Part 26

“Wealthy Jews,” he replied. “One of them anyway, a merchant from Arimathea. Both of them members of the Sanhedrin. They came to petition me.” He saw that she was still not satisfied. “A small matter; they asked for the body of one of the men crucified today. They want to bury him.” He advanced toward her and managed a thin smile. “Here, my dear Claudia,” he pointed, “have this chair.” His smile warmed. “To what am I indebted for the honor of your visit?”

“This man whose body they wished,” she asked, ignoring his question, “could it be that he was the Galilean mystic?”

“Yes, they said he was from Galilee.” His eyes avoided her probing stare.

“He was called Jesus?”

“I believe they called him that.”

“Then you did not receive my message ... about the dream I had?”

She saw in his eyes a mounting panic. “Yes, Claudia, but it was only a dream, and the High Priest demanded....”

“You condemned to the cross an innocent man”—she stood up and pointed a trembling finger at the Procurator, and her eyes blazed furiously—“because the High Priest demanded it! The great Procurator, representative of imperial Rome, _crucified_ an innocent man because a jealous and mean little Temple strut-cock _ordered_ you to send him to the cross! By all the gods, Pilate, _and_ you condemned him after _I_ sent you that warning!”

“But, Claudia, I was being pulled at from both sides. I didn’t want to condemn him. I told them I found no fault in the man. I had a basin of water fetched and before the multitude I washed my hands of his blood, and....”

“You washed your hands of his blood! Never! Oh, by all the gods, those hands! Those blood-red, crawling, slinking hands!” She held her palms before her face. “In the dream I saw them. Now you’ll never be able to cleanse those foul, polluted hands.”

“But if I had released him, Claudia, and news had got back to the Prefect that I had allowed a dangerous revolutionary to go free....”

“You knew he was no revolutionary.” Her voice was almost a hiss. “You knew he was an innocent man, and you sent him to the cross.” She crossed the room quickly and looked out toward the Hill of the Skull. The shadows were heavy in the square before Antonia, but the sinking sun shone levelly upon the three burdened crosses on the hill. “Which cross is his?” she asked, without taking her eyes from the macabre scene.

“The one at the center,” he replied, his eyes fixed unseeing on the polished surface of his desk.

“And he is dead, you’re sure of that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve sent for the centurion in charge of the execution, and now I’m waiting for his report. I told the two Jews I would not release the body until I was certain the Galilean was dead. Should the body be taken down and the man revived, and should word, as it would, get to Rome....”

“Are you concerned only with what sort of reports go to Rome?” she demanded, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “Have you no interest in seeing justice prevail even in Judaea?”

“I am interested, my dear Claudia”—he appeared somewhat to have regained his composure—“in maintaining myself in the office of Procurator. Perhaps I erred in the case of this Galilean. Perhaps I should have given greater heed to the message you sent me. But I’ve spent many hard years in the army, and I have long dreamed of being the Procurator of a province of imperial Rome. Now that I have attained it, I must not gain the further enmity of the Temple leadership, or I might lose the post, you know.”

“Then your only concern is in remaining Procurator of Judaea?” Her tone was coldly scornful. “And you might have the post taken from you, at that. Much depends, you know, on the attitude of the Prefect toward you.”

Pilate blanched. “But, my dear, surely you wouldn’t suggest to him that he carry to Sejanus an evil report about my conduct of affairs....”

“To _him_? To whom, Excellency”—she paused, and her tone was taunting—“do you refer?”

But once more he was evasive. “Perhaps you are tired, my dear,” he said with a short, humorless laugh. “Perhaps you should return to the palace. I can order the sedan-chair bearers....”

“Mine are outside,” she replied evenly. “But why are you trying to get rid of me, Pilate? Does the Galilean haunt you already?”

“Indeed, no.” Again he attempted a laugh, but it lacked conviction. “Any minute now the centurion will be reporting to me, and I thought perhaps you would not wish to be reminded again of the Galilean’s death or your strange dream....”

“No, I will stay. Perhaps it is you who do not wish to be reminded that you condemned to a terrible death a man innocent of the crime charged against him, innocent of any crime, and known by you to be innocent!”

“But, my dear Claudia, had I freed....”

