The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories [Anthology] Read online

  Here there was a vertical wooden post six or seven feet high. When you got there, you were invited to drop the beam you’d been carrying. Then the soldiers knocked you over and lay the back of your neck in the middle of the beam. Then they stretched out one of your arms along the beam. A couple of the men held the arm down while another one took one of those big, long four-sided nails and hammered it through your wrist into the wood below.

  Having nails through the wrist is extremely painful. Believe me, I know.

  After they’d done this with the other arm, the whole execution squad lent a hand to lift up the crossbeam with you hanging from it, yelling your lungs out in agony, or maybe just biting your tongue, determined not to give those filthy bastards any pleasure by letting on you were suffering.

  But then you found it very difficult not to yell out when they actually lifted you off the ground.

  There was a hole in the middle of the beam roughly under your head. This they slotted into the vertical piece already wedged in the ground.

  Now they bent your knees upward until the sole of one foot was pressed flat against the vertical piece. Well fuck my old sandals if they didn’t then produce another one of those big nails.

  A nail through the foot is more - much more - painful than a nail through the wrist. They hammered it through one foot, and when the point came through the sole of that foot, they hammered it through the other foot and into the wood.

  Then they would leave you alone. Some would watch, maybe they would take bets with one another on how long you’d live. After a while, it got boring, and they’d post a guard and go off to get drunk or screw a hog or whatever it was that legionaries did in their time off.

  About now, you’d wish that you were back in the barracks being flogged. If, by any strange mischance, you had not gone out of your mind, you might have time to wish they had flogged you harder because the flogging weakened you. And the weaker you were, the sooner you died. And death was the only thing you desired. Death was the only thing left.

  You didn’t bleed much, but the pain was indescribable. The weight of your body hanging from your wrists pulled your chest upwards as though you’d taken the biggest, deepest breath ever. But you couldn’t breathe out. To breathe out, you’d have to push upwards with your legs. Pushing up with your legs was indescribably painful because of that bloody nail running through your feet.

  At the same time, there was even more pain coming from cramps in your hands, along your arms and shoulders and chest.

  You were in all this pain, and you could hardly breathe. If you were really lucky, you’d bleed, or more likely suffocate, to death in perhaps five hours. If you weren’t lucky, it could take days.

  And those clever, cunning, oh-so-bloody civilized Romans could vary it. They could hammer a piece of wood into the vertical piece, like a little seat under your arse. That meant it was slightly easier to breathe because you didn’t have to push on your legs so much, so you hung there for longer. Or they could tie your arms to the cross-piece as well as nailing them there. That had the same effect. Maybe the sons of bitches used both methods. I’ve seen poor bastards spend nearly a week dying that way. If the Romans liked you - or your relatives bribed them - they could break your legs. That way, you couldn’t push yourself up to breathe even if you wanted to, so you suffocated fairly quickly.

  So don’t talk to me about the old Roman civilization. I know they had central heating and straight roads and the greatest army the world has ever known, but at the back of all that they were the biggest shits in creation. Look, if some barbarian king back in the Dark Ages wanted you dead, what did he do? Cut off your head, or bludgeon your brains out, or drown you, or throw you off a high rock. All pretty quick. The Romans, being three times as clever and ten times as organized as any barbarian were a hundred times more savage in their methods of murdering people.

  And that’s what they did to Yeshua Christos.

  Pilate, being Pilate, got his revenge on the priests for blackmailing him. Whenever someone was crucified, the law said that you had to have a plaque on the top saying what crime the victim was condemned for. Pilate ordered that the inscription read “Yeshua of Nazareth, King of the Jews”, and had it written in Latin, Greek and Hebrew to make sure everyone got the message. This was hung around Yeshua’s neck when He was on his way to the execution and then it was nailed to the top of the cross.

  So how do I know all these things? Well, first, I was there when He was crucified. Secondly, I’ve been crucified myself. Lots of times. They say you have no memory for pain. That’s crap. I shiver every time I pass a carpenter’s shop or hear someone hammering. And I’m immortal. Or I was until today.

  A thousand years ago, my name was Cartaphilus. I was a good, law-biding, unimaginative orthodox Jew. And I worked as doorkeeper to Pontius Pilate. He needed doorkeepers because most people who came to visit a Roman governor were either too important to touch a door themselves or too busy crawling and begging to bother with one. The first time I met Yeshua of Nazareth was as he was being led out to be executed. He had just been scourged. The soldiers had put this crown of thorns on Him. They wanted to have their part in annoying the priests as well and were playing up to Pilate’s crack about Yeshua being King of the Jews. Yeshua was being led out, struggling under the weight of the cross-piece of the crucifixion-frame.

  Now at that time most of what I knew about Him was rumour - that and what my cousin Jacob the wine-merchant said when he dropped in to have his head bandaged. Some people were claiming Yeshua was the Messiah, the king of the Jews. But the high priest Caiaphas had wanted Him condemned to death. Being a good Jew, I figured that anything Caiaphas said must be kosher. If the high priest wanted the Nazarene killed, then he had his good, religious, reasons. So, what can I say? I was an idiot.

