“I answer you, my brother, in this wise, and this is my interpretation of the law. Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone.” His quiet, dark eyes rested a moment on the startled countenance of the man who had just propounded the question, and then quickly they moved along the line of the challenging Temple leaders.
Now once more he bent forward and with stiffened forefinger traced symbols in the dust.
For a long moment his eyes remained fixed upon the pavement. When he looked up, the little group of sneering Pharisees had departed. The others in the ring about him had fallen back from the steps on which he sat and stood regarding him with frank amazement; some of them revealed their delight at his having confounded his enemies, and on the faces of others could be seen a heightened responsiveness to the young man’s teachings and for the Galilean himself a strengthened affection.
“Woman, where are your accusers?” he asked the amazed poor creature, from whom in the swift moment of his answer had fled all trace of defiant insolence. “Does no man remain to condemn you?”
She lifted her tear-streaked face to him. “No man, Lord.”
“Neither do I condemn you. Go now, and sin no more.”
Claudia could not understand the woman’s murmured reply, but on her face clearly discernible was a look of radiance as she bowed to the Galilean and, turning, slipped away out of the crowd. At the same time the Procurator’s wife noticed a large, bushy-bearded fellow, wide of shoulders and heavily muscled, pushing through the throng from the direction of the Gate Shalleketh. He walked up to Jesus, who had stood up as the woman was leaving. “Master, you have been here a long while; you must be weary. Let us go over to Bethany to rest a spell.”
“That’s the fisherman I saw one day at Tiberias,” whispered Tullia. “He is of the Galilean’s company; his name, I think, is Simon.”
The crowd now began to disperse, for Jesus and the big fisherman were moving off toward the Gate Shushan. They came past the two women, so close to them that Claudia could have reached out and touched the tall Galilean. Their eyes met; he smiled and passed on. She stood rooted, watching the two until they had passed out of sight down the slope toward the Brook Kidron. “He seemed to recognize me,” she said to herself, as suddenly a fanciful thought crossed her mind. “But of course he didn’t; he’s never in all his life seen me before.”
With the two men’s disappearance, however, the spell was broken. Claudia caught her maid’s arm. “We’d better be going now,” she said. But she was still lost in her own thoughts; they had rounded the corner of the Soreg and were nearing the North Gate of Asuppim before she spoke again. “By the gods, what a man! What a marvelous, strange Jew. And he didn’t do any feats of magic either. Little one, I’m so glad you brought me down here.”
“Mistress, now that you’ve seen him and heard his discourse, even though for but a few minutes, what is your opinion of him? Do you think that perhaps he really is the Messiah of Israel?”
“I know nothing of the Messiah of Israel ... and care nothing. And this idea of a man’s being a god, even though we Romans are supposed to believe that the gods come to earth in the form of men, is just as incomprehensible to me as it is to Longinus. Maybe that’s because I don’t believe in the gods in the first place.” They were going through the great North Gate of Asuppim when Claudia stopped and caught Tullia’s arm. “Nevertheless, little one—and you asked me my opinion of him—there is something tremendously different about that man. I’m sure I have never encountered another like him. He’s a quick thinker and able to out-wit his enemies, and he’s evidently a good and just man. But there’s something else”—she paused, her forehead creased in a frown—“something to me, at any rate, mystifying. The way he looked at me, Tullia....” Her solemn expression relaxed into a quick, warming smile. “Perhaps he is your Messiah of the Jews, little one, whatever that means!”
38
On her return to Caesarea from the Feast of Tabernacles, Claudia learned from Sergius Paulus that Longinus had sailed for Rome. The message from the centurion to the commander of the Roman constabulary had been brought by a ship’s master who had sailed southward from the Antioch port of Seleucia shortly after Longinus had gone aboard a ship there for his voyage to the capital.
The message had been brief, the commander said; its purpose was to let him know that Longinus had been sent to Rome by the Legate Vitellius on what the legate must have considered an urgent mission, probably to the Prefect Sejanus.
“Longinus must have sailed from Seleucia on one of the last boats out,” Sergius observed. “From now until spring there’ll be few crossings; any ship attempting to make it will be braving the heavy winds.” He smiled wryly. “It must have been important business the legate was sending him on.”
Claudia suspected that Longinus was going to the capital to relay the legate’s report on the situation in Palestine. Particularly important, she knew, would be the question of whether or not King Aretas was planning to attack Herod and thereby involve the whole Palestinian region in war. But she had no direct message from the centurion.
Longinus was acting wisely, she realized, in sending her no written communication. He could hardly evolve any innocent appearing reason for writing her, and it would be impossible to send her such a message without Pilate’s learning about it, and possibly even the Prefect. And any message sent would of necessity be innocuous. But as the weeks pushed deeper and deeper into winter and no word of him came to her at all, she began to wonder if he would return to Palestine or if, the gods forbid, Sejanus might have sent him once more to Germania or Gaul or to some other post far remote from the now increasingly dreary Palestine.
Despite the fact that it was Herodias who had urged her to go up to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, the two women had hardly seen one another during those days in Israel’s capital. Claudia recalled that even then the Tetrarchess had seemed somewhat reserved. And once when mention was made of the journey of Longinus to Antioch in response to the summons of the Legate Vitellius, Herodias had appeared to grow even more coldly formal. Perhaps the Tetrarchess suspected, Claudia thought at the time, that Longinus was reporting on Herod’s visit to Machaerus and the appearance there of the ambassadors from King Aretas, and even of her own bizarre conduct at the Tetrarch’s birthday banquet. Nor had Herodias, as they were preparing to leave Jerusalem, invited her to come to Tiberias.
And at the Feast neither she nor Pilate had seen Antipas. She wondered if perhaps he, too, might have suspected that Longinus was even then in Antioch reporting what he had seen and heard at Machaerus. But her failure to be honored by the Tetrarch in Jerusalem troubled her not at all. She had less respect for him, she confessed to herself, than she had for the Procurator. And she hoped that Longinus was finding opportunity for dropping some poisoned, if discreet, words into the ears of Sejanus concerning Pontius Pilate and his continuing difficulties with the Jews.
