Fifth Gospel(47)

Still they did not move.

Overcome with exhaustion and frustrated by the quarrelsome nature of these people he called for the blood collected in the clay vessel and said to them:

‘Rome will have peace in this province, and she does not care how much blood is shed! Behold, what Rome thinks of Jew blood!’

With these words, he took the vessel, and poured its contents into the sacrificial fires where the blood of the Hebrew people, the sacred blood of Abraham, encountered the blood of the animals.

The symbolism of this act threw the crowd into a strange and immense silence. Pilate asked for a pitcher of water to wash his hands. He took himself from the Temple then and had those zealots who had been captured by his guards scourged and taken to Calvary to be crucified.

That had been yesterday. The sound of wailing had continued all day and only at sundown had the people been allowed, by their religion to bury their dead. This meant that the smell of decay, warmed by sun and visited by flies, still lingered as a reminder of Roman vengeance on defiance.

But what else could he have done? These were a people without reason. Leniency would only have encouraged future riots and revolts; only harshness and severity could control the temper of these people. This was the soldier speaking in him.

He wondered which he was, the soldier or the man? He did not know.

He lay in his bed now with the sickly aroma in the breezes and looked at Claudia as she stirred from the cloudy airs of sleep. Her eyes opened and she reached out to draw him near.

‘All is well? You do not sleep…something troubles you…come…hold me.’

He took her in his arms and whispered in her ear, ‘How must a watchdog of Rome sleep while there are devils at the door?’

She yawned. ‘Oh Pontius! Do you speak of those devils you dispatched to the realm of shades, or to the thoughts that trouble your heart for the innocent that you had killed?’

He bristled at this rebuke and turned on his back. ‘If you were a soldier you would know that sometimes it is necessary to shed blood.’

She turned on her side to look at him. ‘You are a soldier and you say it, but you do not relish it.’

‘I marvel at how clear things are to you…’ he said to her.

She laughed softly. ‘Your mind is not clear because you read Cicero!’

He looked at her. ‘How do you know?’

‘I have been your wife for fifteen years…you always seek his counsel when something worries you. Does he give you comfort this night?’ she asked.

He took to looking at the darkness. ‘Nothing in this strange country, neither our laws nor Cicero’s words give me comfort.’

‘No…but perhaps that is because laws and reason cannot determine for you what is right and what is wrong, husband. This,’ she said to him, ‘you must do for yourself.’

He looked at her again and felt a gratitude to the gods that she had not remained in Rome like the wives of other Roman officials, for she alone had the courage to speak her mind and he esteemed her for her honesty. Even so, she could be a stubborn woman, full of her own opinions. Now and again he needed to put her in her place.

‘Without laws and reason, there is only anarchy and disorder,’ he told her.

She lay on her back. ‘I think some day men will know something higher than the laws they spin from their heads with their reason, something women already know.’

‘So…’ he said, making his voice soft, ‘there is something that women know before men?’

‘Yes…’ she said, stretching her limbs, ‘does that seem so strange to you?’

‘What is it then?’

‘Women feel right from wrong.’

‘How do you mean, feel?’

‘It comes to us naturally, this feeling’ she said, ‘but it isn’t found in your books, Pontius, nor is it dictated by what you esteem so highly, your reason. Reason, my dear, is a child of convenience…I speak of a truth that is true, absolutely.’

‘Yes, but such truths can only be known by the gods…this you say you know? Tell me, how you know it?’

She hoisted herself on her elbows to look at him. ‘A woman knows it, by listening.’

He dismissed it.

‘You may laugh, but I say to you that if more men felt this knowing, then there would be no more war!’

‘There will never be peace,’ he told her.

‘Not while men rule the world,’ she pointed out.

‘Now you have me intrigued…how does it work this knowing?’

‘In the heart speaks the voice that tells what is right, and what is wrong!’ She took his hand, and placed it between her breasts. ‘Here…’ she said. ‘Here speaks a truth that is beyond law and reason.’