“The prefect will see you now,” he said, in a tone that suggested he felt himself imposed upon.
Eleazar glanced back at Noah, as if to say, “I will do my best,” and then followed the servant inside.
The prefect was seated in a room probably reserved for such meetings. He did not rise to greet his guest but merely gestured at another chair, which, Eleazar gathered, was all the invitation he was likely to receive, so he sat down in it.
“I have agreed to see you out of respect for your master,” Pontius Pilatus announced. “I have heard of you, of course, but I gather your visit here today is unrelated to the Tetrarch’s business.”
Pilatus smiled thinly. He was a man of about forty, tall and languid. As a knight, he had probably reached the pinnacle of his official career, and the cast of his face suggested that he knew it. Judea was not a posting much coveted by ambitious men, and Pilatus therefore resented his subjects and made no attempt to disguise the fact. He was regarded by them as cruel and insensitive.
“You are correct in assuming I am here as a private person,” Eleazar began, returning the smile. “My visit concerns one Joshua bar Joseph, who was arrested last night.”
At first Pilatus seemed mildly puzzled and then, apparently, remembered where he had heard the name before.
“He appeared before me just now.” The prefect smiled again, as if the recollection pleased him. “He claims, it seems, to be your king. I condemned him.”
“Did he admit the charge?” Eleazar asked, giving the impression that the question was of purely theoretical interest.
“No. He denied it. They always deny everything. But there was proof, and a witness.”
“I have reason to believe that he was telling the truth, that the evidence against him was fabricated, and that your lordship has been imposed upon.”
There was a slight shift in the prefect’s attitude. Suddenly he seemed on the verge of becoming angry.
“He was hailed as king by the mob,” Pilatus replied, his voice unnaturally calm. “It was witnessed by one of my centurions. Are you questioning the testimony of a Roman officer?”
Eleazar shook his head, suggesting that such an enormity would never have occurred to him.
“No, I am not. The event took place. However, it was staged. Joshua bar Joseph is a preacher, a religious figure, without political pretensions of any sort. My master knows of him and regards him as harmless. Yet he has powerful enemies, who have hit upon this means of destroying him.”
“One of his own followers gave evidence that he claimed to be king of the Jews.”
“The man has perjured himself.”
The prefect stared at the wall for a moment, and then he returned his gaze to Eleazar, his eyes narrowing.
“Why do you care?” he asked, giving the question the full weight of his suspicion. “This Joshua is a peasant. We can take it for granted that in his heart he hates us both. Why do you, a man of position and wealth, concern yourself with what happens to him?”
“Because I have been reminded that I am a priest, and that the God I serve hates injustice.”
“Injustice.”
Pilatus repeated the word as if it were the answer to a riddle. He seemed on the verge of laughing.
“Injustice, you call it,” he went on, his amusement drifting over into anger. “It is never unjust to execute a peasant. They are all traitors—or would be if they dared. The only excuse for not killing every one of them is that we need their work. So we kill them selectively, as an example to the others. This morning I have sent three of them to the cross, and I rejoice in it.”
“And I am asking you to spare only one. I give you my word that he is innocent of the charges against him. I would be in your debt for this act of clemency.”
Without compromising his dignity, Eleazar tried hard to appear as a supplicant. He himself had been the object of hundreds of entreaties, and he tried to sort through his memory for the faces that had moved him most. It was a demeaning exercise, and probably useless, but it was necessary to try.
“I would be grateful,” he added, purely for emphasis.
But the prefect appeared unmoved.
“The city is full of people,” Pilatus said finally. “Exactly what feast is it this time?”
It was a calculated insult, but Eleazar ignored it.
“The Passover,” he said quietly.
“That’s right.” Pilatus looked pleased—he had made his point. “Passover. The city is swarming with pilgrims. It is always dangerous when the lower classes don’t have enough to keep them busy. They become excited over trifles and there is a riot. Then the soldiers have to restore order and more people die than I would condemn in a lifetime. You see, when people like you, the leaders of this country, can’t quiet things down, the emperor expects me to do it for you. He doesn’t care how I do it. He just wants it done.
“Beyond this, the emperor is the only person on earth whose gratitude concerns me.”
He was refusing. That was substance of it. Eleazar had expected as much, but he felt he had to make one final attempt.
“An act of clemency would do much to soothe the people,” he said. “Many believe that Joshua is God’s prophet.”
“Prophet or king makes no difference. I don’t care if he’s innocent or guilty. The mob misunderstands clemency, taking it for weakness. But a man dying on the cross is a clear message.”
The prefect smiled.
“Now, you must excuse me,” he said, abruptly standing up and obliging Eleazar to do the same. “I have much to do, and this business has detained me too long.”
* * *
Noah had been alone in the courtyard for only a few minutes before the door opened again and Judah came out into the morning sunlight. He was alone. He looked as if he expected to be that way for the rest of his life.
He looked directly at Noah without, apparently, seeing him. But Noah did nothing to call attention to himself. He didn’t have to. There were no questions for which he needed Judah’s answers. Judah was free, which meant that Joshua was condemned.
