“So why not just get off in Myra? Thou art not a slave, art thou?”
“No, of course not. But they pay not till the season’s over. I would winter over without enough coins to fill up my hand. And next season, the word would be out on me, no berths for ship-jumpers. No, thou art right, I’m a prisoner of the ship, the same as you of that Roman.” I looked off into the endless blue of the Mediterranean, touched with whitecaps.
“But our worst taskmaster is ourselves. The things we want, the things we think we must have. What are those things, Ibrahim of Arabia?” the Jew continued, eyeing him closely.
“What I’d really like is a ship like this, of my own. Not that I’ll ever get one, being just a simple deckhand. So really, what earned thee thy escort?”
“I am a follower of the Way of Jesus, and I fell into a religious dispute with my fellow Jews. A dispute that could have ended in my death. Somewhat unfairly, I was the one charged with a crime. Now I’m on my way to Rome to appeal my case before the Emperor Nero himself, and bring the Way to him.”
“The Way? What is that?” asked Ibrahim.
And Paul explained it to me. The story of a Jewish holy man named Jeshua, and one God and one Way for all the people of the world. About sin and forgiveness. Much of it I could not comprehend, since the Way was intertwined with the holy book of the Jews. I knew some of the stories from that book, similar to stories of my people. But I could neither read nor write then. Religion was little more than prayers to gods and goddesses that I scarcely understood, offered mostly in times of danger like magic spells. Paul’s words droned on in my ears as I began to nod sleepily, even while standing. Paul noted this and ended the discussion, sending me off to a few hours of blessed sleep.
We managed to talk for a few minutes every day for a week until we reached Myra. That last day, we whiled away an hour or so, before I had to catch a brief nap before a night to be spent making preparations for entering port. At the end of the discussion, Paul added, “Why not comest with me, young Ibrahim? Forget the ship. Forget wintering over in Myra. Breakest thou thy chains.”
I had been drowsing off, just half-listening. So casually had Paul said this, that I awoke from my reverie. “Huh? I am sorry. Come... with thee? To Rome?”
“Thinkest thou on it. We will disembark tomorrow. Give me thy answer then. Get some sleep, post your watch.” Just then, the centurion came on deck to find Paul. He said something in Latin to him, and Paul laughed. “My guardian Julius is hungry, so it must be dinner time. Think on it.” He turned and left, going forward down to the galley.
I went below and found a flea-infested pile of dirty rags on which to sleep. But sleep didn’t come. Go to Rome? I could disembark in Ostia, as a passenger, not as a ship jumper. Next season, I could find a berth on a fine Roman freighter, where I could earn five to ten times what I made on these eastern tramps. Fine ships, fine crews! And Paul seemed well-to-do, even as a prisoner. But what did the strange Jew really intend for me?
Ibrahim helped wrestle the Astarte safely into her moorings at daybreak, a hundred yards from a huge Alexandrian grain freighter whose tall masts cast long shadows over the dockyard in the rising sun. It was time to make my decision. Follow him? Where? Why? Why did this man take such an interest in me? What on earth was this man talking about? Yeshua not only raising others from the dead, but raising himself? Sin, forgiveness and salvation? Crazy talk!
Paul stood at the quarterdeck with his two friends and the soldiers, once again in chains. I thought of just avoiding him, but no, he had been nice enough company. I walked up to him, and outrageously took his manacled hand in his, calling him by name for the first time. “Paul, I thank thee for our talks. I did not understand most of what thou said, but I will think on it. As for now, I will remain with my ship. Good luck to thee on thy trip to Rome.”
“I thought thou might not yet be ready for the Way, Ibrahim. But thou wilt be, someday. Until then, may God grant thee thy greatest wish. And thou wilt do very well in that endeavor. Good luck to thee, young man, and God be with thee.” With that, the centurion took Paul by the arm and escorted him down the gangplank.
