Search the Seven Hills

by Barbara Hambly

  “And what demands were these?”

  The upright back stiffened slightly. “The demands of my church, of my priesthood. The demands of my god.”

  “Are you a priest?”

  “I am a priest of the Lord Jesus Christ,” said Telesphorus proudly, “as you knew, Roman, when you had me arrested.”

  Arrius picked up a little piece of equipment that lay among the parchments and wax tablets on the tabletop. He fiddled with it idly, twirling its bolts-—Marcus saw that it was a kind of small thumbscrew. “How long have you been a priest?”

  “It is twelve years since I received baptism at the hands of Evaristus, who was then the Bishop of Rome. For seven years I have served Jesus Christ, and my people.”

  “Did you know Nikolas, the priest who was killed about three years ago?”

  Telesphorus hesitated. “No.”

  “Oh, come on, do me more credit than that,” snapped Arrius impatiently. “You were priests of the same religion in the same part of town and you never met?”

  The hard mouth under the dirty beard seemed to lengthen, the lips compressing into a solid line. The priest said nothing. Arrius watched him in silence for a moment, spinning the little clamps of the horrible thing he held. The smutty orange of the lamplight shone like oil on the nicks of old scars, the rock-hard ripple of muscle and the broken line of his nose, and looking at him, Marcus shivered involuntarily. For all his easy friendliness, the centurion was a stranger to pity.

  Without a glance at Marcus, he ordered him, “Send for the guard.”

  There was not another sound in the room as he obeyed. A sentry came in, grinning and sweaty and jovial.

  “Put this one in the next cell,” said Arrius briefly. “Is the hangman around?”

  “I think he’s at the games this morning, sir, but he can be fetched.”

  “Maybe later. There’s time. One more thing, old man,” he added, as the guard took Telesphorus’ thin arm in a hand like an iron shackle. “How did you happen to become a Christian?”

  The priest drew himself up to his full height, sweat gleaming on the curve of his high forehead and in the hollow of his throat. “The Lord called me,” he said, “and I answered. It is all I have to say to you, Roman.”

  Arrius’ eyes flashed dangerously, but he only said, “Take him away. If he gives you any trouble, skin his back for him.”

  “What are stripes to me?” demanded Telesphorus. “Each stripe is a brand of victory, an emblem of my love and loyalty for the Christ, the living God. I welcome your flogging.”

  The sentry grinned, showing cracked and missing teeth. “Shall I oblige the man, centurion?”

  “Don’t bother.” He glanced over at Marcus as the priest was led away. “He knows,” he said.

  “About Tullia?”

  Arrius shrugged and spun the bolts of the thumbscrew idly with one finger. “About the priest Nikolas and his group, anyway.”

  Marcus swallowed queasily. “Will you—will you use that thing?”

  The hard face twitched into a wry grin. “I doubt I’ll need it,” he said, standing up. “What’ll you bet me the woman’ll break?”

  Marcus blinked at him, confused. “What makes you think that?”

  “Her kind mostly do.”

  In the darkness of the cell that thick husky voice was declaiming “...and Plato has proved—proved—that the fiery emanations from the Divine World-Soul crossed this intermediate world, becoming entangled in the gross and putrid flesh. These fiery emanations are our souls, which could only be released by the teachings of the Divine Demiurge...”

  “You talk like a Mithraist,” spat an older man’s voice. “Yes, our souls are trapped in our filthy bodies, but it was the original sin of Adam, as Paul has taught us—”

  “Paul!” screamed the youngest boy there. “That scabby faker! Rotten traitor to the cause of the Son of man!”

  “Arete!” called out Arrius.

  “Son of man, hell!” cried the shrill-voiced man wildly. “Son of God, and God Himself...”

  “Now you can’t be yourself and somebody else, too,” yelled the first man, leaping to his feet.

  “Who are you to say what God can and cannot do or be?” yelled the other woman, who up until this time had sat in her black corner saying nothing. “Telesphorus says...”

  “Arete!” roared Arrius in his best parade-ground voice. And when the babbling rose louder around him, he bellowed,

  “Be silent, all of you!”

