CHAPTER 27

Pilate brushed back his cape and took his place on the judgment seat for the final time. He waited for the defiant chant of the crowd to stop, and even then there were a few stray cries of those who wanted Jesus crucified.

Pilate ordered a bowl of water brought to the top of the steps. It was not a normal request for the middle of a trial, and it took several minutes for the servants to return. The crowd waited, murmuring about what the request might mean.

The silver bowl was placed on top of a pedestal a few feet away from the judgment seat. With his eyes on the crowd, Pilate rose and stood behind the bowl.

“I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he declared loudly. He dipped his hands in the water and scrubbed them together. He shook off the remaining water, and his servant handed him a towel.

“His blood be on us and our children!” someone shouted. Others quickly joined in. Pilate said nothing, dried his hands, and handed the towel back to his servant.

The man loved ceremony, but the words of Cicero confirmed what I felt in my heart. “A stain on the soul can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any river.” Much less, Cicero might have added, by a small bowl of water. I knew Cicero was correct just as surely as I knew one other thing: Pilate’s soul was not the only one being stained. I was right there with him, having refused to stand my ground for an innocent man.

Pilate returned to his seat and asked for the titulus board, a rectangular piece of wood about two feet long, coated with white gypsum. He passed the board to me, and I took a seat. A servant handed me a reed that I dipped into the black ink.

“Three languages,” Pilate said. “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

I began the first inscription in Greek. Next would come Latin. Lastly, the same words written in Hebrew.

Annas placed a foot on the bottom step, and a guard moved toward him. The former high priest narrowed his eyes.

“It should say, ‘He claimed to be king of the Jews,’” Annas insisted. A few of the other leaders voiced their agreement, but I kept on writing, finishing off the Greek.

“What I have written, I have written,” Pilate said.

When the titulus was complete, it was hung with a rope around Jesus’ neck, and the crowd jeered. But the shouts were less insistent now. The titulus was a clear sign that the prisoner stood condemned and would soon be executed.

Pilate remained in his seat, and my mind seared the scene before me into my memory. The bloody rabbi, standing at the top of the steps, gazing toward heaven, a wooden sign around his neck. The chief priests in the front row of the crowd, still scowling. Pilate sitting above the fury, pretending to be a man in charge, though everyone knew he had been emasculated. And the empty second-story window where Procula had stood earlier that day, symbolizing the futility of even a dream from the gods.

“He is condemned,” Pilate said. “Let him be crucified.”

The crowd roared, and the soldiers wasted no time descending on the prisoner and pulling him down the steps. In the next few moments, despite the dozen or so guards surrounding Jesus, the crowd seemed to swallow him.

I watched with my stomach in my throat as the band of soldiers and the crowd pushed the prisoner across the courtyard and through the gates at the other end of the stone pavement. I knew they were heading for the area the Jews called Golgotha, the place of the skull, where the soldiers would nail his body to a cross as soon as possible. Two others were scheduled for execution as well —thieves who were supposed to be the bookends for the crucifixion of the notorious Barabbas. Instead, they would hang on either side of Jesus.

I watched until the last person left the courtyard and the soldiers swung the massive gates shut and secured the large iron lock.

The silence that followed was disorienting. There was still a trail of crimson baking in the sun, a trail that marked the prisoner’s movements that day —up and down the stairs, into the Praetorium, across the courtyard. There was a large puddle on the stones at the foot of the whipping post. But the servants were already scurrying about, anxious to scrub the floors of the palace and the steps of the portico. Others would take down the whipping post, storing it until it was needed again.

The silence gave me a moment to reflect. When I closed my eyes, I could still see him —his face bloodied, bruised, and swollen; the crown of thorns pressed low on his brow; that ridiculous purple robe hanging from his shoulders, the cloth sticking to his wounds. I could still hear his voice and feel his eyes piercing my soul. “I was born for this,” he had said, “and for this I have come into the world: to testify to the truth.”

He had a sense of destiny, which shamed me even more.

I once had a sense of destiny too. Or at least I thought I did. I was born to be an advocate for the truth, to fight for justice, to speak for the powerless. But in my greatest test I had failed miserably. I had lost my nerve and at a critical moment abandoned my principles.

Now the rabbi would pay with his life.

What is truth?

It hadn’t been Pilate’s finest hour either. Yet he had escaped another explosive incident and didn’t seem to care about one man’s life. The truth of Pilate’s legacy was this: His past misdeeds had hemmed him in. He could no longer do what was just.

He seemed determined to shrug it off. He rose from the judgment seat and unhooked his red cape, handing it to his servant. He dismissed the remaining guards and cast one last glance at the window where Procula had once stood.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “And I need to finish my shave.”

I was grateful that he didn’t ask me to join him. I headed straight for my room, my thoughts consumed by the role I had played in the death of Jesus. I replayed the flogging, the stoic prisoner absorbing each blow as Pilate counted them out. I knew the whole affair would have turned out differently if not for my gambit with Barabbas.

The thought of it sickened me, and I reached for the washbowl, leaned over it, and threw up.