“Artorius!” Magnus shouted from the line.
He looked down and saw the crowd was becoming more brazen and advancing once more on the wall of legionaries.
“Give the word!”
“Do it!” Justus echoed. There was a look of fierce determination in Justus’ eyes that unnerved Artorius.
Pilate sensed it and immediately acted. “Stand your men down,” the procurator ordered.
Justus closed his eyes and grimaced.
“I’m sorry,” Artorius said as he placed a hand on his fellow centurion’s shoulder. He then turned towards his men below. “Centuries…stand down!”
Though there were numerous muttered curses from the ranks, the men sheathed their weapons.
Presently, the wretched creature Barabbas was brought up from the dungeons by a couple of auxiliaries. He was unkempt and looked as if he’d been beaten every day since the date of his capture. He walked with a limp, but was still grinning broadly in defiance.
“You have been granted the mercy of Rome,” Pilate said. “Do not squander our generosity.”
Barabbas did not say a word, only continued to grin inanely. Artorius wondered if the beatings given to him by the torturers over the past couple months had caused permanent damage to his mind. His stomach turned when he watched Barabbas saunter over to the priest whose daughter he’d molested. The man looked at him with contemptuous horror, seeming to regret the words that brought Barabbas’ release. The wretched thief laughed out loud, grabbed the priest by the shoulder, kissed him on the cheek, and with a shout of triumph stumbled into the now-welcoming crowd.
All eyes returned to the Nazarene and the Roman procurator. Pilate then signaled for a servant, who brought him a bowl of water, in which he symbolically washed his hands.
“I am guiltless of this man’s blood!” he shouted to the crowd.
“Then let it be on our heads!” Caiaphas retorted.
Pilate ignored him but then turned to Artorius. “Have him taken to Golgotha and crucified,” he ordered. He could not bring himself to look again at the Nazarene as he quickly walked away.
“I know this man means much to you,” Artorius said to Justus, “So I won’t have you take part in this.”
His friend stared at him, eyes wet with tears for the first time since losing his son. He then slowly shook his head. “No,” Justus replied, “I will go.”
“Alright,” Artorius nodded, “But I will not have you take part in the actual crucifixion. The auxiliaries will handle that. Take two centuries and fall in behind them. Just make sure the crowds don’t create a disturbance. This Nazarene has many enemies here, but also many more amongst the people who love him. They must not be allowed to interfere.”
“Understood.” Justus’ face was now hard as stone, and he walked back up the stairs signaling for his men to follow him.
“There’s a pair of condemned criminals set to be executed as well,” Abenader said as he walked over to Artorius.
The centurion could only nod in reply as he walked over to the Nazarene. He waved off the pair of auxiliary infantrymen who were readying to drag him away. The man was a fearful sight. The crown of thorns cut deep into his scalp, the streams of blood coagulating all over his face. One eye was closed shut from the beating he had taken, but his face was the least of it. The purple robes that he was covered in were soaked with blood and sticking to his skin. Artorius reckoned that even if they had been able to save him from the cross, he most likely would have died of infection from his terrible injuries. The marks scoured deep, in places his ribs were exposed from where the flesh was torn away. Perhaps crucifixion was a mercy at this point. Still, it did not relieve the sense of guilt that engulfed him.
“Why?” he asked. It was all he could find to say. “Why did you not let us save you?”
The Nazarene looked at him, his one open eye rather serene, despite the torment of pain that showed upon his face. The man’s response would echo in his mind for the remainder of his days, in a mystery that he would never fully understand. They were the same words he had uttered to both Pilate and Justus.
“It was not I who needed to be saved.”
Chapter XXIX: Paid in Blood
The afternoon was unseasonably hot and dry. Artorius and a handful of men decided to take the long way around and avoid the crowds that clamored to watch the fate of the man who was either loved as the Messiah, or despised as a horrid blasphemer. Neither meant anything to the centurion; it was all the same to him. He abhorred the religion of the Jews. Even more so he despised their hypocrisy and sense of superiority, even in the face of their conquerors. Many deaths had he ordered over the years; men, women, even children had perished either by his directive or under his very hand. So why did the pending execution of this one man affect him so? He could not say for certain. Certainly the Nazarene had had an effect on a number of his men, Justus Longinus in particular. And Pilate was right. He could find no fault in him.
The rest of the cohort had turned out, in case of a major disturbance, and those not following the Nazarene and the other condemned criminals went ahead with Artorius. People were already flocking all along the route, the column of Roman soldiers signaling the pending procession of sorrow.
As the group reached the rock of Golgotha, no one said a word. Artorius looked over his shoulder and saw that Magnus and Praxus were there with him; Cornelius and Julius had turned out with their men and elected to accompany Justus. To his right, his signifier planted the standard and leaned against it. To his left, several dozen legionaries formed up, removed their helmets, and grounded their shields and javelins. It had been a short walk of just a few miles, but the men were already soaked in sweat, and they greedily drank from their water bladders. With a few quiet orders from Centurions Magnus and Praxus, the men gratefully started to remove their body armor.
“We’re going to be here a while,” Magnus observed. “No sense in the lads suffering in the heat more than they have to.”
Artorius nodded, though his gaze was fixed on the execution plateau below.
The sound of the crowd was deafening. Whereas the mob that the Sanhedrin had brought into the forum had called for the Nazarene’s death, now people were wailing and crying at his fate. It was a paradox that was not lost on Justus, though lost as he was in his own thoughts. His eyes remained fixed on the man he was set to execute, and it broke his heart. Though he had never admitted it openly, something had awakened inside of him at this man’s teachings. It was the most brutal of ironies that he, a Roman soldier who had spent a life killing in the name of the empire, would come to understand the Nazarene’s message of love and compassion more so than the seemingly most devout of Judea’s religious sects.
The centurion’s spirit had hardened like granite over the past five years since the death of his son. No one, not even his wife and daughter, had been able to break through the barriers that had engulfed his very soul. This man called Jesus, with his simple message of love in a world that was otherwise consumed by hate, had done what no one else could. It was the bitterest irony that Justus would now have to enact Rome’s most severe sentence on him.
Justus cringed as he saw the Nazarene succumb to the weight of the crossbeam and collapse into the dirt. In truth, he was amazed that the man could walk at all, much less carry the crossbar to which he would soon be nailed. An auxilia started lashing him with a whip, but the man could only crawl at this point. A Judean in the crowd forced his way past the auxiliaries and picked up the large brace. Whether he did so because he was ordered to or of his own volition, Justus did not know. He watched as Abenader roughly dragged the Nazarene to his feet and the macabre procession started once more. The two condemned criminals that carried their crossbars behind the Nazarene were a pathetic sight. They had been spared the lash and were relatively unscathed by comparison, yet their lowly demeanor and open sense of self pity paled to the quiet dignity with which the Nazarene carried himself.