Startled out of the hellish irony of his reflections, Marcus heard the real fear in the dry thin voice. “Why?”
“You haven’t heard? This girl who was taken...”
“What?”
“It is noised all over the town,” said the Jew, his brows, thick and surprisingly dark, meeting suddenly over the hooked nose, “that the Christians stole a girl—that they’ll sacrifice her to their dead god—which is absurd, since not even the most degenerate offshoot of my faith would admit of human sacrifice—”
“What? No, wait—How did it get all over town?”
The Jew sniffed. “My son told me a pagan story once, about a man who whispered a secret into a hole in the ground, and the very reeds that grew from the earth whispered it to the wind, who bore the disgraceful tale through the world. I found chalked on my door this morning, ‘Baby-Eater’; the Forum buzzes with nothing else. After the escape of the Christians from the prison in the night there is talk of a general hunt. Rumors are flying in my neighborhood. My fellow clerks in the treasury have likewise found their symbols—the cross and the fish—chalked upon their doors, with curses and lewd words. To Jews and Christians the differences between us are obvious, but to the Greeks and the Romans, and the scum that crowd this city like maggots in the belly of a rotting dog, Jews and Christians are very much the same.”
Marcus shivered, knowing the old man was right. He remembered how in the courtyard of Quindarvis last night the two terms had been used interchangeably by the bearers and linkboys. With sudden enlightenment, he realized old Sixtus’ anxieties over the dangers to the innocent. Of course, he thought. Sixtus was a soldier, and an imperial governor. There can’t be much of the uttermost depths of human brute folly and ignorance that he hasn’t seen. He understood long ago what a general persecution would mean to the families of the Christians.
It was on the tip of his tongue to warn Symmachus about the raid on the catacombs, to tell him to beware. But what, after all, could the frail, bitter little clerk do to protect himself or the other members of his family? And if by some chance he did meet his son that day, it would ruin all hopes for saving Tullia. So he only said, “I haven’t seen him, not since he left Timoleon. But if I do, or if I hear of him, I’ll tell him you’re seeking him.”
“Always that,” sighed the father, and rose stiffly to his feet. “In my youth I prayed for a brilliant son with an ardent spirit, like a lion that roars and is not afraid. How the Lord, who sees all the future, must have laughed to grant me my desire. Better I had prayed for a son with the brains and the spirit of a willing ass.” He moved toward the door, and Marcus was uneasily conscious of how thin he was, how fragile his long clerkish hands, how brittle his body. He looked very breakable. He had seen the rack, in the dark hole under the Capitoline prison. Those old bones would come apart like overcooked meat.
The old Jew went on, “Judah is proud, proud as Satan. After he left Timoleon he would not seek out his friends that he knew there.” He sighed. “I must go. With the audits and the changes in the offices of the praetors, we are working by lamplight these nights, even though the men we work for wallow like hogs in wine. If you see my son, tell him that this is where I am.”
“All right.” The shadows had begun to fold down over that hot little room. Knowing where he would go tonight, Marcus dreaded the thought of meeting Judah Symmachus.
Those dark burning eyes rested on him briefly, curious. “You have left Timoleon yourself, then? I sought you there yesterday and today.”
Marcus paused, his mouth open to speak, and then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve left Timoleon.”
Symmachus pursed his lips for a moment, then sighed and took his leave. Marcus heard his footsteps retreat down the hall, stiff and halting and old, as though weighted down by an unsupportable burden of care.
When he crossed the Forum in the last slanting light of the late afternoon, Marcus saw that what Symmachus had said was perfectly true. On the bare rock face above the Silversmith’s Rise someone had painted a rude cross and some obscenities; he had earlier passed a gang of children throwing mud at an old blind Jewish beggar, and had heard them taunting, “Blood drinker! Body snatcher!”
“How did it get around?” he demanded, over a cheap supper of pork and cabbage at an eating-house off Tuscan Street to which he and the centurion had repaired after meeting outside the prison. “If the Christians didn’t know we were on their trail before, they sure as Fate will now!”
“They knew,” grumbled Arrius, mopping vinegary sauce from his plate with a hunk of bread. “They knew the minute we dropped on them, after tolerating them so long.”
