for your dog, who is clearly the  only creature
for  whom  you  have any  affection. But  the pain will  stop  soon and your
headache will go.'
     The secretary stared at the prisoner, his note-taking abandoned. Pilate
raised his martyred eyes to the prisoner and saw how high the sun now  stood
above the hippodrome, how a ray had penetrated the arcade, had crept towards
Yeshua's patched sandals  and how the man moved aside from the sunlight. The
Procurator stood  up and clasped his head in his hands. Horror came over his
yellowish,  clean-shaven  face. With  an effort  of  will he  controlled his
expression and sank back into his chair.
     Meanwhile the prisoner continued talking, but the secretary had stopped
writing, craning his neck  like a goose  in the effort not to miss  a single
word.
     'There,  it  has  gone,' said the  prisoner,  with a kindly glance at
Pilate. ' I am so glad. I would advise you, hegemon, to leave the palace for
a while and take a walk somewhere nearby, perhaps in the gardens or on Mount
Eleona. There will be thunder . . .' The prisoner turned and  squinted  into
the sun .  . . ' later, towards evening. A walk would do you a great deal of
good  and I should be happy to go with you. Some new thoughts have just come
into my head which you might, I think, find interesting and I should like to
discuss  them  with you,  the  more so as you  strike me  as a  man of great
intelligence.' The secretary turned mortally  pale and dropped his scroll to
the  ground. '  Your trouble is,' went  on the  unstoppable prisoner, ' that
your  mind  is  too closed and  you have finally  lost your  faith in  human
beings. You must admit  that no one ought to lavish all their devotion on  a
dog. Your life is a cramped one, hegemon.' Here  the speaker allowed himself
to smile.
     The  only  thought in the  secretary's  mind  now was whether  he could
believe his  ears. He had to  believe them. He then  tried to guess in  what
strange form the Procurator's fiery temper might break out at the prisoner's
unheard-of insolence. Although he  knew the Procurator well  the secretary's
imagination failed him.
     Then the hoarse, broken voice of the Procurator barked out in Latin:
     'Untie his hands.'
     One of the legionary escorts tapped the ground with his  lance, gave it
to his neighbour, approached and removed the prisoner's bonds. The secretary
picked up his scroll, decided  to take no more notes for  a while  and to be
astonished at nothing he might hear.
     'Tell me,' said Pilate softly in Latin, ' are you a great physician?'
     'No, Procurator, I am no physician,' replied the  prisoner, gratefully
rubbing his twisted, swollen, purpling wrist.
     Staring from beneath his eyelids, Pilate's eyes bored into the prisoner
and those eyes  were no  longer dull. They  now flashed with their  familiar
sparkle. ' I did not ask you,' said Pilate. ' Do you know Latin too? '
     'Yes, I do,' replied the prisoner.
     The  colour flowed  back into Pilate's yellowed cheeks and he  asked in
Latin:
     'How did you know that I wanted to call my dog? '
     'Quite simple,' the prisoner answered in  Latin. ' You moved your hand
through the air  . . . ' the  prisoner repeated Pilate's gesture .  . . ' as
though to stroke something and your lips . . .'
     'Yes,' said Pilate.
     There was silence. Then Pilate put a question in Greek :
     'So you are a physician? '
     'No, no,' was the prisoner's eager reply. ' Believe me I am not.'
     'Very well,  if you wish to keep it a secret, do so. It has  no direct
bearing on the case. So you maintain  that  you never incited people to tear
down ... or burn, or by any means destroy the temple?'
     'I repeat,  hegemon, that I  have  never tried to  persuade  anyone to
attempt any such thing. Do I look weak in the head? '
     'Oh no, you  do not,' replied the  Procurator quietly, and  smiled an
ominous smile. ' Very well, swear that it is not so.'
     'What would you have me swear by? ' enquired the unbound prisoner with
great urgency.
     'Well, by your  life,' replied  the Procurator. ' It is high  time to
swear by it because you should know that it is hanging by a thread.'
     'You do not believe,  do you, hegemon, that  it is you who have strung
it up?' asked the prisoner. ' If you do you are mistaken.'
     Pilate shuddered and answered through clenched teeth :
     'I can cut that thread.'
     'You  are  mistaken  there  too,'  objected  the prisoner, beaming and
shading himself from the sun with his hand. ' You  must agree, I think, that
the thread can only be cut by the one who has suspended it? '
     'Yes, yes,' said Pilate, smiling.  ' I now have no doubt that the idle
gapers of Jerusalem have been pursuing you. I do not know who strung up your
tongue, but  he  strung it  well. By the  way. tell me, is it true that  you
entered Jerusalem  by the Susim Gate  mounted on a donkey, accompanied by  a
rabble who greeted you  as though you were a prophet? '  Here the Procurator
pointed to a scroll of parchment.