Nor was the Procurator’s administration of affairs in Judaea, as the winter advanced, serving to establish him in better favor with the people he was governing. Stubborn and unimaginative, he steadfastly refused either to learn anything or forget anything. Scorning his subordinate officials and refusing to give consideration to their counseling, fearful of his superiors, including the Legate Vitellius and particularly the Prefect Sejanus, Pilate provided no stable rule of Judaea; his administration vacillated from fierce oppression and arbitrary action to cowardly yielding to priestly demands. His tax gatherers, working through the despised publicans, those native hirelings of Rome whom the Israelites looked upon with loathing as traitors to Israel and Israel’s Yahweh, demanded and received exorbitant tribute in money and produce of the land; this did not add to the Procurator’s popularity among the Jews. Both the people and the Temple leaders were growing increasingly enraged.
The natural breach between the Procurator and the Tetrarch, too, was widening as the weeks went by; an incident at the Temple during one of the great festival occasions in which Pilate’s soldiers had slain a group of roistering Galileans had infuriated Herod Antipas. And Pilate’s effort to use Temple funds in the building of an aqueduct to bring water into Jerusalem had evoked the bitter animosity of the Temple leadership. On all sides, then, the Procurator, beginning with his flaunting of the Roman ensigns in Jerusalem shortly after his arrival in Judaea, had been strengthening rather than weakening the natural hostility the Israelites had for the representatives of conquering Rome.
All this Claudia had observed; she wondered how long this mounting burden of tension and hate could continue to build upon the broad shoulders of Pontius Pilate before inevitably it should topple him from the Procuratorship. The answer, she was confident, lay not in Judaea, but in Rome. Pilate would last only so long as he did not too greatly displease Sejanus. And from the moment the tribute from Judaea to Rome ... and Sejanus ... began to shrink, she reasoned, her spouse’s days as Procurator would be numbered.
... Perhaps Sejanus may have begun to suspect already that Pilate’s fingers have become sticky, that too large a proportion of the revenues are failing to reach Rome; perhaps he has revealed, or hinted, his suspicions to Longinus, and Longinus will tell me everything when he returns.
... If he does return. But surely he will be back in Caesarea when winter relents and calming weather permits the ships to resume their sailing. Surely he will arrive in time to go with us to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover....
Thinking one day of the coming Feast, she recalled her earlier visit with Tullia to the Temple. “Do you remember that last day of the Feast of Tabernacles?” she asked, turning to her slave maid. The girl nodded and smiled. “That Galilean,” Claudia continued, “your Messiah of the Jews, I wonder what has become of him. Do you suppose he’ll return to the Jewish capital for the Passover festival?”
“I would say so, Mistress,” Tullia answered. “Every devout Jew tries to go up for the Passover Feast. And certainly the Galilean is a devout Jew. Even though the Temple priests are bent on destroying him, I’m sure he will wish to go there to worship.”
“If he does, maybe we’ll have an opportunity to hear him again ... and perhaps this time he will perform some feat of magic.”
“But, Mistress, those who hold him to be the Messiah insist that he does not work magic; they declare he does his miracles of healing by the will of God.”
She smiled. “Well, however he does them—and even from you, little one, I’ve heard reports that he does—is no concern of mine. But should he come up to the Temple and perform some such feat, either by his own cleverness or with the aid of your Yahweh, I would like to be there when he did it.”
“But, Mistress, you saw him that day they dragged the woman before him....”
“Yes, but his saving her from that mob was not magic, little one. That was only the working of a quick intelligence and a good heart. But they say he can make lame persons walk again and blind persons see. And Cornelius, you remember, declared he healed his little servant boy, though Longinus thinks it was only a coincidence that the boy’s fever broke just at the same time the Galilean supposedly was curing him. Cornelius even believes that the carpenter once actually restored to life the son of a widow; he told me they were bearing the young man to the tomb when the Galilean happened along and brought him back to life. Of course, the boy may have been in a trance; certainly no sensible person can believe that he was really dead and then came back to life when the Galilean said some mysterious words and made some queer motions over him.” She paused and looked Tullia in the eyes. “Or do you, little one?”
“But if he is actually the son of our God....”
“Oh, you gullible Jews, even you, Tullia.” Her countenance revealed an amused tolerance. “And Cornelius. A soldier of Rome. But how, by all the gods, Tullia, can any present-day person of education and culture embrace such blatant superstition to believe that a man could come to earth as a god, even if he could believe that there are gods in the first place?”
But Tullia skillfully evaded answering the question. “If you saw him restore to life a man who you knew was dead, what would you say about him then, Mistress?”
“When I see him do that, little one, I’ll tell you then.”
Nevertheless, Claudia had not dismissed the Galilean from her thoughts, for that night she dreamed about him. It was a confused and illogical arrangement of stories she had heard about Jesus, interwoven with the experience she and Tullia had had that day at the Temple during the final exercises of the Feast of Tabernacles. In the dream she and Longinus had strolled with Cornelius down from the Tower of Antonia into the Court of the Gentiles. Rounding a corner of the Soreg, the three had come upon a throng ringed about the Galilean. They had pushed forward to the inner circle, and there, they had discovered on the stones of the court at the carpenter’s feet a crushed and bloody woman.
“Rabbi,” a burly fellow beside the woman was saying, “this woman is dead. We caught her in the act of adultery, and in accordance with the law of our father Moses we stoned her to death. I ask you, Rabbi, did not we do well in thus upholding the ancient law of Israel?”
“It is the law that the woman and the man taken in adultery be stoned to death,” the Galilean replied, and then his eyes flamed and his voice took on a new intensity, “but you who stoned her, were you without sins?” Then he lowered his eyes to the stones beside the dead woman and began with his forefinger to trace symbols in the dust. After a moment he stood up and, bending down, caught the stiffened body underneath his arms and raised it, unbending, until it stood upright.
“Remember,” said Cornelius, “she is dead, completely dead; see her mangled face, her crushed skull. Watch the Galilean.”
Jesus was steadying the rigid corpse with one hand. Now he raised his other hand to a position above her head and began to intone words that to Claudia were strange and utterly incomprehensible.
