Part 23

Pilate returned quickly to the Praetorium. “Captain of the Guards,” he commanded, “conduct this prisoner to the Tetrarch Herod Antipas. Bear to the Tetrarch the Procurator’s compliments and say to him that the Procurator is sending him the King of the Jews”—a sneering smile for an instant pushed away the scowl on his round face—“a Galilean. It may be that the Tetrarch will wish to examine the prisoner concerning the charges that have been brought against him by the High Priest Caiaphas. At any rate, the prisoner, being from Galilee, is a subject of the Tetrarch and under his jurisdiction.” He nodded curtly. “Go.”

Quickly the guards formed about the tall prisoner and led him from the Praetorium, down the steps into the Court of the Gentiles. Leaving the Temple area through the Gate Shalleketh, they crossed the bridge above the Valley of the Tyropoeon and arrived shortly in front of the sprawling Xystus. A few moments later they paused before the gate giving admittance to the gloomy and forbidding ancient stone residence of the Hasmonean kings.

47

Perhaps it was the thin slash of early sunlight venturing across her bed that had aroused her; perhaps she had awakened early because she had retired early. Pleading weariness and an aching head, Joanna had stayed away from the Tetrarch’s lavish dinner, the preparation of which she had directed. She had felt certain that the banquet, safely hidden within the old palace’s thick walls from the prying, sanctimonious eyes of the priests, would turn into a drunken debauch, and the Feast of the Passover, she held strongly, was no occasion for such frivolity.

The drafty old palace and the grounds about it were quiet. With the exception of the servants, she surmised, there was likely to be no one astir in the Tetrarch’s household, particularly Herod Antipas himself. No doubt he would arise late, in time to bathe and dress for his ceremonious partaking of the Passover meal.

Joanna, who had come up from Tiberias with her husband Chuza and others of the Tetrarch’s staff, lay still and listened to the small sounds of early morning in old Jerusalem: birds twittering on the sill of her open window, cattle lowing in the stalls at the Temple, the rising hum of the densely packed city’s coming alive.

So, lying quiet and keenly awake now, she heard in the court below her window a babble of men’s voices and the uncadenced slap and shuffle of sandaled feet on paving stones. Quickly she slipped from the bed and crossed her chamber. Peering out from behind the draperies, she saw, hardly twenty paces from the palace wall, a motley throng that numbered several Temple priests resplendently robed, with their luxuriant beards fastidiously plaited and oiled. One of the elegant ones, she was surprised to discover, was the High Priest Joseph Caiaphas himself. But why, she wondered, would the High Priest and his Temple aristocracy be coming with such a nondescript mob as this into the palace courtyard?

She ventured to open wider the slit between the draperies and the window frame and lean further forward. Ahead, leading the strangely discordant procession, was a detachment of Roman soldiers, currently assigned, no doubt, as guardsmen in the Temple service, since they were in the vanguard of the High Priest and others of the Temple leadership.

Then, in the center of the marching soldiers, she saw the manacled prisoner. Bareheaded, he was half a head taller than his guards; his reddish-brown hair fell straight to curl at his shoulders. He held his head erect, but he seemed to be walking with labored stride to keep in step with his captors; his wide shoulders sloped as though pulled down by the weight of his long arms and the pinioned hands; his brown homespun robe, already sweat-stained, hung awry and loosely open at the neck.

Though his back was toward her, there was something vaguely familiar about the tall one, his carriage, manner of walking, the way he arched his back, weary though he must have been for a long while. Then he turned his head to look over his shoulder, and she saw the twin-spiked short beard and the curling earlocks.

“By the beard of the High Priest!” She had almost screamed it aloud, but she restrained herself. “The rabbi of Nazareth!” The man who had healed her son of the deadly fever, who had also cured the Centurion Cornelius’ Lucian, the good teacher whom many believed—and she, too!—to have in those fettered hands the veritable healing power of God Himself.

The procession stopped. A soldier stepped to the entrance way and spoke to the sentry on duty there. Now the sentry was talking with a manservant who had appeared at the portal. In another instant the servant disappeared inside.