     The prisoner stared dubiously at the Procurator.
     'I  have  no  donkey, hegemon,'  he  said.  ' I  certainly  came into
Jerusalem through the  Susim  Gate,  but I came  on  foot  alone  except for
Matthew the  Levite  and nobody shouted a word to me  as no one in Jerusalem
knew me then.'
     'Do you happen to know,' went on  Pilate without taking  his eyes off
the prisoner, ' anyone called Dismas? Or Hestas? Or a third--Bar-Abba? '
     'I do not know these good men,' replied the prisoner.
     'Is that the truth? '
     'It is.'
     'And now tell me why you  always use that expression " good  men "? Is
that what you call everybody? '
     'Yes, everybody,' answered the prisoner. ' There are no evil people on
earth.'
     'That is news to me,' said Pilate with a laugh. ' But perhaps I am too
ignorant of life. You need take no further notes,' he said to the secretary,
although  the man had taken  none for some time. Pilate turned back  to  the
prisoner :
     'Did you read about that in some Greek book? '
     'No, I reached that conclusion in my own mind.'
     'And is that what you preach? '
     ‘ Yes.'
     'Centurion Mark Muribellum, for instance--is he good? '
     'Yes,' replied the  prisoner. ' He  is, it is  true,  an unhappy man.
Since  the  good people disfigured him he has become harsh  and callous.  It
would be interesting to know who mutilated him.'
     'That I  will  gladly  tell you,' rejoined Pilate, '  because  I was a
witness to it. These  good men threw  themselves at him like dogs at a bear.
The Germans clung to his neck, his arms, his  legs. An  infantry maniple had
been  ambushed and had it not  been for  a troop of cavalry breaking through
from  the flank--a troop  commanded by me--you,  philosopher, would not have
been talking to Muribellum just now. It happened at the battle of Idistavizo
in the Valley of the Virgins.'
     'If I were to talk to him,' the prisoner suddenly said in a reflective
voice, ' I am sure that he would change greatly.'
     'I suspect,' said Pilate, ' that the Legate of the Legion would not be
best pleased if you took it into your head to talk to one of his officers or
soldiers. Fortunately for us all  any such thing is  forbidden and the first
person to ensure that it cannot occur would be myself.'
     At  that moment a swallow  darted into the  arcade,  circled  under the
gilded ceiling, flew lower, almost brushed its pointed wingtip over the face
of  a bronze statue  in  a niche and  disappeared behind  the  capital of  a
column, perhaps with the thought of nesting there.
     As it flew an  idea formed  itself in the  Procurator's mind, which was
now bright and clear. It was thus : the hegemon had examined the case of the
vagrant philosopher Yeshua, surnamed  Ha-Notsri, and  could not substantiate
the  criminal  charge made against him. In particular he could not find  the
slightest  connection between Yeshua's actions  and the  recent disorders in
Jerusalem.  The vagrant  philosopher was mentally ill, as a  result of which
the sentence  of death pronounced on Ha-Notsri by the Lesser Sanhedrin would
not be confirmed. But in view of the danger of unrest liable to be caused by
Yeshua's mad, Utopian preaching, the Procurator would  remove  the  man from
Jerusalem and  sentence him to imprisonment  in Caesarea  Stratonova  on the
Mediterranean--the place of the Procurator's own residence. It only remained
to dictate this to the secretary.
     The  swallow's wings fluttered  over  the hegemon's head, the bird flew
towards the fountain and out into freedom.
     The Procurator raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw that a column of
dust had swirled up beside him.
     'Is that all there is on this man? ' Pilate asked the secretary.
     'No, unfortunately,' replied the secretary  unexpectedly, and  handed
Pilate another parchment.
     'What else is there? ' enquired Pilate and frowned.
     Having  read the further evidence  a change  came over his  expression.
Whether it  was blood flowing back into his neck and  face or from something
else that  occurred,  his skin changed from yellow to red-brown and his eyes
appeared to collapse. Probably caused by the increased blood-pressure in his
temples, something happened to the Procurator's  sight. He seemed to see the
prisoner's head vanish  and  another appear in  its place,  bald and crowned
with a spiked golden diadem. The skin  of the forehead was split by a round,
livid  scar  smeared  with  ointment.  A  sunken,  toothless  mouth  with  a
capricious, pendulous lower  lip.  Pilate had  the  sensation  that the pink
columns of his balcony  and the roofscape of Jerusalem below and  beyond the
garden had all vanished, drowned in the thick foliage of cypress groves. His
hearing, too,  was  strangely  affected--there  was a  sound  as of  distant
trumpets,  muted and threatening, and  a nasal voice could clearly be  heard
arrogantly intoning the words: ' The law pertaining to high treason . . .'
     Strange, rapid, disconnected thoughts passed through his mind. '  Dead!
