“Not crucify?” she cried. “Tell me, it is not that?”
Calcol nodded. To him one Jew more, one Jew less, was immaterial, provided he had his pay, and the prospect of a return to Rome was not too long delayed. Yet none the less in some misty way he wondered why this woman, with her splendid hair and scorching eyes, should have upbraided the tetrarch and abused the procurator because of the friendless Galilean whom he was leading to the cross. Woman to him, however, was, as she has been to others wiser than he, an enigma he failed to solve. And so he nodded merely, not unkindly, and smiled in Mary’s face.
The horrible longing now was stilled. She knew the worst; yet as the knowledge of it penetrated her being, it seemed to her as though it could not be true, that she was the plaything of some hallucination, her mind inhabited by a nightmare from which she must presently awake. The howl of the impatient mob undeceived her. It was real; it was actual; [pg 238]it was life. She stared at Calcol, her fair mouth agape. There were many things she wanted to say; her thoughts teemed with arguments, her mind with persuasions; but she could utter nothing; she was as one struck dumb; and it was not until the centurion smiled that the spell dissolved and the power of speech returned.
“Ah, that never; you shall kill me first!” she cried. And already she saw herself circumventing the centurion, blinding the soldiery, defying the mob, and leading the Master through byways and underground passages out of the accursed city into the fresh glades of Gethsemane, over the hill, down the hollows to the Jordan, and into the desert beyond. There was one spot she knew very well; one that only a bird could find; one that she would mention to no one, but to which she could take him and keep him hidden there in the brakes till night came, and the fording of the river was safe.
“That never!” she cried. And brush[pg 239]ing Bernice off, she caught the Master by the cloak. “Come with me,” she murmured. “I know a way——”
And she would have dragged him perhaps, regardless of the others, but the centurion had her by the arm.
“See here, my pretty friend, your place is not here.”
With a twist he sent her spinning back to Baba Barbulah’s wall.
“March!” he ordered.
The soldiery, disarranged, fell in line. The two robbers picked up their burden. The Master turned to Mary, to the others as well, with that expression which he alone possessed, that look which both promised and assuaged, and, it may be, would have said some word of encouragement, but Mary was at his side again, her hand upon his cloak.