The Procurator’s protest was interrupted by a knock on the door, and a moment later at Pilate’s bidding the attendant entered. “The Centurion Longinus, Excellency,” he said, bowing, “has arrived to make his report.”

“Longinus! By great Jupiter, did you send Longinus to crucify the Galilean?” She whirled to face the centurion, who had entered the chamber. “Surely, Longinus, you didn’t...” Abruptly she stopped; her face, suddenly drained of fury, betrayed apprehension and pain.

“Yes,” he said, “I killed him. I was ordered by the Procurator to do so, but that doesn’t absolve me from guilt. I crucified an innocent man”—his eyes shifted to level on Pilate—“as the Procurator well knew when he condemned him to the cross.” He paused, but Pilate did not challenge the statement. “Excellency, you sent for me to report. The Galilean is dead. Your order has been carried out.”

“Thank you, Centurion. Then I shall grant those Jews’ request for the body for burial.” He spoke calmly, but his flustered manner betrayed an inner stress. “You may return to your duty and notify the men, who will be at the execution ground, that I grant their petition. You may have your quaternion help them remove the body from the cross and ...”

He broke off suddenly. Through the slit in the doorway, which Longinus had failed to close completely behind him, came the insistent voice of a man talking with Pilate’s aide in the anteroom. “By the gods, I’m glad to catch him. I’ve come from Caesarea with a message for him from the Commander Sergius Paulus. And I was given emphatic instructions to deliver it myself into his hands with the seals unbroken,” they heard the man say. “I’ve been searching all over Jerusalem for him; I even went out to the crucifixion hill.” He lowered his voice. “It’s bound to be an important message. It came from Rome, probably, by the gods, from the Prefect or even the Emperor.”

“Centurion, perhaps you’d prefer to go out there”—Pilate’s face had paled perceptibly—“to accept the message.”

Longinus nodded and left the room. As the door closed behind him, Claudia turned with renewed fury upon her husband. “Why did you assign Longinus to crucify the Galilean?” she cried. “Was it because I sent my message by him and you suspected he had spent the night with me and you finally did me the small honor of being jealous? Well, by the gods”—her voice was tremulous as her anger rose—“_that’s exactly what he did_!” With hatred in her eyes she approached him, coming so close that their faces nearly touched. “And, you fool, that wasn’t the first time,” she added with a low, harsh laugh, “nor even, by Jupiter, the last!”

The Procurator stepped back and sank heavily into his chair. For a long moment he sat silent, staring at the floor. Then he raised his eyes to his wife’s bitter, scornful face. “Surely you cannot believe me that stupid, Claudia my dear,” he said quietly, “to think that I haven’t known. Surely you must know that I am not entirely deaf and blind, that I have even contrived to spend many an evening away so that you....” He paused, pensively contemplating the woman before him. “But perhaps you don’t know....”

“Oh, how I despise you!” she screamed. “I knew you were a weakling, a coward, a ... yes, today, even a murderer. But I didn’t know you were a crawling worm who would willingly lend his wife to another man! By all Pluto’s fire-blackened imps, I....”

“But perhaps you don’t know,” the Procurator went on, “that I was commanded by the Prefect and the Emperor, at the time our marriage was arranged, to do everything possible to keep you content in this dismal province ... even to overlooking any indiscretions....”

“Then you’ve been willing to do anything, by the Great Mother, in order to stay in the good graces of old Sejanus,” Claudia hissed. “You’re willing to send a good and innocent man, maybe a god-man, to the cross rather than displease a contemptible High Priest who might complain against you to the Prefect!” She clenched her fists and brought them down, hard, across the desk. “You’re even willing to surrender your wife to another man’s enjoyment in order—you said it—to keep her ‘content’ but _really_ to keep that man from reporting to Sejanus your bumbling incompetence, your foolish provocations, your utter imbecility!” Her voice had risen to a shout. Slowly she moved toward the window, and then she whirled about to face him again. “Well, I’m not ‘content,’ and I never will be ... with you! And by all the gods, I hope Longinus will go to Rome and reveal to Sejanus how miserably you have administered the affairs of the Empire in this province!” She pointed at him from across the room. “And how you have dragged in the dust Rome’s vaunted justice, how in all probability”—her voice dropped to a menacing tone—“you have withheld funds from the Empire’s treasury....”

