Already the prisoner had been led away, and beyond, in the barracks, was the whiz of jagged leather that lacerated, rebounded, and lacerated again.
“I will not,” he answered. “What I have ordered, I have ordered. As for you——”
There had come to her that look which sibyls have. “Pilate,” she interrupted, “you are powerful here, I know, but”—and her hand shot out like an arrow from a bow—“over there vultures are circling; in your power is a corpse. What the vultures scent, I see.”
So abrupt and earnest was the gesture that unconsciously Pilate found himself looking to where she seemed to point. He lowered his eyes in vexation. Wrangling with a woman was not to his taste.
“There, there,” he said, much as one might to a fretful child; “don’t throw stones.”
“I have but one; it is Justice, and that I keep to hurl at you.”
The procurator’s mouth twitched ominously. “My dear,” he said, “you are too pretty to talk that way; it spoils the looks. Besides, I have no time to listen.”
“Tiberius has and will.”
Pilate nodded; it was the third time he had heard the threat that day.
“There are many rooms in his palace,” he answered, with covert significance.