“Mistress, I was looking at the figs when I heard a familiar voice speaking to the merchant. I looked around; it was Mary of Magdala.”
Jesus and his little group, she had told Tullia, had come down from the Ephraim hills for the Passover. Her master was spending his nights with Martha and Mary and Lazarus out at near-by Bethany; during the day he came into the Temple courts to teach.
“Perhaps, then, he will proclaim himself the Messiah of Israel and establish a new government,” Tullia said she had said to Mary. But the Magdalene had answered that Jesus seemed to be insisting instead that he would not become Israel’s temporal ruler, that he would even die as a sort of Passover sacrifice, an offering for the salvation of his people.
“But surely,” Claudia commented, “you Jews would never so debase yourselves as to offer a human sacrifice, as do those who worship Moloch.”
“It wouldn’t be that way, Mistress. But ... I don’t believe it will ever happen anyway.”
Mary had asked Tullia to spend the night with her in a cottage out at Bethany near the modest home of Lazarus and his sisters. She might be able to see Jesus and even talk with him. They would meet, if Claudia should be agreeable, at Shushan Gate before sunset and go out to Bethany.
“Then you’d best be going soon,” Claudia observed. “But before you meet Mary, I want you to go by Fortress Antonia and tell Longinus that the Procurator will be spending the night there.” She told the maid of the message Pilate had sent her. “And tell Longinus I’ll accept no excuse for his failing to come.”
42
The lean, blue-jowled ascetic face of Joseph Caiaphas, High Priest of Israel, warmed into a disarming smile, and the flames from the chamber’s wall lamps danced in his sharp, dark eyes.
“Excellency,” he said, “you must be exasperated at my coming to you at this late hour.” He faced the Procurator across the ornate, heavy desk. “I know you are tired, and I appreciate the fact that the strain you’ve been undergoing ever since your arrival in Judaea has been intensified during these recent inflammable days of the Passover season.” He leaned nearer Pilate. “I realize, too, Excellency, that you must be determined to prevent the repetition of events in Palestine that might result in the dispatching to Rome of further damaging reports”—the Procurator’s florid round face darkened, but Caiaphas pretended not to notice—“challenging the excellence of the Procurator’s administration of the affairs of this province.”