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 bekeath 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 must -' 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 Saviour 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 Jews-zealots, 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 Saviour'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 tremble-not 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.
PART III
November 17, 1901: Pa-phos, Cyprus
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 sombre brown door in the semi-darkness waiting for my expectant host to answer the bell.
I yanked the bell-pull 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 impossible-not perform miracles!'
Thus began my short, but intensive apprenticeship in conversational Greek. My tutor sent me home with two books that night-one Greek, the other Latin-both 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.'