Simon, lathered and breathless, was standing at the gate.
Quickly John went to the maid who had admitted him and smiled. “That man is also a friend of the high priest,” he said.
The maid glanced back and forth between the two men, suspicious. Finally she went and opened the gate.
If Simon came in, he was on his own.
John was already mounting the steps to the chamber whose windows glowed with an interior light. Voices grew louder the closer he came, the general murmuring of many men. John did not try to enter. He crept along a stone walkway that circled the outside of the room till he was hidden from the courtyard below, then he brought his face close to a window grill and looked inside.
Men’s heads blocked his vision. They were standing with their backs to the wall. But they nodded and muttered and craned to see, so John caught glimpses of the proceedings within.
Jesus! A head moved and John saw Jesus! His heart leaped: there stood Jesus, solitary in the center of the room, as calm as a white candle, though his clothes and his flesh were soiled, and the hair that hung down his back was a falling mass of knots.
A voice inside said, “Testimony!”
Heads moved, all looking in one direction and blocking John’s view.
“Testimony!” said the voice, dominant, self-confident.
A lesser voice, farther inside the room, called out: “He spat in my son’s face.”
The heads swiveled to the new speaker, and John could see Jesus again—profile, facing the front of the room, which was cut from view by the window casement.
His arms were still bound behind him! But he seemed motionless by choice, his lips pursed as if forming one letter of the alphabet, one sound forever.
“Spat in your son’s face?” said the voice of silken authority, and Jesus was hidden again. “What sort of charge is that?”
“Uncleanness! Bodily discharge. The spit defiled my boy.”
Someone else called, “No, it healed your son of blindness!”
“It got him thrown out of the synagogue, too!”
“Not enough!” declared the voice in the front of the room. This must be the high priest, Caiaphas. “I want more damning testimony!” There was menace in the tone.
Then people began to shout out a series of accusations:
“He has broken every Sabbath law, working, walking, cooking on the Sabbath!”
“Noted,” said the high priest.
“He eats with sinners.”
“Noted!”
“He scorns our father, Abraham!”
“He casts out demons by the power of demons!”
“He says he can forgive sins—”
“Noted. Noted!” The high priest raised his voice in procedural scorn. “We’ve heard it all before, and none of it warrants execution.”
The room was stung to silence.
The head directly in front of John bowed down and he saw Jesus framed by the window, still erect, his beautiful forehead filled with thought.
“Who brings against the defendant,” Caiaphas said with smooth articulation, “witness concerning a capital crime, an offense deserving death?”
Suddenly the head at the window snapped up and, inches from John’s face, called, “I do!” John swallowed hard. The nearness left him trembling.
The man moved from the window into the room and stood by Jesus.
“Give God the praise,” the invisible judge intoned. “What have you to say?”
Rubbing his chin, the witness said, “I heard the defendant announce that he was going to destroy the Temple!”
“Good, sir! Sabotage and sacrilege are killing offenses. Very good!”
“Yes,” cried another man, rushing to the side of the first. “Yes, he said he’d destroy the Temple made with hands and in three days build another without hands!”
“Wait,” said Caiaphas.
But already a third man was clapping for attention and shouting: “I heard it, too! Just this week!”
“No, no, no,” the first man shouted. “No, the defendant said it three years ago, exactly.”
“Shut up!” The voice of the high priest dominated the room. “Trifling witnesses, you’re ruining your own testimony.”
The three men crept to the farther wall, and Jesus remained alone in the center of the room.
Then Caiaphas himself appeared.
John saw the high priest approaching Jesus, a wizened, insinuating man, hunched at the shoulders, moving on a soundless tread. Over clean white linen he wore a blue woven robe whose hem was edged with bells of gold and pomegranates of cloth. On his head he wore a grand turban.
Caiaphas found a mark immediately before the slender form of the Lord and stepped on it. Then he lifted his face and parted his lips in smiling.