“Watch now,” said Cornelius. “Keep your eyes on him. And, remember, the woman is dead; there is no life in her, none.”
Incredulous, their eyes straining, they saw the stiffened limbs beginning to relax and the head bend forward slightly; the crushed bones of the shattered face rounded outward, the torn and bruised flesh smoothed, the clotted blood melted away, and the desecrated ghastly countenance was restored to a calm beauty; the woman, looking now into the serene face of the Galilean, smiled.
“By all the great gods ...” But Longinus hushed precipitately, for Jesus was speaking to the woman, now fully alert. “No man condemns you, my sister, and neither do I,” Jesus said, as he pointed toward her executioners, now slinking away toward the Gate of Shushan. “Go, and sin no more.”
Longinus turned now to the Procurator’s wife, and on his face she saw an expression of utter amazement. “But, Claudia, the woman was dead! Her head was crushed; her face was a bloody pulp. And now, look! She is walking away, around the corner of the Soreg! The Galilean, Claudia, he must be a god! By all the gods, Claudia, this man must be a god! He must be....”
But Longinus’ voice was fading, and he was receding, slipping away, and so were Cornelius and the Galilean and the woman....
Claudia opened her eyes; her chamber was flooded with light. She closed them again, trying to recapture the scene in the great court of the Temple. But the dream had fled. “Bona Dea,” she said aloud. “It was so real. That woman. And the Galilean. And Cornelius and Longinus. So vivid. Maybe”—the notion suddenly occurred to her—“I’m dreaming now, maybe I’m dreaming that I was dreaming.”
She sat up, swung her feet around to the floor, stretched and yawned. Then quickly she arose and crossing to the window, looked down at the ships in the harbor. Bright sunlight flashed from the hulls and the billowing sails. On the docks slaves struggled with casks and crates as they loaded and unloaded vessels. The world she was seeing was real; she stood looking through her window upon things tangible and comprehensible. The dream, with all its implications of the inscrutable, was gone, vanished.
But she was not to forget it entirely. One day Tullia revealed that while at the market place she had encountered some travelers from Galilee who had gone up to Jerusalem and were returning by way of Caesarea. On their journey, they told her, they had come upon the Galilean and several of his band in a hamlet in the mountains of Ephraim. Jesus had returned to Galilee from the Feast of Tabernacles, but after several weeks he had gone back for the Feast of Dedication. From Jerusalem he had retired into Peraea.
As Tullia related the story she had been told, her eyes began to shine. “While he was on the other side of the Jordan,” she went on, “he received a message from Bethany....”
“Bethany?”
“It’s a small village a few miles—a mile or so—just west of Jerusalem, Mistress.”
“What was the message?”
“Jesus had three friends who lived there, a man and his two sisters. While he was over beyond the Jordan he had word that the man was near death. So he and his band returned to Bethany. When they got there, they found that his friend had been dead four days.”
“And the Galilean brought him back to life?”
“Yes, Mistress! That’s what the travelers said.”
Claudia laughed. “Cornelius should have been there. No doubt, though, he’s already heard about it. And, of course, he believes the story.”
“But you don’t, Mistress?”
Claudia wasn’t sure that the servant woman was teasing. “No, Tullia, I don’t,” she replied. “Very probably this story has been repeated many times and has been added to by each teller. No doubt it was like the one Cornelius was telling about the widow’s son, or even the incident in which his own little slave boy was supposed to have been cured by the Galilean. Obviously, the man at Bethany was not dead; no doubt they thought he was....”
“But, Mistress, they said he had been in the tomb four days.”
“They said it, yes. Perhaps he hadn’t been entombed that long; but if he had, what of it? He wouldn’t have suffocated; tombs aren’t sealed that securely. In all probability the man was in a trance when they put him away; no doubt the carpenter roused him from the trance into which he had fallen.”
“Mistress, you have little faith in the Galilean.” Tullia’s dark eyes were serious now. “You cannot see how he could be the Messiah of the Jews and armed with unearthly power, can you?”
“I don’t believe that any man can restore life to another man, if that’s what you mean, little one. I cannot believe that any human possesses supernatural power; in fact, as I have told you many times, I doubt the existence of supernatural beings, including your Yahweh.” She laughed again. “But you and Cornelius outnumber me. I should have Longinus here to support me.”
But when a few weeks later the Centurion Longinus did sail into the harbor at Caesarea, Claudia had no longer a thought for the Galilean mystic and his reported wonder-working.
The centurion journeyed on a coastal vessel bound from Seleucia to Alexandria. He had sailed from Rome as soon as weather conditions permitted; from Seleucia he had moved on to Antioch to report to the Legate Vitellius. Returning a few days later, he had boarded another vessel destined for the Palestinian ports and Alexandria.
On coming ashore at Caesarea the centurion went first to the garrison headquarters and reported to Sergius Paulus. That duty completed, he visited the Procurator’s Palace, ostensibly to pay his respects to Pontius Pilate. The Procurator, polite but coldly formal, talked with him for only a moment before excusing himself and leaving the palace. Longinus, remarking about it to Claudia, wondered if the Procurator was finally becoming jealous.
“No, he isn’t jealous, by all the gods, and that makes me furious with him!” Claudia had answered. “But he may suspect that you’ve been spying on him and that Vitellius called you to Antioch to report on his administration of affairs in Judaea and then sent you to Rome to relay information and suggestions to Sejanus.”
“He would be entirely right, too, in thinking so. And you can add old Herod Antipas to my watched list.” He thought, with sudden amusement, of the third name on the list given him by Sejanus when first the Prefect sent him out to Palestine, but he did not comment. “And what I told the Prefect about both of them, for the Legate Vitellius and from my own observations, didn’t make them any more secure in their positions, by the gods!”
Quickly he related his experiences in Rome; he had met several times with Sejanus, once to discuss ways of increasing the output of the glassworks in Phoenicia. On another occasion the two had gone out to Capri for an audience with Tiberius. “The Emperor asked about his beloved stepdaughter,” he said, “but I professed to have little information about you. Sejanus also quizzed me—I’m sure he still suspects us—but he, too, learned nothing.”
