Eden (22 page)

Others had preceded them, two other prisoners with wooden beams.

And more soldiers with picks and shovels.

The grunts of the Legionaries filled the air as they cleaned out old post holes with their sharp spades. Her master lay on his narrow rail, arms outspread, too beaten from his stumbling path through the city to make a sound, too weary from his climb to struggle. As Eden and the woman watched they heard the clink of hammer and nail. But not through flesh. A Roman soldier, wearing no armor but his carpenter's apron, hammered a wooden panel over their master's head. A written word was scrawled on the plank:

INRI.

Eden couldn't read. Nor could she understand the minds of others in this place of death, or even know what her master was thinking. There was no thinking, there was only pain and defeat. Maryam clutched Eden by the neck afraid to let go, and the dog felt the anguish pulsing from the woman with each pound to the spike.

At last the soldier carpenter put down the hammer.

“There,” he proclaimed. “Yashua, that's your name, isn't it? That's what people call you, isn't it?
Joshua?
” But the man did not reply. The Roman looked to the onlookers gathered on the hill's crest, “He's from Nazareth, no? Is no one here from Nazareth?” Again none of the onlookers answered.

“Well, our Lord Pilate says he was of Nazareth. I think it reads better in Latin, a civilized language. IESVS NAZARENVS REX IVDÆORVM,” he said boldly. “Iesus, Nazarenus … Rex Iudaeorum.… But we can write it in Hebrew if you like. Even Greek.” The Roman soldier threw a scornful glance down at the broken man. “But just so all here can understand—Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. So says Lord Pilate.”

As if in answer, the groans of two others perched on their wooden crossbeams filled the air, but no one paid attention. All manner of sounds lived on this hill of the skull. The clink of shield and spear, the grunts of rough men settling in for a long wait, the creak of ropes, even the slosh of water from water jars brought for everyone but the condemned.

And there was one last crossbeam to set upright.

With stout rope, thoroughness and care the soldiers tied their master's arms from shoulder to elbow to the wood; no man was allowed to peel off the cross before his time. The rope would let him hang.

Then came the iron spikes. Two sharp cries as each spike nailed the wrists. It took many hands to lift the man, to plant the base of his rail into the waiting hole. And he cried out a third time as the base of the beam struck bottom. Mallets drove wedges into the ground and packed the dirt tight. The beam stood firm.

The Roman soldier who had hammered the sign took off his carpenter's apron, folded his hammer and nails into the leather and tied the thongs. He glanced up at the last prisoner, the man from Nazareth mounted on his beam:

“This be a king? A king to all men?” the Roman carpenter scoffed. He wagged his head in scorn. “Bow to a king like him, then Rome shall rule eternal.”

His fellow soldiers grunted in agreement.

“If he's all things to all men, then he's really nothing to no one.”

And the others laughed.

Eden looked about for the Hollow Man; for this was the kind of thing he would say. But she sensed him nowhere on this hill. Perhaps he had finally finished with his work, and no longer needed to oversee this matter.

Then she spotted the shape of a stain on the ground by her master's beam, a faint shadow, thrown by the ugly, overcast sky. The beam's shadow took on a strange shape, a form, the slow curling of a serpent, circling at the base of the post. So the Hollow Man had come at last, no longer needing a human form.

The shadow curled about the thick wooden base of the beam, then uncurled and seemed to slither across the ground. It slithered towards the shadows of an outcropping of rock. And Eden saw the fox once more, sitting still as a stone in a narrow cleft under the outcropping. The fox looked out from the dark hole with feverish eyes. The serpent shadow slithered toward his lair and he twitched his nose in disgust, then shivered.

As the shadow drew closer he bolted like quicksilver out of the hidey-hole, and vanished into the brush without a look back. He wanted no part of that crawling thing. The serpent shadow slithered on into the hole. Shadows met with shadows, and the serpent disappeared.

