by Andrew Crown
Chapter XXI
Coughing up a mouthful of blood was the first sensation Dismas felt as he regained consciousness and gradually became aware of the intense pain of his head and face. He was being dragged over rough stones and it felt as if he was floating. Dismas tried to open his eyes but his face was so swollen and bloody that he could only see through narrow slits. The outline of the Roman soldiers’ scarlet plumes, their strong arms locked around his own on either side of him, were all he could make out in the shadowy torch-lit corridors.
After going up and down staircases and through long hallways, they came to two large wooden doors. After a brief pause, the doors swung outwards and Dismas was once again thrust forward, dragged by his iron-gripped captors. He could tell by a slight change in air pressure that he was now in a larger, more open space. Struggling to open his eyes wider, he could see a little bit more. He finally came to rest before a few steps leading up to a raised platform on which sat an ornate wooden chair with carvings of eagle heads on the end of each armrest. Sitting upon the chair was a man clad in a deep purple robe.
Standing before this man were two Roman officers: Bricius, who was animatedly pleading for something, and another man whom Dismas vaguely recognized. He realized it was the Roman Tribune, Magnus, who ordered him whipped at the castrum several months ago. Dismas, exhausted from the loss of blood, slumped back down in the arms of the two soldiers who were holding him up. The ringing in his ears and his state of semi-consciousness prevented him from comprehending the details of the conversation. He merely grimaced as the pantomime played out in front of him.
“Prefect! Tribune! This man stole from me and attacked me. I know it was him! He should be punished for his crimes. An immediate public execution. He needs to die!” Bricius’ sentences were short and breathless, he was so overcome with rage.
Magnus shook his head disapprovingly. “Calm yourself, Bricius. Your shouts are unbecoming of an officer and inappropriate in the presence of the governor.”
The Tribune glanced over at the heaving Dismas. “This man may be guilty. If what you told me is true, he has had an altercation with you before. He does look somewhat familiar. Nevertheless, we must rely on the wisdom of the Prefect to render Caesar’s justice.”
He looked up at Pilate and gave a deferential nod. “It is the rule of law that separates Romans from the uncivilized hordes of the world.”
Pilate was deliberating internally and rested his forehead on the fingers of his right hand. Bricius bristled at the poorly concealed flattery his commander offered up to the Roman governor. The centurion’s temper did not grant him the patience to wait for a reply from the governor.
“I have seen men sentenced to the arena for committing far less!” he shrieked.
Magnus turned to him in fury. “Bricius! I will have you flogged yet again if you break decorum. Mind your place!”
Bricius held his tongue and merely glared with hatred at Dismas’ crumpled form.
Magnus added, “Besides, I thought you mentioned to me that you lost your ring while drinking in the Sea of Galilee. You lied to me! I should have you condemned to death in this man’s place!”
Bricius eyed his commanding officer icily but did not offer a retort. Both men turned their attention to the governor.
Pilate shifted his weight in his chair. “Magnus,” he said in a quiet voice that carried no emotion. “Are you certain this man attacked your centurion before?”
Magnus looked over at the guards holding up Dismas. “Let me see his face.”
He walked over to the prisoner while one of the guards yanked up Dismas’ head by his hair.
Magnus studied the battered face closely. “Does he have scars from a whip?”
The other guard tore the back of Dismas’ robe, revealing the marks.
“Yes, I had him whipped several months ago and he still bears the scars.”
“Perhaps he was whipped by someone else?” Pilate suggested.
“It’s him, Prefect. I recognize his face too…as bloody and swollen as it is.” Magnus glanced over at Bricius as he said the last part. “These two have history and one way or another I will put an end to it.”
Dismas began to stir. The shapes around him began to take on definition and he gradually came to comprehend his situation. He saw the angry Bricius, the prudent Magnus, and the contemplative Pilate. He fixed his eyes back on Bricius, and even in his hazy mental condition, felt pure hatred boil inside of him. He would kill this man. He would kill him even if it meant his own destruction. He did not know how, but he swore to himself that he would do it.
