by Edgar Saltus
CHAPTER IX.
IX.
In the apartment of Claudia Procula, Mary and the wife of the procuratorstood face to face.
The apartment itself overlooked Jerusalem. Beneath was an open space tiledwith 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, andsurrounded by a marble wall that was starred with turrets and flutteredwith doves. The Temple, which, from its cressets, radiated to the hillsbeyond a glare of gold, was not as fair nor yet as vast as this. Withinits gates an army could manoeuvre; in its banquet-hall a cohort could havesupped. It was Herod's triumph, built subsequent to the Temple, to showthe world, perhaps, that to surpass a masterpiece he had only to conceiveanother.
To it now and then, for a week or more, the procurator descended from hisresidence by the sea. He preferred the latter; the day was freer there,life less cramped. But during festival times, when the fanatic Jews wereapt to be excited and need the chill of a curb, it was well for him andhis soldiery to be on hand. And so on this occasion he had come, and withhim his wife, Claudia Procula, and the tetrarch Antipas, who had joinedthem on the way.
Antipas and his retinue occupied the AEgrippeum, the north wing of thepalace, while in the Caesareum, the wing that leaned to the south, wasPilate, 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 ofthe 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 werenearly covered now. A flight of wide, low steps led to the main entranceof 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 hisassessors, members of his suite, and Calcol, a centurion. On one of thesteps Caiaphas stood, near him the elders of the college. Below was theChrist, 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 Romanscontrasted refreshingly with the blossoming garments, effeminate girdles,frontlets, and horned blue bonnets of the priesthood. And in the riot ofcolor and glint of steel the Christ, bound as he was, looked, in thesimplicity 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, wasformulating a complaint. Not indeed that the prisoner had declared himselfa divinity. There were far too many gods in the menagerie of the Pantheonfor a procurator to be the least disturbed at the rumor of a new one. Itwas the right to rule, that attribute of the Messiah, on which he intendedthe gravamen of the charge should rest. But he began circuitously, feelingthe 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, lookedup at the man, and motioned him away.
"My lord governor, we have. The Sanhedrim, having found him guilty, hassentenced him to death. But the Sanhedrim, as you know, may not executethe sentence. The Senate has deprived us of that right. It is for you, asits 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 hebeen caught without his phylacteries?"
"He has declared himself Israel's king!"
"Ah!" And Pilate smiled wearily. "You are always expecting one; why nottake him?"
"Why not, my lord? Because it is treason to do so."
Pilate nodded with affected approval. "I admire your zeal." And with aglance at the prisoner, he added: "You have heard the accusation; defendyourself. What!" he continued, after a moment, "have you nothing to say?"
Caiaphas exulted openly. The corners of his mouth had the width andcruelty, 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 gavethe high-priest a look which was tantamount to a knee pressed on themidriff. 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 adignity which did not clash with the charge; "or have others promptedyou?"
"But I am not a Jew," Pilate retorted. "The matter only interests meofficially. It is your hierarchy that bring the charge. Why have they?What have you done? Tell me," he continued, in Latin, "do you thinkyourself 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, onewhich was so significant that it annulled the charge, he added, still inLatin, "I am Truth, and I preach it."
Pilate with skeptical indulgence shook his head. Truth to him was anelenchicism, an abstraction of the Platonists, whom in Rome he hadrespected for their wisdom and avoided with care. He turned to Caiaphas.The latter had been regretting the absence of an interpreter. Thisamicable conversation, which he did not understand, was not in the leastto 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 callhimself king, but every philosopher does the same. You might yourself, forthat matter."
"A philosopher, this mesith!" Caiaphas gnashed back. "Why, he seduces thepeople; he incites to sedition; he is a rebel to Rome. It is for you, mylord, to see the empire upheld. Would it be well to have another complaintlaid before the Caesar? Ask yourself, is this Galilean worth it?"
The thrust was as keen and as venomous as the tooth of a rat. Pilate hadbeen rebuked by the emperor already; he had no wish to incur furtherdispleasure. Sejanus, the emperor's favorite, to whom he owed hisprocuratorship, had for suspected treason been strangled in a dumb dungeononly a little before. Under Tiberius there was quiet, a future historianwas to note; and Pilate was aware that, should a disturbance occur, thedisturbance 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 wasflung at those who came from there. "Yes, he is a Nazarene."
"Hm. In that case I have no jurisdiction. The tetrarch is my guest; takeyour prisoner to him."
"My lord," the high-priest objected, "our law is such that if we enter thepalace we cannot officiate at the Passover to-night."
Pilate appeared to reflect. "I suppose," he said at last, "I might ask himwhether he would care to come here. In which case," he added, with agesture of elaborate courtesy, "you may remain uncontaminated where youare. Ressala!"
