The Painted Messiah (36 page)

'The prefect is busy, Lady.'

'It is the middle of the night!'

'It is soon daylight, Lady, but he is already engaged in business.'

'Take me to him then.'

'That is not possible. The prefect sits in the great hall. He will not be called out nor is it allowed for a woman to enter.'

'Take me to Cornelius then.'

'Lady, I am not authorized—!'

'I am not asking a favour, Tribune. I am giving you an order!'

'The centurion attends your husband.'

'Then take me as far as it is legal for me to go, and tell the centurion I am waiting to speak to him. Cornelius himself can decide if he wants to come outside.' The young officer considered his options briefly, then gave a curt nod and invited Procula to follow him.

Herod's palace was a monstrous place, busy at every point with vast, meaningless frescoes of vegetation and imaginary landscapes devoid of human and animal life. One great room after another opened off a series of vast hallways having no function other than to create a sense of awe. They walked for nearly ten minutes before they came to the great hall.

Procula waited several minutes before Cornelius appeared. 'What is it, Lady?'

'Pilate must not execute the Jewish Messiah!'

'He has no choice.'

'The man is innocent!'

'That means nothing to a Roman prefect. Politically, he
represents—'

'You don't understand! I have had a dream. I have seen what will happen! This man is the sacrifice of the Passover!'

Cornelius shook his head. 'Dreams do not always—'

'His blood will mark out those who are to be spared when the Angel of Death comes! As in Egypt, before Moses led his people to freedom, it will pass over only those who have the mark of his blood. The rest of us will perish! Not the first born, but all of us - our whole world! If Pilate kills this man, Rome falls!'

'I will tell him of your dream, but it will change nothing, Lady.'

Cornelius departed, and the tribune who had escorted Procula told her, 'The prefect has no choice in the matter. The Jews themselves demand it.'

'Demand what?'

'Demand that the pretender be put to death. Your husband resists them. He says he can find no fault with the man, but they threaten him with the wrath of Caesar if he refuses.'

'The Jews are invoking the name of Caesar?'

'Your husband has already sent Yeshua to Herod Antipas, hoping he would make a judgment, but Antipas refuses to oblige him.'

A second officer listening to this added, 'I hear the prefect still refuses to execute the man. He says he will take him before the Jews themselves and let them decide. The priests are furious about it, too, but your husband will not be swayed. He will spare the man if he can.'

Procula did not answer the young officers, but she did not believe Pilate defended a Jew. In her experience men did not change their nature without reason. If Pilate was quarrelling with the priests over the matter of a single Jew, he had a good reason - and it was not for the sake of kindness or out of a sense of justice. Pilate did not possess those virtues. He was up to some evil. Though what it was she could not even begin to guess.

Theophanes sat down at first light and began to paint. Pilate wanted the King of the Jews, not a criminal, and that is what the painter created. His subject was probably thirty-five or thirty-six years old. Maybe a year or two younger. His face was dark from the constant exposure to the desert. He was balding, and there was a touch of grey at the temples. Theophanes caught the image exactly as he would have been before his arrest: a man who enjoyed food and drink and a bit of laughter to keep the spirit alive - not one of these ugly, thin, sad ascetic sorts who hate the good earth upon which God has put them!

The slave painted quickly, not because Pilate was in a hurry, but because the medium demanded it. As soon as he applied the hot encaustic to the warmed gypsum- treated board it began to cool. As that happened it became progressively more difficult to manage. Had he chosen tempera, Theophanes would have had an easier time of it. Tempera was more forgiving, but encaustic was far superior when it was handled correctly. The satiny finish was as close to life as paint could get, and it kept its luster and colour indefinitely. Theophanes left tempera to lesser men. He worked only in wax.

As he finished the portrait, Pilate approached in order that he might make his habitual complaints. 'Will
those who have seen him in life know him by this portrait, Theophanes?'

Pilate presented four men to the crowd in the great plaza before the Temple, announcing that he had condemned each man to death, but that in honour of the Jewish Passover, the Jews could free one of the criminals.

The crowd was small and surly, the better portion of them rounded up from the streets and the majority not even Jewish, but there were enough bodies that had turned out to call it a crowd. Those who recalled the massacre on this very spot, and almost everyone did that morning, hardly looked at the criminals. Their eyes watched the Syrian cavalry lined up in battle formation at either side of the Plaza. Three centuries of Roman infantry in full battle dress completed the square containing them. Cornelius stood behind the criminals and raised his sword. Each man caught a few wild cheers, save one: the man named Yeshua, who inspired not a single voice. 'Is this not the King of Jews?' Pilate shouted at them. 'No one stands with his king? Not one of you?'

They were quiet. They hardly breathed. Pilate could hear the clap of horse hooves on the cobblestone at the edge of the plaza. 'Is this man to die - this man you adored as your Messiah only a few days ago?'

The priests began the shout, and the others picked it up quickly -
Crucify him!
As each man shouted, another joined him until all of them cried in unison:
Crucify him! Crucify him! Crucify him! '

Pilate signaled to Cornelius to silence the crowd. The prefect walked to a bowl one of his officers now carried forward. 'The man is blameless,' he announced grandly. 'If the Jews want him to die, he will die, but I wash my hands of the matter.'

The thunder broke with the fury of armies colliding and stirred an animal fear deep inside Pilate's chest. Walking out to one of the terraces, he looked up at the still blue sky and wondered what had made the sound.