“No! Oh, no, Claudia! I have kept back nothing due the Empire or the Prefect! Nothing! Not one shekel, not a denarius! Longinus knows it’s true.” He lowered his voice. “Hasn’t he been watching; hasn’t he been reporting? Surely you don’t think I haven’t suspected....” But suddenly he broke off his protests. Quickly crossing the chamber, he opened the door and summoned the centurion. “You have heard my wife’s words?” he asked, as he closed the door behind them.

“I’ve heard excited words,” Longinus replied cautiously. “I didn’t get the full import of them, though.”

“Claudia has been hurling accusations at me. She said she hoped you would report me to the Prefect when you go to....” He paused, and both his face and voice revealed his fear. “The message was from Rome, wasn’t it? From Sejanus? He asked you to report to him on the situation out here, how I’m administering...?”

“He asked me to come at once to Rome, but he said only that it was to meet with him on a matter of utmost concern, the nature of which he did not indicate. Here, Excellency”—he handed the letter to the Procurator—“you may read it yourself.”

Eagerly the Procurator accepted the message. His forehead creased as he studied it. “True,” he said, handing it back to Longinus, “there’s no mention in it of the Procurator. But surely the Prefect will ask you how I’m administering affairs. I beg of you, Centurion, don’t give him an unfavorable report; don’t make any charges against....”

“What of the Galilean you’ve just crucified?” Claudia interrupted. “Can you contend that you even thought you were acting justly? Didn’t you just tell me you found no fault in the man? What else could Longinus tell the Prefect concerning your trial...?”

“But the centurion will say nothing of this Galilean, surely.” The trace of a sickly smile flickered across his round face. “The centurion will remember that it was _he_ who crucified the man.”

“Yes, I shall never forget that I killed him,” Longinus said. “And I suspect that to the end of his days the Procurator, too, will remember the part he played in this horrible thing. But if this Galilean’s case comes to the Prefect’s attention and he inquires of me about it, I shall reveal fully what happened, and why I was involved.”

“But surely, Centurion, unless you report it, Sejanus will never know about it. Caiaphas is pleased. The illiterate, poor followers of the Galilean didn’t even attempt to aid him at the trial; their protests, if they offer any, can never reach as far as Rome. I beg of you, Longinus, make no mention of it to the Prefect. The Galilean is dead; soon he’ll be forgotten.”

“No!” Claudia protested. “I’ll never forget him! Longinus will never forget him! Nor will _you_! Look at your hands, Pilate. Soon you will be seeing them as I saw them, cold, clammy, scurrying to hide themselves under the rocks, foul and evil and reeking with _his_ blood! By all the gods, Pilate”—her voice was shrill in newly mounting anger—“if Longinus doesn’t tell the Prefect of your cowardly flouting of Roman justice, _I_ will!”

The Procurator’s face blanched. He started to speak, then swallowed. “Claudia, my dear, you wouldn’t. Surely you wouldn’t be so....”

“Indeed, I would! I have lost all patience with you, Pilate. Today I’ve seen you as I’ve never seen you before. You’re a small man, Procurator, vain, self-seeking, pompous, and yet a sniveling coward too fearful for his own skin to rule justly. And at the first opportunity I shall so describe you to the Prefect ... and perhaps to the Emperor.”

“No, my dear! No! Please....” His panic changed quickly into abject pleading. “Please don’t, my dear. Why should you wish to ruin me? What would it gain you ... and Longinus?” He sat down wearily behind his desk. “Why can’t we continue as we have been ...” he paused, “enduring this trying land and these troublesome people? Centurion”—he faced Longinus—“for a long time I have suspected, and known, the ... situation. But haven’t I been understanding, even co-operative?” The suggestion of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Why, then, cannot the three of us, understanding this and appreciating it, just continue to play the roles as we have been? Why can’t we...?”

“Oh, by great Ceres!” Claudia shouted angrily, “you are indeed a crawling worm! You _invite_ another man to your wife’s bed! You pander! You’re nothing but a procurer, a Spanish pimp! Gods, but I detest you!” Turning, she strode to the door and opened it. “Summon my sedan-chair bearers,” she ordered the attendant, “and quickly!” Then she wheeled about to face the Procurator again. “I’m going back to the palace. I cannot summon the patience to remain longer in your presence. It would please me greatly if I should never lay eyes on you again!” She stormed through the doorway; the door slammed behind her.