“But what is going to happen, Longinus—about us, I mean—and when? Is there any likelihood still of Pilate’s being recalled ... soon?”
“Yes, I’d say there was. I know Sejanus is losing patience with Pilate; he seems to hear everything that happens out here, and Pilate’s inability to rule Judaea without continually provoking turmoil and protesting by the Jews angers the Prefect. The only thing that’s kept Pilate as Procurator this long, I suspect, is the fact that Sejanus apparently doesn’t suspect that Pilate is dipping too heavily into the taxes, if he is ... and I can’t say yet that he is. That was one question he kept coming back to in talking with me, if there was any evidence that the Procurator was not sending to Rome all the revenues he was supposed to.”
“Did the Prefect indicate that he might call Pilate to Rome for questioning?”
“I couldn’t say that he did. But if the Procurator should be ordered to the capital to justify his administration of Judaea, he won’t be returned, you can be sure. The same thing is true of Herod Antipas. I believe the Procurator and the Tetrarch stand in precarious positions; the next few months could determine the fate of both.”
Longinus left the palace soon after Pilate had departed; he and Claudia, they agreed, would meet again when the opportunity was afforded. But that opportunity did not come quickly; he did not return to the palace until the Procurator summoned him there to discuss plans for the forthcoming journey to Jerusalem.
A week later the Procurator and his party, with Longinus commanding one of the escorting centuries, set out for Israel’s capital and the great Feast of the Passover.
Jerusalem
39
The caravan from Galilee had halted on the plain before Jericho for rest and the midday meal, and now the Tetrarch’s party and the escorting soldiers of Cornelius’ century were preparing to resume their journey. Two days and a half of steady traveling southward had brought them from Tiberias through the rapidly greening gorge of the Jordan, and soon they would face the most grueling and dangerous part of the journey, the steep and boulder-locked climb to Jerusalem.
Centurion Cornelius, who had been making a quick inspection of the assembled legionaries, approached Herod Antipas and saluted. “Sire, I need now to determine your wishes”—he bowed to Herodias—“and the wishes of the Tetrarchess, for the remainder of our journey up to Jerusalem. If you wish to rest awhile, we could make camp here and leave early in the morning for Jerusalem. Or we could move on now and camp for the night where the Jericho road begins its ascent to Jerusalem. But if you prefer, we can set out now and not stop until we reach the capital, though it will probably be well past nightfall before we enter the city.”
“Are you fearful of traveling the Jericho road after the sun has set, Centurion?” Antipas inquired. “Do you think that perhaps robbers or zealot bands might sweep down on us from the rocks?”
“I have no fear, Sire; certainly none, if they knew our strength, would attempt it. And before we enter that region, I’ll rearrange our order of march to strengthen our guard against a surprise attack.”
“Then I suggest that we continue on to Jerusalem today,” Herodias spoke up. “We can rest better tomorrow in the palace than we can here in camp, even though”—she turned malevolent eyes on the Tetrarch, and her tone was bitterly sarcastic—“we shall be lodging in the old Hasmonean Palace in order that our Palace of the Herods may be occupied by the Procurator and his wife.”
“Yes, the Tetrarchess is right, Centurion,” Antipas agreed complaisantly. “Let’s push on to Jerusalem today.” He ignored his wife’s caustic remark. “We’ll have tonight and all tomorrow to rest before the start of the Passover celebration.”
Beyond Jericho, where the Peraean road joined the road up from Galilee and one that came down along the western side of the Jordan from the region of Ephraim, the way began to fill with pilgrims going up to Israel’s capital for the annual great spring festival of the Passover. As the caravan neared the point where the road began its steep climb, Cornelius called a halt. While the Tetrarch and Herodias were having a brief respite from their saddles, he called in his legionaries and changed the pattern of their advance. Down through the Jordan valley they had been moving in column along the roadway with guards ahead of and behind the Tetrarch’s party and only now and then a few soldiers on the flanks.
But now Cornelius gave orders to Decius to divide the century into three groups, the largest of which would continue along the Jericho road, while the other two would move forward with the Tetrarch’s group, one on its right flank, the other on the left, and each several hundred yards from the road.
“I’m not expecting any trouble,” he explained, “but if there are any Zealots lying in wait for us, in all probability they’ll be up there in that defile where the road cuts through the rocks. You men out on the flanks will be able to beat them off; if they’re crouched beside the road, we’ll trap them between your columns and us.”
When the division of the century had been completed, the centurion had a final warning. “Stay abreast of us, and keep in contact. And now, let’s get moving. Men, keep your eyes open. These Zealots are bent on killing every Roman in Palestine. They’re clever, and they know every foot of ground in this region.”
The steep rise of the narrow Jericho road and the push of pilgrims trudging ahead slowed the progress of the caravan, and it was nearing sunset when once more Cornelius halted the column. “It’s been a hard climb, and the animals are laboring,” he explained to the Tetrarch. “A short rest will refresh us for the last few miles into Jerusalem. Soon we’ll be past the boulders and can move faster. And with danger of assault by robbers ended, we can pull in our flanking files. So we should be approaching Jerusalem by nightfall.”
But the centurion had spoken too quickly. They went hardly a mile farther and were moving slowly through the last narrow defile in the ascending road before it veered sharply around screening boulders to come on a level plateau extending to the vicinity of Bethany; the caravan was strung out in a long column and the advance guard had disappeared around the turn in the gorge-like roadway. In the instant that Herod and the Tetrarchess, with Cornelius and several of the escorting legionaries just ahead of or behind them, had advanced into the narrowest portion of the rock-walled canyon, they heard a sudden commotion above them. Looking up, they saw on each side of the pass, glaring down upon them and with spears poised, a group of grizzled, fierce-eyed insurgents.
“Halt, Roman dogs!” shouted a hulking, reddish-bearded fellow, as he drew back his spear menacingly. “Get down from your beast before I nail you to his belly like a thief to his cross! And you”—with his free hand he gestured toward the Tetrarch—“you traitor to Israel, you fawning puppet of evil Rome, stay where you are! You, too”—his angry black eyes were studying Herodias—“you adulterous sharer of your uncle’s bed, don’t you move!”
