After making intricately worded excuses, Pilate asked the high priest

Pontius Pilau 29

To sit down on a bench in the shade of the magnolias and wait while he summoned the others needed for the brief, final meeting and gave one last order regarding the execution.

Kaifa made a polite bow, his hand pressed to his heart, and remained in the garden while Pilate returned to the balcony. There he ordered the waiting secretary to summon to the garden the legate of the legion, the tribune of the cohort, two members of the Sinedrion, and the chief of the temple guard, all of whom were awaiting his summons on the lower terrace in the round gazebo with the fountain. Pilate added that he himself was about to go out to the garden, and then he disappeared inside the palace.

While the secretary gathered people for the meeting, Pilate was in a darkened room, shuttered against the sun, meeting with a man whose face was half-covered by a hood, even though the sun's rays could not possibly have bothered him in that room. This meeting was extremely brief. The procurator said a few quiet words to the man who then left, and Pilate returned to the garden through the colonnade.

There, in the presence of everyone whom he had wished to see, the procurator solemnly and dryly acknowledged his confirmation of Yeshua Ha-Notsri's death sentence, and formally asked the members of the Sinedrion which of the criminals they wished to spare. After receiving the answer that it was Bar-rabban, the procurator said, " Very well, " and ordered the secretary to enter it in the official record, squeezed the clasp which the secretary had picked up off the sand, and said solemnly, " It is time! "

All present then started down the wide marble staircase between the walls of roses that exuded an overpowering scent. They descended lower and lower to the palace wall, to the gates that opened out onto a large, smoothly paved square, at the far end of which could be seen the columns and statues of die Yershalaim hippodrome.

As soon as the group emerged from the garden onto the square and mounted the vast stone platform that dominated it, Pilate surveyed the scene through narrowed eyelids and assessed the situation. Although the space he had just traversed, that is, from the palace walls to the platform, was empty, he could no longer see the square directly in front of him because it had been devoured by the crowd. The crowd would have engulfed the platform and the open space as well if it had not been held back by the triple row of Sebastian soldiers on Pilate's left and the soldiers of the Ituraean auxiliary cohort on his right.

And so, Pilate mounted the platform, clutching the superfluous clasp mechanically in his fist and squinting. But the procurator was not squinting because the sun burned his eyes. No! He was squinting because he did not want to see the condemned men who, as he knew very well, were now being led up onto the platform behind him.