Come, Follow Me, a Novel of Pilate and Jesus

Come, Follow Me:

A Story of Pilate and Jesus

Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” After he said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said that he found no evil in this man. John 19:38

The lightning flashed outside with an audible hiss, filling the hall with brilliant blue fire that left the eyes dazzled, followed immediately by booming thunder that shook the marble columns in the governor’s Praetorium. The five bearded men in counsel with the governor started at the sound, and looked fearfully over their shoulders at the tempest that had begun to break outside. However, they all suppressed the desire to rush to the open balcony to see where the bolt had struck from the darkening sky.

“Close!” said Pilate, “Very close!” Normally himself fearful and superstitious about lightning, the Roman governor felt that this strike had come from Fortuna herself, the goddess of good luck. The blast had emphasized his words perfectly. “As I was saying,” continued Pilate, in the Greek lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean, “there will be no violation of your Law, which Rome has always respected. My soldiers were to terminate the execution just about this very time. The criminals will be hauled down and given to their families for burial. They must be buried by sundown, or they will be held in camp outside the City until your sacred time has passed. Rome would certainly never wish to profane any of your Sabbaths, much less this Passover Sabbath, which you hold so sacred.”

Oh, and you do hold it so sacred, scheming by hook or by crook to show me in contempt of your Law and stir up rebellion on this Passover Sabbath. You scheming bastards would have been pleased to have the streets run red with blood! But I outmaneuvered you at every turn. And now, in a few hours, your very own Law will hold you inactive, bound to prayer and ritual, while the spark of rebellion that you so carefully kindled flickers out.

The old men muttered among themselves in a rapid Aramaic that Pilate could not follow. Outside, the skies, which had been darkening rapidly since noon, gave way to a spatter of heavy raindrops, rapidly building to a torrential cascade. Whipped by the rising wind, the rain pelted through the open balcony door to splatter heavily onto the mosaic floor. Servants scurried around inside, closing doors, shuttering windows and lighting oil lamps, for although it was only midafternoon, the skies had darkened to near total blackness.

“So do you have anything else for me this afternoon? We have executed your would-be king, as you wished, and we have observed all laws, those of Rome and your own, in doing so. I would suggest if you have anything else, speak quickly, or you will not be home in time for sundown. The weather has turned decidedly wicked outside.” The wind rattled the tall louvered doors, now closed, rain lashing against them. Thunder muttered in the distance and boomed menacingly nearby, the sky filled with dancing blue-white lightning bolts.

With no options remaining to them, the five representatives of the Sanhedrin - conservative Sadducees to a man - shook their heads.

“Very well, then. I will arrange you dry transport to your homes in my personal carriage!” Without waiting for their reply, the governor rose out of his seat, a simple folding chair with ivory legs and no back, and left. The governor’s aide-de-camp, a slave named Fidelis, emerged from the shadows to escort them out of the Praetorium.

Pilate himself retired to his private office, closed the door and sat at his desk, his head in his hands. Yes, I outmaneuvered them at every turn. But did the cost of that one innocent life justify the thousands of guilty lives I spared this weekend? What IS truth, anyway? Damn that composed, almost regal prophet, with his wry smile and erect stance, even after thirty-nine lashes had ripped his back to shreds. Damn you, you didn’t have to die! I could have saved you, if you had just given me a chance! Tears burned his eyes, as he rang the pull chime for Fidelis. Only wine would ease the ache of this most distasteful decision he had ever made. Although it had all worked out exactly as he had planned it, Pilate felt... soiled.

Fidelis returned with wine and a plate of figs for the governor to nibble, as Pilate had missed lunch entirely this tumultuous day. As the servant was arranging this on the desk, Lucius Cornelius Longinus, centurion of the Urban Cohort, knocked at the door, soaking wet, dripping on the tile floor. “Reporting the execution completed, sir!” he announced. Although the soldier bore a patrician name, his only relationship to the illustrious Cornelian family was that one of his ancestors had once been a slave, freed by the infamous Lucius Cornelius Sulla himself a century ago.

“Excellent! Come in, come in and sit down. Join me in some wine and figs, and I will have Fidelis fetch you a dry tunic. You’re soaked!” Outside, the storm still raged, the wind howling through the columns outside, rain pouring. The oil lamps flickered from stray drafts stirred up by the outside tempest, emitting black smoke as they wavered.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I can’t... I’m on duty,” declined Lucius, still standing.