“It’s the High Priest’s doing!” she said aloud. “He’s bringing the Nazarene here for the Tetrarch to condemn; he’s determined to destroy Jesus.”

She stepped back from the window and began quickly to dress. As she pulled on her clothes she tried desperately to evolve some plan that might thwart the High Priest’s evil scheme. Certainly Antipas, incredibly fearful of displeasing Caiaphas and his fellows in the Temple leadership, would be disposed to yield to the High Priest’s demands, even to beheading the Galilean. Had he not beheaded the Wilderness prophet? Had he not yielded then, against his better judgment, to Herodias? Herod would be more inclined to give way to Caiaphas than would the Procurator Pontius Pilate. But if Herodias would intervene....

The Tetrarchess indeed! Hurriedly Joanna finished dressing and rushed downstairs as quickly as she could without exciting undue attention, to find the palace servant with whom the sentry a moment ago had spoken.

“They have brought the Galilean wonder worker to the Tetrarch for trial,” the servant revealed. “The High Priest is charging him with many crimes, the soldier said. They took him first before the Procurator, but when Pilate discovered he was a Galilean, he ordered him delivered here for trial before Tetrarch Herod. Now they are in the judgment hall awaiting the Tetrarch’s arrival.” He smiled glumly. “Herod, I suppose, was fit to burst at being awakened so early.”

Next, Joanna went in search of Herodias. She found her in her apartment; the Tetrarchess had finished her bath and now Neaera was doing her hair. In a few words Joanna revealed that Pilate had just sent the Galilean teacher and miracle worker to the Tetrarch for trial and that the High Priest Caiaphas and other Sadducean leaders were awaiting Herod’s arrival in the judgment hall; they planned to present charges that Jesus was guilty of crimes deserving of death.

Herodias listened patiently. When Joanna finished her recital, the Tetrarchess shrugged. “But what do you wish me to do? How does this Galilean’s fate concern me? Just because he beguiled you and Chuza into believing that he drove out the fever and healed your son....” She broke off with a patronizing smile.

“He concerns you, Tetrarchess, in that the Tetrarch is greatly concerned, though he may not suspect it. The High Priest schemed this man’s arrest and carried him before the Procurator, who rules in Judaea. But Pilate, realizing that whatever judgment he might render, whether to release the prisoner or execute him, would cause a great outcry in the province and be reported to the rulers in Rome, has cleverly sought to evade his responsibility and put it upon the Tetrarch. Thus, the Tetrarch in trying the Galilean, will be the one to be judged both in Israel and in Rome.”

The smile on the face of the crafty Herodias had vanished, and her forehead wrinkled in sudden concern. “But the man is a Galilean, and Pilate in sending him before Antipas recognizes the Tetrarch’s authority and compliments him....”

“He professes to do that, but what he’s really doing is shifting the burden onto the Tetrarch. And when this commotion develops into a great storm in Rome, then the Tetrarch, too late, I’m afraid, will know he’s been tricked. Let him free this prisoner, and the High Priest will inform the Emperor that the Tetrarch has released someone who was plotting to overthrow Rome. On the other hand, let him execute the Galilean and the report will go by fastest ship to Rome that another prophet in the Wilderness....”

“No! No! Joanna, never mention that man!” Herodias cried out. But quickly she recovered her poise and smiled weakly. “You see, mere mention of that Wilderness fellow still frightens Antipas. When he began to get reports of this Nazarene’s appearance before throngs in Galilee and other places, Antipas was obsessed with the idea that this one was the Wilderness preacher returned to life. Lately he seems to have returned to his senses, but, as you know, he’s a very superstitious person. And frankly, Joanna, I myself don’t like to be reminded of the Wilderness prophet.” She relaxed somewhat. “You’re right about Pilate, I daresay. He probably does wish to evade trying the Galilean. Claudia, though, would want him to get himself involved in further difficulty; that would make it easier for her and Longinus.” She turned to speak to her maid. “Hurry, Neaera,” she ordered, “I’ve got to get out of here quickly. We can finish all this later. I must see the Tetrarch before he goes.” Then she spoke again to the wife of Herod’s steward. “Thank you, Joanna; you have done Antipas and me a great service.”

