  When Cornelius left the Palace of the Herods, Claudia and Longinus walked out into the garden and sat on the stone bench before the fountain. Already the sun was high in the cloudless heavens and the air was growing warm. Birds chattered in the trees and shrubs, and as they watched the spurting water, two small conies skittered across a circle of sunlight to dark safety beneath a heavily leaved fig bush. “A glorious day.” “Yes.” He tossed a twig toward the fountain. “You know, Claudia”—he was looking, she saw, at some invisible point beyond the trembling column of water—“a hundred years from now the world may still remember this day, if....” “If the Galilean really has come to life?” she finished softly. “What do you think about it, Longinus? Cornelius and Tullia seemed so certain he has.” The centurion shook his head slowly, his eyes still on the lifting and falling water. “I don’t know what to think. But”—he turned to face her, and his forehead was furrowed in concentration—“how else can you explain it? The guards awake, the heavy stone sealing the tomb. By all the gods....” “Are you afraid then?” For a long moment he was silent. “No,” he answered finally, “I’m not afraid. But I’m ... I’m ashamed, Claudia; I’m ashamed for myself, Pilate, Herod, the contemptible High Priest, my quaternion, everybody who had anything at all to do with this terrible thing. If indeed he did come back to life, I hope I may see him in Galilee and beg his forgiveness.” “But what about Pilate? Do you think the Galilean will seek vengeance on him? And on the High Priest, and even Antipas?” “Up there on the hill as we were nailing him to the crossbeam, that man prayed to his god to forgive us ... to forgive us, Claudia. Didn’t he mean all his enemies?” Longinus stood up and walked to the fountain; he held his palm against the upshooting column. “A few days ago I was scoffing at him and even at the very idea of gods, any god, or spirit being, or whatever you may call it”—he smiled glumly—“and so were you, my dear. But since day before yesterday”—he shrugged—“and this morning, well, I’m ... I’m changed. You know, I’ve been thinking about what Cornelius’ old Greek tutor taught and how it might fit in with the Jews’ notion of their Yahweh. And now, if the Galilean really has taken on life again—and I know he was dead when we took him down—it may be that he really was ... is ... a physical, tangible manifestation of this all-wise and all-powerful spirit....” Abruptly he broke off. “Oh, I don’t know, Claudia, it’s too deep for me. But I do know”—his smile was warm—“if there’s ever another testing, I’ll be on his side then.” He strode over to the bench and helped her to her feet, and they returned to her apartment where no other eyes could invade the privacy of their last moments together. “Has this morning changed things for us, beloved?” she asked, as they sat on her couch. “Your plans, in Rome, I mean, do you still intend to do what you were telling me last night?” “Of course, my dearest. And it won’t be long before we’ll have a new Emperor or a new Prefect. And in either case there’ll be a new Procurator in Judaea and”—he smiled playfully—“a new husband for the present Procurator’s wife. It’s even possible,” he added with a studied air, “that the present Procurator’s wife will be the wife of the new Procurator.” “But, Longinus, you wouldn’t want to be Procurator in this dreary province....” “No,” he broke in, “but if the present Procurator’s wife went with the assignment”—he shrugged—“I believe I could endure it.” Then he was serious. “Before the summer is ended, Claudia, I firmly believe that Tiberius or Sejanus will be dead—and little I care which—or both of them even, and there’ll be a new regime at Rome. By then, and maybe earlier, Pilate will have been banished “Oh, Longinus, I hope so, I do hope so.” She clung to him tightly, for in a few minutes, she knew, he would be leaving her to join Cornelius for the journey down into Galilee. “Already it has been so long, and I am utterly weary of waiting. May the beneficent gods grant you swift sailing and an early safe return.” With an arm about her waist he lifted her to her toes. “But there are no gods, remember?” Teasingly, he pushed her chin until her eager lips parted, and then hungrily he bent once again to savor them. |
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