Daughter of Jerusalem (37 page)

Mary said, “I must go to him.”

“We’ll both go,” I said. “Just let me run next door and get one of the neighbors to sit with Martha. She’s been ill, and she’s worried enough about Lazarus.”

The sun was fully up by the time we passed through the Valley Gate and into the city. Jerusalem was filling up with Passover crowds, but we avoided the worst of them by heading west toward the high priest’s house instead of north toward the Temple.

It was less crowded in the Upper City, and the streets were wider, so we quickly reached the large stone mansion that housed Caiaphas. A substantial crowd was gathered in front, and as we joined it, we heard shouting from down the street. John grabbed Mary and me and pushed us back as a detachment of Roman cavalry came trotting up the street. They were shouting in marketplace Greek, the shared
language of the Empire, “Clear the way! Clear the way! Horses coming through!”

Everyone moved as far off the street as possible, afraid of the huge horses that towered over us. As the soldiers formed two lines in front of the high priest’s house, the front door opened—and I saw him.

They had tied his hands in front of him and surrounded him with a phalanx of Temple guards. My heart dropped into my stomach.
Why are the Romans here?

The situation was more dangerous than I had realized.

They made Jesus walk between the horses, with the Temple guard marching in front and behind. Jesus seemed untouched and composed. As he passed a few feet in front of us, his eyes fixed straight ahead, I heard Mary whisper, “Yeshua.”

The childhood name brought tears to my eyes, and I turned to her. She was standing perfectly still, her eyes on the procession as it marched away from us down the street.

John said to me, “What should we do now?”

I knew exactly what we must do. “Go to the Temple and find Nicodemus. He will have been at the Sanhedrin meeting, and he can tell us what was decided.”

John bent down to Mary. “Will that be all right with you, my lady? Do you want to come to the Temple with us?”

She looked up as he towered over her and said in a firm voice, “Yes. Let us go to the Temple.”

The closer we got to the Temple, the thicker the crowds became. People chattering in foreign languages milled all around us, filling the air with the aroma of the different foods and spices that emanated from breath and skin. John pushed doggedly through the streets, and Mary and I followed close behind him. It took an hour to get to the Temple, through the
mikvahs
, and into the Court of the Gentiles where Mary and I met up again with John.

The Court of the Gentiles was also packed with foreigners; we may have been the only ones from Judea in the whole place. John said that local people would have been to the Temple yesterday for the sacrifice of the lambs and were probably at home with their families.

I thought Nicodemus would be in the Court of the Women, so we pushed our way up the staircase and finally spotted him standing by the Nicanor Gate. Nicodemus shepherded us to a quiet spot near the Chamber of Oils.

“Caiaphas brought forward a parade of false witnesses to testify against the Master, but they kept contradicting each other. The high priest was furious and finally turned to the Master, who had been
silent during the whole proceeding. Caiaphas asked him one question: ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?’”

I shut my eyes, afraid of what was coming next.

“The Master said, ‘I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power of God and coming on the clouds of heaven.’”

We were silent as those words resonated in our minds and hearts. A child came running past us holding a dove in a cage, and my eyes followed him while I tried not to think of what must have happened next.

Nicodemus continued, “The high priest said to the Sanhedrin, ‘Why do we need witnesses? You have all heard this blasphemy. What is your decision?’”

Mary pressed her hand against her mouth, and I put my arm around her, as much for my comfort as for hers.

Nicodemus said, “The Sanhedrin answered that he should die.”

“The Sanhedrin doesn’t have the right to execute prisoners,” John said quickly.

“They took him to Pilate,” Nicodemus said.

I was starting to feel frantic. “Pilate won’t condemn Jesus! Calling himself the Son of God isn’t a crime against Rome.”

Nicodemus shook his head. “Too many people are calling him king of the Jews, and that’s a political, not a religious issue.”

John lifted his head to stare around the crowded court. “Then we will rouse his followers to free him. Think of all the people who threw palms at him the other day! They will rise to defend him. I know they will!”

I had to force the words through my closed throat, “But those aren’t the people who are in Jerusalem today. You said it yourself, John. The people here are foreigners, not followers of the Master.”

Mary said, “If my son has been sent to Pilate, then that’s where I must go.”

“That’s where we will all go,” John said. We left Nicodemus and once more fought our way through the crowded streets of the city.

It was turning into a beautiful day, and the blue skies and bright sun seemed a mockery of what was happening in Jerusalem. Apparently word had gotten around that the Sanhedrin was asking Rome to execute a Jewish dissident, and crowds of people were flocking to see, like vultures to a wounded animal.

