As Claudia and her maid entered the anteroom adjacent to the Procurator’s great chamber in the southwestern tower of Antonia, two men of serious mien, well-dressed and with beards oiled and carefully braided, emerged from Pilate’s room and walked quickly into the corridor.

Claudia motioned Tullia to a seat and without pausing strode past the attendant through the still unclosed doorway.

Pilate stood before one of the windows facing westward. His long shadow reached out to her feet across the high-domed room; soon now the sun would be dropping beneath the wall of the ancient city, and the solemnity of the Jewish Sabbath would still the Passover festivities. He turned to face his wife, and she saw that his expression was deadly serious. She questioned him with a lift of her head. “Those men who just went out?”

“Wealthy Jews,” he replied. “One of them anyway, a merchant from Arimathea. Both of them members of the Sanhedrin. They came to petition me.” He saw that she was still not satisfied. “A small matter; they asked for the body of one of the men crucified today. They want to bury him.” He advanced toward her and managed a thin smile. “Here, my dear Claudia,” he pointed, “have this chair.” His smile warmed. “To what am I indebted for the honor of your visit?”

“This man whose body they wished,” she asked, ignoring his question, “could it be that he was the Galilean mystic?”

“Yes, they said he was from Galilee.” His eyes avoided her probing stare.

“He was called Jesus?”

“I believe they called him that.”

“Then you did not receive my message ... about the dream I had?”

She saw in his eyes a mounting panic. “Yes, Claudia, but it was only a dream, and the High Priest demanded....”

“You condemned to the cross an innocent man”—she stood up and pointed a trembling finger at the Procurator, and her eyes blazed furiously—“because the High Priest demanded it! The great Procurator, representative of imperial Rome, crucified an innocent man because a jealous and mean little Temple strut-cock ordered you to send him to the cross! By all the gods, Pilate, and you condemned him after I sent you that warning!”

“But, Claudia, I was being pulled at from both sides. I didn’t want to condemn him. I told them I found no fault in the man. I had a basin of water fetched and before the multitude I washed my hands of his blood, and....”

“You washed your hands of his blood! Never! Oh, by all the gods, those hands! Those blood-red, crawling, slinking hands!” She held her palms before her face. “In the dream I saw them. Now you’ll never be able to cleanse those foul, polluted hands.”

“But if I had released him, Claudia, and news had got back to the Prefect that I had allowed a dangerous revolutionary to go free....”

“You knew he was no revolutionary.” Her voice was almost a hiss. “You knew he was an innocent man, and you sent him to the cross.” She crossed the room quickly and looked out toward the Hill of the Skull. The shadows were heavy in the square before Antonia, but the sinking sun shone levelly upon the three burdened crosses on the hill. “Which cross is his?” she asked, without taking her eyes from the macabre scene.

“The one at the center,” he replied, his eyes fixed unseeing on the polished surface of his desk.

“And he is dead, you’re sure of that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve sent for the centurion in charge of the execution, and now I’m waiting for his report. I told the two Jews I would not release the body until I was certain the Galilean was dead. Should the body be taken down and the man revived, and should word, as it would, get to Rome....”

“Are you concerned only with what sort of reports go to Rome?” she demanded, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “Have you no interest in seeing justice prevail even in Judaea?”

“I am interested, my dear Claudia”—he appeared somewhat to have regained his composure—“in maintaining myself in the office of Procurator. Perhaps I erred in the case of this Galilean. Perhaps I should have given greater heed to the message you sent me. But I’ve spent many hard years in the army, and I have long dreamed of being the Procurator of a province of imperial Rome. Now that I have attained it, I must not gain the further enmity of the Temple leadership, or I might lose the post, you know.”

“Then your only concern is in remaining Procurator of Judaea?” Her tone was coldly scornful. “And you might have the post taken from you, at that. Much depends, you know, on the attitude of the Prefect toward you.”

Pilate blanched. “But, my dear, surely you wouldn’t suggest to him that he carry to Sejanus an evil report about my conduct of affairs....”

“To him? To whom, Excellency”—she paused, and her tone was taunting—“do you refer?”

But once more he was evasive. “Perhaps you are tired, my dear,” he said with a short, humorless laugh. “Perhaps you should return to the palace. I can order the sedan-chair bearers....”

“Mine are outside,” she replied evenly. “But why are you trying to get rid of me, Pilate? Does the Galilean haunt you already?”

“Indeed, no.” Again he attempted a laugh, but it lacked conviction. “Any minute now the centurion will be reporting to me, and I thought perhaps you would not wish to be reminded again of the Galilean’s death or your strange dream....”

“No, I will stay. Perhaps it is you who do not wish to be reminded that you condemned to a terrible death a man innocent of the crime charged against him, innocent of any crime, and known by you to be innocent!”

