Fifth Gospel (13 page)

PONTIUS PILATE

T
he
moon
filtered through the silk curtains and Pontius Pilate lay sleepless in his bed, watching it and listening to Claudia’s soft breathing in the oppressive airs of the night.

In the day she was calm and in the night she slept untroubled
. The heat and disorder of this place did not bother her. Pilate, on the other hand, found that the climate of Jerusalem made his mind seek to stand still in the day and his thoughts to run leagues in the night.

But
this night, something more prevented his sleep.

Sometime ago, on his arrival in Jerusalem and following Caesar’s orders he had his men
erect standards bearing Caesar’s image on the walls of all prominent places, including the Hebrew Temple. Immediately a great uprising broke out, with thousands of people clamouring into the streets and into the Temple, inspired by the Zealots and their speeches. They had climbed the walls of the Temple to take down the standards, and his soldiers tried to stop them the priests stood in their way and offered their throats.

Pilate
sighed now. His orders on his appointment had been clear – maintain peace in the province and do all that is necessary in this regard or else find yourself answering to a Caesar who likes to throw his enemies from cliffs into the sea!

To prevent an escalation of violence
he had ordered the images taken down. Ah! These were a difficult people, beyond reasoning and common sense. In no other province had the Romans encountered such obstinacy, such militancy and extremity.

Afterwards, w
ishing to better know their mind he had invited the tetrarch of Galilee and the priests of the Sanhedrin to a feast. But his guests did not come, the high priest had been afraid of defilement, and Herod had feigned illness. The message could not have been clearer: The conquered people of Judea thought Rome beneath them and would always see themselves her enemies.

Afterwards
his administration had passed through bloody times ending in the latest incident, which on such a night, with the swollen moon and the smell of death for company, weighed heavily on his mind.

Before coming to his bedchamber he had taken a
lamp to his library to consult his favourite philosopher Cicero. Cicero expounded that some men were only guided by what provides comfort and happiness in life. Pilate had seen it in Rome, where those things that were good for the self were sought at the expense of what was moral and good. But his doings had never dictated by his own needs, only by the needs of the state, and these needs he had always regarded as good! However, since arriving in Palestine a change had worked its way into his thinking like a worm into an apple. Roman law was becoming more and more distasteful to him and he was beginning to think of it as something expedient and immoral. Such were the thoughts of the man in him.

The smell of his wife’s hair was comforting to him. He put a hand to her bare shoulder. Claudia Procula was beautiful and
he loved her though their union had been arranged, as was everything else in his life. After all, the future of a man born to the equestrian class was laid out before him like a map divided into the provinces of youth, middle years and old age and his hope was to live long enough to follow these sign posts to that final destination.

Born the son of a woman from Gaul and Ponti, a Samnite general in the service of Rome, he
was inducted into the Roman Cavalry as a youth and had performed military duties in Gaul and other places by the time he had reached maturity. His services had been rewarded in the giving of three gifts: a spear, the name Pilatus, and a province to govern.

He
had thought it a grand thing then, to move so easily from soldier to statesman, from Pontius to Pilate. Now in his middle years, his mind turned differently. These days he found himself not thinking on a senator-ship in Rome but rather on a quiet house in the hills of Gaul surrounded by vineyards and pastures, where his time would be divided between horses, children and the pleasures of his books.

But destiny had not marked such a path before him.
His only son was a sickly child and he could see himself lodged in this godforsaken land for all time, forgotten by Rome and hated by the Jews.

His wife curved towards him in her sleep. She smelt of roses. He knew she used the unguent to dampen the
stench of blood, which ever since her childhood had made her faint to see it. This made his thoughts take a turn to what was troubling him.

Some days ago,
a Jew by the name of Judas had come to him with word of a conspiracy. The man had told him of plans hatched by the treacherous
Sicarri
with the support of Herod Antipas; plans for an insurrection that would plunge the province of Judea into an abyss of revolution not seen since the times of Quirenius.

Pilate had not known whether to believe the Jew, for
the man had a fiery eye and the heart of a traitor. Moreover, Judas’ seeming betrayal of his own countrymen had the scent of a trap and he had almost clapped the man in irons before another thought had come to him to override his misgivings. He had only one legion at his disposal in Jerusalem, a little over five thousand men, and Syria was stretched thin from Roman wars and would not provide him with further soldiery. Tens of thousands came each year to the city for the festival and a Roman Legion would be no more than a shout in a tempest of revolt. He had no choice but to take the man at his word and to set about his own plans.

He
had decided that his men would not search the underground tunnels and passages. These were many and various and well known to the insurrectionists who may have prepared a trap for his Legionnaires. Moreover, it was not his wish to scare the plotters off and to drive them further into the bowls of the city, but rather to ensnare them. So, on the day of the proposed revolt, he left the exits out of these tunnels free and had a portion of his legionnaires lying in wait, ready to prevent the Sicarri, once they were exposed, from retreating into their hiding holes. A further portion of his men were dressed as pilgrims and set to mingle among the crowds, while another portion, led by Gaius Cassius, would strengthen the guards along the walls and all the entrances to the Temple. His own personal guard would lie in wait at his pr
ae
torium
to seize those seeking to assassinate him.

