by Jamie Buxton
With barely a look at the crowd, the governor nodded and the trial began. A succession of men Flea had never seen told the governor that Yeshua wanted a revolution, to change the world, change everything. He would pull down the Temple and throw out the Romans and rule as king.
After the evidence had been heard, the governor turned to Yeshua. “Well?” he asked. “What have you got to say in your defense?”
As before, Yeshua said nothing.
More witnesses stepped up, their words tumbling from their mouths like the harsh clink of coins dropping. If Yeshua was innocent, why didn’t he defend himself? This was more than surliness, more than arrogance; this was rebellion. By refusing to answer, Yeshua was defying the Imperium itself.
The governor himself stayed still, his eyes hooded, but darting to left and right. Outside the palace, shouting rose and fell like a weak wind. Inside, the crowd followed instructions on when to cheer or scream abuse.
Then at last even the governor had had enough.
He stood to cheers from the crowd. When he spoke, he had to shout, and Flea only heard fragments of what he said.
“Should … him go?… Punish him? Temple wants … blasphemy … Choose … Yeshua or Barabbas?”
The governor clapped his hands and another man was brought out. He was stooped and filthy with matted hair, and a shocked gasp went up from the crowd. Abbas Barabbas, the King of Thieves! He stole from the rich! He gave to the poor! He fed the starving! He disappeared a year ago and everyone said the Romans had murdered him. Now here he is, like he has risen from the dead!
Abbas clasped his hands above his head and shook them. He looked drugged. More cheers. The governor called Yesh to stand next to him. The crowd started to hiss. The governor shoved Abbas forward. Cheers.
Flea could not bear to look. The Romans had planned this. Yesh had planned this. The crowd knew what to do. Everything was a link in a chain and the chain was dragging Yesh to his death. How could anyone fight this?
The governor shrugged and the crowd began to surge. The skinny girl caught hold of Flea.
“Now’s your chance to get away!” she said. “No one can stop you.”
“But what about Yesh?”
The girl grabbed him by the arm. “He’s finished. Come away with me now. Please. Save yourself. You can do it.”
Flea didn’t budge. “It’s no use. You don’t understand. I told the Romans where Yesh was tonight. Then I helped them arrest him. If he dies, it’s my fault.”
“Then he got what he wanted! Come on.”
Now from their vantage point Flea could see the Results Man pushing through the crowd toward him.
He pulled the girl close so she could hear what he said without the Results Man seeing. “I can’t. I really can’t. I’m meant to be meeting one of Yesh’s followers by that old tree by the dump tonight. Can you go there instead of me? Can you tell him I’m really sorry that … Can you just tell him I’m sorry? Can you do that? Please?”
“But why don’t you?”
“Like I said, I just can’t,” he said, seeing the hurt and disappointment in her eyes as she realized that he was just pushing her away again.
39
Yesh was dragged to his feet and kicked into the street. Scuffles broke out—the crowd outside was less compliant than the hand-picked stooges inside and some were outraged that Abbas had been released. At an order, the Romans started smashing their spear shafts into the ground to clear the street before them. Any feet caught under them would be broken. Any person who fell would get crushed.
The Results Man looked as unconcerned as if he were going for a stroll through the market. He peered from side to side, his head pecking the air, his mouth curled up in his idiot smile. Every now and again he looked down at Flea and opened his eyes wide, as if he were saying, Look at this, and look at this. Isn’t it exciting? Isn’t it interesting?
Flea couldn’t take it any longer. “Why?” he said. “Why do you want Yeshua to die? Why go to all this trouble?”
“You mean, if we wanted him dead why didn’t we just strangle him quietly up there in the Pleasure Gardens? Him and all his followers?”
“I suppose.”
The Results Man smiled a humorless smile. “Big question. Let’s just say that Rome wants to make sure justice is seen to be done.”
“But if it’s going to make trouble … I mean, it’s not too late. You could just sort of lose him. I could find somewhere to hide him. People would forget soon enough. And anyway, you’re just doing what he wants; surely you don’t want that.”
