Hear Me, Pilate!

9

Longinus led his century from its quarters at Castra Praetoria westward through the Viminal Gate along the way that skirted the leveled-out northern extremity of Esqueline Hill.

At the point where this way joined Via Longa the procession entered the cobblestoned street and moved westward and then straight southward. Longinus glanced over his shoulder and had a glimpse, between shops that crowded the lower level of Quirinal Hill, of his father’s great house high on that elevation. But quickly he lost sight of it as his century became virtually submerged in the dense traffic fighting its way slowly along Via Longa. Fortunately, the legionaries were bearing only their lightest armor; the heavier gear had been sent ahead and put aboard the “Palmyra.” But even thus equipped, in the narrow, packed street, though it was one of Rome’s important thoroughfares, they were finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a steady march.

As the century began to pass north of the crowded Subura, that motley district of massed tenements, shops, taverns, and brothels already being pointed out as the birthplace more than a century ago of the great Julius Caesar, the press of the throng so increased that the soldiers were almost forced to fight their way forward. But progress became easier in the area below the Forum Augustus, and as the troops were pushing past it toward the Forum Romanum, Longinus glanced toward the summit of Palatine Hill crowned by the sprawling great Imperial Palace; his eyes went immediately to the northeast wing and to the window in Claudia’s bedroom through which he had heard, one recent morning, the rising trumpet call from the post.

Longinus had not seen the Emperor’s stepdaughter since the day the Prefect had visited her, though they had exchanged messages left with Stephanos the goldsmith at his shop in Vicus Margaritarius. Claudia’s last message had assured him that she would contrive some plan for seeing him immediately upon her arrival with Pilate at Caesarea; that shouldn’t be too difficult. Tullia had relayed Claudia’s message to Stephanos, and Longinus had received it verbally from the goldsmith. “We will have the Great Sea between the Emperor and Sejanus and us,” she had sent word to the centurion. “It will be much safer then; as for Pilate, I am little concerned with what he thinks or does; in fact, he’ll do nothing.”

Before the Forum Romanum Longinus led his troops straight southward. At the northwest end of Circus Maximus they veered westward and went along the way leading across the Tiber on the ancient Pons Sublicius, fashioned of great stones fitted together to span the swiftly flowing muddy water. Near the bridge entrance the column turned left and paralleled the stream to halt at the pier just below the Sublicius. Quickly the legionaries went aboard the “Palmyra.”

Longinus’ troops were the last to embark, and within an hour the “Palmyra” began slowly to shove its stern out into the stream. When the ship was safely away from the pier, the hortator gave a sharp command, and the long oars, manned by galley slaves chained to their three-tiered benches, rose and fell in perfect cadence, with the starboard oarsmen pushing forward and those on the port side pulling hard, so that the “Palmyra’s” bow came around; soon the vessel was moving steadily downstream.

Longinus and Cornelius, having stowed their gear, returned to the deck to stand together on the port side near the stern. By now the vessel was rounding the slight westward bend in the river and was passing the Aventine Hill. Cornelius, watching the yellow waters churning in the wake of the “Palmyra,” raised his eyes and pointed across the stern toward the Imperial Palace, the western front of which they could see jutting past the squared end of the Circus Maximus. The upper section of the great palace was visible above the race course. “Longinus, I’m surprised you’re leaving her in Rome. I thought that if you ever went back to Palestine, you’d be taking Claudia with you.”

Longinus wondered if by some chance Cornelius had learned of the Emperor’s plans for his stepdaughter and was trying now gently to probe further. “But the night you came to her house for me was the first time I’d seen her after returning from Germania,” he protested, laughing. “Wouldn’t that be a little fast? She’s the Emperor’s stepdaughter, you know.”

“Well, maybe I was imagining things.” Cornelius shrugged. “But she is a beautiful woman.”

“I agree, Cornelius. The Bountiful Mother was lavish with her gifts to the Lady Claudia.” He turned to lean against the rail. “What I’m wondering, though, is why Herod didn’t marry Herodias and bring her along.”

“Maybe he has married her. But I suspect that whether he has or not, he’ll be returning to Rome for her before many months. That is, after he’s made peace with the Tetrarchess and old King Aretas, her father.” He grinned. “I’d wager, too, that you’ll be coming back for Claudia.”

Longinus laughed but made no comment. His friend, he reasoned, did not know about Claudia and Pontius Pilate. Nor would he tell him yet.

