Herodias had been watching silently but with evident interest. “It seems to me, Centurion,” she observed petulantly, “that you could prevent either eventuality by executing these rebel scum right now.”
“I am a Roman soldier, Tetrarchess. These men have had no trial.”
She pointed to her silent spouse, glumly sitting his horse. “He is the Tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea. These revolutionaries are Galileans. He is the proper one to try them.”
“No, my dear Herodias,” Antipas spoke out. “This is neither the time nor the place to conduct any trial. Centurion, let us proceed with your plans to go on into Jerusalem.”
Herodias lifted her head haughtily, but she made no reply. As soon as the caravan re-formed and was ready for the march, Cornelius gave the command to move forward. Less than two hours later he led the Tetrarch and Tetrarchess through the gate and let them and their servants into the gloomy pile of the old Hasmonean Palace. From there he marched his century to the Fortress of Antonia, where he surrendered his three prisoners to the dungeon jailer, who locked them, still bound securely, in the darkness and squalor of one of the lowest-level cells.
When he had seen to the quartering of his men in their Antonia barracks, he climbed the stone stairway in the southwestern tower and walked along the corridor to the room he had been assigned in the officers’ quarters. He had decided he would have a steaming bath and put on fresh clothing before going down to the mess for a late evening meal.
The chamber, the centurion found, was close and warm. He pushed open the window; then he unbolted the door and walked out onto the balcony. Down below lights blazed in the Temple courts, and men scurried to and fro, already in a frenzy of Passover preparations.
Once again the household of Procurator Pontius Pilate was settled in the magnificent great Palace of the Herods; once again the ancient capital of Israel was teeming with countless Jews come up for the Feast of the Passover.
From every region and hamlet, almost from every home, in Judaea, Samaria, Peraea, and Galilee, from Antioch, Damascus, Tarsus, Alexandria, Memphis, and Cyrene, from Ephesus, Athens, and Corinth, from all provinces rimming the Great Sea, even to Rome and beyond, from the islands of Cyprus and Sardinia and Sicily and Crete and those numerous smaller ones dotting the Aegean, devout Israelites had swarmed into Jerusalem’s crowded narrow ways and squares before the gates.