“But, my dear Claudia, had I freed....”

The Procurator’s protest was interrupted by a knock on the door, and a moment later at Pilate’s bidding the attendant entered. “The Centurion Longinus, Excellency,” he said, bowing, “has arrived to make his report.”

“Longinus! By great Jupiter, did you send Longinus to crucify the Galilean?” She whirled to face the centurion, who had entered the chamber. “Surely, Longinus, you didn’t...” Abruptly she stopped; her face, suddenly drained of fury, betrayed apprehension and pain.

“Yes,” he said, “I killed him. I was ordered by the Procurator to do so, but that doesn’t absolve me from guilt. I crucified an innocent man”—his eyes shifted to level on Pilate—“as the Procurator well knew when he condemned him to the cross.” He paused, but Pilate did not challenge the statement. “Excellency, you sent for me to report. The Galilean is dead. Your order has been carried out.”

“Thank you, Centurion. Then I shall grant those Jews’ request for the body for burial.” He spoke calmly, but his flustered manner betrayed an inner stress. “You may return to your duty and notify the men, who will be at the execution ground, that I grant their petition. You may have your quaternion help them remove the body from the cross and ...”

He broke off suddenly. Through the slit in the doorway, which Longinus had failed to close completely behind him, came the insistent voice of a man talking with Pilate’s aide in the anteroom. “By the gods, I’m glad to catch him. I’ve come from Caesarea with a message for him from the Commander Sergius Paulus. And I was given emphatic instructions to deliver it myself into his hands with the seals unbroken,” they heard the man say. “I’ve been searching all over Jerusalem for him; I even went out to the crucifixion hill.” He lowered his voice. “It’s bound to be an important message. It came from Rome, probably, by the gods, from the Prefect or even the Emperor.”

“Centurion, perhaps you’d prefer to go out there”—Pilate’s face had paled perceptibly—“to accept the message.”

Longinus nodded and left the room. As the door closed behind him, Claudia turned with renewed fury upon her husband. “Why did you assign Longinus to crucify the Galilean?” she cried. “Was it because I sent my message by him and you suspected he had spent the night with me and you finally did me the small honor of being jealous? Well, by the gods”—her voice was tremulous as her anger rose—“that’s exactly what he did!” With hatred in her eyes she approached him, coming so close that their faces nearly touched. “And, you fool, that wasn’t the first time,” she added with a low, harsh laugh, “nor even, by Jupiter, the last!”

The Procurator stepped back and sank heavily into his chair. For a long moment he sat silent, staring at the floor. Then he raised his eyes to his wife’s bitter, scornful face. “Surely you cannot believe me that stupid, Claudia my dear,” he said quietly, “to think that I haven’t known. Surely you must know that I am not entirely deaf and blind, that I have even contrived to spend many an evening away so that you....” He paused, pensively contemplating the woman before him. “But perhaps you don’t know....”

“Oh, how I despise you!” she screamed. “I knew you were a weakling, a coward, a ... yes, today, even a murderer. But I didn’t know you were a crawling worm who would willingly lend his wife to another man! By all Pluto’s fire-blackened imps, I....”

“But perhaps you don’t know,” the Procurator went on, “that I was commanded by the Prefect and the Emperor, at the time our marriage was arranged, to do everything possible to keep you content in this dismal province ... even to overlooking any indiscretions....”

“Then you’ve been willing to do anything, by the Great Mother, in order to stay in the good graces of old Sejanus,” Claudia hissed. “You’re willing to send a good and innocent man, maybe a god-man, to the cross rather than displease a contemptible High Priest who might complain against you to the Prefect!” She clenched her fists and brought them down, hard, across the desk. “You’re even willing to surrender your wife to another man’s enjoyment in order—you said it—to keep her ‘content’ but really to keep that man from reporting to Sejanus your bumbling incompetence, your foolish provocations, your utter imbecility!” Her voice had risen to a shout. Slowly she moved toward the window, and then she whirled about to face him again. “Well, I’m not ‘content,’ and I never will be ... with you! And by all the gods, I hope Longinus will go to Rome and reveal to Sejanus how miserably you have administered the affairs of the Empire in this province!” She pointed at him from across the room. “And how you have dragged in the dust Rome’s vaunted justice, how in all probability”—her voice dropped to a menacing tone—“you have withheld funds from the Empire’s treasury....”

“No! Oh, no, Claudia! I have kept back nothing due the Empire or the Prefect! Nothing! Not one shekel, not a denarius! Longinus knows it’s true.” He lowered his voice. “Hasn’t he been watching; hasn’t he been reporting? Surely you don’t think I haven’t suspected....” But suddenly he broke off his protests. Quickly crossing the chamber, he opened the door and summoned the centurion. “You have heard my wife’s words?” he asked, as he closed the door behind them.