'  Then  :  '  They  have  killed him! . .  .' And  an absurd  notion  about
immortality, the thought of which aroused a sense of unbearable grief.
     Pilate straightened  up, banished the vision, turned his  gaze back  to
the balcony and again the prisoner's eyes met his.
     'Listen,  Ha-Notsri,' began  the Procurator, giving  Yeshua a strange
look. His expression was grim but his eyes betrayed anxiety. ' Have you ever
said anything about great Caesar? Answer! Did you say anything of the  sort?
Or did you  . . . not?  '  Pilate gave the word 'not' more emphasis than was
proper  in  a  court of law and his  look  seemed  to be trying to project a
particular thought into the prisoner's mind. ' Telling the truth is easy and
pleasant,' remarked the prisoner.
     'I do  not want to know,'  replied  Pilate  in  a voice of  suppressed
anger, ' whether you enjoy telling the truth or not. You are obliged to tell
me  the truth. But  when you speak weigh every word, if  you wish to avoid a
painful death.'
     No one knows what passed through the  mind of the Procurator of Judaea,
but he permitted himself to raise  his hand as though shading himself from a
ray of sunlight and, shielded by  that hand, to throw the prisoner  a glance
that conveyed a hint.
     'So,' he said, ' answer this question : do you know a certain Judas of
Karioth and  if you have  ever  spoken to him  what did you say to him about
Caesar? '
     'It happened  thus,'  began  the prisoner readily.  ' The day  before
yesterday,  in the evening,  I met a young man  near the  temple  who called
himself Judas, from the town of Karioth.  He invited  me to  his home in the
Lower City and gave me supper...'
     'Is he a good man? ' asked Pilate, a diabolical glitter in his eyes.
     'A very  good  man and eager to learn,'  affirmed the prisoner.  ' He
expressed the greatest interest in my ideas and welcomed me joyfully .. . '
     'Lit the  candles. . . .' said  Pilate through  clenched teeth  to the
prisoner, his eyes glittering.
     'Yes,' said Yeshua, slightly astonished that the Procurator  should be
so  well  informed,  and  went  on  : ' He  asked  me  for  my views on  the
government. The question interested him very much.'
     'And so what did you say? ' asked Pilate. ' Or are you going to reply
that  you have  forgotten what you said? '  But  there was already a note of
hopelessness in Pilate's voice.
     'Among other  things I said,' continued the prisoner, ' that all power
is a form of violence exercised over people and that the time will come when
there will be no rule by Caesar nor any other form  of  rule. Man will  pass
into  the kingdom of  truth and  justice where no  sort  of  power  will  be
needed.'
     'Go on!'
     'There is no more to tell,'  said the  prisoner. ' After that some men
came running in, tied me up and took me to prison.'
     The  secretary,  straining not to miss  a  word, rapidly scribbled  the
statement on his parchment.
     'There never  has been, nor  yet shall  be a greater and  more perfect
government  in this world than the rule  of the emperor  Tiberius!' Pilate's
voice rang out harshly and painfully. The Procurator stared at his secretary
and at the  bodyguard with what seemed like hatred. ' And what business have
you, a criminal lunatic, to discuss such matters! ' Pilate shouted. ' Remove
the  guards from the  balcony! '  And turning to his  secretary he added:  '
Leave me alone with this criminal. This is a case of treason.'
     The bodyguard raised their lances  and with the measured tread of their
iron-shod  caligae  marched from the balcony towards the garden  followed by
the secretary.
     For  a  while the  silence  on  the  balcony was  only disturbed bv the
splashing of the fountain. Pilate watched the water splay out at the apex of
the jet and drip downwards.
     The prisoner was the first to speak :
     'I see that there has been some trouble as a result of my conversation
with that young man from Karioth. I have a presentiment,  hegemon, that some
misfortune will befall him and I feel very sorry for him.'
     'I  think,' replied the Procurator with a strange smile, '  that there
is someone  else  in this  world for whom you should feel  sorrier than  for
Judas of Karioth and who is destined for  a fate much worse than Judas'! ...
So  Mark  Muribellum, a coldblooded killer,  the  people  who I  see  '--the
Procurator  pointed  to  Yeshua's disfigured face--'  beat  you for what you
preached, the robbers Dismas and  Hestas who with  their confederates killed
four soldiers, and finally this dirty informer Judas--are they all good men?
'
     'Yes,' answered the prisoner.
     'And will the  kingdom of  truth come? ' '  It will, hegemon,' replied
Yeshua with conviction.