An official stepped forward; an order was given; he disappeared. Presentlya massive throne of sandalwood and gold was trundled out. Caiaphas hadseen it before, and in it--Herod.
"The justice that comes from there," he muttered, "is as a snake thatissues from a tomb."
His words were drowned in the clamors of the crowd. The sun had crossedthe zenith; in its rays the waters that gushed from the fountain-mouths ofbronze lions fell in rainbows and glistened in great basins that glistenedtoo. There was sunlight everywhere, a sky of untroubled blue, and from theTemple beyond came a glare that radiated from Olivet to Bethlehem.
Pilate was bored. The mantle which Mary wore caught his eye, and he lookedat her, wondering how she came in his wife's apartment, and wh
ere he hadseen her before. Her face was familiar, but the setting vague. Then atonce he remembered. It was at Machaerus he had seen her, gambling with theemir, while Salome danced. She was with Antipas, of course. He lookedagain; she had gone.
The Sanhedrim consulted nervously. The new turn of affairs was not at allto their liking. The clamors of the mob continued. Once a fanatic pushedagainst a soldier. There was a thud, a howl, and a mouth masked withliquid red gasped to the sun and was seen no more.
Behind the procurator came a movement. The officials massed about theentrance parted in uneven ranks, and in the great vestibule beyond,Antipas appeared. Pilate rose to greet him. The elders made obeisance. Thetetrarch moved forward and seated himself in his father's throne. At hisside was Pahul, the butler, balancing himself flamingowise on one leg, hisbold eyes foraging the priests.
Caiaphas formulated the complaint anew, very majestically this time, and,thinking perhaps to overawe the tetrarch, his voice assumed the authorityof a guardian of the keys of heaven, a chamberlain of the sceptres of theearth.
Antipas ignored him utterly. He plucked at his fan-shaped beard, andstared 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 reportwere true; perhaps a thaumaturge. And it was he whom he had feared andfancied might be that Son of David for whom a star was created, whom themagi had visited, whom his father had sought to destroy, and whom now fromhis father's own throne he himself was called upon to judge! He shook hishead, and in the sunlight the indigo with which his hair was powdered madebright blue motes.
"I say----"
Just beyond, where the assessors stood, Mary suddenly appeared. He stoppedabruptly; for more than a year he had not seen her. Pahul had told him shehad gone to Rome. If she had, he reflected, the journey had not improvedher appearance. Then for the moment he dismissed her, and returned to theChrist.
"See here: somebody the other day told me you worked miracles. I havewanted to see one all my life. Gratify me, won't you? Oh, something veryeasy to begin with. Send one of the guards up in the air, or turn yourbonds into bracelets."
The Christ did not seem to hear. Pahul laughed and held to the throne forsupport. 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, whovanished with a grin.
"He has jeered at the Temple your father built," Caiaphas continued. "Hehas declared he could destroy it and rebuild a better one, in three daysat 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 ofa 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, theofficials, 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 amoment the sky was blood-red; then he recovered himself and answeredlightly:
"It seems to me, my dear, that you take things with a high hand. It may bethat you forget yourself."
"I take them from where I am," she cried. "As for forgetfulness, rememberthat my grandfather was satrap of Syria, my father after him, whileyours----"
"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. Pilatevisibly was perplexed. Remembering Mary as he did, he looked upon theincident as a family quarrel, one in which it would be unseemly for him tointerfere, 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 tothe vestibule beyond.
The perplexity of the procurator increased. He did not in the leastunderstand. To him Mary stood in the same relation to Antipas thatCleopatra had to Herod. There had been a feud between the tetrarch andhimself, one recently mended, and which he had no wish to renew. Yetmanifestly Antipas was aggrieved, and his own path in the matter by nomeans clear.
"Bah!" he muttered, in the consoling undertone of thought, "what are theirbeastly 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 inconjunction with the incident that had just occurred it irritated andjarred. Besides, Pilate did not care to be prompted. It was for him tospeak first. He strangled an oath, and, gathering some fringe of themajesty of Rome, he announced very measuredly:
"You have brought this man before me as a rebel. I have examined him andfind no ground for the charge. His ruler, the tetrarch, has also examinedhim, and by him too he has been acquitted. But in view of the fact that heappears to have contravened some one or another of your laws I order himto be scourged and to be liberated."
With that he turned to the prisoner. During the entire proceedings theattitude of Jesus had not altered. He stood as a disinterested spectatormight--one whom chance had brought that way and there hemmed in--his eyes onremote, inaccessible horizons, the tongue silent, the head a littleraised.
"Scourging, my lord," Caiaphas interjected, "is fit and proper, but," hecontinued, one silk-gloved hand uplifted, "our law prescribes death. Onlyan enemy to Tiberius would prevent it."