Pilate sat unmoving and stared stonily into space.

“A moment ago, Excellency,” Longinus ventured, “you directed me to return to the Hill of the Skull. The Jewish Sabbath is fast nearing. Perhaps I should go now.”

Without raising his eyes, Pontius Pilate nodded. Longinus crossed the darkening chamber and went out. After a while the Procurator stood up and walked to the window. Out beyond Antonia’s front square and the squat stone structures flanking it, on a wretched knoll beyond the city’s wall, the three crosses still lifted their quiet burdens into the waning light. But already the shadow of the wall was groping for the pinioned feet of the man on the middle cross. For a long moment Pilate stood rooted before the window; when the shadow had climbed to engulf the man’s sagging knees, he turned slowly away and sat again in his big chair. As the gloom thickened in the great chamber, the staring Procurator leaned slowly forward to cross his arms on the desk and, bending over, cradled his round head on their crossing.

55

Late in the afternoon of the Jews’ Sabbath the Procurator Pontius Pilate stood face to face once again with the High Priest Joseph Caiaphas.

“My visit to you, Excellency, and the petition I bring,” he began, “concern that impostor and revolutionary you crucified yesterday, the one who was seeking to establish himself upon the restored throne of Israel.”

“But the man is dead and buried,” Pilate spoke up irritably. “Can’t you let him lie quietly in his tomb? Can’t you understand that I wish to have no further mention made to me of that Galilean?”

“Indeed I do understand, Excellency. That’s exactly what we also wish, to allow him to lie quietly and undisturbed until his body rots and his name is forgotten.” He leaned forward, and his black eyes lighted with new fires. “But, Excellency, as you may have been told, that blasphemer was heard to declare that he would destroy our Temple and in three days with his own hands rebuild it. Now some of his deluded followers are saying that he wasn’t speaking of the Temple yonder”—he nodded in the direction of the great structure—“but rather of his own physical body. They interpret his words as meaning that he would of his own accord give his life and then on the third day claim it again and walk forth from his tomb. Of course, Excellency, we know that the fellow is dead and will never rise again”—with the tip of his tongue he licked his thin red lips—“but many naïve ones may be deluded into believing that he really did possess power to call back his life. Even today a report has reached us that certain of his followers are planning in the nighttime to visit the tomb and steal away the body. Then with the tomb empty on the morrow, which will be the third day since he died, they can publish abroad the tidings that the blasphemer really did arise as he had declared he would do.”

“But how am I concerned in this nonsense?” Pilate was plainly annoyed. “What do you want me to do?”

“We would have you set a guard over the fellow’s tomb, Excellency, to see that no one steals away the body.”

“What’s this but children’s prattle? Surely no one would seriously expect a dead man to walk from his tomb.” Slowly Pilate’s scowl gave way to a mocking half-smile. “What would the High Priest do if the Galilean _did_ rise? _You_ contrived his crucifixion.”

“But what, Excellency, would the Procurator do? _You crucified_ him.”

Pilate was not amused by the High Priest’s retort. “Maybe it’s as well,” he observed, “that neither of us will be so tested.” For a moment he was silent, looking away. Then he turned back to face Caiaphas. “You have your Temple guards. Can’t you use some of them to guard that tomb?”

“But, Excellency, with the great surge of Passover pilgrims still in the Temple courts and about the cattle stalls and the money changers’ tables, our guards are all greatly needed. And, more important, your placing a guard would lend greater prestige....”

“The Antonia garrison is just as busy,” Pilate interrupted, “and many of our soldiers are leaving Jerusalem. Maybe, though, I can arrange yet again to humor the High Priest.” He beckoned to an aide. “Summon the fortress commander.”

“Are there any centurions available for a special assignment beginning at once and continuing into tomorrow?” he asked, when a few moments later the officer appeared.

“Centurion Longinus, sir, is....”

“No, by all the gods!”

“The only other one not assigned at the present is Centurion Cornelius. He’s preparing to return his....”

“Then call Cornelius in and instruct him to select from his century a sufficient detail and mount a guard at the tomb of the Galilean”—he paused and looked unsmiling toward the High Priest—“rather, the ‘King of the Jews,’ to see that it is not disturbed.”

