Martyrdom

I remember the first moment that I saw him. I was walking through the market place, absently eyeing the goods for sale. He was seated against a building, surrounded by devoted followers and speaking words of kindness and worship to the small assembly with such conviction it made my heart fill with fervor. I wanted to hear more of his words and so I sat on the bare ground with the rest of the gathered, my eyes wide and earnest to devour more of his words. I couldn’t say how much time passed in this way, he never seemed to tire of praising God and kindness, but I enjoyed every moment of it. It wasn’t until the marketplace began to clear out that he stopped for the day. No one had left before he was finished; everyone had been riveted by his words, by his strange but exhilarating convictions. My soul craved more, more of his voice, more of his soft gaze, and more of his honey smile.

I went to the market the next day and the next. After near a week of neglecting my duties to come and listen to him, he pulled me aside before I could leave and spoke to me. He told me things that he had yet to preach to the others, things that seemed blasphemous but that I couldn’t help but readily believe. I could see the earnest in his eyes and my heart seemed to speed up. The thrill of believing, the thrill of being spoken to him by him, I’m not sure which it was that made my blood run hot but I loved the feeling. Even if what he was saying wasn’t true, he believed it with all of him and I was willing to follow him. I wanted to believe what he said and it didn’t take long before I found myself believing with my entire soul that he was indeed what and who he claimed to be.

Soon I became one of his more devoted followers; part of a selected group that he chose to spread his word to the others. It was an honor but on occasion it took me far from him. And though I enjoyed preaching the things that he had told us, I couldn’t help but feel an absence inside of me when he wasn’t around. He delivered the words with more precision and beauty than I ever could. I was just playacting, pantomiming his greatness. I only felt complete when I was with him, listening to him.  

It wasn’t until we were spending our nights all camped out together in the dessert on the outskirts of the city that I began to realize that my devotion to him had begun to twist into something that was far from the purity it was supposed to be. I began to notice myself watching his lips, not marveling at his words but rather wondering how it would feel if they were to press over my own. I was watching him at the most inappropriate of times, scanning his body as he moved, and observing his grace with a subdued lust that I had never felt before. It became so that all of my senses were absorbed with him and his body, with the feelings that I couldn’t control but knew that I wasn’t supposed to have. Eventually, when even my dreams turned to contemplation of him I decided that I would have to distance myself from him and from my desires. I would not abandon him or our group, so all that I could do was avoid him as best as possible in the relatively close quarters. Amongst our circle it would have been considered sick for us to be together. His father, in particular wouldn’t have approved. A man with another man! How disgusting!

But of course he noticed almost as soon as I started to avoid him. How could he not? After all I had always been the one who sat the closest to him and hung onto every word that fell from his lips even if it was only a comment on how sweltering the weather was. The one who would rush to fetch him whatever he wanted without a moment of hesitation. My devotion to him had always been more pronounced than the others and because of that he would often confide in me. It wasn’t uncommon for us to be the last two still awake and sitting around the fire, talking about the things that occurred that day, about how the world would change once he was recognized. So it was no surprise that he noticed when I started going to bed first, ending our conversations abruptly, and spending more of my time with the others and instead of him.

Of course he noticed. I should have realized that either way I would be damned. Being around him was putting me directly in the clutches of temptation and I needed to distance myself from it before I decided to act on it. However, avoidance was glaringly obvious and I shouldn’t have been surprised when he confronted me about it.

It was a bright, cool desert night, with the moon full and low in the sky. Framed by a background of twinkling stars and rolling hills of sand, he approached me where I knelt by the river. I had been distancing myself again, occupied with cleaning our few things of cookware, alone and separate from everyone else. It was the perfect opportunity for him. I would have been safer had I not sought solitude with such earnestness. He would never have deemed it appropriate to question me around other people and so it would have been avoided but by seeking only my own company, I isolated myself and gave him a way to approach and be tactful.

“Is something ailing you? Have I wronged you in some way?” he asked, concern written on his handsome face.

He had such a soft voice. Sweet and tender in a manner that it made it so easy to trust him, so easy to follow him.

