by Andrew Crown
Dismas sat up in with a start and was coldly welcomed back to the despair of his reality. He was still captive in his little foul-smelling cell awaiting execution. Dismas had lost all concept of time but he had thought he had been jailed for at least a day. Which meant that soon they would come for him.
He was starting to feel hungry and felt around for some food. The only thing he found was some rock-hard bread and a wooden cup with a few sips of water. Evidently the jailers had visited while he slept and deposited these meager rations. He forced the terrible tasting bread and water down his throat. It was only his intense hunger that gave him the strength to swallow something so foul.
Hours later, as hunger, discomfort, fear, and regret gnawed at him, Dismas heard the creaking of a door opening on the other end of the dungeon, then footsteps. The warm glow of torchlight grew brighter and brighter through the small barred window in the cell door, illuminating his putrid conditions. A lump formed in his throat and his breath quickened. As he watched the light of the torch draw closer, he knew what it meant.
It was time.
Chapter XXIII
His eyes stung in the torchlight as the jailer stopped outside of his cell. After more than a day confined to a pitch-black room, Dismas had to shield his face to prevent his pupils from drinking in too much of the light.
“You two. Up!” the jailer indicated to Dismas and Barabbas. Despite the filthy grime that covered his skin, his wet and dirty robe, and ungroomed hair, Barabbas looked the same as he did back in the tavern. There were no signs of a beating or any serious injuries like Dismas had sustained save for a cut on his forehead.
The two men struggled to stand on their own and so were hoisted to their feet by the guards. There were a total of four jailers and four Roman soldiers. The jailers proceeded to put the two condemned men in circular irons that clamped upon their wrists and ankles with a chain connecting their right and left appendages.
“Him too,” said one of the soldiers with a cock of his head towards another cell.
“I will bite off your fingers if you try to lay them on me!” yelled Gestas as they pulled him from a neighboring cell. Dismas could now see that Gestas’ injuries surpassed even his own—the man looked as if he had a broken nose and scabs over his face. His black beard was caked with blood from his beating the previous night. The hair on his head came down to almost his shoulders, a consequence of the long duration he had spent detained in the Roman dungeon. This was a man, Dismas thought, who was accustomed to a life of violence. As Gestas screamed profanities, Dismas could see that a few of his teeth had been knocked out in some past scuffle. After a hard strike to his stomach with a club, Gestas was silenced, pulled onto his feet, and chained as well.
The three men were steered past the row of cells and the outstretched arms of other prisoners were met with a blow from a jailer’s club before they were hastily retracted back inside the darkness of their cells. Dismas and the other two were brought up a stone staircase and into a corridor with windows.
Seeing natural light for the first time in almost two days, Dismas realized that it was early morning. The soft glow of the sun was just beginning to peek out over the horizon. He had assumed that they were going to Golgotha, an infamous hill a half-mile outside of the city gates where the Romans crucified their condemned. However, it seemed that they were instead being led towards the interior of the governor’s compound.
“Where are you taking us?” Barabbas asked in his booming, steady voice that rose above the clanking of their chains on the stone passageways.
“To Pilate,” one of the soldiers responded.
To Pilate? Perhaps we might be pardoned after all! thought Dismas. There was no other reason to take them back to the prefect unless there was to be some sort of clemency granted to them. The prospect almost made Dismas smile. He was going to see Leah again! Then he would never come near this infernal city ever again.
As they were led down yet another corridor, the men heard a tremendous noise—voices and shouting that sounded like a cross between a mob and a celebration. They passed through an archway into a large courtyard in the middle of the palace where the noises emanated from. Dismas was shocked to see it was packed with people. Some were shouting, others were crying, and others seemed to be almost cheering. What are all these people doing here? he wondered. He hadn’t seen so many people since Jesus’ sermon on the hill when He performed the miracle. As the prisoners were led towards the front of the crowd, the disposition of the people gathered became gradually angrier.
