The Black Rood (39 page)
Authors: Stephen R. Lawhead
The executioner heard this and grew angry. “Do you call me liar?” he snarled.
“By no means!” said the elder, raising his hands as if to fend off a blow. “But this Jesu was known to be a sorcerer and a magician. He may be using his powers to feign death. Do not be deceived. Rather, do your duty.”
“I know my duty,” growled the big Roman, moving nearer, “just as I know a dead man when I see one.” Hefting the hammer in his hand, he said, “Maybe you would like to join him in Hadesâor wherever it is you people go.”
The wealthy elder gave a yelp and backed away. The executioner made as if to pursue him into the crowd, but the centurion called him back. “Longinus! Enough! We will prove it to them,” he said, casting an eye to the gathering storm. “Then maybe we can get back to the city before we're soaked to the bone.”
The big Roman abandoned his pursuit and returned to the foot of the framework. Taking his spear, he raised it to the Anointed One's side and thrust it up hard beneath his ribs in the center of his chest. Watery blood burst from the wound, gushing in a pale fountain all at once. There was neither movement nor outcry from the victim, and I knew I looked upon a corpse.
At that moment, there came a great peal of thunder and the storm broke with a force to shake the very earth. A cold wind whirled around the hilltop, whining like an animal in pain, and kicking up prodigious clouds of dust and dirt. Seeing that the condemned men were dead, the crowd retreated, streaming back to the city, throwing their cloaks over their heads as they ran. The Romans quickly gathered up their weapons and followed the throng back to the city, leaving two of their number behind to keep watch.
The rain came hard and fast, pelting down in stinging
sheets. I looked around, expecting to find myself alone on the hillside, but was surprised to discover a small, miserable knot of peopleâwomen, mostlyâstanding a little apart. They were weeping and clinging to one another, oblivious to the storm crashing around them.
The wind howled like a wounded animal. Lightning flashed and rolling blasts of thunder shook the ground as if to crack the very walls of Jerusalem. The rain pitched down in great lashing wavesâas if the bruised sky had ruptured, spilling out its waters all at once. The dry hillside slowly dissolved into a sticky quagmire.
Despite the savage blast, I waited to see what would happen, and in a little while the storm which had blown up so quickly, passed the same way. The thunder stopped, and the wind calmed. The air, refreshed from the cooling rain, smelled wonderfully of spices and rare desert flowers. The dead men, their corpses washed, hung dripping from their crosspieces, clean now, and ready for burial.
Above the sound of the wailing women, I heard someone calling from the road below; I turned to see a young dark-bearded man in a fine yellow cloak hastening toward the hill and hailing the little knot of mourners as he came. Some distance behind him came a man leading a donkey and cart. I do not know if either of them had been present at the execution, but the young man quickly mounted the hillside and joined the group. They held a brief discussion, whereupon he stepped out from among them and approached the timber frame.
The two soldiers, who had been huddling in the shelter of the rocks, stepped forward and demanded to know the man's business. He replied, speaking in good Latin, and said that he had come for the body of Jesu. “It is growing late,” he explained. “The Sabbath begins at sunset. We must remove the body before the sun sets, for it is against the law to bury a man on the Sabbath. Likewise it is an abomination to leave the dead unburied.”
The young soldier frowned. “We were told nothing about this. You must get permission from the governor.”
“Please,” the young man said, “there is no time.” Indicat
ing the bundle under his arm, he said, “I have brought the shroud, and I will happily take full responsibility for the burial.”
Reaching into his belt he brought out several pieces of silver which he passed to the soldier. “This is for your trouble. I will need your help to get him down.”
The second soldier looked at the money, and nudged his more reluctant comrade. “Very well,” the legionary agreed at last. “You can have all three of them for all I care.”
The young man called to the waiting mourners, still clustered together, sobbing quietly, and two men came out from among them to help. The Romans put up the ladder and one of them ascended with drawn sword, preparing to hack off the hands of the dead man.
“No! Please, no!” cried the young man. “You must not mutilate the body.”
The legionary grimaced. “I thought you were in a hurry, friend.” Hefting the broad blade. “A clean chopâit is the best way.”
“He won't feel a thing,” added the other soldier helpfully. “He's dead as dung.”
Pointing to the group of women now standing below the body, the young man said, “Please, for his mother's sake, let us preserve what little dignity remains.”
The soldier shrugged and proceeded to hack at the rope binding the crosspiece to the upper framework. One side gave way and the body slewed sideways. Leaning across the corpse, he cut the other rope, and the body pitched forward, still attached to the rood piece. Those on the ground caught the blessed body of Our Lord and bore it up while the second legionary raised a massive pair of iron tongs and proceeded to nip the head from the spike through the corpse's ankles.