 “Nothing at all.” I muttered, averting my eyes in a manner that I knew would betray my feelings. Perhaps I’d wanted to be caught, wanted all of my feelings to be out in the open so that he could judge and damn me and I could be done with it all.

There was nothing but warmth in his eyes as he regarded me. There was never anything but warmth in his eyes when he looked at people, even those who wanted him killed. It was so rare that he was angry.

“You’re lying to me. There’s something wrong. I can see it in the very way that you refuse to meet my eyes, the way that you have kept yourself from me even though we get on well together. Have I done something? Was I unknowingly cruel?” That steady gaze fixed upon me with such thoughtful intensity that I had to look away. It was as though he was trying to read my soul.

It made me feel miserable. I had lied to him, to the one I loved, to the one person that I should never lie to.  Worse of all I had lied to the one person who would never lie to me.

I hung my head in shame over my crimes, a heat burning in the back of my eyes as tears threatened to come. I felt him move closer and one of his delicate hands, filled with an amazing amount of power, came forward and rested on my shoulder in a caring gesture but he couldn’t heal me. He was so close I could feel the warmth of his body and smell the spices from our dinner still on his breath.

“Confide in me,” he pleaded. “I won’t judge you my friend. You shouldn’t lock so much inside of yourself or you will go mad.

Before I could stop it the words fell off my tongue like so many condemning rain drops.

“I love you. And not with my soul like I know I should. My love for you, it’s not pure,” I whispered, looking up at him with meek eyes. I was unfit to gaze at him yet still I tried. “I love you like I shouldn’t. I am damned.”

I hoped he would understand what I meant for there was no other way for me to phrase it. I was speaking as a man speaks to his lover, as a husband should rightfully speak only to his wife, not as two men should.

 There was a painful stretch of silence after I confessed to him. Now that he knew that I desired him and cared for him in wicked ways, I was expecting to be damned even farther with his words. I expected him to crush every hope I had in me with rejection. Already I was thinking about where I would go and what I could do when I was banished from his presence, there didn’t seem to be many options.

The condemnation I had been expecting from the moment I realized my feelings toward him didn’t come. The bitter words I had already steeled myself for were never birthed, my anxiety fading into shocked pleasure at the warm, dry feel of his lips resting against mine.

 “Love me then,” he whispered to me, the faintest trace of a smiling clinging to his lips as he brought his hand up to rest against my cheek.

That night was the first time either of us had ever shared a bed with another person. We embraced our carnal desires far from our camp and under the heavens where only God could judge, wrapped in the warmth of our blankets and our pleasure.

Afterwards we rest on the blankets, basking in the beauty and peace we had managed to discover in one another. His head rested against my chest while his fingers tapped out the beat on my hip, his warm eyes closed as I twisted strands of his soft hair round and round.

“We shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have,” he finally whispered to break the silence, closing his eyes with a pained expression on his face.

My fingers stopped and I registered a painful tightening of my chest with horror and hurt wrapping claws around my heart. “Why?”

“Because,” he hesitated to speak more than that single word, his brow furrowed. “I don’t have long on this land anymore. I don’t have long to live.”

“W-what do you mean?” I asked, my fingers shaking as I moved them back through the others hair.

A soft sigh and he closed his eyes, his fingers running over my skin gently. I felt warm wherever they touched. “I am to be killed. Soon. Sooner than I would like. My time in this place is coming to an end,” he whispered quietly. “They’re going to kill me for what I preach.”

“Then stop!” It was out of me before I could stop it, harsher than I intended it to be. “You don’t have to get killed. You can go into hiding.”

He smiled sadly as he looked up at him. “I can’t,” he said. “The world has become such a dirty place, so heavy with sin. I have to die. It will give people hope, it will cleanse them. I don’t want to leave anyone, I don’t want to leave you, but I have to. That’s why we shouldn’t have done this. It would be easier when-well, none of that now.”

“When what?” I demanded to know.

“I can’t tell you yet. For now, let us just enjoy what we have. We still have some time to spend together and we should take advantage of that. Sleep. Morning will be here soon and we have work to do.” He pressed a chaste kiss to my lips before laying back down, tugging the blankets tighter around us.

