But what if this Jesus had really fancied himself a man ordained to lead his little nation in throwing off the yoke of Rome? What, reasoned the centurion, if he had been as visionary, as passionately though unwisely patriotic as countless other Jews assembled here in Rome for Israel’s great celebration? In this tense, highly inflammable atmosphere of Passover week in Jerusalem, with great numbers of his followers believing that he possessed supernatural authority and powers, the rabbi’s willingness to allow himself to be proclaimed Israel’s king would have resulted in fearful bloodshed. But this Jesus at the last moment had either lost his courage, or else he had never contemplated leadership of Israel except in some vague, religious sense that Cornelius perhaps would term spiritual. At any rate, Longinus concluded, the Galilean was no threat to Rome and of no concern to the Empire. In his report to Sejanus, he would make no mention of the rabbi, unless in some manner Pontius Pilate might become involved with the man from Galilee. He wondered if Pilate had even been informed of the little procession that had come to such an inglorious ending within the Temple court. He wondered if Pilate, in fact, in his harried administration of the affairs of Judaea had ever heard of this Jesus.
Claudia sat on a small stone bench facing one of the fountains in the garden of the Palace of the Herods. All about her the grass was a luxuriant green and the flower beds, fed, she had been told, with blood drained through subterranean pipes from the overflow of the Great Altar, were already ablaze with color. Birds skipped and twittered in the rich foliage, and now and then some venturing small animal would skitter across an open patch of bright sunshine to disappear beneath the branches of a flowering shrub. The bench, shaded by a gnarled great olive, was invitingly cool despite the day’s warmth and heaviness, and the gentle babble of the spraying water ordinarily would have lulled one sitting there into a mood of peaceful contemplation, if not pleasant slumber.
But this afternoon the wife of the Procurator felt neither peaceful nor pleasant. She watched the fountain’s waters lifting and arching and falling and draining away in an undeviating pattern of movement and allowed her own thoughts to wander with it.