“I’ve been expecting you, Cornelius,” he said, looking up as his friend spoke. “I knew you would be coming.”
“We didn’t get into Jerusalem until a short time before the storm. As soon as I heard at Antonia, I came running; I was at the gate down there when the storm struck.”
“I knew you would come.” He shook his head slowly; his eyes were fixed, unseeing. “And I deserve everything you’re going to say.” He lifted his face, and Cornelius saw on it fear and sorrow and a great revulsion. “I’m undone, my friend.” He arose slowly to his feet, and his eyes, for an instant before he looked away, encompassed the crosses behind Cornelius.
“But, Longinus, you didn’t ... it was Pilate....” He reached out to put his hand on his comrade’s arm, but Longinus drew back, hand raised.
“No, Cornelius, Pilate condemned him, but I killed him! I, this hand. Look!” He held it before him and turned it slowly. “His blood! His innocent blood! I tortured to his slow death an innocent man, a good man, Cornelius, a perfect man, yes, and by all the gods, even more than a perfect man!”
“I’d thought that he was more, that perhaps he possessed powers no man could have, I’d hoped so; I’d hoped that he had called upon a supernatural power to heal Lucian. But would a god, would the son of the God, if there is one, my friend”—Cornelius’ countenance was darkly pained—“allow himself to be put to death, to accept the tortured death of the cross?”
“I know that my saying it sounds strange, Cornelius, but ever since this morning I’ve had the feeling that he was allowing himself to be crucified and that at any moment, if he had wished, he could have destroyed us all. Yet in the midst of his agonies, while we were spiking him to the crossbeam, he prayed to his god to forgive us. To forgive us, Centurion!” He shook his head sadly. “To forgive me. But I killed him. By all the gods, let me show you.”
They walked over to the foot of the center cross. The body of Jesus, naked except for a bloody loincloth, hung out from the upright at a grotesque angle, held by heavy spikes through the palms of the hands and supported by a narrow wedge between the legs. The head had slumped forward so that the twin points of his short beard splayed out across his chest. Other large spikes through his purpling feet held them to the upright.
“See?” Longinus pointed to a gaping wound from which blood and body fluid still dripped slowly. Blood had gushed forth when the wound was made, for below it the tortured flesh was wide streaked and the loincloth was gore-soaked; his blood had run down the length of one leg, and even as Cornelius stared, a crimson bead swelled at the end of the great toe and dropped to the bloodstained ground.
“But why this wound?” Cornelius asked. “Did you...?”