Jesus returned the look but did not smile.
Caiaphas said, “What? Have you nothing to say in answer to these charges? You’ve never been afraid to speak. Go ahead.” Caiaphas made a show of bowing his head to listen. “Defend yourself.”
But Jesus held his peace.
John’s heart was hammering within him, seeing these two in such proximity. Jesus had a lean, regal posture. But he was filthy, and Caiaphas was arrayed in the glory of Aaron.
“You do not choose to talk?” said Caiaphas. “Then I choose, and you shall have no choice but to speak!”
The high priest drew himself up to his full height and said, “I adjure you by the living God to tell us whether you are Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God.”
Softly Jesus said, “I am.”
John gasped and covered his mouth.
Jesus was still speaking: “And you shall see the Son of man, sitting at the right hand of power, coming with the clouds of heaven.”
“The man is dangerous,” Caiaphas muttered. Then he said, “Blasphemy.” More loudly still, “Blasphemy!” He seized the throat of his robe and tore the cloth apart. “What need do we have of witnesses, when the man blasphemes in the very midst of the council?”
Caiaphas withdrew from Jesus, out of John’s sight. But his insinuating voice filled the chamber: “What say you, reverend sirs? What sentence does the Nazarene deserve?”
“Death.”
First one and then another said, “Death.”
Then the whole company of witnesses and counselors were condemning Jesus in a glad chorus of unity: Death!
It was as if some prohibition had snapped in the room. Men surged in toward Jesus. John wound his fingers through the window grill, tormented by the scene. Men were spitting in Jesus’ face and hitting him in the head. They covered his eyes and cried, “Prophesy, Christ! Who was it that hit you?”
John backed from the window. Sick with sorrow, he turned away.
Just then he heard footsteps in the narrow road behind the high priest’s house. A man was running: John looked and in the spill of window light recognized the small form of Judas Iscariot, dashing away at a wild pace. It was the last time any disciple saw Judas.
Simon Peter
JOHN LEFT ME ALONE. He disappeared. I had no idea where he went, and I had no friend in that place. He did. I didn’t.
And even as the servant was opening the gate, she kept staring into my face. That was unnerving enough. Then she spoke, and I glanced down at her, and that’s how I lost sight of John in the courtyard.
What she said was, “Aren’t you one of that man’s disciples?”
Took my breath away! I had just gotten there.
“What man?” I said.
“You know,” she said. “The man they arrested.”
“No,” I said. “No, I’m not.”
I brushed past her and since John was nowhere in sight, I went to the fire in the middle of the courtyard—as if I had business in that place and knew exactly where I was going.
It was a common fire on a cold night. Officers of the Temple guard were warming themselves. Servants, too. I put out my hands and ducked my head down. Jesus was somewhere in the palace. I meant to
stay.
But that maid wouldn’t leave me alone!
Soon I felt that people were looking at me. Made my flesh crawl. I glanced up, and there she was, talking to the officers. “This is one of them,” she said. “He’s a disciple of the Nazarene.”
“Woman,” I said, “I don’t know and I do not understand what you’re talking about.”
But I moved to the forecourt. A colder place, but darker, too.
I love Jesus. I loved Jesus then—desperately. That whole night it was hard for me even to breathe, because I kept seeing him tied up. He was somewhere in the high priest’s house, with people who wanted to kill him. How could I leave? I kept wringing my hands. Helpless! I wanted to throw my body at the doors and burst in and beat them all with clubs!
I don’t know how long I paced in that dark place.
An hour, maybe.
But then—I’ll tell this part as truthfully as I can—then four things happened, one right after the other.
First, the shouting. All at once there came from an upper chamber the slurred shouts of many men. They were laughing as if they were drunk. I went back into the courtyard to see what was happening—
But a soldier blocked my way and said, “You are one of them.”
I said, “No.”
He said, “Don’t lie to me. You’re a Galilean.”