“Oh, Flea. How much you have to learn,” sighed the Results Man. “Do you think I have a heart of stone? Justice should be hard but never cruel. Yeshua wants to die. He wants a great send-off. Who am I to deny him that?”
“Let me talk to him,” Flea said. “Please. He thought I was special. He said so. If I could get him to change his mind, then you wouldn’t be doing what he wants and—”
“I could hug you,” the Results Man said, stopping suddenly in his tracks. “You people could start an argument with a wall. I tell you what, Flea—if you can persuade Yeshua to beg me for his life, then yes, I will let him go free.”
“What?” Flea could hardly believe his ears.
“If Yeshua asks nicely, I will spare him his life. Go on. Ask.”
The Results Man shooed Flea along the procession and ordered the soldiers around Yeshua to let him talk to Flea, who was clearly a superior young man and one they could all learn from. The Imps had put a halter round Yesh’s neck and were leading him like a donkey. His feet were dragging and his head was bowed.
But Flea could whisper in his ear. He was almost choked with hope.
“Yeshua, listen. I’ve done it. I’ve got the Results Man to agree. If you ask him for your life, he’ll go along with it. He promised. He’ll let you go free. I should never have told them who you were in the Gardens. I know it’s all my fault. Please,” he wheedled cleverly. “Don’t make me feel so bad. I’m so sorry.”
For an instant there was life in Yesh’s eyes: a gleam of warmth, a glimmer of knowing. He licked his lips, swallowed. “You helped me, Flea. You did what you thought was right.”
“But it was wrong. I see that now. Please. It’s your last chance.”
Another gleam, and this time the bruised lips pulled back in a sort of smile.
“Did you know that the prophet Shama-el wrote about you? ‘For the king has come to seek a flea, as one who hunts a partridge in the mountains.’ I looked for you, Flea. I found you. You have played your part in the prophecy. Now you must accept it.”
Flea realized he was getting nowhere. “I don’t want to be part of a prophecy. Please. Please.”
But Yesh’s face had shut down and Flea knew he would get no more out of him.
Prophecy, Flea thought. What do I know about the prophecy? But his exhausted brain would not give him the answer, and the Results Man did not help.
He beckoned Flea to him and asked what Yesh had said. When Flea told him he was part of a prophecy, the Results Man barked out a laugh.
“Do you really think Yeshua can challenge us? Do you really think a threat could come from the gods of this pitiful dung heap in a forgotten corner of our Empire? Flea, little Flea, we make our own gods. We know Yeshua thinks that if we will kill him, his magic will be all the stronger. We know that and we laugh, because that is the very thing that interests us. His power. We have heard he can do a certain thing that interests the Imperium very much, and we intend to find out how this thing works.”
“What?” Flea said. “A trick?”
“We think it is more than a trick. We think this is the big thing that explains how a mouthy conjuror with twelve tramps for followers thinks he can change the world.”
“What is it?”
“I’ll give you a clue. It’s not about him being the Chosen One. It’s all about how he becomes Chosen One.”
Flea looked away and tried to think.
A
prophecy. A change. A secret. What’s the secret? Flea beat his brains trying to work it out as the procession moved from the governor’s palace to the Fortress.
40
In the courtyard of the Fortress the soldiers wrapped the branches of a thorn bush, spikes as long as a dog’s tooth, around Yesh’s head and asked him who was the governor now.
Flea was still thinking about secrets and prophecies. He was thinking as they tied Yesh by the wrists to the post in the middle of the yard and the Results Man knelt by his head and whispered in his ear.
He was thinking as the whip sang flesh and blood from Yesh’s back so that it pattered onto the flagstones like rain.
He was thinking while the Results Man lost patience, took a handful of Yesh’s hair, yanked his head back, and hissed in his ear, “Well? Now will you tell me? Now you must tell me!”
He was thinking as the guards exchanged looks, shrugged, and winced.
