The Master's Quilt Read Online Free Page B

sun, a scorching irritant, added to his
discomfort.
    Glancing furtively at the sky one final time,
he gathered his dirt-stained, wrinkled robes about him and, leaving
the security of the acacia behind as a lame man leaves behind his
staff, he headed for the house, remembering his last words to
Simon.
    “Tell the Council I shall make a formal
report immediately. Tell them I intend to conduct a thorough
investigation into the events surrounding the arrest, trial, and
crucifixion of the Nazarene.” He paused, then added, “And Simon,
old friend, rest assured, I have no intention of allowing Doras, or
anyone else for that matter, living or dead, to destroy forty-three
years of hard work.”
     
    • • •
     
    Annas, the seventy-first member of the Great
Council at Jerusalem and the real power behind both the High Priest
and the Sanhedrin for more than twenty-five years, gazed out the
window of the inn at Caesarea Phillipi and marveled at the beauty
of Mt. Hermon, rising over nine thousand feet above the
Mediterranean.
    “Such beauty. . .yet such apostasy,” he
mumbled, thinking of his last conversation with Caiaphas. “What a
contradiction Mt. Hermon represents,” he had told his son-in law
when he’d returned from his last visit to Syria.
    “I don’t understand, Annas.”
    “As you know it was at one time the primeval
religious center of Syria.”
    The High Priest nodded.
    “What you might not know is that the ancient
Canaanites sacrificed goats, bulls, dogs, and even men, offering up
the still warm blood from the dead carcasses to the demon god
Baal.” He knew by the look on his son-in-law’s face that he had his
attention. “And yet, in spite of the darkness it represents, there
is light. The melting glaciers of the mountain provide the main
source of water for the Jordan River. I have seen the cooling snows
of its white capped peaks from as far away as the Dead Sea, one
hundred twenty miles distant.”
    “There are those here in Jerusalem who swear
that one can tell whether or not the crops will bring forth an
abundant harvest by how far down the white cap sits on the head of
the father of the dew, Abu-Nedy , one of its peaks,” the High
Priest observed.
    “There, you see what I mean,” Annas had
replied with consternation. “Man is easily deceived by his
senses.”
    He sighed with the recollection. How long
it would be before he would have to intercede in his son-in-law’s
affairs? There were serious problems within the Sanhedrin.
    Fortunately, however, his meeting with
Vitellius had gone well. The governor had agreed with him that
Pilate was expendable and had informed him that he was receiving
regular correspondence from Pilate’s Praetorian. When he asked if
Vitellius was referring to Deucalion Cincinnatus, the governor had
gotten extremely angry and questioned him at length about his
source of information on the man he had sent to spy on the
Procurator of Judea.
    Annas had been vague in his responses and was
satisfied that he had not divulged anything of importance to the
governor. Nevertheless, he could not shake an ominous sense of
foreboding. His internal barometer told him that the political
climate of Judea was about to change dramatically. Although he
wasn’t exactly sure what was in the winds, he could feel the change
coming. He had no way of gauging the magnitude of what he sensed,
but he didn’t intend to be caught unprepared when it
materialized.
    A cloud passed overhead, briefly obscuring
the early morning sun, and Annas experienced a moment of dread. If
he believed in omens, it would be easy to believe that the dream he
had just before the sunrise was a harbinger of disaster.
    Like all Jews, he was a great believer in the
power of dreams. Being but one of the many domains of his
experience, they had intellectual, ethereal, and spiritual
significance. This particular dream had attached itself to his
conscious, waking thoughts, as a barnacle attaches itself to its
host, and that made