‘Go on!’
‘I didn’t go on,’ said the prisoner. ‘Here men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison.’
The secretary, trying not to let drop a single word, rapidly traced the words on his parchment.
‘There never has been, is not, and never will be any authority in this world greater or better for people than the authority of the emperor Tiberius!’ Pilate’s cracked and sick voice swelled. For some reason the procurator looked at the secretary and the convoy with hatred.
‘And it is not for you, insane criminal, to reason about it!’ Here Pilate shouted: ‘Convoy, off the balcony!’ And turning to the secretary, he added: ‘Leave me alone with the criminal, this is a state matter!’
The convoy raised their spears and with a measured tramp of hob-nailed caligae walked off the balcony into the garden, and the secretary followed the convoy.
For some time the silence on the balcony was broken only by the water singing in the fountain. Pilate saw how the watery dish blew up over the spout, how its edges broke off, how it fell down in streams.
The prisoner was the first to speak.
‘I see that some misfortune has come about because I talked with that young man from Kiriath. I have a foreboding, Hegemon, that he will come to grief, and I am very sorry for him.’
‘I think,’ the procurator replied, grinning strangely, ‘that there is now someone else in the world for whom you ought to feel sorrier than for Judas of Kiriath, and who is going to have it much worse than Judas! ... So, then, Mark Ratslayer, a cold and convinced torturer, the people who, as I see,’ the procurator pointed to Yeshua’s disfigured face, ‘beat you for your preaching, the robbers Dysmas and Gestas, who with their confrères killed four soldiers, and, finally, the dirty traitor Judas — are all good people?’
‘Yes,’ said the prisoner.
‘And the kingdom of truth will come?’
‘It will, Hegemon,’ Yeshua answered with conviction.
‘It will never come!’ Pilate suddenly cried out in such a terrible voice that Yeshua drew back. Thus, many years before, in the Valley of the Virgins, Pilate had cried to his horsemen the words: ‘Cut them down! Cut them down! The giant Ratslayer is trapped!’ He raised his voice, cracked with commanding, still more, and called out so that his words could be heard in the garden: ‘Criminal! Criminal! Criminal!’ And then, lowering his voice, he asked: ‘Yeshua Ha-Nozri, do you believe in any gods?’
‘God is one,’ replied Yeshua, ‘I believe in him.’
‘Then pray to him! Pray hard! However ...’ here Pilate’s voice gave out, ‘that won’t help. No wife?’ Pilate asked with anguish for some reason, not understanding what was happening to him.
‘No, I’m alone.’
‘Hateful city ...’ the procurator suddenly muttered for some reason, shaking his shoulders as if he were cold, and rubbing his hands as though washing them, ‘if they’d put a knife in you before your meeting with Judas of Kiriath, it really would have been better.’
‘Why don’t you let me go, Hegemon?’ the prisoner asked unexpectedly, and his voice became anxious. ‘I see they want to kill me.’
A spasm contorted Pilate’s face, he turned to Yeshua the inflamed, red-veined whites of his eyes and said:
‘Do you suppose, wretch, that the Roman procurator will let a man go who has said what you have said? Oh, gods, gods! Or do you think I’m ready to take your place? I don’t share your thoughts! And listen to me: if from this moment on you say even one word, if you speak to anyone at all, beware of me! I repeat to you — beware!’
‘Hegemon...’
‘Silence!’ cried Pilate, and his furious gaze followed the swallow that had again fluttered on to the balcony. ‘To me!’ Pilate shouted.
And when the secretary and the convoy returned to their places, Pilate announced that he confirmed the death sentence passed at the meeting of the Lesser Sanhedrin on the criminal Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and the secretary wrote down what Pilate said.
A moment later Mark Ratslayer stood before the procurator. The procurator ordered him to hand the criminal over to the head of the secret service, along with the procurator’s directive that Yeshua Ha-Nozri was to be separated from the other condemned men, and also that the soldiers of the secret service were to be forbidden, on pain of severe punishment, to talk with Yeshua about anything at all or to answer any of his questions.
At a sign from Mark, the convoy closed around Yeshua and led him from the balcony.
Next there stood before the procurator a handsome, light-bearded man with eagle feathers on the crest of his helmet, golden lions’ heads shining on his chest, and golden plaques on his sword belt, wearing triple-soled boots laced to the knees, and with a purple cloak thrown over his left shoulder. This was the legate in command of the legion.
The procurator asked him where the Sebastean cohort was stationed at the moment. The legate told him that the Sebasteans had cordoned off the square in front of the hippodrome, where the sentencing of the criminals was to be announced to the people.
Then the procurator ordered the legate to detach two centuries from the Roman cohort. One of them, under the command of Ratslayer, was to convoy the criminals, the carts with the implements for the execution and the executioners as they were transported to Bald Mountain,[52] and on arrival was to join the upper cordon. The other was to be sent at once to Bald Mountain and immediately start forming the cordon. For the same purpose, that is, to guard the mountain, the procurator asked the legate to send an auxiliary cavalry regiment — the Syrian ala.
After the legate left the balcony, the procurator ordered the secretary to summon to the palace the president of the Sanhedrin, two of its members, and the head of the temple guard in Yershalaim, adding that he asked things to be so arranged that before conferring with all these people, he could speak with the president previously and alone.
The procurator’s order was executed quickly and precisely, and the sun, which in those days was scorching Yershalaim with an extraordinary fierceness, had not yet had time to approach its highest point when, on the upper terrace of the garden, by the two white marble lions that guarded the stairs, a meeting took place between the procurator and the man fulfilling the duties of president of the Sanhedrin, the high priest of the Jews, Joseph Kaifa.[53]
It was quiet in the garden. But when he came out from under the colonnade to the sun-drenched upper level of the garden with its palm trees on monstrous elephant legs, from which there spread before the procurator the whole of hateful Yershalaim, with its hanging bridges, fortresses, and, above all, that utterly indescribable heap of marble with golden dragon scales for a roof — the temple of Yershalaim — the procurator’s sharp ear caught, far below, where the stone wall separated the lower terraces of the palace garden from the city square, a low rumble over which from time to time there soared feeble, thin moans or cries.
The procurator understood that there, on the square, a numberless crowd of Yershalaim citizens, agitated by the recent disorders, had already gathered, that this crowd was waiting impatiently for the announcement of the sentences, and that restless water sellers were crying in its midst.
The procurator began by inviting the high priest on to the balcony, to take shelter from the merciless heat, but Kaifa politely apologized[54] and explained that he could not do that on the eve of the feast. Pilate covered his slightly balding head with a hood and began the conversation. This conversation took place in Greek.
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