Something pale and without form, invisible to the eye, emerged from Judas’s body and blew directly over Pilate.
Pilate thought he heard Judas say, “It is a terrifying thing.”
“Terrifying? What’s terrifying?”
“I fear . . .”
“Yes?”
Judas turned away from the burning in the northern sky, as though his back might bear the brunt of the tragedy and destruction it would bring.
“Yes. The people will connect the execution of the man from Nazareth with something truly terrible, and they will tell their children.” With that, like a shadow, Judas drifted across the marble balcony and returned to the chamber within.
A short while later, Ceint came hurrying out. “Prefect, Judas Iscariot gave instructions as he left.”
“What did he have to say?”
“He said we should place soldiers at every crossroad in the city from the very early morning and prepare for the worst. He said we should also check our stores of food and watch the roads closely.”
Pilate let his shoulders drop. “Very well, Ceint. Do it, and do it quickly.”
Ceint cast a wondering glance at his master’s face. “Have you received word of some rebellion? I did not get that impression from Judas.”
“I expect no rebellion.”
“Does this have something to do with the execution of the man from Nazareth?”
Pilate put a hand to his forehead, a pained look on his face. “Ceint, in truth I have no idea. But Judas may be right about the need for caution. Do as he says.”
“Prefect, if it is a matter of such gravity, shall I not summon Iscariot once again and have him explain himself?”
Pilate pressed his fingers against his temples and shook his head. “No, Judas will tell us nothing. It is likely he himself does not know exactly what will transpire. All will be revealed on the morrow. Go now, Ceint. Go.”
Ceint lingered for a moment longer, but when he saw that Pilate intended no further words, he departed.
Clouds of multicolored light continued to shimmer in the north, but when Pilate looked to the east, he saw there the watery light of approaching dawn. The stars in the north and east were already dim, filled with the premonition of a terrible ending to come, yet the strong winds that whipped past the vast star field directly overhead promised that the day would dawn hot, without a single cloud in the sky.
High in the sky over Mount Zion and the ridges of Har Hatzofim across the wide Jordan River Valley, gigantic thunderheads had been gathering since morning. But the sun still shone on the near side of the river, suffusing the region’s famous cliffs of white granite with blinding light.
A right turn off the road that leads to the Shushan Gate brings the traveler to a barren, rocky hillside called Golgotha. Judas was standing where the two ways met, looking down at the Jordan Valley below. Several steep, jagged paths were cut into the stepped faces of the cliffs, looking like scars left by lightning bolts. The small collection of dingy dwellings near the center of the valley was the village of Jericho. Beyond that, the Jordan River curved like a silvery snake beneath a shimmering mirage.
Following the bends of the river with his eyes, Judas gazed across the vista to his right to where the Jordan swelled suddenly to become the Dead Sea. Half of that body of water glimmered a rich, brilliant blue, while the other half sat in the shadow cast by the protruding cliff of Tel Bet Yerah.
Once, when Judas was a boy, he had seen something sunken in the depths of the deep water beneath the cliffs—an ancient, empty city. There were buildings of stone there, with square windows cut in their walls; an arcade leading to a wide plaza; even trees turned to stone. All of it seemed close enough to touch were he to reach over the side of the boat. He’d asked many people why there was a city at the bottom of the Dead Sea but had never received a satisfactory answer. Some merely shook their heads fearfully and declined to speak of it, while others had made the Jewish hand gesture for warding off demons and had either promptly departed or driven him away. It was only much later that he had learned of a legend, passed down by the prophets, that identified the city under the waves as part of Sodom or Gomorrah, sunk by no lesser power than the wrathful God Himself.
When Judas was around thirty years of age, a powerful earthquake had struck the region, destroying many buildings in Jerusalem and in other towns and villages on either side of the Jordan. After that, the city at the bottom of the sea could no longer be seen. Where it had been, a large pile of boulders covered the seafloor. Judas harbored doubts about whether the lost ruin really was the remnant of Sodom and Gomorrah. All the legends were in agreement that God in His wrath had rained fire and sulfur down from Heaven, and the two towns had been swallowed by the earth. Judas took this to be a clear indication that, at some point far in the past, a severe earthquake had shaken the Jordan River Valley, causing a volcano to erupt and fissures to open in the ground. Yet the underwater city in Judas’s memory had appeared whole and unblemished. How could this be, if it had suffered such a calamity? It was an unfathomable mystery, and now unanswerable for all time. As such it had joined the set of suspicions that had lingered and grown in Judas’s mind for some time now.
He had always found it odd that the legends of the region pertaining to things divine were so startlingly real. It was almost as if a mere two or three generations before, it had been a regular occurrence for the people of the Jordan River Valley to encounter gods. They spoke with them, fought with them, and sometimes collaborated with them . . .
And whence the abundance of self-proclaimed prophets? Many of them did it for money, of course—prophecy was an occupation, nothing more. Yet still the people of the Jordan hungered for word from the gods as those living elsewhere did not, and they accepted uncritically the revelations of the many prophets. It was possible, Judas had to admit, that since ancient times, there truly had been people living here who had some privileged knowledge of the divine. Moses had been one of them, and Jesus of Nazareth another.
“There you are, Judas. What are you doing here? Time to head up to Golgotha. I expect the crucifixion of the Nazarene to begin shortly.”