The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (43 page)

As he rode, Joseph thought about the events that had transpired in the last few days. He wondered why Jesus would knowingly walk into a place that wanted Him dead. Mary had simply said, “The time is now, Joseph. He has come to fulfill the prophecies.”

Joseph was concerned that with Pilate in Jerusalem, he and Caiaphas would certainly take Jesus’ appearance here now as a sign that He intends to be proclaimed king. Even among Jesus’ own followers, there appeared to be uncertainty. Joseph had noticed a change in Judas Iscariot and had mentioned it to Mary, who had noticed it as well. She admitted that perhaps Judas was finally realizing that Jesus would not let Himself be proclaimed king. Even the rest of the disciples seemed subdued, disappointed that Jesus was not going to lead a rebellion. It didn’t make sense to Joseph. Now, if ever, would be the time for Jesus to whip the crowded city into a religious frenzy by means of some startling miracle that might well have culminated in His being proclaimed the Christ and king of Judea, but after riding into Jerusalem a few days earlier, He had done nothing to attract attention to Himself. Still, when He sat down to teach, His audience was far larger than that gathered around the other teachers who drew crowds at this season of religious enthusiasm.

Joseph did not think for a moment that Caiaphas, hating Jesus as he did, had given up hope of arresting Him and having Him executed. But the crowd that followed the Nazarene Teacher was still large enough to make it unsafe for the high priest to arrest Him in broad daylight. For then the people would swarm to the trial before the Sanhedrin that must inevitably follow, and with as much sentiment as there was in the Sanhedrin itself in favor of the gentle Teacher of Nazareth, Caiaphas would stand little chance of convicting Him of blasphemy. Those who were regarded as prophets had always been allowed to speak more freely by far than those who could claim no such divine inspiration. And Jesus was already acclaimed a prophet by many of the Jews.

In a few more days the Passover season would be finished and many of those who thronged the streets and listened to the teachers upon Solomon’s Porch would depart again for their homes.

When Joseph returned that afternoon to Jerusalem, Mary met him. She had remained at his estate most of the time, for only the inner circle of the disciples accompanied the Master on His nightly visits to Bethany.

“Jesus asked us to help Mary, the mother of Mark, prepare a supper for Him and the Twelve tonight,” she explained. This Mary was the sister of Barnabas, a leader of those in Jerusalem who followed the Nazarene. Her son Mark was still only a lad, but he, too, believed along with his mother. Often when in the city, Jesus and the Twelve rested there before going out to Bethany in the evening.

“But why tonight?” Joseph asked in surprise. “The Passover feast is not until tomorrow evening.”

“I don’t know,” Mary admitted. “The Master insisted upon eating tonight with the Twelve at Mary’s house.” She gripped his hand tightly. “Have you looked in His eyes lately, Joseph? I am terribly afraid of what I see there.”

“Nothing that we feared has happened,” he protested. “And the Passover season has almost ended.”

“What if Jesus knows His time has come and this is the farewell meal with His disciples?”

“Prophets often speak parables that we cannot understand,” Joseph comforted her. “He may have meant something else when He spoke of being killed.”

“Promise that you will watch outside the house where He eats tonight,” Mary begged. “It will be the only night since He returned to Jerusalem that Jesus has remained in the city.”

“I will watch,” he promised her. “And Hadja will be with me. If anyone comes, we can give the alarm.”

Darkness had already fallen when Joseph and Hadja took up their watch outside the house. It was warm, and the curtains of the windows of the upper room where Jesus sat at supper with His disciples had been drawn aside. From time to time the voices of those at the feast grew loud enough for Joseph to hear as he waited nearby in the shadow of a clump of bushes. Hadja was on the other side in order to command a view of the street from another direction.

Mary came out to bring food and a small flask of wine to Joseph and Hadja. She clung to Joseph for a moment in the shadows, as if seeking to draw strength from him as she had so many times in the days since Jesus had returned to Jerusalem. “Watch well, Joseph,” she begged. “I have a feeling that the end is near.”