“Not any longer. Let your optio take over. This storm will put a lid on things tonight, I think. I need a centurion’s advice and counsel now.” The centurion had served under Pontius Pilate on many frontiers, in Raetia, in Germany, in Pannonia, and now in this hell-hole Judean province. Their careers had risen together, Longinus’ from a common miles to primus pilus, the coveted “first lance” senior centurion of the legion; Pilate’s, from junior tribune to governor of Judea. Longinus was ordered here as the head of the Urban Cohort at the specific request of Pilate. Pilate now needed the support that only a centurion can give, to a commander who has had to make a difficult decision. “So sit! Fidelis will get word to your optio. Tell me how it went.”

Fidelis left to carry out the instructions without waiting for further direction. Longinus sat his dripping bulk in a chair opposite the governor’s desk.

“Quick, merciful quick as we could make it, without makin’ it too obvious. We pressed someone into helpin’ him carry the cross up the hill, ‘cuz he wasn’t going to make it, no way. An’ once we got him hung up proper, we tried to give him some wine, laced with some stuff to help him. But he wouldn’t take it. He was in an’ out till about three, when he started cryin’ out in Aramaic, somethin’ about bein’ forsaken and all. I think it was finally getting to him. We went ahead like you planned and broke the legs of the other two to finish ‘em off. But he was already dead, an’ we put a lance in him to be sure.” He paused, and wiped at his eyes. “I did it myself. I owed him.... he healed my son, once. “

“I didn’t know that,” said Pilate, quietly.

“About a year ago up near my home in the Galilee. My son got took sick real bad. The doctors said it was some kind of fever, and they couldn’t do anything more. Anyway, he was preaching up in one of the small towns there, and he had a reputation for healing. So... I went to see him, and ask him if he could do anything for my boy. You know what he said to me? He said, ‘Let’s go to your house, right now.’ Well, I was just taken aback by all this. I lived miles from there, and you know how touchy Jews can be about coming into a foreigner’s house... makes them unclean or something. So I said, no, please, you don’t have to go that far out of your way, just say the word, and that will be enough.”

“So what happened, Longinus?” said Pilate.

“Well, he smiled and made a big fuss to the crowd of Galileans about what I had just said, and said, ‘Go on home. Your faith has healed your son!’ An’ made out like I had something to do with it all. I never understood that. And you know what.... when I got home, my boy was sitting up, eating, an’ his fever broke. That was a good man. He didn’t deserve what was done to him. I hated doin’ it, but at least I made it quick as possible.”

“And the body?”

“Down already. I made sure before I left. The other two as well. Your friend Josephus in the Sanhedrin came. The women claimed his body and they put him in his tomb right away... With this weather, I don’t think anyone but them and us know where it is. The other two bodies are still in the camp, under guard. I don’t think anyone’s going to claim them, and if they’re not claimed, we’ll dispose of them ourselves after the Passover is done. All the bodies are outside the City, like you said.”

“Guards on the tomb?”

“You bet. Word is his followers will try to steal the body and claim he’s come back from the dead. But most likely some of the Sadducee radicals will just try to dig him up, drag him through the streets and toss him in the dump for the dogs to chew up, they hate him so. That’s trouble for you either way. I put double guards on. He’s buried and I intend for him to stay buried. His family wants to go in, clean him up and anoint him after the Passover. I told them they could, but just the women, day after tomorrow at sunrise. I hope that’s all right.”

“Sure. It’s in keeping with their tradition, and that’s exactly how I want this handled. By the book. Their book. All the way.”

Fidelis returned with a dry tunic and a towel for Longinus, who looked questioningly at the governor. At a nod from Pilate, Longinus shed his soaked uniform. The smell of wet leather and wool filled the room as Longinus shrugged off his armor, tugging the drenched white army tunic over his shoulders. After towelling down, he slipped into the dry tunic. “There, that feels some better!” he said, sitting back down.

“So what do you think is going to happen next?” asked Pilate.

“Well, you guessed right about things this morning. There were a lot of weapons in that crowd. The sicarii terrorists were handing out clubs and swords and daggers all over the place. My troops caught a few, but we missed a lot more. It was a setup, for sure. If you had set him free, it would have been a riot, and with the Passover holiday crowd, the City was jam-packed full. A full legion would have been outnumbered, and there was no way just my urban cohort could have stopped that mob.”

Pilate nodded. “Even if we had stopped them, we’d have lost. Roman soldiers slaughtering Jews on the Passover to save someone who had profaned their religion and their Temple? Think how that would go over out in the countryside. They knew I’d never hand him over to them for stoning, but they really didn’t expect me to execute him myself under Roman law either. You know what they did, not an hour after I had him hauled off?”

“I’m afraid to ask,” replied Longinus, sipping his wine.