The next morning came and we returned to camp. No one even glanced at us. They were oblivious to what had just occurred, too trusting to realize that we were doing more than talking late into the night.

My love for him still managed to convince me that it would not happen. I’d often heard of the power of love, how it could change things. Even I knew though that in his case, love would do nothing.

I tried to ignore his impending death but he made it impossible. Every night we spent together involved him somehow reminding me that our time was short. He would tell me how he’d miss me when he was gone. My tears were his only regret about his life on Earth, the knowledge that my heart would shatter. He said that even as he suffered through death his thoughts would not be on his pain but on his love for me.

Melancholy settled heavy onto me, seeping through my flesh and into my spirit. I tried to hide it from him to help rid him of the guilt I knew he felt. He still knew and all the attempts he made at reassurance fell short.

And then one night, I found out just what he was worried would be made hard by our relationship.

“My love, I have to ask you something,” he was whispering as he grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me away from the rest of our group.

“What is it?” I asked, never raising my voice above the same quiet tone as his even though we were some distance from our friends.

“I need you to do something for me. You won’t like it at all,” he said quietly, looking towards the sky instead of at me. “But it must be done and you’re the only one I trust to do this.”

Biting on my lip, I nodded and waited for him to continue. My stomach clenched with dread and I felt a bit nauseous. The way he was taking his time approaching his request made me fear for what it was going to be.  It wouldn’t be something I liked that much was assured as he looked back down, still avoiding my face, my searching eyes.

“I told you that I would be killed,” he started. “But I need your help. I must die and I must die soon for the world is getting darker and darker each day that passes.”

“What do I have to do with that?” I asked, eyes wide and frightened. I could sense what he was going to say and I didn’t like it at all.

“You need to lead them to me,” he said quietly, holding up his hand to silence the protests beginning to be born. “It has to happen. Nothing could be done to stop it. And you, you’re the one that has to give me away. You’re the only one I trust to do this.”

“I don’t want to do it,” I said instantly. “I don’t want to be the one responsible for you being put to death. I can’t do it. I won’t.”

His warm hands grabbed mine, holding them in a tender grip as he pulled me close and brushed a ghost of a kiss over my lips. “Please. I’m asking you to do this for me,” he said quietly. “You’re the only one that I trust with this, you’re the only one.”

I shook my head again, my jaw tight and my lips unyielding as he tried to kiss me once more. I refused to even acknowledge what he was saying and wouldn’t even speak to him for the rest of that night. The next day though he approached me again and then again the day after that. Each time he begged me and tried to make me see why I had to be the betrayer and each time I would walk away and scorn him for the rest of the day.

It wasn’t until he begged me, on his knees and with tears falling from his eyes that I even began to consider it. It seemed like such madness but I believed him. I always believed him. He knew what was right and what had to happen. I was just a pawn for all of this to occur. Eventually, after several more weeks of debate and conversation he convinced me that I needed to do the horrible deed for him. Better me than someone who would mess it all up and completely destroy everything that we had worked for.

Shaking and with my heart pounding too loud, too fast in my chest, I slipped into the room. It was dark and cold. My footsteps echoed in my ears as I approached the hulking figures cloaked in shadows, my head bowing in respect to these horrible men.

“You have information for us?” One asked, his voice cold though it was clear he was trying to be friendly. I did after all know what he wanted to know. And I was there to give it to him.

“Yes. I know where the one you seek is. I know who he is.” I had to try my hardest not to start crying or to let my voice shake. I could walk out and run back to him but I knew that I had to go through with it. For him.

Soon an arrangement had been made and I had to admit it was beautiful in its simplicity. All I would have to would be give my love a simple kiss and then they would come and take him away. He would be killed and I would be the cause of it. I was already prepared for the scorn that would be my burden for the rest of my life, the scorn that generations would feel towards me for betraying their martyr. They wouldn’t understand that I had to do it, that there was no other option.

As I walked from the building, I could feel the dirty silver weigh down my pocket, my heart and I began to weep. It was final.