As the feast in the upper room went on and nothing happened, Joseph began to be more and more certain that they had wrongly interpreted Jesus’ words about being arrested in Jerusalem and put to death. Then suddenly the Master’s voice rose above the others in the room. “Truly I say to you,” Joseph heard Him say, “one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.”

Immediately there was a babble of questioning as one after another of the disciples asked, “Is it I?”

“It is one of the Twelve,” Jesus said, “one who is dipping bread in the same dish with me.”

Joseph felt a sudden dread grip his heart, for Jesus’ voice had been resigned, as if, with His prophetic insight, He already knew exactly what was going to happen. Could Mary’s fears really be justified? Could her intuition have been really a forewarning of some terrible thing that was to happen here in Jerusalem at the Passover season?

Soon they all began to sing a hymn, by which Joseph knew that the supper was over and the group was breaking up. He drew a sigh of relief, for now they would leave the city, and whatever threat hung over Jesus would be averted, at least until tomorrow when He returned.

Joseph was on the point of calling Hadja to draw back into the shadows so that the others would not know they had been watching, when the door of the house burst open and a man plunged from it. The tall figure with the hawklike profile and the iron-gray hair could not be mistaken, and as the man of Kerioth ran past him, Joseph got a glimpse of his face in the light of a lamp that burned outside the door of Mary’s house. It was set in an even harsher cast than usual, and he realized suddenly that something important had happened in the upper room to fill Judas with such a fiery purpose. As he plunged on up the street, half running, Joseph obeyed a sudden impulse and followed him.

Across the now quiet city Judas went almost at a trot with Joseph close behind, hard put to keep up. Judas never looked back, and only when he reached the palace of Caiaphas and was challenged by the armed guard that stood always before the door did he stop. The challenge was perfunctory, however, and he was admitted as soon as the guard was able to see who he was. Obviously, Joseph realized as he drew back into the shadows lest the guard see him, Judas was expected.

Now Joseph became conscious of the sound of men moving about and talking in the courtyard of Caiaphas’s house. Some were Jewish voices, but the rattle of arms and rough words used by Roman soldiers betrayed the fact that a party of Pilate’s troops was included among those who had been waiting, perhaps for a man who would lead them to their prey. Judas had come to betray Jesus, Joseph was certain now, to inform Caiaphas where the Nazarene Teacher could be captured by night when there were no crowds to interfere.

But why had this moody, strange man called Judas Iscariot chosen to sell the knowledge of his Master’s presence in the city this night to the high priest and his minions? Joseph wondered. The man of Kerioth had changed lately, as Joseph had already noticed. Perhaps, Joseph thought, it was because he had realized at last that Jesus had no intention of allowing Himself to be proclaimed a king in Judea and Galilee, as the Zealots planned. Or it might be that Judas hoped through Jesus’ arrest to so provoke the teeming thousands of the city into action that they would tear Him from the hands of the soldiers and set Him upon the throne of Judea in defiance of the high priest and Pontius Pilate. And Caiaphas, it seemed, was acting in collusion with the procurator. The presence of Roman soldiers in the party waiting for Judas’s arrival could mean nothing else.

Now the gates of the courtyard opened and a burly Roman officer emerged with a captain of the Jewish temple guards beside him. Behind them was a party of at least fifty men, more than half of whom were soldiers of the cohort manning the Roman garrison of Jerusalem. When Judas emerged from the house and joined the leaders before the gate, Joseph knew with a desperate urgency that he must not delay here any longer. Jesus and the disciples might not yet have left the city, and at all costs they must not be caught within the gates tonight. Winded as he was, Joseph knew he must race back across the city to warn them, hoping to be able to arrive far enough ahead of the slower marching troops to hide Jesus in some safe place before they arrived at the house where the supper had been eaten that night.

But when Joseph reached the house, Jesus and the disciples had gone. Mary was with the other women, clearing away the remains of the feast. She came quickly to Joseph. “Hadja said Judas ran from the house and you followed,” she told him. “I was worried for you.”

“Judas is bringing Caiaphas and the Romans here,” Joseph gasped. “I came to warn Jesus.”

