“A pretty time would I have explaining to Tiberius if I interfered,” was his reply.
“No matter what happens,” said Miriam, “I can see you writing explanations, and soon; for Jesus is already come up to Jerusalem and a number of his fishermen with him.”
Pilate showed the irritation this information caused him.
“I have no interest in his movements,” he pronounced. “I hope never to see him.”
“Trust Hanan to find him for you,” Miriam replied, “and to bring him to your gate.”
Pilate shrugged his shoulders, and there the talk ended.
Pilate’s wife, nervous and overwrought, must claim Miriam to her apartments, so that nothing remained for me but to go to bed and doze off to the buzz and murmur of the city of madmen. * * * * *
Events moved rapidly.
Over night the white heat of the city had scorched upon itself.
By midday, when I rode forth with half a dozen of my men, the streets were packed, and more reluctant than ever were the folk to give way before me.
If looks could kill I should have been a dead man that day.
Openly they spat at sight of me, and, everywhere arose snarls and cries.
Less was I a thing of wonder, and more was I the thing hated in that I wore the hated harness of Rome.
Had it been any other city, I should have given command to my men to lay the flats of their swords on those snarling fanatics.
But this was Jerusalem, at fever heat, and these were a people unable in thought to divorce the idea of State from the idea of God.
Hanan the Sadducee had done his work well.
No matter what he and the Sanhedrim believed of the true inwardness of the situation, it was clear this rabble had been well tutored to believe that Rome was at the bottom of it.
I encountered Miriam in the press.
She was on foot, attended only by a woman.
It was no time in such turbulence for her to be abroad garbed as became her station.
Through her sister she was indeed sister-in-law to Antipas for whom few bore love.
So she was dressed discreetly, her face covered, so that she might pass as any Jewish woman of the lower orders.
But not to my eye could she hide that fine stature of her, that carriage and walk, so different from other women’s, of which I had already dreamed more than once.
Few and quick were the words we were able to exchange, for the way jammed on the moment, and soon my men and horses were being pressed and jostled.
Miriam was sheltered in an angle of house-wall.
“Have they got the fisherman yet?” I asked.
“No; but he is just outside the wall.
He has ridden up to Jerusalem on an ass, with a multitude before and behind; and some, poor dupes, have hailed him as he passed as King of Israel.
That finally is the pretext with which Hanan will compel Pilate.
Truly, though not yet taken, the sentence is already written.
This fisherman is a dead man.”
“But Pilate will not arrest him,” I defended.
Miriam shook her head.
“Hanan will attend to that.
They will bring him before the Sanhedrim.
The sentence will be death.
They may stone him.”
“But the Sanhedrim has not the right to execute,” I contended.
“Jesus is not a Roman,” she replied. “He is a Jew.
By the law of the Talmud he is guilty of death, for he has blasphemed against the law.”
Still I shook my head.
“The Sanhedrim has not the right.”
“Pilate is willing that it should take that right.”
“But it is a fine question of legality,” I insisted. “You know what the Romans are in such matters.”
“Then will Hanan avoid the question,” she smiled, “by compelling Pilate to crucify him.
In either event it will be well.”
A surging of the mob was sweeping our horses along and grinding our knees together.
Some fanatic had fallen, and I could feel my horse recoil and half rear as it tramped on him, and I could hear the man screaming and the snarling menace from all about rising to a roar.
But my head was over my shoulder as I called back to Miriam:
“You are hard on a man you have said yourself is without evil.”