31 Sign of Beauty, Sign of Glory cheeks and braided hair and a coronet. “Augusta,” it read, while on the reverse stood an allegory of Security, holding an olive branch. No security but in Christ, she thought. “Augusta,” said the centurion, as if short of breath. “We have found three of them. Three posts and three beams.” The old woman hobbled to the edge of the cavity, fell to her knees, and peered down. Five or six sweating men, stripped to the waist, looked up to her, holding their picks upright and backing away, in dread, from the planks. For a few moments no one said a word. A dove cooed from the rocks above. “How can we tell?” Helena turned about. “Judas!” she cried. The old Jewish man stood near. “Do you know which one it is?” “No, Augusta. But,” he said, with all the courage he could muster, “I know a woman who is dying of typhus. Perhaps,” he said, but the empress interrupted him. “Bring her here!” That was how they knew they had found the true cross of Christ, when the dying woman was cured. This Judas did not go and hang himself from a tree. He did not ask for thirty pieces of silver for his services. He was baptized, and took the name Kyriakos (Latin Cyriacus), meaning “Belonging to the Lord.” Helena built a chapel nearby, and several other great churches in the Holy Land. For many years, the
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