The Obsidian Blade (22 page)

Crossing the valley, headed in their direction, were three naked men carrying wooden beams across their shoulders. A group of about ten soldiers followed them closely. The soldiers could have been Greek, Egyptian, or any of a dozen other nationalities, but with a growing dread of what he was about to witness, Tucker felt certain they were Romans.

A crowd of perhaps thirty people wearing a variety of robes and tunics in various colors followed the Roman soldiers. Several children, dressed in tattered and stained fabric, ran in and out of the crowd, shouting and laughing. At the rear of the procession, several bearded men in long white robes walked two abreast.

One of the naked men at the front of the procession pitched forward. He fell flat, the weight of the beam driving his face into the dirt. Two of the soldiers grabbed the ends of the beam and lifted him to his feet. The man’s arms were roped to the beam. He staggered forward, blood streaming from his nose.

Horrified, Tucker ducked back into the ravine. He did not think he could watch what was about to happen, even though he’d seen it depicted in illustrations, in movies, and — most vividly — in his imagination. He huddled there trying not to listen as the voices — and the cries of pain — grew louder. He pressed his hands to his ears and, for the first time since he had left Hopewell, Tucker Feye prayed — for Jesus.

T
HE WORST PART — EVEN WORSE THAN THE SCREAMS
and gasps and groans — was the sound of the mallet striking iron, again and again. The reality of what was happening on top of that hill could not possibly have been worse than what Tucker was seeing in his head: nails tearing through muscle, tendon, and bone. He forced himself to climb back up the side of the ravine. He peeked over the edge in time to see four of the soldiers using the forked poles, one on each end of the beam, to raise one of the men — the one who had fallen on his face — onto the tallest post. When the beam reached the top, it dropped with a thud into the notch, forming a T-shaped cross.

The man hanging from the cross appeared to be unconscious. The other two men had already been hung from two of the shorter posts.

The crowd watching the crucifixions were gathered at the far side of the hilltop. Tucker remembered the name of this hill: Golgotha, the place of the skull. The man hanging from the tallest cross would be Jesus.

The death of a prophet.

The Roman soldiers formed a barrier, keeping the observers well back from the crosses. The white-robed men stood off to the side, separate from the rest. The cheerful man with the silver-studded belt brought his mallet over to the tall post and looked up at Jesus. The head of the mallet was stained with blood. The man, Tucker decided, must be the official crucifier, or executioner. He said something to one of the soldiers, who spat on the ground and turned away. Another soldier — the only one wearing a crest on his helmet — shouted an order. The soldier who had spat returned reluctantly to the base of the crucifix, removed his helmet, squatted down, and allowed the executioner to clamber onto his shoulders so that he could reach Jesus’s feet. The executioner pulled a long, broad-headed nail from a pocket in his tunic. He used his palm to drive the point of the nail deep into Jesus’s right ankle, then bent the leg and hammered the nail through the ankle into the side of the post. Blood spattered from the fresh wound, ran down his arm and dribbled onto the cursing soldier’s head.

By this point, the scene had become so unreal that Tucker felt as if he were watching a particularly graphic and gruesome movie, but he could not look away. The executioner repeated his act with the other ankle. This time, as the executioner delivered the final blow with the mallet, the man on the cross shuddered and awakened with an agonized moan. The soldier, startled, staggered back and lost his balance. Both men fell backward, the executioner landing flat on his back.

The other soldiers laughed. The executioner and the soldier jumped to their feet, shouting at each other. Above them, on the cross, the dying man looked around with a wild-eyed expression of amazement and despair, as if he could not believe that he had come to this.

Tucker, cowering in the ravine, closed his eyes and began, silently, to weep.

The soldiers departed Golgotha — all but two, who squatted in the scant shadow cast by the dying prophet and played some sort of game involving polished stones and coins. The crowd of gawkers became bored and returned to the city. The men in the white robes were among the last to leave, but for a few of the unruly children, who stayed behind, laughing and calling out to the crucified men. Mired in their own miseries, the dying men ignored them. One of the children threw a handful of pebbles at Jesus. The pebbles bounced off the cross and rattled down upon the soldiers, who jumped up from their game and chased the children off.

Tucker waited in the ravine. Every few minutes, the man on the tallest cross would stir, moaning and muttering and trying to lift himself with his feet to take the pressure off his arms and chest, and then he would pass out again. The other two crucified men followed a similar pattern. Tucker had always thought of the crucifixion as equal parts holy and horrifying, but he could see nothing holy about any of this. The dying men were in agony. Jesus did not look at all like a man who believed he would be resurrected. He looked
scared.
And where was Mary, his mother? Where was Mary Magdalene? Where were the apostles and the rest of his followers?

One of the soldiers produced a wineskin. The two men passed it back and forth, drinking. Their conversation became loud and boisterous; one attempted to engage Jesus in conversation, but he was not satisfied by the dying man’s anguished replies. The wineskin gave up its last drops; the soldiers grew sleepy. They arranged themselves with their heads in the shadow of the cross and soon were snoring.

This might be a good time for me to leave,
Tucker thought. He could follow the ravine down to the base of the hill. From there, he could cut through the olive orchard and . . . after that, he wasn’t sure. He would have to find food and shelter for the night — either that or go back through the disko to confront the priests.

