CHAPTER 4

I slept fitfully that night in the barracks, my mind racing with the implications of what had transpired earlier that day. My emotions pulled me in different directions. I was proud of sticking up for myself, yet I felt sorry for Caligula. It was not easy seeing him writhing uncontrollably on the ground with everyone gawking at him. We had all been sworn to secrecy about the disease, but I knew it would be hard to keep it quiet.

The pain from my swollen face and ear reminded me that I’d had no choice but to retaliate. Seneca had handled things the same way a time or two before —allowed some of the students to fight it out and shake hands afterward. I think Seneca knew I could handle Caligula, or maybe he thought I needed to be toughened up a little. But now, hours later, the problem wasn’t with me. Caligula was the one not willing to let it drop.

He had made no attempt to hide his contempt for me throughout the rest of the day. I saw him huddling with Lucian and others, making plans and casting glances my way. Retaliation was in the air, and the other boys started distancing themselves from me —except, of course, my friend Marcus, who followed me around like a shadow.

I decided to lie awake all night on the theory that Caligula and his friends would strike under cover of darkness. But the day’s activities had been taxing, and the steady breathing of the others in the barracks made staying awake difficult. I don’t remember when I dozed off, but my exhausted body could not obey the demands of my paranoid mind.

I definitely remember when I woke up.

They dragged me from my bunk and threw me to the floor before I knew what was happening. Somebody wrenched my hands behind my back while one of my attackers stuffed a rag in my mouth. A third tied a blindfold over my eyes. I tried to scream, but my shouts were muffled by the gag. I felt a heavy knee in the middle of my back while somebody else pinned my head to the floor with his elbow. My attackers quickly tied my wrists together behind my back, whispering to each other as they worked. They tied my ankles as well and pulled my gag tight, knotting the cloth behind my head.

I was terrified, my heart beating out of my chest.

They turned me on my side and somebody kicked me in the gut, forcing the wind out of my lungs.

They pulled at the ropes on my ankles and wrists. I kicked and squirmed, but my movements only brought more pressure from all sides, strong hands holding me in place, pressing me against the floor. Someone tied my wrists and ankles together in one big knot in the middle of my back. I stopped squirming and told myself to just breathe.

They grabbed my arms and legs and carried me, facedown, out the barracks door and down the street. It sounded like the footsteps of ten or twelve boys at the very least. I could hear them whispering and laughing and arguing over which direction they should go.

I tried to calm myself by recalling all the pranks we had played on each other. I seldom participated because I was busy studying, but I had been the brunt of some of these in the past, and I told myself that this time would be no different. Seneca had trained us in Stoicism, and that meant I knew how to detach myself from suffering or humiliation.

In theory.

But in fact, my mind raced with fear about what my classmates had in mind. Underneath the blindfold, my eyes watered from the crushing humiliation of being singled out and picked on by everyone else. They were laughing at me, having a grand time at my expense. I was the one who had never learned to fit in. The kid with only one true friend in the whole school.

It seemed like they carried me for a long time, pausing occasionally so they could take turns bearing my weight. Finally they stopped and placed me facedown on the ground. They rolled me on my side and cut the cords binding my wrists and ankles together. I felt the blood rushing back to my hands, and I could straighten my legs again. They cut the rope that bound my wrists, and I jerked my arms free —struggling, swinging —but there were too many of them, and they pinned down my arms. They rolled me onto my back, still blindfolded and gagged, and I felt a beam under my shoulders.

That’s when I knew what was happening. I was going to be crucified!

The whispering was more frantic now, and I heard a few voices I thought I recognized. Adrenaline shot through my veins but I couldn’t struggle free. Surely somebody would stop this madness! They would laugh at how they had scared me and then had let me go —humiliated but unhurt. They wouldn’t really nail me to a cross.

Would they?

I heard somebody mention a hammer, which chilled me and made every muscle in my body contract. The gag turned my cries for help into muffled groans. I heard them nailing a small block of wood to the vertical post of the cross, somewhere below my feet. I was crying harder now, breathing in short sobs. They stretched my arms out to the sides and wrenched them over the top of the crossbeam, tying my wrists to the beam so that my triceps rested on top of the wood. They tied my legs to the vertical post, the ropes cutting into me just below my knees and at my ankles.

“Move that block up a little,” I heard someone say. But the others argued that it was fine where it was.

There was no mistaking this for a harmless prank. Seneca had told us that some prisoners hung on their crosses for days while others died within a matter of hours. My shame and humiliation were overcome by the terror that I might actually die. I was fourteen years old. How could this be happening to me?

Then, in the midst of this bone-chilling terror, there was a brief flicker of hope. I was lying there on the cross, tied to the crossbar and vertical beam, gagged and blindfolded, but there were no longer any hands on me. Maybe they were just going to leave me there and let me be discovered by some passerby. My humiliation would be complete, but at least there would be no fear of dying like a common criminal.

I could sense that my attackers had stepped away for a moment and were huddling about something. Would they cut me free and run away before I took the blindfold off, figuring that I had learned my lesson?