“Who are you? What do you want?” Cornelius demanded loudly, in the hope that his soldiers in the flanking columns would hear.
“You needn’t be screaming, soldier,” the burly fellow said calmly. “There’s nobody to help you. We have you surrounded. See?” He pointed to his men in the rocks on the other side of the road. “One wrong move and we’ll stick your carcasses full of spears. And you needn’t be hoping for help from those up ahead”—he motioned—“or down there.” He threw back his bearish great head and roared his laughter. “We have them cornered, too.” Then suddenly he was scowling again. “You dogs of Rome! Throw down your weapons! Quickly, before we forget ourselves and let our spears fly!”
“Do as he says, men,” Cornelius commanded, dropping his sword. “But what do you want?” he asked the highwaymen’s leader again. He had decided that the safest course would be to pretend that he knew nothing of the rebel group, that ruthless party of guerrilla-fighting revolutionaries known as Zealots who had sworn not to rest until every imperialist Roman had been vanquished from their nation’s soil. “We have brought little money,” he said casually. “We aren’t Jews, you know; we aren’t going up to Jerusalem to purchase animals for the Passover sacrifices.”
The centurion’s thrust at the Israelites seemed to incense the fellow. “No, you mongrel of a Roman,” he roared, “nor would your sacrifice be acceptable to Israel’s God were you of a mind to offer it! Now get down, all you Romans! We’re taking your horses. But you and your woman, Herod, stay where you are. We’re taking you with us for ransom, and if the money isn’t quickly forthcoming to redeem you”—he tugged at his flaring dirt-caked beard and once again laughed uproariously—“we’ll skin you and one dark night pin your worthless hides to the door of old Herod’s Palace.” But quickly his demeanor changed again. He turned to glare at his comrades. “Get down there and pick up their weapons,” he commanded, “and mount the horses. We’ve got to be getting back into the hills. And you, Bildad and Achbor, I’ll hold you accountable for the Tetrarch. Dysmas and Cush, you take charge of the woman.” His sneering countenance softened into an evil grinning. “And see that no harm comes to her. I may wish myself to examine her seductive charms.”
Antipas sat staring stonily ahead, his countenance a frozen mask of fear. But anger added a flush to the cheeks of the frightened Tetrarchess. She did not venture, however, to challenge the man’s insulting remark.
The revolutionaries scampered like sure-footed mountain goats down from the rocks and quickly assembled the swords that Cornelius’ soldiers had thrown to the ground. The leader, who had stayed in his position atop an overjutting boulder, watched eagle-eyed along with several of his band who had continued to stand guard. “Issachar, you and Nadab see to the weapons those frightened dogs have thrown down,” he called. “See that not one remains to them when we’re gone. Now, Achbor and you, Bildad, get started with the Tetrarch, and let the woman follow. Men, mount the horses”—he paused an instant to watch one of his men who was having trouble getting into the saddle—“all you who know how to ride a horse ... and Coz, you don’t, I see.”
“But you can’t get away into the rocks with these horses. You have our swords; why don’t you leave us the horses...?”
“And let you fly into Jerusalem and have old Pilate’s soldiers combing through the hills for us? Oh, no, Roman dog, we aren’t fools. You’ll stand in your tracks until we’re gone, or we’ll come charging back and slit your throats and leave you here for the vultures to clean your bones.” He suddenly whirled about, for from behind him came the sound of men running through the rocks back from the road.
“Romans! Romans!” Cornelius heard someone shouting in Aramaic. “Fly! Roman soldiers!” In the next instant a bearded, coarse fellow burst into view above the deep-cut trail. “We can’t stand against them, Bar Abbas; there are too many of them!” he shouted. “We’d better get across the road and into those rocks!” He looked down and spied his companions and their captured party. “The Romans!” he yelled. “Fly men! There are too many for us to fight them!”
“Fly!” yelled the gang’s leader. “Go out through that ravine!” He pointed. “Get yourselves lost in the rocks, and hurry!” He turned to the man who had just rushed up to him. “How many did there appear to be, Hamor?”
“Many. I could not count them. We speared several before they discovered us....”
“Fools! If you’d held your peace and stayed under cover, they wouldn’t have known you were there. Now you’ve caused us to be flushed out. By the beard of the High Priest, Hamor, haven’t I warned you...?”
“But we thought there were only a handful....”
“Through that way!” Bar Abbas turned his back toward the road and was signaling the revolutionaries racing toward him. Cornelius, who since his first sight of the burly fellow had suspected he was the notorious Zealot marauder, couldn’t see the fleeing Israelites, but he could hear their sandals slapping against the loose stones. And close behind them—he was able distinctly to distinguish the sound of their heavy boots crunching the gravel and scattering the pebbles—came the pursuing legionaries of his flanking file on the west.
Already the assailants in the defile of the road were fleeing. Some clambered up the steep sides of the little ravine that opened into the gulch of the roadway and disappeared into the sheltering boulders above; others ran down the road to the end of the canyon and turned eastward; several went the other way along the narrow trail and then turned off in the same direction the others had taken. But before they had all cleared the road, Bar Abbas and his companions on the boulders above, still clutching their spears, had dropped into the defile and without a glance toward their now liberated prisoners had scampered into the converging ravine.
Hardly had the burly Bar Abbas disappeared before the pursuing Romans were plunging into the boulders beside the road. In another moment several of them were peering down into the narrow roadway. In that same instant Cornelius, looking up, spied Decius. “Here!” the centurion called out. “Down that way!” He pointed. “Hurry!”
“Cornelius, by all the gods, you aren’t going to let them get away, are you!” screamed Herodias, having suddenly found her voice.
“But, my dear Herodias”—Antipas turned ponderously in his saddle to face his spouse—“certainly the centurion knows what....”
“Hah! The Tetrarch has come to life! He speaks, now that Bar Abbas and his revolutionaries have fled,” she observed sneeringly.
