The Testament of Mary (8 page)

The next day, all of us left the house. One of the men, the one who comes here still, was given control of Mary and myself. He told us to stay with him at all times and speak to no one. We moved through the narrow streets in the morning until we came to a vast open space filled with people.

‘All of these people,’ our minder told me, ‘are in the pay of the Temple. All of them are here to shout for the freedom of the thief when the moment comes. Pilate knows this, the Temple knows that it will succeed, and it is possible that even the thief has been told. It is the beginning of our redemption, the great new dawn for the world. It is mapped out as the sea and the land are mapped out.’

By the time he had finished speaking I was tired of walking, one of my shoes hurt. As I closed my eyes and listened, I noticed that there was something about his voice and his tone; I felt that he did not
mean what he said, but had learned it and come to believe it was all the more true and impressive because of that.

It was hard to credit that everything in the square had been arranged, but there was a different atmosphere here than there had been in the streets of Cana or at the wedding itself – there were no sudden shouts or shifts of mood, no sense of a wild-eyed gathering of people. Many of those in the square were older; they came in smaller groups. None of them seemed to recognize us, but nonetheless we stood in the shadows, Mary and I, trying to appear as though this was a normal place for us to come, or as though we too with our minder were part of the arrangement.

At first I could not hear what was being said from the balcony of the building across the square and it was difficult even to get a clear view. We had to move from the shadows into the sun and then push forward into the crowd. It was Pilate, everyone around murmured his name, and he was shouting louder each time he spoke.

‘What accusation bring ye against this man?’

And the people were shouting back in one voice.

‘If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up to thee!’

I missed the next moment as someone had pushed me to the side and there was too much talking around us but Mary heard it and she told me what it was.
Pilate had asked the crowd to take the prisoner and deal with him according to Jewish law.

Pilate was still alone on the balcony with one or two officials standing to the side. Now I heard the response of the crowd because it came in ringing tones.

‘It is not lawful to put any man to death,’ they said, and it was clear in how they said it that all of this, every moment we were witnessing, had indeed been arranged. I did not know that such things could happen. Then Pilate disappeared and a new feeling grew among those around us, the talking and muttering ceased and I felt something fresh coming into the atmosphere as all of us stared in the direction of the balcony. I sensed a thirst for blood among the crowd. I could see it in people’s faces, how their jaws were set and their eyes bright with excitement. There was a dark vacancy in the faces of some, and they wanted this vacancy filled with cruelty, with pain and with the sound of someone crying out. Only something vicious would satisfy them now, once they had been given permission to want it. They had changed from being a crowd doing what they were told to being a mob in search of some vast satisfaction that could come only with shrieks of pain and torn flesh and broken bones.

As time passed and we stood there waiting, I noticed this hunger spreading like contagion until I
believed that it had reached every single person there just as blood pumped from the heart makes its way inexorably to every part of the body.

When Pilate came out again, they listened but what he said made no difference.

‘I find in him no fault at all,’ he said. ‘But ye had a custom that I should release unto you one prisoner at the Passover, will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews?’

The crowd was ready. They shouted back: ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’ And Barabbas the thief then appeared and he was set free to roars of approval from the crowd. And then there was a shout from somewhere and people at the front appeared to be able to see something that we could not see and there was confusion among the crowd and a sort of impatience as well, with people piling into the square so that we were no longer standing to the side but closer to the centre, all three of us staying together, saying nothing, making every effort not to be noticed. Everyone’s full attention was on the balcony; they knew what was shortly to appear and were merely waiting for this great satisfaction.

And then it came and there was a gasp from the crowd, it was a gasp of delight before it was anything but it also contained shock and a sort of unease that grew into a hunger for more and thus the gasping became shouting and cheering and
yelling and catcalling because on the balcony with blood streaming down his face and a thing made of thorns pushed back into the side of his head, my son came wearing the purple robe of a king, which seemed to hang on his shoulders in a way that made me understand that his hands were tied behind his back. There were soldiers all around him. The crowd began to laugh and roar as the soldiers pushed him around on the balcony. I could sense from the way he responded to being pushed that something had happened to weaken him. He seemed beaten down, almost resigned. As soon as Pilate spoke again, the crowd began to interrupt him, but he demanded that he be heard.

‘Behold this man!’ he said.

