We were at a house in the south end of the upper city, and I went straight to the foot of the bridge, which connects the upper city with the Royal Portico of the temple court. At the upper end of the bridge, I could see two men of the temple guard, on duty. I sat down against the parapet, and within an hour, there appeared the man I was hoping to see; a captain of the guard, on his rounds, inspecting his sentries. He came down the Royal Portico, and was about to turn north, towards the council house.
     His name was Gamaliel. We had met when I was barely twenty. I had listened to the zealots, attended their meetings and expressed my support, but I had done nothing. Then when a group of them attacked and almost killed a Roman soldier who had foolishly strayed within the temple confines, my name had been found among others on a scroll, and several of us had been arrested, I being in Jerusalem on my father’s business at the time. A message was sent to my father, who arrived late, next day.
     During the night of my captivity, however, a group of off-duty Romans had visited the jail, demanding to interrogate the prisoners brought in for questioning. In the normal course of events, for their own good, the temple guard would have delivered up the prisoners to the Romans who would have beaten and tortured them. When the Romans finally wearied of their sport, they would dump their victims back into custody.
     Gamaliel would have none of this and stood his ground, saying that they were to be questioned only by the temple authority, since the offence had been committed within the temple precinct. When my father arrived the next day, he was able to show,  in his scrolls of accounts, certain lengthy detailed passages with times and dates, all in my handwriting and bearing my signature, that on the day in question, indeed for several days preceding and after, that I was over fifty miles away, at my home, just south of Caesarea, and that several people mentioned in the accounts could, and were willing to testify to that effect.
     So Gamaliel was instructed to release me into my father’s custody, which he did, with the stern admonition to steer clear of the zealots. I had already resolved to do so, and this I told him. Since then, he and I, on the varied occasions of my visits to the temple for festivals, had maintained a nodding acquaintance based on mutual respect. He respected me for a law-abiding citizen; I respected him for an honourable man.
     When I saw him appear at the head of the bridge, I waited until he had spoken to the two guards and was turning to go, then I stood up, and called his name-
     “Gamaliel!”
     “Who is that?”
     “It is Judas Iskeriot. You will not remember my name but you know my face”.
    “Then come forward- slowly, and show your face!”
     I walked over the bridge, and had got to within a few yards of him before the torches in the wall sconces behind him gave him enough light to recognise me, then-
     “You. Yes, I remember you. What are you doing here at this hour? What do you want of me?”
     I took his arm, and led him a little way back on to the bridge, away from the guards, then he pulled me up short with-
     “No further! What is going on, here?”
     I looked into his eyes for several seconds, then speaking softly-
     “Your masters desire the man, Jesus of Nazareth”.
     He looked at me in a way I did not like, and then said-
     “And you would deliver him.”
     “I could take you to him now, yes”.
     Again a searching critical look before-
     “He is a rabbi, a healer. Why do you do this?”
     “If I could tell you that, make you understand, it would only make you as wretched and miserable as I am”.
     Still Gamaliel’s eyes bored into me as he said-
     “They will ask. Why do you do this?
     “Tell them- for money.”
     Another pause, then-
    “Yes. For money. They will understand that”.
     His eyes pierced me still, until suddenly he was the soldier again, and before I realised what was happening, he had grabbed my arm, spun me round, pushed me towards the two sentries, and barked out-
     “Keep this man here! Do not let him leave! Do not leave your post, either of you, until I return, no matter how long it takes! He is to speak with no one- not even you!”
     Then he marched off, quickly, towards the council house. Little short of an hour later, we heard the approach of a detachment of men, perhaps two or three dozen. They proved to be temple guards, led by Gamaliel. When they reached us, he shouted a command to halt, instructed the two sentries to maintain their watch duty, and then said-
     “Right! Let us go and apprehend this dangerous man, this Jesus! Oh, I almost forgot. They told me to give you this”.
     He threw a small, soft leather purse at me. As I caught it, I felt the coins inside.
     “Well, aren’t you going to open it?”
     “No”.
     “They asked if it was enough. I said it was about right. Thirty pieces of silver”.
     I made no answer. Gamaliel’s scorn did not matter, not that it was entirely convincing. Even so, it did not matter. Nothing mattered any more.
     “Right! The sooner we get this dirty business over with, the sooner we can all fall into our beds with clear consciences”.
     Gamaliel then instructed his men as to order and pace, and we set off for Gethsemane. We must have arrived at the gate to the garden soon after midnight. Gamaliel signalled his men to stop, then muttered to me-
     “Well? How do you want to do this?”
     I was confused. Apart from my first conversation with Gamaliel, since I left the upper room, my mind had been dull. I felt like one who has been heavily drugged against pain, or as one in a dream filled with incomprehensible speech by strangers, in unknown places. Gamaliel shook me by the shoulder and hissed-
     “Wake up, man! It is too late too go soft, now! Too late to be sorry!”
     “No. You do not understand”.
     “Looking at you, I do not want to understand. I just want to get it over with”.