Marcus was silent for a moment, watching the shopkeeper across the way putting up the shutters over his storefront with the aid of his wife. They worked like a smooth and well-oiled team while arguing at the top of their lungs. Evening shadows filled the street, but beyond the corner he could see that brightness lingered in the open spaces of the deserted Forum. Then he turned back to his companion. “Arrius, why have the Christians been tolerated for as long as they have?”
The centurion shrugged. “The emperor’s a just man. He’s not going to order wholesale slaughter without proof.”
“But everybody knows...” He paused, realizing that no philosopher argues from what “everybody knows.” “Surely among as many Christians as there are they’d have got some kind of proof?”
“You think so?” One long eyebrow was cocked at him. “There are many different groups of Christians; what’s true of one may not be true of others. And it’s not as easy as you might suppose to get an initiate to talk about the secrets of a mystery. Have you ever been initiated into a mystery, Professor?”
“Of course not!” Indignation made his raw voice squeaky.
Arrius’ back was to the light; the shadows of evening made it difficult to read his expression, but Marcus thought the hard cynicism of his voice had softened. “I don’t think there’s a man in the Praetorian who’d reveal the secrets of Mithras, even under torture. The bond of a mystery is a powerful one; you cannot understand its power unless you’ve experienced it for yourself. It’s knowledge within knowledge within knowledge; the true teaching at the heart binds the fellowship together. You can’t reveal it, or any part of it, to outsiders; an outsider simply would not, and could not, understand. Their partial knowledge could only pollute and distort the truth.” And seeing Marcus’ surprise and wonder to hear that new note in his voice, he added bluntly, “It’s like trying to talk about sex to a virgin.”
“Arrius,” said Marcus softly, “are you an initiate of Mithras?” He felt that he had glimpsed something whose very existence he had never before guessed, a mystical streak that ran like a buried river under the rock of the man’s street-wise intelligence and brutal sense of duty. But he should have guessed, he thought. The army was said to be riddled with the cult of the Soldier’s God, the Mystery of the Unconquerable Sun.
The centurion drained his wine cup and pushed his plate aside. “Any soldier,” he said thoughtfully, “would push your teeth in for even asking a question like that, but since you’re young and dumb we’ll let it go. What bothers me is that the anti-Christian feeling has gone far beyond the law. If it runs high enough—which it seems to be doing, between these rumors that are all over town and the news of the emperor’s latest defeat in Persia—people may start taking the law into their own hands. If there are any Christians to be killed, I’d rather we did it, after having a chance to question them first.”
They crossed the Forum, their footsteps echoing oddly in the deserted wilderness of marble. The only people left there were the public slaves, sweeping the temple porches, and an occasional loiterer outside the shadowy basilicas of the law-courts. Marcus had spent his last few sesterces on a long, late bath and a massage, and was surprised at how much improvement there was. He still couldn’t speak above a hoarse breathy croak, but at least he no longer feared he’d be crippled for life.
A squad of
fifty of the Praetorian Guard was assembled in the old public assembly grounds, the Comitium, before the doors of the Senate house. As Symmachus had said, there were lamps burning in the nearby treasury offices. Marcus wondered if the old Jew heard the soldiers assembling, and if he guessed the reason. He felt a twinge of guilt, as though he had betrayed the old man to his death.
At one time the Praetorian Guard had been entirely composed of Italians, but now it was mostly Germans, huge blond men in their bronze mail, their thighs like tree trunks beneath the scarlet hems of their tunics. The few Romans, Spaniards, and Illyrians among them had been chosen to match them in height and build; Marcus felt like a baby among them. These were the shock troops of Empire, tough and hard and trained to a hair. Their influence had boosted men to the precarious throne and slaughtered them upon it. The noise of their arms slapping out in salute was like the single crack of a sheet in the wind.
Watching Arrius as he walked among them in the cool twilight, Marcus found himself wondering how many of them were initiates of the Soldier’s God. How many of them had received that promise of life and salvation beyond the blood-edged bronze that any day could stop any of their hearts?