  To Marcus’ surprise, they were.

  “Arete, widow of Simeon the baker?”

  Marcus saw the woman’s face turn chalk-white in the gloom. The shrill-voiced little man sprang to his feet and shrieked at her, “Fry in hell, you Gnostic whore!”

  She whirled on him. “You scabby dung-picking monkey—” She lunged for him, hands opened to claw. Arrius reached her in a stride and seized her wrists, forcing them down behind her while the little man ducked behind the other woman.

  “What have you done with Telesphorus?” he cried.

  Arrius spat out a stray trail of hair; the woman had begun to struggle like the Old Man of the Sea, kicking at his booted shins with her bare toes. As he shoved her toward the door he answered viciously, “I fed him to the lions!” Marcus’ last glimpse of the Christians, as the prison door closed upon them, was of the little man with his palms upraised in prayer, and all the rest of them arguing furiously around him.

  Once outside the cell the woman Arete ceased to struggle, but as she stumbled along in the iron grip of the centurion’s arm, Marcus could see the rim of white that showed all around the pupils of her eyes, like those of a frightened horse. She was saying, “Haven’t you rotten pimps of Caesar got anything better to do than to persecute the Lord’s anointed? Aren’t there criminals enough in Rome without... ?”

  “Be quiet, woman,” sighed Arrius.

  “Because in the long run the Lord will look after his own. You don’t understand that when the sheep are separated from the goats—”

  “I said be quiet.” He pushed her ahead of him into the interrogation room. She whirled, as though she would try to flee, when she saw the rack there, waiting. But Arrius filled the narrow door, with bone and muscle and mail; Marcus had the impression that she did not see himself at all. Her breasts heaved with her thick frightened breathing; her dark eyes shifted, seeking a way out. Arrius kicked the door shut behind him. “Your name’s Arete; your husband’s name was Simeon. That right?”

  She nodded and swallowed hard.

  “Formerly an initiate of the rites of Cybele, formerly a worshiper of Isis, formerly connected with the cult of Moloch. When’d you turn Christian, Arete?”

  “Can you blame a traveler who has found the right road for straying down many paths? This entire empire has come to grief because—”

  “How long have you been a Christian?” he demanded, and her eyes flashed briefly with anger.

  “Does it matter... ?”

  “Yes, it matters.” Arrius’ voice was harsh. “When I ask you a question it’s because I want an answer, not because I want to hear a bunch of drivel about the Christ.”

  “You speak of drivel when you talk of the One True Word!” she protested furiously. “I know the true path, the true knowledge, and I shall never recant it!”

  “That’s good,” purred the centurion. “Because I’m not going to ask you to recant.”

  Her eyes widened with shock. “What?”

  He stepped over close to her and rested his big hands on her shoulders. Though she was a tall woman, and strong, the mail-clad body with its crested helm seemed to dominate her, as inhuman and faceless as the implements of torture that surrounded them. His voice was soft, intimate, and utterly without warmth. “I don’t personally care how much incense anyone throws on Caesar’s altar, or who you sing your hymns to. It won’t keep you off the rack.”

  Her eyes were huge, pits of horror staring into his. “You can’t do that,” she whispered. “My husba
nd was a Roman citizen...”

  “But you’re not, are you?” he murmured. His gripping hands turned her, thrust her deeper into the hot blackness of the back of the room. She stared at the rack in a kind of horrible fascination, the stained boards, the long pale hollows worn by countless digging heels, the filthy leather and the dark iron shining with oil and grease. The gears and cogs and levers, stronger than any human flesh. He held her against his mailed body, so she could not turn away from the sight, but Marcus did not see that she even made the attempt. What Arrius said to her he did not hear, for the centurion’s voice was as low as a seducer’s, murmuring in the woman’s ear, but once he heard her groan, “I’ll recant! I’ll burn the incense,” and he said quietly, “I’m not asking for that, Arete. Now—how long have you been a Christian?”

  She stammered, “Three years—almost four years.”

  “And did you know the priest Nikolas, who was executed?”

