In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was with God.
And the Word was God.
✦ ✦ ✦
The large scallop shells hanging in the corner of the room rattled like dry bones as the air stirred.
“Come in,” Pontius Pilate called out as he tossed his writing quill down on the desk.
What a grating racket those shells make, he thought. I’ll have to have them replaced. They had hung from his ceiling ever since a merchant from the East had given them to him as a gift many years before—and Pilate had hated them for almost as long.
A hand brushed aside the curtain in the doorway and his advisor, Ceint, entered, catching his breath. “Prefect!” he huffed.
“What is it, Ceint? I don’t think I’ve seen you looking so agitated in my life.”
“Well, it was most unexpected,” the advisor grumbled, brushing back his cape and folding his thick arms across his chest.
“What was?” Pilate leaned forward.
“That carpenter fellow, Jesus of Nazareth—Yeshua, the locals call him. He’s come to Jerusalem.”
“Made his move at last, has he? That complicates matters.” The wrinkles deepened on Pilate’s brow. The carpenter from Nazareth had already been giving him headaches for the past four or five days; he could only imagine what it would be like now that the man was sharing the same city.
“What about the Jewish priests—what do the kohanim have to say about all this?”
If there was anything that gave Pilate bigger headaches than prophet carpenters, it was the kohanim.
“Plenty. They’ve been gathering in the courtyard in front of the hall since a short while ago.”
Pilate cursed under his breath and looked in the direction of the courtyard—though several walls stood between it and his quarters. The white petals of a large dragon-tongue orchid that sat in the window swayed in the breeze.
“Well? Drive them off, Ceint!”
His advisor frowned uneasily. “Er . . . I’m afraid that if we ignore the kohanim’s feelings on this matter we’ll pay dearly for it later.” Ceint knew as well as Pilate that governing Israel without the support of the priesthood would be an exercise in futility. It was his acceptance of this fact that made him such a valuable advisor. “Which is to say,” he continued, “it’s almost tax collection time, and their requests for exemption grow louder with each year.”
This Pilate knew without being told. The Jewish clergy’s tax payments accounted for a good four tenths of his entire income from the Roman territories of Israel. It was one of his most important duties as Prefect of Jerusalem and representative of Rome in Israel to badger the kohanim into coughing up a portion of the coin they received from their congregations.
Ceint was warming to his topic. “Prefect, the missteps of the Roman empire in recent years have made it very difficult to administer these provincial territories. Even the proud Roman army is mostly made up of foreign mercenaries these days. Should the unthinkable happen and an uprising against the Empire take place here in Israel, I do not think we can expect much support from the homeland. We must keep that in mind when dealing with the locals.”
This too, Pilate knew, and the knowledge gnawed at him. Just as the midday sun begins to descend toward the western horizon the moment it reaches its zenith, the Roman Empire had begun to weaken year by year, almost imperceptibly, yet with undeniable certainty. The word had passed from mouth to mouth in the markets, dispersing in every direction on the lips of Jewish pilgrims, until every scruffy-headed street urchin in the province knew it for a fact. This knowlege gave the kohanim more influence and made it easier for them to be openly defiant of Rome and her representative.
“Prefect!” someone shouted from outside the room.
“What’s that now?”
Ceint went out to check.
Pilate heard his advisor and another man speaking intently outside. His head felt heavy. They had thrown a banquet the night before for Tethias, the head of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem, and it had left him exhausted. Tethias was a famous lover of alcohol, and the wine they had served, made from some grain grown in lands to the east, was heady stuff. The morning light had already begun painting stripes of light across the dusty cobblestones of Jerusalem’s inner streets when Tethias’s men had helped the inebriated prefect back to his quarters.
“Macillus!” he called. “Where’s Macillus?”
The door in the rear opened and the prefect’s servant came sidling out. “Yes, Master?”
“There you are, Macillus. I require a bath.”
“Very good, Prefect.”
Macillus shuffled from the room, his belt of silver chains clinking across his wine-colored sheepskin tunic.
Ceint came hurrying back in. “Prefect?”
“What is it now?”
“Simon has come with a request from the kohanim.”
“So? What do they want this time?”
Ceint leaned in closer. Pilate caught a whiff of scented oil.
“They want you to arrest Jesus and hand him over to the Sanhedrin . . . or execute him yourself.”
“What? Since when do the kohanim give orders to the representative of Rome?” He spat. “Fine. If it’s blood they want, then it’s blood they’ll get!”
Pontius Pilate picked up the longsword that rested behind his chair and strode out of the room, his face flushed with anger.
Ceint yelped. “Wait, Prefect, wait!” He scurried to stand in front of his chief, holding out both hands in desperation. “You must wait!”
Pilate paused, his jaw twitching with the embarrassment of being manipulated by the kohanim. How could one rule a people if you were forever frightened of angering them?
“Prefect! Er, I was thinking—what if we gave this Jesus a summons instead? It would look better than arresting him. After all, he has committed no crime.
“If necessary,” Ceint continued in that way he had of stating things so evenly that one might take them to mean whatever one wished, “I could do the questioning myself.”
Pilate considered. If they served this “prophet” with a summons now, they would always be able to jail him afterward under the pretext of incivility toward a Roman agent.
“Not a terrible idea,” the prefect admitted with a sigh. In truth, it was a great annoyance to him to have to question and try heretics. Prolocutors of faith had a way with words, but they always seemed to lack a basic grasp on logic—and yet pointing out their errors never seemed to have any effect, much to Pilate’s consternation.
“Perhaps, Prefect,” Ceint continued, sensing his master’s hesitation, “we should have a look at this Jesus fellow first. I will be happy to join you. We can watch him anonymously, then decide his fate.”
If they did so, Pilate knew, Ceint would be sure to slowly win him over to his way of thinking. But the realization did not upset him. It was often the case that Ceint’s stated plans were what the prefect had been unconsciously planning anyway—another reason that he was such a good and loyal advisor.
“Right. Let’s go see for ourselves what all the fuss is about.”
Pilate returned his longsword to its customary place behind the chair and stuck his head into the gallery behind the office.
“We’re going out.”