At the veiled menace Pilate gnawed his under lip. He had no faith at allin the loyalty of the hierarch; at any other time the affection the lattermanifested for the chains he bore would have been ludicrous and nothingelse. But at the moment he felt insecure. There were Galileans whom he hadsacrificed, Judaeans whom he had slaughtered, Samaritans whom he hadoppressed, an embassy might even now be on its way to Rome; he thoughtagain of Sejanus, and, with cause, he hesitated. Yet of the inwardperturbation he gave no outward sign.
"On this day," he said at last, "it is customary that in commemoration ofyour 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 likeleaves. "Have done with the Nazarene," cried one. "He would lead youastray," insinuated another. "He has violated the Law," exclaimed a third.
And, filtering through the soldiery into the mob without, they exhortedand prayed and coerced. "Ask for Barabba; denounce the blasphemer. Trustto the Sanhedrim. We are your guides. Let him atone for his crimes. TheGod of your fathers commands that you condemn. Demand Barabba; uphold yournation. 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 filledwith beasts. There were the satin and stripes of the panther, the yellowof treacherous eyes, the gnash of fangs, the guttural rumble, thedeafening 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 thatrabble 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 thebarracks and have him scourged."
"Brute!" cried a voice that lifted him as a blow might from his ebonychair. "Pilate, though you are a plebeian, why show yourself a slave?"
And Mary, with the strength of anger, brushed through the encirclingofficials 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, andlooked 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, wasthe whiz of jagged leather that lacerated, rebounded, and lacerated again.
"I will not," he answered. "What I have ordered, I have ordered. As foryou----"
There had come to her that look which sibyls have. "Pilate," sheinterrupted, "you are powerful here, I know, but"--and her hand shot outlike an arrow from a bow--"over there vultures are circling; in your poweris a corpse. What the vultures scent, I see."
So abrupt and earnest was the gesture that unconsciously Pilate foundhimself looking to where she seemed to point. He lowered his eyes invexation. Wrangling with a woman was not to his taste.
"There, there," he said, much as one might to a fretful child; "don'tthrow 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 aretoo pretty to talk that way; it spoils the looks. Besides, I have no timeto 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 covertsignificance.
"Yes, I know it. There are many, as you say. But there is one I willenter. On the door stands written The Future, and behind it, Pilate, isyour death."
The Roman, goaded to exasperation, sprang to his feet. An expression whichAntipas had used occurred to him. "Away with the hetaira," he cried; andhe was about, it may be, to order her to be tossed to the fierce wildswine in the paddocks of the park when the prisoner and his guardsreappeared on the tessellated pavement, and Mary, already dragged fromhim, 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 alaticlave, loosely about his form. In his hand a bulrush swayed; on hishead was a twisted coil of bear's-breech, in which, among the ruffledleaves, one bud remained; it was white, the opening edges flecked withpink, perhaps with blood, for from the temples and about the ear a rillran down and mixed with the purple of the laticlave below. And in this redparody of kingship the Christ stood, unmoved as a phantom, but in his faceand eyes there was a projecting light so luminous, so intangible, and yetso real, that the skeptical procurator started, the staff of officependent 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 theguards beside him did not catch the words.
To Pilate his lips had barely moved, and his wonderment increased. "Why doyou not answer?" he said. "You must know that I have the power to condemnand to acquit."
With that gentleness that was the flower of his parables Jesus raised hisvoice. "No," he replied, "you can have no power against me unless it comefrom 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 jestmerely, and with it the stains that torture leaves. The sight of blood isheady; it inebriates more surely than wine. The mob, trained by theelders, and used by them as a body-guard, fanatic before, were intoxicatednow. 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 arevolution on the day of the Paschal feast. You hear that multitude. Thenbe warned."
"But your feast is one of mercy."
The high-priest gazed curiously at his silk-gloved hands. You would havesaid they were objects he had never seen before. Then he returned theprocurator'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, itis for that. There is no such doctrine in the Pentateuch. We have done ourduty. 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 hadhundreds massacred without judgment, without trial either, and forwhat?--for one rebellious cry. You must have a reason for the favor youshow this man. It would interest me to learn it; it would interestTiberius as well. Listen to that multitude. If you pay no heed to ouraccusation nor yet to their demand, on you the consequences rest. We areabsolved."
"He is your king," the procurator objected, meditatively.
Caiaphas wheeled like a feather a breeze has caught. One hand outstretchedhe 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 Caesar."
"Think of Sejanus," the high-priest suggested. The thrust was so welltimed it told.
Pilate looked sullenly about. "Fetch me water," he ordered.
