and strayed off the path downward, Giuliano stopped. "Are you all right?" he said anxiously.
"Yes," she said. "Do you want to go south now?" She pointed back to the road. "The Jaffa Gate's that way. That's Herod's Gate ahead of us. I could go in there. There's a pilgrim lodging near St. Stephen's. I'll stay there overnight, and go down to the Sion Gate before morning."
"I'll come with you," he said quickly.
"No. Take the painting and go back to Acre and the sea. I'll stay in this until morning, then I'll put on the gray again." She looked at him briefly, then turned away. Beyond his shoulder she saw the scarred hillside with holes in it that seemed at a glance like the eyes and nostrils of a great skull. She shivered.
"What is it?" he asked, swiveling around to follow her line of sight. "There's no one."
"I know. It wasn't that..." Her voice tailed off.
He stood closer to her, his hand on her arm. "Do you know where we are?" he said softly.
"No..." But even as she denied it, she understood. "Yes. Golgotha. The place of the crucifixion."
"Perhaps. I know some people think it's inside the city, and perhaps it doesn't matter. I'd rather it were here, desolate with the earth and the sky. It shouldn't have a pretty church built over it. That is to efface all it means. It had to be terrible, and alone, like this."
"Do you think we'll all come to such a place one day?" she asked. "Or be brought here?"
"Maybe, one day or another," he answered.
She stood still for several moments longer. Then she turned to him. "But I must go to Sinai, and you must go to Acre. I'll see you again in thirty-five days, or as close as I can to that." She found it difficult to keep her voice level, the emotion in control. She wanted to leave before it broke. She glanced down to where he held his sack with the clothes and the picture. "Thank you." She smiled briefly and turned away, climbing back up the steep incline to the road. At the top, she looked at him once and saw he was still on the same spot, still watching her, the skull of Golgotha behind him. She took a deep breath, swallowed, and started walking again.
Chapter 61-64
Sixty-one
GIULIANO WATCHED UNTIL THE SLENDER, LONELY FIGURE of Anastasius disappeared into the distance, then he walked over the rough ground and climbed back up to the road, joining it farther to the south and west. Was that the true Golgotha on which they had stood? The desolation of it seeped into his bones, drowning his mind. Why hast Thou forsaken me? The cry of every human soul who looks upon despair.
Was the sad, powerful face on the wooden painting he carried really that of Mary? It didn't matter. The passion was real. Who cared if it was this place or that place? This woman or another?
Why did the sight of Anastasius dressed as a woman trouble Giuliano so much? He not only looked so natural in the clothes, he even changed his walk and the angle of his head. The way he looked at the passing men was feminine, different. His character had changed. He was no longer the friend Giuliano had come to know so well. At least he thought he had. There were days at a time when he forgot that Anastasius was a eunuch. His sexuality, or lack of it, was of no importance. It was his courage, his gentleness, his intelligence, his quick wit and soaring imagination that mattered and made him who he was.
Now suddenly the whole issue was forced into the open. Anastasius truly was a third gender, neither male nor female. He could slip from one to the other as silk changed in the light, almost as if there were nothing innate that defined him.
But it was worse than that. It was something deeper, something within himself, that troubled him. He had found Anastasius dressed as a woman to be beautiful. He knew perfectly well that he was, if not a man, then definitely male, yet momentarily he had responded to him as if he had been female. He had felt protective and then been aware of the sharp stirrings of sexual attraction.
Giuliano was relieved that he had to go to Jaffa and there was no real question of his traveling to Sinai as well.
Yet the moment Anastasius, such a vulnerable figure, was gone,