“By all the great gods ...” But Longinus hushed precipitately, for Jesus was speaking to the woman, now fully alert. “No man condemns you, my sister, and neither do I,” Jesus said, as he pointed toward her executioners, now slinking away toward the Gate of Shushan. “Go, and sin no more.”
Longinus turned now to the Procurator’s wife, and on his face she saw an expression of utter amazement. “But, Claudia, the woman was dead! Her head was crushed; her face was a bloody pulp. And now, look! She is walking away, around the corner of the Soreg! The Galilean, Claudia, he must be a god! By all the gods, Claudia, this man must be a god! He must be....”
But Longinus’ voice was fading, and he was receding, slipping away, and so were Cornelius and the Galilean and the woman....
Claudia opened her eyes; her chamber was flooded with light. She closed them again, trying to recapture the scene in the great court of the Temple. But the dream had fled. “Bona Dea,” she said aloud. “It was so real. That woman. And the Galilean. And Cornelius and Longinus. So vivid. Maybe”—the notion suddenly occurred to her—“I’m dreaming now, maybe I’m dreaming that I was dreaming.”
She sat up, swung her feet around to the floor, stretched and yawned. Then quickly she arose and crossing to the window, looked down at the ships in the harbor. Bright sunlight flashed from the hulls and the billowing sails. On the docks slaves struggled with casks and crates as they loaded and unloaded vessels. The world she was seeing was real; she stood looking through her window upon things tangible and comprehensible. The dream, with all its implications of the inscrutable, was gone, vanished.
But she was not to forget it entirely. One day Tullia revealed that while at the market place she had encountered some travelers from Galilee who had gone up to Jerusalem and were returning by way of Caesarea. On their journey, they told her, they had come upon the Galilean and several of his band in a hamlet in the mountains of Ephraim. Jesus had returned to Galilee from the Feast of Tabernacles, but after several weeks he had gone back for the Feast of Dedication. From Jerusalem he had retired into Peraea.
As Tullia related the story she had been told, her eyes began to shine. “While he was on the other side of the Jordan,” she went on, “he received a message from Bethany....”
“Bethany?”
“It’s a small village a few miles—a mile or so—just west of Jerusalem, Mistress.”
“What was the message?”