A silver bowl was brought, and borrowing a custom from the Jews heloathed, 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 hadconquered. 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 theorder?"
"Calcol!"
The centurion approached. An order was given him in an undertone, and ashe 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 ranksof his servitors passed on into the great blue vestibule beyond.
CHAPTER X.
X.
In a sook near the Gannath Gate Mary stood. In the distance the palace ofHerod defied the sun. Beyond the gate lay the Hennom Valley, the GeiaHennom, contracted by the people into Ge' Hennom, or Gehenna, andconverted by them into a sewer, a place where carrion was thrown, and thefilth of a great city. In earlier days children had been immolated toMoloch there, human victims had been burned; it was a place accursed, andto purify the air, as a safeguard against pestilence, the offal wasconsumed by bonfires that were constantly renewed and never extinguished.At its extremity was an elevation, a hilly contour which to the popularfancy suggested a skull. To the west it fell steeply away. It was calledGuelgolta.
The sook in which Mary stood was affected by shoemakers. Against thedwelling of one of them she leaned. The mantle was gone from her now, andthe olive robe had a rent, but the splendor of her hair fell unconfined,the perils of her eyes had increased; yet in their depths where love hadbeen was hate. One arm la
y along the resisting stone, the other hung ather side; her face was turned to the palace, her thin nostrils quivering,her breath coming and going with that spasmodic irregularity which theconsciousness of outrage brings. She laid it all to Judas; he must havereturned to Kerioth, she thought. The sook itself was silent, stirredmerely by some echo of the uproar in the palace beyond.
From a grilled lattice near by an old man peered out. He had the restlesseyes of a ferret, and a white beard that was very long. He too was lookingtoward the palace. Now and then he muttered inaudibly in Aramaic tohimself. In the shadow of a neighboring house a woman appeared; he shookat the lattice as an ape does at the bars of a cage, and spat a bestialinsult at her. The woman shrank back. Instinctively Mary turned. In theretreating figure she recognized Ahulah, and at once, without consciouseffort, she divined that the dwelling against which she leaned was that ofBaba Barbulah, the husband of the woman whom the Master had declined tocondemn.
But other things possessed her--the outrage to the Christ, perplexity as tohow the trial would result, more remotely the indignity to herself, theslurs of the tetrarch and of the procurator; and with them, sapping herheart as fever might, was that thirst for reparation, unquenchable in itsintensity, which comes to those who have seen their own life wrecked andits ideals dispersed.
Already Ahulah was forgot. On the wings of vagabond fancy she was in Rome,demanding vengeance of Tiberius, wresting it from him by the sheer forceof entreaty, and with it exulting in the death-throes of the procurator.Oh, to see his nails pulled out, his outer skin removed, his tonguesevered, his eyes seared with irons, his wrists slowly twisted till theysnapped! to hear him cry for mercy! to promise it and not fulfil!--dearGod, what joy was there!
From the alley into which Ahulah had shrunk a man issued. He was sturdy asa bludgeon, and he had a growth of thick black hair that curled about anhonest face. In his hand was a basket. At the sight of Mary his stepshesitated, and his eyes followed hers to where the palace lay. Then hecrossed the zigzag of the intervening space, but he had to touch heroutstretched arm before she noticed him.
"Simon!" she exclaimed, with that start one has when suddenly awaked.
"Yes, Simon indeed;" and through the silence of the sook his clear laughrang. "I frightened you, did I not?"
Mary interrupted him. "Haven't you heard? Has not Eleazer told you----"
"When I left Bethany he was sleeping with both fists closed. Martha----"
"The Master is arrested. Last night he was before the Sanhedrim; he isbefore the procurator now."
Hurriedly Mary gave an account of what had occurred. As the recitalcontinued, Simon's expression grew darker than his curling hair, heclutched at the basket which he held, so tightly that the handle severed,the basket fell, and fruit that imprisoned the sunlight rolled on theground.
"They were for the Master," he said. "I thought he would sup with usto-night."
"He may do so yet," she answered. "Perhaps----"
"Never!" cried a voice from the lattice. "They are leading him to Guelgoltanow."
Beyond, through the palace gate, a mass undulated, the body elongated,expanding as it moved. It was black, but at the sides was the glisten thatcobras have. About it dust circled, and from it came the rumble of thunderheard afar. As the bulk increased, the roar deepened; the black lessenedinto varying hues. To the glisten came the glint of steel; the cobrachanged into a multitude, the escort of a squad of soldiery, fronted by acenturion and led by the banner of Imperial Rome.
Behind the centurion, Jesus, in his faded sagum, staggered, overweightedby the burden of a cross. Two comrades in misery were at his side, butthey moved with steadier step, bearing their crosses with the brawn ofmuscular and untired arms. The soldiers marched impassibly, preceding theexecutioners--four stalwart Cypriotes, distinguishable by the fatness oftheir calves--while behind was the Sanhedrim, and, extending indefinitelyto the rear, the rabble of yelling Jews.
