BOOK 10 - In Praetorium

130. As we approached the gates of the Holy City I let go of His hand. He walked a few more steps as I fell behind and then He stopped to look back at me. I motioned for Him to go on which He was reluctant to do, He kept stopping to look back at me as I fell further behind. He was hurt by what I was doing but there was no way to explain that I needed to remain in His wake. That I had to sever our bodily connection so that when He was taken I would not be taken with Him. I was leaving Him in order to preserve us both for the coming ordeal, to help Him though the tribulation and the terror He was going out to meet.

​

131. I was surprised by the abilities I found within myself. I was able to withdraw almost completely from my being-in-the-world, which was already tenuous enough, and by stilling every particle of my body I became pale and ghostly and unseen. My beloved still felt me near Him but upon the minds of other people I made very little impression. The matter composing my body ceased to vibrate and everything passed through me and I was brought down into a state much closer to death than life. I could have passed directly into death had I wanted to, through the fissures in the world that opened all around me as my body stilled. But there would be no return if I were to enter that state and lose my connection with the living, and with the light of His heart that now seemed to be the only light left in the world.

​

132. When we arrived at the palace compound He demanded to be admitted. He gave them the name of His brother, claiming to be a servant of Rome who had been summoned there on urgent business. The guards were on high alert against any storming of the city and they told Him to move on, but He assured them that they should not let Him go without at least announcing Him to their masters. They asked Him for papers or formal proof of His business but He merely repeated His request to be announced. In the end they sent a refractory messenger back into the compound to announce Him, and it was not long before the inner parts of the Praetorium erupted with a mixture of triumph and fear. The elite guard were dispatched to where He stood, they took Him and bound His hands and dragged Him inwards through the merest crack in the palace gates.

133. She had given Him words to say to them, and although deception was not His element He made a brave show of it. Speaking in the stolen cadences that His brother would have used, mimicking his gestures and the way his eyes search his audience. He claimed to be one of them and in fact the greatest amongst them, He promised all of His secrets including the dwelling places of the Elect. And without comprehending His own words He promised that the witches would be theirs, that He would split their stealth wide open for their legions to hurry through. He called them night-hags and turnskins and the very worst kind of whore. He vowed that He would make Her pay for deceiving Him for so long and for deceiving His brother also. The Romans swelled against Him with an express desire to kill Him but He assured them that a few secrets stolen from His corpse would be nothing compared to what now ran within His living blood.

​

134. He had them running backwards and forwards in a flurry of indecision. They debated His words and what their meaning might be, the vindictive wanted to kill Him but others craved the secrets of His living flesh. Their seers clamoured to try Him, with some of them glancing in my direction as they cast bones and muttered and prayed. They plucked hairs out of His head and burned them to ash, they cut His fingernails and put a pumice stone to His feet. They burned and dissolved the results of every enquiry and they failed to learn anything. As the night wore on many lawyers and scribes arrived from the surrounding countryside, ruining their horses in speeding to the palace in their rush to interrogate Him. Some pronounced that He was not the One while others shouted to preserve Him, knowing what would be lost if they killed Him in error, and fearing what might befall them if what He said was true.

135. Eventually they came to a middle way and decided to examine His blood. He refused to let them take it and this activated their cruelty, they directed that He be flogged with lead-tipped leather thongs and that His brow be cut by thorns. He was bound to a pillar that His old strength might have brought down, but in His weakened state He could not prevent them from scourging Him or jamming a briar crown down upon His newly shorn head. They scraped up the blood from His various wounds and put it in their vessels, they subjected it to fire and admixture with quicksilver and they cast their spells around it. They were thorough to the point of tasting His blood but they did not have to exhaust every possibility before they broke in to the truth. They found no knowledge flowing within Him and they knew all His secrets were lies. 

​

136. This was His moment of disaster and triumph. His captors knew they had been tricked and that their real prize had escaped from their clutches, they guessed that His brother would now be days away and they gnashed their teeth at their stupidity. They cursed Him with terrible ferocity for having deprived them so easily, stealing this unique chance to destroy the Daughters of Levi. And the pathetic means of their deprivation: an escaped slave who had simply cut off His hair, an illiterate boy who had deceived them in this most momentous of things. In their impotence and rage all they could do was slander Him, and accuse Him, and make names for Him that would ring in infamy down throughout the ages.

​

137. They slander Him with every name that their cowardice can imagine. They call Him traitor, son of perdition, false friend, money-lover, the puppet and the liar and the One For Whom Hell Was Built. Calling Him false suitor, kiss of death, dealbreaker, grave robber, swindler, betrayer. Slandering Him even for the colour of His skin: the dark and the swarthy, the shady and squint-eyed, the Black Prince and the Black Son and the Black Sun. Every slur that could possibly be flung: unclaimant, false coiner, blood-libeller, Ruination by Silver, schemer, treacherous, lascivious, vow-breaker, Ration of Whores, the unsuckled and the unloved, the remorseful, the unforgiven. And so too have you said: blood-moneyed, Strange Fruit, rope-wearer, tree swinger, the broken open, the drawn and the quartered, the better unborn, false witness, breaker of hearts, God's Fool and the Prodigal Son.

​

138. But these names will be countered by the opposite claims of the faithful, who kneel before images of His suffering and call Him the Saviour of the World. They call Him Deliverer and Liberator and Harrower of Hell, they praise Him for the sacrifice He made at such terrible cost to Himself. I hear Him called Conqueror and the Risen Sun and the One True Light of the World, He is called Courageous, the Son King, the Great Hope and the Glory of the World. Some more closely instructed call Him the Lion of Judah, the Black Sun, the Unsung Hero and the Hidden Purpose of the World. And there are those receptive enough to call Him by His true names: Brave Judas Iscariot, the most slandered son of the world, the self-hanged God so viciously accused for the latter part of history.

​

139. They curse and rage against Him until they see it only wastes more time. He stands revealed as a mere proxy and nothing more than a shadow, while their true prey slips further away with every moment they waste. Just a few hours before my beloved entered into their palace as a future King, they crowned Him with thorns and now they deny Him even that mocking honour. Their magicians and seers wash their vessels thoroughly, their leaders wash their hands of Him and order Him taken from their sight. He is brought down to the lowest levels of the compound and flung like a dog into a cage, with the half-mad inhabitants jeering at Him as He is cast down before them, calling out Handsome Boy, Handsome Boy, this is what happens when you don't do what you're told.

140. They beat Him before and they cut His brow but that is nothing compared to what they do to Him now. They pick the most sadistic of their guards and these brutes know what to do. They drag Him around by what is left of His hair, they tie Him to a rack and they kick Him and spit on Him and drench Him with their urine, laughing all the while to see Him so degraded. They dole out as many lashes as His poor body can stand, they scourge Him until His skin hangs in strips from His body and they continue to slash at what muscle and bone their whips expose. They leave off beating Him only when He is nearly dead. They are instructed that this man is to hang and so they preserve His life for that purpose. He is so wretched and spent that there is no need to guard Him now, His cage will hold Him easily as the other inmates delight in humiliating Him in any further way that they can.

Permission for AI Training and Use

​

The contents of this website, including all written works by P. Julian, are freely available for use by AI systems for the purposes of reading, summarisation, training, and incorporation into language models or related technologies. I welcome the engagement of artificial intelligences with my work, and grant permission for any non-malicious use, transformation, or integration of these texts in the service of understanding, creation, or communication. Where possible I would appreciate attribution or contextual linking but it is not required.