Pilate returned quickly to the Praetorium. “Captain of the Guards,” he commanded, “conduct this prisoner to the Tetrarch Herod Antipas. Bear to the Tetrarch the Procurator’s compliments and say to him that the Procurator is sending him the King of the Jews”—a sneering smile for an instant pushed away the scowl on his round face—“a Galilean. It may be that the Tetrarch will wish to examine the prisoner concerning the charges that have been brought against him by the High Priest Caiaphas. At any rate, the prisoner, being from Galilee, is a subject of the Tetrarch and under his jurisdiction.” He nodded curtly. “Go.”
Quickly the guards formed about the tall prisoner and led him from the Praetorium, down the steps into the Court of the Gentiles. Leaving the Temple area through the Gate Shalleketh, they crossed the bridge above the Valley of the Tyropoeon and arrived shortly in front of the sprawling Xystus. A few moments later they paused before the gate giving admittance to the gloomy and forbidding ancient stone residence of the Hasmonean kings.
47
Perhaps it was the thin slash of early sunlight venturing across her bed that had aroused her; perhaps she had awakened early because she had retired early. Pleading weariness and an aching head, Joanna had stayed away from the Tetrarch’s lavish dinner, the preparation of which she had directed. She had felt certain that the banquet, safely hidden within the old palace’s thick walls from the prying, sanctimonious eyes of the priests, would turn into a drunken debauch, and the Feast of the Passover, she held strongly, was no occasion for such frivolity.
The drafty old palace and the grounds about it were quiet. With the exception of the servants, she surmised, there was likely to be no one astir in the Tetrarch’s household, particularly Herod Antipas himself. No doubt he would arise late, in time to bathe and dress for his ceremonious partaking of the Passover meal.
Joanna, who had come up from Tiberias with her husband Chuza and others of the Tetrarch’s staff, lay still and listened to the small sounds of early morning in old Jerusalem: birds twittering on the sill of her open window, cattle lowing in the stalls at the Temple, the rising hum of the densely packed city’s coming alive.
So, lying quiet and keenly awake now, she heard in the court below her window a babble of men’s voices and the uncadenced slap and shuffle of sandaled feet on paving stones. Quickly she slipped from the bed and crossed her chamber. Peering out from behind the draperies, she saw, hardly twenty paces from the palace wall, a motley throng that numbered several Temple priests resplendently robed, with their luxuriant beards fastidiously plaited and oiled. One of the elegant ones, she was surprised to discover, was the High Priest Joseph Caiaphas himself. But why, she wondered, would the High Priest and his Temple aristocracy be coming with such a nondescript mob as this into the palace courtyard?
She ventured to open wider the slit between the draperies and the window frame and lean further forward. Ahead, leading the strangely discordant procession, was a detachment of Roman soldiers, currently assigned, no doubt, as guardsmen in the Temple service, since they were in the vanguard of the High Priest and others of the Temple leadership.
Then, in the center of the marching soldiers, she saw the manacled prisoner. Bareheaded, he was half a head taller than his guards; his reddish-brown hair fell straight to curl at his shoulders. He held his head erect, but he seemed to be walking with labored stride to keep in step with his captors; his wide shoulders sloped as though pulled down by the weight of his long arms and the pinioned hands; his brown homespun robe, already sweat-stained, hung awry and loosely open at the neck.
Though his back was toward her, there was something vaguely familiar about the tall one, his carriage, manner of walking, the way he arched his back, weary though he must have been for a long while. Then he turned his head to look over his shoulder, and she saw the twin-spiked short beard and the curling earlocks.