Part 22

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.”

The Procurator sat up in bed and blinked his heavy-lidded eyes. “Insolent Jew!” he muttered. “He would not only tell the Procurator what to do, but when to do it! By the great Jove, I may surprise him!” He threw back the covering and rose ponderously to his feet. “Go tell the High Priest to have his witnesses ready. I shall be there shortly.”

The great Fortress of Antonia, Rome’s bastion in the Jerusalem region, consisted actually of four straight-walled, high buildings joined together by corner towers to compose an impregnable stone structure some fifty by one hundred paces on the outside walls. The space within the inside four walls had been paved with great stone slabs to form a tremendous courtyard reached by huge gateways, one on each of the edifice’s four sides. Massive gates guarded the fortress against sudden attack; when opened, they admitted a flow of nondescript traffic into the courtyard.

Along the southern side of the fortress there was another paved court from which a wide flight of stone steps led up to a terrace; the terrace, in turn, led into the interior courtyard. In a high-ceilinged chamber on the ground floor of this structure, Pontius Pilate had set up his Praetorium. A Roman praetorium, or trial place of a praetor, consisted of a semicircular dais on which the curule, or magistrate’s chair, had been placed.

In the rear of this chamber was a small doorway, and it was through this doorway that Pilate, shortly after the orderly had reported to High Priest Caiaphas, came into the Praetorium.

The Procurator strode straight to the dais, mounted its several steps, and sat down on the curule. Frowning, he glanced toward the tall, manacled prisoner. Flanking the man on both sides were several guards, all Roman soldiers, who had been assigned to the Temple detail. Though a throng had already assembled in the court beyond the gateway, the Procurator could see from where he sat on the tribunal that not a Jew had followed the prisoner inside the vaulted chamber. “What charge is brought against this man?” Pilate snapped. “And where are his accusers?”

The captain of the guard saluted. “High Priest Caiaphas commanded me, Excellency, to bring the prisoner before you with instructions that he has been tried before the Jewish Sanhedrin and found guilty of crimes punishable by death. He said you, O Excellency, were to confirm the verdict of the Jewish court and order its sentence put into execution.”

Anger suffused the Procurator’s round, usually bland face. “And why hasn’t the High Priest come himself to bear witness to the Sanhedrin’s action? Why has this man no accusers confronting him?”

The captain was plainly ill at ease. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, started to speak, then swallowed. “The Jews, O Excellency, will not enter the Praetorium for fear that to do so will be a profanation, that it will render them unfit to eat of their Passover evening meal,” he finally revealed. “They will come no nearer than the steps”—he pointed—“out there.”

Pilate, as the captain had expected, was furious. “Profanation! Profanation! All I hear in this rebellious, proud province is profanation! Hah! They would profane themselves by entering a Roman hall of justice!” His already flushed cheeks were purpling. He stood up quickly, strode down the steps of the tribunal, and stalked forward to the stairway; from there he could survey the mass of excited, chattering Jews, who quieted perceptibly on seeing him emerge from the Praetorium.

“The prisoner,” he said, motioning with his head toward the chamber from which he had just come, “what charge do you bring against him? And where are his accusers?”

The multitude was silent. Eyes turned toward a group near the foot of the steps; in the center of the knot stood the High Priest. He advanced a pace and bowed to the Procurator. “O Excellency, this man has been tried by our Sanhedrin and found guilty of grievous crimes. If he had not been found to be a criminal of desperate wickedness, then we would not have brought him before the Procurator to be sentenced.”

The bold insolence of the High Priest’s reply did not escape Pilate. “If you have tried him then and found him guilty, why don’t you also take him and execute upon him your sentence?”

Caiaphas stood silent for a moment. “But the Procurator must know, O Excellency,” he replied at length, a humorless smile lifting the corners of his mouth, “that under the dominion of Rome the Sanhedrin has not the authority, however heinous the criminal’s deeds may have been, to execute upon him the sentence of death. Therefore, O sir, we petition the Procurator to order executed upon this vicious criminal the sentence of death which the Sanhedrin has found him so fully to deserve.”

But Pilate was obdurate. “You would ask a Roman magistrate to find a man guilty and send him to the cross, even though no accusation had been made against him and no witnesses had confronted him,” he declared. “Don’t you know that were I to do so I would violate every principle of Roman justice?” He jabbed a pudgy forefinger toward Caiaphas. “Would you, O High Priest, ask the Procurator thus to violate his oath as Rome’s regent in Judaea?”

The Procurator, however, had failed to gauge the High Priest’s cunning. “Indeed, O Excellency, of course I would not seek to lead the Procurator into violating his oath to uphold Roman justice.” He smiled and bowed, mockingly. “Nor would I stand silent and unprotesting while the Procurator released a clever though iniquitous criminal who seeks not only the demoralization of Israel’s religion and the perversion of her people but also the overthrow of Rome in this province and the establishment of himself as King of Israel.”

The High Priest’s answer was not only a skilful parry of the Procurator’s question but it was, moreover, a well-aimed thrust of his own most effective weapon. Caiaphas knew that Pilate lived always in mortal fear of being reported to Rome; he knew that the Procurator would not dare to ignore any situation in Judaea, or even the hint of it, that might be fostering incipient revolt against Roman rule.

