In the apartment of Claudia Procula,
Mary and the wife of the procurator stood face to
face.
The apartment itself overlooked Jerusalem.
Beneath was an open space tiled with little oblong
stones, red, yellow, and blue; the blue predominating.
On either side the colossal white wings of the palace
stretched to a park, very green in the sunlight, cut
by colonnades in which fountains were, and surrounded
by a marble wall that was starred with turrets and
fluttered with doves. The Temple, which, from
its cressets, radiated to the hills beyond a glare
of gold, was not as fair nor yet as vast as this.
Within its gates an army could manoeuvre; in its banquet-hall
a cohort could have supped. It was Herod’s
triumph, built subsequent to the Temple, to show the
world, perhaps, that to surpass a masterpiece he had
only to conceive another.
To it now and then, for a week or
more, the procurator descended from his residence
by the sea. He preferred the latter; the day was
freer there, life less cramped. But during festival
times, when the fanatic Jews were apt to be excited
and need the chill of a curb, it was well for him and
his soldiery to be on hand. And so on this occasion
he had come, and with him his wife, Claudia Procula,
and the tetrarch Antipas, who had joined them on the
way.
Antipas and his retinue occupied the
AEgrippeum, the north wing of the palace, while in
the Caesareum, the wing that leaned to the south, was
Pilate, his wife and body-guard.
And now on this clear morning the
sweet-faced patrician, Claudia Procula, with perfectly
feminine curiosity was looking into the drawn features
of the Magdalen, and wondering whence her rumored
charm could come.
“I will do my best,” she
said, at last, in answer to an anterior request.
And calling a servant, she wrote on a tablet a word
for Pilate’s eye.
Mary moved to the portico. The
variegated tiles of the quadrangle were nearly covered
now. A flight of wide, low steps led to the main
entrance of the palace, and there a high seat of enamelled
ebony had been placed. In it Pilate sat, in his
hand the staff of office. Beside him were his
assessors, members of his suite, and Calcol, a centurion.
On one of the steps Caiaphas stood, near him the elders
of the college. Below was the Christ, bound and
guarded. Across the quadrangle was a line of soldiery,
behind it a mob.
The helmets, glancing mail, short
skirts, and bare legs of the Romans contrasted refreshingly
with the blossoming garments, effeminate girdles,
frontlets, and horned blue bonnets of the priesthood.
And in the riot of color and glint of steel the Christ,
bound as he was, looked, in the simplicity of his
seamless robe, the descendant of a larger sphere.
Above, to the left, Antipas, aroused by the clamor,
leaned from a portico. Opposite where the sunlight
fell Mary held her cloak about her.
Caiaphas, a hand indicating Jesus,
his head turned to Pilate, was formulating a complaint.
Not indeed that the prisoner had declared himself
a divinity. There were far too many gods in the
menagerie of the Pantheon for a procurator to be the
least disturbed at the rumor of a new one. It
was the right to rule, that attribute of the Messiah,
on which he intended the gravamen of the charge should
rest. But he began circuitously, feeling the
way, in Greek at that, with an accent which might have
been improved.
“And so,” he concluded,
“in many ways he has transgressed the Law.”
“Why don’t you judge him
by it, then?” asked Pilate, grimly.
A servant approached with a tablet.
The procurator glanced at it, looked up at the man,
and motioned him away.
“My lord governor, we have.
The Sanhedrim, having found him guilty, has sentenced
him to death. But the Sanhedrim, as you know,
may not execute the sentence. The Senate has
deprived us of that right. It is for you, as
its legate, to order it done.”
Pilate sneered. “I can’t
very well, until I know of what he is guilty.
What crime has he committed written a letter
on the Sabbath, or has he been caught without his
phylacteries?”
“He has declared himself Israel’s king!”
“Ah!” And Pilate smiled
wearily. “You are always expecting one;
why not take him?”
“Why not, my lord? Because it is treason
to do so.”
Pilate nodded with affected approval.
“I admire your zeal.” And with a
glance at the prisoner, he added: “You have
heard the accusation; defend yourself. What!”
he continued, after a moment, “have you nothing
to say?”
Caiaphas exulted openly. The
corners of his mouth had the width and cruelty, and
his nostrils the dilation, of a wolf.
“My lord,” he cried, “his silence
is an admission.”
“Hold your tongue! It is
for me to question.” And therewith Pilate
gave the high-priest a look which was tantamount to
a knee pressed on the midriff. He glanced again
at the tablet, then at the prisoner.
