The Watch

2: Year & Place Unknown, Palestine: Anvil of the Gods.

Only the shadows on the chill sandy soil were black. Above, the vault of heaven was alive with energy from the blazing stars and the lambent glow of the Milky Way. Phineas crouched closer to the meager warmth and dim glow of the dried camel dung fire, his eyes not moving from the spot above. It was there, on the shoulder of the Great Hunter, the Spear Holder, the Light of Heaven, where the Oracle had first appeared. As usual, months before, he had consulted the auguries, the numbers, the signs and it was written clear. Something was coming. The Elders had convened when he first prophesied that Yahweh had tossed a pebble into the great cosmic void. Its ripples would eventually reach them from the spot where God had touched their universe, there on the shoulder of Orion. At first there was nothing, no sign at all, and the Elders were on the verge of ridiculing him, even banishing him as a false prophet. But then the star appeared. The bright light turned into a comet, an omen of great portent. Of good or evil Phineas knew not. Indeed, he felt that the comet was the sign of some great gift from God…that would eventually become a great curse. He pondered long and hard over this mystery.

The comet brightened over the next few weeks, its tail elongating, white and brilliant. And then, it was gone.

Nothing. The tribe again raised their voices against him. The Elders called a council of the Sanhedrin, demanding that Phineas account for the sudden death of the come

That was when Phineas was drawn here, into the desert. It was days before the council meeting and Phineas withdrew from the tribe to see what solitude, fasting, and prayer would reveal to him. He wandered at night, his eyes ever skyward. And it was upon the third night that he rested, here, hours before sunrise on the day before the council meeting

This, he knew, was the spot. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, it was daylight. The stars vanished and the desert blazed into a multitude of colors. He could see for miles. Shading his eyes, Phineas looked skyward. There, above him, was a second sun. The ball of blazing light seemed to be hurling towards him, a brilliant white orb surrounded by a halo of gold, then red, and then purple. Seconds later he heard the roar like rolling thunder, from within this, he feared, would come the voice of Yaweh himself! The explosion made the earth tremble. His ears were momentarily deafened, his eyes blinded by the intense flash of light. Phineas was blown to the ground. He covered his head, eyes and ears with his robe and shemagh.

All was black once again. Phineas uncovered his head, expecting to see the very God standing before him. Nothing…then a faint noise, almost musical as metallic fragments began to rain down upon the rocks around him. He watched in awe, one arm over his head and face as the fragments of metal and cinder began to drop out of the night sky for miles around him.

The fragments were small at first, but then others smashed and clanged on the rocks or thudded into the sand, they were large, the size of an arm or a leg. One small fragment set fire to his headgear, he brushed it aside, his hand smarting from the dull yellow-red glow of the metal. Others were dense black against the star-lit white sand. He touched one of these, carefully, then quickly withdrew his fingers. The black metal was cold, a deadly cold and as icy as the far stars or the frozen tops of the mountains far to the north. More fragments were falling, harder, heavier, one in particular demanded his attention with a low whistling noise in the air far above him. As it drew closer it sounded like a demon screaming in rage as it fell from the distant heavens to the earth below. It crashed into the sand a hundred paces away from him, close enough to scatter sand over his head.

Then, silence. Phineas waited, trembling, deeply afraid as should be any man who has witnessed the hand of God upon the sands of the desert. When all was truly silent and still, Phineas arose and walked the spot where the large fragment had fallen. It lay in a small depression in the sand. It was long and black. He wrapped his hand in his headgear and lifted one end of the fragment. It was cold like some of the others, and almost all the same black metal. Iron he guessed. He tested its weight. It was incredibly dense and heavy. He lifted it with both hands. It was thick and heavy at one end, the other narrowing down to a deadly sharp shard of black iron.

It was then that the import of the awe filled happening dawned upon him. “Oh God! Thou hast delivered unto me the symbol and the weapon of my people! Never more certain have I been that you have chosen us. That you have placed on our heads the burden and the privilege of bringing your word and your redemption to mankind…” It was days later that Phineas stood before the Grand Council and as many of the tribe that could gather within the sacred tent.

