"Roads by Seabury Quinn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Quinn Seabury)

changers from the forecourt and traffickers in sacrificial doves
who had been driven from their stalls by the prisoner three
days since - thundered a chorus: "Crucify him!"
"Water in a ewer and a napkin, Claudius," ordered Pilate,
and when his aide returned he set the silver basin down before
him and laved his hands in the water and dried them on the
Linen napkin. "Bear ye witness, priests and people. I am
innocent of the blood of this just man. See ye to it!" cried the
Procurator as he handed ewer and towel back to Claudius.
The high priest smiled in his beard. Once more he had
bent Pilate to his will. "His blood be on our heads and on our
children's heads," he answered, and the chorus massed
outside the judgment hall took up the savage paean of blood-
guiltiness: "On our heads and on our children's! Crucify
him!"Lucius Pontius Pilate shrugged his shoulders. "I have
done the best I could, my Claudius. Let him be led away to
prison, and on the morrow have him taken with the other
adjudged malefactors and crucified. My guard will have no

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part in it, but I would that you go with the execution party to
make sure all is regularly done and" - his thin lips parted in a
mocking, mirthless smile - "to put my superscription on the
cross to which they hang him. By Neptunus his trident, the
same nails that pierce his members are like to prick the vanity
of Caiaphas, methinks!" He chuckled softly to himself as if he
relished some keen jest.

The procession to the execution hill or "Place of Skulls"
began at dawn, for crucifixion was a slow death, and the
morrow being Sabbath it was not lawful that the malefactors
be left alive to profane the sacred day with their expiring
groans. The crowds assembled in the city to keep Passover
lined the Street of David and gathered at the alley-heads to
watch the march of the condemned, making carnival of the
occasion. Sweetmeat vendors and water-sellers did a thriving
business with the merrymakers, and one or two far-sighted
merchants who had come with panniers of rotten fruit and
vegetables found ready market for their wares; for everyone
enjoyed the sport of heaving offal at the condemned as they
struggled past beneath the burden of their crosses.
Claudius did not go with them. The Procurator rested late
that morning and there were routine matters to engage his
time when he had finished at the bath. The sun was several
hours high when a scrivener from the secretariat came into the
officium with the titulus the Governor had dictated,