What was it that Joshua had said? “I cannot save Judah by abandoning him. I have no choice but to help him work out his salvation.” But Judah had abandoned Joshua. And now, from the look of him, he was in the process of abandoning himself.
In a moment, he was gone.
Shortly thereafter the Lord Eleazar came out through the same door.
“There was nothing I could do,” he said, shaking his head. “I offered him my gratitude, which is worth something in this world, and he spurned it. He does not care if your cousin is innocent. He is determined to make an example of him for the mob.”
Without realizing what he was doing, Noah covered his face with his hands. It was really going to happen. It was appalling, unthinkable, but it was really true. His cousin Joshua, his friend since childhood, was going to be nailed to a wooden cross and left to die.
His mind felt as if it had been frozen shut, but he forced himself to think. Was there nothing he could do?
“I can be with him,” he said, half to himself. “At least, if he must suffer and die, someone, some friend, should be with him.”
“Come away.” Eleazar put his arm over Noah’s shoulders. “Come back to my house with me. We cannot save his life, but perhaps there is yet something we can do to help him.”
“I have to find him,” Noah said almost defiantly. “I have to find him.”
“You will not find him. The Romans are holding him close now, and they will not let anyone near him. Come away.”
The walk did him some good. The first shock had been followed by a terrible numbness, which gradually wore off as they made their way through the narrow streets. By the time they reached the Lord Eleazar’s door, Noah had recovered enough to grasp his own helplessness.
They went to Eleazar’s study and sat down. A servant brought a jar of wine and two stone cups. Eleazar poured out the wine, and at first Noah simply stared at it.
“Drink. You need it. We both do.”
Noah picked up the cup and drained it in one swallow. Eleazar instantly refilled it.
“What is happening to him now?” Noah asked, with reasonable detachment. “Do you know? Can you guess?”
“I know. Have you ever seen a crucifixion?”
“No.”
“I have.”
For a moment the Lord Eleazar’s eyes closed, as if he wished to blot out some ghastly recollection. Then he poured himself a cup of wine. He did not speak again until he had drunk it.
“You are not old enough to have lived through it, but when Great Herod died I was seven years old. There was a rebellion in Galilee. The Romans came in force. They burned Sepphoris and there was a great slaughter. Many of the survivors were sold into slavery. My father was warden of the city—Herod’s man—and so we were allowed to leave. We went to Jerusalem, and we returned when the rebellion was over. My father was reappointed to his post by Antipas, Old Herod’s son, and he helped rebuild the city.
“I remember the journey home. I will never forget it. The Romans crucified all the captured rebels. They started at the eastern gate of Sepphoris, and the crosses extended for miles along both sides of the road to Jerusalem. My father and mother and I rode in our cart along that road, under the shadows of crucified men.
“It takes a long time for someone to die like that. Sometimes three or four days, sometimes a week. The first ones I saw called down to us, begging for water. Later they were mute—alive, it seemed, only to their own suffering. Finally, within sight of the city, they were all dead.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Noah asked, his voice thick with grief.
“To prepare you for what you will see if you are fool enough to search out your cousin’s place of execution. It will be terrible beyond my poor powers to describe it.”
The Lord Eleazar drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. The subject, clearly, was painful to him.
“Right now your cousin is probably being scourged. They use leather whips with pieces of bone and sharp metal woven into the lashes. They will not stop until he is covered with wounds, until he is half dead. When you see him next he will look like nothing human.”
“You said there was something we could still do to help him.”
“Yes. One thing.”
48
Gaius Raetius did not like Jerusalem. He liked Caesarea, which was on the sea and where the food was better. There wasn’t much going on in Caesarea, which was another advantage.
But in Jerusalem there was always trouble. The legions came up here four times a year, for the festivals, and the crowds were always getting excited about something. Soldiers had to stay in their barracks to avoid “incidents,” because the Jews hated them.
And then there were the executions.
In Caesarea there weren’t more than five or six crucifixions in a month, but in Jerusalem there were sometimes that many in a day. Crucifixions were boring duty. If you flogged a man to death or cut off his head, the thing was done in a few minutes, or maybe half an hour, but crucifixions took a long time, and you had to post a guard while the bastards died and then after they were dead, to keep relatives from stealing the bodies.
The only thing good about crucifixions in Jerusalem was the site. In Caesarea, criminals would be left on the cross until they rotted off, and then the dogs got them. But in Jerusalem there were just too many, so you had to take them down and dispose of them. And Golgotha, which someone had told him meant Place of Skulls, had been a stone quarry, so there were lots of deep holes in the rock. You dropped the corpse into one of the holes, dumped in a little quicklime, and that took care of it.
Still, it was boring duty. You stayed busy until the day’s batch was nailed up but, after that, there was nothing to do except sit around and play dice.
At least this time Raetius was getting paid. Gideon, who wasn’t a bad fellow, said his cousin wanted to be sure the execution was properly carried out, and the fifty silver pieces they had agreed on would be paid as soon as this Joshua was dead.