He held the shard of metal high in his hands. “The prophecy has come to pass! I foretold of the coming of a great sign from the celestial spearman, Orion. I was called into the desert and there received the sacred symbol forged for us upon the very anvil of the Gods! You saw the light, you heard the thunder of the celestial hammers upon the anvil, you even felt the rain of sparks from the forge itself. It was then that this piece of heavenly iron was placed at my feet. I bring it to you now. I demand that the council have our best blacksmith finish the work of the Lord – and in so doing join our hands with those of Yaweh to create a gleaming iron spear head, the symbol of our people, the embodiment of our blood and our spirit.

“Let it march before the armies of our people for generations to come, that all may see, and know, that we are the chosen of God and where we make war, he makes war, and where we make peace, he makes peace.” And so it was.

3: 0 AD, Palestine: Golgotha.

He was an old man even then. He was almost blind and even with sight would have been unfit for the rigors of daily duty putting down the occasional rebel band, ever present thieves and protecting the tax collectors.

As it was, the Procurator valued his past services and he was put out to pasture as a liaison with the Sanhedrin. He ached as he sat in the saddle. He had not stayed the entire time. Long enough in the morning to see the three men fastened to the stakes and cross arms. Then he left. The Legion and the Procurator had plenty of other business to keep him busy. His guards remained to keep order among the small crowd that had gathered. Few of the so-called Messiah’s followers were there. In hiding, he imagined. The one woman among the followers, his woman it was supposed, was there. Perhaps there were others in disguise. She was composed, serene almost, showing the same stoicism as the man Jesus had throughout the trials, the beatings and even the nailing upon the cross.

He returned late in the afternoon when word had come that guards from the Sanhedrin had left the temple to finish off the three men. He went out of curiosity more than anything. What, he wondered, were they up to? It was bad enough that the High Priests wanted the men crucified by the Legion. At first, he knew them to be little more than common thieves and a rabble-rouser. The priests would have been well within their authority to simply have the men dragged out to the City wall and stoned to death. Yet no, they wanted the Romans to kill them.

It soon became clear enough. The rabble-rouser was the man who had started the riot in the Temple marketplace. Some claimed him as the new Savior, the Messiah, the one long prophesied to lead the Jewish tribes to freedom from Rome and back to a simpler, purer worship of their one supreme God.

He smiled imperceptibly, the freedom from Rome charge was thrown in to challenge the Procurator. More than likely, the man was a challenge to the control of the High Priests. As such, they could not be seen as the ones to execute him. It would have given too much credence to his claims. No, better to throw him in with two common criminals, add the offense against Rome, and let the heavy hand of the Legion deal with all three in the one way reserved by Rome for its enemies and malcontents.

Crucifixion, he knew, was simply the most excruciatingly painful and slow death that could be devised for a man. If the executioner was skillful enough, the victim could be forced to endure the horrendous pain for many, many hours. Those hours served to deliver an awesome message to the onlookers. Few would ever dare stand or speak against the power and the rule of Rome after watching a victim suffer on the cross.

In most cases a skillful crucifixion could be made to last a full day or more. Much depended upon the strength of the victim. Strong arms and legs were ideal. The arms were stretched outward, but not too far, as it was important to keep the top of the head slightly below the palms. The spikes were then driven through each wrist, in the center below the joint of the thumb, but not through the main artery.

Then the man, now writhing in pain, would be stretched by the legs, one ankle turned and braced so that another spike could be driven through it from side to side just beneath the ankle. Then the body would be turned slightly so that the spike now in the upper ankle could be driven through the lower ankle and then into the wooden beam below it.

Many men swooned from the frightful pain of the nails being driven through bone and flesh. Once they were hauled upright and began to hang from the nails in the wrists, their knees would buckle and the full weight of their bodies would pull on the arms and muscles across the chest. Between the pain from the body weight on the nails, and the same weight pressing down against every indrawn breath, they would soon awaken to struggle for air. The only way to breath would be to push down on the spike through the ankles, using it to take pressure off the chest in order to breath, and off the wrists to ease the pain. And herein lay the true horror of death upon such a cross, for the cost of one breath, one moment’s respite from the pain in the wrists, was the even more excruciating pain of the body’s weight pressing down on the spike through the ankles.

