The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville Read Free Book Online Page A

“It is dangerous—and not only that, it’s downright unholy. You profane the prophecies. Though I love Miriam, I must point out that no king of Judea has ever been anointed on profane ground, nor by the hand of a woman!”
    “I am not come here to be king of Judea, my beloved Joseph. I have another kingdom—and, as you’ve seen, I’ve another method of anointment as well. But I have also another request of you, my friend. By the time of the Pesach supper, many will be searching for me. It is dangerous to reveal where we will meet for that night’s meal. You must come to the temple, and bring the others with you. There, near the marketplace, you will see a man bearing a pitcher of water. Follow him.”
    “Those are your only instructions? That we come to a place and follow an unknown person?” said Joseph.
    “Follow the water-bearer,” said the Master, “and all will happen as planned.”
    SATURDAY
    It was just after midnight when it happened. Caiaphas would never forget the moment when they came to awaken him, the knock on his chamber door as he stirred beneath the bedclothes, wondering what time it was. The sensation he felt then was one he’d heard of but had never before experienced: the hair actually rose up on the back of his spine! He knew something dangerous and exciting was about to happen. He knew, without being able to name it, that it was what he had been waiting for all along.
    The temple police, who guarded the high priest’s palace and his person, too, stood outside his chamber door and told him that a man had come to the palace gates—here, in a secured quarter of the town, and now, in the dead of night, hours after the Roman curfew was in effect—asking to see him. It was a darkly handsome man, they said, strong, with a craggy face and heavy brow. He refused to speak with any but the high priest Caiaphas, on a very private matter of utmost urgency. He had no credentials, no appointment, and no explanation for his visit, and the temple police knew that it was their duty to arrest and interrogate the man or send him away. Yet they somehow hesitated to do either.
    Caiaphas knew, deep in his soul, that he need not ask further questions. As one betrayer understands another, Joseph Caiaphas understood that he had known this man always, perhaps through all eternity.
    His servant wrapped him in the cocoonlike folds of his lush green dressing gown and, followed by the temple guard, he padded along the stone corridors in silence toward the chamber where the stranger awaited him. Caiaphas knew in his private thoughts that this was the moment of destiny. He knew that his hour had come.
    But later, when he was asked about that night—interrogated, really, by the Romans and the Sanhedrin—it was odd, for that was all he could recall. His awakening in the dead of night, that march down the long hall—and the sense of personal destiny, which he never mentioned, of course, for it was nobody’s affair but his own. The stranger himself, the encounter, was just a blur to Caiaphas, as though his mind had been clouded with drink.
    After all, why should he recall him, when they’d met only for a moment, just that one night? The police took care of the rest: they paid out thirty pieces of silver for the job. How could Caiaphas be expected, so long afterward, to remember his name? Some fellow from Dar-es-Keriot, he believed, though he wasn’t even sure of that. In the larger perspective, thought Caiaphas, in the great tapestry that was history, what difference did it make? Only the moment was important.
    Two thousand years from now, their names would be like specks of dust blowing across a vast plain. In two thousand years, no one would remember any of this at all.
    SUNDAY
    Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar could see in the dark.
    Now, as he stood in the black night on the parapet, a night without moon or stars, he could still see clearly the clean lines and veins of his own strong hands resting on the parapet wall.