She leaned out and looked westward along the platform. “Pilate tells me very little,” she answered. “By the gods, it’s a tall structure and a grim-looking one. Doubtless overrun with soldiers, too, even in the Procurator’s private apartments.” She winked and smiled. “I’m glad Pilate decided to stop at the Herod Palace during our visit to Jerusalem. He’ll probably be here at Antonia much of the time. It should be easier then to arrange things over there.”
“Things?”
“Well”—her tone was playful, her eyelids fluttered teasingly—“yes, things for people to do ... two people.”
14
It was past midnight when Longinus returned at last to the now quiet Tower of Antonia. Before leaving Caesarea he had arranged with Sergius Paulus to have little more than token duty during the stay in Jerusalem. In the weeks since his arrival in Palestine, he and the cohort commander had come to an understanding; although Sergius knew little of the centurion’s reasons for being in this far eastern province, he did know that Longinus had been sent out by the Prefect Sejanus, and Sergius was not disposed to challenge, or even question actions of the Prefect.
Pontius Pilate had not returned to the palace; presumably he had eaten his evening meal at the tower with the officers there. At any rate, Longinus and Claudia had not been disturbed.
But when Longinus was admitted by the guards at the tower’s outer gate, he deliberately walked past the stairs leading to the southwest tower, where the administrative offices, including the Procurator’s quarters, were situated. Going by the southeast tower would take him a bit out of his way, Longinus reasoned, but he would be less likely to run into the Procurator at this late and embarrassing hour.
The centurion had been assigned quarters in the officers’ section on a floor level with a great gallery along the Temple side of Antonia; a protective rampart ran the length of this gallery, and a door opened onto the gallery from each officer’s quarters.
The air in the small chamber was musty and warm, and Longinus, too, was warm from the exertion of his walk back to the tower. He sat on the side of his bed for a moment, then stood up and opened the outer door. When the draft of fresh air swept in, he stepped out onto the gallery to wait there until his chamber had cooled.
As he stood leaning on the rampart, Longinus heard a door open behind him. Turning, he saw a soldier coming out. Another man too warm to fall asleep, he thought, as he turned back to stare at the still and almost deserted Temple enclosure. Fires smoldered on the great altar, and flickering lamplight from the region of the cattle and sheep stalls gave a look of eeriness to a scene that just a few hours before had been a bedlam of sound and movement.