MOMENT OF GLORY
By Russ Durbin
Copyright © 2012 by Russ Durbin
Cover Design: Charlene Lavinia
Moment of Glory
Demas could hear the rats scurrying about in a corner of the cell, and he thought, wryly, that Antonia was not particularly noted for its accommodations or pleasant company.
He sat on a straw mat, his head against the cool stone wall, and listened to the regular breathing of Gestas. Amazing how a man could sleep so soundly only a few hours before he was to be executed! Was it that he was completely fearless, or simply a fool? Demas didn’t know which; he only knew that he, Demas the Greek, was very much afraid of what the morning light would bring. He had seen these Roman executions before and knew how slow and painful they could be.
Would he whimper and cry and curse and beg and plead like he had seen others do? Or would he endure in silence?
“No,” he thought. “No man can endure that kind of torture, that kind of pain in silence.”
Thoughts, emotions and memories whirled and eddied in the stream of his consciousness as he sought to grasp something solid and hold onto it. Strangely, there was nothing that did not slip and fade away—nothing except the hard reality of the prison walls around him, and the iron bars across the narrow window. The walls pressed in on him in the darkness until he felt as if he were suffocating. It seemed that a great band was pressing in on his chest, relentlessly squeezing the breath of life from him. Then, in a cool rational moment, he realized he was holding his breath. Demas exhaled, and suddenly he felt light-headed and dizzy. He breathed deeply. For a moment, he didn’t notice the prison stench as air filled his lungs again and again, reassuringly. For a brief moment that had seemed an eternity, he thought he had forgotten how to breathe.
He had heard that when a person is on the brink of death, he remembers his childhood vividly; that his whole life passes before his eyes in the flicker of a moment. But try as he would, Demas could not conjure up the image of his parents and their villa by the little blue lake in Greece. Perhaps that would come later.
Instead, violent thoughts of more recent and more turbulent days crowded roughly into his mind.
Those first few days in Jerusalem had been riotous, bawdy days. Tantalizingly, he remembered soft lips and warm bodies, but strangely the faces and names escaped him. And only such a short time ago. The sensual caresses remained like vague ghosts flitting across the cell.
Gestas had begun to snore as the gray pre-dawn light filtered through the window.
Demas licked his dry lips and remembered the taste of fermented wine in the Jerusalem shops and inns.
* * *
“So, my little Greek stripling,” Gestas laughed drunkenly. “You think you can hold your own with a Jew. Ha! Did you hear that, my friends?” He turned to the other grinning, bearded faces around him. “Our little friend thinks he can out-drink, out-love and out-fight me. Go ‘way, boy. Play elsewhere. If you were but a man, perhaps I might…but you are not. Run along and behave yourself or I, Gestas, will have to spank.” The Jew roared with laughter as he grabbed a large cup of wine and turned to his friends.
Suddenly, he was whirled around, caught on a slender, but hard-muscled hip, and thrown across the room to land heavily on his side. Gestas was too stunned, too surprised, too drunk to do more than flounder around on the floor and sputter. It was the handsome smooth-faced Greek’s turn to laugh.
“So—I’m a boy, am I? Then perhaps you Jews should fight one another since you cannot whip even a Greek ‘boy’.” He laughed loudly, the devil dancing naked in his flashing blue eyes. “Now, bring on your women and your wine and we’ll see who is the best man.”
Gestas gathered his robe about him and staggered to his feet, unsteady with too much wine and shaken from the fall. Already he had decided he had had enough of this young upstart.
Seeing there was little fight left in the Jew, the young Greek started to turn away when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up into fierce black eyes, burning beneath strong black eyebrows. The man’s whole appearance, from his long hair to his matted beard and hairy arms, gave the impression of power and strength. The stranger’s deep-set eyes gave the young man an indication of his intelligence and leadership. Yet, somehow, despite the regular and strong features of the man, the face seemed twisted and unnecessarily cruel.
“You, boy,” the man said roughly. “What’s your name?”
For a moment the Greek was tempted to spit in the man’s face. But he felt the great strength in the hand as the fingers tightened on his shoulder and decided any such action would be unwise.
“I am called Demas,” he told the man.
The dark man with the piercing eyes surveyed him thoughtfully for a moment while the others in the inn went about their business, the incident with Gestas apparently forgotten.
“You like to fight?” the man asked.
“What do you think?” The laughing Greek answered with his own question.
“You’ll do,” said the man as if deciding something. “If you want to really fight—not just play at it in inns and shops with drunken men—but fight for a cause,” the man’s eyes burned more brightly, “then meet me at Nain, north of here in the Valley of Esdraelon. Gestas will show you the way. He is one of us.” With that, the man was gone.
“Who was that?” Demas asked.
“Him? Why, some say he is the Messiah,” Gestas replied. “Whether he is or not, who can say? But this I know—he is the man who will liberate our country from the cursed rule of the Romans. He is Barabbas!”