The day wore on. The onlookers sat on flat rocks in a rough circle, and others gathered in twos and threes to watch and wait. Those who knew the man, or knew
of him
, sat quietly among themselves. Two others had been sentenced to the hill that day, and those two criminals drew a handful of onlookers—perhaps the men they had robbed, or women they had bedded. It didn't matter, their end would be the same. And lastly, the curious appeared, a few heartless souls desiring a closer look at death.

But they were just a few.

No man sought this ground.

No man chose it of his own free will.

For this fetid hill stank of dried blood, untold bodies and decay.

The Romans had stripped Eden's master of his robe as he dragged the beam up the slope and then pored over his other garments, discarded as he stumbled up the hill. Turban, robe and girdle, they passed the clothes among them so as to soften the flat rocks where they sat for they knew their limbs would soon grow weary. Padding for the endless watch was always welcome.

As the beam was raised Eden saw a long tunic slip from her master's body—but before it touched the soiled ground one Roman soldier pulled his knife from its scabbard and caught it on the blade. With a few shorts stroke he could split the thing among them for extra padding. But the carpenter soldier stayed his fellow's hand. This seamless, finely woven tunic was too precious to cut into patches no matter how hard the rocks under their bones.

Eden saw her master's cracked lips move speaking indistinct words:

Forgive … forgive them … forgive everyone

Eden's master must have spoken out loud because the Roman soldiers glanced up at the man on the beam. They shrugged. No soldier begged forgiveness. And for once Eden saw the Roman's true faces, hard and blank like stone. Mercy was something soldiers offered to others but never expected. There was nothing to forgive. Legionaries did their duty. No more, no less. And that's all that mattered.

Now as they sat the long hours, the carpenter soldier fished some dice from his purse and tossed them on the ground. Let some of them at least gamble for these things. One after the other, each Legionary took a throw. Last of all, the carpenter soldier took his turn. And as luck had it, his own dice rolled his way.

His men looked up at him with dark, suspicious eyes.

He won too often for their tastes.

But the carpenter soldier did not covet his prize.

Telling his men, “I'm not keeping it. Sell it later when we're done. Back to his mother if you want, surely one of the women made it for him. For now, it can sit beneath me.”

He had brought with him a low wooden stool with his own name carved on it. Years of sitting upon his own mark waiting for men to die had worn away the letters. He carefully folded the tunic, placed it on the stool and sat, covering his name once more.

The soldiers had brought with them drink and food, but did not touch it. They started a smoky fire, burning dirty wood to cover the horrid smell of this ground. And from time to time a Roman stirred the embers of the fire with the tip of his spear to keep it going. They threw a few coins at an old man to fetch armfuls of wood for them from down below. As the day wore on you could hear the old man huffing and puffing each time he brought another sling of sticks and branches to the top of the hill. Down and back, down and back—

Another hour passed. And then another.

The day wore on as the crowd silently watched; the only sound the wind sighing across a broken sky, while the clouds overhead held their breath in anger.

Eden didn't move from the shelter of Maryam's arms. Somehow they seemed to be crouching on the one patch of ground not soiled by an overpowering stench, a tiny patch of ground with a thatch of grass poking up like close-cropped hair. Nearby, under a low bush, three brave mice stood silently watching from the safety of a tangle of thorns, their eyes glued to the men hung on the wood. They whispered nervously among themselves as if they feared they might be next. Eden could not hear what they were saying, but it didn't matter. Their whiskers twitched, their eyes gleamed and they wrung their paws in dismay, too afraid to stay and too afraid to flee.

Flies hovered about her master's mouth and eyes, and Eden heard the woman beside her muttering, attempting to command the flies to depart and trouble their master no more. But the flies didn't listen and Maryam fell silent.

The hours passed.

The men on their wooden beams gasped hopelessly for air. Legs weakened, limbs trembled and their bodies sank. With great effort one of them tried to talk to the other, to speak a few words, but he could barely make a sound, and Eden could not hear them. She felt her master trying to comfort the other men, perhaps to say that this would not endure forever, that something greater was at hand, but she could not make out the words. A cloak of silence seemed to wrap the dog's head. All human tongues were muted in this place, as if the Almighty wanted to keep Eden innocent of darkest human thought.