Now the “Palmyra” was moving swiftly, its cadenced oars rising and falling rhythmically to propel the vessel much faster downstream than the current unaided would have borne it. They had come opposite the thousand-foot-long Emporium huddled on the Tiber’s eastern bank, its wharves crawling with slaves moving great casks and bales of merchandise into the warehouses or bringing them out to be loaded aboard ships preparing to slip down the Tiber and into the Great Sea at Ostia. Black Ethiopians and Nubians, their sweating bodies shining as though they had been rubbed with olive oil and naked except for brightly colored loincloths, straggled at their tasks. Blond warriors brought from Germania as part of some Roman general’s triumph, their skins now burnt to the color of old leather, and squat, swarthy men from Gaul and Dalmatia, from Macedonia and the Greek islands, captives of Roman legionaries ranging far from the Italian mainland, pulled and shoved to the roared commands of the overseers and the not infrequent angry uncoiling of long leather whips.

“Did you ever realize, Longinus, what a comprehensive view you get of Rome and the Empire from a ship going along the Tiber?” Cornelius nodded toward the stern. “Look at those marble-crowned hills back there, literally overrun with palaces, billions of sesterces spent in building them, hundreds, thousands of lives used up, sacrificed, raising them one above the other. The people in them, too, Longinus, and the rottenness—smug hypocrisy, adherence to convention, infidelity, unfairness, utter cruelty, depravity. Rome, great mistress of the world. Hah!” He half turned and pointed toward the Emporium. “Those sweating slaves over there would agree.” He gestured with opened hands. “Ride down the Tiber and see Rome, glorious Mother Rome, from Viminal’s crown to Emporium’s docks, eh?”

“You’re right,” Longinus smiled. “And it’s only because the gods have decreed for us a different fate that you and I are not over there heaving crates, or chained here pulling oars.” He leaned over the rail and studied the rhythmical rise and fall of the long, slim oars. “No doubt there are among these slaves several whose intelligence, education, and culture are considerably greater than the hortator’s, and I’m sure.... Look!”

Cornelius followed the direction of Longinus’ outstretched arm. One of the oars had come up beneath a floating object and sent it spinning and twisting in the churning muddy flood. Now another oar’s sharp blade struck the object, ripping apart its once carefully folded wrapping; as the oar cleared the surface, the wrapping unrolled, exposing the body of a tiny infant, chalk-white in the yellow water. It spun giddily for a moment, then sank.

“By the gods!” Cornelius shouted. “It’s an exposed baby girl!”

But now the small, lifeless body bobbed to the surface and for one unruffled moment lay on its back, eyes wide-open and fixed, staring upward unseeing toward the two centurions leaning over the ship’s rail. In that same instant the oars descended, and the knife-sharp edge of one near the stern sliced diagonally across the drowned infant; the oar shivered with the unexpected added burden, but it bore the mangled small corpse beneath the thick waters, and up through them rose a trickle of dark crimson.

“She wasn’t dead when she was thrown in,” Cornelius said, “and that wasn’t long ago. Perhaps from one of the bridges back there, or maybe a wharf. Or even a boat ahead.” His shoulders trembled in an involuntary shudder. “Longinus, I could kill a man in battle without blinking, but I couldn’t throw an infant into the Tiber. By the gods, how can any man do it?”

“Nevertheless, hundreds do it every year, Centurion. We were speaking of those slaves over there on the Emporium’s docks and these galley slaves rowing us. And this drowned baby, and countless others who simply lost when the gods rolled the dice. The fickle gods, my friend, the unfeeling, stonehearted gods.”

“Don’t blame the gods, Longinus. Blame rather Rome’s mounting vanity and greed, her selfishness, cruelty.”

“You know I’m not blaming the gods, Cornelius; I have no more faith than you have even in their existence. They are nothing but pale nobodies, fabrications in which not even intelligent children believe.”

“Fabrications, yes. Our gods are inventions, but they serve a purpose and are necessary.”

“Necessary?” The centurion’s face had twisted into a heavy scowl. “Why, Cornelius?”

“Because they fill a place, supply a need, Longinus. It’s the nature of man to look to some higher power, isn’t it, some greater intelligence? Else why would one invent these gods; why would primitive peoples carve them from wood and stone; why would we and the Greeks and the Egyptians raise great temples to them?”

“Do you contend then that people worship these carved sticks and stones as symbols of some higher intelligence and power rather than the carved objects themselves, even primitive peoples? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Some—many, in fact—have become confused, of course, and in seeking to worship this mysterious divinity they go through a form or ceremony of worshiping the symbol. But what I’m trying to say, Centurion, is that it is the nature of mankind to look to something higher, something more intelligent, more powerful, better, yes, than man himself, better even than such an exemplary man as our beloved”—now his tone was sarcastic—“Emperor, or his most worthy Prefect. And if man seeks such a being to worship—and all men, mind you, even savages, even those wild tree worshipers in Britannia do it—doesn’t it stand to reason that there should be such a being?”

