“It shall never be,” she repeated. “They must kill me first.”
Calcol wheeled. His short sword glistened, reversed, and her cheek was laid open by the hilt. She staggered back. The soldiery moved on. The [pg 240]women surrounded her and stanched the wound. To her the blow held the difference between a cut and a cancer; she knew that it could never heal; and, as the blood poured down her face, for the first time she divined the uselessness of revolt.
Presently a wave of the mob caught her, separating her from the other women, and carrying her in its eddy through the gate, into the valley and on to the hillock beyond. On one side were the glimmer of fires, the smell of smoke, of offal too. On the infrequent trees vultures perched. To the right was a nest of gardens and of tombs.
In the eddies Mary lost foothold and lagged a little to the rear. When she reached Gülgolta the soldiery had formed three sides of a square. In it were the executioners, the prisoners, and the centurion. At the place where a fourth side might have been a steep decline began.
Within the square three crosses lay; before them the prisoners stood, stripped of their clothing now, and naked.
The Sanhedrim was grouped about [pg 241]that side of the square which leaned to the south, the horned bonnet of Caiaphas towering its lacework above the others. To the wide and cruel corners of his mouth had come the calm of a cheetah devouring its prey. At the outer angle, to the right, the standard of the empire swayed; and from an oak two vultures soared with a scream into the air, their eyes fixed on the vision of bare white flesh.
Through the ranks an elder passed. In his hand was a gourd, which he offered to one of the thieves.
“Drink of it, Dysmas,” he invited. “In it grains of frankincense have been dissolved.”
To the rear Annas nodded his approval. His lean, lank jaws parted. “Give strong drink,” he announced, authoritatively; “give strong and heady drink to those about to die, and wine to those that sorrow.”
Dysmas drank abundantly of the soporific, and held the gourd to his comrade.