The Master's Quilt (2 page)

Hastily, he dipped the hyssop he held in his
trembling right hand into the wooden bowl he cupped in his left and
sprinkled the blood of the lamb upon his doorway, wondering why he
felt so strange on this very special night.

• • •

The priest lit the incense. The room was
smoky, the air thick with
ketoret
, the special blend of
spices he had prepared earlier. He took several deep breaths as he
went about his tasks and smiled contentedly. His nose twitched as
he savored the unique, aromatic smell: frankincense, galbanum,
stactate, onchya, and myrrh. Finally, as the thick night began to
seep into the cracks and crevices of the Temple, he trimmed the
lamps in preparation for the evening prayer.

D
eucalion
Quinctus Cincinnatus tasted fear. The flavor was cold, like iron,
and it lay on his tongue with the sharpness of a battle sword.
Around him stretched a stark and shadowy landscape. He gripped a
spear in his sweaty right hand, tight enough to soak the wooden
handle. Cautiously, he walked towards a mound littered with skulls.
The mound, adjacent to the deep, narrow glen called
Hinnom
by the Jews, held three wooden crosses. In the distance a wild
dog howled. He turned in the direction of the unnerving sound and
saw the city of Rome—or was it Babylon? Sweat burned in his eyes
and when he blinked, the scene dissolved.

The shadows shifted around him, seemingly
alive with things that made his skin crawl. Even though it was
almost summer, and he was in the middle of the desert, he suddenly
felt chilled to the bone. He walked on, shivering uncontrollably.
Finally, he stopped before the center cross and looked up.

Above him, a man hung with his head slumped
forward, so that his chin touched his chest. He wasn’t breathing.
There were three bloodied holes in his body; one in each wrist, and
one through both feet, where the two-pound nails that secured him
to the crossbars had punctured his olive-colored skin. He reminded
Deucalion of a flayed animal pelt, stretched taut to dry.

Deucalion winced, knowing that somehow he
was responsible for the man’s hanging there. That thought caused
bile to rise in his throat, and he retched. He noticed something
else. Where he stood was bathed in light, although everything else
was in shadow. A strange, ethereal light seemed to glow with
pulsating force. Fear began to overwhelm him. He had fought in a
hundred battles, but had never known the darkness, the
hopelessness, the soul-wrenching agony of such terror. His heart
pounded furiously, as if it might burst through the walls of his
chest at any moment. Instinctively, he raised the spear and thrust
it upward at the man—at the light. The razor-sharp metal tip
pierced the man’s side. Blood and water spewed forth, splattering
his tunic and face. Startled, he stepped backward, frantically
trying to wipe the stains away.

Abruptly, the scene shifted.

He stood before a tomb hewn out of solid
rock, just before the column of dawn. Suddenly he was engulfed by
an intense, blinding white light. He tried to run, but his feet
were rooted to the ground. He had to get away! It was too bright. .
.too bright. . .

He screamed. . .

“Commander! Are you all right?”

Deucalion awakened startled, and turned
toward the door and the source of the voice. He blinked several
times, trying to wash away the stinging salt of a cold sweat. The
room was dark. He was disoriented, because the light in his dream
had been so bright. “What in the name of the gods is going on?” he
muttered.

“Commander. . .it’s Malkus. I have an urgent
message from Rome.”

Deucalion shuddered with sudden realization.
The scream had been real! He sat up and shook his head back and
forth, trying to clear it. “What time is it?” he asked in a
scratchy, dry voice.

“Just after the column of dawn,” came the
muffled reply.

The tall, dark-haired Praetorian heaved
himself off his cot, feeling as if he had not slept at all, and
splashed several handfuls of tepid water on his lean, angular face
from a nearby plain porcelain washbasin. The water helped cleanse
the stinging from his eyes, but did nothing for the nasty headache
that was working its way to the top of his head from the base of
his skull.

“I’ll be out in a moment,” he croaked,
rubbing the back of his neck, trying to massage away the throbbing
pain. “Prepare my armor.”

