the hill they called the Place of the Skull. Lavi and I had seen them only yesterday as we’d approached the city after our long trek from Joppa. In the dusk, they’d appeared like a little forest of dead trees amputated at the neck. We knew them to be the upright beams of the crosses on which the Romans crucified their victims, but neither of us had said it.
The bone scrape on the street intensified. I turned back to the sad procession. The soldiers are taking the man to the Place of the Skull. He’s carrying the crossbeam. I studied him closer. There was a familiarity about him, something about the shape of his shoulders. He lifted his head and his dark hair parted to reveal his face. This man was my husband.
“Jesus,” I said quietly, speaking to myself, to Lavi, to no one.
Lavi tugged my arm. “Do not be a witness to this, Ana. Spare yourself.”
I wrenched free, unable to tear my eyes from Jesus. He wore a cap plaited out of the thorn twigs used to kindle fires. He’d been flogged. His arms and legs were a mass of torn skin and dried blood. A howl formed in my belly and pushed into my mouth. It came without sound, just a violent spasm of pain.
Jesus stumbled, and though he was at least twenty arm lengths away from me, I reached out to catch him. He fell hard onto one knee and wavered there as a puddle of blood oozed around it. Then he collapsed, the crossbeam thudding onto his back. I screamed, and this time it split the stones.
As I started toward him, Lavi’s hand clamped my wrist. “You cannot go to him. If you impede these men, they will not hesitate to kill you as well.” I jerked my arm, twisting to free myself.
The soldiers were shouting at Jesus to get up, prodding him with the shafts of their spears. “Get up, Jew! Get to your feet.” He tried, pushing onto his elbow, then dropped back onto his chest.
My wrist burned from Lavi’s grip. He would not relent. The centurion climbed down from the black horse and kicked the crossbeam off Jesus’s back. “Leave him be,” he ordered his men. “He can carry it no farther.”
I hardened my eyes. “Release me now or I shall never forgive you.” Lavi dropped his hand, and I charged into the street, past the soldiers, keeping my eye on the centurion, who paced the edge of the crowd with his back to me.
I knelt beside Jesus, possessed now by an eerie calm, by a self barely known to me. Everything receded into the distance—the street, the soldiers, the noise, the city walls, the people craning to watch—the whole pageant of horrors abating until there was nothing there but Jesus and me. His eyes were closed. He didn’t move or seem to breathe, and I wondered if he was already dead. He would never know I was here, but I was relieved for him. Crucifixion was barbarous. I rolled him gently onto his side and a breath floated up.
“Beloved,” I said, bending close.
He blinked and his gaze found me. “Ana?”
“I’m here . . . I’ve come back. I’m here.” A drop of blood trickled over his brow, pooling in the corner of his eye. I took the sleeve of my cloak, his cloak, and dabbed it. His eyes lingered on the red thread on my arm, the one that was there at the beginning and would be there at the end.
“I will not leave you,” I said.
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered.
Far away I heard the centurion command a bystander to step forward and carry the crossbeam. Jesus and I didn’t have long. In these last minutes, what did he most want to hear—that he’d been seen and heard in this world? That he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do? That he’d loved and been loved?
“Your goodness will not be forgotten,” I told him. “Not a single act of your love will be squandered. You’ve brought God’s kingdom as you hoped—you’ve planted it in our hearts.”
He smiled, and I saw my face in the dark gold suns of