by Ron Marasco
The small gray slice of moon was no match for the dank mist, so Barley knew that by the time he could get a good look at whatever was coming near, it would almost be upon him.
Within the low droning, Barley heard another sound, a thumping accompaniment to the eerie tune that Barley recognized. It was the sound of a horse’s hooves trotting on the road. A large horse, by the sound of it. And Barley finally began to recognize the figure of a man mounted atop the horse. The man was singing an agonizing song.
Barley stood waiting for the arrival of the horse and man making this strange music.
As the party drew very close to where Barley stood tied to the tree, Barley could discern that the man had a helmet. The helmet was not on his head but was hanging awkwardly on a hook on his horse’s rein. The man’s cape was askew, and he was drinking out of a wineskin. Barley could sense the rank smell of the strong drink that permeated the man’s sweaty body.
The man was a soldier. And he was drunk.
As soon as he saw Barley, the soldier stopped his singing.
Barley peered at him, shaking in silence.
The soldier spoke in a slurred, guttural voice that cut through the quiet.
“Cur? A mangy cur? How nice!”
The horrible sound echoed through the street in what sounded like something between laughter and screaming.
“Now I’ll—”
And interrupting his own drunken words, the man slid off the horse, landing on the road with such a thud that Barley saw a great cloud of dirt rise from the man’s heavy boots and waft up his large body.
Then the soldier straightened himself to his full height and stood there. To Barley he looked every bit as big and solid as the boulder he was cowering near.
The soldier exhaled a rumbling groan. “I’ll show you how we can fix the little ones, like you, that need fixing!”
With a forceful heave he drew his sword.
The soldier moved toward Barley, gripping his sword tightly and pointing at Barley’s little body as Barley cowered. Once his belly, and then his face, had touched the ground, Barley closed his eyes and pressed his little head as firmly as he could into the dirt below him.
Then it came.
The terrible jolt.
A terrific force ran through Barley’s throat, filled his head with an echoing rip, shook his spine, and upended his entire body.
And then—nothing.
After a few seconds, Barley opened his eyes. He saw the soldier staggering back toward his horse. Intuitively, Barley stood up. As soon as he did, he looked down and saw on the ground the rope from his neck, sliced cleanly in two.
Barley looked up at the man in astonishment as the soldier climbed back onto his horse, downed a huge swig of wine, looked over at Barley with a smile, and said, “That’ll fix you, little boy. Run free.”
Then, picking up his song right where he left off, the soldier gave his horse a yank and began to trot away, singing off into the night.
Barley roved long stretches of road, his keen eyes peering through the faintly moonlit distance and glancing down side roads and alleyways as he made his way.
He had traveled a good distance in the thickest darkness before reaching a place within the city walls where he saw an unmistakable orange glow lighting up the low clouds. The glow was emanating from a large fire under a garden of trees behind a high iron fence. Barley saw the silhouettes of people warming themselves as the blaze flickered. He could tell they were all men, about a dozen of them, and Barley could hear they were talking and laughing.
Pushing against the harsh wind, Barley sidled along the fence until he saw an opening, a gate that was ajar with room for him to slip in. Barley scooted through the gate and trotted slowly toward the fire, getting as close as he could without being noticed. He stopped, looked around, and could see by the light of the fire that he was in a large fenced area next to a mammoth building that seemed to stretch as far as his eyes could see in each direction. As he looked more closely at the men around the fire, their faces no longer in silhouette, Barley could see who they were.
The men were all Roman soldiers.
They were chuckling gruffly and passing wineskins between them. Their heavy helmets lay at their sides, their capes bunched on the ground where the men sprawled, their metal weapons propped up near the fire, making crisscross shapes against the illuminated sky.
Barley turned and launched himself forward toward the gate, but before he could pass through it, he heard a clamorous sound rising from the path he had just followed through the gate. It was the sound of pounding hooves.
Barley stopped and stood still, watching with his ears pinned back as the horses came up the hill—huge horses mounted with soldiers, some of them holding fiery torches, others wearing shiny armor and capes with extra flourishes of fabric or silver plating. Another cluster of men followed the mounted soldiers on foot.
The moment these new soldiers arrived, the ones by the fire reacted with haste. In a moment, all wineskins were hurled aside, helmets were clapped back onto heads, capes were straightened, and the men snapped themselves into a formal military line and stood erect—in a flash, each man a model of duty and respectability.
Barley saw these arriving soldiers were leaders—severe men with strict discipline who passed through the gate with no acknowledgment of the other soldiers who were standing respectfully. They headed toward the big building as Barley trotted along the wall several paces until he was safely in the shadows, where he sat to watch the commotion and wait for it to die down.
Once the group of soldiers reached the wall, the riders on horseback dismounted and stood waiting with the foot soldiers in a tight cluster. Then, after some echoing clangs, a heavy door in the wall of the big building was pushed open from within. The soldiers began to enter the building, and as the tight cluster of soldiers broke apart, Barley saw someone he recognized at the center of the group.
It was the Kind Man.
Barley was surprised to see him, but very glad.