The “Palmyra” had entered the smooth bending of the Tiber and was moving rapidly toward the river’s nearest approach to Janiculum Hill, Rome’s Jewish quarter on the west bank of the stream. Longinus pointed to the steep rise of the hill and the plane before it cluttered with the densely massed homes of thousands of Jews, many of them born in the capital, others newly settled there. “It seems to me, Centurion, that you’ve become an adherent of the Jewish one-god religion.”

His words amused Cornelius. “Other Romans at our post in Galilee have charged me with the same thing. It came about, I suppose, from my helping the Jews at Capernaum build their new synagogue.”

“Then surely you must be a member of their fellowship or synagogue ... whatever they call it?”

“No, I’m no convert to the Jews’ religion, Centurion. I don’t belong to the synagogue. I helped them, I told myself, in order to promote good relations between the Jews in Galilee and the members of our small Roman post. But maybe I had other reasons, too. There are many things about their one-god religion that seem sensible and right to me. But there are also practices among the Jews that I don’t approve of at all, practices that seem cruel and senseless. Their system of sacrifices, for instance. I can see no act of proper worship in slitting the throats of innumerable sheep and cattle to appease an angry god....”

“I agree. But we do the same thing. Doesn’t the Emperor dedicate the games by slitting the throats of oxen?”

“Exactly. But what is the good of such worship or ceremony or whatever you may choose to call it? If there is a god to whom the sacrifice is being made, what good does it do him, what pleasure could he possibly receive from it?”

“I see nothing to any of it, Cornelius. Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, forest worship in Britannia, whatever the system is; it’s all superstition, delusion....”

“I grant you, maybe it is. But, Longinus, don’t you feel deep down inside yourself that there must be some intelligence, some power, far above man’s very limited intelligence and power, that created the earth and the heavens and controls them? Else how did they get here in the first place?”

“I don’t know, Cornelius. You’ve gone ahead of me, my friend. I never gave much thought to matters like this.” The lines of his forehead wrinkled into a frown. “But even if you should feel that way, how could you ever know? Have you seen a god, Centurion? Have you ever felt one or heard one speak?”

“I’ve never seen one, Longinus. But I think I have felt and perhaps heard one. There have been times when I was confident that I was communicating with one.” Cornelius watched the spume thrown up by the flashing oars as they cut into the muddy waters. He turned back to face Longinus. “That’s the difficulty, you know, communication. How can one get a grip upon a god—the god, if there be but one, and the way I see it that is the only sensible answer—like those slaves down there grip the oar handles? How can one hear a god, see him, taste him? Obviously, one cannot, for this god, whether there be one or many, must be different from man; he must be a spiritual being rather than a physical one. But if he is a spirit, how can we of the physical world communicate with him and he with us? There, my friend, is the problem.”

Longinus shook his head. “You’ve got me, Cornelius. I cannot imagine a spirit, a being without a body, a something that is nothing.”

“Many persons can’t, Centurion. And that’s the main difficulty in accepting the Jews’ Yahweh, their one god. He is a spirit, they say, without physical form or substance. They believe in him, but how do they know him, how do they learn what he’s like? In a word, if he does exist, how can he be made comprehensible to man?”

Longinus smiled indulgently. “But you say you think you have felt one and maybe heard one. Why?”

“I don’t know if I can explain. Maybe it goes back to the fact that my first lessons were taught me by a Greek slave. He was purchased by my father from a lot brought to Rome after one of those early rebellions. This man was one of the wisest I have ever known. I shall never forget his teaching concerning the gods. When we would speak lightly of our Roman gods, old Pheidias would scold us. ‘Don’t speak disparagingly of the gods,’ he would say, even though he himself did not believe in them. I can still remember his words. ‘The gods,’ he said, ‘are symbols of man’s efforts to attain a higher life, a more noble plane of living. The good gods are the symbols of the good attributes in man; evil gods symbolize the base passions. Therefore, hold communion with the good gods, and seek to avoid contact with the evil ones.’”

“But how does that teaching explain what you feel?”

