One of the soldiers, the one in charge, it seemed, shook his head, frustration creased his face, and looked around for help. Apparently they had orders to deliver Jesus for execution and they were determined to do it. They would not allow him to die beforehand. The soldier walked into the crowd and grabbed a man. By his dress and demeanor, I guessed he came from Africa, perhaps Cyrenaica or Tripolitania. The soldier told him in broken Greek to pick up the beam.
Whether the African understood what the soldier was saying or not, he knew better than to argue. He picked up one end of the beam Jesus carried on his back. They trudged along single file, sharing its weight, for a short distance, before Jesus fell again. The crossbeam tumbled away. The soldier hit the man with his scourge, not hard, but enough to draw a cry of pain.
“If this happens again, man,” the soldier shouted, “it will be very often you will feel these lashes.”
While this exchange took place, a woman knelt at Jesus’ side and wiped his face. Another gave him a wet cloth to suck on. Another soldier cursed at the women and shoved them away. I saw tears in their eyes. For the first time, I noticed the people around me. I recognized many of the faces from the last three years—honest Galilean faces. Men, women, and children stood silent and weeping as Jesus reeled past them with his cross, as though he carried their burdens, their pain, on his back as well. A few mocked him, but others stared them into silence. One small group of men started to sing softly. Others joined them.
The man required to carry the cross positioned himself immediately behind Jesus and took nearly all the crossbeam’s weight onto his own shoulders. If Jesus should fall again, the beam would not. They continued slowly and deliberately through the valley, climbed the steep slope past Herod’s palace, through the Gannath Gate, and out to the hill the local people call by its Aramaic name, Golgotha—Skull Hill.
Chapter Fifty-eight
Golgotha is a low hill just outside the walls and at the east end of an abandoned quarry. Its stone contained too many fractures and, therefore, was deemed unfit for cutting, so the masons left it, a small rise at the end of an otherwise flat valley, now turned into a rough garden. At the far end, where the quarry face remained, tombs had been cut into the stone for wealthy families.
We arrived about the fourth hour. Jesus and his helper staggered, lockstep, up the hill. The other two men—thieves, I was told by one of the regulars to these occasions—had already been raised up. Their cries rent the morning air.
I have witnessed crucifixion many times—who hasn’t? You cannot live in the Roman Empire for very long and not see that peculiar Roman institution. But no matter how many times you see it, nothing prepares you for the horror. There are a variety of ways to nail someone to a cross—all of them terrible. Some are more appalling than others. A few soldiers relish the moment, inventing new ways to inflict pain when they draw the assignment. Most, however, get down to business and do the task as quickly as they can. I never saw a woman on a cross. Romans have more humiliating ways to punish them.
To survive, the victim must pull with his arms and push with his legs against the pain of the nails. In time, he weakens. Then, strength drained and no longer able to withstand the pull his tired body makes, his knees bend, his arms dislocate from the shoulders, he sinks, and suffocates. The whole process may take hours or days. It is an awful way to die.
I watched as soldiers stripped Jesus of his clothes and lashed his crossbeam in place in a notch prepared for it on a long vertical. With a quick blow to the back of his knees, they dropped him in place, stretched him out on the assembled cross and extended his arms to their limit on the horizontal. He looked almost relieved to lie down. He was whiter than the linen cloth they had taken from him. His back, now rubbed by the rough wood of the cross, began to bleed again, adding new stains to the already bloody crossbeam.
Usually nails are driven through the wrists, less often through the tough sinews of the palm. Driven through the wrist, there is no chance the nails will tear out and have to be replaced. But, if the intention is to create the greatest distress, they are driven through the palms of the hand. To stay alive, the victim must make a fist and grasp the very nails that send searing pain up his arms and into his shoulders. They nailed Jesus through his palms.
The soldier raised his maul high over his head. There was a collective intake of breath. The hammer swung down and rang against the spike. We all exhaled. Each stroke of the hammer sent a shock through my body as if I, not Jesus, had received it. I covered my ears, but it did not stop the sound. I think God wanted me to hear every ringing blow.
Next, Jesus’ knees were bent to the right and spikes were driven through his heels. The men stood back and inspected their work. At the signal from one of them, the cross was raised up and dropped into its hole. The vertical hit the bottom of the hole with a loud thunk and Jesus’ body jerked violently downward. Whether he groaned or not, I could not tell, as the onlookers, those who came to mourn and those who came to jeer, moaned in unison for him.
The hecklers turned their attention from the thieves and had their time with Jesus. I could only hear a few words. Jesus managed to hold himself erect.
“He is praying,” a woman near me said.
“It is one of David’s Psalms,” another corrected her.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from my cry and my distress?
I looked around for the other disciples. Mary, his mother, stood off to one side. John and the Magdalan and some of the other women hovered nearby. I saw no sign of Peter or James or anyone else. One of the thieves wailed at Jesus, “If you are the Messiah, deliver yourself and us, too.”
But the other thief rebuked him, and turning his head, said something about being remembered in his Kingdom. Jesus paused in the midst of his chanting and said, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” It sounded like paradise, although I could not be sure. It was not an expression I had ever heard him use.