“Bar Abbas,” Cornelius said, ignoring the Tetrarchess and Herod, as Decius and several of his detachment clambered down into the road. “They pounced on us from the rocks there”—he pointed—“and had us disarmed. I was hoping you would hear the commotion.”
“They jumped us the same way, Centurion,” Decius said. “I think they killed two of our men. I left some men with them. We got several of the revolutionaries, though.”
“It’s a poor exchange. But get after him, Decius. Here, Galba, Licinius, Mallius”—Cornelius called out a half dozen of the men who had been in his detachment—“go with them; you saw Bar Abbas; you’ll know him.” Already the men were grabbing up their swords from the pile Bar Abbas’ men had left in their rush to get away. “They were headed east, toward the Wilderness. In a moment they’ll be running into Lucius on the flank over there. If he can turn them back, we’ll have them in a bag. But they may break through him. Stay after them, Decius; get that Bar Abbas, and try to take him alive.” He turned to another of his men. “Livius, take a detachment and go down the road; you saw where the revolutionaries turned off left. Marius, take your squad and go that way”—he pointed up the Jericho road toward Jerusalem—“and run down those that fled in that direction; you saw where they turned off. Follow them. And all of you be careful; we want no more ambushes.” He called out several more names. “You men stay here with me,” he said. “We’ll see that no harm comes to the Tetrarch and his lady.” He smiled wryly as he looked toward Herodias. “We almost didn’t do that awhile ago.” Then he turned again to Decius. “We’re moving out of this trap in here, though,” he said. “We’ll be up there a thousand paces. And hurry, men; it will soon be dark in those rocks.” He signaled for them to be off. “I want that Bar Abbas.”
Less than half an hour later Marius and his men returned. They were leading a manacled Israelite. “We saw only five men,” Marius reported. “Two of them we killed, and this one we cornered between two big rocks. The other two slipped away; we searched, but we’re sure they’re gone now. This fellow is a Galilean, named Gesmas, he says.”
“And you had nobody hurt?” Marius nodded. “Good. Keep a sharp eye on this fellow.” Cornelius pointed. “Livius is coming in. No prisoners, I believe.”
Livius reported that his men had killed or wounded several of the fleeing revolutionaries. He had had only one man cut slightly by an Israelite’s desperately wielded spear; the weapon had grazed the soldier’s shoulder. “We saw no signs of Lucius’ flanking file,” Livius revealed. “They must have been up ahead, and the revolutionaries we were pursuing must have slipped around their rear. They know this country; they simply disappeared like conies into those big rocks. But maybe Lucius intercepted some of those that Decius went after.”
“Look!” One of the Romans pointed. “There’s Decius.” Having moved up from the narrow defile through the boulders, they could see out on both sides of the road. “And he has two prisoners.”
“Yes. And one of them, by all the gods”—Cornelius was straining to see more clearly in the gathering dusk—“is Bar Abbas! Great Jove, he caught the big prize!”
The other Israelite, too, they discovered in a moment, was a much wanted revolutionary, one of Bar Abbas’ principal lieutenants, a Galilean named Dysmas.
Lucius had stayed out on the flank, Decius explained, to prevent any sudden desperate attempt of the Zealots to rescue their leader. They were still no doubt in the rocks back from the road, perhaps regrouping their scattered forces.
“From here into Jerusalem the road is clear, and they won’t be able to prepare any ambush.” The centurion called out four soldiers standing near him. “Go tell Lucius to come in nearer. We can move faster that way, and in the deepening darkness it will be safer for everybody. Tell him we’re starting at once for Jerusalem.” As they were leaving, he turned again to Decius. “See that the prisoners are bound securely, and manacle each one between two of our men. And box them in with guards. Give them no chance of getting away from us or being rescued.”
Herodias had been watching silently but with evident interest. “It seems to me, Centurion,” she observed petulantly, “that you could prevent either eventuality by executing these rebel scum right now.”
“I am a Roman soldier, Tetrarchess. These men have had no trial.”
She pointed to her silent spouse, glumly sitting his horse. “He is the Tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea. These revolutionaries are Galileans. He is the proper one to try them.”
“No, my dear Herodias,” Antipas spoke out. “This is neither the time nor the place to conduct any trial. Centurion, let us proceed with your plans to go on into Jerusalem.”
Herodias lifted her head haughtily, but she made no reply. As soon as the caravan re-formed and was ready for the march, Cornelius gave the command to move forward. Less than two hours later he led the Tetrarch and Tetrarchess through the gate and let them and their servants into the gloomy pile of the old Hasmonean Palace. From there he marched his century to the Fortress of Antonia, where he surrendered his three prisoners to the dungeon jailer, who locked them, still bound securely, in the darkness and squalor of one of the lowest-level cells.
When he had seen to the quartering of his men in their Antonia barracks, he climbed the stone stairway in the southwestern tower and walked along the corridor to the room he had been assigned in the officers’ quarters. He had decided he would have a steaming bath and put on fresh clothing before going down to the mess for a late evening meal.
The chamber, the centurion found, was close and warm. He pushed open the window; then he unbolted the door and walked out onto the balcony. Down below lights blazed in the Temple courts, and men scurried to and fro, already in a frenzy of Passover preparations.
40
Once again the household of Procurator Pontius Pilate was settled in the magnificent great Palace of the Herods; once again the ancient capital of Israel was teeming with countless Jews come up for the Feast of the Passover.
From every region and hamlet, almost from every home, in Judaea, Samaria, Peraea, and Galilee, from Antioch, Damascus, Tarsus, Alexandria, Memphis, and Cyrene, from Ephesus, Athens, and Corinth, from all provinces rimming the Great Sea, even to Rome and beyond, from the islands of Cyprus and Sardinia and Sicily and Crete and those numerous smaller ones dotting the Aegean, devout Israelites had swarmed into Jerusalem’s crowded narrow ways and squares before the gates.
