CHAPTER 28

I couldn’t stay away.

At the fifth hour, with the sun almost at its peak, I walked to Golgotha, a rocky crag north of the Damascus Gate, just outside the city limits. It was the preferred spot for executions because the criminals would be seen by everyone entering the city and because there was a cemetery nearby. On the sheer face of the hill, two small caves in the rocks resembled the eye sockets of a skull.

I arrived and climbed the small dirt road that led to the top of Golgotha. The crowd had thinned, but there were still a few hundred people loitering around, watching the criminals suffer. Jesus was in the middle, with one thief on each side.

I stayed on the fringes of the crowd, trying not to draw attention. One of the soldiers, playing a game of dice at the foot of the cross, caught a glimpse of me. He twisted his face into a question. I nodded in reassurance and he returned to the game. I had never shown up for an execution before, but I had no power to stop one unless I was acting on orders from Pilate.

I knew the centurion in charge, a Roman named Quintus, who had made the trek with us from Caesarea. He was a member of the Italian Regiment, a decorated and loyal soldier. He had seen plenty of men die, but unlike many of Pilate’s other commanders, he did not lust for it.

He and his men had driven long spikes through Jesus’ wrists, just below the palm, between the two bones of the forearm. I had seen them do it to other prisoners in the arena. I had watched the blood spurt out. Even now, as Jesus hung there, blood trickled to the ground.

An angled block of wood had been attached to the cross as a footrest, and Jesus’ feet had been placed one on top of the other, then nailed in place. He hung, for the most part, with his head down. Periodically, he would pull himself up, rubbing his flayed back against the coarse wood of the cross. He would gasp for air and grimace as the nails pressured the nerves in his wrists and ripped the tendons in his feet. I found myself catching my breath with him, thinking about the pain and humiliation I had suffered as a boy, gasping for air and feeling the shame.

I had been there —where he was —but this was no prank. There would be no friends to save him, no reprieve or pardon. He would hang there until he didn’t have the strength to take another breath. Or, if the guards were merciful, they would break his legs with a steel rod and put him out of his misery.

I had to look away.

Most of the crowd was decidedly less sympathetic. “He saved others, but he cannot save himself!” one of the leaders of the Sanhedrin said.

Another joined in. “He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross, and then we’ll believe in him. He’s the one who claimed to be the Son of God!”

I made my way to a group of women standing with a solitary man. They were all crying, though the bearded Jewish man tried to wipe away his tears. I recognized one of the women from the Stone Pavement Courtyard, the one I suspected of being the rabbi’s mother.

“What does this mean,” I asked the women, “that he saved others?”

The one closest to me was a beautiful young woman with dark knotted hair, smooth skin, and almond eyes. She wore none of the makeup favored by Roman women, but even in her misery she possessed a raw beauty seldom seen in Caesarea or even the great capital city of Rome. Her eyes were red and puffy. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

She looked at me, and I couldn’t tell whether she recognized me from earlier or not. “He saved me,” she said. She didn’t sound indignant or defensive. Only sad.

“How did he save you?”

She stole a sideways glance at the other women as if seeking their permission. “I was caught in the act of adultery by those men,” she explained, motioning to the leaders at the foot of the cross. “They dragged me before Jesus and reminded him that the law of Moses required that I be stoned. They asked him what he thought.”

I waited, shoving a small pebble with my sandal. The silence prompted her to continue.

“He told them that the man who had never sinned should be the one to throw the first stone,” she said. “It’s another precept of the law of Moses.”

“And that stopped them?”

“It probably wouldn’t have. But then he knelt down and wrote in the dirt.”

She paused and stared at the rabbi as if she had forgotten all about our conversation.

“What did he write?” I prompted.

She turned back to me. She didn’t exactly smile, but there was the slightest upturn of her lips as she remembered the moment. “The names of the women the leaders had been sleeping with. Jesus wrote them very deliberately, one by one, starting with the oldest man’s affairs first. They dropped their stones and left.”

“He saved others, but he cannot save himself.” I wanted to tell this young woman that the rabbi seemed like a good man, but I knew those words would ring hypocritical and hollow. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, yet I couldn’t bring myself to say that either. So we stood there in silence as Jesus tensed and raised himself up for another labored breath.

“After the religious leaders left, Jesus told me that he wouldn’t condemn me either,” she said. “He told me to go and not sin anymore.”

“He sounds like an amazing man.”

“He is.” There was a long pause. “Or at least he was.”

She turned to the cross, and I took it as a cue that the conversation was over. I moved a few feet away and turned my attention back to the three crucified men hanging there, laboring to breathe. Every few minutes, more onlookers would peel away and head down the hill. Travelers on the road sometimes stopped and stared for a moment, but not many of them came up the hill.

Men had been known to hang on the cross for days before they died. Tomorrow was the Sabbath. The Jews had work to finish before the evening.

The defections were slow at first, a small group here or there. But by noon, the crowd had thinned to less than a hundred.

For some reason, I couldn’t walk away. The sign I had written with my own hand had been nailed above his head: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. His face was marred and bruised. He grimaced in pain and had an awkward way of sliding up and down the wood, tensing every muscle to catch his breath. I wanted to give an order to put an end to the man’s suffering.

“So you’re the Messiah,” one of the thieves said. He pulled himself up for a breath. “Prove it by saving yourself —and us, too, while you’re at it!”

Jesus looked at the man with sad eyes. But he didn’t defend himself.

“Don’t you fear God?” the other thief asked, gasping. “We deserve this, but this man hasn’t done anything —” he stopped to catch a breath —“anything wrong.”

The argument drew me closer. I had been there during the second thief’s trial. He had perjured himself and tried to intimidate the witnesses. He had shown no remorse. And now he had found humility?

He lowered his voice, but I still heard what he said: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

Jesus glanced at him with great sympathy. I could have sworn the rabbi tried to smile.

He raised himself up, inhaled, and spoke with calm assurance. “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

That was all he said, but it seemed to be enough. The thief dropped his head on his chest and muttered something that sounded like a prayer.

And then, without warning, the sky went dark.