48

As the Temple guardsmen withdrew with their prisoner from the Praetorium, Pilate beckoned to one of the Antonia soldiers.

“I wish to proceed with the trials of the revolutionaries captured last week by Centurion Cornelius,” he announced. “If the centurion has returned with any other captives, have them brought in too.”

“He has not returned, sir,” the soldier said.

“Then we shall try the three we have.”

Bar Abbas and his two henchmen had already been brought up from their cells deep under Antonia; the witnesses who would testify against them, including several soldiers from Cornelius’ century, were waiting in an anteroom. In the group of witnesses were several Temple priests, elegantly robed, their beards elaborately braided and oiled, their plump fingers weighted with rings.

The prisoners, shackled at wrists and ankles, were led shuffling into the chamber to stand before the tribunal. After a week in the blackness of the dungeon, their eyes were unaccustomed to light; they stood blinking in the growing brightness of the chamber. Then from an anteroom on the other side of the courtroom another soldier escorted the witnesses to a position facing Pilate’s curule several paces across from the three bound men.

Quickly the prisoners were identified: one Bar Abbas, long sought chieftain of a Zealot band preying upon travelers in various sections of the province, particularly the boulder-bordered steep ascent of the Jericho road, and two others of his fellow revolutionaries, one Dysmas and one Gesmas, all three of Galilee.

“With what crimes are these men charged?” the Procurator asked. He made no reference to their being Galileans, nor did he question his jurisdiction over them, though he had just sent another Galilean to the Tetrarch.

The accusations were made. As members of a notoriously desperate Zealot gang of revolutionaries, they had pillaged caravans, waylaid tax collectors and robbed them of their revenues, descended from the hills upon merchants’ pack trains and looted them, even assailed detachments of Roman soldiers and slain some. Then the witnesses confronted them. One of the priests, accompanied by fellow priests of the Temple, was returning from Caesarea when the party was set upon and robbed. He identified the three as among his assailants; he declared he was positive the shackled men standing there were the culprits. Then another lavishly robed priest was called upon to give testimony.

“O Excellency,” he began, “it was on the Jericho road that these men, this Bar Abbas and these other two”—he pointed to each in turn—“came down from the rocks and seized me. I was bearing a large pouch of gold and silver, funds of the Temple I was taking to be put in its coffers, when this big fellow here....”

“He was coming _from_ the Temple!” screamed Bar Abbas, interrupting the testimony, as he lifted his pinioned hands and shook them so that the chains rattled loudly. “He had stolen the money from its coffers! But we took it from him and gave it to feed the poor and those dispossessed by the traitorous publicans!”

“Silence!” commanded Pilate. “You will have your turn to speak.”

Next, two soldiers, one after the other, who had been coming to Jerusalem the past week as members of the century commanded by Centurion Cornelius, testified that the three were among the marauders who had swept down from the rocks beside the Jericho road to capture for a few minutes the detachment that was escorting Tetrarch Herod Antipas and his wife and to assail the near-by flanking columns put out by the centurion. In this assault, the witnesses testified, several of the Roman soldiers had been killed.

The three offered no evidence in rebuttal. The one called Dysmas, who looked both grave and resigned, seemed to be studying the pattern of the mosaic at his feet; Gesmas glared sullenly at the smirking priests who had witnessed against him; and Bar Abbas stood, as wide-legged as his chains would permit, with his sharp black eyes fixed in defiance on the round face of his judge and his lips above the tangle of his beard twisted in a sneer.

“I adjudge you guilty,” Pilate said, looking in turn toward each of the prisoners. He called to one of the soldiers on courtroom duty. “Go tell the commander to send me three centurions.”

When after a short wait the soldier returned with the three officers and they had reported to the Procurator, Pilate faced the convicted revolutionaries. “I sentence each of you to the lash and the cross. And may all such dastardly wicked enemies of Rome so perish!” He turned again to the tribunal attendant. “Prepare a titulus for each,” he commanded, “and write thus: robber-assassin-revolutionary.” He leaned forward. “Take them now into the courtyard and scourge them, and then conduct them outside the walls to the Hill of the Skull, and crucify them. Each of you centurions will choose a quaternion to assist, and each will have charge of the scourging and execution of one of the prisoners. And do not dally. I wish them on the crosses quickly, so that the Passover crowds may see what becomes of those who plot revolution against Rome. It should have a salutary effect.” He waved his arm imperiously. “Take them away!”