     'It will never come! ' Pilate suddenly shouted in a voice so terrible
that  Yeshua staggered  back. Many years ago  in  the Valley  of the Virgins
Pilate had shouted in that same voice to his horsemen : ' Cut them down! Cut
them down! They have caught  the  giant Muribellum!' And again he raised his
parade-ground voice,  barking out  the words so that  they would be heard in
the garden :  ' Criminal! Criminal!  Criminal! ' Then lowering his voice  he
asked : ' Yeshua Ha-Notsri, do you believe in any gods?'
     'God is one,' answered Yeshua. ' I believe in Him.'
     'Then pray to him! Pray hard! However,' at  this Pilate's voice  fell
again, ' it will do no  good. Have you  a wife? ' asked Pilate with a sudden
inexplicable access of depression.
     'No, I am alone.'
     'I  hate this city,' the  Procurator suddenly  mumbled,  hunching his
shoulders as though from cold and wiping his hands as though washing them. '
If they had murdered you before your meeting with Judas of Karioth  I really
believe it would have been better.'
     'You  should  let  me  go,  hegemon,' was  the  prisoner's  unexpected
request, his voice full of anxiety. ' I see now that they want to kill me.'
     A spasm distorted  Pilate's  face as he turned his blood-shot  eyes  on
Yeshua and said :
     'Do you imagine, you miserable creature, that a Roman Procurator could
release a man who has said what you have said to me? Oh gods, oh gods! Or do
you think I'm  prepared to take your  place? I  don't believe in your ideas!
And listen  to me : if from this  moment onward you say so much as a word or
try to talk to anybody, beware! I repeat--beware!'
     'Hegemon . ..'
     'Be  quiet!  '  shouted Pilate,  his  infuriated stare following  the
swallow which had flown on to the balcony again. ' Here!' shouted Pilate.
     The  secretary  and  the  guards  returned  to their  places and Pilate
announced that he confirmed  the sentence of death pronounced by  the Lesser
Sanhedrin  on  the  accused  Yeshua  Ha-Notsri  and the  secretary  recorded
Pilate's words.
     A minute  later centurion Mark Muribellum  stood before the Procurator.
He  was ordered by the Procurator to hand the  felon over  to the captain of
the secret service and in  doing  so to  transmit the Procurator's directive
that  Yeshua  Ha-Notsri was to  be segregated from  the other convicts, also
that  the captain  of  the  secret  service was forbidden on pain  of severe
punishment to talk to Yeshua or to answer any questions he might ask.
     At a signal from Mark the guard closed ranks around Yeshua and escorted
him from the balcony.
     Later the Procurator received a call from a  handsome man with  a blond
beard,  eagles'  feathers in  the  crest of  his helmet,  glittering  lions'
muzzles on his  breastplate,  a  gold-studded sword belt, triple-soled boots
laced to the knee and a purple cloak thrown over his left shoulder.  He  was
the commanding officer, the Legate of the Legion.
     The Procurator asked him where  the Sebastian cohort was stationed. The
Legate reported that the Sebastian was on cordon duty in the square in front
of the hippodrome, where the sentences on the prisoners would  be  announced
to the crowd.
     Then the Procurator  instructed the Legate to detach two centuries from
the  Roman  cohort. One of  them, under the  command of Muribellum,  was  to
escort the convicts,  the carts transporting the executioners' equipment and
the executioners themselves to Mount  Golgotha and on arrival  to cordon off
the  summit area. The other was to proceed at once to  Mount Golgotha and to
form a cordon immediately on arrival. To assist in the task of guarding  the
hill,  the Procurator asked the Legate  to  despatch  an  auxiliary  cavalry
regiment, the Syrian ala.
     When  the  Legate  had  left  the balcony, the  Procurator ordered  his
secretary to summon to the palace the president of the Sanhedrin, two of its
members and the captain of  the Jerusalem temple  guard, but  added that  he
wished arrangements to be made which would allow him, before conferring with
all  these  people,  to have a  private  meeting with  the president  of the
Sanhedrin.
     The Procurator's orders were carried out rapidly and precisely and  the
sun,  which had  lately  seemed to scorch  Jerusalem  with  such  particular
vehemence, had  not  yet reached its  zenith when  the  meeting  took  place
between the Procurator  and the president of  the Sanhedrin, the High Priest
of Judaea,  Joseph Caiaphas. They  met on  the upper  terrace  of the garden
between two white marble lions guarding the staircase.
     It was quiet in the garden. But as he emerged from the arcade on to the
sun-drenched  upper  terrace of the garden with its palms on their monstrous
elephantine legs, the terrace from which the whole of Pilate's detested city
of  Jerusalem  lay  spread  out  before  the Procurator with its  suspension
bridges, its fortresses and over it all  that  indescribable  lump of marble
with a golden dragon's scale instead of a roof--the temple of Jerusalem--the
Procurator's sharp hearing detected far below, down there where a stone wall
divided the lower  terraces of the palace garden from the city square, a low
rumbling broken now and again by faint sounds, half groans, half cries.