So began the dance, pressing against the ankle spike, pulling against the wrist spikes, each rise and fall accompanied by screams and moans of pain, all to a cacophony of jeers from the watching crowd. Finally, as the strength faded from the arms and legs, the dance would slow, the victim would hang and the slow process of suffocation would begin. The end came either when the breathing finally stopped, or when the victim convulsed from some pain deep in the chest. He watched as the Temple Guards approached the hill. They came up from the west, black silhouettes against a crimson band of setting sunlight, the rays casting a blood red glow against the underbelly of a massive black cloudbank closing in from the east. Despite his failing eyes, he noticed the spear rising above the naked heads of the guards. It would be in the hands of the master of the guards, the one empowered by the Sanhedrin to carry the symbol of their power and religious authority.

The spear! as if these swine had any authority to begin with! They called it the Spear of Phineas The Prophet. It had been handed down from King to King for generations ands so the hand of Herod Antipas. It was, supposedly, the source and symbol of victory for the Israelites at one battle after another. It certainly hadn’t swayed the might of Rome, and now here he was, killing their thieves and heretics for them and not one cowardly priest among them to witness his work on their behalf, just their damned spear in the hands of so-called guards.

He leaned forward and spat on the ground to the right of his mount’s head. This was already a bad business and the taste in his mouth wasn’t getting any better. As they approached in the gathering gloom his partial sight finally saw that some of the guards carrying mallets. So, it was true, they wanted to ensure the three men were dead on their crosses before nightfall.

“Damn you ‘Master of the Guard.’ You dare come before me with your mallets and your spear? This is a Roman execution, what makes you think you have a hand in how it ends?” He looked at the men hanging on the crosses. The two thieves were certainly alive, but barely, the heretic between them was probably already dead.

“These men may well breathe in agony well into the night. Do you intend to deny Rome the full punishment it reserves for those who hang upon its cross?”

The Master of the Guard stepped forward in front of his mount and looked up at him. He held the spear forward as if to make his authority obvious.

“Gaius Cassius Longinus, Centurion of the Legion, I am here at the command of the Sanhedrin! They have petitioned Pilate, the Procurator, so that we may break the legs of the condemned before it is fully dusk and the Sabbath commences.”

He leaned forward and spat once more. The Master of the Guard flinched.

“So, what am I to believe, Master of the Guard, you bow to the law of Rome rather than kill these men yourselves, yet now you ask the Law of Rome to bow to the religious edicts of the Sanhedrin!”

The man looked up at him, uncertain now as to whether he was being challenged or not.

“The Procurator has signed the petition, Centurion. Please, let us be about our task and there will be no need for you and your soldiers to spend the night here.”

The gathering clouds, now roiling in purpling colors lent sense to the man’s words.

“I care little for the commands of Caiaphas and Annas, and Pilate’s would mean as much but that they carry the weight of the Rome I serve. Go then, kill those that are alive.”

The Master whispered back at the men behind him. He had long pretended not to understand their Aramaic tongue, but he knew well the Master had told the men to “smash them all.”

The words seemed to raise the gall in his gut to the back of his throat. He clenched his teeth, telling himself that it mattered little. Two men, each armed with long handled mallets walked to the bottom of the crosses on which the thieves hung. As they approached they swung the mallets, the heads smashing against the outermost thighs of both men with a sickening crack.

One man managed a stifled scream, the other moaned in agony. The mallet heads swung again, this time against the inner thighs with the same result. The two men hung lower, gasping, choking, the merciful end but moments away. But then, each man changed his grip, and swung again. Gaius could see them holding their mallets at the very end of the long handles. The blows landed squarely of the faces of the men, smashing their skulls. Several onlookers turned away in disgust, others moaned softly. The two guards then turned to the central figure, readying the bloodied mallets.

“Halt!” It was as if Gaius heard the word, rather than uttered it. He realized then that the thought forming in the back of his mind was now to be action.

“I said kill those that are alive! You will not smash them all!’ He said the words in Aramaic to the stunned Temple guards.

The Master of the Guards spun around, fear in his eyes, “Centurion, we have our orders, and besides the man is alive, I swear he is breathing.”

“This man was beaten, scourged and humiliated, then dragged through the streets and hung upon the cross until he died. He bore it all with the dignity and bravery of one of my own Legionnaires. And now you want to smash his bones and mutilate his dead body. I say enough. He is dead. Give him over to be buried in peace!”