  She raised her head a little. “That dolt? They were all scum, they weren’t even true Christians at all, just a bunch of superstitious heretics who followed Paul’s letters as if they’d been handed down by God himself. Butt-headed and ignorant as a corral full of jackasses. They—”

  “I’m not interested in their faith,” murmured the centurion through his teeth. “Who were they? What were their names?”

  She hesitated, looking into his eyes and evidently finding nothing there to give her hope. Then, with a kind of defiance, she rattled off a list of names, accompanied by abusive commentary upon the morals, character, and faith of each. “But they’re all dead, the filthy heretics, and good riddance,” she finished. “I don’t see what—”

  “You don’t have to see,” grated Arrius. “Did any of them leave families?”

  “I don’t know,” she said sulkily. He shoved her back against the rack, so that her buttocks pressed the edge of the worn wood. She tried to pull away, frightened, but he kept her there, his body pinning hers. “I don’t know, I tell you!” she gabbled. “I wasn’t in that group, or anyway not for very long, I didn’t know them. And anyway if their families had sense they’d have left the city before they were pulled in, too.”

  “Were there any survivors?” he pressed her, and her breath caught. She tried to turn her face away, but he seized her by the hair, twisted her head brutally back to look into his eyes. “Who?”

  “There weren’t,” she gulped, panic in her voice.

  “Don’t lie to me. You said a minute ago they weren’t real Christians anyway.”

  “Yes, but...”

  “You said you’d recant the faith. You still mean that?”

  “If you...”

  “You ever seen anyone racked, Arete? Ever seen what the joints look like after the bones come apart?” Moaning she tried to writhe free of him, but he held her, breast to breast like an iron lover, and past that unyielding mailed shoulder Marcus could see the gilding of oily sweat on her terrified face. “You going to let that happen to those soft limbs of yours, over a bunch of swine who don’t really understand the faith at all?”

  She whispered, “But they’re...”

  “They’re what?”

  With his hand tangled in the knot of her hair she could look nowhere but into those cruel wolf eyes. Her face changed; she said spitefully, “They’re that superstitious lout Telesphorus and his whining jackal Ignatius. They were the only survivors.”

  “What about the Christians on the Quirinal Hill?”

  Her eyes flared wider. “You know?”

  “Who are they?”

  She stammered, gulping, “There—there aren’t any.” And she cried out in pain as his grip tightened on her arm and her hair.

  “You just said there were. Who are the Christians in the prefect Varus’ household?” And when she only stared at him, he shook her again, bending her body backward over the rack.

  She sobbed, “No, please, I don’t know—I really don’t—”

  He said through his teeth, “That’ll be too bad, won’t it?”

  “I—they—it’s the physician,” she gasped. “The physician and—and—the maidservant—”

  He dragged her back up to face him. Tears were running down her face, her bosom heaving with terror. Marcus looked away, sickened, his whole soul crying out that it couldn’t be Nicanor—not Nicanor.

  Arrius’ voice was a deadly rasp. “There must be a dozen maidservants in the house. Which one?”

  “I don’t know,” she gasped; Marcus saw their shadows thrown against the wall jerk suddenly, and her voice rose to a shriek. “I don’t know! I swear it! By God I swear it! It’s a—a Greek name, Chloris or Chloe or Charis or something like that—please...”

  The dark shapes on the stained wall moved in the fitful torchlight. He heard Arrius growl, “Where’d they take the girl?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” sobbed the woman. “I don’t know who you mean!” Her voice was thick and jerky with sobs; Marcus saw the shadows sway and turn, and looked around to see the centurion push the woman away from him. She collapsed, weeping, on the floor.

  Arrius said impassively, “Lying bitch.”

  She made no reply, only lay there sobbing, her inky hair spread round about her, gulping and sniveling incoherently not to be hurt.

  “Aurelia Pollia really have a Greek slave girl?” he asked softly after a moment.

  Marcus shook his head. “I think she used to have a Greek girl named Ledo, but right now her dresser’s an Armenian—Maali—and both her maids are Africans, sisters, Priscilla and Prudentia.”

