“What did he say? How did he act?”
“At first he was angry; he charged that the guards had gone to sleep, said the High Priest would be greatly agitated, and threatened to punish us severely. But when I stood my ground and insisted that no one had stolen the body, he began to show concern, and when I left him he was thoroughly frightened.” He turned to Longinus. “That’s why I want to get started as quickly as possible for Tiberias, before Pilate orders my century to remain in Jerusalem to help protect him from the Galilean. Can you be ready to start by midday?”
Longinus nodded. “Yes. I’m already packed. All I have to do is pick up my bags at Antonia.”
58
When Cornelius left the Palace of the Herods, Claudia and Longinus walked out into the garden and sat on the stone bench before the fountain. Already the sun was high in the cloudless heavens and the air was growing warm. Birds chattered in the trees and shrubs, and as they watched the spurting water, two small conies skittered across a circle of sunlight to dark safety beneath a heavily leaved fig bush.
“A glorious day.”
“Yes.” He tossed a twig toward the fountain. “You know, Claudia”—he was looking, she saw, at some invisible point beyond the trembling column of water—“a hundred years from now the world may still remember this day, if....”
“If the Galilean really has come to life?” she finished softly. “What do you think about it, Longinus? Cornelius and Tullia seemed so certain he has.”
The centurion shook his head slowly, his eyes still on the lifting and falling water. “I don’t know what to think. But”—he turned to face her, and his forehead was furrowed in concentration—“how else can you explain it? The guards awake, the heavy stone sealing the tomb. By all the gods....”
“Are you afraid then?”