Up ahead, a semi-circle of armed Roman soldiers, two deep, stood at the base of a balcony which was twenty feet up jutting out of the wall of the palace. Standing on this balcony was Pontius Pilate and some of his aides. Pilate, once again clad in his deep purple robes, looked down upon the angry townspeople with concern. The mob shouted and pushed against the soldiers, who held back the wave of humanity with their shields. It was as if Dismas was walking into a scene of a play where the first act had already been completed and he was trying to piece together the plot.
“Make way! Make way!” the Roman soldier leading the column of prisoners and their jailers called as they jostled through the crowd. The people seemed to ignore Dismas and his fellow condemned men, instead focusing on someone on the other side of the semi-circle of soldiers, standing on a raised wooden platform below and to the side of Pilate’s balcony. It was too dark, and the distance was too great for Dismas to see who it was.
As they got closer to the balcony, Dismas recognized there were several of the Pharisees sprinkled among the masses. Some of them were shouting at Pilate as well, which seemed unbecoming of their typically stoic dispositions.
With another shove, the lead soldier moved a young man aside and Dismas could finally see the clearing directly ahead. His eyes moved towards the ground and he understood. Lying there in a neat row were three wooden crosses. His heart sank and his legs grew weak as he saw the massive beams. The longer axis was taller than a man and was met with a cross beam two-thirds of the way up where the condemned men’s arms would be affixed.
With a spear point in his back, Dismas was brought behind the cross to the far right with Barabbas in the center and Gestas on the left. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed that a Roman soldier with a whip stood at the ready behind each man. Once positioned behind the crosses, the prisoners and their guards waited for a signal from Pilate.
Squinting through the rapidly dissipating darkness as the sun raced higher across the sky, Dismas tried to make out the identity of the man on the wooden platform below Pilate’s balcony as well as the intent of the furious, pulsating crowd.
“Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” they chanted.
The man who stood on the platform looked downtrodden with His head bowed low. He appeared to have been beaten even worse than Gestas or Dismas. A stream of blood ran down His face from a dozen cuts and His tattered robes were soaked crimson. On His head sat a crown of thorns that dug into His scalp. Blood trickled down the sides of His head from where the thorns entered His flesh. Despite his obvious injuries, this man stood silently and almost motionless, save for a slight swaying back and forth. His sweaty, blood spattered hair fell down over His face, obscuring His identity from Dismas.
“Death to the blasphemer!” someone shouted. “He calls Himself the King of the Jews!”
Dismas turned and looked at the crowned man closer. They called Him the King of Jews? Why would they do that? Then it struck him. Was this man…Jesus? He was completely unrecognizable, so marred was He from the whips and clubs of the Roman guards. What had He done? He seemed to be a man of peace in all their interactions and in all the stories ever told of Him.
Pilate stood overlooking the courtyard below and surveyed the vast numbers of people shouting at Jesus and at the Roman guards.
An aide came up beside him on the balcony and cleared his throat. “Prefect, shall I ask Tribune Magnus to send additional troops in to disperse the crowd?”
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br /> Pilate glanced back down at the angry masses. “No, the last thing I need is have this turn into full-scale revolt. Tell him to keep his troops out of sight but at the ready.”
With a quick bow, the aide hurried off.
Pilate rubbed his eyes, having been awoken in the middle of the night with reports that the Pharisees had a man they wanted put to death. He had almost dismissed them in his exhausted state but then remembered how the consequences of discontent in this province would reflect on him in Caesar’s estimation. What started as a request for Pilate to use the power of Rome to settle what he thought was a minor grievance had now turned into the beginnings of a full-scale riot. He initially had this Jesus beaten extensively, thinking it would be sufficient. It was not proper in his view to execute a man without cause. Yet, the Pharisees demanded more severe punishment and got the crowd worked up on their side.
He watched helplessly as people crowded into the courtyard of his palace and then, when there was no more room, outside the gates. He knew that this would be the biggest test of his governing career.