I said, “No,” and tried to push past him.
But he struck my chest and said, “Don’t you recognize me?” He struck me again. “I was there when you cut off my cousin’s ear!”
“Damn you!” I yelled. “Damn you!” People started to look, people in the courtyard, people pouring out of the upper chamber. Two guards reached for their weapons. It drove me crazy. I raised my right hand and screamed, “I swear by the city of Jerusalem that I know nothing of the man! I do not know—”
Then this is the third thing that happened.
Jesus came out of the upper chamber, his arms bound behind him. He turned and looked down at me. He saw my right hand in the air.
And this is the fourth thing.
Somewhere in the night a rooster started to crow.
I lowered my hand and covered my mouth and turned away from Jesus and ran out of the courtyard. I ran out into the city. I ran down a dark alley and fell to the ground with my face in my hands and I burst into tears. I cried and cried and could not stop.
This is the whole truth.
IV
FRIDAY’S DAWNING WAS UNCERTAIN. It was the end of the latter rains. Clouds had crept in from the sea and covered Jerusalem in a sky as undefined as the sea itself, a grey weight under heaven. Dawn, then, was a lessening of shadow, an odor of moisture, and a dirty light.
Now and again a thin, drizzling rain fell.
The palace which Herod the Great had built more than fifty years ago was enclosed by a wall of massive stone forty-five feet high. Within the wall were rich green gardens, covered promenades bordered by canals, lovely pools, curious water fountains. The palace had more than a hundred apartments, two magnificent banquet halls, roofs constructed of long beams carved with brilliant decorations, barracks for several legions of soldiers, stables. But thirty-three years ago King Herod had gone down to death, and now—all his ambition for the glory of his name and the kingship of his son having failed—the place was named for the Roman governor who held court here during the high feast days of the Jews: it was called the Praetorium. Pontius Pilate walked its promenades. His troops occupied its barracks. Rome ruled.
A principal gate in the Praetorium wall opened eastward to the wide public square of the upper city. Guards stood in towers on either side of the gate, though in these days they did not shut its huge doors: Jews who intended to celebrate the Passover would never defile themselves by entering the residence of a Gentile.
But Roman law required prosecutions and sentencing to take place in public. In order to render legal judgments, then, Pilate met with the people of Judea in that square east of the royal palace. A tribunale, an elevated speaker’s platform, had been erected in that place. When court was in session, a large wooden chair was brought out and set upon this platform, the magistrate’s seat. When Pontius Pilate sat therein, he was Rome.
In the dirty dawn of Friday, high priest Caiaphas stood at the very edge of the ramp that led to the Praetorium gate and rapped the hard end of his staff on the flagstones.
“An audience and a judgment!” he called.
Behind him a miserable group had gathered in the public square: soldiers of the Temple guard, certain leading members of the Sanhedrin, and in their midst—his wrists bound in front of him, his face soiled and tired but otherwise unremarkable—Jesus of Nazareth.
“Pontius Pilate, Procurator!” the high priest called, clearly but loudly, not obsequiously. “Here is a criminal of such public threat that Rome must hear the indictment and pass sentence and execute her sentence now, today, before sunset and the Sabbath!”
Having made his formal petition, the high priest returned to those who stood under the grey drizzle in the open square. Other members of the Sanhedrin showed more anxiety than he did, murmuring among themselves about the charges they would bring.
Jesus allowed his eye to wander over the spacious pavement. He focused on the far southeastern corner. His lips tightened, and his jaw clenched.
Several women and a man were lurking in that corner, their hoods drawn up against the weather. Their faces were mostly concealed, but he recognized them. Andrew, his first follower. He must have brought the women here. Mary Magdalene, pinched and pale. Joanna and Susanna and Mary of Bethany. And her sister Martha, short and solid.
Jesus closed his eyes with unutterable sadness.
