Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [58]
`Yes, yes,' said Iola, grabbing her friend's arm and literally dragging her along the road by the sea walls. The pungent smell of fish and sea salt filled the aft Vicki almost stumbled as she shook herself free from lola's grasp.
`Hang on, slow down,' she said, but Iola was hurrying ahead. `What's the hurry?'
`Come on,' said the girl, eagerly. ‘We shall be late and miss it.'
Vicki had to run to keep up. 'Who's going to die?' she asked, hoping she didn't sound as morbidly curious as she felt.
But Iola seemed not to mind. 'Two Christians, apparently.
Heretics.'
Òh,' replied Vicki as they reached the base of the rising ground. `Well, I'm sure they deserved it.'
The two girls ran to the dry-stone wall that surrounded the hillock and Iola pulled Vicki with her. They crouched down and peered over the wall at the hive of activity taking place fifty feet higher up the rolling grassland.
Àre you sure this is wise?' Vicki asked, her voice cracking as she said it. 'The Romans might...’
Iola gave her a sharp look. ‘The Romans want people to see,'
she replied. `That's why they do it out here.'
`Well, what about your mother?' Vicki hissed. 'I'm sure she doesn't approve.'
`She does not have to know,' Iola replied. 'Unless you were thinking of telling her?'
Vicki shrugged and turned her attention to what was taking place on the hillside. There were muffled shouts from the Roman legionnaires as two men dressed in filthy rags and chained together were pushed towards two vertical stakes which stood erect and stark against the gathering gloom of the afternoon sky behind.
Ìt appears as though it is going to rain,' Iola noted. 'I hope not, we shall get wet.'
Vicki gave her friend a horrified look. `Do you realise what...?'
A scream from the knot of people on the hill silenced Vicki.
She turned to see one of the men being thrown to the ground and having something large and shiny hammered into his hands.
Òh my God,' she said, as the screaming continued.
`They're called cruciamentuni stauros,' Iola noted, matter-of-factly. `Torture stakes.'
The man was dragged to one of the torture stakes and attached to it by ropes around his arms whilst, simultaneously, a nail was driven into his feet.
Meanwhile, other soldiers were beginning the execution process on his companion.
'I think I'm going to be sick,' Vicki told her friend, who was watching the horror on the hill with undisguised glee.
Vicki put her hands over her ears to block out the screaming. To block out everything that Byzantium had to offer.
Chapter Eighteen
Searching for the Young Soul Rebels
But when Jesus saw it, he was
much displeased, and said unto them,
Suffer the little children to come
unto me, and forbid them not
Mark 10:14
'Cease that infernal wailing, you ignorant, flea-ridden peasants,' tribune Edius Flavia told the assembled crowd as the Christian heretic Malachi was hoisted upright to join Obediah on the stauros. Flavia pointed his riding crop towards the group and told the sergeant of the guards that he should 'watch this rabble closely. I smell trouble at the heart of them.'
`Yes sir,' said the sergeant, clutching his gladius threateningly in his hand. In his eyes, Flavia could see an obvious desire to use his sword if the opportunity presented itself. Or even if it didn't.
On the other side of the hill, Flavia spotted the two senior Pharisees who had requested an isolated spot from which to observe the crucifixion. They, at least, seemed satisfied. But now they were ready to leave.
Flavia rode across to them on his sea-grey horse:Going so soon, gentlemen?' he asked. 'We have yet hours of fine entertainment and revelry to endure before this thing that you requested is done.' So typical of the Jews, he thought angrily.
They get us to do their dirty work for them but they have not the stomach to see it through.
'We are merely here to observe that the judgment of the court of the law of Moses, as ratified by his most gracious excellence, the praefectus Thalius Maximus, has been carried out,' said Titus with a rather watery