The Thief (35 page)

“No.” She put her hands on his trembling shoulders.
How could he say that?

“Mouse.” A flash of anger strengthened his voice. “There
is much I regret in my life. Stealing, whoring. My wife and my little girl.” His voice cracked. “But this”—he pushed up under the burden—“this might be the only good thing I’ve done.” He looked back to where Jesus struggled with his cross.

She swallowed hard.
How could dying on a cross be a good thing?
What had Jesus said to him in that moment before he took his cross?

Nissa clutched at his robe and buried her face in his shoulder, breathing in the faint whiff of peppermint and cloves that lingered among the scents of dirt and blood.
Not for me, Dismas. I’m not worth it.

Marcellus prodded Dismas. The soldier’s face was grim, but he didn’t shout or curse like the ones who surrounded Gestas.

Dismas clenched his jaw and bore up under his burden. “Go, Mouse. Let my death be honorable, even if my life was not.” His legs trembled as he dragged the cross forward.

Nissa fell into step beside him.
I won’t go, not this time.

The streets were lined with men and women, baskets in their hands or lambs in their arms, readying for the Passover. Some jeered at the men dragging crosses. A few older boys followed along beside the two thieves, scooping up stones and throwing them. Dismas ducked his head, but not before one caught him just below his eye.

Rage rose in Nissa. She stamped up to the boy and pushed him hard in the chest. He dropped his stone and stepped back, his mouth agape. Another pulled his arm back to throw, and she ran at him, knocking the stone from his hands. She darted back to Dismas, shielding him with her body. “Leave him alone, you dogs!”

A woman shouted an insult. Nissa glared at her until she dropped her gaze and turned away. A group of old men spit at Gestas and moved to do the same to Dismas. She lifted her cloak, shielding him while she kicked dust at the old men.

Women who looked like pilgrims from Galilee gathered under the Jaffa Gate, wailing and sobbing. Not for Dismas, surely. Nissa looked over her shoulder. Jesus had fallen.

Longinus was off his horse, standing over the bloody man. A soldier let his whip fall on Jesus’s back. Longinus advanced on the soldier, his face like a thundercloud, his vitis raised in silent threat. The soldier shied back into the ranks.

Dismas groaned and swayed under the weight of his cross. His legs shook like saplings in the wind. Nissa reached out, but she was too late. He fell forward, the heavy beam smashed into the stone street, his body pinned beneath it.

Nissa pulled at the beam, her nails digging into the damp, slippery wood. Dismas keened like a dying animal. Sweat and blood trickled over his closed eyes.

Nissa pulled off her mantle and bunched the soft wool in her hand. She wiped his brow and his eyes. She fit her shoulder under the beam and strained to lift it.
My God, you may have abandoned him, but I will not.
The weight tore at her shoulder, wood biting into her skin, her legs shaking with the burden.

Dismas lurched to standing and wedged his shoulder under the cross. He took most of the weight, and they moved together, dragging the cross with them. Dismas’s rasping breath matched the slow cadence of their feet. The scrape of wood against stone mingled with the wails of the women.

The crowds thinned as they moved away from the city. The morning light brightened the hills of silver olive groves, but Nissa saw only the white rocks of Golgotha rising up before them.

The weight of the cross doubled as they mounted the hill. Spasms of pain shot through her neck and back. A whip slashed at Dismas; she flinched, but he didn’t falter. A few steps more and they were at the top of the rocky outcropping.

Dismas stopped, his head bowed, his chest heaving with great breaths.

The weight of the cross lifted from her back, and she collapsed into the dirt, her body shaking. Golgotha. This was where Dismas would die. But she would not let him die alone.

Three soldiers grappled Gestas to the ground as he cursed the
crowd, the gods, even the sky, but his voice held the terror of someone who knew he was about to die. Three others stretched Dismas on his cross.

