“Yes, I know it. There are many, as you say. But there is one I will enter. On the door stands written The Future, and behind it, Pilate, is your death.”
The Roman, goaded to exasperation, sprang to his feet. An expression which Antipas had used occurred to him. “Away with the hetaira,” he cried; and he was about, it may be, to order her to be tossed to the fierce wild swine in the paddocks of the park when the prisoner and his guards reappeared on the tessel[pg 220]lated pavement, and Mary, already dragged from him, was instantly forgot.
A tattered sagum, which had once been scarlet, but which had faded since, hung, detained at the shoulder by a rusty buckle, and bordered by a laticlave, loosely about his form. In his hand a bulrush swayed; on his head was a twisted coil of bear’s-breech, in which, among the ruffled leaves, one bud remained; it was white, the opening edges flecked with pink, perhaps with blood, for from the temples and about the ear a rill ran down and mixed with the purple of the laticlave below. And in this red parody of kingship the Christ stood, unmoved as a phantom, but in his face and eyes there was a projecting light so luminous, so intangible, and yet so real, that the skeptical procurator started, the staff of office pendent in his grasp.
“Ecce homo!” he exclaimed. Instinctively he drew back, and, wonderingly, half to himself, half to the Christ, “Who are you?” he asked.
“A flame below, a soul above,” Jesus [pg 221]answered, yet so inaudibly that the guards beside him did not catch the words.
To Pilate his lips had barely moved, and his wonderment increased. “Why do you not answer?” he said. “You must know that I have the power to condemn and to acquit.”
With that gentleness that was the flower of his parables Jesus raised his voice. “No,” he replied, “you can have no power against me unless it come from above.”
Again Pilate drew back. Unsummoned to his lips had sprung the words, “Behold the man!” and now he exclaimed, “Behold the king!”
But to the mob the vision he intercepted was lost. They saw the jest merely, and with it the stains that torture leaves. The sight of blood is heady; it inebriates more surely than wine. The mob, trained by the elders, and used by them as a body-guard, fanatic before, were intoxicated now. With one accord they shrieked the liturgy again.
“Sekaph! Sekaph! Let him be crucified.”