As the Temple guardsmen withdrew with their prisoner from the Praetorium, Pilate beckoned to one of the Antonia soldiers.

“I wish to proceed with the trials of the revolutionaries captured last week by Centurion Cornelius,” he announced. “If the centurion has returned with any other captives, have them brought in too.”

“He has not returned, sir,” the soldier said.

“Then we shall try the three we have.”

Bar Abbas and his two henchmen had already been brought up from their cells deep under Antonia; the witnesses who would testify against them, including several soldiers from Cornelius’ century, were waiting in an anteroom. In the group of witnesses were several Temple priests, elegantly robed, their beards elaborately braided and oiled, their plump fingers weighted with rings.

The prisoners, shackled at wrists and ankles, were led shuffling into the chamber to stand before the tribunal. After a week in the blackness of the dungeon, their eyes were unaccustomed to light; they stood blinking in the growing brightness of the chamber. Then from an anteroom on the other side of the courtroom another soldier escorted the witnesses to a position facing Pilate’s curule several paces across from the three bound men.

Quickly the prisoners were identified: one Bar Abbas, long sought chieftain of a Zealot band preying upon travelers in various sections of the province, particularly the boulder-bordered steep ascent of the Jericho road, and two others of his fellow revolutionaries, one Dysmas and one Gesmas, all three of Galilee.

“With what crimes are these men charged?” the Procurator asked. He made no reference to their being Galileans, nor did he question his jurisdiction over them, though he had just sent another Galilean to the Tetrarch.

The accusations were made. As members of a notoriously desperate Zealot gang of revolutionaries, they had pillaged caravans, waylaid tax collectors and robbed them of their revenues, descended from the hills upon merchants’ pack trains and looted them, even assailed detachments of Roman soldiers and slain some. Then the witnesses confronted them. One of the priests, accompanied by fellow priests of the Temple, was returning from Caesarea when the party was set upon and robbed. He identified the three as among his assailants; he declared he was positive the shackled men standing there were the culprits. Then another lavishly robed priest was called upon to give testimony.

“O Excellency,” he began, “it was on the Jericho road that these men, this Bar Abbas and these other two”—he pointed to each in turn—“came down from the rocks and seized me. I was bearing a large pouch of gold and silver, funds of the Temple I was taking to be put in its coffers, when this big fellow here....”

“He was coming from the Temple!” screamed Bar Abbas, interrupting the testimony, as he lifted his pinioned hands and shook them so that the chains rattled loudly. “He had stolen the money from its coffers! But we took it from him and gave it to feed the poor and those dispossessed by the traitorous publicans!”

“Silence!” commanded Pilate. “You will have your turn to speak.”

Next, two soldiers, one after the other, who had been coming to Jerusalem the past week as members of the century commanded by Centurion Cornelius, testified that the three were among the marauders who had swept down from the rocks beside the Jericho road to capture for a few minutes the detachment that was escorting Tetrarch Herod Antipas and his wife and to assail the near-by flanking columns put out by the centurion. In this assault, the witnesses testified, several of the Roman soldiers had been killed.

The three offered no evidence in rebuttal. The one called Dysmas, who looked both grave and resigned, seemed to be studying the pattern of the mosaic at his feet; Gesmas glared sullenly at the smirking priests who had witnessed against him; and Bar Abbas stood, as wide-legged as his chains would permit, with his sharp black eyes fixed in defiance on the round face of his judge and his lips above the tangle of his beard twisted in a sneer.

“I adjudge you guilty,” Pilate said, looking in turn toward each of the prisoners. He called to one of the soldiers on courtroom duty. “Go tell the commander to send me three centurions.”

When after a short wait the soldier returned with the three officers and they had reported to the Procurator, Pilate faced the convicted revolutionaries. “I sentence each of you to the lash and the cross. And may all such dastardly wicked enemies of Rome so perish!” He turned again to the tribunal attendant. “Prepare a titulus for each,” he commanded, “and write thus: robber-assassin-revolutionary.” He leaned forward. “Take them now into the courtyard and scourge them, and then conduct them outside the walls to the Hill of the Skull, and crucify them. Each of you centurions will choose a quaternion to assist, and each will have charge of the scourging and execution of one of the prisoners. And do not dally. I wish them on the crosses quickly, so that the Passover crowds may see what becomes of those who plot revolution against Rome. It should have a salutary effect.” He waved his arm imperiously. “Take them away!”