     The Procurator realised that already there was assembling in the square
a numberless crowd of  the inhabitants of Jerusalem, excited  by  the recent
disorders; that this crowd was waiting impatiently for the pronouncement  of
sentence and that the water-sellers were busily shouting their wares.
     The Procurator began by inviting the High Priest on  to  the balcony to
find  some shade  from  the  pitiless heat,  but  Caiaphas politely  excused
himself, explaining that he could not do that on the eve of a feast-day.
     Pilate pulled his  cowl over his slightly  balding head and  began  the
conversation, which was conducted in Greek.
     Pilate remarked that  he had examined the case  of Yeshua Ha-Notsri and
had confirmed the sentence  of death.  Consequently those due for  execution
that day were the three  robbers--Hestas, Dismas and Bar-Abba--and  now this
other man, Yeshua  Ha- Notsri. The first two, who had  tried  to incite  the
people to rebel against Caesar, had  been forcibly apprehended by  the Roman
authorities; they were  therefore the  Procurator's responsibility and there
was no reason to  discuss their case.  The  last  two, however, Bar-Abba and
Ha-Notsri, had been  arrested by the local authorities and tried before  the
Sanhedrin. In  accordance  with law  and custom, one of  these two criminals
should be  released in honour of the imminent great feast of  Passover.  The
Procurator therefore wished to know which of these two felons the  Sanhedrin
proposed to discharge--Bar-Abba or Ha-Notsri?
     Caiaphas inclined  his head as a sign  that he  understood the question
and replied:
     'The Sanhedrin requests the release of Bar-Abba.' The  Procurator well
knew  that this would be  the High Priest's reply;  his problem was  to show
that the request aroused his astonishment.
     This  Pilate  did  with  great  skill.  The eyebrows rose on his  proud
forehead and the Procurator looked the High Priest straight  in the eye with
amazement.
     'I confess that your reply surprises me,' began the Procurator softly.
' I fear there may have been some misunderstanding here.'
     Pilate stressed that the  Roman  government wished  to make no  inroads
into the  prerogatives of the local  priestly authority, the High Priest was
well aware of that,  but  in this particular case an obvious error seemed to
have  occurred.  And  the Roman  government  naturally  had  an  interest in
correcting  such an error. The crimes of Bar-Abba and Ha-Notsri  were  after
all not comparable in gravity.  If the latter, a man who was clearly insane,
were guilty of making some absurd speeches in Jerusalem  and  various  other
localities, the former stood convicted of offences that were infinitely more
serious.  Not  only  had he  permitted himself to  make  direct  appeals  to
rebellion,  but he had killed a sentry while resisting arrest.  Bar-Abba was
immeasurably more dangerous  than Ha-Notsri. In view of all these facts, the
Procurator requested  the High  Priest  to  reconsider his  decision  and to
discharge  the  least  dangerous  of  the two  convicts  and  that  one  was
undoubtedly Ha-Notsri . . . Therefore?
     Caiaphas said in  a quiet but  firm voice that the  Sanhedrin had taken
due cognisance of the case and repeated its intention to release Bar-Abba.
     'What?  Even  after  my   intervention?   The  intervention  of   the
representative  of the Roman government?  High Priest,  say it for the third
time.'
     'And  for the third  time I say that we shall release Bar-Abba,'  said
Caiaphas softly.
     It was over  and there was no more to be discussed. Ha-Notsri had  gone
for ever  and there was no one  to  heal the  Procurator's terrible,  savage
pains ;  there was no cure for them now  except  death. But this thought did
not strike  Pilate immediately. At first his whole being was seized with the
same incomprehensible sense of grief which had come to him  on  the balcony.
He at once sought for its explanation and its  cause was a strange one : the
Procurator was obscurely aware that he still  had something to  say  to  the
prisoner and that perhaps, too, he had more to learn from him.
     Pilate banished the thought and it passed as quickly as it had come. It
passed, yet that  grievous ache  remained a  mystery, for  it  could not  be
explained  by  another thought that had flashed  in and out of his mind like
lightning--' Immortality ... immortality  has come .  . .' Whose immortality
had come? The Procurator could not understand it, but  that puzzling thought
of immortality sent a chill over him despite the sun's heat.
     'Very well,' said Pilate. ' So be it.'
     With that  he looked round. The visible  world vanished from  his sight
and an astonishing change occurred. The  flower-laden rosebush  disappeared,
the cypresses fringing the upper terrace disappeared, as did the pomegranate
tree, the white  statue among  the foliage and the foliage  itself. In their
place came a kind of dense purple mass in which seaweed waved and swayed and
Pilate himself was swaying with  it. He was seized, suffocating and burning,
by the most terrible rage of all rage--the rage of impotence.