“The thing to remember,” Arrius was saying, “is that this isn’t an ordinary raid. It’s a hunt, and Christians are slippery as ferrets. Like ferrets they’re tunnelers, and slick as snakes. We’re hitting the old Tomb of Domitilla out on the Ardeatine Way—one of the old Flavian imperial tombs—that the Christians have been using for burials for years. Mithras only knows how far they’ve tunneled away from the original shaft of the mausoleum. That’s one reason I’m taking half a century to round up a dozen or so crazy Jew-Greeks. Hermann...”
“Ja?” A big German with a badly bent nose saluted.
“You’re in charge of stopping the other earths. You know the Ardeatine Way?”
“Ja. It’s tombs out ten, twelve mile from the city.”
“I want you to put three men at every major tomb or group of tombs two miles up and two miles down from the one we’re hitting. Cover any old shrines or abandoned houses as well. I want them in place before Antares clears the hills.”
The man nodded. “Is done.”
“Good. The rest of you I’m taking down with me. Take charcoal with you and mark your way. There’s no knowing how far those galleries run underground, or what other tombs or cellars they connect up with. If anyone bolts I want them taken alive. Same with the guards outside. I don’t want a bunch of dead Christians on my hands. Understand?”
There was a deep-throated rumble of assent, reminding Marcus for all the world of Priscus Quindarvis’ lions. Arrius looked around at them sharply, the faint stirring of the evening breeze ruffling at the stiff crimson horsehair of the cross-roached crest on his helmet. With his stride the chain of his mail shirt jingled, the leather of his scabbard slapping his thigh. The last stains of evening light were fading from a sky streaked rose and amber and heliotrope; they put an edge like a knife blade of brightness on the burnish of his helmet and a glint in the watching eyes of the men.
Arrius went on, his voice gruff and matter-of-fact. “There’s one more thing. It’s after sundown, and we’re going to be trespassing on the precincts of the dead.”
There was a silence and a shift of those glittering eyes. Marcus remembered the darkness of the trees around the tombs when he’d scrambled over Quindarvis’ wall. Even three years rigorous training in philosophy hadn’t quite wiped from his soul the tales his Greek nursemaid had used to tell.
“That’s why I asked for volunteers,” continued the centurion. “I asked for men whose gods are strong—stronger anyway than the ghosts of a bunch of dead Christians. Mithras is the Bringer of Light, and Donar’s a match for any ghost that ever walked. And you can bet your next month’s pay the dead won’t raise their hands against men who’ve come to avenge the defilement of their tombs. Now let’s go trap those ghouls.” He glanced sideways at Marcus. “You ready for another walk, boy?”
It was not, on the whole, an unpleasant walk. The Praetorians moved at Caesar-speed, that swift ground-eating pace whose uniformity served everywhere in the empire as a standard of distance, but Marcus found that despite his soreness, once he fell into the rhythm of it he was able to keep pace with them easily. They passed out of Rome over the same way he had traveled behind Sixtus’ hired litter last night—through the Naevian Gate and the commercial suburbs that lay beyond it, past a big suburban house or two, into the green darkness of the warm country night. In the ranks no one spoke, but the beat of their hobnailed boots on the stone of the roadbed was a hard steady pulse that worked itself into Marcus’ blood. The moon had not yet risen; early starlight silvered the mailed shoulders, tipped the tall helmet-crests and dyed the crimson of their tunics to the blackness of old blood. In time they began to pass tombs: the dovecote columbaria of poor workers’ fraternities, the walled little cemeteries where the poor lay under gabled shelters of tiles or simply buried in clay jars, the better-off in brick tombs, shaped like houses or temples, shaded by their trees. The larger ones were surrounded by orchards or boasted a statue or two, glimmering like ghosts in the darkness. The smell of roses, the flowers of the dead, was suffocating on the warm night air.