Pilate cleared his throat. “I grow tired of this deliberation. There seems to be enough testimony, and this man is clearly a thief and a common criminal that has had too many run-ins with a centurion of Rome. Guards, put him in the dungeons. We are crucifying two other men in two days. Throw him in with them to make it a third. Now be gone with him.”
Bricius smiled with his remaining teeth while Magnus offered his superior a solemn salute.
Dismas felt the hard tug at his arms as he was dragged across the marble floor. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Did he really hear what he thought he heard? Were they really going to execute him? He tried to find the words to protest, but as the harsh yanking of the guards spun him out of the two heavy doors away from Pilate and his officers, he could not even turn his head for one last look at Bricius or utter a cry of despair.
As he was pulled through the hallways and staircases again, his thoughts shifted from Bricius to Leah. He would probably never see her again. Instead, he was going to be nailed to a cross and left to die. A mixture of anguish and terror froze his thoughts as he was dragged further down toward the dungeon beneath the palace.
Chapter XXII
The heavy clang of the iron door blocked out the last wisps of torchlight after the guards deposited Dismas into a small, damp cell in the dungeon. No light whatsoever crept inside, and this disoriented him. He could not immediately tell if he was alone or among others locked inside the same cell. The screams of desperate men rang out all around him from the surrounding rooms. Some cried in anger, some cried in fear. Some asked for water or food. Others whimpered for their mothers. All of these cries combined to create a deafening noise.
The stench in the dungeon was particularly foul—a mix of rotten food, human excrement, along with the body odor of a couple dozen unwashed men. The smell was so overpowering that Dismas vomited, which splashed up around his ankles from the hard stone floor. After retching he leaned back until he felt the rough stone of the cell wall and allowed himself to slide down to a seated position, near the pool of his own sickness.
He sensed movement around his feet, and two small furry creatures climbed up over his ankle. He instinctively kicked them away. He couldn’t see exactly what they were but guessed that they were some kind of rat, attracted by the smell of his vomit.
He tried in vain not to panic in these dreadful conditions as he sat shivering on the ground. The thin film of water at the bottom of his cell had already soaked through his torn robe, but he was too exhausted and sore to stand up. He instead rubbed his tender and swollen face to provide his body some marginal comfort. His fingers inadvertently peeled away some of the dry, caked blood, which stung a little as it fell away. Despite the horror inspired by his current accommodations, the thought of actually dying in two days terrified Dismas much more. He hadn’t even killed anyone, and yet he was to die. Sure, he was a thief, but he was not a murderer.
Amidst the screams of other condemned men, his thoughts ran wild. He should have left Jerusalem days ago. He should have gone back to Leah and Asher and avoided all of this. Why did he attack the Roman soldier in their home to begin with? To defend Leah, of course—there was honor in that, but he didn’t need to steal the ring. That was careless. It gave the Romans greater recourse to punish him. He could have left the centurion unconscious and left his money and ring intact. So stupid. So very, very stupid. And now he
was going to die because his greed, carelessness, and foolish pride.
A piercing scream shattered Dismas’ remorseful self-pity.
“I will kill you Roman bastards! You cage me like an animal and so I will butcher you all like animals!”
The scream came from a cell a couple down from Dismas’, a nameless, faceless voice in the darkness that faded into obscurity as suddenly as it had risen above the other cries.
After a moment of relative silence, another man let out a guttural scream that made Dismas jump. Then the first man continued with another primal yell. This was followed by a banging against the iron door of his cell. Despite the undoubtable pain the impact of hitting his fist against metal caused, the prisoner did not relent. The pounding continued just a dozen feet away from Dismas. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Dismas heard the footsteps of the jailers as they walked quickly towards the noise.
“Shut up, Gestas! SHUT UP!” The jailers had had enough.