And Flea also waited. He waited for Yeshua to talk. And when he didn’t, Flea waited for the heavens to open, for the people to rise, and for the Temple to fall. But nothing happened like that. The music of hissing whip and splitting flesh hurt his head and clogged his ears, and Yesh’s silence grew huge and squeezed out all other thoughts, all ideas, and just left the knowledge of his pain.
Then Flea saw Shim.
He was standing in the shadows at the back of the courtyard, but the sudden flare of a nearby torch lit up his weak, handsome face. It had lines that had not been there the day before and he was looking around as if nothing quite made sense.
Flea made his way toward him. “Satisfied now?” he sneered. His voice felt harsh. “Come to check the job’s been done?”
“I…” Shim’s mouth opened and he tried to lick his lips. “That’s not … why I … came here.” A particularly brutal snap of the whip made him wince. “Is it quite necessary…?”
“No!” Flea said. “It’s not necessary. It’s not necessary at all. That’s what Jude was trying to show you.”
Shim pursed his lips. “Jude didn’t understand what was at stake. Jude didn’t understand what … was needed.”
“Jude loved Yesh and wanted this not to happen. Tell me what you want to happen. Tell me what the secret is.”
“Secret?”
“That’s what’s happening here. The Romans think Yesh has a power and they’re trying to whip it out of him. Jude knew that. Jude wanted to stop it.”
“Jude did not understand greatness. Where is Jude now? At least I’ve come to bear witness. To accept what we have done. Yesh will die outside the city. He will be sacrificed by strangers out in the world. Now the whole world is his Temple. To show how proud—”
That was too much for Flea. “Proud! You’re proud of this? Hey!” he called out. “This is one of Yeshua’s followers! He loved Yesh so much he wanted this to happen! Here! This one here!”
Shim paled as people turned to look at him. He shook his head and backed away, hands out. “Don’t listen to that brat! What would I be doing here if I was one of his followers?”
“He feels guilty,” Flea shouted. “That’s why he’s here!”
“I don’t know anything.”
The damage done, Flea ran back to Yesh. Guards tried to stop him but the Results Man waved him through. His face was spattered with blood and he looked tense. “Will he talk to you? He won’t … He won’t talk to me! He just won’t talk!” The word exploded from his mouth.
Yesh had collapsed now, held up only by his wrists, which were tied to the whipping post. Strips of his back were hanging down like saddle straps. His face was a color beyond white, beyond anything. He smelled like a butcher’s block.
Flea knelt.
“Tell him your secret,” he said. “Please! You can’t have meant this to happen. Not like this! Tell him and he’ll let you go. Your back will get better. You could heal it yourself, or tell someone else how to.”
When Yeshua opened his eyes, he looked scared. “Don’t…” He licked his cracked lips.
“Don’t what?”
“Tempt me.” He tried to swallow. “Don’t leave me.”
The Results Man was there immediately. “What did he say? I saw his lips move.” He gnawed at one of his nails. They were bitten down to the quick.
“He asked me not to tempt him. Then he asked me to stay.” Flea looked into the Results Man’s eyes. They looked strained and his mouth was pulled into an odd shape. “You thought he’d crack by now,” he said.
“I don’t understand it. Why hasn’t he done something? He’s meant to have powers. That’s meant to be the point. I push him and I push and … he tells me.”
A soldier, crested, cloaked, clean-shaven, muscled his way through the crowd.
“Governor wants his report.”
“Not yet. We’re not ready.”
“Governor was led to understand that you’d have something by now.”
“Well I don’t. Yet.”
“Yet isn’t good enough. He’s to be executed—that’s the sentence, and it’s got to be done now if he’s going to die in time.”
“In time for what?” The Results Man looked panicked.
“This feast means he has to be dead by midday and in the ground before sunset, so local customs can be properly respected. That means commencing the execution now and you reporting your findings to the governor.”
“Rome can’t be worried about local customs. Do you know what’s at stake?”
“Tell it to the governor. You’re coming with me.” The soldier’s hand strayed toward his sword hilt.