Nissa threw herself next to him and held his face in her hands as a soldier bound each arm to the crossbeam. Another pushed the point of a long iron nail against his palm. Nissa pressed her cheek against Dismas’s rough face. His jaw tightened beneath hers as the hammer rose. At the clash of iron, his body seized upward, arching as a groan of agony broke from deep within his chest. Nissa’s stomach writhed, and her heart seemed to rip asunder as they hammered the second nail and moved to tie Dismas legs to the bottom of the beam. Dismas jerked as another nail pierced his feet, and a low moan shook his body.

Rough hands wrenched Nissa away and flung her onto the rocks. She squeezed her eyes shut. Blackness swam around her, and nausea rose in her throat. There would be no mercy. Not for Dismas, and not for her.

The exultant voice howled.
Look what you’ve done.

The voice was right. It had always been right. This was her fault. She was worthless, useless. It would be better if she had never been born.

She opened her eyes to see the soldiers raising the cross. Dismas’s head swung wildly, and blood streamed from his mouth where he had bitten through his lower lip. A hollow thud echoed over the hilltop as the bottom of the cross found its niche in the rock.

Nissa crawled to the foot of the cross, her mouth as dry as a potsherd, her bones as soft as wax. She inched up on her knees, reaching to touch Dismas’s foot, pierced by a black nail and dark with blood.

She leaned her head against the damp wood that smelled of blood and sap.
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
She closed her eyes, and blackness descended upon her.

Chapter 32

L
ONGINUS SUFFERED EVERY
tortured step Jesus took as they approached the ascent to Golgotha. He swept the crowds back with his vitis but couldn’t stop their insults or the rocks and debris they flung at the man who staggered, barely alive, under the cross.

Numb, he watched men gather at the top of the hill. Golgotha. The place of the skull. His gut twisted. Here he would order the death of this man, pound the nails, raise the cross. And these men, these pious Jews, were rushing for the front row.

Where were all those who should be here—Jesus’ disciples and friends? Had the cowards all abandoned the one they called the Messiah?

He wouldn’t abandon this man—the one he would crucify today with his own hand—whether he was a man or the son of the one God, as Stephen had claimed.

He would do what Jesus had so clearly willed him to do. His Father’s will. As soon as Jesus was dead, probably before, Silvanus would run to Pilate and accuse Longinus of treason. It didn’t matter. His friends were now his enemies, and his enemies—the Jews, the followers of Jesus—they hated him, too. He was more alone than he had ever been.

Wood scraped against the dirt and rock. Jesus’s breath rasped in and out of his chest in tortured gasps. He swayed and fell, the heavy wood beam falling across his shoulders and pushing his
face into the dirt. Two legionaries closed in on him, kicking and shouting. He didn’t move.

Longinus smacked his vitis against a legionary’s helmet. “Help him up.” The legionary obeyed, setting Jesus on his feet and moving ahead to push the crowd back from the path that wound up the rocky hill.

Longinus’s muscles tensed as Jesus dragged the cross one step forward. He was weakening. He’d left so much blood at the flogging pillar, he should be dead already. It would be more merciful for him to die here, at the bottom of the hill. Anything was more merciful than what awaited him on Golgotha.

He must die on the cross.
Longinus knew it in the same way he knew that he must be the one to get him there.

He jumped down from Ferox and moved to a knot of bystanders—a man and a few women and children. All had the ebony skin of the southern provinces, Cyrene by the look of them. The women wept and covered their faces, pulling children into the folds of their garments. The man had wide shoulders, thick arms, and eyes full of pity.

“You there.”

The man jumped and looked behind his shoulder.

Longinus pointed his stick. “Help him.”

“Me?” The man shook his head. “I don’t even know him.”

“Carry the cross for him, to the top of the hill.”

The man backed up, a terrified look on his face.

Longinus took a long, slow look at the women and children. He’d never hurt them, but this man didn’t know that. He raised his stick toward them. “Now.”

The man jerked forward and hurried to catch up with Jesus. He ducked under the cross and wrapped his thick arms around the beam. When he lifted it from Jesus’ shoulders, Jesus crumpled to the ground again.