“Open this door and make me! I will grind your face into a bloody mess so that your whore of a mother wouldn’t even recognize you!” the voice in the cell mocked.
Dismas saw a glimmer between the bars in the small window on his cell door that signaled the approach of fiery torches down the corridor. Rapid footsteps accompanied the growing light, followed by the sound of iron scraping on the stone floor as the obstinate prisoner’s cell door was thrust open. This was followed by another scream from Gestas. The screaming continued but gradually turned from anger to pain as Dismas heard the dull thuds of clubs meeting flesh. Finally, the screaming became a whimper and the guards closed the door with the same scraping sound. Then their footsteps died away along with their torchlight, plunging the dungeon back into darkness. Although there was some occasional crying and calling out, punctuated by a loud groan from Gestas, it was much quieter than before the beating.
In some ways the quiet was more unsettling than the noise. Without the distraction from the other prisoners, Dismas could not help but focus on his guilt-ridden conscience and death sentence. It was these thoughts along with fleeting images of Leah’s smiling face that played in his mind as he slipped off into a restless sleep.
*
He awoke in what could have been a several minutes or several hours. There was no light to judge the passage of time. The dungeon was getting slightly noisier again, but the cries did not come from the direction of Gestas, who was still recovering from his wounds.
It was at this moment that Dismas realized that someone was breathing close to him. He listened intently and heard the inhaling and exhaling. He was not alone in the cell.
“Who is here?” He emphatically stomped his foot on the ground. “Who is here in this cell with me?”
A voice called out from the darkness only a few feet away. “You know who I am.”
The deep voice sounded familiar but Dismas could not quite place it. There was a menace in the tone that unsettled him.
“I do not know you. I was just brought here.”
“And yet you know me.” The voice was almost mocking.
“Who are you?”
“You don’t remember me, Dismas? We only met a short time ago.”
Dismas racked his brain, trying to recall who it could be.
The voice finally answered. “I am Barabbas!”
Now Dismas remembered the discussion in the brothel and the seditious plot against the Romans.
“Oh…Barabbas.” He had never thought he would speak to him again. “I guess your plan didn’t go as you expected.”
“It went well enough. We killed a few men, so I’m told.”
“I saw Micah get cut down by the Romans. It happened right in front of me in the street.”
“Oh, I had thought he was one of the ones who had gotten away. Most of my men were killed.”
Dismas didn’t think he sounded particularly sad or regretful about this. Barabbas was very matter of fact in his statements, as if he were simply recounting his trip to the market. “They caught me, obviously, and tomorrow they’re going to crucify me and leave me to be eaten by the buzzards.” He presented this gruesome fact with the same emotionless detachment.
“Me as well,” Dismas said quietly after a swallow of tears.
“You too, eh?” Barabbas let out a deep laugh. “You might as well have joined me then. We’ve ended up in the same place! Our corpses will rot together in the sun.” He continued laughing amid the cries of anguish from neighboring cells.
“I wasn’t going to kill anyone who did not personally wrong me,” Dismas said. “The only man I want to kill is the one responsible for putting me in here.”
“There are a lot of men I wish I could kill too, but I guess that won’t happen now. If only we had more time in life to hurt the people who wronged us. That is my only regret.” Barabbas’ tone returned to a cold, emotionless state.
“I never killed anyone before, but there is one that I feel I could kill now,” Dismas said.
“Never?” Barabbas asked incredulously. “I can’t remember exactly how many men I’ve killed. Over ten, that much I can say for certain.” He let out another laugh. “You always remember your first kill the clearest. Mine was a young carpenter named Selig. I remember what it was like to watch the life drain out of him under my blade.” He sounded like he was recalling a fond memory.
Dismas’ heart dropped. Did he say…Selig? But surely it could not be the same Selig as his brother.
“I had a brother named Selig,” Dismas said tentatively, hoping to alleviate his fears without asking the disturbing Barabbas directly. “I came to the city looking for him. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in years.”