With that, Ibrahim returned to the present. “Paul took passage on the big grain freighter next to us. And within a few days, a fierce storm blew up, casting it a wreck onto Malta, and blowing me into command of my first ship, a twenty year old pirate, knowing nothing about navigation or seamanship, or even piracy! But I found people who could teach me and I learned. And I learned Greek, well enough to read the philosophers and the Septuagint Bible in Alexandria. But I also killed scores of people, financially ruined hundreds more, and committed every sin in that book, and some for which there are no names. I did not become worthy of the trust Paul had in me, I spurned it.”
There was a great silence in the room. Then Kaneias looked at Ibrahim with his one good eye. “We are honored to have you among us, you who were blessed by Paul,” he said. “You are no more sinful than I, or any in this room, or even the Blessed Paul. But more on that later. I would like to share the story of the rest of Paul’s journey.”
And he related from memory the account of Paul’s sea voyage, boarding the ship Ibrahim had identified as the Astarte at Caesarea with companions Aristarchus and Luke, with stops at Sidon and a change of ships at Myra, in October around the Day of Atonement. From there, the ship attempted Cnidus, but winds being unfavorable, went southwest to Fair Haven in Crete. There they made the fateful decision to make for the better harbor at Phoenix, but a gale blew up and they struggled fourteen days against it to Malta where they intentionally ran the ship aground. Ibrahim listened intently, hearing his own account repeated, followed by a very good description of the next leg. Warazan finished his account, then said “I am not a sailor, nor am I familiar with these places. Ibrahim, can you shed some light on this story?”
“That type of storm is called a Euraquilo, a northeaster, the same as the one that struck my ship. And yes, I have stopped at all the places mentioned, many times. Fair Haven is a bad place to winter over for a big ship, anchored out and exposed to the waves, so I understand why they tried to make the shelter at Phoenix. What became of Paul afterwards?”
Kaneias answered, “He went to Rome and was imprisoned, awaiting his trial that never came. A few years after he got there, there was a huge fire that destroyed a large part of the city. Nero blamed the Christians for setting it, and killed thousands of them, many horribly. Paul, a citizen, was beheaded. His companion and fellow apostle Peter, who also had come there, was crucified.”
They talked until the dawn was breaking, about sin and the forgiveness of sins, about eternal life, and love as the supreme sacrifice. Ibrahim had long ago rejected any notion of an afterlife, other than perhaps a vague fading out of one’s existence after death. Likewise, he rejected the idea of a god, or gods, as other than some vague powerful entity that might cause everything to begin, but otherwise be no more concerned about his life than the sun or the moon. To conceive of a god that cared, implied a god of justice, and a god of justice would then mete out punishment as well as reward, and Ibrahim knew full well what he merited. But he felt strangely drawn to these people, and he remembered what Paul had told him decades ago, “You are not yet ready for the Way. But you will be.” And the various events in his life had steered him to this place and time, to this humble mud house in Bactra and a belated reunion with his old friend Paul, long dead, with the implacability of an ocean wind. But could his sins really be forgiven? It was on this that his ‘faith’, as they called it, fell short.
Demosthenes did not seem to struggle with the new faith at all. The idea that he was required to interact with the people around him in love and sacrifice, rather than attain some sort of total detachment of the world, had come naturally to him. He was to reject the things of the world, the fame, the praise, the money, the power… but not the people. He had been imbued with Greek philosophy in his education, as well as Buddhism, and understood Plato’s analogy of the reality o
f the world of the senses as shadows cast on a cave wall; in fact, he used that as the foundation of many of his Buddhhist meditations. And his father had told him that he could retain his Buddhist ethics and meditations with his new beliefs.
At dawn, Warazan, who seemed to be the leader of the group, announced that this was their day of worship, and of rest thereafter. The two newcomers were welcome to observe but not participate. Bread and wine were put on the table, and the group sat around it with Warazan at the center. They sang some unfamiliar hymns to Jesus as to a god. Warazan spoke a few words on the gift of their visitors, praying that God would provide them the answers they sought. He then shared a ceremony of bread and wine.
CHAPTER 80: TREACHERY AND DEATH
The group left Bactra after about a week, traveling with a caravan for Aria and the Parthian border at the Hari-Ruud River. Demosthenes remained behind and was missed, but having been reunited with his father and his extended family, they knew he would be in good hands.