Suddenly two Roman soldiers thrust a wooden shaft between his elbows and his back. They each took an end and drove him forward to the front steps of the platform. Pilate’s chair was in position. Pontius Pilate himself was ascending steps at the back of the platform: the judge and the accused arrived at the same time.
A servant raised a shield over Pilate’s chair, to protect him from the rain.
“Now, then,” said Pilate, sitting down and beckoning the high priest forward. “What’s the charge?”
The Roman wore his hair cut short. His knuckles were dimpled, his fingers fat, his upper lip low in the middle and high at the sides, as if it were deformed by too much blowing of trumpets. It gave him an expression of perpetual sneering.
Caiaphas said, “We found this man, Jesus of Nazareth, perverting our nation.”
“Yes?” said Pilate. “And?”
“And,” said Caiaphas, “sedition. He says that he is Messiah, a king.”
Pilate frowned. “Why have you come to me?” he said. “Your ‘Messiah’ is your religion. Judge him according to your own law.” The governor made motions to stand and go.
Caiaphas snapped to attention. “No! We must come to you!” he said. “We don’t have the authority to put a man to death.”
Pilate did stand up then. “Death?” he said. “You think he’s committed a capital offense?” He stepped forward and squinted into Jesus’ face, then said, “Bring him in. I’ll interrogate him inside.”
By the rod at his back, the soldiers dragged Jesus after the governor, through the gate, into the Praetorium itself.
In a broad hallway Pilate again sat down. Jesus was positioned directly in front of him. There was a bowl of fruit at Pilate’s left hand.
“I have no time for this,” he said. “Make your answers short. Jesus of Nazareth, are you the king of the Jews?”
Jesus, bent forward by the rod through the crooks of his elbows, nevertheless raised his head and looked into Pilate’s eyes. “Do you say this on your own?” he said. “Or did others tell you this about me?”
“What! Am I a Jew?” Pilate sneered. “Your own chief priests delivered you to me. What have you done?”
Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my subjects would be fighting for me—but my kingdom does not belong
here at all.”
“So,” said Pilate, “then you are a king?”
“You say I am a king,” said Jesus. “The reason I was born into the world is to testify to the truth. All those who belong to the truth listen to my voice.”
“Truth?” said Pilate abruptly, half out of his chair. “What is truth?”
Shaking his head, he walked out into the wet morning, while the accused was driven stumbling behind him. This time Jesus was forced to climb the steps to the tribunale.
As he came to the top, he saw Pilate’s back and heard his confident announcement: “I find no fault in this man.”
Immediately a clamor arose in the public square. Crowds were gathering now. Certain members of the Sanhedrin came forward, lodging further charges against Jesus.
“He stirs the people to insurrection, even from Galilee to this place!”
Pilate glanced toward Jesus: permission to respond.
Jesus said nothing.
“He’s a known revolutionary!”
Pilate nodded, but Jesus said nothing.
“He has forbidden his followers to give tribute to Caesar!”
Each time an accusation was presented, Pilate invited some reply from Jesus, but he held his peace. He pursed his lips. He looked every accuser squarely in the face, but he himself said nothing.
Finally Pilate raised his hands for silence. He stepped forward on the platform, prepared to render his ruling.
“I examined this man and found no evidence for any of your charges,” he said. “But your outrage is real, and it must be satisfied. Therefore, I will order the accused to be scourged with a whip of knotted cords and weights of metal. The flagellum. After that I propose to honor your custom of releasing one prisoner at the Passover. I will release this man, Jesus of Nazareth.”
There was a moment of perfect stillness. The high priest looked trapped, unable to respond.
Suddenly a voice cried from the back of the crowd, “Jesus? Jesus who?”
It was a woman perhaps fifty years old. She began to push her way forward, crying, “Jesus of Nazareth? Not Jesus of Nazareth!” She was clothed modestly, like a rabbi’s wife, though her robes were drenched and her progress was broken by the weight.
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel Page 74