“Tell me, do you really claim to be king?”
“Is it your idea of me?”
the Christ asked; and in his bearing was a dignity
which did not clash with the charge; “or have
others prompted you?”
“But I am not a Jew,”
Pilate retorted. “The matter only interests
me officially. It is your hierarchy that bring
the charge. Why have they? What have you
done? Tell me,” he continued, in Latin,
“do you think yourself King?”
“Tu dixisti,” Jesus
answered, and smiled as he had before, very gravely.
“But my royalty is not of the earth.”
And with a glance at his bonds, one which was so significant
that it annulled the charge, he added, still in Latin,
“I am Truth, and I preach it.”
Pilate with skeptical indulgence shook
his head. Truth to him was an elenchicism, an
abstraction of the Platonists, whom in Rome he had
respected for their wisdom and avoided with care.
He turned to Caiaphas. The latter had been regretting
the absence of an interpreter. This amicable
conversation, which he did not understand, was not
in the least to his liking, and as Pilate turned to
him he frowned in his beard.
“I am unable to find him guilty,”
the procurator announced. “He may call
himself king, but every philosopher does the same.
You might yourself, for that matter.”
“A philosopher, this mesith!”
Caiaphas gnashed back. “Why, he seduces
the people; he incites to sedition; he is a rebel
to Rome. It is for you, my lord, to see the empire
upheld. Would it be well to have another complaint
laid before the Cæsar? Ask yourself, is this
Galilean worth it?”
The thrust was as keen and as venomous
as the tooth of a rat. Pilate had been rebuked
by the emperor already; he had no wish to incur further
displeasure. Sejanus, the emperor’s favorite,
to whom he owed his procuratorship, had for suspected
treason been strangled in a dumb dungeon only a little
before. Under Tiberius there was quiet, a future
historian was to note; and Pilate was aware that,
should a disturbance occur, the disturbance would
be quelled, but at his expense.
An idea presented itself. “Did
I understand you to say he is a Galilean?” he
asked.
“Yes,” Caiaphas answered,
expecting, perhaps, the usual jibe that was flung
at those who came from there. “Yes, he is
a Nazarene.”
“Hm. In that case
I have no jurisdiction. The tetrarch is my guest;
take your prisoner to him.”
“My lord,” the high-priest
objected, “our law is such that if we enter the
palace we cannot officiate at the Passover to-night.”
Pilate appeared to reflect. “I
suppose,” he said at last, “I might ask
him whether he would care to come here. In which
case,” he added, with a gesture of elaborate
courtesy, “you may remain uncontaminated where
you are. Ressala!”
An official stepped forward; an order
was given; he disappeared. Presently a massive
throne of sandalwood and gold was trundled out.
Caiaphas had seen it before, and in it Herod.
“The justice that comes from
there,” he muttered, “is as a snake that
issues from a tomb.”
His words were drowned in the clamors
of the crowd. The sun had crossed the zenith;
in its rays the waters that gushed from the fountain-mouths
of bronze lions fell in rainbows and glistened in
great basins that glistened too. There was sunlight
everywhere, a sky of untroubled blue, and from the
Temple beyond came a glare that radiated from Olivet
to Bethlehem.
Pilate was bored. The mantle
which Mary wore caught his eye, and he looked at her,
wondering how she came in his wife’s apartment,
and where he had seen her before. Her face was
familiar, but the setting vague. Then at once
he remembered. It was at Machaerus he had seen
her, gambling with the emir, while Salome danced.
She was with Antipas, of course. He looked again;
she had gone.
The Sanhedrim consulted nervously.
The new turn of affairs was not at all to their liking.
The clamors of the mob continued. Once a fanatic
pushed against a soldier. There was a thud, a
howl, and a mouth masked with liquid red gasped to
the sun and was seen no more.
Behind the procurator came a movement.
The officials massed about the entrance parted in
uneven ranks, and in the great vestibule beyond, Antipas
appeared. Pilate rose to greet him. The elders
made obeisance. The tetrarch moved forward and
seated himself in his father’s throne. At
his side was Pahul, the butler, balancing himself
flamingowise on one leg, his bold eyes foraging the
priests.
Caiaphas formulated the complaint
anew, very majestically this time, and, thinking perhaps
to overawe the tetrarch, his voice assumed the authority
of a guardian of the keys of heaven, a chamberlain
of the sceptres of the earth.