“Wait,” Cornelius smiled, then continued. “Sometimes Pheidias would confide in us and talk in more intimate terms of his own philosophy. At such times he would tell us that his own gods were merged into one omnipotent and omniscient good god, a spirit without a body, everywhere present. This one god was a synthesis of the good, the true, and the beautiful. And though he could not be felt, as I feel this rail here”—Cornelius ran his hand along the ship’s rail—“and though he was not to be seen or heard as one sees or hears another person, he was nevertheless even more real. ‘For the only things that are real,’ my tutor would say, ‘are the intangible things, and the only imperishable things are those that have no physical being. Truth, for example. Truth has no body. Who can hold truth in his hand? And yet truth is eternal, unchangeable, indestructible. And love? Who can destroy love; who can defeat it? Yet can you put love in a basket and carry it from the shop? And who can measure a modius of love or weigh out twelve unciae?’” Calmly he regarded Longinus. “And I ask you, my friend, who can? What, after all, is more indestructible, unchangeable, immortal than the intangible?”

The “Palmyra” was moving around the river’s bend now and gaining speed as it came into the straight stretch at a point even with the right-angled turning of the city’s south wall. “But forgive me, Longinus,” Cornelius said lightly. “I hadn’t meant to be giving you a lecture on the nature of the gods or the one god.”

“It has been entertaining and enlightening, my friend. And it has convinced me that you do hold with this one-god idea. Those Jews at Capernaum, cultivating the plant that came up from the seeds that old tutor sowed in your childhood, have brought it along to blooming.” He laughed and tapped the rail with the palm of his hand. “Well, perhaps it’s an advance—from the Roman gods to the Jews’ one god—in superstition.” But then the patronizing smile was gone, and he was serious. “I don’t know, Cornelius. This one-god scheme does have its merits, I can see. I would like to believe, and I wish I could, that such an all-powerful, all-wise, all-good being rules the universe. But”—he paused, and a heavy frown darkened his countenance—“Cornelius,” he began again, “I keep thinking of those slaves back there on the Emporium docks, countless slaves all over Rome and throughout the Empire, beaten, maimed, killed at the whims of their masters, yes, and that baby thrown into the Tiber, numberless unwanted babies exposed to die—drowned, thrown to the beasts, bashed against walls—and yet you say that one good god rules, one all-powerful and all-knowing god, one good god.” He thrust forth a quivering, challenging forefinger almost under his friend’s nose. “Then tell me, Cornelius, why does your good one god send all this ignorance, this stupidity, this cruelty, this despicable wickedness on the world? Tell me why; give me one logical, sensible reason, and I’ll fall down at the invisible and intangible feet of your great one god and worship him in utter subjection.”

“I can’t tell you, Longinus. That very question has troubled me, too. I have wondered, and I’ve tried to explain it for myself. I don’t know how old Pheidias explained it, or even if he did. I don’t recall our ever challenging him on that point. But it may be that this one god—if there be one, mind you—does not ordain all the things that happen in the world. It may be that he is even sorrowful, too, because babies are thrown into the Tiber, because men are cruel and heartless toward other men....”

“Then if he is all-powerful, Cornelius, why does he permit it? You say he doesn’t will it. Then why does he allow it?”

Cornelius looked across the deck to the shore line on the starboard side and for a long moment silently considered his friend’s question. “I cannot say, Centurion; it’s a mystery to me. Could it be, though, that the answer, if there be any answer, lies in this god’s determination to give man his freedom? Could it be that even though he is hurt when man abuses the freedom given him, he feels that his children must be free, nevertheless, to work out their destinies? Maybe some such reasoning might explain it. I don’t know.” He shook his head sadly. “What do you think?”

“I disagree, Cornelius. You say that this one god would not order an infant thrown into the river. I agree, but that is not enough. A good god would not permit it.” His grim expression relaxed, but he was still serious. “No, when one sees the condition in which countless men live, the utter unfairness of things, one cannot logically believe in the existence of such a god as you have described. Indeed, it is more logical to believe in our Roman gods than in the god of your old tutor or the Yahweh of the Jews, in our good ones contending with the evil ones”—he shrugged—“with the evil ones usually winning. But it is even more logical, Cornelius, to believe in no gods at all.”

“You have a good argument, Longinus. But it seems to me that we invariably come back to what I said when we started this gods discussion. If there is no higher intelligence, no supreme power, then how did all this”—he swept his arm in a wide arc—“how did we, the world, the sun and moon and stars, everything, how did it all come into existence in the first place? By accident? Bah! And if not by accident, how? Answer me that, Longinus.”