But Pilate maintained his composure; he would not yield obsequiously to this hateful symbol of Jewry’s stubborn pride of race and nationality and her cold scorn of everything Roman. He studied the group for whom the High Priest professed to be speaking; it was a nondescript assemblage, Temple hirelings, a knot of Pharisees, and surrounding the High Priest himself, his own Sadducean coterie; the others were, for the most part, sunburnt fellows who might well be, the thought came to him suddenly, Galilean and Judaean revolutionaries come in for the Passover feast from their mountain and Wilderness strongholds. Scowling, Pilate confronted the cynically smiling Caiaphas. “You say this man is guilty of heinous crimes, you declare he would set himself up as King of Judaea, but, O High Priest, you have made before me no accusation, you have brought no witnesses to testify against him.” He turned to point with a sweep of his arm toward the Galilean, standing calmly beside his guards. “There stands the prisoner before the tribunal. I ask you again, O High Priest, what charges do you bring against him? Where are his accusers?”

Caiaphas realized that the Procurator was refusing to admit what he had assumed, at last night’s meeting, had been a tacit agreement, that a retrial of the prisoner would be unnecessary; perhaps he was fearful that Rome would disapprove such a disposition of the case. At any rate, reasoned the High Priest, further verbal sparring would mean delay in sending the upstart Galilean to the cross, and he wished this Jesus dead and taken down before the beginning at sunset of the sacred Sabbath. Too, the longer they delayed, the more likely it was that other hot-blooded Galileans would get noise of the trial and come storming to their leader’s support; they might even succeed in effecting the fellow’s release. He would not, therefore, challenge Pilate further.

“O Excellency”—Caiaphas raised his hand and the rays of the morning sun flashed in the gems of his rings—“we charge that this fellow not only sought to lead astray the people from the true worship of our God of Israel, but that he did also forbid them to pay tribute to Caesar, and that he did declare that he himself was rightful King of Israel and would so establish himself!”

Pilate would give no consideration to the first charge, the High Priest was sure, but, he reasoned, the Procurator could not ignore the other two. And the soundness of his reasoning was immediately demonstrated. Pilate turned his back upon Caiaphas and the crowd and returned to the Praetorium, where he mounted the tribunal and sat down. “Are you”—he pointed toward the prisoner, who still, though weary, stood erect and calm—“the King of the Jews?”

“Do you ask this of your own desire to know”—the trace of a smile lightened the solemn countenance—“or has someone else said it of me?”

The Procurator shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Am I a Jew?” he asked sarcastically. “Your own nation, your High Priest, and the others of the Temple leadership have delivered you unto me. What have you done?”

“I am a King,” Jesus replied calmly. “But my Kingdom is not a worldly kingdom; if it were, then my servants would fight against my being delivered to these leaders of the Jews. The Kingdom I rule is not of this world.”

Pilate’s round face betrayed bafflement. “Then you profess to be a king, but in another realm, the world of magic, spirits...?”

“I was born into this world to bear testimony to the truth,” Jesus answered. “Everyone who is of the truth will understand and acknowledge my Kingship.”

Then this man was, as Pilate had suspected all along, in no sense a revolutionary planning Rome’s overthrow; he was but another of these eastern mystics, dreaming of the imponderable and intangible. Hadn’t Herod Antipas beheaded another such fellow because of his slurs against Herodias, slurs undoubtedly deserved at that? The man before him, Pilate realized, was simply a religious leader, someone whom, perhaps, Caiaphas feared as a possible rival, who Caiaphas felt might even supplant him in the office of High Priest. Of course, reasoned the Procurator, the fellow might well be a little addled through too long immersion in this utterly foolish and depraved one-god religion of Israel. “Those who know the truth,” the fellow had just proclaimed, “will recognize me, acknowledge me as their king.” Hah!

“Truth”—Pilate shot forth his finger toward the prisoner—“what is truth?” He hunched his shoulders and waved his hands, palms up, in a gesture he had borrowed from the Jews. And without looking toward the man of whom he had asked the question, he stepped down from the tribunal and strode out to the High Priest and his restive throng.

“I have examined the prisoner as to the charges you have brought against him,” he announced to Caiaphas. “I find nothing criminal in him. He’s a religious man, a dreamer, but he is no revolutionary.” He was glad to be rid of the man, though, he confessed to himself; he was happy to wash his hands of this Jesus, Caiaphas, and the rest of them; if he could only be freed of all Palestine, if he could never lay eyes again upon another Jew. “I find no fault in the man; I shall release him.”

“No! No! O Excellency, no!” Hands were waving wildly in the air. “No! O Pilate!” The Procurator, scanning the throng, saw the priests fomenting the agitation into a swell of shouted disapproval of his verdict. Once more the High Priest stepped forward a pace or two from the front ranks. “The man is amazingly clever, O Excellency,” he declared, smiling agreeably, “as he has just demonstrated in thus deceiving the Procurator. But he is a criminal, and one of the most vicious and depraved order, O sir. And he is a revolutionary. Beginning in his native Galilee, he has deceived and perverted the people, and by his dangerous and evil perverting, his criminal teachings in opposition to our religion and Rome’s government, he has brought into Peraea and Judaea....”

“Beginning, you say, in Galilee? Then this man is a Galilean?”

“Indeed, O Excellency, and one of the worst of the Galilean revolutionaries, one of the most dastardly clever,” He smiled sardonically. “He smites with words rather than a dagger.”

_... A Galilean, by great Jove! Then send him to Herod Antipas. Let the Tetrarch dispose of this case. He assumed jurisdiction over that fanatical Wilderness prophet and ordered him beheaded. Well, this man, too, is a Galilean. Let Herod stand between this persistent, obstinate High Priest and old Sejanus. Let the Tetrarch, for once, bear the brunt of any reports sent back to Rome; this time Sejanus may not overlook what he considers a mistake of administration in this gods-abandoned province. If there’s to be a mistake, let the Tetrarch make it...._

“Then this man,” he said to the High Priest, “is a subject of the Tetrarch Herod Antipas. He should be remanded to the Tetrarch for trial.”