The five hundred mile trip was among the worst they had experienced in two years of traveling, loess sand plains and open desert, bitter cold in January with biting winds that easily penetrated even the Roman party’s winter fleeces and traveling yurt, and occasional blinding snow. Marcia wished she could grow a beard like the men to protect her face. She made do with a woolen scarf wrapped entirely around her face and ears, leaving only her eyes exposed. At the worst of times, her breath froze on the cloth in a white frost.
The caravan consisted of mounted horsemen or wagons towed by either horses or camels, trying to maintain a pace of twenty or so miles a day, weather permitting. The caravan was laden mostly with foodstuffs for exchange among the villages and cities enroute.
The road was interspersed with various small towns: Faryab and Maynama were the largest, providing the luxury of overnight indoor accommodations, but many of the smaller villages only supported the caravan drivers, and sometimes not all of them. Not even the Roman yurt could keep out the frigid wind when they were forced to camp overnight in the icy weather.
Antonius had resumed training the group with the wooden swords. They had not drilled in almost a year, though they had provided security for caravans for several months. But two months of luxurious living in Bagram, and another month in accommodations almost as good at the fort in Bactra, had left their muscles soft and their reflexes slow. Antonius proceeded to whip them into shape quickly, in the event they had to fight off bandits enroute. However, unlike with past caravans, they were not part of caravan security. The short winter days allowed for an hour of drill before dinner, conducted inside their yurt due to weather.
Marcia, alone of the group, had been quietly doing some practice on a new move of her own. A charging attack with a sword had almost always left her vulnerable. She always stepped backwards, often losing her balance and with it the bout. She thought she had a counter to that move now, and she looked forward to using it in this night’s practice. She drew Gaius as her sparring partner, and they squared off inside the yurt, lit by the center fire. Lamps were not yet lit, in case one should be upended and set their shelter and all their belongings ablaze.
There was the usual initial checking, a clacking of swords, testing thrusts easily parried, just warming up. She watched Gaius’ eyes. He didn’t give away much, because as an experienced fighter, he understood eye control. But she had learned through sparring with him that he always took in an audible gasp of air before doing something dramatic. That warned her that something was coming, though not where, so she was ready when she saw the lunge materialize, and she executed her counter while his sword was still enroute toward her midsection. She pivoted lightly on her left foot, spinning clockwise, drawing both arms and her sword tight in against her body to make herself spin faster. She had made a quarter turn when the point of Gaius’ sword passed through the air where her gut had been at the beginning of the stroke, leaving him extended, surprised and off-balance. His momentum carried him forward, and he was behind her when she flexed her butt into his side, just enough to further unbalance him. As she completed her turn, she extended both arms and her sword to slow her spin, saw Gaius’ exposed back where she expected it, and administered a sharp delivery across his spine, knocking him to his knees. Had it been live steel, she likely would have sliced him in two.
She sheathed her sword and graciously extended her hand to help him up, smiling.
“Damn, woman! Where the hell did you go? You vanished like smoke!” he said, struggling to his feet. “That hurt!” he rubbed the small of his back, while everyone else in the yurt laughed.
“I’ve been working on that move for months. The lunge was the one move that I couldn’t counter if I couldn’t parry it. Anyone else?”
Shmuel stepped up beside the fire, and they set off with the usual preliminaries. Shmuel’s eye control was not as good as Gaius’, she saw his lunge coming but chose not to parry, spun and cut him down quickly.
Antonius nodded his approval. “Good move, domina, damned good move. I think it would work even on me.”
“You’re too easy, carus meus. You always pull your strokes with me!” she laughed, wiping her forehead with a rag. Even in a chill December, a yurt with a fire and seven people exercising in it warmed up fast.
They sparred for a few more rounds, then broke for dinner. “We all got some catching up to do. Let’s hope we don’t meet some real bandits before we are back in shape!” said Antonius.
Antonius broke out some homebrew kumis that was a close approximation of the real thing, a wheel of nan, a bowl of walnuts from Bactra, and some dried meat, smoked and salted in the style Galosga had taught them. “Never thought I would enjoy being back in the yurt, but I actually like this better than sitting around the castle. Never been one for aristocratic society,” he said in Bactrian.