On the day of the Passover
Feast, the appointed day of the revolt, he and his men were among those crowds that made their way to the Temple to purchase the Passover lambs. When dissenting voices were heard in the streets he gave the signal to his legionnaires who acted immediately, throwing off their cloaks and descending like a storm of well-honed swords upon the rebels. The wild-eyed Roman guards thrust their weapons into the bellies and limbs of those perpetrators who fought back with vehemence. But they also killed and maimed those who came between them so that in the end the streets were littered with carcasses. The blood of old men, women and children, of youths and men in their prime, all who were caught in the fighting, mingled with the blood of the Sicarri zealots, and ran together in a stream over the stones, making puddles like spring rain.

Pilate
ordered the blood of those killed collected in a clay vessel and took himself through the mourning crowds to the Temple. Flanked by the insignia of Rome, he climbed the steps to the inner sanctuary where only priests were deigned passage, and in a show of Roman defiance pushed aside the old priests who were horrified at his desecration. The people who were then gathered in the court began a lamentation. The paschal festival was despoiled! The presence of a gentile in the courts and the smell and sight of death had defiled the celebration of the sacrifices!

He ignored the
cacophony of howling and weeping and stood looking down upon the throngs with no pity in his heart. He ordered the priests to bring forth the sacred scrolls kept in the sanctuary so that he could throw them into the sacrificial fires. Horrified the priests fell on their knees and began to tear at their vestments and to offer up their necks to his guards.

‘I will kill you all!’
he warned them, ‘Before your own people!’

Still they did
not move.

Overcome with exhaustion and frustrated by the quarrelsome nature of these people he called for the blood collected in
the clay vessel and said to them:

‘Rome will have peace in this province
, and she does not care how much blood is shed! Behold, what Rome thinks of Jew blood!’

With these words
, he took the vessel, and poured its contents into the sacrificial fires where the blood of the Hebrew people, the sacred blood of Abraham, encountered the blood of the animals.

The symbolism of this act
threw the crowd into a strange and immense silence. Pilate asked for a pitcher of water to wash his hands. He took himself from the Temple then and had those zealots who had been captured by his guards scourged and taken to Calvary to be crucified.

That had been yesterday
. The sound of wailing had continued all day and only at sundown had the people been allowed, by their religion to bury their dead. This meant that the smell of decay, warmed by sun and visited by flies, still lingered as a reminder of Roman vengeance on defiance.

But w
hat else could he have done? These were a people without reason. Leniency would only have encouraged future riots and revolts; only harshness and severity could control the temper of these people. This was the soldier speaking in him.

He wondered which he was, the soldier or the man? He did not know.

He lay in his bed now with the sickly aroma in the breezes and looked at Claudia as she stirred from the cloudy airs of sleep. Her eyes opened and she reached out to draw him near.

‘All is well? You do not sleep…something troubles you
…come…hold me.’

He
took her in his arms and whispered in her ear, ‘How must a watchdog of Rome sleep while there are devils at the door?’

She yawn
ed. ‘Oh Pontius! Do you speak of those devils you dispatched to the realm of shades, or to the thoughts that trouble your heart for the innocent that you had killed?’

He
bristled at this rebuke and turned on his back. ‘If you were a soldier you would know that sometimes it is necessary to shed blood.’

She turned on her side
to look at him. ‘You are a soldier and you say it, but you do not relish it.’

‘
I marvel at how clear things are to you…’ he said to her.

She laughed softly
. ‘Your mind is not clear because you read Cicero!’

He looked at her.
‘How do you know?’

‘I
have been your wife for fifteen years…you always seek his counsel when something worries you. Does he give you comfort this night?’ she asked.

He took
to looking at the darkness. ‘Nothing in this strange country, neither our laws nor Cicero’s words give me comfort.’

‘
No…but perhaps that is because laws and reason cannot determine for you what is right and what is wrong, husband. This,’ she said to him, ‘you must do for yourself.’

He looked at her
again and felt a gratitude to the gods that she had not remained in Rome like the wives of other Roman officials, for she alone had the courage to speak her mind and he esteemed her for her honesty. Even so, she could be a stubborn woman, full of her own opinions. Now and again he needed to put her in her place.

‘Without laws and reason
, there is only anarchy and disorder,’ he told her.

She
lay on her back. ‘I think some day men will know something higher than the laws they spin from their heads with their reason, something women already know.’

‘
So…’ he said, making his voice soft, ‘there is something that women know before men?’

‘
Yes…’ she said, stretching her limbs, ‘does that seem so strange to you?’

‘What is it then?’

‘Women feel right from wrong.’

‘
How do you mean, feel?’

‘I
t comes to us naturally, this feeling’ she said, ‘but it isn’t found in your books, Pontius, nor is it dictated by what you esteem so highly, your reason. Reason, my dear, is a child of convenience…I speak of a truth that is true, absolutely.’

‘Y
es, but such truths can only be known by the gods…this you say
you
know? Tell me, how you know it?’

She hoisted herself on her elbows to look at him. ‘A woman knows it
, by listening.’

He dismissed
it.

‘
You may laugh, but I say to you that if more men felt this knowing, then there would be no more war!’

‘
There will never be peace,’ he told her.

‘
Not while men rule the world,’ she pointed out.

‘Now you have me intrigued…how does it work
this knowing?’