The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (44 page)

The soldiers converged upon Jesus once more, but before they took Him from the room He looked around and saw Joseph and Mary standing there, distressed at this mockery of a trial and yet unable to do anything. A smile seemed to warm His lips for a moment, a smile of encouragement for them although His life, not theirs, was in danger.

As Joseph’s eyes met those of Jesus, it was as if a sudden light burst in his brain. And in a blinding revelation that could come only from God Himself, he knew now that the one thing he had lacked, he lacked no more. For he had looked into the eyes of the Son of God and seen there the glory of a revelation he had sought but not been able to find until the moment when he had heard Jesus proclaim Himself the Christ.

The shock and the glory of the revelation made Joseph reel a little, so that it was he who clung to Mary’s arm for support now. And she, realizing what had happened to him because she had experienced the same blinding glory, put her arm about him and held to him tightly while tears streamed down her cheeks. They remained thus while the soldiers took Jesus from the room and the crowd filed out, leaving them alone.

“He is indeed the Son of God, Mary,” Joseph whispered as they went out into the courtyard. “I saw it just now, as if the Most High had opened a page and let me look upon the words themselves written there.”

“I know, dear,” she said softly. “I always knew that when the time came Jesus Himself would reveal the truth to you.” And then her voice broke with grief. “But what can we do, Joseph? Pilate will sentence Him this morning and they will crucify Him. It is the Roman way.”

Joseph straightened his shoulders. “I must speak to Pilate immediately. Perhaps I can still persuade him of the truth.” But he was foiled there, too, for a double guard had been placed around the procurator’s palace and strict orders given that he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. If they had needed any further evidence that the whole thing had been planned by Caiaphas and Pilate together, it was this.

For a while they could think of nothing that would help Jesus. Then Joseph had an inspiration. “If I can’t talk to Pilate, perhaps Claudia Procula will see me,” he said.

“We can try,” Mary agreed. “I know she loves her husband enough to do anything she could to help him from crucifying the Son of God.”

Joseph and Mary made their way to where Claudia Procula was staying in the palace. The guard was a member of Pilate’s household troops and knew him, so he was admitted immediately. The
nomenclator
informed him that the procurator’s lady was still asleep, but at Joseph’s insistence she was awakened. A few minutes later Claudia Procula came into the room, wrapped in a rich dressing robe, her face still flushed from sleep. When she saw who her visitor was, her eyes widened and her hand went to her throat. “Why are you here, Joseph?” she cried. “Is Pontius ill?”

“The procurator is in good health, I am told.” He knelt before her. “I come to beg that you save Jesus of Nazareth.”

“To save Jesus? What has happened?”

“Caiaphas arrested Him for blasphemy and they have condemned Him to death. The procurator will pass sentence on Him today.”

“Crucifixion!” she gasped. “But why? I thought they had decided He was harmless.”

“Caiaphas fears Jesus,” Joseph explained, “lest His teachings break the hold the high priest has on the people. He must have convinced the procurator that Jesus’ death is best for the state.”

Claudia Procula’s eyes fell. “He required little convincing, Joseph. Pontius ordered me not to listen to Jesus and I refused.”

“You must go to Pilate now,” he urged, “or your husband will crucify the Son of God.”

She looked at him closely and saw that he was confident of the truth in what he said. “I know Mary has believed He is the Messiah for a long time,” she said. “But I did not think you believed it. What made you change your mind, Joseph?”

“This morning it was revealed to me,” he told her simply. “I no longer doubt.”

Claudia Procula took a long breath. “And if He really is the Christ—” Her face grew pale. “Pontius must not do this thing, Joseph!” she cried. “I have suffered greatly in a dream this night because of Jesus.”

The great crowd gathered around the
praetorium
where the procurator held court while in Jerusalem indicated that the trial of Jesus, if trial it was to be, was already in progress. In the mass of people, Joseph saw many of the same faces that had been in the mob that morning several months before when Jesus had almost been stoned and Trojanus had rescued them.