Antipas ignored him utterly.
He plucked at his fan-shaped beard, and stared at
the Christ. He could see now he bore no resemblance
to Iohanan. There was nothing of the hyena about
him, nor of the prophet either. Evidently he
was but a harmless vagabond, skilled in simples, if
report were true; perhaps a thaumaturge. And
it was he whom he had feared and fancied might be
that Son of David for whom a star was created, whom
the magi had visited, whom his father had sought to
destroy, and whom now from his father’s own
throne he himself was called upon to judge! He
shook his head, and in the sunlight the indigo with
which his hair was powdered made bright blue motes.
“I say
Just beyond, where the assessors stood,
Mary suddenly appeared. He stopped abruptly;
for more than a year he had not seen her. Pahul
had told him she had gone to Rome. If she had,
he reflected, the journey had not improved her appearance.
Then for the moment he dismissed her, and returned
to the Christ.
“See here: somebody the
other day told me you worked miracles. I have
wanted to see one all my life. Gratify me, won’t
you? Oh, something very easy to begin with.
Send one of the guards up in the air, or turn your
bonds into bracelets.”
The Christ did not seem to hear.
Pahul laughed and held to the throne for support.
Antipas shrugged his shoulders.
“He looks harmless enough,”
he said. “Why not let him go?”
Caiaphas glowered, and his fingers
twitched. “He claims to be king!”
At this statement the tetrarch laughed
too. He gave an order to Pahul, who vanished
with a grin.
“He has jeered at the Temple
your father built,” Caiaphas continued.
“He has declared he could destroy it and rebuild
a better one, in three days at that.”
“He is king, then, but of fools.”
“And he has called you a fox,” Caiaphas
added, significantly.
“He doesn’t claim to be one himself, does
he?”
“He is guilty of treason, and it is for you,
his ruler, to sentence him.”
“Not I. The blood of kings is sacred. Pahul,
make haste!”
The butler, reappearing, held in his
hand the glittering white vestment of a candidate.
The tetrarch took it and held it in air.
“Here, put this on him, and
let his subjects admire him to their hearts’
content.”
“Antipas, you disgrace your purple!”
At the exclamation, the Sanhedrim,
the guards, the assessors, the officials, Pilate himself,
everyone save the prisoner, turned and looked.
On the colored pavement Mary stood, her face very pale.
The tetrarch flushed mightily; anger
mounted into his shifting eyes. For a moment
the sky was blood-red; then he recovered himself and
answered lightly:
“It seems to me, my dear, that
you take things with a high hand. It may be that
you forget yourself.”
“I take them from where I am,”
she cried. “As for forgetfulness, remember
that my grandfather was satrap of Syria, my father
after him, while yours
“Yes, yes, I dare say. He is not in power
now; I am.”
“Not here, Antipas, nor in Rome. I appeal
to Pilate.”
The tetrarch rose from the throne.
The elders whispered together. Pilate visibly
was perplexed. Remembering Mary as he did, he
looked upon the incident as a family quarrel, one
in which it would be unseemly for him to interfere,
and which none the less disturbed the decorum of his
court.
Caiaphas edged up to the tetrarch, but the latter
brushed him aside.
“The hetaira is right,”
he exclaimed. “I am not in power here.
If I were, she should be lapidated.”
And, preceded by the butler, Antipas
passed through the parting ranks to the vestibule
beyond.
The perplexity of the procurator increased.
He did not in the least understand. To him Mary
stood in the same relation to Antipas that Cleopatra
had to Herod. There had been a feud between the
tetrarch and himself, one recently mended, and which
he had no wish to renew. Yet manifestly Antipas
was aggrieved, and his own path in the matter by no
means clear.
“Bah!” he muttered, in
the consoling undertone of thought, “what are
their beastly barbarian manners to me?”
These reflections Caiaphas interrupted.
“We are waiting, my lord, for the sentence to
be pronounced.”
The tone he used was not, however,
indicative of patience, and in conjunction with the
incident that had just occurred it irritated and jarred.
Besides, Pilate did not care to be prompted. It
was for him to speak first. He strangled an oath,
and, gathering some fringe of the majesty of Rome,
he announced very measuredly:
“You have brought this man before
me as a rebel. I have examined him and find no
ground for the charge. His ruler, the tetrarch,
has also examined him, and by him too he has been
acquitted. But in view of the fact that he appears
to have contravened some one or another of your laws
I order him to be scourged and to be liberated.”