At the front and, I noticed, all around the edges of the crowd, the chief priests began to lead the people in shouting: ‘Crucify him, crucify him!’ Pilate once more demanded silence. He moved closer to my son to hold him steady and prevent the soldiers from pushing him. He called to the chief priest: ‘Take ye him and crucify him, for I find no fault in him.’ And one of the chief priests shouted: ‘We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he calls himself the Son of God!’ Once more Pilate withdrew and ordered the prisoner to be taken back with him. I noticed as he turned – and I could see his face clearly – that he looked at the crowd with fear and puzzlement. Although it
seemed at this point that Pilate was considering the idea of releasing him, I realize now that I was alone in letting that hope linger. Everyone else knew that something was being played out for the sake of the future, that nothing mattered now except the killing. So when they returned again and Pilate shouted, ‘Behold your king!’ it did nothing but enrage the crowd. All around they shouted the words ‘Away with him, away with him, crucify him!’ as though these words if put into action would mean infinite joy and pleasure, a sense of plenty and fulfilment. When Pilate roared again, ‘Shall I crucify your king?’ it was only as you would throw a stick to a dog. It was a game they seemed to be playing as they answered: ‘We have no king but Caesar.’ Then he was delivered by Pilate to the crowd and the crowd was fully prepared; each one of them would have personally helped to organize the suffering had they been called upon. We edged slowly and with difficulty to the side so that we were ahead of a group which had formed, with men yelping and shouting greetings to their friends, and a sense that everybody’s blood was filled with venom, a venom which came in the guise of energy, activity, shouting, laughing, roaring instructions as they paved the way for a grim procession to a hill beyond.

As we pushed our way to the front and tried to make sure that we were not separated from one another, each of us in our own way must have
looked like the rest of those present, it must have seemed that we too were hungry with excitement at a glorious duty being performed, that someone who claimed to be king should be mocked and paraded and fully humiliated before being put to a painful death on a hill so that all could see him as he died. And it was strange too that the fact that my shoes hurt me, that they were not made for this bustle and this heat, preyed on my mind sometimes as a distraction from what was really happening.

I gasped when I saw the cross. They had it ready, waiting for him. It was too heavy to be carried and so they made him drag it through the crowd. I noticed how he tried to remove the thorns from around his head a number of times, but the efforts did not succeed and seemed instead to make them further push themselves into the skin and into the bone of his skull and his forehead. Each time he lifted his hands to see if he could ease the pain of this, some men behind him grew impatient and they came with clubs and whips to press him forward. For a time he seemed to forget all pain as he pushed the cross forward or pulled it. We moved quickly ahead of him. I still wondered if his followers had a plan, if they were waiting, or were disguised among the crowd as we were. I did not want to ask and it would have
been impossible now anyway, and I was alert that any word we said or look we gave in the frenzy of things could have made us, any one of us, a victim too, to be kicked, or stoned, or taken away.

It was when I caught his eye that things changed. We had moved ahead and suddenly I turned and I saw that once again he was trying to remove the thorns that were cutting into his forehead and the back of his head and, failing to do anything to help himself, he lifted his head for a moment and his eyes caught mine. All of the worry, all of the shock, seemed to focus on a point in my chest. I cried out and made to run towards him but was held back by my companions, Mary whispering to me that I would have to be quiet and controlled or I would be recognized and taken away.

He was the boy I had given birth to and he was more defenceless now than he had been then. And in those days after he was born, when I held him and watched him, my thoughts included the thought that I would have someone now to watch over me when I was dying, to look after my body when I had died. In those days if I had even dreamed that I would see him bloody, and the crowd around filled with zeal that he should be bloodied more, I would have cried out as I cried out that day and the cry would have come from a part of me that is the core of me. The rest of me is merely flesh and blood and bone.

With Mary and our guide constantly telling me that I must not attempt to speak to him, that I must not cry out again, I followed them towards the hill. It was easy to fit in with those who were there, everyone talking or laughing, some leading horses or donkeys, others eating and drinking, the soldiers shouting in a language we did not understand, some of them with red hair and broken teeth and coarse faces. It was like a marketplace, but more intense somehow, as if the act that was about to take place was going to make a profit for both seller and buyer. All the time I felt it would still be easy for someone to slip away unnoticed and I had a hope that his supporters might have planned a way for him to escape through this throng and out of the city to somewhere safe. But then, at the top of the hill, I saw some of them digging a hole and I realized that the people here meant business; they were here for one reason only, even though it might look like a gathering of motley groups.

We waited and it took an hour or maybe more for the procession to arrive. It became easy somehow to tell the difference between those who were there for a reason, who were in the pay of somebody, acting on instructions, and those who were merely there as spectators. What was strange was how little attention some of them paid as others set about nailing him to the cross and, then, using ropes, trying to pull the
cross towards the hole they had dug and balance it there.

For the nailing part, we stood back. Each of the nails was longer than my hand. Five or six of the men had to hold him and stretch out his arm along the cross and then, as they started to drive the first nail into him, at the point where the wrist meets the hand, he howled with pain and resisted them as jets of blood spurted out and the hammering began as they sought to get the long spike of the nail into the wood, crushing his hand and his arm against the cross as he writhed and roared out. When it was done, he did everything to stop them stretching out his other arm. One of them held his shoulder and one the upper arm, but still he managed to hold his arm in against his chest so they had to call for help. And then they held him and drove in a second nail so that his two arms were outstretched on the wood.