On the north side of the garden, as we rounded a gradual turn past a tall clump of damask roses, I saw the great stone. It was leaning against the side of a dark outcropping of rock. Next to it an opening had been cut into the rock that looked identical in size and shape to the one in the tomb I had just visited in Joseph’s garden. Joseph was standing next to me with a smug look on his face but he said nothing. Neither did Nicodemus, so I left them and ran ahead to the stone. It was round, stood nearly as tall as I do, and was a good foot in thickness. I leaned against its side and pushed. It refused to budge. I shoved harder. Not even an inch. I stooped down and looked inside the tomb. Then I fell to my knees. Incredible! Nicodemus had duplicated exactly, so far as I could see, the tomb in which the body of Jesus had been laid! Except for the great stone. I didn’t have to be reminded that it was the actual piece that Mark and, later, Mary Magdalene had found rolled aside on that morning six years ago. I was still shaking my head when the two led me to a curved marble bench nearby.

“Well.” Nicodemus finally broke the silence. “What do you think of my humble garden?”

“It’s amazing,” I marveled, “absolutely amazing, all of it!”

“I like to come out here and sit, as we do now, when the worries of the day become more than I can bear. Here, close to the great stone, it is possible to put everything in its proper perspective, and those things which seemed so important in the marketplace become as transitory and insignificant as a grain of sand.”

“I have never seen its equal. Although my profession is words, I can’t think of a compliment worthy of what you have accomplished here.”

“Even if you could, I would not be deserving, Matthias. It is my chief gardener who has made this place his life’s work.”

“Perhaps Matthias would like to meet him,” Joseph urged.

“I would indeed.”

Nicodemus was gone for only a few moments, returning in the company of a giant almost as large as Shem. He was not a young man, and his dark, heavily lined face was marred by two ugly gray scars, one across his left cheek and the other beneath the mouth. Sword cuts? His long straight hair was tied into a ponytail, and his beard protruded from his chin as if all its hairs were made of stiff wire. When he saw us he slowed his walk and fell behind Nicodemus, staring self-consciously at the ground as if he were searching for any straggling weed that would dare to show itself in his garden.