“I can’t answer you. But why should I? What difference does it make? If this good god does exist but does not rule, if he does not enforce a good way of living among men, if he does not protect helpless babies or captured peoples—and obviously he doesn’t—is the world any better off than if no gods existed in the first place?” He smiled complacently. “But, Cornelius, I have no quarrel with your attachment to your tutor’s strangely Yahweh-like god. Some day when I visit you in Capernaum I may go with you to the synagogue or even the Temple at Jerusalem. I may even,” he added with a grin, “offer a brace of doves for the sacrifices. Or would your Yahweh insist on my offering a young lamb?”

“My Yahweh? But I’m no Jew, Longinus. The god of old Pheidias has a greater appeal to me than Yahweh. Yahweh is too stern, too unbending, as they interpret him. But maybe they interpret him wrong, the priests who lead the worship, or maybe I interpret their interpretation wrong. It may be that the true one god”—he smiled—“if there be one, my friend, has never been properly interpreted to man. Maybe we just don’t know him, what he’s like.” He shrugged and stepped away from the rail. “But I think we’ve had enough of gods for one day, don’t you agree? Let’s go inside. I’ve got some work to do before we reach Ostia; you probably have some, too.”

As they started toward the cabin, Longinus turned to look back. Rome was entirely behind them now, off the port stern, but still clearly in sight. Above the city wall and the Aventine Hill beyond and now lifted clear of the Circus Maximus, the sprawling great Imperial Palace atop Palatine Hill flaunted itself in the sunshine.

Had Claudia arisen? Was she now in her bath or in the solarium having her hair dressed or her nails manicured? Was she in the peristylium or on the couch in the exedra? Was she making preparations, not too reluctantly perhaps, for her wedding with Pontius Pilate?

... Yes, and back there somewhere in that press of humanity were Pontius Pilate and the Prefect Sejanus, by all the gods. By all the gods, indeed. Good gods and evil gods, good to Pilate, evil to me....

Longinus abruptly faced about. Ahead, straight over the bow of the “Palmyra,” gaining momentum now in a channel clearing of the jam of traffic within the city’s walls, was Rome’s port of Ostia, where the great mainsail would be hoisted aloft to catch the winds that would help speed the vessel eastward. Ahead and many days and long Great Sea miles distant were the coasts of Palestine ... and Caesarea. Ahead, too, despite all the gods, real or fancied, and despite Sejanus and Pontius Pilate, was Claudia.

Palestine

10

Longinus and Cornelius strolled over to the port bow rail as the “Palmyra,” its mainsail sliding slowly down the mast behind them, swung around the end of the north breakwater and skimmed lightly across the harbor toward the docks at Ptolemaïs.

“I thought Caesarea would be our first stop.”

“We’re putting in here only long enough to drop some passengers and a quantity of goods Herod’s brought from Rome,” Cornelius revealed.

Longinus looked up in surprise. “Herod’s goods?” he asked.

“Furnishings for the palace at Tiberias—bronze tables, chairs, decorative pieces, of Herodias’ choosing, I suspect. In fact, some of it probably came from her house, favorite things to make her feel more at home in Tiberias. Putting those crates ashore here will save us the trouble of carrying them on to Joppa and Jerusalem.”

“But when the Tetrarchess discovers that Herodias had a hand in selecting the things....” Longinus grimaced, laughing. “Say, are you letting your men go ashore here?”

“Only for a few minutes, just to let them stretch their legs while the vessel’s unloading. Don’t worry, they’ve been told to stay in the wharf area. If they were to get near the taverns and brothels, we’d be here all night!”

Already the soldiers of the two centuries, impatient to get ashore ever since they had first spotted Mount Carmel towering above the promontory jutting out from the Phoenician coast, were lining the “Palmyra’s” rails. Cornelius beckoned to one of his legionaries.

“Decius, call out a detachment—twelve men should be enough—to be ready as soon as the ‘Palmyra’ docks to take charge of transporting the shipment of goods the Tetrarch Herod is sending to his palace at Tiberias. His steward Chuza will put several of the palace servants to unloading it and will arrange for obtaining carts and beasts to move it. You will be concerned only with guarding the caravan. But be on the alert every moment, Decius. See that you aren’t surprised by some lurking band of thieves lying in wait for you. If anything should happen to this shipment, by the gods, we’d never hear the end of it; word would get back to Rome and the Prefect himself would know about it.” Upon delivering the goods at the Tetrarch’s palace, he added, Decius should take the detachment to the garrison post and there await his arrival with the remainder of the century, which would be escorting Herod to Jerusalem and from there northward to his Galilean capital.

When some two hours later the unloading had been completed and the other legionaries had returned to the ship, Decius stood with his detachment beside the piled crates and casks and waved good-by to his comrades as the “Palmyra” moved slowly away from the wharf and then, gaining speed, headed on a straight course toward the harbor mouth. The next day the vessel cleared the long breakwater thrust far out into the Great Sea to provide a safe harbor at Caesarea, and Longinus and his century went ashore. While the legionaries were assembling their gear, Cornelius stood with him on the pier.

