“Release him! By all the gods, can the Tetrarch be speaking seriously? Does he for one moment contemplate giving this notorious insurrectionist his freedom to resume his agitating against us, against Rome...?”
“But, my dear Tetrarchess, Rome, as represented by the Centurion Cornelius,” he interrupted, as he glanced toward the centurion and then turned his head the other way to address his wife, “thinks that releasing this man will be not only an evidence of the Tetrarch’s magnanimity but also a politic act greatly pleasing to a countless number of our Jewish brothers. It was he who suggested....”
“But are not you Tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea? Was it not your wife and you, not the centurion, whom this revolutionary castigated so bitterly? And has he not sought to inflame the people even against Rome?”
Claudia had turned to confront Cornelius; she said nothing, but her eyes were sharply questioning. He bent forward and spoke quietly, so that none of the others would hear.
“I did suggest that it would be a good idea—especially in so far as Sejanus is concerned—for him to free the man, since it would please the Jews and the man is plainly no insurrectionist against Rome. But I didn’t know he meant to have the fellow brought before us. The man should have been freed quietly, with no fanfare.”
“Frankly, I think he would have done better,” Claudia whispered to Cornelius, “to have had the fellow beheaded, but quietly.” She leaned nearer the centurion. “Antipas craves attention; he tries to be dramatic. He’s always....”
But suddenly she stopped, for the guards, flanking the manacled prisoner, were entering the great hall. They escorted John into the open square before the Tetrarch’s table.
“Unbind him,” the Tetrarch commanded, “and step back from him.”
In an instant the guards had removed the shackles about the prophet’s wrists and retreated to their former places at the doorway.
Though not all the Tetrarch’s guests had completely sobered, every eye was on the Wilderness preacher. In the months he had been imprisoned in the Machaerus dungeon, John had lost the leathery deep burn of the desert, but otherwise he was little changed. He was tall and erect and perhaps even more gaunt than he had appeared to be the day Antipas had ordered his arrest; his coarse brown robe, belted with a woven rope at the waist, hung loosely about him. But his eyes still blazed with the zealot’s fire as, relaxed and silent, he stood calmly facing the Tetrarch.