It was difficult work, and the young Jew continually urged the soldiers to use as much care as possible. Before it was over, all of the mourners were needed to help support the body so as to prevent it breaking off at the feet. But at last the legionary succeeded in freeing the corpse and they laid the inert body of the Lord Jesu gently on the wet ground.
Next, the legionary went to work on the spikes holding the dead man's arms to the crossbeam. Using the huge tongs, he gnawed and worried the beaten heads from the iron nails, and all the while the young man pressed him to hurry as it was growing late. The soldier grew angry. “Do you want it fast, or do you want it clean?” he demanded. “Which is it?”
“Joseph,” said one of the women gently. She was younger than the others; long dark hair spilled out from beneath the hood of her cloak. “Do not anger the man. He is only trying to help.” Her voice was a warm balm of comfort poured out to soothe the cold, cruel hurt of the day.
“Miriam, we mustâ” He started to object, but she silenced him with a smile of such sweet sadness, it cleft my heart to see it. “Please, Joseph. It will be all right. There is no hurry anymore.”
“Very well,” the wealthy young man relented. To the legionary, he said, “Take your time, my friend.”
The soldier, glancing at the woman with something more than benign interest, resumed his work, eventually freeing the right wrist and then the left. The women carefully spread the woven linen shroud on the ground and the body of Heaven's Fairest Son was laid upon it. The men watched while the women carefully arranged the torn limbs and smoothed back the tangled hair, murmuring a low litany of Psalms the while. Then they folded the shroud over the body and secured it with broad bands around the neck, and chest, and feet. Thanking the Roman soldiers, the men took up the body and carried it down the hillside to the cart which was now waiting on the road. They placed the body of the Savior in the cart and then began the long, slow journey back to the city.
The soldiers divided the money between them and, with a last glance at the two dead thieves, shouldered their spears and departed. “Who do you think he was?” I heard one of them ask as they started off down the hill.
“It hardly matters,” replied the other. “One Jew is the same as another. They're all alike, these Jewsâzealots, madmen, and murderers.”
They moved off, and I found myself alone on the hillside, staring at the crossbeam which had been left lying on the ground, the headless spikes where the Blessed Savior's arms had been pierced, the stain of his blood deep in the grain of the rough-hewn wood.
I knelt and placed my hand reverently on the rood, and felt the coarse, unforgiving weight hard beneath my palm. I heard voices behind me and, thinking the legionaries had returned, I glanced quickly over my shoulder and saw myself asleep on the ground beside a well.
Instantly, I was back in Amir Ghazi's camp.
The moon was down and the stars were fading with the first pale hint of dawn showing in the east, and I was in my place beside the well once more.
I rose. The camp was quiet; nothing had changed. Had I crept into the amir's tent? Or, had I fallen asleep and dreamed it? It did not matter. I knew beyond all uncertainty that I had received a vision of rare and special power. My hands and face tingled, and the ground felt thin as water beneath my feet.
My body began to trembleânot with fear or foreboding, but with a ferocious ecstasy. I felt like running and leaping and crying to the star-dusted heavens in praise and thanksgiving to my Generous Creator for the wonderful vision I had been granted.
It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud and waking all the camp. So, I lay beside the well, exhilarated, shaking with jubilation, joy coursing like liquid fire through my veins, pure elation bubbling up like a wellspring filled not with water, but with sweet, heady wine.
As dawn broke full and glorious in the east, I got up and knelt, raising my face to the sun, and stretching my arms wide, I pledged a solemn vow within my heart that whatever should befall me in the days to come, I would strive above all things to acquit myself with the same humility, strength, and courage I had witnessed in Jesu's death so that I might be worthy of my Redeemer's sacrifice.
Professor Manos Rossides lived in the bottom floor of a tiny townhouse. A violin teacher had the upper floors, and there was a violin and cello duet wafting down the stairwell as I stood before the somber brown door in the semi-darkness waiting for my expectant host to answer the bell.
I yanked the bellpull again, waited some more, and was just about to give up and go home when I heard a shuffling sound on the other side. Presently a key clicked in the lock and the door opened onto a small dark man with a heavy beetling brow, hooded eyes, and an unruly mass of thick, wavy, dark hair which stood out from his head in all directions; it put me in mind of a storm at sea, and it was all I could do to tear my eyes from the startling sight and say, “Professor Rossides? I am Gordon Murray. I was given to understand you would be expecting me.”
At the sound of my name the man's sleepy countenance sparked to life. “Quite right, sir! Right on time!” He smiled and his dark eyes became keen, and his features boyish and winsome. “Do come in, Mr. Murray.” He took my coat and waved me to a chair at a spindle-legged table piled dangerously high with books and papers. A brass lamp with a green glass shade hung over the table, illuminating the stacks of printed matter like upland plateaux in the glare of the summer sun.