He didn’t move. The Cyrenian looked at Longinus, a question on his face. Longinus’s mouth went dry. He slid his hands under Jesus’s arms and lifted him from the dirt. For a moment,
Jesus’ weight was in his arms. His muscles were hard and sinewy, and he smelled of blood and sweat. He was like any other man Longinus had crucified . . . until he lifted his head to meet Longinus’s eyes. There, in that gaze, Longinus glimpsed the peace that he sought—the peace Stephen had found—like water flowing from a never-ending source.

Jesus could stop this. Longinus could see his power even now, feel it under his hands. Yet Jesus refused to wield it. Why would a god—
the
God—want his own son to die like this, on a Roman cross? What had Pilate said?
Sometimes the innocent have to pay the price for the guilty.
Just as Dismas was doing for Nissa. So who was Jesus saving from death? Whose punishment was he taking on his shoulders?

Longinus leaned Jesus against the Cyrenian. They stepped together, the big man shortening his long steps to accommodate Jesus’ shuffling gate. Longinus pulled himself back onto Ferox and urged the horse up the hill. Dismas’s cross was already raised. He trembled on it, a low groan coming from him. Gestas cursed at the world. The thieves hadn’t lost as much blood as Jesus; they would last a long time. Perhaps even days.

He hardened his heart at the sight of Nissa, huddled at Dismas’s feet. Her anguish was well deserved. If he could, he’d shorten the thief’s agony on the cross. That was all he could do for Dismas.

Jesus fell to his knees at the top of the hill. The Cyrenian dropped the cross between the two thieves, his breath heaving. He glanced warily at Longinus.

Longinus waved him away. “Go now. Back to your family.”

But the man retreated to the edges of the crowd, his eyes on Jesus, the fear in his face replaced with grief.

Longinus eyed the dismal hilltop where the Romans crucified murderers and thieves, insurrectionists and rebels. Jesus wasn’t a rebel, not like the others. This man was something else. A prophet? Perhaps. He had spoken to God in the garden. A priest and healer? Yes. Longinus had seen his miraculous power.
But more than that, even as he knelt beside the wood of the cross with a crown of thorns on his head, he had the air of a king.

Two legionaries halted in front of Longinus, waiting for orders.

This was the last chance. Longinus couldn’t stop what was about to happen, but Jesus could. He bent over the kneeling man. Jesus raised his face to look into Longinus’s eyes.

Longinus heard the echo of the words in the garden.
Not my will, Abba, but yours be done.

Longinus nodded to his men. They pulled Jesus to his feet and yanked his tunic over his head. His wounds reopened, and bright blood flowed over his back and chest. Clothed only in his linen undergarment, he shivered in the cold wind gusting over the hilltop.

Longinus swallowed, his mouth tasting like dust and just as dry.

The wails of the women grew louder.

A legionary hefted the mallet and chose a nail the length of his hand and as thick as his finger. The other two threw Jesus onto the cross. The sun dimmed, like a shadow had fallen across the heavens.

A searing pain ripped through Longinus’s temple. He must be the one. He, the only Roman who knew this man wasn’t a criminal but something more than any of them could understand. He pushed the legionary aside and jerked the mallet from his hand.

Jesus didn’t struggle. The two legionaries stretched one arm along the crossbeam. Jesus opened his hand to receive the nail. Longinus knelt beside the cross. He fit the point of the nail into the palm of the man who had healed the blind, raised a man from the tomb.
Forgive me.
He lifted the mallet and let it fall.

Iron rang on iron. Jesus cried out. His back arched, and blood spurted onto the dark wood and the white stone. Twice more, Longinus lifted the mallet. Twice more Jesus cried out until the nail head lay flush against his palm.

Longinus fought the sickness that threatened. He scrambled to the other side of the cross, where his men held Jesus’ other hand. Three rings of the mallet, and the other hand was nailed.