     He turned away and peered through the wicket gate, and after a moment, said-
     “I can see a group of maybe six- eight men, forty-odd yards away, lying down by one of the trees. Maybe another thirty yards up the slope, there are two, possibly three more sitting, sprawling against another tree. Another figure- alone- even further up, coming back down the track. Now he has reached the other three- yes, I can see now, it is three. Stopped – He is bending over them now- rousing them- must have been asleep. Not pleased.”
     I was suddenly, irrationally revolted by the detached, objective way that Gamaliel was assessing the situation- the soldier dispassionately assessing the enemy’s deployment. I suppose it was this irrational and pathetic resentment which broke my inertia. I spoke quickly-
     “That will be Jesus. I will go to him. Then you come- quickly. I do not think the others will give you any trouble”
     As I finished speaking, I slipped through the wicket, and ran silently up the track.
     Why was I in such a hurry? Not to get it over with. No. I think, perhaps, it was to extend the last brief moment we would share. Not to speak; I had no words, but to let him read my face so he would know. It was suddenly of paramount importance that he know that I had done what he had asked, because he had asked it. There could be no other reason, and in my foolish, half-crazed mind, nothing else mattered- only that he know.
     When I was almost upon him, he heard me and turned, and I threw myself at his feet, clasping his legs, clumsily, and looking up at him-
     “Master!”
     He put his hands to my shoulders and raised me up. I received just one more beautiful, loving, heart-breaking smile, as he asked-
“Judas, would you betray me with a kiss?”
     We embraced, and all the sorrow and pity and self-loathing that had ever racked any man, all welled up in my breast, and my sobs threatened to choke me.
     I must have been aware of the approach of the guards, the startled cries of the other disciples, but I do not recall it. My next awareness was of being grabbed by the waist, and flung aside with such violence that my belt was broken, and the satchel at my waist, the satchel I carried for our common purse, and which now contained my unopened purse of blood money, fell to the ground. Indeed, I hit the ground with such force that there was earth in my mouth, and my hands were grazed on the stony path.
     There were cries of alarm from Peter, James and John, the ones to whom Jesus had been speaking, and from the rest, further down the slope. Incongruously, I remembered that as I had run past, none had challenged me; they were all asleep. Now in their rude awakening they were surrounded by guards, and one or two half-hearted scuffles broke out, but nothing of any consequence.
     Indeed, after a few seconds of aimless milling about and running hither and thither like headless chickens, after a short period of witless cries of alarm and fright, all was silent. I realised that the disciples had all run away. Indeed one hapless soul, whom I will not name, when seized by a burly brute of a guard, was so petrified that he tore himself free of the mere linen shift he wore, and fled in only the pelt he was so bent on preserving. Yes- they had all disappeared- run away. They had melted away into the olive trees or under the stones, to hide their faces, to save their necks.
     And they will tell you that I betrayed him.
     I looked to where two guards were tying Jesus’ hands together, cruelly tight. I staggered to them, protesting to Gamaliel, who had not seen, that it was not necessary. Before he could speak, one of the guards turned, and with an almost lazy, negligent motion, hit me across the mouth with the back of his mailed hand. I fell against the tree, cracking my skull, so that I slid to the ground, stunned- conscious but not able to move or speak.
     Gamaliel had tried to prevent the blow, but too late. Now he instructed the others to walk on, cautioning them against any further, unnecessary violence. I remember saying ‘thank you’ in my mind. He stood over me, obviously taking me to be unconscious. He felt the pulse in my neck, and satisfied that I was still alive, let me be. I heard his voice, seemingly a long way away, as he muttered-
     “Sleep on, my friend, while you can. After your labour here, tonight, I fancy there will not be much sleep for you, ever again”.
     Then he was gone, and all was quiet.
     I do not know how long I lay there, probably only minutes, though it seemed longer. I did not feel my hurts; they were nothing to the hurt inside. When I eventually roused myself, I remembered that I had lost my belt, and I started to cry- like a simpleton or a child; in all this I was crying because some bully had broken my belt, and I had lost it. I seemed to spend half the night shuffling about the grass and the stony path on my hands and knees, like an imbecile, looking and crying for my lost belt. I was aware that the satchel had gone too, but that seemed of no consequence to me. I did not want money; I wanted my belt back.
     Eventually I found it. I stood up and realised that my hands and knees were ribbons of torn flesh, matted with grass, half dried mud and blood. But no matter-
I had found my belt. The buckle pin had sundered, but the belt being of ample length, I was able to tie it in place.
      This apparent lapse of sanity may seem an incongruous and unnecessary thing to relate, but it happened, and I have recorded it so. Possibly it was my mind’s way of seeking respite from all the horror to which it had been subjected? Or mayhap I should leave interpretation to wiser men.
     Sanity did return at some point, and still I sat against the olive tree, still in the dark. I stayed there, hardly thinking, strangely. Not until light started to tinge the eastern sky, did I get up to go- where? Where to go? Or why? I was like one of the waking dead that the necromancers supposedly conjure out of the earth, to no purpose.
     When I reached the wicket gate, I stopped and looked back up the slope, and remembered Jesus’ empathy with high ground. I thought ‘Master, they will not let you visit high ground again’. I was wrong. They would give him one last hill to climb-
     Golgotha- the Hill of the Skull.