Every Jewish home, whether pretentious stone residence crowning Mount Zion or squalid malodorous hovel burrowed beneath the city’s walls in noisome Ophel, was overflowing with pilgrim kinsmen returned for this greatest annual feast of Israel. For every person living in Jerusalem, Centurion Longinus casually estimated as he stood on Fortress Antonia’s balcony outside his chamber, perhaps ten pilgrims had squirmed themselves inside the walls of the old city. And countless other thousands had been unable to find living quarters within the walls. Throngs of Passover celebrants overflowed the slope downward to the Brook Kidron and up the eastern rise past Gethsemane to the summit of the Mount of Olives and as far as Bethany. To the south, beyond the ever smoldering fires of the refuse dumps in the Hinnom valley, and to the west, tents and brush arbors of Passover pilgrims dotted the untilled areas through which ran the Bethlehem road. Northward, too, though Longinus could not survey that section of Jerusalem and its environs because of the great tower at his back, and to his right over beyond the massive pile of the Palace of the Herods, for many furlongs past the Ephraim and Joppa Gates, thin curlings of grayish-white smoke spiraled upward from small fires over which Passover pilgrims were bending now in preparation of the evening meal.
Longinus had been quartered near the Centurion Cornelius, but he had hardly seen his friend. The night of Cornelius’ arrival from Galilee with the Tetrarch’s party and his three Zealot prisoners, they had talked briefly in the mess hall, but they were both weary from the traveling and soon retired to their beds. The next day Pontius Pilate, greatly pleased at the capture of the wily zealot chieftain, had ordered Cornelius to take his century and scour the rocks above the Jericho road into which the evening before the marauders had disappeared. He had commanded the centurion to ferret out every member of Bar Abbas’ band and either capture or kill him. “And follow them as far as Galilee if need be, Centurion,” the Procurator had instructed him. “Capture any you can, and bring them back here; we will crucify them during the Passover festival, and for the thousands of rebellious, stubborn Jews who will see them dying on the crosses it will be a salutary lesson. It may help them realize what fate awaits those who thus oppose Rome’s authority and power.”
Longinus wondered what success Cornelius was having. Evidently he had been forced to pursue the fleeing revolutionaries a long way, perhaps even as far as Galilee, where they might expect to find haven among kinsmen and friends. No doubt the attackers of the Tetrarch’s party had separated in their flight from the soldiers of Cornelius. It would be particularly difficult, virtually impossible, in fact, to round up all the revolutionaries Bar Abbas had been leading, Longinus felt. In all probability, he reasoned, a number of them had slipped into Jerusalem a few minutes after Cornelius had entered the city, perhaps even ahead of his caravan, and were now safely lost among the tens of thousands deluging the ancient capital.
Nor had Longinus had an opportunity thus far to spend any considerable time alone with Claudia. Though Pilate had been keeping close to his headquarters in the fortress during the day-time, he had been returning to the palace at night, and his bedchamber was beside Claudia’s and connected with it by a doorway. The Procurator, too, had issued orders for all officers not on active duty to be quickly available; Pilate seemed unusually restive. Longinus felt that Pilate was determined to prevent any small turmoil among the Jews from developing into a crisis whose handling by him might further jeopardize his standing with the Prefect Sejanus and the Emperor. With so many Jews congregated in Israel’s holy city on a festival occasion so characteristically Jewish and one that so emphasized the peculiarly nationalistic spirit of the Jews, the situation was always highly inflammable. A small spark, if not snuffed quickly, could blaze into a holocaust.
One such minor incident that had taken place on the first day of the Jewish week might have provided such a spark, had the principal actor in it been of a mind to cause trouble. And, strangely, without having known what he was seeing, Longinus had witnessed this small happening.
He had breakfasted early with several fellow officers and had come up to his chamber this particular morning, when, to enjoy a stirring of the already warming April air, he had stepped out onto the balcony. Down below him the Court of the Gentiles was a hive of bustling activity. Out beyond the eastern wall in the direction he happened to be looking the slopes were alive with pilgrims preparing for the great festival. But up on the balcony he was safe from the stir and seething and the interminable chattering of excited Jewry, and a gentle breeze fanned him. He sat on the wide stone railing of the rampart, and idly his gaze went down the nearer slope to the Brook Kidron and along the meandering road on the other side as it climbed past Gethsemane’s olive grove toward the hill’s summit.
It was then that he noticed a procession moving slowly but with evident enthusiasm downward over this road toward the city from the direction of Bethany. Immediately his interest was attracted to the motley parade. Above the harsh cries of the hawkers in the Temple courts, the quarrelsome tones of bargaining, and the dull lowing of the cattle in the stalls awaiting sacrificing on the Great Altar, Longinus could distinguish the screamed hosannas of this unrestrained movement of dancing, singing, joyous people. Many of them were waving green branches they must have torn from trees and shrubs along the roadside. Occasionally the centurion would catch sight of an erect, tall man astride a white donkey. He adjudged the man to be tall, because his feet were not far from the gravel of the road as he sat astride the beast. And then he would lose sight of the rider as the shouting celebrants swirled about him.
Some popular rabbi with his people coming up to Jerusalem for the Passover, Longinus surmised, as he watched the writhing column approach the Brook Kidron crossing. Soon it disappeared under the walls down near Dung Gate, but presently it emerged again into his sight; he followed its progress through the cavernous alleys of Ophel, sometimes seeing it crossing a narrow opening between huddled buildings but hearing without interruption its lively shouts and chantings, until it came into clearer view at a stairway in the street pushing upward along Mount Moriah toward the Temple now resplendent in the morning sunshine.
Inside the Court of the Gentiles, which the strange little caravan of one rider and his evidently unorganized but plainly joyous adherents had reached by coming in through the Gate Shalleketh, the tall man dismounted, and someone quickly led the little animal away. In another moment the shouting and hosannas had ceased, and soon the centurion lost the rider in the press of the Temple throng.
Later that day in crossing the Court of the Gentiles to go out through the Gate Shalleketh and onto the bridge over the Tyropoeon, which was the easiest way to Mount Zion from the fortress, Longinus learned that the man on the donkey was the rabbi from Galilee. Many of his followers had expected the rabbi, whose fame by now had spread throughout Judaea, to come into the precincts of the Temple, proclaim himself Yahweh’s Messiah and the ruler of the world, and call down legions of heavenly angels utterly to destroy every vestige of Rome’s dominion. Now these followers were deeply disappointed and utterly chagrined. The tall one from Galilee in whom they had put their trust, the one who would be Israel’s new David to deliver it from its mighty enemy, had failed them.
