He answered immediately. “No one was asleep in our house, that night, except my sick uncle. Downstairs I could hear my mother and the other women wailing and crying and calling out the name of our Lord, and every now and then, just as I closed my eyes, one of them would scream and I would be fully awake again.”

“As the night wore on, did you notice anything unusual taking place in what you can view of the city from this spot?”

He hesitated, wary of me after my accurate description of his near capture in Gethsemane. “Unusual? I don’t believe so. What do you mean?”

I pointed toward Golgotha. “A fire—a fire burning near that hill, in the garden. Built by the guards sent from the Temple, by Caiaphas, to watch over the tomb of Jesus, as you know now but didn’t then. Did you see that blaze and perhaps the torches of the guards as they stood their watch? And didn’t you wonder why a fire should be burning so near the place where Jesus had been crucified and buried?”

Mark’s wide brown eyes looked at me pleadingly. He turned toward Joseph as if expecting the old man to rescue him from his plight, but he received no relief from that quarter. Finally I placed both hands on his shoulders and squeezed them gently. “Mark, why don’t you tell us, in your own words, what you saw and what happened afterward. It will do you good to share the burden you have been carrying by yourself for so long.”

He turned his back on me and took several steps toward the edge of the terrace that was unprotected by any railing. As he stared down at the pavement below I moved toward him, but Joseph’s arm restrained me. He knew Mark better than I ever would. After several anxious moments, at least for me, the young man turned and said, “I shall tell you, providing that what I say remains a secret among the three of us. No good will come, at this time, of my story by making it public, and it will only create doubt in the minds of those whose faith is not yet strong that Jesus rose from the dead, as we know he did. Perhaps later, when the foundations that Peter and John and James and the others are building become more solid, everyone can be told. Are my terms acceptable to your.”

It was more than I had dared to expect. I nodded, knowing that he would keep his word. Within twenty or thirty years, according to my research, Mark would write the first synopsis of the life of Jesus, with the help of Peter’s firsthand recollections. And in that powerful but most brief of all Gospels he would include the story of the naked young man in Gethsemane as well as the white-garmented one at the tomb.

“Proceed with your story,” I said, “and be assured that your words are safe with us.”