  The Nazarene was trying to get through the door. I spat on Him. He fell down under the weight of the wooden beam. I put my foot on His back, where He had been whipped and the flesh was hanging off him. I pushed with my foot and told Him to get up and get a move on.

  Someone had told me He sacrificed and ate small children. And, back then, I was callous.

  He cried out. Then He got up, picked up the beam with some effort and he looked at me. He said, “I am going quickly to my death. But you will wait a long time for death. You will be waiting until I return.”

  I didn’t know what to make of this. I didn’t think much about it. A couple of soldiers hit Him with the flats of their swords and off He went to Golgotha.

  His words didn’t sink in at first, then a strange panic overtook me. I realized He’d put some kind of curse on me. Even if He was a blasphemer, He was still some kind of holy man. I was very troubled. An hour and a half after He had spoken to me, I quit my doorkeeper’s job forever.

  I ran to Golgotha. He was nailed to his cross in between two Zealots. He was still alive, but quiet, not struggling and groaning as much as the other two. There weren’t many other people around, just some ghouls. His disciples had all deserted him. Whether Yeshua was the son of God or not, no man would want to be associated with Him and run the risk winding up nailed to the next-cross-but-one.

  There were a few women around. Friends and relatives. And the execution squad was there, playing dice for his possessions. But there was a strange thing, a Roman officer - I don’t know if he was in charge of the execution squad - was pacing up and down, looking at the dying man and muttering to himself.

  The Centurion looked at me and beckoned me over. In those days, you did everything in your power to avoid those people. They brutalized their own soldiers enough, and they could be lethal to ordinary civilians, especially in a country they could barely control. I was terrified as I walked over to him. But all he did was grab me by the shoulders, look straight into my eyes and say, “Truly, this man was the son of God.” All he wanted was someone to listen.

  The son of God! Only afterwards did I realize what a queer thing this was for a Roman to be saying. Romans believed in
lots of gods. The only people around who believed in one god were we Jews. Maybe the Centurion was Jewish. I don’t know.

  The son of God!

  If the Centurion was right, then I was condemned forever. I lost my reason. I walked to the foot of the cross and begged the Nazarene to forgive me. But it was too late. He was in too much pain to take any notice.

  Then I went over to the women, who were all crying and pulling at their hair and I joined them. One of the whores had seen me kicking Him. They didn’t want to know me. I can’t blame them for that.

  I was too troubled and too ashamed to seek out the Nazarene’s friends. Not that he had many at this stage. His male followers were in hiding. Even good old Peter, who was no slouch when it came to beating the crap out of money-changers and wine-merchants, was at this moment loudly claiming he had never heard of Yeshua and didn’t like him anyway. As for Judas the Zealot, he hanged himself because his plan had gone wrong. I regretted that. In the next few years, he would have been company.

  I began to wander. I left my wife and my family and walked first north, towards Galilee. I don’t know why. An evil spirit within me told me that I must wander the face of the world until He should return.

  The nights were always the worst. As evening drew in and the shadows lengthened, my own shadow would become that of Yeshua struggling under the weight of that wooden beam.

  Years later, I heard what happened. The Romans liked to leave corpses hanging to rot as an example to any other would-be offenders. But the Jewish law would not permit bodies to be exposed in this way on the Sabbath, and the day after Yeshua’s execution was the Sabbath. Joseph, a man from a place called Arimathea, a rich and influential Jew who was friendly both with Yeshua’s family and with Pilate, approached the governor. After the Romans had checked that Yeshua was dead, Joseph got permission to take the body down and he buried It in the tomb he had bought for himself.

  A few days later, Yeshua of Nazareth rose from the dead. He visited his frightened followers who took strength from seeing Him again. Some time after that He ascended to Heaven to take his place at the right hand of the Lord.

  Don’t be so shocked, rabbi. Just because it isn’t in your One True Testament doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

  Yeshua’s followers now dispersed throughout the Empire and beyond, spreading the story of how He had come to save man from his sins. Some of them began their work right there in Jerusalem, but they were driven out by the authorities. One of them, a man named Stephen, was stoned to death for blasphemy.

  At first, followers of Christos and those they baptized into their faith seemed to be forming a new sect of Judaism, but soon it became clear that there were important differences. One of the others, Philip, met an Ethiopian on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. The Ethiopian was an important court official in the service of the queen of his country. He was a eunuch. As you know, a man who is not whole may not become a Jew. The eunuch asked Philip, “Is there anything to prevent me being baptized?” And Philip answered, “Nothing.”

  From now on, said the Christians, there would be no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, slaves and freedmen, men and women. The Ethiopian returned to Nubia and told his fellow citizens the good news.

  The number of Christians multiplied rapidly. The faith was taken by the missionaries into Africa and Syria, to Mesopotamia and even as far as India. Syria, with its great cities of Antioch, Damascus and Edessa, became a great centre of the Christian religion.

