“Yes, they said he was from Galilee.” His eyes avoided her probing stare.
“He was called Jesus?”
“I believe they called him that.”
“Then you did not receive my message ... about the dream I had?”
She saw in his eyes a mounting panic. “Yes, Claudia, but it was only a dream, and the High Priest demanded....”
“You condemned to the cross an innocent man”—she stood up and pointed a trembling finger at the Procurator, and her eyes blazed furiously—“because the High Priest demanded it! The great Procurator, representative of imperial Rome, crucified an innocent man because a jealous and mean little Temple strut-cock ordered you to send him to the cross! By all the gods, Pilate, and you condemned him after I sent you that warning!”
“But, Claudia, I was being pulled at from both sides. I didn’t want to condemn him. I told them I found no fault in the man. I had a basin of water fetched and before the multitude I washed my hands of his blood, and....”
“You washed your hands of his blood! Never! Oh, by all the gods, those hands! Those blood-red, crawling, slinking hands!” She held her palms before her face. “In the dream I saw them. Now you’ll never be able to cleanse those foul, polluted hands.”
“But if I had released him, Claudia, and news had got back to the Prefect that I had allowed a dangerous revolutionary to go free....”
“You knew he was no revolutionary.” Her voice was almost a hiss. “You knew he was an innocent man, and you sent him to the cross.” She crossed the room quickly and looked out toward the Hill of the Skull. The shadows were heavy in the square before Antonia, but the sinking sun shone levelly upon the three burdened crosses on the hill. “Which cross is his?” she asked, without taking her eyes from the macabre scene.