But what if this Jesus had really fancied himself a man ordained to lead his little nation in throwing off the yoke of Rome? What, reasoned the centurion, if he had been as visionary, as passionately though unwisely patriotic as countless other Jews assembled here in Rome for Israel’s great celebration? In this tense, highly inflammable atmosphere of Passover week in Jerusalem, with great numbers of his followers believing that he possessed supernatural authority and powers, the rabbi’s willingness to allow himself to be proclaimed Israel’s king would have resulted in fearful bloodshed. But this Jesus at the last moment had either lost his courage, or else he had never contemplated leadership of Israel except in some vague, religious sense that Cornelius perhaps would term spiritual. At any rate, Longinus concluded, the Galilean was no threat to Rome and of no concern to the Empire. In his report to Sejanus, he would make no mention of the rabbi, unless in some manner Pontius Pilate might become involved with the man from Galilee. He wondered if Pilate had even been informed of the little procession that had come to such an inglorious ending within the Temple court. He wondered if Pilate, in fact, in his harried administration of the affairs of Judaea had ever heard of this Jesus.
41
Claudia sat on a small stone bench facing one of the fountains in the garden of the Palace of the Herods. All about her the grass was a luxuriant green and the flower beds, fed, she had been told, with blood drained through subterranean pipes from the overflow of the Great Altar, were already ablaze with color. Birds skipped and twittered in the rich foliage, and now and then some venturing small animal would skitter across an open patch of bright sunshine to disappear beneath the branches of a flowering shrub. The bench, shaded by a gnarled great olive, was invitingly cool despite the day’s warmth and heaviness, and the gentle babble of the spraying water ordinarily would have lulled one sitting there into a mood of peaceful contemplation, if not pleasant slumber.
But this afternoon the wife of the Procurator felt neither peaceful nor pleasant. She watched the fountain’s waters lifting and arching and falling and draining away in an undeviating pattern of movement and allowed her own thoughts to wander with it.
... There is the picture of my living. Like the water that is the thrust-along prisoner of the pump, or the ram which again and again lifts it and sends it spurting upward only to fall back and sink down and be forced up again, I am the prisoner of some malign power that pushes me along through a dull monotony of days that I am powerless even to protest against; I am swirled about but held fast like that water in a routine of existence I dare not even challenge....
She leaned forward with her head upon her hands and glared, hardly seeing it, at the captive, dancing water. How, by Bona Dea and all the good and gentle gods, the kind and happily ministering gods, how, by Pluto and all his evil soot-begrimed and blackened imps, could she escape the treadmill of this deadening monotony, this unending, bedeviling frustration? Granddaughter of the great god Augustus, stepdaughter of the great god Tiberius, granddaughter of the almost-great god Mark Antony and the great great goddess Cleopatra, wife of the mighty Procurator of Judaea, daughter through Augustus of Jove himself, princess of the blood....
“Bah!” She said it aloud. But there was nobody near-by in the garden. She sat back against the coolness of the stone. “By all the gods, why couldn’t I have been a wench serving tables in a tavern, a strumpet down in the Subura, and had my freedom!”
... Why, by all the gods, can’t old Tiberius die? He’s past seventy now, and of what service is he to the Empire? And Sejanus, the old rake, must be past sixty. If someone would give the Prefect a neat sword thrust....
She stood up and walked over to the fountain, held out her hands to the spraying water and lifted wet palms to her flushed cheeks. The afternoon was still and depressing. She raised her eyes and saw above the trees and the turreted nearest corner of the great palace rounded soft white puffs of clouds, like newly lifted fresh curds in a deeply blue overturned bowl. “A storm,” she said to herself, “one of those swiftly arrived, quickly gone, fierce Judaean storms. But it will clear the air of this blanket of heat, and it will serve to break for a while the monotony of another fruitless day.”
But she did not go inside. She sat down again and watched the gathering puffs of clouds. Never had she been afraid of storms, even ominous thunder and the swift, sharp streaks of lightning. She remembered that once in her early childhood when a governess had warned her against staying outdoors and running the risk of being struck by one of Jove’s hurled mighty bolts, she had remarked, “If old Jove is clever enough to strike me with a bolt outdoors, why can’t he throw one right through the roof and hit me while I’m inside? I don’t believe he can hit me whether I’m outside or inside.”
Her blasphemous words had woefully shocked the governess, but Claudia had never seen cause to retract them. One thing had led to another; from denying Jove’s power she had soon come to deny his very existence, and with his, the existence likewise of the entire pantheon of lesser gods and goddesses.
She was still seated on the bench when a palace servant came out to announce that a soldier had arrived from Fortress Antonia with a message for her.
“Then bring him here,” she instructed the servant. Could it be, she wondered, that the man is bringing a message from Longinus?
But the legionary had been sent to her by the Procurator. Pilate, he reported, would not be returning to the palace either for the evening meal or to spend the night. He begged to explain to his wife that he had had a very trying day and that he would be engaged until late in the evening. He had agreed to give an audience to the High Priest Caiaphas, and their meeting might well be extended into the night. He had decided, therefore, to forego the privilege and pleasure of dining with the Procuratoress; he would have supper in his quarters and after he had ended his long day’s duties would spend the remainder of the night there.
Her first thought was of getting a message to Longinus. She would write it, seal it fast, and send it by the legionary.
“Thank you,” she said to the soldier. “I shall want you to carry a message to the Fortress.” She stood up. “I’ll go inside and prepare it.” But would it be a discreet thing to do, sending a message to Longinus by this legionary? What if by chance it should fall into other hands, even Pilate’s? “No, there’s no need of my writing it,” she said. “Just tell the Procurator that I thank him for informing me and that I shall see him at his pleasure tomorrow.”
But she would find a way of notifying Longinus. Tullia. Of course. Tullia was one person upon whose loyalty and good judgment she could always depend. When Tullia returned, she would send her to Longinus.