“Come visit us at Tiberias, Longinus. You can contrive some mission that will warrant your being sent, can’t you?” he asked, then added, “Herodias will probably be coming out from Rome before long. I suspect Herod will be going back for her as soon as he can arrange with the present Tetrarchess for her to be supplanted....”

“If he can—which I doubt.”

“Whether he can amicably or not, I’d wager that he’ll be bringing Herodias to Tiberias as Tetrarchess. Then Claudia can visit her and you can meet her there. And marry her and keep her out here until you’ve completed your tour of duty.” Cornelius winked and playfully nudged his friend with an elbow. “By the gods, maybe that’s what you and Claudia have planned all along. Is it, Longinus?”

“No, we haven’t planned any such thing.” Longinus stared thoughtfully out at the shore before them. “But I’ll contrive some reason for getting up to Tiberias. And we’re bound to meet in Jerusalem during one of the festivals; they bring in the troops then, you know. Or perhaps some mission will bring you to Caesarea; at Tiberias, after all, you’ll be nearer us than we will be to Jerusalem.” He clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “My love, and the blessings of the gods—including your Yahweh—to your family.”

Cornelius stood at the “Palmyra’s” rail as the vessel slipped away from the wharf. When it was nearing the rounding of the breakwater, he heard Longinus’ sharp command, and the century moved off smartly. The tapping of the legionaries’ heavy boots in rhythmical, perfect cadence came clearly to him across the water. Longinus turned and lifted his arm high in salute; Cornelius returned it, as the century, swinging along the cobblestoned way, gained a street corner and turned, then began to be swallowed up into the maze of stone buildings beyond the piers.

The sun was dropping low into the Great Sea when the “Palmyra” sailed into the port at Joppa. Relieved and happy that the long voyage was safely ended, the passengers disembarked to seek refreshment and rest for the night. Early on the morrow Herod Antipas with Mary of Magdala and the others of his company, escorted by Centurion Cornelius and his century, would set out on the forty-mile journey southeastward to Jerusalem.

11

Centurion Cornelius pointed to a horseman hurrying toward them along the narrow road east of the river. “The advance guard must have run into trouble, maybe Bar Abbas and his gang or some other waylaying zealots.”

“Then you’d better send out a patrol to overtake and destroy them,” Herod Antipas scowled. “I have no patience with those rebel cutthroats.”

The caravan trudging up the deep trough of the Jordan had paused for the midday refreshment. Four days ago it had descended the Jericho road from Jerusalem to encamp for the night on the plain before the city. Horses had been provided for the Tetrarch and certain of his household, but the soldiers of the century, with the exception of the small advance and rear patrols, were on foot. Heavily loaded carts and donkeys transported the supplies, gear, and tents. The journey had been made without incident; another day of uninterrupted progress would bring the caravan to the Sea of Galilee, or, if they were lucky, perhaps even as far as Tiberias.

Cornelius stood up and signaled the approaching rider. The horseman rode straight up to him, reined in his mount, and saluted. “Centurion,” he reported, “up ahead at the river crossing there’s a motley crowd of about a hundred persons, most of them men. Judging by their appearance, they must have traveled a long way. They appear to be peaceful, but there’s a wild-looking, hairy fellow haranguing them, and they’re drinking in his every word; they hardly noticed me when I joined them.”

“What was the fellow saying, Lucilius?”

“I couldn’t understand him, Centurion. I’m not familiar with the speech of this region, which I presume it was. But I thought he might be one of those Galilean revolutionaries trying to incite the crowd against our Roman rule.”

“One of those zealots, you mean? No, hardly, Lucilius. Those rebels don’t stand up delivering speeches; their way is to thrust a knife between somebody’s ribs and then slink quickly away. More than likely this fellow’s a religious fanatic, and I would guess his language is Aramaic. There’s probably no harm in him, but you did well to report. I understand Aramaic; I’ll return with you and investigate.”

“I believe I know who the man is, Centurion,” the Tetrarch volunteered. “There was a desert fellow from the Wilderness country beginning to cause a stir here when I was leaving for Rome. I had reports then that he was thundering invectives against everything, even the Tetrarch and his house. He may be inciting the people against Rome. At any rate, I want to hear him, and perhaps you should, too.”

Mary of Magdala, seated near-by, had overheard. “I, too, would like to hear the strange prophet.”

