Mary Magdalen Part 14

With that gentleness that was the flower of his parables Jesus raised his voice. "No," he replied, "you can have no power against me unless it come from above."

Again Pilate drew back. Unsummoned to his lips had sprung the words, "Behold the man!" and now he exclaimed, "Behold the king!"

But to the mob the vision he intercepted was lost. They saw the jest merely, and with it the stains that torture leaves. The sight of blood is heady; it inebriates more surely than wine. The mob, trained by the elders, and used by them as a body-guard, fanatic before, were intoxicated now. With one accord they shrieked the liturgy again.

"Sekaph! Sekaph! Let him be crucified."

In that gust of hatred Pilate recovered. He turned to Caiaphas:

"I have released one prisoner; I will release another too."

"My lord, be warned by one who is your elder."

"One whom I can remove."

"No doubt, my lord; but suffer him while he may to warn you not to cause a revolution on the day of the Paschal feast. You hear that mult.i.tude. Then be warned."

"But your feast is one of mercy."

The high-priest gazed curiously at his silk-gloved hands. You would have said they were objects he had never seen before. Then he returned the procurator's stare.

"We know of no such G.o.d."

"Ah!" And the procurator drew a long breath of understanding. "It is that, I believe, he preaches."

"And it is for that," Caiaphas echoed, "that he must die. Yes, Pilate, it is for that. There is no such doctrine in the Pentateuch. We have done our duty. We have convicted a rebel of his guilt. We have brought him to you, and we demand his sentence. Pilate, it is not so very long ago you had hundreds ma.s.sacred without judgment, without trial either, and for what?-for one rebellious cry. You must have a reason for the favor you show this man. It would interest me to learn it; it would interest Tiberius as well. Listen to that mult.i.tude. If you pay no heed to our accusation nor yet to their demand, on you the consequences rest. We are absolved."

"He is your king," the procurator objected, meditatively.

Caiaphas wheeled like a feather a breeze has caught. One hand outstretched he held to the mob, with the other he pointed to the Christ.

"Our king!" he cried. "The procurator says he is our king!"

As the thunder peals, a roar surged back:

"We have no other king than Caesar."

"Think of Seja.n.u.s," the high-priest suggested. The thrust was so well timed it told.

Pilate looked sullenly about. "Fetch me water," he ordered.

A silver bowl was brought, and borrowing a custom from the Jews he loathed, he dipped his fingers in it.

"I wash my hands of it all," he muttered.

Caiaphas looked at the elders and sighed with infinite relief. He had conquered. For the first time that day he smiled. He became gracious also, and he bowed.

"The blood be upon us, my lord, and on our children. Will you give the order?"

"Calcol!"

The centurion approached. An order was given him in an undertone, and as he turned to the guards, Pilate drew the staff of office across his knee, snapped it in two, tossed the pieces to the ground, and through the ranks of his servitors pa.s.sed on into the great blue vestibule beyond.

CHAPTER X.

X.

In a sook near the Gannath Gate Mary stood. In the distance the palace of Herod defied the sun. Beyond the gate lay the Hennom Valley, the Geia Hennom, contracted by the people into Ge' Hennom, or Gehenna, and converted by them into a sewer, a place where carrion was thrown, and the filth of a great city. In earlier days children had been immolated to Moloch there, human victims had been burned; it was a place accursed, and to purify the air, as a safeguard against pestilence, the offal was consumed by bonfires that were constantly renewed and never extinguished.

At its extremity was an elevation, a hilly contour which to the popular fancy suggested a skull. To the west it fell steeply away. It was called Gulgolta.

The sook in which Mary stood was affected by shoemakers. Against the dwelling of one of them she leaned. The mantle was gone from her now, and the olive robe had a rent, but the splendor of her hair fell unconfined, the perils of her eyes had increased; yet in their depths where love had been was hate. One arm lay along the resisting stone, the other hung at her side; her face was turned to the palace, her thin nostrils quivering, her breath coming and going with that spasmodic irregularity which the consciousness of outrage brings. She laid it all to Judas; he must have returned to Kerioth, she thought. The sook itself was silent, stirred merely by some echo of the uproar in the palace beyond.

From a grilled lattice near by an old man peered out. He had the restless eyes of a ferret, and a white beard that was very long. He too was looking toward the palace. Now and then he muttered inaudibly in Aramaic to himself. In the shadow of a neighboring house a woman appeared; he shook at the lattice as an ape does at the bars of a cage, and spat a b.e.s.t.i.a.l insult at her. The woman shrank back. Instinctively Mary turned. In the retreating figure she recognized Ahulah, and at once, without conscious effort, she divined that the dwelling against which she leaned was that of Baba Barbulah, the husband of the woman whom the Master had declined to condemn.

But other things possessed her-the outrage to the Christ, perplexity as to how the trial would result, more remotely the indignity to herself, the slurs of the tetrarch and of the procurator; and with them, sapping her heart as fever might, was that thirst for reparation, unquenchable in its intensity, which comes to those who have seen their own life wrecked and its ideals dispersed.

Already Ahulah was forgot. On the wings of vagabond fancy she was in Rome, demanding vengeance of Tiberius, wresting it from him by the sheer force of entreaty, and with it exulting in the death-throes of the procurator.

Oh, to see his nails pulled out, his outer skin removed, his tongue severed, his eyes seared with irons, his wrists slowly twisted till they snapped! to hear him cry for mercy! to promise it and not fulfil!-dear G.o.d, what joy was there!

From the alley into which Ahulah had shrunk a man issued. He was st.u.r.dy as a bludgeon, and he had a growth of thick black hair that curled about an honest face. In his hand was a basket. At the sight of Mary his steps hesitated, and his eyes followed hers to where the palace lay. Then he crossed the zigzag of the intervening s.p.a.ce, but he had to touch her outstretched arm before she noticed him.

"Simon!" she exclaimed, with that start one has when suddenly awaked.

"Yes, Simon indeed;" and through the silence of the sook his clear laugh rang. "I frightened you, did I not?"

Mary interrupted him. "Haven't you heard? Has not Eleazer told you--"

"When I left Bethany he was sleeping with both fists closed. Martha--"

"The Master is arrested. Last night he was before the Sanhedrim; he is before the procurator now."

Hurriedly Mary gave an account of what had occurred. As the recital continued, Simon's expression grew darker than his curling hair, he clutched at the basket which he held, so tightly that the handle severed, the basket fell, and fruit that imprisoned the sunlight rolled on the ground.

"They were for the Master," he said. "I thought he would sup with us to-night."

"He may do so yet," she answered. "Perhaps--"

"Never!" cried a voice from the lattice. "They are leading him to Gulgolta now."

Beyond, through the palace gate, a ma.s.s undulated, the body elongated, expanding as it moved. It was black, but at the sides was the glisten that cobras have. About it dust circled, and from it came the rumble of thunder heard afar. As the bulk increased, the roar deepened; the black lessened into varying hues. To the glisten came the glint of steel; the cobra changed into a mult.i.tude, the escort of a squad of soldiery, fronted by a centurion and led by the banner of Imperial Rome.

Behind the centurion, Jesus, in his faded sagum, staggered, overweighted by the burden of a cross. Two comrades in misery were at his side, but they moved with steadier step, bearing their crosses with the brawn of muscular and untired arms. The soldiers marched impa.s.sibly, preceding the executioners-four stalwart Cypriotes, distinguishable by the fatness of their calves-while behind was the Sanhedrim, and, extending indefinitely to the rear, the rabble of yelling Jews.