The Kind Man’s light garments gave off a dim glow amid the sea of soldiers’ red uniforms. Barley felt so happy to see the Kind Man again that he began to wag his tail excitedly.
The last time Barley had seen the Kind Man was when he was riding the donkey and the citizens had pushed their way to the front of the crowd to lay down the large green leaves and blanket the Kind Man’s way.
Tonight there were no palms, no cheering crowds.
Tonight a few soldiers were walking alongside the Kind Man and holding on to him tightly, roughly. And the soldiers’ faces were cold and serious, unlike the citizens who greeted the Kind Man as he entered the city on the donkey and were so full of joy at seeing him.
But one thing that hadn’t changed since the last time Barley had seen the Kind Man was the look on his face.
He seemed just as kind as ever.
His expression was peaceful, his eyes soft and glistening, his head held with sincerity and poise. And Barley could feel the same warm feeling coming from the Kind Man’s eyes that he had felt the first time he saw him. Tonight the people who were around the Kind Man were acting differently, but the Kind Man seemed just as interesting and beautiful and kind to Barley as he had before.
Barley watched as the soldiers ushered the Kind Man through the door and he disappeared into the building, followed by the rest of the soldiers. Then, with a solid thud and a series of loud clangs, the huge door was shut and locked.
Barley turned and saw that the gate to the fence behind him, through which the soldiers had just come, was also shut and locked.
Barley was alone.
He barked twice.
Barley looked up anxiously at the door into which the Kind Man had been taken. He stood watching the door for a few moments.
Then Barley began to look around at his surroundings—the darkness around him, the tall trees and the fence. He could feel that the trimmed grass under his paws was thick and soft. Once he found a spot he liked, Barley laid
his belly on the ground, keeping his head up. He did not turn around three times and curl himself into a ball to go to sleep, like he usually did.
Barley did not want to go to sleep tonight.
CHAPTER 13
The following day, the dawn brought with it ominous weather that seemed strange and felt wrong.
Usually in this desert region the nights were windy, raw, and cold—until the sun of morning warmed the day into an eventual bright blaze of noon. But this day was different. The weather the night before had been balmy and genial, and Barley had passed a pleasant watch, sitting there awake and alert until daybreak in a breath-warm breeze. But when dawn came, it brought with it a silver sky filled with leaden clouds and gusts of unpredictable wind that blew away the warmth of the previous night and left an icy dampness in the Friday air.
Through the night, Barley had heard strange commotions, arrivals and departures on the other side of the large stone wall. But he never saw anyone arrive or depart again from the door that he watched all night. So Barley spent the morning continuing to watch, even though the grass was damp with cold morning dew and the wind was strong.
Barley stayed where he was, as close as he could get to his master and to the Kind Man.
Barley kept hearing a noise, a sound he couldn’t quite place. It sounded to Barley almost as though the lower part of the sky was whispering—softly, but in anger. As Barley listened, he could not make out any specific human voice in the sound, but he heard something in it that had a vaguely human rhythm to it. Soon, he realized what the sound was. It was the loud sound of many voices.
A crowd was forming around the side of the giant building. The last crowd Barley had heard making this sort of collective noise had gathered to see the Kind Man when he came into Jerusalem. Now that he heard the same noise—a roar of many voices off in the distance—he began to worry that maybe the Kind Man was with a crowd again, and he was not there to see him.
Barley ran frantically around the fenced yard along the side of the building, searching for a way to escape. Finally, he found it—a small dip in the ground beneath the fence just large enough for Barley to squeeze his small body through.
Once he was free, Barley ran for a long time toward the sound of the crowd. At last he saw stretching before him a massive plaza—not quite as large as the temple marketplace but much colder and statelier. The plaza was filled with soldiers—dozens of them—all with their backs to Barley, looking forward at a procession of people forming at the far end of the plaza. Several wide stairs descended to the street where the crowd had gathered. The street-level noise was now surging over the wide steps and echoing off the buildings in the vast plaza. Barley ran across the plaza and made his way down onto the street.
Barley could see that the people at the head of the crowd had begun to move up the street at the bottom of the plaza steps and were now making the first turn up one of the many winding roads that wove through that part of the city.
Barley looked around him for a break in the thronging mass of people. He cocked his head alertly in all directions, searching for a path, until finally his eyes fell on a promising sight.
Barley looked at the looming chain of stone structures bordering the crowded street. The buildings rose up at the same steep angle as the incline of the street they fronted. Barley noticed one building in particular near the crest of the hill toward which the crowd progressed. He saw a bit of daylight shining between it and the building next to it—a small alleyway. Barley could see through that slender opening a sliver of the huge crowd lining the sides of the street and looking back down the road toward the plaza.
Barley had found his shortcut.
He saw that he could snake his way up to the backs of those buildings by climbing one small wall that led up the hill, then all he had to do was scamper up a small patch of hillside ground that led up to the alleyway. From there he could get to the head of the procession.
Barley turned from the crowd and made for the wall that would be the first step in his trek. Barley anticipated the wall’s height and leapt through the air in one arcing jump, landing atop the wall. He scooted along the length of its narrow edge until he reached the patch of rocky cliffside that now separated him from the alleyway leading to the street.