  The centurion nodded. “But I’d say three quarters of the wealthy houses in the city have some Greek girl in them named Chloris or Chloe or Charis or Corrinna or Core. And damn near every one of them has a physician.”

  Marcus looked up quickly. “You think she was lying?”

  He shrugged. “If she was, she was pretty safe. You know the physician?”

  Marcus nodded wretchedly.

  “You think he’s a Christian?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, miserable with the truth that it was impossible to know. Before them on the floor, the woman groveled, sobbing, oblivious to their soft conversation. “I don’t think so, but...”

  “We’ll hold him in reserve, and I’ll cross-check with the others,” said Arrius. “No sense crushing the poor bastard’s finger joints on her word alone. Telesphorus and Ignatius, eh?” He stepped over to the door, pushed it open, and called, “Guard!”

  The woman Arete got slowly to her feet. With her struggles her gown had come unpinned and gaped open over her bosom; her damp black hair hung down like a river, framing her blotched, tear-streaked face. She said slowly, “I want to recant my faith.”

  Arrius shrugged, the dim lamplight glittering harshly over his mail shirt. His eyes might have been something dug from a mine. “Sorry. We’re not out for recantations. This is a civil case, and I don’t give an old date pit who you worship.”

  “But you promised,” she said desperately. “You said...”

  He glanced over at Marcus. “You hear me promise anything, boy?” Marcus shook his head.

  “You promised me,” said the woman frantically, as the guard entered and took her by the arm. Her voice rose to a shriek. “You stinking beast! You filthy pimp! The Lord God will smite you as he smote Ananias, as he smote Judas the traitor, as he...” The door shut behind them.

  “Whew.” Arrius removed his helmet and wiped the sweat from his brow with his arm. “She may be right,” he said after a moment. “If I was planning revenge or anything else, she’s the last person I’d tell of it. Odds are she knows nothing of the kidnapping at all. There’s ways of finding out.”

  Sullen silence reigned in the Christians’ cell. Arrius called out “Ignatius!” and was answered by that shrill rasping voice.

  “Oh Lord!” it prayed, “sustain me to the glories of martyrdom in thy Holy Name!”

  “Shut up, you stinking heretic Sodomite,” growled the young
boy in the corner.

  The little bald man scrambled nimbly to his feet and threw himself at Arrius. “Do your worst to me, imperial thug!” he cried, ripping open his tunic to bare an unwashed and rather concave breast. “The teeth of the beasts in the arena will be but the grindstones to mill my body, to make the pure bread of the Lord!”

  The older of the two men remaining in the cell sighed. “Gag him when you throw him to the lions,” he advised.

  “That’s it!” screamed Ignatius furiously. “Gag the truth! I should have known it of you, Doriskos! Any man who would champion me desecration of the holy Easter Sunday by making it a cheap Jewish movable feast...”

  “The Passover has always been...” began the younger boy, and the room showed every sign of degenerating into new squabbles. But at that moment Marcus heard the creak of the ladder in the corridor, and one of the guards from the room above emerged from me murky darkness.

  “Sir?” he said. “There’s a woman here to see the prisoners.”

  Arrius glanced from the rising uproar in the cell to the sentry, and back again. He signaled to Marcus, and they retired into the hall, unnoticed by any of the combatants in the room. In the next cell Arete and Telesphorus could be faintly heard, screaming abuse at each other.

  Arrius took Marcus by the arm and steered him back into the examination room. “Will you let her see them?” Marcus asked.

  “Oh, yes.” He shut the door and went to the rear of the chamber, stepping around the black crouching shape of the rack to the shadowed wall behind. “Here.” There was a faint scraping sound. Marcus saw the shadows of the wall shift and a darker oblong appear among them, where there had been only dirty and bloodstained plaster. Coming gingerly at Arrius’ signal, he saw a very small chamber, like a closet, concealed behind the hidden door.

  “Through that knothole you can see everything that passes in the room,” said the centurion. “The wall’s thin, and the ceiling’s pitched so you can hear a whisper. Will you do it?”