IX
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 maneuver; 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 bodyguard.
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