In a cobra's coils is death, its eyes transfix. Neither Mary nor Simon hadspoken, and now, as the soldiery was upon them, they leaned yet nearer thewall. For a moment Mary hid her face. At her feet the Christ had fallen,and from her came one wail, choked down at once. She stooped to aid him,but he stood up unassisted and reached to the wall for support.
The bars of the lattice shook; the old man peered out.
"Don't touch my house, you vagabond! Move on!" he cried.
Calcol had turned to Simon, who was raising the cross. "Carry it for him,"he commanded.
Baba Barbulah still shook at the lattice. "Move on!" he repeated. "Seducerof the people, remitter of sins, upholder of adultery, move on; don'ttouch my house, it will fall down on you! Move on, I say!"
Calcol's command Simon had anticipated. He shouldered the cross. It washeavier to him than to the Christ, not in weight, perhaps, but in purpose.In the narrowness of the sook the crowd was impeded, but from the rearthey pushed, surprised at the halt.
Mary sprang at the lattice. "It is you that shall move on," she cried;"yes, you; and forever. The desert will call to you, 'March;' and the seawill snarl, 'Further yet.' The gates of cities will deny you, and thedoors of hamlets be closed. The eagles may return to their eyrie, thepanthers retreat to their lair, but you will have no home, no rest, and,till time dies, no tomb."
The old man gnashed back at her an insult more bestial than he usedbefore, and spat at her through the bars. But Mary had turned to theChrist. He was surrounded now by some women who had filtered through thealley above. Johanna, Mary Clopas, the wife of Zebdia, and Bernice, afragile girl newly enrolled. The latter was wiping from his face thestains of blood and dust. The others were beating their breasts, cryingaloud.
Of the disciples there was no trace, nor yet of any of those who hadgreeted him as the Messiah. It may be that the admiring throngs that hadgathered about him had faded before a superior force. It may be they hadlost heart, belief perhaps as well. Invective never propitiates. Recentlyhe had omitted to prophesy, he argued. The exquisite parables with whichhe had been wont to charm even the recalcitrant seemed to have been putaside, and with them those wonders which rumor held him to have worked.But now that pathos and grace which endeared, that perfection of sentimentand expression which exalted the heart, returned to him, accentuatedperhaps by the agonies he had endured.
"Weep for me no more," he entreated. "But weep for yourselves and for yourchildren. The days are coming," he added, with a gesture at the impatientmob--"the days are coming in which they shall say to the mountains, Fall onus; to the hills, Cover us. For if these things are done in the greentree, what will be done in the dry?"
And in this entreaty, in which he exhorted them to view disaster otherwisethan from the external and evanescent aspect, the voice of the prophetrang once more.
Mary as yet had not realized the full portent of the soldiery and the mob.When it was approaching it had occurred to her that it might be anothertriumphal escort, such as she had once seen surround him on his way to afeast. As it advanced, the roar bewildered, and she had ceased toconjecture; then the Master had fallen, and the old Jew had vomited hisslime. At the moment it was that, and that only, which had impressed her,and she had answered with the force of that new strength which suddenlyshe had found. But now at the sight of the women beating their breasts,and the blood-stained face of the Master, an inkling came to her; shestared open-mouthed at the cross, at Calcol, and at the executioners thatwere there.
Then immediately that horrible longing to know the worst beset her, andshe darted to where the centurion stood.
"What is it?" she gasped. "What are you to do with him?"
By way of answer Calcol extended his arms straight out from either side,his head thrown back. He was a good-natured ruffian, with clear andpleasant eyes.
"Not crucify?" she cried. "Tell me, it is not that?"
Calcol nodded. To him one Jew more, one Jew less, was immaterial, providedhe had his pay, and the prospect of a return to Rome was not too longdelayed. Yet none the less in some mis
ty way he wondered why this woman,with her splendid hair and scorching eyes, should have upbraided thetetrarch and abused the procurator because of the friendless Galilean whomhe was leading to the cross. Woman to him, however, was, as she has beento others wiser than he, an enigma he failed to solve. And so he noddedmerely, not unkindly, and smiled in Mary's face.
The horrible longing now was stilled. She knew the worst; yet as theknowledge of it penetrated her being, it seemed to her as though it couldnot be true, that she was the plaything of some hallucination, her mindinhabited by a nightmare from which she must presently awake. The howl ofthe impatient mob undeceived her. It was real; it was actual; it was life.She stared at Calcol, her fair mouth agape. There were many things shewanted to say; her thoughts teemed with arguments, her mind withpersuasions; but she could utter nothing; she was as one struck dumb; andit was not until the centurion smiled that the spell dissolved and thepower of speech returned.