These were not the simple people of the city who had listened to the Nazarene Teacher and loved Him. The high priest and his sycophants had obviously sent word that Jesus was to be judged to the people who would be most interested in seeing Him destroyed—the money-changers whose booths He had overturned in the temple, the sellers of sacrificial animals whose stalls had been ripped apart, the lesser priests who lived luxurious lives on the temple tribute, the stiff-necked Pharisees in long fringed robes, and the haughty scribes, carrying the curved inkhorns, symbols of their trade, slung over their shoulders. At the hands of such as these, Jesus would receive no mercy, for all of them hated Him.

Claudia turned to Mary and asked, “What must I do to stop this terrible thing, Mary?”

“Jesus is before the procurator now in the praetorium,” Mary told her. “If you go to him he might still order a lesser sentence.”

“Pontius would resent my interfering in public,” Procula demurred. “I will write a note to him. There is an alcove behind the throne. We will watch from there, and one of the servants can give it to him.”

She wrote quickly upon a wax tablet and, calling a soldier, gave orders for it to be given to the procurator immediately, even if the proceedings must be interrupted. Then she guided Joseph and Mary to an alcove near the throne from which they could see the entire room where the hearing was being held.

Pontius Pilate sat upon an elevated dais with the clerks beside him. Flanking them were the lictors, whose upright fasces indicated that this was a civil court. The actual proceedings were just beginning, and while they watched, Jesus was brought in, His hands still chained together, between two Roman soldiers. Joseph could see that the Master had been cruelly treated during the early morning hours after being sentenced by the Sanhedrin. His face was puffed and bruised, and the marks of scourges were on His body. But the same light shone in His eyes, as if He were seeing something far beyond the vision of those around Him, and the same half-smile of pity was upon His lips. After Him came the priests led by Caiaphas, his thin-lipped mouth tightly drawn and his eyes cold with hate for the prisoner.

“What charges do you make against this man?” Pilate asked the high priest formally.

“He claims that He is king of the Jews,” Caiaphas said, and looked around at the others. “All of us heard Him say it.”

A chorus of voices continued the statement.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” the procurator asked Jesus directly.

Jesus turned to look at him, but for a moment He did not speak. Then He said quietly, “You have said so.”

Pilate was obviously taken aback by the answer, and his uncertainty plainly showed on his face. Caiaphas and the others at once broke into a babble of charges against Jesus, lest the procurator be influenced by the prisoner’s calm demeanor, but Pilate silenced them with an uplifted hand. As the babble was dying away, the soldier came up to the throne and handed him the wax tablet upon which Claudia Procula had written. Pilate glanced at it quickly, and a startled look came over his face before he turned and looked into the alcove. Seeing his wife standing there, pleading with him wordlessly to have mercy, he seemed to waver for a moment.

Watching the procurator, Joseph could almost read his thoughts. Pontius Pilate, in spite of his cruelty, was not a man of direct and consistent action. Twice he had deeply affronted the Jews by insisting that the customs of Rome take precedence over their ancient laws. And each time when they had resisted passively he had been forced to give in. Watching him now, Joseph saw that Pilate was strongly tempted to turn Jesus loose, even though it would mean a break with Caiaphas, with whom he had planned the destruction of this man who threatened so much trouble for the high priest and his group, and also for the Romans, if the ever-bubbling caldron of revolt against Rome should once boil over.

Pilate turned to Jesus again and asked, “See how many charges they bring against you. Have you no answer to make?”

The prisoner did not answer, and the procurator frowned and looked at Caiaphas, as if for advice. Something in the high priest’s eyes, perhaps his contempt for the Roman’s uncertainty, seemed to sting Pilate, and a faint flush rose in his sallow cheeks. Then his face hardened and he straightened his shoulders and drew himself more erect, as if he had come to a decision.

“Pontius! No,” Claudia Procula cried in a broken voice. But just then a man shouted from the crowd, “Release to us a prisoner as is the custom on this day,” and the sound of her plea was drowned out by hundreds of voices that took up the cry, demanding that the Roman governor observe the custom of the Passover, when traditionally he released whomever the crowd demanded from prison.