Raetius didn’t care anything about reasons. One Jew wanted another killed, and who cared why. But if he had to take sides he would have preferred it the other way around, because he didn’t much like Gideon’s cousin. Joshua, though, would have made a good soldier.
Put a man under sentence of death and you find out fast enough what he’s got inside him. Joshua didn’t beg or cry or piss himself. He kept his dignity, which was a thing one had to respect. Of course, he would scream like all the others when the nails bit into him, but that didn’t count.
He took the scourging pretty well.
In Caesarea the scourgings were carried out in public. It was entertainment for the crowds, who were mainly Greek and felt no kinship with the condemned. But in Jerusalem a public scourging might cause a riot, so they were done in the garrison, where there was no audience in front of whom a man might feel he had to display courage.
This morning there were three: two bandits and Joshua. Each man got a quarter of an hour by the water clock—if he collapsed, the clock was stopped until he was back on his feet, and then it started again. A quarter of an hour, not a minute less.
A quarter of an hour under the scourge was a long time. It ripped a man apart. The very air grew pink with blood. By the end, his whole body was covered with open, bleeding tears, and the wounds were sometimes deep enough to leave the bone exposed. It was not uncommon for the lash to take out a man’s eyes.
Raetius ordered that Joshua go first. He was really doing him a favor, because scourging a man for a quarter of an hour is hard work, and the first man always got the worst of it. The worse the scourging, the weaker they were and the less time they had to spend dying on the cross.
Joshua was pretty good. He only went down once, not on his face but only on one knee, and he got back up on his own. He groaned a lot, but they all did. Who could help it?
Then came the hard part. Golgotha was less than half a mile from the garrison, but that was a long way for half-dead men who had to carry their crosspieces the whole distance. It was an ordeal.
Some men had to drag them, but Joshua simply picked his up, balanced it across his shoulders, and carried it. He did it as if he had been bearing such burdens all his life. Perhaps he had.
The whole route was outside the city walls, but there were always crowds and they were always hostile. It took at least thirty men to guard the prisoners and overawe the crowds. Any less and there was a good chance of a disturbance.
Less than half a mile, and it usually took at least an hour.
But it also served its purpose. Sometimes a man died before he ever reached the execution grounds, and the ones who didn’t were worn down all the more. It just meant less time on the cross, which was better for everyone.
Once they reached Golgotha, it was time for the actual crucifixion.
Raetius had fought in scores of battles and had killed more men than he could remember. He was hardened to suffering—his own as well as others’. It did not bother him to drive nails into men’s flesh and leave them to die. He could listen to them sob and beg for water or for death and feel no pity. His world was full of horrors, and he was accustomed to them.
Golgotha was a little hill, and it really did look like a skull. There was a path to the top, where the uprights were already in place, and the prisoners carried their crosspieces up that path and then threw the crosspieces to the ground and sat down on them.
For most of the soldiers, their job was done. They collected in little groups and had their midday meal. Some had wine in their canteens.
And while the others ate, a crew of four men, who had been especially trained, got to work crucifying the prisoners.
One after the other, the condemned were made to lie down on the ground, their shoulders resting against the crosspiece. Then their arms were roped to it, from about the center of the upper arm to the elbow. When all three were secure, a soldier with a bag of
nails and a hammer went from one to the next.
The nails were driven into their forearms, about three fingers’ width above their wrists. First a small piece of wood was positioned over the spot, which would prevent the condemned from pulling loose from the nail. Then the nail was driven through the piece of wood, through the arm, and into the crosspiece. First the right arm and then the left.
Everyone screamed. Everyone. Raetius was not sure why. He had seen men have a hand hacked off in battle without making a sound. But everyone screamed when their arms were nailed. With every stroke of the hammer, they screamed. They couldn’t seem to help it.
The two bandits were done first, the younger one and then the older. The younger one wasn’t even twenty, and he couldn’t seem to grasp what was happening to him. He begged and pleaded and wept, and when the nails went in he screamed with that mingling of fear and pain one hears in children.
Then the older one, who took it better, and then Joshua. Joshua was good. He was a strong man. If he screamed, no one could hold that against him.
Then, on either side of the upright, wooden tripods were set up, each with a pulley dangling just beneath the apex. Ropes were run through the pulleys and tied to the ends of the crosspieces. The uprights were tapered at the top, and the crosspieces had holes at the center. A man would work each rope, hoisting up the crosspiece, with the prisoner dangling from it by his arms, and then a third man on a ladder would position the hole in the crosspiece over the top of the upright. Then the crosspiece was lowered into place.
Finally, the prisoners’ feet were nailed to the sides of the upright. The nails went through the heels, and again were held in place by pieces of wood. Somehow that didn’t seem to bother them as much. Perhaps there was some limit to how much pain can make itself felt.
Once the work was done, the crew could clean up and eat their meal. There was always extra wine for the crew.
When everything was finished, Raetius always took a little tour of inspection. He liked to look the condemned over and form some idea of how long they were likely to last. In Caesarea the men would lay bets on it, but in Jerusalem there were too many executions to leave a man hanging until he died. Tomorrow there would be another batch, and this lot would have to be thrown into a hole to make room.
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