‘He is as mad as they come!’ He said.
Herodias and his entire court found this touchingly funny and they laughed and laughed until they near burst.
Herod watched the priests leave and ordered their Levites to return Jesus to Pilate, urging them to have some merriment with him along the way.
‘Amuse yourselves! Pay homage to the king of Israel.’
‘Here…’ said Herodias flinging her robe across the room. ‘Use this as a symbol of his purity, that all may see it and laugh as we have laughed!’
The Levites placed the white robe over the man’s shoulders and they did laugh all of them, except Herod, who did not feel merry at all, for he heard the flapping and saw those shadows come again to drive him mad.
66
DECISION
The same moment that Claudia Procula woke from her dream Gaius Cassius too sat up in his bed covered in sweat with his heart pounding the drum of his chest.
He had dreamt of a cold day and a sun obscured by cloud whose light was thrown over a man standing before a bull. The man, his heart bursting with fear and love, was held by a force, which travelled, pulsated and dissolved in pools and streams towards him. In his hand he held an ancient weapon, a weapon forged from the fires of heaven.
‘You are born from fire!’ he heard a voice in the dream say. ‘Use the lance of fire!’
But when he made to plunge the lance into the bull, it became Mithras before his eyes, and being unable to forestall the lance he realised with horror that he had killed Mithras, the God, and that his blood was falling to the ground.
In the dream the man shouted, ‘No!’
But it was Cassius shouting himself awake. With his mouth dry and his mind disordered he sat up in his litter and realised that he could hear a commotion coming from the streets outside the fortress. By the time the servant arrived with Claudia’s message he was already dressed and gathering a number of his men to make a way out into the streets into the mayhem of people and torches and flares, with the wind howling into his bad eyes.
Much had happened since, and now, full of misgivings, he stood in the broad day upon the Pavement for the second time that morning, gazing down upon the great throng that now filled the square to the very corners.
Claudia’s portent had been accurate for Jesus was in peril.
Herod had not condemned him and the priests, having got wind of it had gathered up the population and no doubt paid a good sum to a score of malcontents to add weight to their cause. He was glad that he had doubled the soldiery on the steps to the palace and that he had also placed archers on the parapets that ran on all sides with their weapons aimed and ready. For now the noise-some and riotous rabble, coarse and fierce, cried out abuse and jostled, vying for the best view of Jesus, as he was pushed and pulled and dragged by his chains into the square.
But the man he had shadowed in Galilee and in other places was not this man who came into the square wearing a bloodied white robe. Jesus was almost unrecognisable to his diseased sight.
As he was brought forward those paid crowds mocked him and kicked and spat at him until he came to the wall of men guarding the stairs. They parted to let him through and he made a slow way over the steps and came to stand upon the Pavement nearby to Cassius.
The sun was high and it was hot. The cross that had been branded on Cassius’ chest those years ago after his third degree, worried him. Moreover, an intoxicating scent, a pungent perfume of roses came from some place, and made his nose twitch. Cassius knew it was a scent used by the lady Claudia. She would be watching the proceedings from one of the windows that gazed out into the court. She loved this man and thought him a living god and because she loved him, his heart was sorely affected for her part.
The court grew silent. Cassius squinted and saw that Pilate had returned and now stood on the other side of the Nazarene. He tried to wipe away the brown film over his eyes but could not.
‘Where is Caiaphas?’ shouted Pilate.
The priest’s mitre was seen even before the man was, so engulfed was he by people crowding the archway to the square.
‘Make a way for the priest!’ Cassius barked at the people.
Caiaphas, with Ananias as his shadow, came out into the lime coloured light.
Pilate said, ‘This man, which you say has perverted the people, I have examined. I have found no cause in him for your accusations. Herod has also questioned him and finds him innocent. I will chastise him and release him.’
‘No!’ Caiaphas yelled out, ‘Rome must answer to the needs of Israel! If he is judged guilty by the Sanhedrin he must be condemned by Rome!’
A great clamour rose upwards to the clouding sky.
‘The way you speak, Caiaphas, one would think that Rome was the servant of Israel and not the other way around.’ Pilate sighed. ‘Is there any man who will speak for this man’s part?’