Marcia elbowed him in the ribs playfully, munching a handful of nan. “You did quite well, carus, you didn’t embarrass me much… except maybe with that awful joke about the camel!”
“We were all drunk, the king included!” he responded defensively, while everyone laughed. “Anyway, he made it easy to be around him. If I have to be around the upper classes, I’d as soon be around King Vima as anyone else. Very normal sort of man. And Cassandra and Ranisa. Real people, no airs. Just like you, Senator!” he said, grinning at Aulus; It was the first time in a very long time that he had addressed Aulus by his title.
Aulus was struggling with the tough smoked meat, chewing furiously, unable answer for a minute. Finally he gulped down his mouthful with a bowl of kumis and wiped his hands on his grimy riding shirt. “Well, yurts don’t lend themselves to much in the way of social distinctions! But good camaraderie. Speaking of camaraderie, that was quite a ceremony with Dim’s family, and you, too, Ibrahim. He must have had every cousin, uncle and aunt in Bactra come to that. What was the occasion?”
“We were baptized into our new faith. It seems to be quite the solution for both of us, forgiveness of my sins for me, a chance at perfection for him,” said Ibrahim.
Shmuel interjected, “It reminded me of a mikvah bath, a Jewish cleansing ceremony. I went through that at a synagogue a few months ago in Warnu. I’m not sure sin has the same meanings between the two faiths, although Ibrahim’s new faith sprang from mine. But I enjoy feeling Jewish again.”
“What was the occasion for Dim? That was rather a sudden change from Buddhism to … what? Being Christian?” asked Marcia.
“It was,” answered Ibrahim, sitting cross-legged across from her. “As you know, he was really tormented about having failed as a monk. His family had been quite proud that he had chosen the Buddhist way when he left, and he was afraid they would feel he had shamed them when he returned as a lay person. Only they had all become Christians in his absence, so it was a natural thing for him to follow them. And he got to keep many of his Buddhist beliefs and practices. which aren’t too dissimilar at all from Christianity. Detachment from material things, he never had a problem with th
at. It was more of a struggle for me.”
“Why was that?” asked Gaius. He got up to fetch a flask of wine, and returned to sit before the fire.
“Mostly philosophical. If God is justice, then how can He forgive sins without holding the sinner accountable? That seemed contradictory to me. And certainly I knew what accountability for my sins meant. I preferred to deny an afterlife, rather than face it!”
“So what changed your mind?” asked Antonius.
“They finally convinced me that God is infinite mercy as well as infinite justice, so He can dispense however much of either as He chooses. So I decided to take a chance on the new faith. And I thank Dim for introducing me to both this faith, and to some of his Buddhist beliefs. In many ways, they are very similar. Like Buddhism, not much in the way of rituals, no long list of things to do or not do so the gods don’t get upset and smite you. Just to not worship other objects as gods, which I don’t do anyway. It’s a very, well, philosophical God, not like the ordinary gods that just seem to be the personification of jealousy and pettiness.”
Aulus cleared his throat. “Well, I hate to change the subject, but before we retire to our bedrolls we need to discuss what we do when we reach Aria and Parthian territory. Ibrahim, while you may have your sins forgiven, you still have great insights into evading authorities that you gained by a lifetime of sinning. What are your thoughts about how best to cross Parthia?”
“I suggest we do it openly,” answered Ibrahim, sipping his wine. “The Parthians know who we are, the Parthian ambassador almost certainly sent word back on us, and there is no way to enter Parthia except through Aria. They will have a good description of us. King Vima made it very clear to their ambassador that our reaching Rome is critical to avoiding war, that we are carrying messages from him to Trajan, and that if we don’t deliver them, that could seriously jeopardize relations between Ctesiphon and Bagram. Pacorus has to balance his petty jealousy about our relations with the Han, against a real threat of war with Rome, with his backside exposed or even threatened if he provokes King Vima. I think we should go, pick up a caravan in Aria to the Armenian border, and keep our fingers crossed. Trying to skulk through is likely to make us look more suspicious.”
The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China Page 69