Caiaphas smiled grimly but made no comment.

“Now, O High Priest, you will have your guard, though I consider a guard unnecessary. Once again your will has prevailed.” He bowed, and his smile was cold. “I trust your sleep tonight will be peaceful.”

56

It was within two hours of midnight after the Jewish Sabbath, which by Hebrew reckoning ended at sundown, when Longinus came to the Palace of the Herods. Claudia was already in her nightdress and prepared for bed. “Aren’t you going to spend the night?” she asked eagerly, after he loosened her from their warm embrace.

“With your permission,” he said, grinning wryly. “I have your husband’s, remember.”

“Please, let’s not talk of him.” Her expression sobered. “Did I speak too frankly yesterday, Longinus? Did I reveal too much to him ... about us, I mean? Is that why you didn’t come last night? You were annoyed with me?”

“You really spoke your feelings, didn’t you? But I wasn’t annoyed with you,” he said. “In fact, I’m glad you spoke up. And I suspect he was not surprised at what you told him, only that you would say it, and with such fury.” She had sat down on the side of her bed. He seated himself beside her and bent over to unfasten his sandals. Then he straightened and faced her. “Claudia, I was too depressed last night to be good company.” He shook his head slowly. “I’ve never been in lower spirits.”

“Because of the Galilean?”

“Yes. Because of what I had done. It felt like a crushing load on my back. I couldn’t get out from under it.” He stood up, and laid his tunic across a chair. “After I left you and Pilate, I went back out to the crosses and helped get him down, taking care to see that in pulling the nails out we didn’t tear or further bruise the flesh”—he paused in his narration, and his low laugh was hollow, mirthless—“after I had seen the nails driven through the living flesh and had plunged my lance into his side. Then we put him in the rich Jew’s tomb; they had bound the body the way the Jews prepare their dead for burial, although they didn’t have time to anoint it with aromatic spices as they customarily do....”

“They are going to do that tomorrow,” Claudia interrupted him. “Tullia has gone out to Bethany to go with Mary of Magdala and Chuza’s wife Joanna and some other followers of the Galilean early in the morning to the tomb to finish the burial rites.” She paused. “But I interrupted your story. What did you do when you had finished out there?”

“I came back to Antonia and sat for a long time on the balcony looking out over the Temple courts. Then I went to bed and tried to get some sleep, but I couldn’t, no matter how I tried. Every time I closed my eyes I saw that man ... the death march out to the hill, nailing him down, lifting him to the upright....” He cupped his palm across his eyes. “By the gods, Claudia, it was terrible, frightening. And his crying out to his god to forgive us.” His hand dropped listlessly to his side. “Well, I finally gave up and walked out along the balcony again, and then I went to see Cornelius. He was troubled, too. He hadn’t gone to bed. We sat and talked, mostly about that man, until daylight.”

“Did you come to any conclusion ... about him, I mean?”

“Well, no, I suppose not, except that it was a monstrous crime to crucify such a man, though Cornelius still held to the idea that the Galilean probably was a god of some sort, that he had supernatural powers, even the ability to heal people—he insisted that he had healed his little Lucian—maybe to raise dead people to life. Cornelius even said he thought it was possible that the Galilean might come to life himself, as some of his followers say he will, and walk out of that tomb.” He was silent for a moment. “If he does,” he added after awhile, “he’ll have to move a tremendous stone from the mouth of the tomb ... and _from the inside_.” He sat down again beside her. “And under the noses of the guards, too.”

“The guards?”

“Yes. At the insistence of the High Priest, Pilate has set a guard at the tomb to prevent the Galilean’s followers from stealing the body and claiming that he actually did come to life. The Procurator put Cornelius in charge, and I went out there with him; in fact, I’ve just come from there. Cornelius is going to stay until daylight.”

“Then Pilate is still trying to appease the High Priest, even after all I said to him yesterday?”

“Evidently. The Procurator isn’t likely to change his ways.”

“Maybe I was rash yesterday in losing my temper and speaking with such boldness, but I’ve come to have such contempt for him, to loathe him so. Oh, Longinus”—she clutched his arm in both hands and clung to him—“how can I stay with him longer in this dreary land? Please take me with you to Rome. Hasn’t the time come...?”