The Results Man turned to Flea. “Stay with him. If you want your friends to live, you’d better tell me what happens. What he says as he dies. You’re my witness. Make this mess mean something.”
Flea looked up. Dawn.
The sky was lemon-juice gray streaked with pomegranate red. It matched Yesh’s skin.
The whole sky was Yesh’s skin.
His body was a temple as high as the sky and as broad as the world.
41
On the top of the Skull, a row of square holes had been chiseled into the rock in front of a rickety guardhouse. A stack of timbers stood nearby. Nailings usually took place at sunup and the soldiers who did it were always drunk.
Crosses didn’t kill people. They let people kill themselves with the most pain and the least supervision. They were economical. The upright of a cross was just tall enough to hold the victim’s feet off the ground, the crosspiece just wide enough to spread his arms, the wood just thick enough to take three huge nails, one for the feet and two for the wrists.
Try to reduce the pressure on your wrists by pushing upward and your feet pressed down on the nail that went through them. Relax the knees and the nails in your wrists tore flesh and tendons and ground on the bones. As your knees weakened, you slumped farther and farther down so your arms rose in a V shape and squeezed the air from your lungs. In the end, at the end, it wasn’t the cross that killed you. It was your weight as the earth called your body home.
Two other men were due to die that day. They dropped their beams at the top of the hill, fetched the uprights from a stack behind the shed, then dropped the beam into a notch and watched the soldiers lash it into place. The first of them was wrestled to the ground and his right wrist was nailed to the crosspiece, then his left wrist; then his legs were held crossed at the ankles and a single nail was hammered through them. He resisted sluggishly—relatives had bribed the Imps to drug his last meal with poppy—but he began to wail as the soldiers lifted the cross and he screamed when its foot slammed into the square hole cut into the ground and held him vertical. The second man begged the soldiers to knock him out then screamed all the way through the process.
Flea closed his eyes when it was Yesh’s turn and blessed him for his silence. He huddled behind a nearby boulder, holding his knees and rocking from side to side. He was hollow and numb, as if he had no feelings left. The world was swirling around him. He wanted to join it, get
whisked away like a snowflake, but he was too tired and too weak. Behind him he could hear the dying men groan, but it meant nothing to him. Nothing at all.
He was woken by women’s voices. They came from below. He screwed his eyes tight shut and waited for them to reach the top of the hill. They fell silent, then one of them screamed, another moaned, and a third began shouting at the guards.
Flea continued to feel detached from it all until hands grabbed him and shook him.
“The child’s in shock, Mari. Leave him be.”
“But the guard said he came here with Yeshua. He must have seen. He must know what happened.”
“He’s an idiot. Look, he’s drooling.”
Flea opened his eyes. Every color but gray had fled. The sky was gray, the western hills were gray, the city was gray, the stony hill was gray.
There was a face very close to his. He looked past it to the crosses. On Yesh’s left-hand side was a thin man who looked half-starved. Must be a sneak thief, Flea thought. No visitors.
On his right-hand side was a big man, dragged out by a ballooning white belly. Tax collector, Flea thought. His family looked exhausted and inconvenienced.
Flea looked at the person who had lifted him. A woman, tall and beautiful, with tawny hair, full lips, and big gray eyes. He wiped the dribble from his chin and giggled. The woman dropped him as if he were toxic.
He got to his feet, swayed, and said, “I apologize.” For some reason he felt drunk, but that was better than feeling nothing. With the tall woman was another with the weather-beaten face of a villager, frizzy bangs escaping from her headscarf. Behind her was an older woman with a wrinkled face, who was gazing at Flea with deep-set eyes that seemed familiar. They were the same as Yesh’s, he realized. The old woman must be Yesh’s mother. That woke him up.
Flea tried to stand up straight and met the eyes of the beautiful woman, who apparently didn’t like him.
“Go on, say it,” she snapped. “If he’s a magician, why can’t he magic himself off the cross?” She looked around. “And where are the others? Where are his friends? His followers? Where’s his brother?”
