they say he is corrupting our religion.”

“Hah! Annas and Caiaphas talk of corruption! I should think they wouldn’t have the nerve. But have you seen this Galilean, little one?”

“No, Mistress, but I should like to. They say he speaks with great charm and clarity.”

“By the gods, I would like to hear him myself. He’s the one, isn’t he, who Cornelius contends healed his little servant boy? Maybe we could prevail on him to do some other feats of magic.”

“But his followers, so I hear, deny that he works magic. They say he does such things of his own power and authority, as the Messiah of God.”

“So Cornelius believes, according to Longinus; he thinks the Galilean is a man-god and that he really healed the little boy, but Longinus wasn’t that naïve. I wish Longinus were here to see the carpenter and hear his discoursing; I’d like to know _his_ opinion of the man.”

But Longinus was not in Jerusalem. Cornelius had failed in his promise to bring the centurion to the Feast of Tabernacles. Hardly a week before they were to leave Tiberias, Cornelius had received a message from Longinus saying that the Prefect Sejanus had sent him instructions to board ship at Tyre for Antioch, where he would have business with the Legate Vitellius. What the nature of the business was, Cornelius told Claudia, had not been revealed. Nor had Longinus indicated how long he would be away. Had she known he would not be in the Judaean capital, Claudia told her maid, she herself would have remained in the provincial capital on the coast. That would have given her two weeks of freedom from Pontius Pilate, at any rate, for Pilate, with a maniple of soldiers and a retinue of servants, had come up with her to the festival and would probably remain in Jerusalem until the final ceremonies were completed and all the withered booths had been removed.

In late afternoon the Procurator’s wife ate an early dinner, and as the sun dropped behind the western walls, she stood again with Tullia at the balcony’s parapet and looked down upon the animated movement within the Temple’s courts.

“See, Mistress!” Tullia pointed. “They all carry unlighted torches. It will be beautiful, the illumination of the Temple. This is the great event of the festival; it is called the ‘Joy of the Feast.’ When the sun goes down, a watchman on the western wall of the Temple will give the signal and the candelabra will be lighted. See how high they are, perhaps thirty cubits. The light from them will illuminate the whole Temple area. It will be like nothing you have seen, Mistress!”

“Yes, Bona Dea, I agree it will be different. And in Jerusalem, Tullia, you’re different. I do believe I’ve never before seen you so excited.”

The service began with a great company of priests and Levites alternating in the antiphonal chant of the Psalms and other sacred Hebrew scriptures. Then, as the shadows lengthened and the quick murk of descending night began to envelop the vast edifice and the thousands massed within it, one of the priests, bearing a long lighted taper, moved through the Court of the Priests and down the steps to the Court of the Women.

“Look, Mistress! See the priest carrying the lighted taper,” Tullia said, her enthusiasm mounting. “With it he will light the great candelabra.”

The advancing priest paused. “Arise, shine!” his voice suddenly rang out, “for thy Light is come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!” Deliberately, with all eyes upon him, he lighted first the central candle in the great stand, and then as quickly as he could with the uplifted long taper he touched the flickering flame to each of the three on either side of the central one; when he had finished his task before the first great candelabrum, he crossed with measured tread to the other and lighted it. As he touched the last candle and the flame caught, a great welling up of excited, triumphant song was lifted to the two on the balcony above, one the pagan daughter of Roman emperors and the other, her slave maid, daughter of ancient and buffeted Israel.

“What does the song mean, Tullia?” Claudia asked. “It seems to have a tone of triumph, of victory. Yet how can the people of Israel boast of their victories, if that is what they are doing?”

“It _is_ a song of triumph, Mistress,” she replied. “It speaks, like the Feast of Tabernacles itself does, of the days when our fathers were led by the God of Israel out of bondage in Egypt. The song recalls, like the flaming candelabra, the long and wearisome journey upward into the promised land when the pillar of cloud led by day and the pillar of fire by night. It is more of the lore of our people. But look! The procession of light is beginning! See the torches!”

First came the Levites. In procession they passed the flaming candelabra, and as each man came opposite the blazing, darting fire, he mounted the steps, lifted high his torch, and touched it to the flame. Soon the torches of the Levites, followed by those of the pilgrims, had transformed the entire mountain of the Temple into a blaze of fire.

For a long moment, silent, Claudia stood at the balcony’s parapet and studied the procession of torchbearers; their voices, raised in song, filled the night. “It’s amazing,” she said finally. “I’ve always thought that the Jewish religion had no joy in it; I thought it was the worship of a stern, vengeful, morose god who was quick to punish any violator of his strict and senseless laws, who demanded bloody sacrifices and fasting and permitted no indulgence in pleasures. But these Jews seem to be having a grand time, almost as though they were devotees of Isis or Moloch.”

“Yes, but without the orgies of Isis and Moloch,” Tullia explained. “Many persons who are not of our faith do have that opinion of the God of Israel. But we believe that although He is stern and demands that we uphold His laws, He is also a loving God who wants His people to be happy. Some will be dancing here as long as their torches burn, Mistress.”

“Well, you may stay out and watch them as long as you like, Tullia, but I’m going to bed.”

“One more thing, Mistress,” the slave girl asked. “If I may, I should like at sunrise tomorrow to slip down into the Temple courts for the early service.”

“Of course, little one,” Claudia smiled. “But be careful. And perhaps it would be best if you made no mention of being in the Procurator’s household.”

36

Faintly at first and from afar off the silvery notes of a trumpet floated into her bedchamber. As she seemed to rise slowly upward out of a deep cavern of slumber, she sensed a stirring beside her.

“The morning watch at Castra Praetoria,” he said, as in the dim light of breaking day he raised himself on an elbow to look into her face, “and I have early duty.”