The answer came half an hour later when the storm hit. It came with wind and rain. The earth shook so that tiles fell from the ceiling of the great hall. Fearing for his life Pilate ran out of the building and into the shrieking wind. There he saw trees collapsing, debris and leaves blowing wildly through the air like arrows on a battlefield. He could not see the great Temple of the Jews, the rain was so heavy, and for a moment he thought the desert god had been awakened from his long sleep.

Procula found him on the porch only partially protected from the rain. The wind still howled. The storm had emptied the Plaza and had driven the Roman guard to cover, so they stood alone before the palace, only their slaves to attend them. 'You have murdered an innocent,' Procula shouted, 'and this is what comes of it!' She swept her hand out toward the storm and darkness.

'I did not kill him, Procula. The Jews have done it!'

'Is that what you are telling Rome?'

'I had no choice. The Jews forced me to do it! I had to keep the peace, didn't I?'

'The
Jews
forced you? Who rules the Jews, Pilate?

What death did the man die but a Roman one?'

'I tried to save him, but they would not have it!'

'Tell your lies to someone who does not know you so well!'

'Take care, woman, or—'

'Or what? Will the Jews demand you kill me as well?'

The son of Nicodemus visited Pilate in the company of another wealthy man. They were asking for the body of the rabbi. Roman policy was to leave criminals on the cross until the stench of human decomposition had passed and the birds had finished feeding. Pilate might have refused easily enough by citing the law, but he was moved by the presence of Nicodemus the younger, whose favour he wanted to keep, and by the politics of the moment. He had challenged the Jewish nation and he had won by skillfully passing his own guilt in the matter to their collective head. It did not pay to keep his victory before them.

Better, he thought, to let this thing finish quickly and quietly. They would not move against him until sundown tomorrow, because of their Sabbath. By then they might have organized again, might have found someone capable of stirring their passion for blood, even if Judas had been discredited. Pilate did not need to give them a point of focus for their rage. He told Cornelius to give orders that the three men be finished off and taken down before sunset. 'Throw the two thieves into the sewers for the rats to strip, but see that the body these men seek is given to them.'

Before he left, Nicodemus asked for a word in
private. Pilate granted him his request out of reverence for his father.

'I appreciate what you have done today,' the young man said. 'I know it would have been easier politically for you, if you had not resisted the Temple authorities.'

'Sometimes it is not enough simply to want to do the right thing,' Pilate answered.

'But it is! It is all that matters. That is what the rabbi taught us! Our victories and failures do not make us what we are: our intentions do. What we hold in our heart is the only action that matters!'

There was no kind way to answer such naïveté, so Pilate remained silent, as if contemplating a great wisdom.

After the sun had set and the Jewish Sabbath had begun, Nicodemus the Elder showed up. As Procula had refused to join him, Pilate was eating alone and left his meal to meet his friend
in camera.

'The priests have called Judas to them and paid him for giving them Yeshua.'

'Did he take the money?'

'He threw it at them and ran into the streets.'

Pilate smiled.

'They have already spread the rumor that Judas sold his master for a few pieces of silver. He is ruined and knows it.'

'And the others?'

'Make a show of your troops for a few days and you will hear nothing more from those men.'

'There will be no revolt?'

'Who is to lead it? And against whom? The Jews have

killed their Messiah, not Rome. I heard you say it yourself.'

Lake Lucerne

October 12, 2006.

At three-thirty Kate knocked on the hanger where Malloy had spent the night and greeted him with a thermos of hot black campfire-brewed coffee. She pointed toward the woods behind the tiny airfield and told him, 'We've got bacon, sausage, and eggs and more coffee when you're ready.' She tossed him a pair of night vision goggles. 'Just follow your nose.'

He joined them fifteen minutes later. Ethan prepared three eggs for him and piled on the meat. 'A Tennessee breakfast!'

'He
thinks
it's Tennessee. I keep telling him it's English.'

Malloy looked at the pork doubtfully. For the sake of Gwen he had begun to follow Jewish dietary customs, if not their faith. 'I don't know,' he said, pushing the meat from his plate back into the pan, 'I'm a little tight this morning. I think the eggs will be enough.'

'When was the last time you jumped?' Ethan asked.

'Jumped?'

'With a parachute.'

Malloy looked at them in the flickering light of the fire. 'Where are we jumping?'

'We're going to pay a visit on Sir Julian,' Kate answered. 'You didn't think we would be driving up to the front gate, did you?'

'The last jump I made was about a quarter of a century ago.'

'You trained on the round parachutes?'

Malloy nodded and took a sip of coffee. 'The last of the old school.' He could still remember the impact. As a kid it hadn't been pleasant. The idea of it now left his knees sore.

'You ever use a rectangular canopy?'

'I never jumped again after jump school. If a job required a maniac, I usually out-sourced it.'

'The good news is,' Kate said, 'you're going to love the new canopy. You've got nothing to worry about. You remember the old paratrooper boots? They're out. People jump in tennis shoes these days. Even beginners land standing up . . . and smiling. Handling is easier, too. A morning like this with no wind, if you land in a treetop it's because you want to.'

'Usually when people talk about the good news, there's some bad news too.'

'There's a little bit of problem with your drop zone,' Ethan told him.

'A little bit?'

'You've got about twenty to thirty yards between the cliff and the rotary blades of Corbeau's helicopter. Sounds like plenty of room—'

'Not really.'

'It's enough, but you have to be careful. You come in too low and you smack into the side of a cliff. You come in a little high and the rotary blades suck you in. Other than that,' he smiled, 'no problem.'