“The Sadducees sent a deputation to me, saying that I had better not plan on profaning the Sabbath by leaving them dangling there overnight, and complaining about the sign I had you stick on the cross. Jesus Nazareni Rex Iudaeorum. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. I think that made some of them nervous. Maybe they have aspirations themselves in that direction! Anyway, they knew how long a crucifixion takes, sometimes days, and it was they who put that mob up to demanding it... this morning! That’s why I gave the special instructions to cut it short. They wanted blood, they got it, and now it’s over. Till the next time.” Pilate poured himself another goblet of wine, and offered the pitcher to Longinus. “More?”

So Pilate and Longinus sat and drank. The last of the storm blew itself away outside, while the two soldiers discussed past campaigns and exploits. Finally, with the thunder fading away to a distant rumble and the rain to a fine mist, Longinus excused himself. After all, tomorrow was the Sabbath, and there was still potential trouble which would require a clear head. Pilate, on the other hand, decided to drink the rest of the wine.

Pilate was never a dreamer, other than the usual erotic and sensual dreams that come to all men, dreams which he never remembered as other than vaguely pleasant. His wife was the dreamer, and she had warned him the previous night to have nothing to do with that man, because of a dream she’d had. But tonight Pilate did dream. Running down a dark trail, trying to catch the man he had condemned... to do what? To apologize? To explain why it had to be? He could not remember. But he did remember that the man was nowhere to be found, and Pilate awoke in the early morning, sweating profusely, breathing fast. But as he looked around the darkened office, where he had fallen asleep on his couch, there was no one to be seen... just as in his dream. He tried to go back to sleep, but found he could not.

Saturday brought a splendidly cool dry breeze to an almost snappy spring morning, a stark contrast to the stifling heat and humidity of yesterday, finally broken by the violent afternoon thunderstorm. As the ram’s horn shofars brayed from every corner of the Temple, Pilate went out onto his patio overlooking the Temple to watch the festival first hand; Longinus had warned him that several hundred thousand would be in Jerusalem, just to be close to the Passover.

Pilate remembered what his predecessor Valerius had said, warning him that these self-described “proud, stiff-necked people” would be difficult to govern, and that they had been. His soldiers, shortly after he took over as praefectus, had requested permission to carry their eagles and images of Tiberius on their standards inside the city walls to the barracks, rather than unshipping them outside and carrying them in, shrouded from view. This had ended in a confrontation, the entire Sandedrin willing to face death in his courtyard rather than allow this mockery of their unseen and unseeable god. He smiled, remembering the rebuke from Tiberius, charging him to “adhere to established precedent” when governing the province.

Well, he had tried. He learned as much of their religion as he could, gaining a grudging respect for its unashamed monotheism, and its claimed antiquity going back thousands of years. Jewish politics was another matter.

I have tried to make the Sanhedrin into their Senate, to consult with them, to make them partners, to guide me in governing this province. But the factions! The damned Pharisees purport to be modernists, educated in Greek languages and philosophy, all promising to help me make Judea into a model part of the empire. What they are doing is lying through their teeth, fishing for another bribe or business interest. But at least the Pharisees could be bought, though usually not for long. The Sadducees just want me and all foreigners gone, so Judaea can go back to some primitive religious state. Those bastards spend all their time stirring up the Zealots in the countryside, and the sicarii knife-wielders in the city. They think those bandits are going to be their army of God that will throw us out. It is a good thing for the Pharisees and Sadducees both that the Zealots have no chance of doing that… if they did, their next target would be their sponsors’ throats, to take their gold, houses and women as their own.

As smoke began to curl above the Temple courtyard where the sacrificial fires were being kindled, Pilate’s thoughts turned to this last confrontation over Jesus. An interesting fellow. His intelligence people had been initially concerned when he began preaching in Galilee and drawing huge crowds. They took a keen interest in him, what he said, what he advocated. But he never made the mistake of his cousin John, to criticize those in real power. That had cost that prophet his head at the hands of Herod. Jesus’ message was always mystical and other-worldly, peace, love and forgiveness, even toward non-Jews. Actually a helpful contrast to the firebrand preachers trying to stir up uprisings, a distraction from them.

Pilate smiled as he recollected how the Pharisees and Sadducees both at first vied in courting Jesus: the man’s crowd appeal was powerful and he could be valuable to whichever faction won him over. The Pharisees saw his mysticism as a counter to the harshly fundamentalist Sadducees. The Sadducees, on the other hand, saw him as the leader who could catalyze the masses of Judea into a rebellion against Rome. But Jesus rebuffed them both. Like he said yesterday, his business was not of this world, neither the world of the merchants nor the world of rebellion. And last week, he outfoxed them all. They were going to seduce him to announce himself, organizing a huge crowd to sing “Hosannah” and wave palms, the traditional greeting to a Jewish king, when he entered Jerusalem at the beginning of Passover week. But he took his triumphal procession wearing shabby traveling clothes, seated on a donkey, making a mockery of the whole affair.