The fortress of the Antonia, the most visible sign of the Roman occupation in Jerusalem, was a huge building just north of the Temple. Though chiefly a military garrison, it also contained a fortified palace for the Roman procurator to use when he was in the city.

A crowd had already gathered when we arrived. Caiaphas and a group of priests from the Sanhedrin were standing in front of the palace. A contingent of Temple guards kept the crowd at a distance. There was no sign of Jesus.

Speaking in Greek, John asked the man standing next to us what was happening. The man said, “They have some fellow in with Pilate who has been going around saying he’s the Son of God. The Sanhedrin wants him executed, but Pilate has been trying to get them to change their minds.”

We stood waiting, sick with fear. I couldn’t get the image of John the Baptizer out of my mind. Pilate wouldn’t behead Jesus. His Father would never allow such a dreadful thing to happen to His Son.

We saw movement among the group of priests, and John, who was tall, told us that the procurator had come out.

We could all hear Pilate’s voice as he told the Sanhedrin that he found no fault with this man.

The priests of the Sanhedrin yelled back. “He has said he is the Son of God.
Crucify him!”

All around me the crowd took up the cry. “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Crucifixion was for common criminals. How could these people be asking for crucifixion?

John grabbed the arm of the man we had been speaking to and shook him. “You don’t even know him! How can you call for him to be crucified?”

The man tried to pull away. “Are you mad? Let go of me, or I’ll have you arrested!”

“John,” I said, tugging on his robe, “don’t do anything stupid. We need you.”

I could see the effort it took for him to contain his fury, but finally he stepped away from the angry, frightened man.

The crowd had quieted, and Pilate’s raised voice came clearly. “Do you want me to crucify your king?”

A chorus of voices shouted back, “We have no king but Caesar.”

I hated them. I hated every single person in that crowd of foreign Jews. How could they say such a thing? How
could
they?

Pilate’s voice sounded for the last time. “Take him, then, and do with him as you please. I will put my guards at your disposal.”

“Hold onto my Cloak and stay behind me,” John said to Mary and me, and he began to push his way forward. He must have looked like
the Son of Thunder that Jesus had called him, because the crowd fell away before us.

We were almost to the front when I saw him. They had put a circle of thorns on his head and pressed them in so that blood ran down his face. Blood stained his robe as well. They must have whipped him. His face was drawn and pale and set like stone.

Mary made a whimpering sound, and I put my hand on her shoulder.

As we watched they put a great wooden crossbar on Jesus’ back for him to carry from the Antonia to his place of execution, a distance of about two miles. He would have to walk first through the narrow streets southwest of the Antonia, then cross the hot Tyropoeon Valley to Golgotha.

A procession formed, with Roman soldiers in front to clear the path, then Jesus with his cross, and then another group of Romans on horseback behind him. A crowd of Jews began to fill in behind the procession, and John managed to edge us into the front, directly behind the horses.

The narrow city streets were lined with people as the death march wound along the prescribed route. Many of the watchers shouted vicious remarks at the vulnerable figure of the Master as he passed, bent under the heavy crossbar, but a number of women called out blessings and tried to follow him from the side. One woman even dashed into the street to wipe his face with her veil.

The Romans pushed her away.

We passed through the city gate and came out into the sunlight of the valley. We couldn’t see over the horses, so we didn’t know what had happened when the procession suddenly stopped.

“The prisoner’s down!” someone shouted.

I shut my eyes.
Please let him be dead
, I prayed.
Please, dear Lord, don’t make him go through the horror of crucifixion. Take him home to paradise. Please let him be dead.

John shouted at the horsemen in front of us, “What’s happening?”

One of the soldiers turned his head, “They got someone else to carry the crossbar. The prisoner can’t do it anymore.”

John’s face was ashen. He said, “He’s exhausted himself with his preaching. He’s lost too much weight.”

I looked at the crowd of strange Jews behind us and thought,
Where is everyone else? Peter? James? Andrew? Where are they? They should be here for him. Where are they?

The procession started to move again, and we followed. I looked at Mary. This was worse for her than it was for John and me. But she never faltered; she kept walking steadily under the hot sun, stepping over the leavings of the horses, until the hill of Calvary appeared in the distance.

Two men were already hanging there, and between them was a single empty post.

My knees started to buckle. John grabbed my elbow and held me up. I looked at Mary. Her face was set in stone, just like her son’s. She wasn’t going to collapse. She was going to see this through.

I strove to pull myself together. The least I could do was see it through with her.

“I’m all right,” I said to John. “I will be all right.”