Judas (25 page)
Freedom. For the first time in two days I could move about as I pleased. I stretched my arms out and spun on my heel. I looked right and left. I did not want to meet any of the disciples closest to Jesus, or any of our supporters, in fact. I did not know what they knew about my role in Jesus’ arrest and impending crucifixion, but I knew if he had not already done so, John would tell them, and no amount of explaining on my part could ever reconcile us. I wanted to flee, to go as far as I could, as fast as I could, anywhere. But instead, I wandered aimlessly around the city, my mind numb, and my spirit broken.
As darkness fell, I found myself wandering the hills north of the city, a short distance from the Fish Gate. Travelers covered the area with their tents. I settled near a family from Thrace. Their horsehide tent with its streamers and gaily-colored poles spread over a substantial piece of ground. I counted nearly a dozen people coming and going through its bright red flaps. I caught the aroma of cooking, some sort of meat.
The head of the household motioned for me to join them for Passover. His wife looked dubious, but when I offered a few coins, she beamed and waved me in. They had never heard of Jesus, were only dimly aware of the commotion at the temple, and eager to eat and sing and celebrate. I was not very good company, I fear. Afterward, I spent the night in the rocky hills not far from their tent. Sleep, the great healer, avoided my earnest pleas, so I watched as the stars made their circuits in the heavens and finally gave way to the sun.
Before I left, I traded a few more coins and my cloak for one of theirs and a head covering. The cloak, like their tent, was made from finely tanned horsehide and decorated with loops and swirls along its edge. Anyone seeking me would not be looking for a man from Thrace. I wished my host a safe trip and set out, intending to go away from the city. Instead, my steps turned toward it as if a great force willed me back, back to the temple, back to the fortress, back to my shame. I wondered if I had finally gone mad.
I entered the city and made my way to the north side of the Antonia Fortress. A large crowd had gathered at the stout door that fronted onto the street. They pushed and shoved and a few minor fights broke out. Soldiers moved into the mass of people to quell them. Even though the crowd vastly outnumbered the guards, no one dared attack them. The sun cleared the eastern walls—the second hour of the sixth day. With an eye trained to spot them, I noted the cutpurses were out in force.
A soldier on the wall above shouted an order to those below. They moved to the door, pointed their spears at the mob, and drove them back. When they had cleared a space, one of them banged his fist on the door and it swung open. More soldiers led out three men. The crowd began to curse and throw rotten fruit. Neither pilgrims nor worshippers, this mob came from the threadbare hem of society that delights in public hangings and crucifixions. They would jeer and harass the prisoners all the way through the city. Whatever the other two had done or not done held no interest for me. My eyes were only on the third man, Jesus.
He wore the same dirty purple robe, but now it was stained dark brown. The dried blood from his wounds glued the cloth to his torn back. There were dark circles under his eyes. A piece of pomegranate glanced off his forehead. Only when an errant apple struck a soldier’s helmet and its recipient whirled, sword in hand, did the pelting stop. People laughed.
The soldier nearest Jesus grabbed the purple robe and, with a jerk, tore it away. I swear I could smell blood. Jesus cried out. Everyone could see the horror the scourge had made of his back. Even those slow-witted street denizens were subdued at the sight. His old linen robe replaced the purple one across his shoulders and, eyes wet, I watched as new red stains spread across it.
The soldiers then dragged three heavy wooden beams from the fortress, each half again as long as the men were tall. They banged and bumped across the rough cobbles. From the new bark on them I guessed they had been cut from green wood and would be very heavy. Next, the soldiers hoisted them up onto the shoulders of Jesus’ companions. The two trudged away, bearing their crosses, but Jesus remained. Most of the oafs and their baskets of fruit followed the first two. Only a smaller, quieter crowd remained. It looked like the soldiers wanted the other two prisoners away before they started down the street with Jesus. I thought I saw Joseph nearby. Perhaps he had arranged it. Perhaps he, like me, felt deep shame for our lack of courage.
The soldiers placed the crossbeam on Jesus’ back. He collapsed under its weight. He was jerked back to his feet and given a drink and the beam lifted on his back again. This time he managed to stagger down the street, one painful step at a time. I stayed at the back of the onlookers, moving slowly with them. The street twisted down into the Tyropoeon Valley, the valley of the cheese mongers, which divides the city. Just as he reached the bottom of the street where it veered to the left, he fell. The crossbeam bounced off his torn back and clattered several paces away. He lay motionless in the street. A soldier kicked him and he stirred. He struggled back to his feet but as soon as the beam was replaced on his back, he collapsed again.
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.
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.