"Ah, _that_ never; you shall kill me first!" she cried. And already shesaw herself circumventing the centurion, blinding the soldiery, defyingthe mob, and leading the Master through byways and underground passagesout of the accursed city into the fresh glades of Gethsemane, over thehill, down the hollows to the Jordan, and into the desert beyond. Therewas one spot she knew very well; one that only a bird could find; one thatshe would mention to no one, but to which she could take him and keep himhidden there in the brakes till night came, and the fording of the riverwas safe.
"That never!" she cried. And brushing Bernice off, she caught the Masterby the cloak. "Come with me," she murmured. "I know a way----"
And she would have dragged him perhaps, regardless of the others, but thecenturion had her by the arm.
"See here, my pretty friend, your place is not here."
With a twist he sent her spinning back to Baba Barbulah's wall.
"March!" he ordered.
The soldiery, disarranged, fell in line. The two robbers picked up theirburden. The Master turned to Mary, to the others as well, with thatexpression which he alone possessed, that look which both promised andassuaged, and, it may be, would have said some word of encouragement, butMary was at his side again, her hand upon his cloak.
"It shall never be," she repeated. "They must kill me first."
Calcol wheeled. His short sword glistened, reversed, and her cheek waslaid open by the hilt. She staggered back. The soldiery moved on. Thewomen surrounded her and stanched the wound. To her the blow held thedifference between a cut and a cancer; she knew that it could never heal;and, as the blood poured down her face, for the first time she divined theuselessness of revolt.
Presently a wave of the mob caught her, separating her from the otherwomen, and carrying her in its eddy through the gate, into the valley andon to the hillock beyond. On one side were the glimmer of fires, the smellof smoke, of offal too. On the infrequent trees vultures perched. To theright was a nest of gardens and of tombs.
In the eddies Mary lost foothold and lagged a little to the rear. When shereached Guelgolta the soldiery had formed three sides of a square. In itwere the executioners, the prisoners, and the centurion. At the placewhere a fourth side might have been a steep decline began.
Within the square three crosses lay; before them the prisoners stood,stripped of their clothing now, and naked.
The Sanhedrim was grouped about that side of the square which leaned tothe south, the horned bonnet of Caiaphas towering its lacework above theothers. To the wide and cruel corners of his mouth had come the calm of acheetah devouring its prey. At the outer angle, to the right, the standardof the empire swayed; and from an oak two vultures soared with a screaminto the air, their eyes fixed on the vision of bare white flesh.
Through the ranks an elder passed. In his hand was a gourd, which heoffered to one of the thieves.
"Drink of it, Dysmas," he invited. "In it grains of frankincense have beendissolved."
To the rear Annas nodded his approval. His lean, lank jaws parted. "Givestrong drink," he announced, authoritatively; "give strong and heady drinkto those about to die, and wine to those that sorrow."
Dysmas drank abundantly of the soporific, and held the gourd to hiscomrade.
"Take it, Stegas."
As the second thief raised it to his lips, with a motion of arm and kneean executioner caught Dysmas beneath the chin, behind the leg, and thethief lay on a cross. In a second his wrists were bound, his feet as well.There was the blow of a hammer on a nail, a spurt of blood from the openhand; another blow, another spurt; and the cross, upraised, settled in acavity already prepared, a beam behind it for support.
Stegas, his thirst slaked, fell as Dysmas had, and the elder caught thegourd and offered it to the Christ. If he had been tempted in the desert,as rumor alleged, the temptation could have been as nothing in comparisonto the enticements of that cup. It held relief from thought, from theacutest pain that flesh can know, from life, from death.
He waved it aside. The executioner started with surprise; but he had hisduty to perform, and, recovering himself, he caught the Christ, and in amoment he too was down, his hands transfixed, the cross upraised. Theblood dripped leisurely on the sand beneath. Across his features a shadowpassed and vanished. His lips moved.
"Father," he murmured, "forgive them; they know not what they do."
Calcol gave an order. Over the heads of Dysmas and of Stegas the saniswere affixed, wooden tablets smeared with gypsum, bearing the name of thecrucified and with it the offence. They were simple and terse; but abovethe Christ appeared a legend in three tongues, in Aramaic, in Greek, andin Latin:
[Aramaic: Malka di Jehudaje]
_{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON WITH DASIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}._
Rex Judaeorum.
Caiaphas sprang back as from the point of a sword.
"Malka di Jehudaje!" he bellowed. "King of the Jews! It is a blasphemy, aniniquity, and an outrage. Centurion, tear it down."
