Part 15 (2/2)

With a twist he sent her spinning back to Baba Barbulah's wall.

”March!” he ordered.

The soldiery, disarranged, fell in line. The two robbers picked up their burden. The Master turned to Mary, to the others as well, with that expression which he alone possessed, that look which both promised and a.s.suaged, and, it may be, would have said some word of encouragement, but Mary was at his side again, her hand upon his cloak.

”It shall never be,” she repeated. ”They must kill me first.”

Calcol wheeled. His short sword glistened, reversed, and her cheek was laid open by the hilt. She staggered back. The soldiery moved on. The women surrounded her and stanched the wound. To her the blow held the difference between a cut and a cancer; she knew that it could never heal; and, as the blood poured down her face, for the first time she divined the uselessness of revolt.

Presently a wave of the mob caught her, separating her from the other women, and carrying her in its eddy through the gate, into the valley and on to the hillock beyond. On one side were the glimmer of fires, the smell of smoke, of offal too. On the infrequent trees vultures perched. To the right was a nest of gardens and of tombs.

In the eddies Mary lost foothold and lagged a little to the rear. When she reached Gulgolta the soldiery had formed three sides of a square. In it were the executioners, the prisoners, and the centurion. At the place where a fourth side might have been a steep decline began.

Within the square three crosses lay; before them the prisoners stood, stripped of their clothing now, and naked.

The Sanhedrim was grouped about that side of the square which leaned to the south, the horned bonnet of Caiaphas towering its lacework above the others. To the wide and cruel corners of his mouth had come the calm of a cheetah devouring its prey. At the outer angle, to the right, the standard of the empire swayed; and from an oak two vultures soared with a scream into the air, their eyes fixed on the vision of bare white flesh.

Through the ranks an elder pa.s.sed. In his hand was a gourd, which he offered to one of the thieves.

”Drink of it, Dysmas,” he invited. ”In it grains of frankincense have been dissolved.”

To the rear Annas nodded his approval. His lean, lank jaws parted. ”Give strong drink,” he announced, authoritatively; ”give strong and heady drink to those about to die, and wine to those that sorrow.”

Dysmas drank abundantly of the soporific, and held the gourd to his comrade.

”Take it, Stegas.”

As the second thief raised it to his lips, with a motion of arm and knee an executioner caught Dysmas beneath the chin, behind the leg, and the thief lay on a cross. In a second his wrists were bound, his feet as well.

There was the blow of a hammer on a nail, a spurt of blood from the open hand; another blow, another spurt; and the cross, upraised, settled in a cavity already prepared, a beam behind it for support.

Stegas, his thirst slaked, fell as Dysmas had, and the elder caught the gourd and offered it to the Christ. If he had been tempted in the desert, as rumor alleged, the temptation could have been as nothing in comparison to the enticements of that cup. It held relief from thought, from the acutest pain that flesh can know, from life, from death.

He waved it aside. The executioner started with surprise; but he had his duty to perform, and, recovering himself, he caught the Christ, and in a moment he too was down, his hands transfixed, the cross upraised. The blood dripped leisurely on the sand beneath. Across his features a shadow pa.s.sed and vanished. His lips moved.

”Father,” he murmured, ”forgive them; they know not what they do.”

Calcol gave an order. Over the heads of Dysmas and of Stegas the sanis were affixed, wooden tablets smeared with gypsum, bearing the name of the crucified and with it the offence. They were simple and terse; but above the Christ appeared a legend in three tongues, in Aramaic, in Greek, and in Latin:

[Aramaic: Malka di Jehudaje]

_? as??e?? t?? ???da???._

Rex Judaeorum.

Caiaphas sprang back as from the point of a sword.

”Malka di Jehudaje!” he bellowed. ”King of the Jews! It is a blasphemy, an iniquity, and an outrage. Centurion, tear it down.”

Calcol shrugged his shoulders, and pointed to the palace. ”What the procurator has written he has written,” he answered.

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