The woman's death had been decided.

And this day was the day of her death, something the children of the village sensed without quite comprehending, soaking in the excited and anticipated horror from the whispered gossip of adults.

So the children followed.

They followed behind the villagers. The villagers, in turn, followed the elders-men dressed in dusty knee-length tunics, wearing silent grimness like cloaks, their bearded faces straining with the seriousness of their task. All of them followed the woman, who walked in front of the elders, draped in a plain brown girdled blanket, her hands bound and resting on her belly, and her freshly-shaved head bowed. The children, the villagers, the elders, and the woman formed a small, pitiful, dusty procession in a small, pitiful, dusty village high in the rocky hills of a small, pitiful, provincial outpost of the Roman Empire.

The death procession was made even grimmer by the merciless heat. The cloudless sky was white with the glare of the sun. Powder rose like talcum as each step of each man's sandal flopped on the wide path that served as a road between the square plastered houses with palm branch roofs. The walls of the buildings seemed to ripple in the stifling, shimmering air.

The men walked slowly and ignored the villagers and the children. Leading the procession of woman, men and children was a synagogue herald, sweating heavily in his tasseled cassock. Their destination was the crumbling stone walls that formed the town gates.

Near the gates, fist-sized jagged rocks were piled like a cairn.

Every few steps, the herald called out a sing-song proclamation of ritual, as if he served an audience of hundreds instead of only the population of a tiny obscure village. As required by law, the herald called out the same proclamation one last time as the procession neared the gates.

"Jaala Mehetabel, wife of Lachish, the son of Sabian of Beth She'arim, is going forth to be stoned because she has dishonored him and his name through the act of adultery. Nadabb, son of Nodab, and Seth of Kedesh are witnesses against her. If anyone knows anything in favor of her acquittal, let him come and plead it."

No one came forth. The evidence was irrefutable. Late one evening an unidentified and still unknown man had been seen entering her house. This man had not been her husband, for Lachish son of Sabian had been in nearby Japhia for a week-long feast to celebrate a nephew's wedding. The witnesses that night were impeccable and beyond refute: the two town elders, Nadabb, son of Nodab, and Seth of Kedesh. They had immediately undertaken a vigil outside of the house, determined to identify this intruder. Unfortunately for their curiosity, the old men had fallen asleep, sitting each against the other, during their wait to identify the man on his departure.

Within an hour of the sunrise that followed, all the adults in this small village had shared and reshared those scant details through endless hours of gossip. Jaala Mehetabel, wife of Lachish, the son of Sabian of Beth She'arim, had not called out for help, some said, so obviously the intruder had been a welcome guest. Others laughed, saying the man must have been dragged in by rope, for Jaala was no woman of beauty. All agreed, however, it was shame that the town elders had fallen asleep, for according to law, both the man and the adulterous woman must die.

The subsequent trial had been swift, the judgment rendered as commanded by Rabbinical law, the rocks readied. So now the herald, and the procession which followed him, continued in the mid day heat toward the town gates.

Ten cubits from the place of execution, the herald stopped-as did the entire procession, with the children straining to peer around the larger bodies of the adults. The herald turned to face the woman with the shaved head.

Make your confession," he commanded her, for ancient law required the statement at exactly this distance from the town gates.

Jaala Mehetabel, wife of Lachish, the son of Sabian of Beth She'arim, raised her head and stared the herald directly in the eyes. She had a square face, the flesh just starting to sag with age. Her eyebrows were thick and dull brown, the same color as her thin hair-before the men had held her down and sheared her no differently than if she was a sheep to be readied for slaughter. Her lips, like her chunky body, had no curves. When she folded her bound hands together, the skin showed work scars on red, swollen knuckles. Any beauty she had was in her eyes, which glowed from a mixture of fear and defiance and, strangely, joy.

"Make your confession," the herald demanded again. Everyone expected her to recite the ritualistic reply as the occasion demanded. May my death be an atonement for all my sins. This would cleanse her of evil, this would cleanse the land of evil.

Her answer instead was continued silence.

"Make your confession," the herald commanded once again, his tone higher with restrained anger.

She did not.

The herald looked to the town elders for guidance.

"Let her die without peace then," said a man at the front of the crowd. He was the largest of them, and the face above his untrimmed beard was permanently flushed red from the years of food and wine that had also given him his bulk.

"As you say," the herald said. After all, aside from Moses, who was a greater authority on her punishment than this man, Lachish son of Sabian, both her husband and her formal accuser?

Lachish waved the men behind him to move forward and push the woman toward the stone wall. They grabbed the woman's arms to force her forward. She shook them off and walked alone to her place of execution.

She turned to face them, her large hands clenched and straining at the bounds of rope. Defiance finally gave way to fear. Tears as thick as blood welled in the corners of her eyes.

Even now, the elders were not yet ready to take up rocks from the nearby pile. Two marched to the woman. Wordlessly, without resistance from her, they stripped the brown tunic from her body and left it at her feet. Because of the watching children, they left her undergarments in place. Yet even this limited exposure showed the entire village that her body held little attraction for any man. This new humiliation brought her head down once more.

