It was not over.
Herod was weak willed and would not make a judgement and the man would return to his hands. What would he do then? Once more he felt himself standing like two pillars on either side of a raging sea: one pillar was the Roman statesman and the other was the man. How must he marry his mind’s reason to that soft voice that had begun, only now, to speak of that strange thing called truth?
He did not know. And so he walked away and tried to think no more on it.
‡
‘Reason and faith…polarities that are ever at war, one with the other,’ I said with a sigh, massaging my cramped hand.
‘Mind and heart, pairé.’
‘Yes, yes…I know…the middle way.’
‘You see, if Pilate could only have seen beyond that life, his gaze would have fallen on an old man in Rome many centuries from that time – an old pontiff called Nicholas.’
‘Nicholas?’ I sat up full of attention, ‘Which Nicholas? Not the Pope in the ninth century? Tell me, does Pontius Pilate become Nicholas I?’
‘Yes, pairé… imagine him sitting before a great fire holding an ancient codex, asking himself if he will throw it into the flames.’
‘What was this codex?’
‘The Isidoric Decretals. They were forgeries, which gave a pope power over unruly and immoral kings. He wanted to marry faith with reason once again. He was a good pope, the last pope who was inspired by the Holy Spirit.’
My mind was searching through the annals of knowledge in my head. ‘I remember…after his death, there was a great council of the church in Constantinople. It used the power of these Isidoric Decretals to make it an anathema to say that a man was possessed of body, soul, and spirit! It was the cause of the schism between the Greeks and the Romans…Oh Lea! A Roman Procurator becomes a Roman Pope! His name was Pontius, and it becomes, Pontifex Maximus…Pontiff…Pope!’
‘Yes, pairé…he was still a bridge…Ponti.’
‘So he is responsible for us being upon this mountain then, responsible for the arguments between our church and the Romans concerning the Holy Spirit!’
‘In many ways you are united with Pilate through that one deed which began it all, long before, in Jerusalem.’
‘Me?’ I said, shocked, my heart drained of blood. Now came the question that had lived silent and wary in my heart, ‘What do you mean, Lea? What deed? Who have I been in past lives and what shall I become?’
The light of the stars was in her eyes, she looked queenly then and full of knowledge. ‘That is why I am here…patience, pairé, soon you will come to know the world, and in the world you will recognise yourself.
65
SHOW AND TELL
When Pilate’s man arrived with the message that Jesus was on his way to his palace, Herod was flattered but not surprised. The night before he had been informed of the judgement by the hasty gathering of the Sanhedrin and this morning from his rooms built on the north side of the forum he could hear the commotion at the Gabbatha and had sent his own men to see to it.
Now he was full with anticipation as he sat upon his large dais set at the end of the great hall, anxious for it all to begin.
Gathered around him were those members of his court who were called to observe the spectacle and Herodias his wife, wearing an incongruous white robe that made her countenance grey-grim.
Since the death of John the Baptist she had fallen into strange ways, shutting herself up in her rooms with the man’s decaying head and that sword of hers. She had hoped to extract from them something to her gain but her disappointments had reverberated through the halls and courts of Machareus for weeks, foaming over the walls and catapulting onto the expanses of the Dead Sea. In truth, her screams and strange bouts of laughter had been enough to make even the ghosts of the old Hasmoneans shiver!
The poor woman has lost her magic!
Yes! This was his lot! To have his ugly wife lose what had been her only talent in itself was bad enough, but why must it come at a time when he was beset by so many concerns?
No, nothing had gone well for him since the death of John the Baptist! For one thing, Salome had been thrown into despondency and kept herself shut up in her rooms and for another war threatened to break out at any time with King Aretas, his former father-in-law. On top of everything else that ominous shadow with its flapping wings kept him awake night after night, threatening to tear away his soul and to take it to hell.
So disturbed had he been by these night terrors that he had finally succumbed to his doctor’s ministrations. They had given him a malodorous concoction to drink made from mushrooms and other heinous substances – a potion which brought him oblivion in the night, yes, but made him dull-headed in the day. To counter this they gave him stimulating herbs to chew, which made his muscles twitch and his eyes bulge and caused him to jump at the slightest noise. Soon he found himself afflicted with every degree of symptom known to mankind: itches, pustules, lack of feeling in his feet, pains in his muscles, headaches, sore teeth, bad breath, colic and poor digestion. His nerves were ruined, his mind was ravaged, his temper frayed. He was certain that John the Baptist had added a further curse to cause his ailment, and he had but one hope.