Calcol shrugged his shoulders, and pointed to the palace. "What theprocurator has written he has written," he answered.
In the tone, in the gesture that preceded it, and in its impertinenceCaiaphas read Pilate's one yet supreme revenge, the expression of hisabsolute contempt for the whole Sanhedrim and the nation that it ruled.
From the rear the mob jumped at the title as at a catchword. To them theirony of the procurator presumably was lost.
"King of the Jews!" they shouted. "Malka di Jehudaje, come down from yourcross!"
It was a great festival, and as they jeered at Jesus they enjoyedthemselves hugely.
In their vast delight the voice of Stegas was drowned.
"I am a Roman citizen," he kept repeating, his head swaying, andindicating with his eyes the wounds in his hands, the torture he endured."Kill me," he implored. And finding entreaty idle, he reviled thecenturion, cursed the soldiery, and would have spat at them, but to hisburning throat no spittle came.
The tongue of Dysmas lolled from his mouth. He had not the ability tospeak, even if in speech relief could come. Flame licked at his flesh, hisjoints were severing, each artery was a nerve exposed, and something wascrunching his brain. He could no longer groan; he could suffer merely,such suffering as hell perhaps has failed to contrive, that apogee ofagony which it was left for man to devise.
Stegas, catching the refrain the mob repeated, turned his eyes from thesoldiery to the adjacent cross.
"If you are as they
say," he cried, "save yourself and us."
As a taunt to Caiaphas, Calcol echoed, "Behold your king!" and raising astalk of hyssop, on which was a sponge that he had dipped in the posca,the thin wine the soldiers drink, he offered it to the Christ.
The sun was nearing the horizon. Caiaphas gathered his ample folds abouthim. He had seen enough. The feast, wretchedly embittered, was nearlydone. There was another at which he must officiate: the shofa presentlywould sound; the skewering of the Paschal lamb it was needful for him tosuperintend. It was time, he knew, to return to the Temple; and as he gavea last indignant look at the placard, the lips of the Christ parted to onedespairing cry:
"Eli, Eli, lemah shebaktani?"
Caiaphas, nodding to the elders, smiled with satisfaction.
At last the false pretender was forced to acknowledge the invalidity ofhis claims. The Father whose son he vaunted himself to be had disowned himwhen his recognition was needed, if ever it had been needed at all. Andso, with the smile of one whose labor has had its recompense, Caiaphaspatted his skirt, and the elders about him strolled back through theGannath Gate to the Temple that awaited him.
The multitude meanwhile had decreased. To the crowd also the Temple hadits attractions, its duties, and its offices. Moreover, the spectacle wasat an end. With a blow of the mallet the legs of the thieves had beenbroken. They had died without a shriek, a thing to be regretted. TheGalilean too, pierced by the level stroke of a spear, had succumbedwithout a word. Sundown was approaching. Clearly it was best to be withinthe walls where other gayeties were. The mob dispersed, leaving behind butthe dead, the circling vultures, a group of soldiers throwing dice for thegarments of the crucified, and, remotely, a group of women huddled beneatha protecting oak.
During the hour or two that intervened, the force which had visited Maryevaporated in strength overtaxed. She was conscious only that shesuffocated. The words of the women that had drawn her to them were emptyas blanks in a dream; the jeers of the mob vacant as an empty bier. To butone thing was she alive, the fact that death could be. Little by little,as the impossible merged into the actual, the understanding came to herthat the worst that could be had been done, and she ceased to suffer. Thedeparting hierarchy, the dispersing mob, retreating before encroachingnight, left her unimpressed. To her the setting sun was Christ.
The soldiers passed. She did not see them. Calcol called to her. She didnot hear. The women had gone from her; she did not notice it. She stood asa cataleptic might, her eyes on the cross. Once only, when the Christ haduttered his despairing cry, she too had cried in her despair. In the roarof the mob the cry was lost as a stone tossed in the sea. Since then shehad been dumb, sightless also, existing, if at all, unconsciously, herlife-springs nourished by death.
Though she gazed at the cross, she had ceased to distinguish it. A littlegroup that had reached it before the soldiery left had been unmarked byher. On the platform of her dream a serpent had emerged. In its coils wereher immortal hopes. It was that she saw, and that alone. Those moments ofagony in which the imagination oscillates between the past and the future,devouring the one, fumbling the other, had been endured, and resignationfailed to bring its balm. She had believed with a faith so firm that nowin its demolition there was nothing left--an abyss merely, where light wasnot.
A hand touched her, and she quivered as a leaf does at the wing of a bird."Mary, come with us," some one was saying; "we are taking him to a tomb."