Pilate’s face cleared. Here was a way out of the difficulty, for if the crowd demanded the release of Jesus, he would have good reason to grant them the request. “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” he asked.

Now the final working out of Caiaphas’s plan showed itself, for the high priest knew his co-conspirator and his weakness and had cleverly prepared against it. From the front row of the crowd a group of the temple hangers-on shouted, “No! No! Release to us the man called Barabbas.”

Barabbas was a hardened criminal, a known revolutionary who had murdered a man during one of the brawls between zealots and the temple guards that happened so often. Pilate was obviously startled by the vehement request. “Then what shall I do with the man whom you call the king of the Jews?” he asked.

“Crucify Him!” those in front shouted. “Crucify Him!” The dread words rolled back over the crowd, magnified again and again by the shouts of a hundred bloodthirsty throats glad of a chance to punish this man who had dared to expose how they had made a mockery and a shameful thing out of the worship of God and His holy temple.

Taken aback by the fury of their demand, Pilate asked again, “Why? What evil has He done?” But his question was drowned out by the answer, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

Pilate realized he was getting nowhere and that there would be a riot if he didn’t deal with the situation immediately. He motioned for a servant to bring him a bowl of water. The servant scurried to locate a bowl and fill it. When he returned, Pilate made a great show of placing his hands in the water.

“So be it!” he said then resignedly. “I wash my hands of this man. I am innocent of His blood. This is your responsibility. Let Him be scourged and taken to the place of execution.” He signaled to the soldiers and they led Jesus away.

Morning had arrived, and although it was the season of the Passover when all Jews rejoiced to eat the ritual meal together, thousands still gathered on the slopes of the hill called Golgotha beneath three crosses watched over by Roman soldiers. These were not the bloodthirsty group who had crowded into the
praetorium
that morning, demanding that Pontius Pilate release to them not Jesus of Nazareth, who was innocent, but a known criminal, Barabbas. These were Jews who had loved Jesus and heard in His teachings a new hope, a new evidence that God loved them for themselves, not for their sacrifices, their minute observance of the law, as the Pharisees claimed, or the pretentiousness of their piety. They prostrated themselves in the dust of this place of execution and wept for the pale figure on the center cross whose hands were nailed to the beam called the
patibulum.

The Roman soldiers who had carried out the order of execution had tried to make Jesus bear the beam of His own cross, as was customary, but He was not strong enough, and it had been transferred to the broad shoulders of Simon the Cyrene. They had beaten Jesus and taunted Him before they put on a purple robe to mock Him. And they had then jammed a crown of thorns down cruelly upon His head until the sharp points penetrated the scalp and framed His face in a halo of blood.

Above His head now hung the placard which Pilate had ordered put there, bearing the jeering charge,
The King of the Jews.

Joseph and Mary had been near the foot of the cross from the beginning of the end. They had flinched as the nails were driven one by one into the tender hands which had brought surcease from pain to so many of the sick and afflicted. And they had marveled when Jesus had prayed for those who tormented Him, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Even the rough soldiers who were casting lots for His garments had been silenced for a while then.

And finally Joseph and Mary, with some of the others who had found their courage and come to watch the death of their Master, had heard the pathetic cry from the cross,
“Eli, Eli, la’ma sabach-tha’ni!”
the cry of the dying man who in His last agony felt utterly forsaken, even by the Father. After that Jesus had seemed to lapse into unconsciousness. Only when one of the soldiers thrust a spear into His side did they realize that He was already dead.

During the afternoon Joseph had sent a messenger to Pontius Pilate through his uncle and namesake, Joseph of Arimathea, asking that he be allowed to prepare the body for burial and lay it in a tomb. And now, seeing that Jesus had indeed ceased to breathe, he and his uncle approached the centurion in charge of the guard and asked that the cross be taken down and the body turned over to them according to Pilate’s order.

The centurion himself helped them to lift the broken and wounded body from the cross and lay it upon a clean cloth placed on a litter. As he straightened up the Roman said quietly, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “When you have placed Him in the tomb, flee the city. I heard talk among the temple guards. They hope to take all who were close to the Teacher tonight and put them to death.”