The guard looked back at his men, as if for assurance, “The Sanhedrin wanted his bones smashed more than any other…surely, Centurion, you can agree that he is alive?”

“Enough! Damn you once again. He is dead, “ As he spoke Gaius leaned forward, snatched the ceremonial spear from the hands of the Master of the Guards and spurred his mount forward. He charged through the small group of onlookers and mourners, his horse’s chest thrusting aside the group of two temple guards. With practiced aim he thrust the spear forward and upward as he reined the horse to a halt. The entire blade slid in between the last two rib bones on the left side of the chest. The body did not move. Gaius yanked the blade back out of the lifeless body. The gaping wound spewed out a thin, brown liquid and instantly there was a strong smell of vinegar in the air. The vinegar, drunk some hours before the heretic died, was followed by a thick slow trickle of dark blood.

Gaius spat a command to the two men holding the mallets, “Back away. You were given permission to the kill the living, not mutilate the dead. This man is dead I have tested a thousand corpses this way and there is no doubt. The next two I test will be yours!”

The men backed away, looking to the Master of the Guard for orders. It was then that Gaius looked at the man, standing at the back of the crowd on the same spot where the spear had been snatched from his hand. There was a look of sheer horror on his face. Gaius cantered back. He held the bloodied spear forward, toward the stricken man. As he did so, a single rivulet of the heretic’s blood ran down the shaft and across the back of his hand.

The Master of the Guard shook his head. His men were backing away from him, as if, suddenly, he were a leper. “You have killed me, “ he gasped, his hands waiving away the spear.

“How so, Master of the Guard?”

“No, no, I am no longer the Master of the Temple Guard. It has been my honor for many years to hold the Spear of Phineas for the Sanhedrin and my King. Now, not only has it been taken from my grasp, but I have also allowed it to be defiled with the blood of a heretic. Surely the Priests and the King cannot take it back, the very symbol of the blood of our nation has been defiled.”

Gaius stared at the man’s face in the last fading light of the dying sun now below the horizon. He could see the fear in the man’s eyes, the sweat upon his brow, the trembling mouth and each and every hair on his face and head. He looked again. He could even see his own reflection in the man’s eyes, the last of the blood light glinting off his helmet and breastplate.

He spoke quietly, “Perhaps it is as well that your priests and King lose their symbol of authority. If this day your Messiah, the son of your God made flesh in man’s form has been so tortured to death upon a common cross…all for the sake of Caiaphas and his like…then surely the wrath of your God will be unending.”

Several of Gaius’ men came forward with torches. Behind him, the crosses had been lowered and soldiers were prying the spikes from the wood and the flesh of the dead.

He turned back to the Master of the Guard. His own men had deserted him, gone in the well of darkness filling the valley below the hill. The face was now strangely calm, the torchlight flickering in the half closed eyes.

He reached a hand toward Gaius, “Please Centurion, give me your gladius.”

Gauis instinctively knew why. Under Roman law, the temple guards carried only short belt daggers. He unsheathed the short-sword at his waist, gripped the point and handed the pommel to the guard. He took the pommel, smiled at Gauis, then turned away.

“Vade in pacem,” said Gauis.

The man nodded, then fell to his knees, then onto his stomach, the point of the gladius exiting his body through the small of his back.

“That was well done,” said Gauis, motioning to one of his men to retrieve the sword.

He was trembling within as he wiped the blood from his hand with the corner of his Centurion’s robe. He looked up at the night sky, a great doming panoply of brilliance, each and every star so crystal clear it seemed to pain the very eyes that saw them. A small group of people stumbled down the hillside by the light of one feeble torch as they carried the body of the dead Messiah. The woman, his woman, stopped, turned and looked back at Gaius. She smiled sadly, then turned back away and disappeared into the darkness.

His hand shook as he held the spear. He would be silent for now about the miracle of his restored eyesight. Silent until he returned to his home at Zobingen in the land of the Teutons. It was time, he knew, to go home. He pointed to the center cross and motioned to one of his men, “Bring me one of the nails.”

Next: Chapter 4: Saturday, January 3rd, 1903 Linz, Austria: Herr Schickelgruber.