“As you wish, Commander,” came the reply from
his second-in-command. Deucalion pictured Malkus’ sharp, wolfish
features and sighed. The younger man was ambitious. He would have
to watch his backside around him. Malkus had heard him scream and
he wouldn’t forget it. An ironic, bitter smile crossed Deucalion’s
face. He would have to remember to drink more heavily before he
retired every night. The wine would drug him and he would sleep
less fitfully. Maybe then the dreams would stop, and his capable
junior officer would have less opportunity to circle him like a
lone, hungry wolf.

• • •

Joseph ben Caiaphas, High Priest of the Most
High God, felt the sunrise upon his face long before he saw it with
his eyes—and feeling it, began to dream.

He stood in the marble hall, before the
Sanhedrin. Seventy old men stared down at him with hollow, vacant
eyes. He felt fear—gut wrenching, heart stopping panic.

The balance of power, painstakingly
developed through years of study and worship, was disintegrating.
Joshua had returned. And he’d commanded the sun and moon to stand
still, once again. Forever. Never again was the earth to know
darkness. Never again was man to be allowed the luxury of
exercising his debaucheries under the cover of night. Light now
reigned supreme. The sin of Adam could no longer be denied.

Suddenly, the walls of the hall became
transparent. Outside, thousands of fellow Jews had gathered. Roman
soldiers penned them in on all sides, like slaves about to be
auctioned off. They had come, not to hear the High Priest speak,
but to hear the message of the CHRISTOS—the anointed One. In
frustration, the Sanhedrin kept demanding that the high priest give
them an answer. “What are we to do, Joseph?”

“
Crucify Him!” he shouted and, outside,
the mob took up the chant. But all he could hear was an echo: THE
BLOOD OF THE LAMB—THE BLOOD OF—THE BLOOD. . .

Time and space dissolved and he sensed that
his order had been executed. However, the crucifixion of the
heretical Jew, Jesus, did not cause the sun to move again in normal
fashion. Instead, it glowed brighter. Caiaphas spun, confronting
angry faces on all sides. The walls started to close around him and
still the light consumed everything. The Council members began to
shake angry fists at him. Several of them, including his
father-in-law, Annas, demanded that he order the sun to cease its
rebellion and give darkness back its rightful place in the scheme
of things . . .

Abruptly, Caiaphas awoke, as he had on
several mornings the past four weeks: mouth dry, tongue swollen,
body drenched. And his eyes were filled with tears, as if he’d been
crying uncontrollably in his sleep. He groaned, then uttered a
silent curse. Hopefully, there was enough water on hand to quench
the fiery thirst raging in his throat.

He glanced furtively at the heavens. His
dream had been so vivid that he fully expected to see both sun and
moon radiating in the crystal blue sky. Instead, the morning looked
normal and so perfectly ordinary that he wondered why he’d ever
been afraid.

• • •

At about the same time Joseph Caiaphas was
rubbing sleep from his eyes, a man of medium build, with a square
cut face and curly black hair pomaded with olive oil, paced the
floor of his Jerusalem residence. The Procurator Caesaris had
awakened hours before the sun began to rise hot and bright over the
city. Sleep had become a luxury of the past for Pontius Pilate.

The man Rome had selected to govern Judea
wrestled yet again with his tortured conscience. He cringed in pain
as the pounding inside his head reached epic proportions. “It will
be a hot, dry summer,” he said aloud to the walls. He cursed the
day he was sent to this land forsaken by the gods and filled with
quarrelsome, rebellious Jews.

He poured himself a flagon of wine and
greedily drank half of it down in one gulp. Unfortunately, the warm
blood-red liquid would only dull, not eliminate, his raging pain.
He watched the daylight carpet the city that had become his
nemesis. The desert heat steadily worked its way into his dark
skin. He grimaced as the prophetic words of Claudia, his wife,
beckoned to him, as they had done daily for the past month.

“
The Hebrew priests have beguiled you,
Pontius,” she had said with defiance, on the eve of the trial.
“Beware, and touch not that man. . .for He is holy. Last night I
saw Him in a vision: He was walking on the waters; He was flying on
the wings of the winds. There was a mighty storm raging about Him.
He spoke to the tempest and to the fish of the lakes; all were
obedient to Him. Behold, the forest in Mt. Kellum flows with blood,
the statues of Caesar are filled with the filth of Gemoniae, the
columns of the Intercium have given way, and the sun is mourning
like a vestal in the tomb. Oh Pilate, evil awaits you if you will
not listen to the prayer of your wife!”