But then I sensed somebody leaning over me. I felt the sharp point of something scratch my side and knew they had cut off my subligar, the knotted loincloth that I had worn to bed. I was now lying there naked, utterly humiliated, wishing I could somehow cover myself.

Several of them lifted the cross and turned it over so that I was hanging from it facedown. They unknotted the blindfold and took out the gag. It was dark outside, almost pitch-black, and my attackers were all behind me. I tried to look over my shoulder, but they were already lifting the cross up, and I was disoriented.

I didn’t cry out. I would not give them the satisfaction of hearing me beg. Tears rolled down my cheeks in the darkness, but I clenched my jaw and kept my silence —anger and defiance pushing aside the fear.

The pressure on my arms and chest made it hard to breathe. I looked down, and I could make out the heads of Caligula and at least a half-dozen other boys. I used to think that some of them were my friends. I had defended them when Seneca pressed too hard. I had suffered with them as we learned to endure hardship together.

But now they were all helping to lift the cross and secure its base into a hole they had apparently dug in the ground earlier that night.

When the cross jarred into place, it felt like my arms tore away from my shoulder joints. My assailants knelt down and packed in the dirt around the foot of the cross, bracing it so it wouldn’t lean.

The pressure on my chest and arms was nearly unbearable. The only way I could breathe was to tense all my muscles and pull up using my arms, taking one gasping breath before I sagged back down. When I sagged, there was a small block of wood that my feet could barely touch. I could rest there for a moment, though I couldn’t draw a deep breath in that position.

Most of my tormentors lingered in back of the cross, but Caligula and Lucian stepped in front and looked up at me. In the shadows from the moon and stars I could see Caligula’s sneer. “Next time,” he said, “show a little respect.”

I raised myself up, pain burning my chest and shoulders. My arms were already starting to go numb.

“I showed you no disrespect,” I said. “Please. I’m not a criminal.” I gasped for air. “You have proven your point. Let me down.”

Caligula scoffed. “You’re a great believer in the Fates. Perhaps the Fates will save you now.” He motioned to the others, and they all started walking away.

I raised myself up again and called out after them, naming the ones I had thought were my friends. One of the boys picked up a rock and threw it at me, and a few others joined in. Caligula watched for a moment, then told them to stop. They all walked down the road and left.

I looked around with tears in my eyes, trying to get my bearings. I was on the side of a dirt road and seemed to be about a half mile from the torches of the city. They had placed the cross in plain sight so that when the merchants came in the early morning with their carts of grain and vegetables, I would be discovered. But I didn’t know if I could survive that long. When I sagged down so my feet could rest on the block of wood, I felt like my chest would collapse and my arms would be ripped from their sockets. I had to flex my arms and rise up to take some of the weight off my shoulders. But every time I did that, scraping my back against the rough wood of the cross, I could feel more strength being sapped from my body.

Before long, stabbing pains shot through my triceps, shoulders, and chest with each breath. I forced myself to rise, breathe, cry for help, and sag back down. Each time it got a little harder. Each time I felt myself getting a little more desperate. The humiliation and anger at my supposed friends had been replaced by a relentless pain and a single overriding goal.

I just wanted to survive.

I followed this agonizing routine for what seemed like an eternity. My breathing became shallow. Before long, I couldn’t even cry out for help.

I closed my eyes and prayed to the gods. What a humiliating death! Hanging there, exposed like a common criminal or a rebellious slave. I was the son of an equestrian! I was a Roman citizen! Surely if I died, Caligula and his cohorts would receive the most extreme punishment.

But I wasn’t ready to die.

I started imagining things. I kept seeing the face of Caligula, at first mocking me and then breaking into convulsions. I thought about my mother and little sister —the pain they would feel if I didn’t survive this. My father would be furious, out for revenge.

In that delirious state, when I first heard the voice, it was hard to know whether it was real or imagined.

“Theophilus! Theophilus!”

I felt a stick tap against my shin, and somehow it jolted me back to reality. I looked down and saw him standing there. I recognized the curly blond hair and the reed-thin body. He had a look of shock and worry on his face. He glanced over his shoulder as if my attackers might come back at any minute and put him on a cross as well.

“How do I get you down?” Marcus asked.

“Hurry” was all I could manage.

He shinnied up and untied my ankles first and eventually my wrists. It felt so good just to breathe again.

By the time my feet hit the ground, I was swirling with emotion. Pain still stabbed at my shoulders and chest. I felt gratitude for a friend who had put himself at risk to save me. But mostly I was furious at Caligula, Lucian, and their cohorts.

I wanted revenge. I wanted them to pay. What had I done to deserve being crucified? I knew Caligula and his family were powerful, but how could I keep my mouth shut about this?

“What are you going to do?” Marcus asked.

“I’m going home,” I said through gritted teeth. I found my subligar on the ground and tied it on. I was in no shape to be walking all the way home, but I wasn’t going back to the barracks. “You should come with me.”

I could tell by the look in his eyes that Marcus didn’t like the tone of my voice. He was willing to risk everything to save a friend, but he didn’t really want to squeal on his classmates.

“We can’t let them get away with this,” I said.