  Faintly at first and from afar off the silvery notes of a trumpet floated into her bedchamber. As she seemed to rise slowly upward out of a deep cavern of slumber, she sensed a stirring beside her. “The morning watch at Castra Praetoria,” he said, as in the dim light of breaking day he raised himself on an elbow to look into her face, “and I have early duty.” “But, Longinus,” she began a murmured protest, “must you forever be leaving...?” “Today is very important,” he went on, unheeding. “I must meet the Prefect there to begin our journey down to Capri for an audience with the Emperor. Sejanus is going to recommend that Tiberius recall Pontius Pilate and banish him to Gaul and then name me as Procurator. But you are not to go with him into banishment. Instead, you will marry me and....” “By all the gods! Longinus! Oh, by the Bountiful Mother! So long have we waited....” She sat up from her pillow. The light was seeping through the narrow window beyond the foot of the bed; the chamber was bursting now with the sound of trumpets. Sleepily, though she was fast coming awake, she felt for the centurion and sought to hold on to the dream, but she knew he was not there. And in a moment’s hush between the trumpetings she heard from the room adjoining hers, through the doorway connecting the chambers, the sonorous, heavy snoring of Pontius Pilate. “Tullia!” she called, keeping her voice down. But the door to the maid’s smaller chamber on the side opposite the Procurator’s was open; she had hardly expected Tullia to be there. The trumpets below were calling Israel to the sunrise worship, and somewhere in the milling throng of Jerusalem dwellers and pilgrims was her devoted maid. She pushed down the covering, swung her feet around to the floor, and stood up. Drawing her robe about her, she stepped into her sandals and tiptoed out onto the balcony. Down below in the Temple courts a few torches sputtered sporadically in the strengthening light, and several still burning in the two giant candelabra offered more twisting blue-black smoke than illumination. But there was a glory in the east; behind the rounded crest of the Mount of Olives a giant hand spread fingers of orange and gold and salmon and pink, and as the aureole fanned out higher and wider and its vivid colors swam together in one blazing brightness, the sun ventured to peek above the hilltop. In that instant the golden dome of the Temple flamed, and the topmost stones around the city’s western wall caught fire. A blast of trumpets, silvery, melodious, triumphant, saluted the sun’s rising. And then another, and another. Looking down into the Court of the Priests, from which the sound had come, Claudia saw two lavishly caparisoned priests, carrying trumpets and walking abreast, marching toward the lower Court of the Women. They were going down the steps between the two courts when suddenly they paused and, lifting their instruments to their lips, once again blew three blasts. Then they moved austerely down the remaining steps and into the court, where they paused and blew three blasts again. “Can they be sun worshipers, by all the gods?” Claudia murmured as she watched the priests offering what appeared to be homage to the newly risen monarch of the heavens. The two priests, pacing steadily eastward through the great Court of the Women, stopped near its center and once more blew sharp blasts and then, lowering their trumpets, marched straight toward the Beautiful Gate, the eastern entrance to the court. But before the huge portal they stopped and faced about, so that now their backs were toward the sun. “Our fathers, who worshiped likewise in this place, turned their backs upon the sanctuary of the Lord and their faces to the sun,” they said in chorus, and the words came up distinctly to Claudia, “Then at least they do not worship the sun,” she said to herself, “although I look upon the sun as being more godlike than their puny spirit one god.” She stood another moment watching the pageantry below; then her eyes swept beyond the Temple walls to survey the tabernacled city and the area outside its protective walls. Today, she remembered, would see the ending of the Jewish autumn festival, the Israelites’ traditional Feast of Tabernacles. And it was well that it should. Already the little green bough shelters were beginning to wilt in the October sun. The pageantry, too, must be losing its luster, even to the people of Israel. ... And Longinus could not come to Jerusalem.... Turning from the parapet, she crossed the balcony and entered her chamber. Taking off her robe, she slipped back into the inviting warmth of the bed. |
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