  Don’t be ashamed that you’ve not heard of Christianity. It was a long time ago.

  What of me?

  My travels took me to Rome where I found a thriving community of believers in the Christian sect. I joined them, and learned more of Yeshua’s teachings. I was baptized into their faith, meaning they dunked me in water in a ceremony similar to that of immersion in the mikveh. I changed my name to Joseph in honour of Joseph of Arimathea.

  By now, I was almost a hundred years old, though I looked no older than the day on which I had abused our Saviour. My new faith brought me peace of a sort, for Yeshua Christos taught that the most loathsome of sins would be forgiven by the Lord His Father. I had spat on Him and kicked Him, and while I dared not admit this to my comrades I could hope that when He returned I would be forgiven. In those days we all believed His return was imminent. This is what we told one another, and it is what we preached to any who were willing to listen, and many who did not wish to hear. We were a nuisance to some, offensive to others. Some of our number, including Peter the thug, were executed by the authorities. My cousin Jacob the wine-merchant, whose fault all this was, prospered and lived to be one hundred and fifteen, at which age he was still fathering children.

  We were unsure of our relationship with the orthodox Jews. Most of us considered ourselves a Jewish sect. Others, generally the hotheads, thought we should be completely separate. There were many Jews in Rome and we debated with them whether or not Yeshua had been the Messiah. We believed so, but they did not. On many occasions we fought openly in the streets. We gradually came to realize there was no reconciliation between us.

  There was a great fire that wrecked the city centre. The Emperor Nero’s new palace was badly damaged. Nero was spendthrift and unpredictable and unpopular, and the rumour went about the market that he had started the fire deliberately. Another story had it that he had done nothing to quench the fires, and had played a lyre and recited his poems as the city burned, for he considered himself a great artist. Having been burned alive and having heard Nero recite in public, I can honestly say I preferred the former experience.

  Nero, probably at the suggestion of one of his toadies, wanted to blame the fire on the Jews. The Jews were unpopular in Rome for while their religion was tolerated, they did not worship the Roman Gods. Nero’s wife Poppaea discouraged him from persecuting the Jews. She was not Jewish herself, but was sympathetic to them. She said that Nero should instead blame the Christians. Nero readily agreed. We were to be used in the manner of a scapegoat.

  Nero, by the way, also ordered the death of the aged Pontius Pilate. I don’t know why. Pilate was in Gaul at that time, and the story goes that he was staked out, cut open in a few places and eaten alive by worms. Perhaps this was just wishful thinking on our part.

  Nero ordered his brutish Praetorian prefect Tigellinus to do his dirty work. The soldiers came for us and, after trials of sorts in which they seemed more interested in our “hatred of humanity” than our alleged arson, we were despatched in all manner of ways. Not by crucifixion, but by the sword, or by being sewn into the skins of wild animals and being attacked and eaten by dogs in the circus. That was a good one - it hurt like a bastard. At first, our persecution was popular. People disliked us for our disdain for their gods, and for preaching our own faith so aggressively. Then Nero’s excesses turned many to pity, while others were inspired by the way in which we died for our faith. This happened particularly after Nero ordered that Christians be tied to crosses that were set in tubs of oil. This was at night and we were then set ablaze and used like oversized torches to light an avenue through the Emperor’s gardens, along which His Talentless Majesty proceeded in his chariot.

  I was one of those Christians.

  I’ve said much about suffering already, so I shall spare you a detailed description of what it is to be set in oil and pitch and burned alive. In spite of all the pain and the terror which I and my brothers and sisters experienced, I am proud to say that we all went to our deaths without show of fear and with great joy, for would we not soon be reunited with our Saviour?

  But imagine my surprise when, after experiencing considerable physical agony and apparently dying, I woke up the next day as though nothing had happened. In Judaea.

  That’s a bloody long way from Rome.

  Now I began to fully understand the meaning of Yeshua’s curse upon me. To atone for my great sin I would have to wander the world of men until His return. This was the first occasion on which I had died and now I found I h
ad not been granted the release of death but had remained among men. My soul was chained to the earth in the same body and my martyrdom in the Emperor’s gardens had not taken.

  Whenever I died subsequently, I would not know what happened to my corpse, but I always awoke in the same body -or a similar one - in some new and frequently distant land.

  Waking from the dead this first time in Judaea, I soon discovered what my purpose was to be.

  I entered Jerusalem and, without bothering to seek out others among the Christian community, I begged food and drink and preached the good news of Christos in public. Within three days the Sanhedrin had me stoned to death as a blasphemer. Again, I did not truly die. I woke up in a different place, Corinth. Again I preached the message of Christos and again, though it took me a few years this time, I was martyred.

  At around the same time as the last great Jewish rebellion against Rome, which as you know resulted in the destruction of the Temple and the sack of Jerusalem, I became a professional martyr. At the same time as the Romans were causing the Jews to disperse throughout the world, I, too, travelled, seeking out death. The Voice of the Lord told me that in this way I was doing penance for my sin, that the example shown to others by martyrs would win people over to our Church.