With that he turned to the prisoner.
During the entire proceedings the attitude of Jesus
had not altered. He stood as a disinterested spectator
might one whom chance had brought that way
and there hemmed in his eyes on remote,
inaccessible horizons, the tongue silent, the head
a little raised.
“Scourging, my lord,”
Caiaphas interjected, “is fit and proper, but,”
he continued, one silk-gloved hand uplifted, “our
law prescribes death. Only an enemy to Tiberius
would prevent it.”
At the veiled menace Pilate gnawed
his under lip. He had no faith at all in the
loyalty of the hierarch; at any other time the affection
the latter manifested for the chains he bore would
have been ludicrous and nothing else. But at
the moment he felt insecure. There were Galileans
whom he had sacrificed, Judaeans whom he had slaughtered,
Samaritans whom he had oppressed, an embassy might
even now be on its way to Rome; he thought again of
Sejanus, and, with cause, he hesitated. Yet of
the inward perturbation he gave no outward sign.
“On this day,” he said
at last, “it is customary that in commemoration
of your nation’s delivery out of Egypt I should
release a prisoner to you. There are three others
here, among them Jesus Barabba.”
Then, for support perhaps, he looked
over at the clamoring mob.
“I will leave the choice to the people.”
A wind seemed to raise the elders;
they scattered through the court like leaves.
“Have done with the Nazarene,” cried one.
“He would lead you astray,” insinuated
another. “He has violated the Law,”
exclaimed a third.
And, filtering through the soldiery
into the mob without, they exhorted and prayed and
coerced. “Ask for Barabba; denounce the
blasphemer. Trust to the Sanhedrim. We are
your guides. Let him atone for his crimes.
The God of your fathers commands that you condemn.
Demand Barabba; uphold your nation. To the cross
with the Nazarene!”
“Whom do you choose?” shouted Pilate.
And the pleb of Jerusalem shouted back as one man,
“Barabba!”
At the moment Pilate fancied himself
in an amphitheatre, the arena filled with beasts.
There were the satin and stripes of the panther, the
yellow of treacherous eyes, the gnash of fangs, the
guttural rumble, the deafening yell, the scent of
blood, and above, the same blue tender sky.
“What of the prisoner?” he called.
A roar leapt back. “Sekaph! Sekaph!
Let him be crucified.”
Pilate had fronted a rabble before,
and in two minutes had turned that rabble into so
many dead flies, the legs in the air. He shook
his head, and told himself he was not there to be
coerced.
“Release Barabba,” he
ordered. “And as for the prisoner, take
him to the barracks and have him scourged.”
“Brute!” cried a voice
that lifted him as a blow might from his ebony chair.
“Pilate, though you are a plebeian, why show
yourself a slave?”
And Mary, with the strength of anger,
brushed through the encircling officials and towered
before him, robed in wrath.
“Ah, permit me,” he answered;
“you are singularly unjust.”
“Prove me so, and countermand the order that
you gave.”
As she spoke she adjusted her mantle,
which had become disarranged, and looked him from
head to foot, measuring him as it were, and finding
him, visibly, very small.
Already the prisoner had been led
away, and beyond, in the barracks, was the whiz of
jagged leather that lacerated, rebounded, and lacerated
again.
“I will not,” he answered.
“What I have ordered, I have ordered. As
for you
There had come to her that look which
sibyls have. “Pilate,” she interrupted,
“you are powerful here, I know, but” and
her hand shot out like an arrow from a bow “over
there vultures are circling; in your power is a corpse.
What the vultures scent, I see.”
So abrupt and earnest was the gesture
that unconsciously Pilate found himself looking to
where she seemed to point. He lowered his eyes
in vexation. Wrangling with a woman was not to
his taste.
“There, there,” he said,
much as one might to a fretful child; “don’t
throw stones.”
“I have but one; it is Justice,
and that I keep to hurl at you.”
The procurator’s mouth twitched
ominously. “My dear,” he said, “you
are too pretty to talk that way; it spoils the looks.
Besides, I have no time to listen.”
“Tiberius has and will.”
Pilate nodded; it was the third time he had heard
the threat that day.
“There are many rooms in his
palace,” he answered, with covert significance.
“Yes, I know it. There
are many, as you say. But there is one I will
enter. On the door stands written The Future,
and behind it, Pilate, is your death.”