     'I am suffocating,' said Pilate. ' Suffocating! '
     With  a cold damp hand he tore the buckle from the collar  of his cloak
and it fell on to the sand.
     'It  is  stifling  today,  there  is  a thunderstorm  brewing,'  said
Caiaphas, his gaze fixed on the Procurator's  reddening face, foreseeing all
the discomfort that the weather was yet  to bring. '  The month of Nisan has
been terrible this year! '
     'No,' said Pilate. ' That  is not why I am suffocating. I feel stifled
by your  presence, Caiaphas.'  Narrowing his eyes Pilate  added  : ' Beware,
High Priest! '
     The  High Priest's dark eyes  flashed  and--no less cunningly  than the
Procurator--his face showed astonishment.
     'What do I hear, Procurator? ' Caiaphas answered proudly and calmly. '
Are you threatening me--when sentence has been duly pronounced and confirmed
by yourself? Can  this be  so?  We  are accustomed  to the  Roman Procurator
choosing his words carefully before saying anything. I trust no one can have
overheard us, hegemon?'
     With lifeless  eyes Pilate  gazed at the High Priest and manufactured a
smile.
     'Come now. High Priest! Who can overhear us here? Do you take me for a
fool, like  that crazy  young  vagrant  who is  to be executed today? Am I a
child, Caiphas? I know what I'm saying and where I'm saying it. This garden,
this whole palace is so  well cordoned that there's not a crack for a  mouse
to slip through.  Not a mouse--and  not even that man--what's his name  . .?
That man from Karioth.  You do know him, don't you,  High Priest? Yes ... if
someone like that  were to  get in here,  he would  bitterly  regret it. You
believe me when I say that, don't you?  I tell you,  High  Priest, that from
henceforth you  shall  have no peace! Neither you nor your  people '--Pilate
pointed  to  the  right  where the  pinnacle  of  the temple flashed  in the
distance. ' I, Pontius Pilate,  knight of the Golden Lance, tell you so! ' '
I know it! ' fearlessly replied the bearded Caiaphas. His eyes flashed as he
raised his hand to the sky and went on :  ' The Jewish people knows that you
hate  it  with  a  terrible  hatred  and  that  you  have  brought  it  much
suffering--but you will  never destroy it! God will protect it. And he shall
hear  us--mighty  Caesar  shall  hear us  and  protect  us from  Pilate  the
oppressor! '
     'Oh no! ' rejoined Pilate,  feeling more and more relieved with  every
word that he spoke; there was  no longer any need to dissemble, no  need  to
pick his words : ' You have complained of me to  Caesar too often and now my
hour has come, Caiaphas! Now  I  shall send word--but not to the  viceroy in
Antioch,  not even to Rome  but straight to Capreia, to the emperor himself,
word  of  how you in Jerusalem are saving  convicted rebels from death.  And
then it will not be  water from Solomon's pool, as I once intended for  your
benefit,  that I  shall give Jerusalem to  drink--no, it will  not be water!
Remember how thanks  to  you  I was  made to  remove  the  shields  with the
imperial cipher from the walls, to transfer troops, to come and  take charge
here myself! Remember my  words. High Priest: you are going to see more than
one cohort here in Jerusalem! Under the city walls you are going to see  the
Fulminata legion at full strength and Arab cavalry too. Then the weeping and
lamentation will be bitter! Then you  will  remember that you saved Bar-Abba
and you will regret that you sent that preacher of peace to his death!
     Flecks of colour spread over the High  Priest's face, his eyes  burned.
Like the Procurator he grinned mirthlessly and replied:
     'Do you really believe what you have just said, Procurator? No, you do
not! It was not peace  that this  rabble-rouser brought to Jerusalem and  of
that, hegamon,  you are  well aware. You wanted to  release  him  so that he
could  stir up the  people,  curse our faith and deliver the people to  your
Roman swords! But as long as  I, the High Priest of Judaea, am alive I shall
not  allow the faith to be defamed and  I shall  protect the people!  Do you
hear, Pilate?' With this Caiaphas raised his arm threateningly;
     'Take heed. Procurator! '
     Caiaphas was  silent and again the  Procurator heard a murmuring  as of
the sea, rolling up to the very walls of Herod the Great's garden. The sound
flowed upwards from below until it  seemed  to swirl round  the Procurator's
legs  and into  his  face. Behind  his back,  from beyond the  wings of  the
palace, came urgent trumpet calls, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, the
clank of metal. It told  the Procurator that the Roman infantry was marching
out, on his  orders, to  the execution parade that was to strike terror into
the hearts of all thieves and rebels
     'Do you  hear. Procurator?  ' the  High  Priest quietly  repeated his
words. '  Surely you are not trying to tell  me  that all this '--  here the
High Priest raised both arms and his dark cowl  slipped from his head--' can
have been evoked by that miserable thief Bar-Abba?'