At the first such large family tomb, three soldiers fell out from the ranks, slapped their breasts in salute, and moved off silently into the trees. Arrius knew his business well, thought Marcus. Two men are too easily separated in the hushed darkness of a graveyard on a moonless night. Three can laugh their fears to scorn. In a distant field a run-down shrine could be seen, dark against the paler grass, a tangle of thorn and overgrown trees, and guards were sent to cover that as well. They passed other tombs, or clusters of tombs, dark brick or white moony marble, sometimes low and square, occasionally fanciful, pyramids, or pillars, or towers. The night was as warm as a spring day. Marcus found himself remembering that in two days was the pagan festival of Midsummer, when Churaldin’s people—and probably the relatives of most of the men he marched with, back in Germany—would be binding human captives into their green wicker cages and setting them alight.
Nero, he thought, would have loved it.
They reached the Christian cemetery, a white foursquare tomb that had belonged to some connection of the imperial Flavians and had later come to be used as a catacomb for the Christian community. The marble walls looked cracked and dirty, half-overgrown with vines. The pepper and willow trees that shrouded it looked untrimmed, the little funerary chapel in the nearby orchard, run-down. The silence and blown leaves reminded him somehow of Sixtus’ house, a richness fallen upon evil times.
Half the remaining soldiers moved on up the road, to cover the possible bolt-holes farther south. Silent as a panther, one of the men scouted the abandoned orchards and chapel and returned to whisper softly, “The grass has been trampled.”
Silhouetted in darkness against the shadows of the grove, Arrius nodded his head.
They waited in silence for what seemed an interminable time to let Hermann get his men in place. Through the dark trees, Marcus could see the stars and recognized when the claws of the Scorpion appeared over the eastern hills. Distantly, only a little south of them, he could see the twinkling lights of Quindarvis’ villa and, much closer, the stand of trees that marked his lion pit. He wondered what that suave and cynical family friend would have to say when Varus returned to find his daughter missing. How much of the pity and horror he would express—had expressed—would be real, and how much mere political accompaniment to the father’s grief?
He wondered where they’d buried that poor little drunken slave, whom the gladiators had drowned in the fishpond.
Arrius said, “Time.”
Marcus looked up and saw the red angry eye of Ares’ star glaring balefully above the black line of the eastern hills.
At the bottom of its twelve worn marble steps, the narrow tomb door opened easily. The smell that rushed forth was choking, a stink of rot, of dampness, of rats, of f
lesh putrefying in darkness. The centurion took a cold torch from one of his men and lighted it from the closed bronze lantern an orderly carried. The ruddy flickering light spread over the narrow gallery before them, picking out old gilding, tarnished inscriptions, statuary busts befouled by rats. Above them on the vaulted ceilings a fretwork of wreaths and roses announced to the world the wealth of the builders of the tomb, a hollow hymn of forgotten names. On one wall someone had drawn a cross.
Leaving five men to guard the steps, Arrius led the way forward, Marcus and the remaining guards following in silence. Their shadows loomed huge, grotesque giants wavering over the carved sarcophagi that lay in some burial niches, the elaborate ash-chests of metal and precious stones that occupied others. At the far end of the room a shaft had been cut into the floor. The smell of putrescence rose from it in a gagging cloud.
At the bottom of the rude ladder that led down the shaft, a narrow hallway led into blackness. Smoke from the torch brushed the soot-stained ceiling; on either side, niches had been cut into the clammy gray stone of the walls and sealed over with slabs of cheap flawed marble, or with tile. Sunk in the cement, coins glinted, and an occasional, long-dried bottle that had contained perfume. Sometimes names or the symbols—the cross, the fish, the lamb, the cup—had been chalked onto the slabs. The torchlight only penetrated a few yards into the horrible gloom, and beyond its perimeter, wicked little red eyes flashed and winked in the dark.
As they moved along the gallery into the black shadows, doorways became visible, other passages cutting the first at right angles. Marcus fumbled a piece of chalk from the purse at his belt and marked arrows, to guide them back. Some of the soldiers lit torches from the centurion’s and moved off to explore the branching corridors; others remained with him, looking about them uneasily in the dark. They passed a doorway where the smell was stronger and found a square burial chamber, sealed niches let into all four walls, and another shaft with a ladder leading down to a level below. Arrius whispered, “Mithras knows how far these tunnels extend,” and Marcus replied, “I didn’t know there were this many Christians in Rome!”
Search the Seven Hills Page 18