The Roman, goaded to exasperation,
sprang to his feet. An expression which Antipas
had used occurred to him. “Away with the
hetaira,” he cried; and he was about, it
may be, to order her to be tossed to the fierce wild
swine in the paddocks of the park when the prisoner
and his guards reappeared on the tessellated pavement,
and Mary, already dragged from him, was instantly
forgot.
A tattered sagum, which had once
been scarlet, but which had faded since, hung, detained
at the shoulder by a rusty buckle, and bordered by
a laticlave, loosely about his form. In
his hand a bulrush swayed; on his head was a twisted
coil of bear’s-breech, in which, among the ruffled
leaves, one bud remained; it was white, the opening
edges flecked with pink, perhaps with blood, for from
the temples and about the ear a rill ran down and
mixed with the purple of the laticlave below.
And in this red parody of kingship the Christ stood,
unmoved as a phantom, but in his face and eyes there
was a projecting light so luminous, so intangible,
and yet so real, that the skeptical procurator started,
the staff of office pendent in his grasp.
“Ecce homo!” he exclaimed.
Instinctively he drew back, and, wonderingly, half
to himself, half to the Christ, “Who are you?”
he asked.
“A flame below, a soul above,”
Jesus answered, yet so inaudibly that the guards beside
him did not catch the words.
To Pilate his lips had barely moved,
and his wonderment increased. “Why do you
not answer?” he said. “You must know
that I have the power to condemn and to acquit.”
With that gentleness that was the
flower of his parables Jesus raised his voice.
“No,” he replied, “you can have no
power against me unless it come from above.”
Again Pilate drew back. Unsummoned
to his lips had sprung the words, “Behold the
man!” and now he exclaimed, “Behold the
king!”
But to the mob the vision he intercepted
was lost. They saw the jest merely, and with
it the stains that torture leaves. The sight of
blood is heady; it inebriates more surely than wine.
The mob, trained by the elders, and used by them as
a body-guard, fanatic before, were intoxicated now.
With one accord they shrieked the liturgy again.
“Sekaph! Sekaph! Let him be crucified.”
In that gust of hatred Pilate recovered. He turned
to Caiaphas:
“I have released one prisoner; I will release
another too.”
“My lord, be warned by one who is your elder.”
“One whom I can remove.”
“No doubt, my lord; but suffer
him while he may to warn you not to cause a revolution
on the day of the Paschal feast. You hear that
multitude. Then be warned.”
“But your feast is one of mercy.”
The high-priest gazed curiously at
his silk-gloved hands. You would have said they
were objects he had never seen before. Then he
returned the procurator’s stare.
“We know of no such god.”
“Ah!” And the procurator
drew a long breath of understanding. “It
is that, I believe, he preaches.”
“And it is for that,”
Caiaphas echoed, “that he must die. Yes,
Pilate, it is for that. There is no such doctrine
in the Pentateuch. We have done our duty.
We have convicted a rebel of his guilt. We have
brought him to you, and we demand his sentence.
Pilate, it is not so very long ago you had hundreds
massacred without judgment, without trial either, and
for what? for one rebellious cry.
You must have a reason for the favor you show this
man. It would interest me to learn it; it would
interest Tiberius as well. Listen to that multitude.
If you pay no heed to our accusation nor yet to their
demand, on you the consequences rest. We are
absolved.”
“He is your king,” the procurator objected,
meditatively.
Caiaphas wheeled like a feather a
breeze has caught. One hand outstretched he held
to the mob, with the other he pointed to the Christ.
“Our king!” he cried.
“The procurator says he is our king!”
As the thunder peals, a roar surged back:
“We have no other king than Cæsar.”
“Think of Sejanus,” the
high-priest suggested. The thrust was so well
timed it told.
Pilate looked sullenly about. “Fetch me
water,” he ordered.
A silver bowl was brought, and borrowing
a custom from the Jews he loathed, he dipped his fingers
in it.
“I wash my hands of it all,” he muttered.
Caiaphas looked at the elders and
sighed with infinite relief. He had conquered.
For the first time that day he smiled. He became
gracious also, and he bowed.
“The blood be upon us, my lord,
and on our children. Will you give the order?”
“Calcol!”
The centurion approached. An
order was given him in an undertone, and as he turned
to the guards, Pilate drew the staff of office across
his knee, snapped it in two, tossed the pieces to
the ground, and through the ranks of his servitors
passed on into the great blue vestibule beyond.