     With  the  back of  his  wrist the  Procurator  wiped  his  damp,  cold
forehead,  stared at  the  ground, then frowning skywards  he  saw  that the
incandescent ball was nearly overhead,  that  Caiaphas' shadow had shrunk to
almost nothing and he said in a calm, expressionless voice :
     'The execution will be at noon. We have enjoyed this conversation, but
matters must proceed.'
     Excusing  himself to  the High Priest in a few  artificial phrases,  he
invited him to sit down  on a bench  in the shade of a magnolia  and to wait
while he summoned the others necessary for  the final short consultation and
to give one more order concerning the execution.
     Caiaphas bowed politely, placing his hand on his heart, and remained in
the garden  while  Pilate  returned to  the  balcony.  There he  ordered his
waiting secretary to call the  Legate of the  Legion and  the Tribune of the
cohort  into  the  garden, also  the two  members of  the Sanhedrin and  the
captain of the temple guard, who were standing grouped round the fountain on
the lower terrace  awaiting  his  call. Pilate  added that he would  himself
shortly  return  to  join  them  in  the garden, and  disappeared inside the
palace.
     While  the  secretary  convened  the  meeting,  inside  his  darken-ed,
shuttered  room  the  Procurator spoke  to a  man  whose face,  despite  the
complete absence of sunlight from the room, remained half covered by a hood.
The  interview was very short. The Procurator whispered a  few words  to the
man,  who immediately departed. Pilate passed  through the arcade  into  the
garden.
     There  in  the  presence of all  the  men  he had  asked  to  see,  the
Procurator solemnly and curtly repeated that  he confirmed the  sentence  of
death  on Yeshua Ha-Notsri and enquired officially of  the Sanhedrin members
as to which of the prisoners it had  pleased them to  release. On being told
that it was Bar-Abba, the Procurator said:
     'Very well,' and ordered the secretary to enter it  in the minutes. He
clutched the  buckle which  the secretary  had picked  up from  the sand and
announced solemnly : ' It is time! '
     At this all present set off down the broad marble staircase between the
lines of rose  bushes,  exuding  their stupefying  aroma,  down towards  the
palace wall, to a gate leading to the  smoothly  paved  square at whose  end
could be seen the columns and statues of the Jerusalem hippodrome.
     As  soon as the group entered the square and  began climbing  up to the
broad  temporary  wooden  platform  raised  high  above  the square,  Pilate
assessed the situation through narrowed eyelids.
     The cleared passage  that he had just crossed between the  palace walls
and  the scaffolding platform was empty, but  in front  of Pilate the square
could no longer  be  seen--it had been  devoured by the crowd. The mob would
have poured on to the platform and the passage too if there had not been two
triple rows of soldiers, one from  the Sebastian cohort on Pilate's left and
on his right another from the Ituraean auxiliary cohort, to keep it clear.
     Pilate climbed the platform, mechanically clenching and unclenching his
fist  on  the useless  buckle and  frowning  hard.  The  Procurator was  not
frowning because  the  sun was blinding him but to  somehow avoid seeing the
group of prisoners which, as he well knew,  would shortly be led  out on the
platform behind him.
     The moment the white  cloak with the blood-red lining appeared atop the
stone block at the edge of that human sea a wave of sound--' Aaahh '--struck
the  unseeing Pilate's ears. It began softly, far away at the hippodrome end
of the square, then grew to thunderous volume and after a few seconds, began
to diminish again. ' They have seen me,' thought the Procurator. The wave of
sound did  not recede altogether and  began unexpectedly to  grow  again and
waveringly rose to  a higher pitch than the first and  on top of the  second
surge of noise, like  foam on  the  crest of a wave at sea, could  be  heard
whistles and the  shrieks of several  women  audible above the  roar. ' That
means  they have led them  out  on to the  platform,' thought  Pilate, ' and
those  screams are  from  women who  were  crushed  when  the  crowd  surged
forward.'
     He waited for a while, knowing  that  nothing  could silence the  crowd
until it had let loose its pent-up feelings and quietened of its own accord.
     When that moment came tlie Procurator  threw up his  right hand and the
last murmurings  of  the crowd expired. Then Pilate took as deep a breath as
he could of the hot air and his cracked voice rang out over the thousands of
heads :
     'In the name of imperial Caesar! . . .'
     At  once his ears were struck by a  clipped,  metallic  chorus  as  the
cohorts, raising lances and standards, roared out their fearful response:
     'Hail, Caesar! '
     Pilate jerked his head up straight  at the  sun. He had  a sensation of
green fire piercing his eyelids, his brain seemed to burn. In hoarse Aramaic
he flung his words out over the crowd :
     'Four  criminals,  arrested in  Jerusalem for  murder,  incitement to
rebellion,  contempt of  the law  and blasphemy,  have been condemned to the
most  shameful form  of  execution--crucifixion!  Their  execution  will  be
carried  out shortly on Mount Golgotha The names of these felons are Dismas,
Hestas, Bar-Abba and Ha-Notsri and there they stand before you! '
     Pilate pointed to  the right, unable to see  the prisoners but  knowing
that they were standing where they should be.