The sun neared its zenith, the heat bordered on the unbearable. A dry southerly wind gusted through the crowd but it brought no relief. The air felt like the blast from a furnace. People nearby laughed and threw the last of their fruit. Jesus continued to recite the Psalm.
All who see me laugh at me with scorn, they sneer and shake their heads and they say—
“He trusted in the Lord—let’s see the Lord deliver him. Let’s see the Lord rescue him,” one of the temple officials shouted, as if on cue.
People laughed but Jesus remained upright on his cross. I could only imagine what that must have cost him in his weakened state. After a while, the crowd tired of their sport and began to drift away. A few stayed bearing silent witness.
Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is no one to help. Praise the Lord, you that stand in awe of him, offspring of Israel, you of Jacob’s line…
At the sixth hour, the sun disappeared and it turned dark as night. The wind shifted and blew from the north, a cold, biting wind that made people clutch their cloaks close about them. I saw worried and fearful expressions on the faces of the spectators. Even those sanguine Roman soldiers, for all their ferocity, were nonplussed at the temporary disappearance of the sun. When it finally returned, many had scurried back to their lairs like wolves at the sight of a lion. Only the few loyal to Jesus remained. I looked up at the cross again, silhouetted against a copper sky. Jesus struggled to hold himself erect.
At the tenth hour I heard a faint rumble, and then I felt it under my feet. For what seemed a long time the ground rolled and trembled. Women screamed and the soldiers, who had managed the darkness with relative aplomb, leapt to their feet and looked around frantically. Red smoke rose on the skyline in the direction of the temple.
The Sabbath would begin soon. The priests assigned to oversee the executions approached the centurion in charge and asked him to break the legs of the three men so they might die quickly and be buried before sundown. It would not do to have them hang there on the Sabbath. Much
to the disappointment of the soldiers, who had bet on the order of death, the centurion agreed. One soldier prodded each man with a spear. The two thieves jerked as its sharp point pierced their flesh. A second soldier then crushed their legs with a heavy club. They screamed and crumpled. In a moment, they were still. Jesus did not respond to the spear. The soldier then stabbed harder. Finally, he pressed the spear into his ribs. Only a little blood and a clear fluid poured from his side.
“This one’s dead already,” the soldier reported. A collective groan rose from the few people left on the hillside. Jesus’ mother fainted. The Magdalan knelt down next to her, buried her face, and sobbed. John stood near them, his shoulders slumped in defeat, and then looking up, shook his fist at the sky. Nearly everyone wept, except the soldiers who noisily divided the prisoners’ belongings. The centurion muttered something to his aide who looked startled and then nodded.
I turned to leave. I had no idea what to do next. I no longer had a purpose for my life. My friend, perhaps the only real friend I ever had, lay dead as the spikes were removed from his broken body. In despair, I turned and headed back to the hillside.
Chapter Fifty-nine
I resisted the temptation to return to our rooms and find out what the others knew. I reckoned the last person they wanted to see, now or ever, would be Judas, the thief, the traitor. But I lingered nearby out of sight. Shortly after sunup, I saw Mary rush into the rooms. Moments later, those few who had not fled the city poured out and raced in the direction of Golgotha. When I saw Mary reappear, I signaled to her. She looked my way, hesitated, and then came to me.
“Judas,” she said. She had the same expression on her face my mother had the day we parted. “What you have done…you cannot stay here.” Again, a memory that refused to fade.
We cannot stay here.
She added, “You must go.”
I retrieved my few belongings and slung them in a bundle over my shoulder.
“There is one last thing I must tell you,” she said as I turned to leave. “He is risen.” She saw the blank look on my face. “Jesus was not in the tomb.” She stopped and looked at me, her eyes pleading.
“Are you sure?” I thought of Thomas, and his resemblance to Jesus, Didymus. I wondered if she had mistaken the one for the other.
“I spoke to him. He…What are we to do?”
***
I tried to return the silver but the high priest refused to see me. He sent a clerk who would only speak to me through a bronze grating set in the door.
“That is blood money,” the clerk said. “We cannot accept it.”
“But it is the money you gave to me less than two days ago. If it is blood money now, it was blood money then. I do not want it. It is like fire in my hand.” I shouted at him and threw it through the grate.
“Very well,” the smug clerk said, “we will use it to buy a burial field near the rubbish pile, and we will buy it in your name.”
***
At the seventh hour, I found myself outside the city walls with no place to go, no one to speak to, and no future. I had finally become the murderer the empire wanted me to be. I did not kill Leonides, I did not push that boy over the sea wall in Cenchrea, and I did not kill the Roman soldier, but I had murdered Jesus as surely as if I stabbed him in the heart.
As I walked away from the city, an assortment of petty merchants and artisans caught my eye. They were haggling with one another over the price of this or that. I paused to listen; I’m not sure why. I let my eyes wander over this gaggle of honking geese, wondering about each in turn. Did the one with the red nose drink too much wine? Did the sylph-like servant attending a fat wife also serve her master in another way? My eyes fell on a woman, the wife of a leather merchant who, to his credit, seemed calm and deliberate. Her back was to me. She had her hands full with a fussing child. Something about her seemed familiar—the curve of her neck, the arch of her back—something. A plump Israelite matron absorbed in her child, her mind miles away from the men’s haranguing. She turned and faced me. I don’t know why, but I caught her eye first. Our gazes locked like tiles in one of Zakis’ mosaics, unmoving, unmovable.