Her master cried to the sky, begging pity for his pain. Eden heard the cry, but only as a voice tearing at the clouds above. As if to hear him, the sky swirled overhead. And Eden watched, helplessly, those on the beam and those waiting below. The carpenter soldier dipped a ball of sponge into a jar of wine, and then placed it on a stick. The soldier stood on his stool and the wet sponge reached her master's face. The wine ran down his chin and some into his throat. Enough for a few more words.

Did he speak? Was it him?

Or someone else?

Yes, him. Eden heard it.

It is finished …

The world fell silent and the wind took what little of him remained alive.

The merest breath …

A gust, and Eden's master was gone.

For many moments a great stillness hung over the men on their wooden beams and over the people watching. The soldiers looked up from their smoky pit. The fire itself seemed to die. And the deep silence sank into the ground beneath Eden's paws.

The carpenter soldier took a spear from his fellow and went to the wooden beam. He touched it once upon the rib of the hanging man. The flesh did not jump. He pressed it in, and blood and water flowed from the open seam. There was nothing left.

Eden felt a great chasm open inside her. And she realized now that the man she had followed all this time, mile after mile, had faded from her with every step she took. She knew him better when she was a puppy always underfoot in the family's shop. She knew him better as his friend in the wilderness staring at the Hollow Man on the side of the cliff. She knew him better when the rams and goats came to save them, and when she first met the donkey Samson. But since that time he walked from the great water to the great city, since the time he made the strangers well, since the time he saved her from the storm standing by the boat, since all the time of miracles, she did not know him anymore.

He had passed into something greater than that man who loved her. Half shadow, half hope. For he had loved more and more people. And the many places and many creatures of his past clung to him, but only as creatures of the past. And she was one of those. And this emptiness poured through her like grains of sand through open hands until the hands were empty.

Perhaps the Roman soldiers were right, perhaps in a good way.

During their last great journey her master had become all things to all creatures.

Maryam's hands loosened around her neck. The air on this ugly hill swirled overhead, a bitter smoke. Eden felt a queer kind of dizziness that welled from the inside. A great flock of birds flew up from the city below them, circled in a wide arc and kept circling as though the earth itself was no place to land. The sky overhead grew even darker. From every corner of the bald hill the rats began to flee. Eden watched them scamper off, leaping from rock to rock and snaking through every little gully, tails shivering in fear and squealing all at once, running for their lives.

And then the ground beneath their feet began to tremble, shaking the city, the hill, and even tipped the wooden beams with hanging men from side to side.

A rolling thunder came down from heaven and kept roaring until everyone cowered, covering their heads. Cold rain slashed down, cutting as ice, and quickly filled every hole and pockmark. The Roman soldiers clutched their spears and shields, but the shaking earth and roaring air tore the weapons from their hands and the metal clattered to the ground. Then, just as suddenly as it came, the roaring stopped.

And the cold rain passed over the hills toward the horizon.

The carpenter soldier stooped to pick up his spear. The blood from the man's wound still stained the tip despite the rain, and he ran his finger along the edge. He muttered to himself, suddenly ashamed for all he had done and witnessed, and the dog heard his words.

“Righteous blood of a righteous man.”

The first bold, clear words Eden understood since she had come to this ugly place.

The carpenter soldier spoke again:

“I saw no evil in him.”

Faintly, a forlorn wail rose up from the city and all those standing on the hill turned their faces to look at the high walls. The temple doors stood out like Goliath's gate. The towering curtains draped in the entranceway, now hung in tatters, ripped apart by the wind.

And all the temple worshippers and priests standing in the temple courtyard looked like grains of wheat milling about inside a stone box. They wrung their hands in grief beseeching heaven, tiny, terrified creatures with no place to call home.

No one who stood on the hill could tell if it was sundown or merely dark. But the time had come to relieve the wooden beams of their lifeless burdens. A ladder was brought and winding sheets. And many hands came to return the three men to the earth. The two criminals first. Their crosses, loosed by the rumbles of the earth, toppled easily. Once fallen, they lay on the cold ground unattended, with none to mourn them.