A movement about fifty yards to his right caught his eye. A figure emerged from another ravine and crept across the stony expanse toward the tallest cross. It was his father, in jeans and a flannel shirt, wearing the bright-blue boots of the Medicants, exactly as he had been dressed the day he returned to Hopewell with Lahlia.

Tucker almost shouted but caught himself before the sound left his throat. He did not want to awaken the two snoring soldiers. Instead, he stood and waved, but his father was focused on the man on the cross, and had his back to Tucker.

The Reverend Feye approached the cross. He looked up at Jesus and said something. Jesus groaned and stirred. The Reverend moved closer and spoke again, then reached up and touched the man’s foot.

Jesus screamed, contorted his body, and passed out again.

The two soldiers sat up at the sound and looked around, confused. The Reverend Feye took off running, his long strides quickly taking him over the back side of the hill and into the olive orchard. Both soldiers started after him, but one of them stopped after a few strides, ran back to the tall cross, and thrust his sword deep into Jesus’s side. Satisfied by the sudden and copious flow of blood, he joined his fellow soldier in pursuit of the Reverend Feye.

Tucker’s first impulse was to go running after them, but he held back. Assuming his dad was able to elude the soldiers, where would he go? He would be interested in only one thing — the man who now hung slack and lifeless from that cross. Tucker thought there was a good chance he would return to the hilltop.

The soldiers had been gone for only a minute or two when another group appeared over the brow of the hill — the white-robed men who had earlier witnessed the crucifixion. Moving quickly and purposefully, they surrounded Jesus. One of them produced an iron tool from the sleeve of his robe and worked the nails loose from Jesus’s ankles. Using the forked poles left behind by the soldiers, the others lowered him from the post — still attached to the crossbar. The man with the tool pulled the nails from his wrists. They wrapped him in a long white cloth and carried him off the hill in the opposite direction taken by Tucker’s father and the two soldiers. Could his father have lured the soldiers away so that these men could steal Jesus’s body?

The men carried the body off Golgotha using the path that led toward the city. Tucker followed them, staying out of sight. After a hundred yards or so, they turned away from the city onto a narrow road paved with irregular stones, where they were met by several other similarly garbed men. They followed the road along the valley, moving quickly, taking turns carrying their burden, looking back frequently. Tucker stayed off to the side, using rocks and the occasional shrub for concealment. His Medicant boots did an amazing job of protecting his feet from the plentiful sharp stones and thorns.

They walked for perhaps a mile, until they reached the base of a low cliff, a nearly vertical rock face about thirty feet high and several hundred yards long. Along its shadowed face were several rectangular openings. Some of the openings were blocked or partially blocked by stone slabs. Tucker watched from the opposite side of the road, hidden behind a cluster of bushes. The men set the body on the ground before one of the stone slabs. Using three round logs as crude wheels, they rolled the stone slab aside to reveal a low, narrow opening.

Two of the men carried the body inside. The others waited outside, pressing themselves close to the wall to take advantage of the scant midday shade.

By the time the men emerged from the cave, the sun had moved closer to the horizon. They rolled the slab back into place, then removed the rollers by twisting, rocking, and pulling at them until the bottom of the slab lay flat on the ground. The men talked for a few minutes, then headed back up the road toward the city.

What will I see,
Tucker wondered,
if I sit here for three days?
Could that ruin of a man actually be Jesus Christ? Would he come back to life?

Tucker had always believed the story of Jesus in every detail, but after the blood and the horror he had seen, it seemed impossible that the crucified man could live again. And even if he were resurrected — assuming that it really
was
Jesus — what did that mean for Tucker? Would he join the men in white and become a boy apostle?

A flash of blue caught his eye. Farther down the road, the Reverend Feye stepped out from behind a pile of rocks and ran toward the sealed tomb. Tucker was about to shout out to him when nearby voices startled him to silence. Two men wearing faded red tunics were coming up the road, one of them carrying a dead goat over his shoulders. They were not the same men he had seen on Golgotha, but the hard-faced look of the professional soldier was unmistakable. Tucker ducked behind the bushes.

One of the soldiers noticed the oddly dressed man by the tomb and pointed him out to his companion. The Reverend was trying to pull the heavy stone away from the opening with his hands. The soldiers stopped and watched, first laughing at his efforts, then arguing with each other. Tucker understood none of the words, but he got the impression that they were trying to decide if it was worth their while to set aside their business with the dead goat long enough to arrest a possible grave robber. After a short discussion, the soldiers continued on down the road.

Tucker’s father, intent on his work, had not noticed them. He tried to wedge one of the log rollers between the slab and the cliff. He couldn’t get it in from the side, but after a minute he climbed on top and was able to force the end of the log between the rock face and the slab. Using the log as a pry bar, he pressed with his feet against the cliff and threw all his weight against the log. The slab teetered, then fell flat, breaking into two pieces. The Reverend landed on his feet, ducked his head, and entered the tomb.

T
UCKER WAITED UNTIL THE TWO SOLDIERS WITH THE
goat were completely out of sight, then ran across the road and followed his father into the tomb. The passageway was only about five feet high and not much wider than his shoulders. To his relief, the tomb smelled only of moist stone, not of death.