The two elders rejoined the group.

Lachish, son of Sabian, was the first man to approach the pile of rocks. As accuser, he would be the first to throw.

The other men followed and armed themselves with jagged stones.

At this moment, wind broke the heat's stranglehold, coming up from the valley and kicking dust. Somewhere in the crowd, a woman wailed. The men of the procession closed their mouths tighter and squinted against the swirling dust. Neither wind nor mourning would prevent them from their duty.

They all waited for Lachish, her husband. The stoning could not begin until he threw first. He hefted a rock in his right hand.

Jaala Mehetabel, wife of Lachish, the son of Sabian of Beth She'arim, raised her head again.

"No," she cried above the rising wind. "Not until I speak."

The men hesitated.

With both bound hands, she raised her arms and pointed at her husband Lachish. "I was sold to this man by my father, a man who drank too much wine and beat me when it suited him. My husband saw fit to continue my father's habit."

"Enough, woman!" Lachish roared. "You have no say."

She ignored him and directed her words to the town elders. "I have been nothing more to him than a beast, an animal to work his fields and household. I have seen this man pat a mule's neck and comfort the beast with more kindness than he has ever shown me. This is a man who inflicted upon his wife public shame by leaving her behind when he attended a wedding no farther away than a half hour's travel."

The women in the crowd muttered agreement. Many shared her sentiments toward their own husbands and wanted to applaud her anger. But she would be dead soon, and they would have to continue to live with the men who treated them no better than mules.

At the muttering, Lachish raised his hand to throw a rock. The elder beside him restrained his arm.

"It must not be thrown in anger," the elder said to Lachish. "We punish her out of duty."

"She has brought death upon herself," Lachish snarled. "It is the law."

"Listen to me," the woman cried. "You know how much dishonor there is for a woman to be sent away by her man. Even so, I would have begged him to release me and I would have gladly fled. Yet I had no place to go, no family to take me. So I was forced to stay.

"Listen to me. The women of this village shunned me, and I visited the well alone. Unlike even cows or sheep, I could find no comfort with others like me."

The wind swirled at her feet, tugging at the hem of her undergarments.

"Not once in my life had the warmth of any love touched me," she cried. "Until another man saw beyond this wretched, worn appearance. And finally I was loved."

The tears rolled freely down her plain face.

"Loved," she repeated. "Loved in spirit, not in body. Loved and respected so much that not once did this man touch me. He gave me a far greater gift. He spoke to me and gave me comfort through long, lonely hours."

She wiped her face, awkwardly with her bound hands, smearing dust that had collected on the streams of tears.

"If accepting love and comfort when my own husband treated me as an animal is a sin, then I confess it freely in front of God and His people. If spending cold, lonely nights in the company of a man who loved me but did not touch me in an adulterous way is a sin, then I confess it freely in front of God and His people. If death is the price I must pay for that comfort and love, I gladly accept it in exchange for the short time that love touched my barren life."

Her mouth began to quiver as she fought for more words, for more courage. She drew a breath and spoke with a quietness barely audible above the wind. "Stone me if you will."

"Moses has commanded us to purge this evil from the people," Lachish shouted. He wrenched his arm from the man beside him and hurled his rock.

It struck her in the upper arm, gashing a streak of bright red.

"You want to know who he was," she taunted her husband. "It drives you mad with anger to think any other man might take a possession of yours. In my death, I take satisfaction in knowing you weren't able to kill him alongside me."

Lachish transferred another rock from his left hand to his right, and threw it in full rage. She chose not to duck, and it hit her cheekbone, knocking her to her knees.

"I will not tell you who he is," she said, her words difficult to understand through broken teeth. "You will not kill him with me."

Yet before any of the other town elders could throw, a figure broke loose from the small crowd of villagers and ran toward her.

"No!" he cried. "No! I cannot be among those who watch!"

He was a tiny man with a crippled left arm. Thin. Dressed in rags. He fell to his knees and wrapped his right around the broadness of her upper body in an effort to protect her body with his own.

"The dung collector!" laughed Lachish, relieved that it was not a man of higher stature who had somehow seen an overlooked value in his wife. "Can you do no better?"

Neither the little man nor the big woman gave a sign that either had heard. Each clung to the other, murmuring words of love. He, the man who made a living by searching the rocky hills for dry dung to sell as fuel for cooking. She, a worn childless woman with no friends in the village.

Lachish, son of Sabian, gave the signal. Rocks rained down on both.

The tiny man died on his knees, his arms around her, his face turned away from the men of the village. The woman's face, however, was clearly visible to the men above the tiny man's shoulder, and showed a smile that remained until the final light left her eyes.

Behind the elders silently intent on throwing the rocks, behind the villagers and older children who jeered the death of the dung collector and the ugly woman, was a young boy, the son of Joseph and Mary, born in another village to the south because of a census decreed by the emperor Augustus and enforced by Quirinius, governor of Syria.

Few others around understood what this boy, despite his youth, understood on that day in the small, dusty village of Nazareth. Man and law, even armed with death as the greatest and final weapon, can never defeat love.