Just beyond were men and women whom she knew. Joseph of Haramathaim, aclose follower of the Master; Nikodemon, the richest man in all Judaea;Johanna, Mary Clopas, Salome, Bernice, and the servants of the opulentJew. It was Ahulah who had touched her; and as Mary started she saw beforeher a coffin which the others bore.
"Come with us," Ahulah repeated; and Mary crossed the intervening ridge towhere the gardens were and the tombs she had already passed.
At the door of a sepulchre the brief procession halted. Within was a room,a little grotto furnished with a stone slab and a lamp that flickered,surmounted by an arch. The coffin, placed on the slab, routed a bat thatflew to the arch, and a lizard that scurried to a crevice. In the coffinthe Christ lay, his head wrapped in a napkin, the body wound about bybroad bands of linen that were secured with gum and impregnated withspices and with myrrh. The odor of aromatics filled the tomb. The batescaped to the night. A stone was rolled before the opening, the briefprocession withdrew, and Mary was left with the dead.
The momentary exertion, the bier, the sepulchre, the sight of the Christin his cerements, the brooding quiet--these things had roused her. Her mindwas nimbler, and thought more active. One by one the stars appeared. Theywould vanish, she told herself, as her hopes had done. Only they wouldreappear, and belief could not. It had come as a rainbow does, anddisappeared as vaporously, little by little, before the full glare ofmight. For a minute, hours perhaps, she stood quite still, interrogatingthe past in which so much had been, gauging the future in which so muchwas to be. The one retreated, the other fled. Thoughts came to herevanescently, and faded before they were wholly formed. At one moment shewas beckoning the unicorns from the desert, the winged lions from theyonderland, commanding them to bear her to the home of some immenserevenge. At others she was asking her way of griffins, propounding theproblem to the Sphinx. But the unicorns and lions took flight, thegriffins spread their wings, the Sphinx fell asleep. There was no answerto her appeal.
Behind the sepulchre the moon rose; it dropped a beam near by. There islight somewhere, it seemed to say; and in that telegram from Above, shethought of Rome. She remembered now, in Rome was Tiberius, and in himRevenge. She smiled at her own forgetfulness. Yes, it was there. She wouldgo to him, she would exact reparation; there should be anothercrucifixion. Pilate should be nailed to the cross, Judas on one side,Caiaphas on the other. Only it would be at Rome where there was noPassover to interfere with the torture they endured. Things were donebetter there. Men were crucified, not with the head up, but with the feet;and so remained, not for hours, but for days; and died, not of theirwounds alone, but of hunger too.
A chariot of dream caught her, and, borne across the intervening space,she saw herself in a palace where there were gods and monsters, columns oftransparent quartz, floors of malachite, roofs of gold. And there, on adais, the Caesar lay. Behind him a fan, luminous as a peacock's tail,oscillated to the tinkling of mysterious keys. In his crown was thelividity of uncolored dawns, in his sceptre the dominion of the world. Anulcer devoured his face, and in his ear a boy repeated the maxims ofElephantis. Mary threw herself at his feet, her tears fell on them as rainon leaves. "Vengeance," she implored; but he listened merely to the boy athis side. "Death is your servant," she cried. "You command, it obeys." Theulcer oozed, the face grew vague, he gave no answer. She stood up andmenaced him. "Behind you spectres crouch; you may not see them. I do;their name is To-morrow." The murmurs of the boy were her sole reply. Theroof crumbled, the flooring disappeared, the emperor faded, and Marystared into space.
The moon that had struck aslant the tomb had gone, but where its beams hadfallen the message remained. There is light somewhere, it repeated. Acrossthe heavens a meteor shot like a bee. In the air voices whisperedconfusedly. It is not in Rome, one seemed to say. It is not on earth,another called.
Mary clutched at her beating breast. The sky now was an opening rose. Whatthe sunset had sown the dawn would reap. In the night that had enveloped,day raised a lattice, and through it came a gust of higher thought. It isnot in revenge, a voice whispered. It is not in regret, another called.
"I know it," Mary gasped. "Yes, yes, I know it now. It is in faith."
"And in abnegation of self."
The stone which stood before the sepulchre had rolled away. At her sidethe Christ stood. In his eyes were golden parables, in his face Truthshone revealed. She stared, dumb with the unexpected joy of beliefconfirmed, blinded by the sudden light, while he who had rent the bonds ofdeath passed on into the budding day.
When the brief pr
ocession of the night before returned to the tomb, it wasempty. At the door Mary lay, her arms outstretched and vacant.
FINIS MARIAE.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
The table of contents has been added in the electronic version.
The following changes have been made to the text:
page 36, "forget" changed to "forgot", "Hew" changed to "Her" page 38, "a" added before "sword" page 46, period added following "roof" page 108, "surperber" changed to "superber" page 118, "is" changed to "it"