“But surely even your irresistible charms would not tempt this mad Wilderness preacher.” Antipas winked at the centurion.

“I am not interested in charming him. But if this is the man you think he is I have heard much about him. I would like to observe him for myself.”

Cornelius turned back to Antipas. “If the Tetrarch wishes, I’ll send up a patrol to be near-by in case of any trouble. But I think, Sire, you should disguise yourself. Then you will be able to mingle safely with the throng, and the preacher, not knowing the Tetrarch is hearing him, will talk freely.”

Antipas, agreeing, quickly exchanged his purple mantle for the simple Galilean garment of one of his servants and wrapped about his Roman-style cropped head a bedraggled scarf to form an effectively concealing headdress. The servant cut a reed to serve as a walking staff. Mary, too, changed garments and veiled her face in the manner of a Galilean peasant woman.

Cornelius sent a patrol ahead. “Stop this side of the ford,” he instructed Lucilius, “and try to avoid being noticed by the throng down there. But keep on the alert for any commotion that might develop.” Then he, Antipas, and Mary all mounted horses and rode toward the place where the multitude had assembled. At a bend in the road some two hundred paces from the ford the three riders dismounted behind screening thick willows that came up from the river bank; from there they quietly made their way down to the ford and slipped unobtrusively into the crowd.

Every burning dark eye seemed to be focused on the gesticulating, fiercely intent preacher. He stood in the center of the circled throng on the river bank, and his words came to them clear and sharply challenging, angry and pleading, denunciatory and promising.

“You generation of vipers!” he thundered, shaking a gnarled fist in their teeth, “have I not warned you to escape from the wrath that is coming? Do you contend that because you are Abraham’s seed you are secure from the judgment of a righteous God?” He lowered his voice, strode two steps forward, and dramatically wheeled about. “What are Abraham’s descendants to God? Could he not raise up from these very stones”—he pointed toward the smoothly rounded small rocks lining the water’s edge—“children for Abraham? And is not the ax ready at the foot of the tree to cut down every one that does not bear fruit?”

Cornelius nudged a bent Jew, his face streaked with perspiration that ran down in soiled small beads into his grizzled beard, his whole frame seemingly so absorbed in the speaker’s thundering words that he had not even noticed the centurion’s arrival beside him. “That man, who is he?”

The old fellow turned incredulously to stare. “Soldier, you have been in Galilee long enough to speak our tongue, and yet you do not know him?”

“But for many weeks I have not set foot in Galilee,” Cornelius replied. “I am just now returning, by way of Jerusalem, from Rome.”

“He is the Prophet John, soldier, the one sent of God to warn Israel to repent and be baptized.” The old man turned back to give his attention for the moment to the preacher. Then, his face earnest, he confronted Cornelius again. “He is not concerned with Rome, soldier. He preaches only that men should cleanse their hearts of evil and walk in the way of our Yahweh.” Once more he turned to stare at the prophet whose eyes were wildly flaming in his burnt dark face; ignoring Cornelius, the old man leaned forward and raised a knotted hand to cup his ear.

John was tall, and his leathery leanness accentuated his height. The prophet, it was immediately evident to the centurion, was not a man of the cities and the synagogues; he was a son of the desert and the wastelands of Judaea, and the sun and wind had tanned his skin to the color and hardness of old harness. Nor did he appear any more afraid of the proud and opulent Pharisees and Sadducees who confronted him with their disdainful smiles than he must have been of the wild animals of his Wilderness haunts.

“Repent! I say unto you. And bring forth fruits worthy of repentance. Try not further the patience of God. Forswear evil and do good.”

“But what are for us fruits worthy of repentance? What must we do?”

The questioner, his countenance heavy with pain, stood at the river’s edge facing the prophet. His garb revealed him to be a man of means, but it was evident also that the thundering words of the baptizer had stirred him deeply and that he had asked the question in all humility.

John thrust forth a lean forefinger and shook it sternly. “You are of a calling unloved in Israel, and justly so. You have sold your birthright as a son of Israel to join your heel to the conqueror’s to grind Abraham’s seed into the earth. You are a publican; I know you, and I know the publican’s heart.” His voice was almost a hiss, and around the clearing beards nodded in agreement with the prophet’s harsh appraisal. “I call upon you to repent!”

“But what, Rab John, are the fruits of my repentance?” The perspiration was running freely down the man’s face and dripping into his beard. “What must I do?”

“Demand only that which is legally due you.”

“I swear that this I shall henceforth do, Yahweh being my helper. By the beard of the High Priest, I swear it.” The man sighed deeply, and from the fold of his robe pulled forth a kerchief with which he mopped his forehead, his whiskered cheeks, and the dampened long beard.