With a nervous clearing of his throat, he addressed the man below him.
“Are You the King of the Jews?”
“It is as you say,” said Jesus calmly.
This caught Pilate off guard. He expected either the denial of a desperate man hoping to avoid death or the wild acceptance of a delusional madman. Nevertheless, he pressed on.
“Do You not hear how many things they testify against You?”
Jesus said nothing. He also seemed oblivious to the taunting and jeering from the crowd. Then the shouting began again. “Crucify Him! CRUCIFY HIM!”
Pilate was bewildered. He had never known such vehement anger from the Jewish people against one of their own.
“Why, what evil has He done? I have found no reason for death in Him. I will therefore further chastise Him and let Him go,” Pilate proclaimed.
At this, there was an outpouring of boos and shouts, and the crowd surged forward against the interlocked shields of the two-deep Roman semicircle. Pilate had ordered the soldiers to not further incite the mob by retaliating, but the animalistic fervor of the people was escalating quickly to the point that the soldiers soon would not have much choice but to defend themselves.
An aide, no older than a teenager, brazenly grabbed Pilate by the arm and hurriedly whispered something in his ear. Instead of chastising his brashness, Pilate nodded as he listened to what the young man had to say. At the end, he almost smiled, a sense of relief overtaking him as he patted his aide on the arm in a show of gratitude. He had an out.
Focused again on the frenzied masses below, he quickly held up his hands and nervously shouted over them.
“It is a tradition that I release one prisoner to you every year at Passover. Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?”
“NO! NO! NO!” the people screamed repeatedly in unison. “NO! NO! NO! NO!”
Dismas, chained behind his cross, could not believe the scene unfolding in front of him. A short time ago, he had seen people flock to Jesus to hear His teachings and see His miracles. Now they were calling for His death. Where were His disciples? Where were His followers? Why was there no one to defend Him? What was going on?
Pilate was quite anxious now. He knew very well that he could have an insurrection on his hands if he did not act. The soldiers dug their sandaled feet into the ground to hold back the mob with their long shields. He scanned the three prisoners standing behind their crosses awaiting his final execution order to seal their fate.
He cleared his throat and said as loudly as he could to make himself heard over the clamor. “Or would you rather me release to you…”
Pilate looked at all three prisoners. His eyes glanced over the two men before locking eyes with Dismas. Suddenly, Dismas was filled with hope of being spared. He was about to freed.
“…Barabbas!”.
“WHY HIM?!” both Dismas and Gestas bellowed, their outburst simultaneous in shock and despair.
Dismas made an effort to move forward, but the heavy slap of a whip on his back dropped him to his knees.
“Why?! Why not me? Why not me?” His voice grew hoarse from his sudden screams of consternation. Another whip connected with his back, but he did not care. He was hysterical.
“I have not murdered like Barabbas. Save me!” The whips began to fall in succession upon him. A few strides away, Gestas writhed in pain amid his own flogging and desperate protests. Only Barabbas stood there quietly, slowly coming to the realization that there was now a chance that the death he had come to accept in his mind might not yet come to pass. A smirk crossed Barabbas’ face as he looked at the crowd chanting his name.
Dismas continued to cry out, “I am not a murderer! I deserve to live!”
WHACK! Another crack of the whip finally silenced him.
“Barabbas! Barabbas! Give us Barabbas!” The Pharisees, all decorum vanished, waved their arms to incite the crowd to keep chanting.
“Give us Barabbas!”
Pilate was dismayed. He did not want to send a man who was innocent of any serious crime as far as he could tell to die nor did he want to release a murderer back into the streets. Yet he saw his soldiers below, struggling to maintain order, begin to slide backward as they conceded more ground to the bloodthirsty crowd. The chants filled his ears.
“Give us Barabbas! We want Barabbas!”