He took another gulp of wine and pressed
trembling hands into tired, reddened eyes. His headaches grew worse
by the day. Why hadn’t he listened? What evil, indeed, awaited him?
Gods protect me
, he thought miserably and wished desperately
that he had never heard of Judea or Jesus of Nazareth.

Suddenly, the throbbing behind his eyes
became so intense that he cried out, loud enough to wake his
servant, Antonius, who came running.

• • •

Not far away, another man, a Jew in his
mid-fifties, stood silently on one of the many balconies of the
Hasmonian Palace and admired the coral colored dawn. His
rectangular face was composed of deep-set eyes and a square chin
that supported taut, thin lips.

Lost in thought, he barely heard the trumpet
blasts that saluted the sunrise. In each of the fourteen districts
of the city the Praetorian Guard were even now synchronizing the
water clocks., Throughout Jerusalem the elite of the Roman
citizenry were awakening, preparing to eat a breakfast of
wine-soaked bread, pullet, and fresh eggs.

Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, shared
with the beleaguered Roman Procurator—though for different reasons
and with different effect—a sense of frustration and impotence. He
was a man of action, as had been his father, Herod the Great, and
so his failure to maintain the momentum of the powerful political
apparatus the now dead patriarch had forged, disturbed him deeply.
He sighed heavily, remembering a recent conversation he had with
the one man he reviled most—the man who had usurped his father’s
authority. Even though he would never admit it to anyone, the
subject matter of that conversation had caused him many a sleepless
night.

“You’re a vain man, Herod,” the Roman
Procurator had said the day after the crucifixion of the heretical
Nazarene, as he offered his guest a goblet of wine, “and your
vanity will be your downfall. . .just as it was your father’s.”

“Aren’t you even going to thank me for
helping you solve your problem?”

The short, balding man whom Herod knew hated
Jews with a fanatical passion stared at him with cold, brown eyes.
The Tetrarch noted that the muscle along Pilate’s jaw line twitched
imperceptibly.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” growled
the Procurator.

“Only that now you have no one to blame for
your problems—except yourself.”

“You dare talk to me that way! It is I who
occupy the palace your father built. Not you. Too often you seem to
forget that it is we Romans who rule Judea and the surrounding
territory, not you Jews.”

“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t
think about both of those facts, Pontius.” His reply had been as
hard with contempt as it had been truthful.

“No doubt,” grunted the Procurator. “However,
if you’re not careful, your appetite for power might very well
choke you to death.”

Now, weeks later, Antipas wiped the sweat
from his brow with a white linen cloth he carried for just such a
purpose. He thought about Pilate’s unsettling words and the unusual
events that had unfolded two days after they were spoken.
What
really had happened at the Nazarene’s tomb?
He chuckled without
humor at his own mordant curiosity. Unfortunately, all he knew on
this hot, dry May morning was that the lack of any breeze was a
portent of a long, stifling summer.

“Master, a courier has arrived with a
parchment from Rome.”

He turned at the sound of his secretary’s
voice. “And?” he snarled, angry at being disturbed.

“The Praetorian says it’s urgent.”

What could be so important that Rome would
send a message here to Jerusalem, rather than waiting for him to
return to Caesarea? And in the hands of a Praetorian, no less.
Suddenly, he had a premonition of impending doom. He shivered, and
then wrapped his robe snugly about him and reached for a brimming
cup of
mulsum
, a wine and honey mixture he had acquired a
taste for as a result of his association with the Roman
Procurator.

“Make the Praetorian comfortable,” he said
gruffly. “Tell him I’ll be with him shortly.”

Deucalion Quinctus Cincinnatus, Pontius
Pilate’s Commander of the Garrison, waited patiently for Herod
Antipas’ secretary to bring him refreshment and thought about how
far he had come in his career in such a short time. His father
would be proud of him, were he alive.