My mother stared at me across thirty cubits of open space and a lost decade. I stood motionless, unable to breathe. I spent years searching for her in all the wrong places. I thought to find her in the brothels or under the shadowy arches of the city, the places where men seek a quick release for their lust. I sought her in the eyes of every woman who came to us from her broken profession. But she had escaped that. Somehow she had reinvented herself. Unencumbered by children and Darcas, she left the streets and found respectability. All those wonderful fantasies spun for me so long ago in Caesarea; she’d made one of them come true and found someone to believe her. Did this leather merchant think she came from the priestly class, that she was a widow of means? I don’t know. It didn’t matter. She was free.
I started toward her but drew up short when I saw the look of panic on her face, the quick jerk of her head. Her eyes slid first to the boy, then to the man, her husband. Then I understood. “You are dead to me,” she once said. And so I must remain. How would she explain a grown son to her husband? She had found her way home without me.
Our eyes embraced one last time. Disengaging was more painful than the beating I had taken at the hands of Barabbas and his men. I wanted to tell her about Dinah, I wanted to tell her how much I missed her, about the years I looked for her. But all I could do was smile and lift my fingers to my lips. She glanced uneasily at her husband and her son and, seeing them both momentarily distracted, smiled back. I walked away and Jesus’ voice whispered in my ear.
Have you found your treasure yet?
***
The morning’s early chill gave way to scorching heat. Although spring, it felt like summer in the valley of the Salt Sea. Lost in my thoughts and feeling sorry for myself, I did not notice where my footsteps had taken me. Only when I stumbled did I realize I had wandered to the rubbish heap outside the city walls. All the city’s trash, garbage, and offal was deposited there along with animal carcasses, the contents of thousands of chamber pots, mixed in with shattered dreams, lost lives, and broken promises. Fires smoldered here and there. Gehenna they called it, the Hinnom Valley—Hell. Sensible people avoided this place. The only signs of life were dogs—the pariahs—digging through the rubbish, snapping at rats bold enough to challenge them, and rooting for something to eat. Occasionally a fight broke out over a bone or a scrap. Then, teeth bared, they tore into each other with desperation known only to the starving. I knew that feeling, had even fought like that—pariah dogs and Judas, cousins.
I noticed other pariahs as well, human refuse from the city—abandoned children, the infirm, lunatics, all of the city’s unwanted human surplus. They, like the dogs, scavenged through rubbish. Each carried a club or stout stick used to poke in the piles of trash or to protect themselves from the dogs and each other.
I made a wide circuit around the stinking pile and plodded onward, up and away from the city. It occurred to me I ought to be near the field purchased in my name by the clerk and his masters. I may even be standing on my own land. That was something I had never been before. Imagine—Judas the Red, landowner.
As I neared the crest of the hill, I saw a small boy sitting by the side of the path—one of the denizens of Gehenna. As I drew near, he leapt to his feet. He may have been asleep, startled by my approach, or just frightened. I raised my right hand, palm out, to show him I meant him no harm. His face was so incredibly dirty, when he looked up at me his eyes glowed like twin moons in the night sky.
“I wouldn’t go up there, sir.”
I took in the sores and the bruises on his body and I saw in him all the children I had known in my past. I thought of Gaius and his pack of urchins working the streets of Cenchrea—all of them dead before they were twelve.
“Why should I not go up there, boy?”
“There’s a dead man up there, sir.”
“A dead man? What sort of dead man?”
“Soldiers come up here last night, and when Barak thought they were sleeping, he tried to steal their things. They woke up and caught him. Now he’s dead.”
“That was very foolish of Barak. Was he a friend of yours?”
“No sir, he’s just one of us what lives up here. Sometimes he was nice to me. When he found some food, he would sometimes give me some, that’s all.”
The boy was dressed in rags so filthy it was nearly impossible to tell what color they were. His sandals were an adult’s and his cloak dragged on the ground. I reached in my purse and gave him a few coins. His mooneyes waxed at the sight. It will hold him a week or two, I thought, if someone does not steal them from him in the meantime. Unfortunately, the sores on his legs were already festering and I did not hold out much hope for him. I wondered…what would Jesus have done? Probably healed him and told me to get him clothes and food. Then he would have sent him to Bethany to the women. But we could not do that anymore. Whatever power I had to heal had surely been taken from me.
“Run along boy. Get away from this place. Go to the Jericho Road. Do you know where it is? Yes? When you get there, go down to Qumran, Masad Hasidim. They will help you. Do you hear me? Masad Hasidim. Go.”
He dashed off and, I hoped, away. It is never easy to leave the familiar, even when you know it will eventually kill you.
What would Jesus have done?…What had he done? I stopped in my tracks…dumbstruck.
Judas Page 23