“But we are not great ones,” ventured a gnarled and grizzled fellow who leaned twisted on his staff, “neither are we publicans. We are the plain and the simple and the poor of Galilee. What shall we do worthy of repentance?”

“You have two coats, though they be worn and patched with much wearing? Then give one to him who has none. And you have food, though it be coarse and not plentiful? Share what you have with him who is hungry.”

Cornelius had noticed, standing not far from the prophet but somewhat withdrawn from the throng as if to avoid contamination with these men of earth such as the one who had just questioned John, a knot of resplendently robed Israelites, their beards oiled and combed and carefully braided, their fingers heavily ringed. Now one of these men, his hands clasped in front of his rounded, sagging paunch, stepped forward a pace and bowed. “Rabbi, we are priests and Levites sent by the rulers in Jerusalem to hear and observe your teaching. We perceive that you speak with great authority. Tell us, Rabbi”—his smile was as unctuous as his beard was oiled—“are you that great One for whom we are looking?”

“I am not the Messiah,” John answered evenly.

“Are you then the Prophet Elijah returned to us?”

“I am not he.”

“Then, Rabbi, who are you? We have been instructed to come and see and carry back our report to the Temple rulers. What then shall we say of you, who you are?”

“Say that I am:

“You speak the words of the great Isaiah,” the pompous questioner declared.

“Yes,” John agreed. “And other words he said also.

“Then you, like we, yet look for the coming of the Messiah of God?”

John raised a lean and burnt arm and the haircloth robe slid down along it to his shoulder. He pointed a darting forefinger toward the Temple’s emissary, and his countenance was solemn. “I tell you, that One is now among us, though you have not recognized him as the Messiah of God. And though he comes after me in time, he ranks before me; indeed, I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose his sandal straps. I baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire!”

“Then, Rabbi, why do you baptize with water?” The unctuous one smiled broadly and, pleased with his cleverness, looked from one member of the delegation to another.

“It is a sign that those who enter upon it have repented and been cleansed in their hearts.” He looked the man in the eyes. “Have you repented, my brother? Is your heart changed? Are you ready for the coming of Him of Whom I have this moment spoken?” John whirled about, and his lean arm described an arc that embraced the multitude. “Repent, ye men of Israel! Ye who dwell in great houses, repent! Ye men of earth who know not where your next mouthful will be found, repent. For the clean in heart do not all dwell in palaces or attend upon the Temple worship, nor do they all go about hungry and naked and shelterless.”

As the prophet paused, he looked toward the centurion and the disguised Tetrarch, who stood beside Mary and within a few paces of the portly questioner from Jerusalem. Cornelius wondered what Herod was thinking of this strange Wilderness preacher, this fiery denouncer of evildoers. But in that same moment John resumed his discourse. “No, sin and wickedness abide in the high places; evil reigns even in the great marble pile built above the graves at Tiberias where the Idumaean pawn of the conqueror despoils and seduces the people of Israel! He, too, my brothers, even he must repent his wicked ways; he must seek the Lord while yet He may be found, or he and his evil associates will be cast into outer darkness!”

The fleeting thought came suddenly to the centurion that the prophet had recognized the large man in the soiled Galilean robe, and perhaps the notorious woman of Magdala as well. But then would he have dared utter such a denunciation? Was the desert preacher really a man of dedication and courage, as people said? Perhaps. Cornelius scrutinized Herod’s face. The Tetrarch’s normally pale complexion had turned an ugly shade of red beneath the twisted turban, while beads of perspiration ran down his heavy jowls. But Mary, though little of her face showed because of the veil, appeared more amused than angered.

The prophet’s interrogator from Jerusalem was still unsatisfied. “But, Rabbi,” he began again, “you say that the Messiah of God is already among us. Why then has he not declared himself, why has he not consumed with holy fire the Edomite who possesses us and tramples into the dust of utter subjection our ancient land?”

John’s eyes flashed angrily, but he controlled his tongue. When he spoke his voice was calm. “It is not for me to explain or defend the will and works of the Messiah. I am but His messenger who goes ahead to announce His coming, to call upon His people Israel to repent that their eyes might be whole to see Him when He comes, that their hearts might be clean to know Him!” With bronzed fist he smote the palm of his left hand, his ardor mounting. “You leaders of the people”—he stabbed a lean forefinger toward the haughty group from Jerusalem—“cleanse your own hearts; let fall from your eyes the scabs of greed and hypocrisy so that when He comes you may recognize Him!”