A silence passed between the two men. Barabbas finally spoke. “I bet he was the same one. I remember what he looked like—almost like another version of you, now that you mention it.” He paused before continuing. “While shooting dice with him I caught him cheating. I got so angry that he would try to swindle me out of money that I put a knife in him. It was easier than I thought it would be. The next kills were even easier.”
Dismas took this information with a knot in his stomach. As dismal as his situation was, he sunk even lower. So that is what became of his long-lost brother—on the wrong end of a blade while gambling with the degenerate Barabbas. What a sad conclusion to Selig’s life. But then Dismas realized his own story wouldn’t end much better.
He felt a rush of anger towards Barabbas, almost as intense as his anger for Bricius. In different circumstances, he would charge at Barabbas and furiously pound him with his fists. He could probably kill him in the dark cell. His screams would blend in with those of the other prisoners and the guards would not come to his aid.
But whether it was because he too worn out from his injuries, too fearful of the coming dawn, or if his brother was too distant a memory, Dismas continued to sit unmoving on the damp floor of the cell. Barabbas would die next to him in a few hours and Selig would be avenged. It was Bricius who was still walking free. Dismas saved all his rage for the man who sent him to his death. He found his initial anger towards Barabbas had dissipated.
Barabbas continued, “I suspect you will see him again soon if you believe in that sort of thing. If not, then it doesn’t matter anyway.”
Dismas chose not to respond. Selig was dead, as he would be soon. He didn’t want to spend his remaining time in a discourse with a murderer. Barabbas fell silent as well as each man sat alone with his thoughts.
Dismas moved on from his brother and reflected upon the life he had up until very recently. The gentle rocking of the fishing boat, the simple but welcoming home, and the love of Leah. He thought of the excruciating pain he was about to experience, the nails driven through his hands and feet and the slow suffocation that crucifixion entails. He shuddered. How would he die? Would it be the suffocation? Would he bleed out? Perhaps thirst would slowly cause his throat to clench up as he was driven to madness in the last moments of life?
Involuntarily, Di
smas began to weep. He hadn’t truly cried since he was a child, and he felt like one now, alone and scared in the dark. Other men whimpered too, each one dreading their inevitable fate. Dismas felt no shame in joining them.
“Quit your crying. There is nothing that can save you now.” Barabbas’ cold, callous voice stung, but Dismas continued on weeping.
“Be a man, Dismas. Show our persecutors that you go to your death gladly as a man going towards freedom. You are no longer subject to their oppressive whims once you are dead.”
In a strange way, Barabbas’ words held a kernel of truth. Dismas did not want his last moments on Earth to be spent crying. There was a certain comfort in defiance. He took a deep long breath and his tears began to subside. After a few moments, he only had the occasional hiccup. With a wipe of his filthy hand, he cleared the last remnants of tears from his face, an unnecessary gesture, since no one could see them in the darkness.
He lay his head back against the hard stone of the wall of the cell. Soon he heard the snores of Barabbas, who had evidently dozed off. Outside the cell the cries and occasional screams of the other prisoners echoed, all of which fell on the deaf ears of the jailers. It was a cacophony of noise, but Dismas eventually grew used to it and then found he was able ignore it completely as he too drifted off to sleep.
He was bothered by strange dreams. In one, he imagined that he had already gone through with the execution, inexplicably survived, and was now free to go. It was as if crucifixion was nothing but a bad storm and he just needed to hunker down to emerge on the other side unscathed. He dreamed of embracing Leah and Asher afterwards and laughing about the ordeal like it was a distant memory.
He also dreamed that the jailers opened his cell and set him free. They told him there was some sort of mistake or that there was a last-minute push for clemency from Pontius Pilate. He walked up the stairs and out into the sunlight again. Soon he would be back on the road towards the fishing village, leaving the city of Jerusalem and its dungeon behind him. Freedom was close at hand!