     The crowd responded with a long rumble that could have been surprise or
relief. When it had subsided Pilate went on :
     'But only three of them are to be executed for, in accordance with law
and custom, in honour of the great feast  of Passover the emperor Caesar  in
his magnanimity will,  at the choice  of  the Lesser  Sanhedrin and with the
approval of the Roman government, render back to  one of these convicted men
his contemptible life!'
     As Pilate  rasped out his words he noticed that the rumbling  had given
way to a great  silence. Now  not a sigh, not a rustle reached  his ears and
there even came a moment when it seemed to Pilate that the people around him
had  vanished altogether. The city he so  hated might have died and  only he
alone  stood  there,  scorched  by the vertical  rays  of the  sun, his face
craning skywards. Pilate allowed the  silence to continue and  then began to
shout again: ' The name of the man who is about to be  released before you .
. .'
     He paused once more, holding back the name, mentally confirming that he
had said  everything, because he knew that as soon as he pronounced the name
of the fortunate man the lifeless city would awaken and nothing more that he
might say would be audible.
     'Is that everything? ' Pilate whispered soundlessly to himself. ' Yes,
it is. Now  the name!  ' And rolling his ' r 's over the heads of the silent
populace he roared : ' Bar-Abba! '
     It was as though the  sun  detonated above him and drowned his  ears in
fire, a fire that roared, shrieked, groaned, laughed and whistled.
     Pilate  turned and walked back  along the platform towards  the  steps,
glancing only at the parti-coloured wooden  blocks  of the steps beneath his
feet to save  himself from stumbling. He knew that behind his back a hail of
bronze coins  and  dates  was showering  the  platform, that  people in  the
whooping crowd, elbowing each other aside, were climbing  on to shoulders to
see a miracle with their own eyes--a  man already in  the arms of  death and
torn  from  their  grasp!  They watched  the legionaries  as they untied his
bonds, involuntarily causing  him searing pain in his swollen  arms, watched
as  grimacing  and complaining he nevertheless  smiled an  insane, senseless
smile.
     Pilate knew that the escort was now marching  the three bound prisoners
to the side steps of the platform to lead them off on the road westward, out
of the city,  towards Mount Golgotha. Only when he stood beneath  and behind
the platform did Pilate  open his  eyes,  knowing  that he was  now safe--he
could no longer see the convicted men.
     As  the roar  of  the  crowd  began to  die down the separate, piercing
voices  of the heralds could be heard repeating, one in Aramaic, the  others
in Greek, the  announcement  that  the Procurator  had  just  made from  the
platform. Besides that his ears  caught the approaching irregular clatter of
horses' hoofs and the sharp, bright call of a trumpet. This sound was echoed
by  the  piercing whistles of boys from the rooftops and by shouts of ' Look
out! '
     A lone soldier, standing in the space cleared in the square,  waved his
standard in warning, at  which the  Procurator, the Legate of the Legion and
their escort halted.
     A squadron of cavalry entered the square at a fast trot, cutting across
it  diagonally,  past  a  knot  of people, then down a  side-street  along a
vine-covered  stone  wall in  order to gallop  on to  Mount  Golgotha by the
shortest route.
     As the squadron commander, a Syrian as small as a  boy and as dark as a
mulatto, trotted  past Pilate he gave a high-pitched cry and drew  his sword
from  its scabbard.  His sweating,  ugly-tempered black  horse  snorted  and
reared up on its hind  legs.  Sheathing his sword the commander  struck  the
horse's neck with his whip, brought its forelegs down and moved off down the
side street, breaking into a gallop. Behind him in columns of three galloped
the horsemen  in a ha2e  of dust, the  tips  of  their bamboo lances bobbing
rhythmically. They  swept past the Procurator, their  faces unnaturally dark
in contrast with their white turbans, grinning cheerfully, teeth flashing.
     Raising a cloud of  dust the squadron surged down the street,  the last
trooper to pass Pilate carrying a glinting trumpet slung across his back.
     Shielding  his face  from  the  dust with  his hand  and  frowning with
annoyance Pilate walked  on, hurrying  towards the gate of the palace garden
followed by the Legate, the secretary and the escort.
     It was about ten o'clock in the morning.



        3. The Seventh Proof


     'Yes,  it  was  about  ten  o'clock  in  the morning,  my  dear  Ivan
Nikolayich,' said the professor.
     The poet drew his hand across his face like a man who has just woken up
and noticed that it was now evening