It was still early. But she was glad to be up. She couldn't sleep, and doing things distracted her mind from the terrors and loneliness of the night, and took away some of the pain.

She had a long journey in front of her. An early start and she could be well on her way before the sun got really uncomfortable.

The cold air of the morning snarled at her frail body and bit her hands as she saddled the donkey, and tied on the panniers containing her few possessions.

The donkey nudged her and flicked an ear. She took the bridle and they were on the move.

The roads out of the city were alive with pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem for Passover.

It was a lonely journey. The slow, downhill route by fast-flowing Jordan was far behind. Jericho was passed, and only the desolation of the wilderness of Judah stretched out before her. She was afraid, and tried to staunch the fear by tagging closer to the caravan making its way through the deep ravines. She remembered the stories of the atrocities that were committed along this road -- 'The Bloody Road' -- as they called it.

She had been on this road before. It was all so familiar. But the familiarity itself bred only a deeper loneliness; an aching sorrow that seared through her like a sword in the heart.

The rumours of the past weeks, the travellers' tales from Jerusalem, became pictures so real, so alive that she felt she could almost reach out and snatch her son from the terror and hate that enveloped him.

She wanted to scream. How could all this be? She kept asking herself. How could her son come to this? He'd begun so well. There'd been so much promise in the beginning... It was a lifetime ago, but it all came back: the promises, the hope, the great future... "Thou shalt call his name Jesus..." Everything had seemed so cut-and-dried, so God-appointed. "He shall be great... and of his kingdom there shall be no end..."

But all this was just a mother's fancy, she decided. The angel's message was the dream of a woman ambitious for her unborn child. She ought to have known.

Thirty-three years ago she ought to have realised it. Her boy was just an ordinary son. She was just another woman.

Aye, she knew it now. She had been deluding herself. Through the tears that welled in her tired eyes she searched into the distance where the skyline broke into the shapes and shadows of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was dressed for the Feast. The Holy City had decked itself in all its gaudy finery.

The city was bustling with people. Shops spumed their wares off spilling stalls into the streets. Bedlam was the password, and impatience jostled with fear of suffocation in the rabbit-warren alleyways of Zion.

She searched the faces of the passers-by for the face of a friend. But found none. She edged her way through the crowds, not sure where she was going. Old women blocked her way in gossipy groups, and she skirted round little men in deep conversation. Where womanly modesty allowed her, she glanced at men to recognise her son.

She picked up snatches of the conversations, and was sorry for the man they talked about.

And then it dawned. Too late. The whole town was talking about the son she had come to find. Jesus of Nazareth, they said, was crucified -- at Golgotha, they said. At the execution site outside the city. And they were cold about it, unemotional, matter-of-fact, as though her son's death didn't affect anybody.

Trusting her intuition, she accepted the terror she did not want to believe. The death at Golgotha would be the death of the child she'd borne 33 years ago.

Dazed. Numb. Unaware of how she'd come, she stood with the few that clustered near the place of execution. Silent. Conscious of nobody, seeing nothing, save the three crosses reared on the hillock.

Her son.

How long she watched.

He looked old. The age of the world. His face tired, drawn, drained. And the blood congealed about his brow made a garland for the crown of thorns set tight upon his head.

She watched the pain creep with the coiling venom-slowness of a serpent through his body, and felt every spasm of it herself... as though a child laboured in her womb and would not come to birth.

The crowd at the roadside grew restive. They had recovered from the first shock of the horror, and wanted to give vent to their pent-up emotions. They began to joke. And then it grew and grew till even those who passed by joined in. They joked about her son, they ridiculed him.

Even officialdom laughed at his expense. The accusation that had been carried before him through the streets to the place of execution, now jangled loosely, mockingly above him on the cross: JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. The proclamation was cruel.

She felt guilty that all her hopes and ambitions of years ago had brought her son to this. She wanted to grasp him to herself. Her child again, warm in her bosom, unscathed in the shelter of her arms.

She felt helpless, useless in the situation. He might hang there for days and, in the end, die of sheer agony and exhaustion. And there was nothing she could do but stand and watch and wait.

The air was warm with melancholy. The carrion birds already wheeled the sky, screeching their own lamentation.

The soldiers near the cross played dice. She felt sorry for them. She watched them gambling and drinking posca to dull the keen edge of their guilt, and numb the fear that overwhelmed them in the presence of imminent death.

Near the gamblers, she could see the neat parcels of his clothes, stripped from him to leave his body naked, red-raw from wounds and bruises and suppurating sores.

A soldier held aloft to him a pot of posca. But the soldier couldn't reach near enough, and the poor parched mouth couldn't stoop to touch it. The soldier shrugged-off the effort and went back to his comrades and the dice. And they laughed at him for his failure.

She saw the tired head move slowly, and the eyes search into the little group. She felt him stare, and then his eyes turned to search again.

She heard him speak, "Woman, behold thy son... Son, behold thy mother."

She felt John's strong arms about her shoulder, turning her from the agony.

They walked in the cooling air. Above them in the greying sky the wheeling birds slid lower to the ground.

Behind them, from the hillock by the roadside, came a long, piercing, agonising yell that waned in the air till it became the whimper of a newborn infant in a crib.

She recognised the sound.

The cry stopped.

Her son was dead.

They walked heavily to John's house in Jerusalem. And as they walked she remembered old Simeon's words in the Temple years ago: "A sword shall pierce thine own heart also..."

She knew, now, what they meant.

The Very Rev'd Matthew Byrne is a former Dean of Kildare, and author of several books. His bestseller The Day He Died - the Passion according to Luke is published by Columba Press.