49

Hardly had the Procurator climbed the stairs to his apartment and ordered his long delayed breakfast to be brought in, when a soldier assigned to the Praetorium reported to him.

“Sir, the Galilean whom you sent to the Tetrarch Herod has been returned to you,” he announced. “The High Priest and his Temple associates, together with a throng of excited Jews, are down there awaiting your return to the Praetorium to resume trial of the prisoner.”

“By great Jove!” The Procurator’s scowl was heavy. Why had Herod sent him back? Surely the bumbling Tetrarch hadn’t been clever enough to comprehend Pilate’s scheme to evade responsibility.

He did not question the soldier, however, and a few moments later he mounted the tribunal again and sat down upon the curule. From the pavement before the Praetorium the captain of the Temple guards and his detachment, forming a square about the Galilean, advanced to the tribunal. Jesus, Pilate saw, was wearing a bedraggled, purple-bordered robe. One of the soldiers was carrying the folded brown homespun robe which the prisoner had been wearing before.

Pilate, color mounting, pointed to Jesus and glared at the officer. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Why is he wearing this emblem of authority? Speak up! Who is responsible for this mockery?”

“Not I, sir,” the captain hastened to declare. “The Tetrarch ordered one of his old robes to be placed upon the prisoner; he said he appreciated the Procurator’s raillery in calling the man the King of the Jews, and he ordered him arrayed in the purple in order to further your joking, sir.”

“Didn’t he examine the prisoner?”

“He questioned him, sir, and sought to have him work some tricks of magic, but the prisoner made no reply.”

Once again Pilate descended from the tribunal and went out upon the pavement before the Praetorium. At first sight of him the mob began to raise a clamor. “Bar Abbas!” a man toward the rear of the multitude screamed. “Bar Abbas! Give us Bar Abbas!” Others joined in the uproar. Pilate seemed not to understand them. “They want to see the revolutionaries’ leader,” he said to the soldier who had accompanied him. “They will see him as the condemned men start for the Hill of the Skull. But not until I have disposed of this Galilean. There is already too much commotion. Go into the courtyard, and tell the centurions not to start to the execution ground until I give the order.” He turned back to face Caiaphas and the priests and behind them the motley crowd. “You brought me this man and charged that he was a revolutionary, that he sought to overthrow the rule of Rome in this province, but I found no guilt in him, and when I sent him to the Tetrarch Herod, ruler of Galilee, he, too, found nothing worthy of death. So I shall discharge him. And now, disperse and let us have no more of this tumult.”

“No! No! O Procurator, crucify him! Bar Abbas! Bar Abbas!”

“Crucify the King of the Jews!” Pilate looked toward the High Priest as he said it, as though he were jesting, but he could not effectively conceal the scorn in his voice and on his face. “I must let him go free!”

His words provoked another storm of shouted entreaties and demands. “Bar Abbas! Bar Abbas! Give us Bar Abbas!”

“When I have disposed of this Jesus of Galilee, you shall get to see that revolutionary”—he smiled glumly—“as Bar Abbas goes to the cross.”

“The Passover release! It’s the long-established custom, O Procurator. Give us the Passover release!”

Pilate stared in surprise at the crowd shouting below him. Could it be, then, as he had first suspected, that this throng hated the Temple priests and especially Caiaphas and wanted the release of the Galilean? But he had found Jesus not guilty and technically had already released him. If, however, he should find him guilty of some minor crime, such as causing a great disturbance and commotion among the people, for example, and punish him for that, then he might logically release him as the Passover recipient of the Procurator’s pardon. At the same time he would dull considerably any report concerning this case that might find its way to Rome.

“I find no serious fault in this Galilean,” he declared, as he held up his hand to signal for silence, “but because of his indiscretions and his provocation of tumults and unrest and much bickering among the people, I shall have him scourged before I release him.”