When the time came, I looked around to make sure the soldiers were in place. I could see them, carrying the shadows from that cold room with them, sneers on their faces as they waited for it to be done. He was surrounded like always, a smile on his lips even though he knew of his coming death. We all knew of his death. He had told us at our last meal together. He mentioned that he would be denied and betrayed, that he would die and there was nothing any of us could do to stop him. He made sure not to tell them that it was me that would do the betraying and I understood. I knew that I would have to play the villain in order for this to work. Everyone needed someone to dislike, someone who seems cowardly. And they would think that it was me, even if it was far from the truth. They would take what I did and interpret it in their own way. I was prepared for that.

I took a deep breath and stepped towards him. The soldiers had their eyes on me, waiting for me to show them which person was the one that they sought, even though it should have been obvious to them. His own eyes rested on me and something secret shone in his eyes, something only for me to see. I knew he loved me and I knew I had to go through with this. Steeling myself for what would come, I closed the distance between us. The moment my lips pressed to his it was done. I heard a gasp and I felt the soldiers begin to approach, the crowd quieting and parting.

“I love you,” I managed to whisper to him before he was pulled away from me.

I lowered my eyes as I felt glares and hatred aimed at me as he was led off. I knew I would be hated because of this and I couldn’t do anything but turn my back on the people that had once been my closest friends. I saw my lover’s back as he was led away and I felt my heart tighten as tears threaten to come. He would be taken away and tried for his crimes before he was killed.

Public humiliation, however, came before the slow death. Hidden with a hood over my head, my face not privy to the glares that it would receive, I didn’t bother to hide the tears as I watched this, watched him marched through the crowd. The soft hair that I’d often held between my fingers was now matted with dirt, sticky with blood. The red stained his face, falling from the wounds inflicted to his head, looking like tears. But it was nothing compared to the sight of his bared back, torn by the whip and soaked in blood that gleamed sickly in the bright sunlight.

His burden was heavy. It was plain to see in the way he struggled to support it, in the pain his eyes reflected. There was something hopeless about him though that made me feel even worse. He couldn’t be losing faith but it was plain to see that his suffering was tainting his belief.

How could they do this to him? This kind man had done nothing wrong. Yet they were still going to kill him. The crowd around me was taunting him, their faces grotesque in their smugness. They didn’t believe in him. But that was there fault, their mistake. And even if they didn’t believe they still shouldn’t be so cruel to him. He was still a human being and he didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. He’d not done anything wrong. He’d not hurt anyone. But it didn’t matter. He would die.

But I wouldn’t be around to witness it. I couldn’t.

I walked until I found an expanse of land that was secluded enough that no one would come across it, not during the night at least. And there was a sturdy tree, perfect for my task.  I sat myself beneath the tree, watching until the sun rose to the apex of the sky, an obscene sun that refused to respect the somber mood. When I grew bored of watching it, I grabbed the rope and began working my hands over it again. The rough fibers bit into my skin and I knew it would feel coarse against my neck. I might even bleed once it was around me. I wasn’t sure though. I did know that the rope was strong and sturdy. It would hold my weight. I was sure of it.

Being in a world without him was simply not an option for me. I would not be in a place that would allow someone as pure and beautiful as my lover to die in such a horrible way. It was a cruel, dark place and I could take no more of it. My actions might not be seen in a positive light and in fact I knew that they would not. But it still seemed like the only option. My love would be back but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Carrying on was not something I would be able to do. I tied the rope around the tree, running my fingers over the rough fibers once more before I closed my eyes. It would all be over soon.

Author's Note

Revised version!

Reviews

[Taylor H.]

I did enjoyed this. I thought it went a little fast paced and lacked some detail but overall I enjoyed it :) Good job!

[TL Boehm]

the writing itself is beautiful - but the subject matter I cannot comment on - I know it is a topic of speculation and interest for many. I don't myself consider it as even possible. Hear my heart then when a voice rises up even as I read and says "no..."
But, as a writer - you have an exquisite voice and flow in this piece - it is technically sound and emotionally wrenching - it is a solid write indeed.