“Judas!” She caught her breath. “Of course. He would be the one.”

“Have they gone to Bethany?”

Mary shook her head. “The Master will not return there tonight. As they were leaving Simon told me they were going to the Mount of Olives instead to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane.”

“The soldiers will be here soon. We must send them in another direction,” Joseph said. “Go tell the women not to reveal where Jesus really went, and I will run to the garden and warn them.”

“But Judas knew Jesus was going to pray with the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, Joseph.”

“Then he is leading the soldiers to the garden and not here!” Joseph cried. “If only I had stayed to watch where they went,” he added bitterly, “but it is too late now.”

“You could not have possibly warned Jesus and the others in time,” Mary pointed out logically. “Don’t you see? It is just as Jesus said. One of the disciples has betrayed Him and He will be taken to the chief priest and the scribes. It had to happen this way, Joseph.”

And that, as they discovered when they met the soldiers returning with Jesus bound in their midst near the foot of the Mount of Olives, was exactly what had occurred. Led by the traitor Judas, the temple guards and the Roman detachment had surrounded Jesus while He prayed in the garden and had taken Him prisoner without resistance. Of the eleven disciples who accompanied Him, not one stood by Him in this hour of trial or offered to share His fate.

It was after midnight. Surrounded as Jesus was by nearly fifty guards, any attempt at resistance would have been foolish. Mary and Joseph followed as closely behind as they could, while the party retraced the way by which it had come and entered again the courtyard of Caiaphas. Only a few people could get into the chamber where the priests were questioning Jesus, but Joseph was recognized by the guard, and he and Mary managed to push their way in with the crowd where they could see and hear the trial, if indeed it could be called such.

This was no formal hearing before the legally constituted Sanhedrin. Caiaphas and Annas, the old high priest, with Elias and several others of the same group who had questioned Joseph after his return from Galilee, made up the tribunal before which Jesus was brought. It was what Nicodemus had called the political Sanhedrin, the small body of influential priests and doctors of the law who, although having no legal existence, yet ruled the people, in so far as the Jews ruled themselves at all, with an inflexible hand.

Jesus stood quietly with His manacled hands before Him. Already dark bruises showed on His skin where He had been manhandled by the guards, and blood trickled from a small cut on His wrist where the irons had been roughly applied. The sorrow that Joseph and Mary had noticed so markedly in His face these last few days was gone now. It was replaced by a look almost of exaltation, as if God had indeed given Him some special source of strength in this hour of trial. He showed no fear, nothing indeed but a calm resignation for whatever was to come.

The witnesses, Pharisees whom Joseph recognized as having been among those who questioned Jesus whenever He taught, stood to one side. When Caiaphas nodded to them, the leading one said eagerly “I heard Him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands.’”

Caiaphas was obviously triumphant at thus establishing blasphemy against the temple, but when Jesus looked at the Pharisee who witnessed against Him, the man began to stammer a different version of his story. Angrily Caiaphas sent him back to the group of witnesses, but when one after another tried to tell how Jesus had blasphemed, only to have their stories become more and more confused, the crowd began to murmur among themselves at this travesty of a trial.

Caiaphas flushed at the reaction of the crowd and said sharply to Jesus, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?”

Jesus did not speak, and the high priest said sharply, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

Slowly the eyes of the prisoner swept the room and the elegant person of the high priest who was tormenting Him. Before the calmness in His glance, even the confidence of Caiaphas seemed to wane a little. When Jesus spoke, His voice was loud and distinct, as if He wanted not only those in the room to hear, but also the small crowd that filled the courtyard. “I am,” He said, “and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”

Then Caiaphas, suddenly triumphant, tore his robe and shouted, “Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard His blasphemy. What is your decision?”

And as they had been coached, the members of this mock council answered, “He deserves death!”

“Bind Him and send Him to Pontius Pilate for sentencing,” Caiaphas ordered exultantly. This was his hour of triumph. The man who had dared to mock the priests and the Pharisees before the people was at his mercy, condemned by His own words.