Girgensona vārti mazākumā palīdz Sabres tikt pie dramatiskas uzvaras

Early in the morning on the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in a white cloak lined with blood-red, emerged with his shuffling cavalryman's walk into the arcade connecting the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great. More than anything else in the world the Procurator hated the smell of attar of roses. The omens for the day were bad, as this scent had been haunting him since dawn. It seemed to the Procurator that the very cypresses and palms in the garden were exuding the smell of roses, that this damned stench of roses was even mingling with the smell of leather tackle and sweat from his mounted bodyguard. A haze of smoke was drifting towards the arcade across the upper courtyard of the garden, coming from the wing at the rear of the palace, the quarters of the first cohort of the XII Legion ; known as the ' Lightning', it had been stationed in Jerusalem since the Procurator's arrival. The same oily perfume of roses was mixed with the acrid smoke that showed that the centuries' cooks had started to prepare breakfast. 'Oh gods, what are you punishing me for? . . . No, there's no doubt, I have it again, this terrible incurable pain . . . hemicrania, when half the head aches . . . there's no cure for it, nothing helps. ... I must try not to move my head. . . . '