He returned to the tribunal and gave the formal order for the scourging of Jesus. Then once again he climbed the stone stairway to his apartment and called for his breakfast. His food was placed on a small table by the window, for already the morning sun was warm and out beyond the smoldering Vale of Hinnom dark, thickening clouds had begun to form. But the Procurator was not permitted to relax calmly over his morning meal. The din below not only continued, but the shoutings grew increasingly loud. After awhile, Pilate pushed back his plate and stood up.

“I’ll abide this no longer!” he shouted to his orderly standing near the doorway. “The obstinate, cantankerous provincials! They’ll end this disgraceful tumult, or I’ll have the Antonia garrison on them with their swords!” He caught up his toga and started once more for the Praetorium.

“Bring out to the pavement the robber Bar Abbas and the Galilean miracle worker,” he commanded, when he arrived in his tribunal chamber.

“Bar Abbas! Bar Abbas! Bring forth Bar Abbas, O Procurator!” the multitude began to shout, as Pilate appeared on the mosaic in front of the Praetorium. “The Passover release! Give us Bar Abbas!” The Procurator, studying the vociferous throng, saw that the cries for the release of the robber chieftain seemed to be coming from a group of wild-eyed, fanatical-looking rough fellows bunched behind the High Priest and his clique. The thought came to him that they might be Zealots, even some of the escaped members of the Bar Abbas band broken up a week before by the Centurion Cornelius. But the supporters of the Galilean mystic, he reasoned, would outnumber these men screaming for the release of Bar Abbas.

The multitude calmed perceptibly as the scourged revolutionary appeared on the pavement before them and then, recovered somewhat from the shock the man’s sad state had caused, burst into a new clamoring for his release. Bar Abbas stared stonily ahead, as if indifferent to the screams and yelling of the people, no doubt still half dazed from the ordeal from which he had that moment been delivered. Although his coarse robe had been returned to him after the scourging and was thrown loosely about his shoulders, the milling crowd saw at once that the leather-thonged whip had stripped and torn the flesh of his shoulders and back; already the robe was reddening into a gory, clinging covering like that which a butcher might have worn to carry on his shoulder a freshly slaughtered lamb.

But Jesus, when he was led forth from the courtyard to the pavement before the Praetorium to stand near the robber chieftain, made an even more pitiable figure. The purple robe he had been wearing when he was brought back from Herod’s judgment hall was once again about his sagging shoulders, and it was soaked with blood. His long hair was matted with drying blood where it curled above his flayed and bruised shoulders, and his naked upper arms were crisscrossed with bleeding cuts and great reddened welts. But more shocking than the lacerations and the bleeding flesh, the blood-soaked purple robe, the mercilessly flayed, drooping shoulders burdened beyond human strength to endure, was the evidence he wore upon his head of a sadism past comprehending. Pressed down hard against his skull, so that the sharp points in some places actually had pierced the skin of his forehead and temples, was a circlet hastily fashioned from a long thin branch torn from a rhamnus thorn.

Pilate noticed it immediately. “Why the victor’s wreath?” he asked the soldier guarding the Galilean.

“It’s not a victor’s wreath,” he answered. “Sir, it’s the royal crown of the King of the Jews.” He ventured a smile. “The soldiers made it from a shrub growing near the scourging post and crowned him with it.”

“Indeed, the crown goes well with the Tetrarch’s purple.” Pilate smiled humorlessly. Then he held up his hand to command silence. “It must be well known to you that each year at the Feast of the Passover it is the custom of the Procurator to release a prisoner. Here before you are the revolutionary and murderer and robber, one Bar Abbas, who has been sentenced to the cross, and the prisoner brought by the High Priest, one Jesus of Galilee”—he paused and looking directly at the group of Temple priests, smiled appreciatively—“the King of the Jews....”

“We have no king!” shouted Joseph Caiaphas, and a chorus of angry voices supported him, “no king except Tiberius. This man is not our king; he is a blasphemer, an enemy of Israel’s God; he stirs up the people; he declares himself to be king in Israel; he calls himself the Son of God!” He paused, as if fearful at having uttered the ineffable name.

“Crucify him! Crucify him!” The mob renewed its angry demanding. “He claims to be the Son of God, the blasphemer! Crucify him!”