Mary Magdalen Part 13

"It seems to me, my dear, that you take things with a high hand. It may be that you forget yourself."

"I take them from where I am," she cried. "As for forgetfulness, remember that my grandfather was satrap of Syria, my father after him, while yours--"

"Yes, yes, I dare say. He is not in power now; I am."

"Not here, Antipas, nor in Rome. I appeal to Pilate."

The tetrarch rose from the throne. The elders whispered together. Pilate visibly was perplexed. Remembering Mary as he did, he looked upon the incident as a family quarrel, one in which it would be unseemly for him to interfere, and which none the less disturbed the decorum of his court.

Caiaphas edged up to the tetrarch, but the latter brushed him aside.

"The hetaira is right," he exclaimed. "I am not in power here. If I were, she should be lapidated."

And, preceded by the butler, Antipas pa.s.sed through the parting ranks to the vestibule beyond.

The perplexity of the procurator increased. He did not in the least understand. To him Mary stood in the same relation to Antipas that Cleopatra had to Herod. There had been a feud between the tetrarch and himself, one recently mended, and which he had no wish to renew. Yet manifestly Antipas was aggrieved, and his own path in the matter by no means clear.

"Bah!" he muttered, in the consoling undertone of thought, "what are their beastly barbarian manners to me?"

These reflections Caiaphas interrupted.

"We are waiting, my lord, for the sentence to be p.r.o.nounced."

The tone he used was not, however, indicative of patience, and in conjunction with the incident that had just occurred it irritated and jarred. Besides, Pilate did not care to be prompted. It was for him to speak first. He strangled an oath, and, gathering some fringe of the majesty of Rome, he announced very measuredly:

"You have brought this man before me as a rebel. I have examined him and find no ground for the charge. His ruler, the tetrarch, has also examined him, and by him too he has been acquitted. But in view of the fact that he appears to have contravened some one or another of your laws I order him to be scourged and to be liberated."

With that he turned to the prisoner. During the entire proceedings the att.i.tude of Jesus had not altered. He stood as a disinterested spectator might-one whom chance had brought that way and there hemmed in-his eyes on remote, inaccessible horizons, the tongue silent, the head a little raised.

"Scourging, my lord," Caiaphas interjected, "is fit and proper, but," he continued, one silk-gloved hand uplifted, "our law prescribes death. Only an enemy to Tiberius would prevent it."

At the veiled menace Pilate gnawed his under lip. He had no faith at all in the loyalty of the hierarch; at any other time the affection the latter manifested for the chains he bore would have been ludicrous and nothing else. But at the moment he felt insecure. There were Galileans whom he had sacrificed, Judaeans whom he had slaughtered, Samaritans whom he had oppressed, an emba.s.sy might even now be on its way to Rome; he thought again of Seja.n.u.s, and, with cause, he hesitated. Yet of the inward perturbation he gave no outward sign.

"On this day," he said at last, "it is customary that in commemoration of your nation's delivery out of Egypt I should release a prisoner to you.

There are three others here, among them Jesus Barabba."

Then, for support perhaps, he looked over at the clamoring mob.

"I will leave the choice to the people."

A wind seemed to raise the elders; they scattered through the court like leaves. "Have done with the Nazarene," cried one. "He would lead you astray," insinuated another. "He has violated the Law," exclaimed a third.

And, filtering through the soldiery into the mob without, they exhorted and prayed and coerced. "Ask for Barabba; denounce the blasphemer. Trust to the Sanhedrim. We are your guides. Let him atone for his crimes. The G.o.d of your fathers commands that you condemn. Demand Barabba; uphold your nation. To the cross with the Nazarene!"

"Whom do you choose?" shouted Pilate.

And the pleb of Jerusalem shouted back as one man, "Barabba!"

At the moment Pilate fancied himself in an amphitheatre, the arena filled with beasts. There were the satin and stripes of the panther, the yellow of treacherous eyes, the gnash of fangs, the guttural rumble, the deafening yell, the scent of blood, and above, the same blue tender sky.

"What of the prisoner?" he called.

A roar leapt back. "Sekaph! Sekaph! Let him be crucified."

Pilate had fronted a rabble before, and in two minutes had turned that rabble into so many dead flies, the legs in the air. He shook his head, and told himself he was not there to be coerced.

"Release Barabba," he ordered. "And as for the prisoner, take him to the barracks and have him scourged."

"Brute!" cried a voice that lifted him as a blow might from his ebony chair. "Pilate, though you are a plebeian, why show yourself a slave?"

And Mary, with the strength of anger, brushed through the encircling officials and towered before him, robed in wrath.

"Ah, permit me," he answered; "you are singularly unjust."

"Prove me so, and countermand the order that you gave."

As she spoke she adjusted her mantle, which had become disarranged, and looked him from head to foot, measuring him as it were, and finding him, visibly, very small.

Already the prisoner had been led away, and beyond, in the barracks, was the whiz of jagged leather that lacerated, rebounded, and lacerated again.

"I will not," he answered. "What I have ordered, I have ordered. As for you--"

There had come to her that look which sibyls have. "Pilate," she interrupted, "you are powerful here, I know, but"-and her hand shot out like an arrow from a bow-"over there vultures are circling; in your power is a corpse. What the vultures scent, I see."

So abrupt and earnest was the gesture that unconsciously Pilate found himself looking to where she seemed to point. He lowered his eyes in vexation. Wrangling with a woman was not to his taste.

"There, there," he said, much as one might to a fretful child; "don't throw stones."

"I have but one; it is Justice, and that I keep to hurl at you."

The procurator's mouth twitched ominously. "My dear," he said, "you are too pretty to talk that way; it spoils the looks. Besides, I have no time to listen."

"Tiberius has and will."

Pilate nodded; it was the third time he had heard the threat that day.

"There are many rooms in his palace," he answered, with covert significance.

"Yes, I know it. There are many, as you say. But there is one I will enter. On the door stands written The Future, and behind it, Pilate, is your death."

The Roman, goaded to exasperation, sprang to his feet. An expression which Antipas had used occurred to him. "Away with the hetaira," he cried; and he was about, it may be, to order her to be tossed to the fierce wild swine in the paddocks of the park when the prisoner and his guards reappeared on the tessellated pavement, and Mary, already dragged from him, was instantly forgot.

A tattered sagum, which had once been scarlet, but which had faded since, hung, detained at the shoulder by a rusty buckle, and bordered by a laticlave, loosely about his form. In his hand a bulrush swayed; on his head was a twisted coil of bear's-breech, in which, among the ruffled leaves, one bud remained; it was white, the opening edges flecked with pink, perhaps with blood, for from the temples and about the ear a rill ran down and mixed with the purple of the laticlave below. And in this red parody of kings.h.i.+p the Christ stood, unmoved as a phantom, but in his face and eyes there was a projecting light so luminous, so intangible, and yet so real, that the skeptical procurator started, the staff of office pendent in his grasp.

"Ecce h.o.m.o!" he exclaimed. Instinctively he drew back, and, wonderingly, half to himself, half to the Christ, "Who are you?" he asked.

"A flame below, a soul above," Jesus answered, yet so inaudibly that the guards beside him did not catch the words.

To Pilate his lips had barely moved, and his wonderment increased. "Why do you not answer?" he said. "You must know that I have the power to condemn and to acquit."