“Time is precious,” he announced. “We begin at once.” With that he began reciting the Greek alphabet, drifting around the room behind me, pounding his fist into the palm of his outstretched hand as he enunciated each letter. After two more recitations, he had me doing it. We worked steadily for ninety minutes, and just as I was beginning to get the feel of the unfamiliar words in my mouth, he called the lesson to a halt.
“Excellent! Excellent!” he cried, beaming at me as if at a prize heifer. “You are a natural scholar, Mr. Murray. Together we will achieve the impossible.”
“I will be content with the merely passable,” I told him.
He laughed, shaking his head. “Dear me, no. We'll have none of that. You are too able and too clever to settle for second best. No, my friend, when we are finished you will be able to sit in Aphrodite's Taverna on the waterfront in Rhodes and talk politics with the fishermen.”
“Oh?” I said, rising to retrieve my coat. “Is that all? I rather thought I might indulge in a bit of lecturing on Plato's
Symposium
.”
“Tut, sir,” the professor chided, his eyes wrinkling with mirth. “I said we should achieve the impossibleânot perform miracles!”
Thus began my short, but intensive apprenticeship in conversational Greek. My tutor sent me home with two books that nightâone Greek, the other Latinâboth of which I was to have read by my next visit the following week. I do not know how he crammed so much expert instruction into our all-too-short sessions. But as the weeks went by, I found my mastery growing by leaps and bounds; nagging little foibles and difficulties that had plagued me since college evaporated in the blistering heat of the professor's searing, searching intellect.
Summer came and went, and as autumn rolled on apace, I began to think ahead to what might await me at the end of September. The answer to this came on my last visit to Professor Rossides' study. Actually, I did not know it was my final visit until my assiduous mentor reached over to the text I was reading, and closed the book. “Perfect,” he declared. “Our work together is completed.”
“How can it be finished? I feel as if I have only begun.”
“Oh, indeed. And I congratulate you on a most auspicious beginning. But, my assignment was to enable you to speak and write well enough to make yourself understood, and you have achieved that and more. I shall be making my report to your colleagues shortly. Well done, Mr. Murray.”
I bade him farewell, and left feeling slightly saddened by the prospect that I would no longer have the enjoyment of his intensely stimulating lessons. This feeling lasted until the middle of the next week, when I once again received a visit from Pemberton and Zaccaria.
They turned up just before the office closed for the day and, with evident pleasure, pronounced the completion of my assignment satisfactory in every way. “We knew you would take to your studies,” Zaccaria confided.
“It was a most gratifying experience, I must say. I enjoyed it very much.”
“Be that as it may,” said Pemberton, withdrawing a long white envelope from the inner pocket of his coat. “I think you will enjoy employing your new skills even more.”
He passed he envelope to me and indicated that I was to open it. I lifted the flap, reached in, and pulled out two steamer ticketsâone for my wife, and one for myselfâwith the destination listed as Paphos, Cyprus. “As you see, the ship sails two weeks from today,” he said. “That should give you time enough to arrange your affairs, I should think.”
“Six weeks in Cyprus,” I mused, reading the return portion of the ticket. “Yes, I think Caitlin and I could do very well with that, thank you very much.”
“I do not anticipate any problems arising from your legal work.” The way he said it, I could not tell if it was a question, or an observation of fact. In any case, I suspected any genuine obstacles would have been foreseen and removed.
“None at all,” I replied. “As it happens, this time of year is normally very quiet. I can have one of my juniors keep an eye on things while I am gone.”
“Splendid.”
Thus, the arrangements were firmly in place. All I had to do was pack and get myself and the good wife to the steamer on timeâa task which somehow expanded to fill every available moment, even as Caitlin filled every available case and trunk. It was not until the ship loosed its moorings and steamed for Cyprus that I realized not a single word had been said about what I would do when I got there.
More mystery was awaiting me on the landing at Paphos harbor in the form of the jovial Mr. Melos who stood on the wharf in his best blue suit, holding a card with my last name written on it. His dark hair was oiled and combed, and the lower part of his face was covered by three-day-old stubble. He grinned and waved when he saw us, and came bounding across the landing to shake our hands.
“What's this?” wondered Caitlin, charmed by the man's eagerness to please. “You didn't tell me we were to be chaperoned, darling.”
“It is nonstop adventure start to finish,” I said.
Our greeter introduced himself and I understood at once why I had sweated and strained through the summer to learn the language: Mr. Melos spoke no English. Nevertheless, I was quickly to learn that he was the most expert and knowledgeable guide imaginable. He was an archaeologist who had spent his entire career digging on the island; there was nothing about Cyprus or its history he did not know. He also ran a small, private museum, with a guest house next door, both of which he had filled with mementos from his various digs. “The more valuable specimens go off to museums around the world,” he said, when he showed us through his rooms one day. “But the smaller pieces, the duplicates, I keep.”