“I’ve heard excited words,” Longinus replied cautiously. “I didn’t get the full import of them, though.”

“Claudia has been hurling accusations at me. She said she hoped you would report me to the Prefect when you go to....” He paused, and both his face and voice revealed his fear. “The message was from Rome, wasn’t it? From Sejanus? He asked you to report to him on the situation out here, how I’m administering...?”

“He asked me to come at once to Rome, but he said only that it was to meet with him on a matter of utmost concern, the nature of which he did not indicate. Here, Excellency”—he handed the letter to the Procurator—“you may read it yourself.”

Eagerly the Procurator accepted the message. His forehead creased as he studied it. “True,” he said, handing it back to Longinus, “there’s no mention in it of the Procurator. But surely the Prefect will ask you how I’m administering affairs. I beg of you, Centurion, don’t give him an unfavorable report; don’t make any charges against....”

“What of the Galilean you’ve just crucified?” Claudia interrupted. “Can you contend that you even thought you were acting justly? Didn’t you just tell me you found no fault in the man? What else could Longinus tell the Prefect concerning your trial...?”

“But the centurion will say nothing of this Galilean, surely.” The trace of a sickly smile flickered across his round face. “The centurion will remember that it was he who crucified the man.”

“Yes, I shall never forget that I killed him,” Longinus said. “And I suspect that to the end of his days the Procurator, too, will remember the part he played in this horrible thing. But if this Galilean’s case comes to the Prefect’s attention and he inquires of me about it, I shall reveal fully what happened, and why I was involved.”

“But surely, Centurion, unless you report it, Sejanus will never know about it. Caiaphas is pleased. The illiterate, poor followers of the Galilean didn’t even attempt to aid him at the trial; their protests, if they offer any, can never reach as far as Rome. I beg of you, Longinus, make no mention of it to the Prefect. The Galilean is dead; soon he’ll be forgotten.”

“No!” Claudia protested. “I’ll never forget him! Longinus will never forget him! Nor will you! Look at your hands, Pilate. Soon you will be seeing them as I saw them, cold, clammy, scurrying to hide themselves under the rocks, foul and evil and reeking with his blood! By all the gods, Pilate”—her voice was shrill in newly mounting anger—“if Longinus doesn’t tell the Prefect of your cowardly flouting of Roman justice, I will!”

The Procurator’s face blanched. He started to speak, then swallowed. “Claudia, my dear, you wouldn’t. Surely you wouldn’t be so....”

“Indeed, I would! I have lost all patience with you, Pilate. Today I’ve seen you as I’ve never seen you before. You’re a small man, Procurator, vain, self-seeking, pompous, and yet a sniveling coward too fearful for his own skin to rule justly. And at the first opportunity I shall so describe you to the Prefect ... and perhaps to the Emperor.”

“No, my dear! No! Please....” His panic changed quickly into abject pleading. “Please don’t, my dear. Why should you wish to ruin me? What would it gain you ... and Longinus?” He sat down wearily behind his desk. “Why can’t we continue as we have been ...” he paused, “enduring this trying land and these troublesome people? Centurion”—he faced Longinus—“for a long time I have suspected, and known, the ... situation. But haven’t I been understanding, even co-operative?” The suggestion of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Why, then, cannot the three of us, understanding this and appreciating it, just continue to play the roles as we have been? Why can’t we...?”

“Oh, by great Ceres!” Claudia shouted angrily, “you are indeed a crawling worm! You invite another man to your wife’s bed! You pander! You’re nothing but a procurer, a Spanish pimp! Gods, but I detest you!” Turning, she strode to the door and opened it. “Summon my sedan-chair bearers,” she ordered the attendant, “and quickly!” Then she wheeled about to face the Procurator again. “I’m going back to the palace. I cannot summon the patience to remain longer in your presence. It would please me greatly if I should never lay eyes on you again!” She stormed through the doorway; the door slammed behind her.

Pilate sat unmoving and stared stonily into space.

“A moment ago, Excellency,” Longinus ventured, “you directed me to return to the Hill of the Skull. The Jewish Sabbath is fast nearing. Perhaps I should go now.”

Without raising his eyes, Pontius Pilate nodded. Longinus crossed the darkening chamber and went out. After a while the Procurator stood up and walked to the window. Out beyond Antonia’s front square and the squat stone structures flanking it, on a wretched knoll beyond the city’s wall, the three crosses still lifted their quiet burdens into the waning light. But already the shadow of the wall was groping for the pinioned feet of the man on the middle cross. For a long moment Pilate stood rooted before the window; when the shadow had climbed to engulf the man’s sagging knees, he turned slowly away and sat again in his big chair. As the gloom thickened in the great chamber, the staring Procurator leaned slowly forward to cross his arms on the desk and, bending over, cradled his round head on their crossing.