“Drink, sir?” Here the timing was critical.

“Anyone want a sip of water?” I asked before taking the sponge. I was palming the ying-yang amulet as I said it.

“Drink after a Jewish dog. Not likely,” said the old soldier.

“I’m getting the impression that my Jewish money might sully your Roman purse,” I said. “Maybe I should go.”

“No, your money’s good enough,” said a young soldier, punching my shoulder in good spirits. I was tempted to relieve him of his teeth.

I took the sponge and feigned taking a drink. When I raised the sponge to squeeze the water into my mouth I dumped the poison over it. Instantly I handed it back to Johanna so as not to poison myself. Without dipping it back in the water she affixed the sponge to the stick and raised it up to Joshua’s face. His head rolled, and his tongue rolled out of the side of his mouth against the moisture.

“Drink,” Johanna said, but Joshua didn’t seem to hear her. She pushed the sponge harder against his mouth and it dripped on one of the Romans. “Drink.”

“Move away from there, Marcus,” said the old soldier. “When he goes he’ll lose his fluids all over you. You don’t want to sit too close.” The old Roman laughed raucously.

“Drink it, Joshua,” said Susanna.

Finally Joshua opened his eyes and pushed his face into the sponge. I held my breath as I heard him sucking the moisture out of it.

“Enough!” said the young soldier. He knocked the stick out of Susanna’s hands. The sponge went flying off into the dirt. “He’ll be dead soon.”

“Not soon enough, though, with that block to stand on,” said the old soldier.

Then time began to pass more slowly than I could ever remember. When Joy had poisoned me it had taken only seconds before I was paralyzed, then when I’d used the poison on the man in India he’d dropped almost immediately. I tried to pretend to pay attention to the game, but I was looking for some sign that the poison was working.

The women moved away and watched from a distance, but I heard one of them gasp and when I looked up, Joshua’s head had lolled over. Drool ran out of his open mouth.

“How do you know when he’s dead?” I asked.

“Like this.” The young soldier named Marcus prodded Joshua in the thigh with his spear. Joshua moaned and opened his eyes and I felt my stomach sink. I could hear sobbing from Johanna and Susanna.

I threw the dice, and waited. An hour passed, and still Joshua moaned. I could hear him praying softly from time to time over the laughter of the soldiers. Another hour. I had begun to shake. Every sound from the cross was like a hot iron driven in my spine. I couldn’t bring myself to look up at him. The disciples moved closer, less concerned now about staying hidden, but the Romans were too intent on their game to notice. Unfortunately, I was not intent enough.

“That’s it for you,” said the old soldier. “Unless you want to gamble for your own cloak now. Your purse is empty.”

“Is this bastard ever going to die?” said one of the young soldiers.

“He just needs help,” said the young soldier named Marcus, who had stood and was leaning on his spear. Before I could even get to my feet he thrust the spear upward into Joshua’s side, the point went up under his ribs, and his heart blood pulsed down the iron in three great gushes, then ran out in a trickle. Marcus yanked the spear out. The entire hillside echoed with screaming, some of it my own. I stood transfixed, shaking, watching the blood run out of Joshua’s side. Hands latched onto my arms and I was dragged back, away from the cross. The Romans started to pick up their things to head back to the praetorium.

“Loony,” said the old soldier, looking at me.

Joshua looked at me one last time, then closed his eyes and died.

“Come away, Biff,” a woman’s voice said in my ear. “Come away.” They turned me around and started marching me toward the city. I could feel a chill running over me as the wind came up and the sky started to darken under a sudden storm. There was still screaming, going on and on, and when Johanna clamped her hand over my mouth I realized it was me who had been screaming. I blinked tears out of my eyes, again and again, trying to at least see where they were leading me, but as soon as my sight would clear another sob would rock my body and the water would rise again.

They were leading me to the Gennath Gate, that much I could tell, and there was a dark figure standing on the wall above the gate, watching us. I blinked and caught a single second of clarity as I saw who it was.

“Judas!” I screamed until my voice shattered. I shook off the women and ran through the gate, swung myself up on top of one of the huge doors, and leapt to the wall. Judas ran south along the wall, looking from side to side for a place to jump off.

There was no thought to what I was doing, nothing but grief gone to anger, love gone to hatred. I followed Judas across the roofs of Jerusalem, tossing aside anyone who got in my way, shattering pottery, crashing down rooftop chicken cages, pulling down lines of hanging clothes. When he came to a roof that led no further, Judas jumped two stories to the ground and came up limping as he ran down the street toward the Essene Gate at Ben Hinnon. I came off the roof full stride and landed without losing a step. Although I heard something tear in my ankle I couldn’t feel it.

There was a line of people trying to get into the city at the Essene Gate, probably seeking shelter from the impending storm. Lightning crackled across the sky and raindrops as big as frogs began to plop onto the streets, leaving craters in the dust and painting the city with a thin coat of mud. Judas fought through the crowd as if he were swimming in pitch, pulling people past him on either side, moving a step forward only to be carried back a step.

I saw a ladder leaning against the city wall and ran up it. There were Roman soldiers stationed here on the wall and I brushed by them, ducking spears and swords as I made my way to the gate, then over it, then to the wall on the other side. I could see Judas below me. He’d broken out of the crowd and was making his way along a ridge that ran parallel to the wall. It was too far to jump, so I followed him from above until I came to the corner of the battlement, where the wall sloped down to accommodate the thickness required to hold the corner. I slid down the wet limestone on my feet and hands and hit the ground ten paces behind the Zealot.

He didn’t know I was there. The rain came down now in sheets and the thunder was so frequent and loud that I could hear nothing myself but the roaring anger in my head. Judas came to a cypress tree that jutted over a high cliff with hundreds of tombs gouged into it. The path passed between a wall of tombs and the cypress tree; past the tree was a fifty-yard drop. Judas pulled a purse from his belt, pulled a small stone out of the opening to one of the tombs, then shoved the purse inside. I caught him by the back of the neck and he shrieked.

“Go ahead, put the stone back,” I said.

He tried to wheel on me and hit me with the stone. I took it from him and fitted it back into the tomb, then kicked his feet out from under him and dragged him to the edge of the cliff. I clamped onto his windpipe and, holding the cypress tree with my free hand, I leaned him out over the cliff.

“Don’t struggle!” I shouted. “You’ll only free yourself to the fall.”

“I couldn’t let him live,” Judas said. “You can’t have someone like him alive.” I pulled the Zealot back up on the cliff and whipped the sash from around his tunic.

“He knew he had to die,” Judas said. “How do you think I knew he’d be at Gethsemane, not at Simon’s? He told me!”

“You didn’t have to give him up!” I screamed. I wrapped the sash around his neck, then pulled it tight over the crook of a cypress branch.

“Don’t. Don’t do this. I had to do it. Someone did. He would have just reminded us of what we’ll never be.”