Dismas and Gestas were back on their feet, helpless spectators to their inevitable fate. The question now became, who would join them on the march to Golgotha? Tears filled Dismas’ eyes while Gestas continued to scream at Pilate.
Pilate held up his hands and the roar of the crowd subsided. He whispered to two of his aides who momentarily disappeared into the building and returned with a copper basin and a silver pitcher. One aide tilted the pitcher and water flowed slowly into the basin held by the other aide. The governor rinsed his hands.
“I rinse my hands of this man’s blood. I release to you Barabbas.”
A loud cheer erupted from the crowd as if they were witnessing a sporting spectacle at the arena. One of the jailers stepped forward to remove the irons from Barabbas’ wrists and ankles. The chains fell to the ground with a clanking sound. The criminal rubbed his wrists where the chains had been and beamed a huge smile as he entered the cheering throng of people who welcomed him like a conquering hero. He was congratulated by a few bystanders with slaps on the back before he disappeared among the crowd. He never even looked back at Dismas and Gestas.
Jesus was led down from his platform by soldiers and taken to the spot that Barabbas had occupied just a minute before. The chains were taken off Dismas and Gestas to allow them to carry their crosses.
The side of a spear thrust into Dismas’ back, pushing him towards the cross.
“Let’s go!” The voice of the Roman guard behind him rang in his ear.
So it begins, Dismas thought to himself. He felt the rough wood in his hands as he gripped the underside of the crossbeam. He then pushed upward with his legs and the cross rose off the ground.
The three men lifted their heavy crosses with some difficulty. Dismas felt the muscles in his legs burn as he hoisted up the cross and rested the point where the beams came together on his right shoulder. He trudged towards the gate that led outside of the palace, the long beam of the cross dragging on the ground behind him.
Jesus was first in line, Dismas behind Him, and Gestas took up the rear. Beside each man were a couple of soldiers with whips that they used if the procession moved too slowly for their liking. In front of the column, a Roman soldier held up a sign that read, JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.
The crowd, still jammed into the courtyard shoulder to shoulder, stepped aside to create a narrow path for the procession of the condemned men.
Pilate looked down on them as they started to move towards the gate and let out a long sigh of relief. The crowd seemed placated. With one last look towards the group headin
g towards Golgotha, he retired to his chambers.
The crowd, meanwhile, followed the men. Once they passed through the wrought iron gates of the palace and into the city streets, more people joined to watch the procession. Half of the onlookers mocked Jesus and spat on Him as He moved past. Some stayed silent and stared transfixed, morbidly fascinated by watching three men being led to their deaths. Then there were some that were sympathetic to Jesus and were openly crying as He drew near.
“Bless you, Lord! Bless you!” they called out.
Dismas felt the heavy wood dig deeply into his shoulder as he navigated along the streets of Jerusalem, his eyes fixed on the heels of the Roman guards in front of him. He paused to readjust the weight.
WHACK! The whip connected with his back. “Keep moving!” a gruff voice commanded.
Dismas obeyed and trudged forward with the cross dragging behind. Blood began to trickle down his back where the whip had landed. The whip fell again on him with no explanation given, which caused him to stagger. The sounds of lashes in front of him and behind him echoed periodically as the guards struck Jesus and Gestas with the same arbitrariness.
Dismas could see Jesus sag under the weight of the cross. The severe beatings had taken their toll on Him. Dismas was surprised that He could even walk at all. Yet, He kept going with His crowned head bent low, dragging His cross with a scraping sound as the wood met the stone of the road.
Dismas scanned the crowd and saw a flash of a familiar face sitting on steps next to the street, a young woman with long dark hair, brown eyes, and tan skin. Leah! He moved forward purposefully with renewed energy in his step. But when he drew alongside of the steps, there was no young woman there, just an older man leaning up against the steps. He had seen her though! He knew he had.
WHACK! The whip fell on his back, drawing more blood. “Don’t stop! Keep carrying your cross!”