We spent the first few days in Mr. Melos' able care, the sole tenants in his guest house. Caitlin fell instantly in love with the place, and proclaimed that it was high time I had brought her someplace nice, and furthermore, she was never leaving.
That first day we ate a light meal and waited for our luggage to arrive, which it did by donkey cart toward evening. By then, we were already feeling ourselves slipping into what Caitlin called “Cyprus time”âthe pace at which things happened, or didn't, according to the whims and preoccupations of the locals.
The reason for my adventure remained obscure, and I had begun to wonder whether I ought to say something about it, when Mr. Melos appeared as we were having breakfast one morning. He presented me with a letter which had arrived some little while previously, I suspect. It was from Zaccaria, and it contained the purpose of my visit. As soon as we were rested from our journey, we were to make our way to a certain monastery in the hills. “I will take you,” said Melos when I asked him where it was. “I know this place very well. Leave everything to me; it is all arranged.”
Later that same morning, we gathered our things and proceeded by carriage up into the foothills of the Troodos mountains to the little village of Panayia, where a cottage had been hired for us. We arrived near dusk and Melos took us to our cottage, and introduced us to our housekeeperâa sister of his named Helena, a small, plump woman of mature years who chattered like a mynah bird whether anyone was listening or not. She had a meal ready for us when we arrived, showed us where to find everything, and then left us to eat and sleep in peace.
We spent a wonderful first night in our little cottage, dining by candlelight with the windows open onto the courtyard where late roses were still in bloom. The next morning, our inestimable host collected us and took us to the monastery.
“Ayios Moni is a very ancient place,” he said. “The monks there maintain a library of many priceless manuscripts.”
It was, of course, these manuscripts that I had come to seeârather, it was one manuscript in particular.
Upon our arrival, we were introduced to the bishop, who conducted us on a tour of the small, but tidy monastery, which was now home to fewer than thirty monks. At the end of the tour, he said, “I suppose you will be wanting to get started.”
“To tell you the truth,” I replied, silently thanking Rossides for my newfound fluency, “I would like nothing better. Unfortunately, I do not know precisely why I have come.”
Bald Bishop Naxos laughed, and said, “You have come to view the Caithness Manuscript.”
“Caithness,” said Caitlin, when I had told her what the bishop had said. “You mean the Caithness in Scotland?”
“Haven't the foggiest.”
He led us to the library where a few monks were working away, hunched silently over old vellums and parchments. He spoke a few words to the brother in charge of the collection, and the black-robed monk disappeared into the stacks, returning a few moments later with a weighty bundle wrapped in heavy homespun linen.
“Behold,” said Bishop Naxos, “one of our order's prize possessions.” He directed Brother Nicholas to a nearby table beneath a window, and there the monk opened the parcel. “The ink is faded, and there are a few water spotsâwe had a bad storm in the fifteenth century, and the roof leaked. Still, it is in remarkable condition for a document which was written in 1132.”
I translated the priest's words for Caitlin, who marveled at the age of the venerable manuscript.
He passed his hand lovingly over the bundle of parchment, and fingered the silk cord which bound the bundle together. “This will be the last time the manuscript is seen in the place where it was created. I think it highly appropriate that you should be the reader.”
He regarded me meaningfully, but the reference was lost on me. “I do not understand,” I said.
“Next month it is going into a vault at the Ministry of Antiquities in Athens,” he explained, but before I could tell him that this was not what I meant, he added: “It is felt by my superiors at Khyrsorroyiatissa that our order can no longer protect it adequately.”
“Nonsense!” grumbled Melos sourly.
“We have it for a little while yet.” He smiled sadly, and pulled a chair from the table. “Please, sit. We would be honored for you to be our guest for as long as you like.”
Again, I understood that he was according me a special favor, but his meaning remained beyond my comprehension.
I told Caitlin what he had said, and asked if she minded very much amusing herself for awhile. “Go on with you,” she said, “and don't be silly. Of course I don't mind. I can well look after myself for a few days.”
So, with the blessing of both bishop and wife, I settled myself into the chair I was to occupy for a good many days. When the others had gone, I loosened the silken cord and turned back the battered old covering.
The script that met my eye was strong and fair. The rich black tone had faded to a pale reddish sepia, but remained clearly legible. I read the first words, and knew why I had been summoned to this task. My heart began to beat with such force I thought I would have to abandon the work before I had even begun. Before me on the table was the account of Murdo's son, Duncan, and, in his own words, a record of his pilgrimage in the Holy Land.
Â