In a moment, Barley was quickly up the cliff and running into the little alley. He easily fit through its narrow length and soon found himself at the top of the crowded street.
The street was lined with so many people that Barley’s view of it was obscured. He pushed into the crowd, making his way through a gauntlet of legs, until he reached the street’s edge. From this vantage point, he had a clear view of the procession coming up the street.
Barley waited and watched. While this crowd looked similar to the crowd that had gathered the last time he had seen the Kind Man, the feeling in the air was very different.
This time there was no jubilation. There was a whiff of danger in the air that made Barley uneasy. The mood of this crowd was as ugly as the ashen sky and hissing clouds overhead.
As Barley looked down the hill to the bottom of the street, he could tell by the way the crowd was shuffling, pointing, reacting, craning necks, and standing up on tip-toes that the procession was just now rounding the curve to walk up the road.
Then Barley saw him, at the center of an angry escort of soldiers pushing through the crowd.
It was the Kind Man.
Even at a distance, Barley recognized his eyes—unmistakable and beautiful.
But everything else about the Kind Man looked different now.
He was not wearing the clean white cloak that seemed to glow when Barley saw it shining in the sun and hanging gracefully off the Kind Man’s tall, thin frame. Now, all the Kind Man had on his body was a torn red cloak—draped awkwardly over his back and hanging down over some tattered undergarments tied loosely around his waist. And somehow his frame looked even thinner than it had just hours before when Barley had seen him with the soldiers.
And Barley saw that he was carrying an enormous piece of wood.
This confused Barley.
It looked to him like the Kind Man did not want to be carrying the wood, like it was hurting him and making him distressed. Barley wondered why he didn’t just put down the wood in the street and walk without it. But the Kind Man didn’t. He kept carrying the heavy wood up the incline of the road, wincing and sweating as he worked to keep it on his shoulders as he climbed the stone street.
The crossbar he was carrying was so large and so rough-hewn that even from far up the street, Barley could see its coarse, splintery surface cutting into the Kind Man’s back and shoulders. It was so heavy it weighed the Kind Man down so that he could only walk slowly, one unsure step followed by the next.
As the Kind Man moved up the road, closer to where Barley stood, Barley could see that his back and arms had several long, red marks on them, like the marks Duv carved into wood and painted to make his beautiful birds. But the marks on the Kind Man’s body were not beautiful to Barley.
The Kind Man continued up the road slowly, shifting the heavy wood and struggling with each step. He was trying to keep moving, pausing every few seconds to summon strength from deep inside his bent body to continue making his way up the road.
When the Kind Man moved within feet of Barley, Barley realized he could not see the man’s long hair. The Kind Man’s hair was being held back by something encircling his head.
It looked to Barley like a shattered wooden water bowl, an ugly basket, or the nest of a terrible bird had been placed atop the Kind Man’s head. When the Kind Man came closer still to Barley’s spot along the road, Barley finally realized what it was.
It was no bowl or basket or nest encircling the Kind Man’s head.
It was thorns.
The thorns were long and sharp and scary to look at, and they were pressing into the Kind Man’s forehead and scalp.
Nobody from the crowd moved forward to help the Kind Man. They just stood an
d watched as he lugged the heavy wood up the hill, with thorns wreathing his head in a mangle of punctures.
Now Barley began to notice something about the Kind Man’s legs, which were at Barley’s eye level. They were quivering. The weight of the wood was bearing down on the Kind Man’s torso and lower limbs until, after a few more strained steps, they began to wobble awkwardly. The Kind Man stood in place for one teetering second. Then his body collapsed, dropping down onto the street as the crowd gasped loudly. The huge piece of wood followed immediately, landing with a loud crack and then a thud—half on the street, half across the Kind Man’s back.
For a few seconds, there was a numb pause, and the crowd hushed as the Kind Man lay in the road, dazed and weak, his chest flat on the ground. Then some in the crowd became impatient at the lull in the procession, and this feeling rippled through the crowd until a few citizens actually shouted for him to get back up. At this, the Kind Man lifted his head weakly and with a look of such deep sadness that Barley could begin to see it, for the first time, overtaking the kindness of his eyes.
But just as Barley began to feel despair over what he was witnessing, he glimpsed what seemed to be a ray of goodness from one of the soldiers.
As soon as the Kind Man fell, this soldier immediately ran to the Kind Man’s side. Barley watched as the soldier lifted the heavy wood off the Kind Man’s back and let it drop next to him in the street.
Once the Kind Man’s back was clear of the fallen wood, the soldier lifted what Barley saw was a whip and began swinging it down onto the fallen man again and again, the earsplitting cracks ringing out each time the soldier’s whip landed.
Now Barley understood that the soldier had not moved the wood off the Kind Man’s back to help him. He also now understood how the Kind Man came to have those long, red marks on his body.
Barley cowered as he watched the soldier beat the Kind Man, his body wincing at the landing of each lash.
At long last, the Kind Man pushed himself up off the ground, even amid the onslaught of the whip. As he did, the soldier lifted the wood back up onto the Kind Man’s bloody shoulders, and the procession continued.