“But, Longinus,” she began a murmured protest, “must you forever be leaving...?”

“Today is very important,” he went on, unheeding. “I must meet the Prefect there to begin our journey down to Capri for an audience with the Emperor. Sejanus is going to recommend that Tiberius recall Pontius Pilate and banish him to Gaul and then name me as Procurator. But you are not to go with him into banishment. Instead, you will marry me and....”

“By all the gods! Longinus! Oh, by the Bountiful Mother! So long have we waited....”

She sat up from her pillow. The light was seeping through the narrow window beyond the foot of the bed; the chamber was bursting now with the sound of trumpets. Sleepily, though she was fast coming awake, she felt for the centurion and sought to hold on to the dream, but she knew he was not there. And in a moment’s hush between the trumpetings she heard from the room adjoining hers, through the doorway connecting the chambers, the sonorous, heavy snoring of Pontius Pilate.

“Tullia!” she called, keeping her voice down. But the door to the maid’s smaller chamber on the side opposite the Procurator’s was open; she had hardly expected Tullia to be there. The trumpets below were calling Israel to the sunrise worship, and somewhere in the milling throng of Jerusalem dwellers and pilgrims was her devoted maid.

She pushed down the covering, swung her feet around to the floor, and stood up. Drawing her robe about her, she stepped into her sandals and tiptoed out onto the balcony. Down below in the Temple courts a few torches sputtered sporadically in the strengthening light, and several still burning in the two giant candelabra offered more twisting blue-black smoke than illumination.

But there was a glory in the east; behind the rounded crest of the Mount of Olives a giant hand spread fingers of orange and gold and salmon and pink, and as the aureole fanned out higher and wider and its vivid colors swam together in one blazing brightness, the sun ventured to peek above the hilltop. In that instant the golden dome of the Temple flamed, and the topmost stones around the city’s western wall caught fire.

A blast of trumpets, silvery, melodious, triumphant, saluted the sun’s rising. And then another, and another. Looking down into the Court of the Priests, from which the sound had come, Claudia saw two lavishly caparisoned priests, carrying trumpets and walking abreast, marching toward the lower Court of the Women. They were going down the steps between the two courts when suddenly they paused and, lifting their instruments to their lips, once again blew three blasts. Then they moved austerely down the remaining steps and into the court, where they paused and blew three blasts again.

“Can they be sun worshipers, by all the gods?” Claudia murmured as she watched the priests offering what appeared to be homage to the newly risen monarch of the heavens.

The two priests, pacing steadily eastward through the great Court of the Women, stopped near its center and once more blew sharp blasts and then, lowering their trumpets, marched straight toward the Beautiful Gate, the eastern entrance to the court. But before the huge portal they stopped and faced about, so that now their backs were toward the sun.

“Our fathers, who worshiped likewise in this place, turned their backs upon the sanctuary of the Lord and their faces to the sun,” they said in chorus, and the words came up distinctly to Claudia, who was able to understand their meaning though she could not comprehend their significance. “But our eyes are turned toward the Lord!”

“Then at least they do not worship the sun,” she said to herself, “although I look upon the sun as being more godlike than their puny spirit one god.”

She stood another moment watching the pageantry below; then her eyes swept beyond the Temple walls to survey the tabernacled city and the area outside its protective walls. Today, she remembered, would see the ending of the Jewish autumn festival, the Israelites’ traditional Feast of Tabernacles. And it was well that it should. Already the little green bough shelters were beginning to wilt in the October sun. The pageantry, too, must be losing its luster, even to the people of Israel.

_... And Longinus could not come to Jerusalem...._

Turning from the parapet, she crossed the balcony and entered her chamber. Taking off her robe, she slipped back into the inviting warmth of the bed.

37

The opening of the bedchamber door awakened Claudia; she sat up in bed.

“I’m sorry, Mistress,” Tullia said apologetically as she closed the door behind her. “I thought perhaps you had gone out.”

“It’s all right. I’ve slept enough. Those early trumpets awoke me, and I went out on the balcony and watched the services beginning. That was probably just a short while after you left. Then I came back to bed. But why have you returned so soon? Surely that water-pouring ceremony isn’t finished yet.” She paused and studied the slave maid. “By the gods, Tullia, something’s happened. I can see stars in your eyes. And you’re all out of breath; you’ve been running. Quickly, tell me, what is it?”

“Oh, Mistress,” Tullia burst out happily, “he’s down there! He’s down there right now, in the Court of the Gentiles. I ran back to tell you.”

“Longinus!” Claudia scrambled to her feet.

The stars dimmed. “I’m sorry, Mistress, I hadn’t meant to disappoint you. But yesterday you said you’d like to see him....”

“The Galilean?”

“Yes, Mistress, and he’s down there right now. Do you remember that woman who came with the Tetrarch Herod to Rome, the beautiful one called Mary of Magdala?”

“Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”

“I was in the Court of the Women, Mistress, during the early service, when I came upon her. I recognized her, and I knew she was a follower of the Galilean. So I asked her to tell me if he had come to the Feast. She said he had and that even then he was in the Court of the Gentiles over near the Shushan Gate; today, she said, he would be teaching there, no doubt as soon as the service of the water pouring is finished. Soon the procession will return from the Pool of Siloam; it may be that it’s already back. If you’d like to eat, Mistress, and then go down to the Court of the Gentiles....”

“But I need not eat just this minute, Tullia. We’ll go now. Here,” she said, holding out her robe, “help me get dressed. I really would like to see that man and hear him speak”—she smiled—“and witness any feats of magic he might be prevailed upon to perform.” But quickly her expression sobered. “Tullia, you’ll have to fix me so that no one would even dream he was looking at the Procurator’s wife.”