by Stant Litore
Polycarp had prepared himself. All the previous night, he’d waited in a cramped shed with little sleep and no company but the occasional, distant moans of wandering dead downhill by the river. A long time he’d lain awake on the straw, listening for those groaning cries. His eyes stung with tears. In the dark, he contemplated the misery of the earth. Those moaning things by the Tiber bank had been men and women, fearing and loving and craving. Locked into little tenements that crowded narrow water browned with human waste, in life they’d hungered and found no answer to their hunger. Now that hunger had been translated into something eternal. At one point during the night, Polycarp had pressed his hands hard over his ears, unable to bear any more. He’d turned his face into the straw and wept. He was old; it came to him suddenly that he needed to find another, some other to care for the gathering. In the next day he might be dead. He didn’t think about the fire pit; he thought only of the weakness of his body and the emptiness of his hands, which held no bread, could never hold enough bread to feed those who needed it. And within every set of eyes he’d seen, living and dead, there had been broken lives, so many. What had his life been worth, when the gathering was so small, the hunger so great? In those cries in the night, he heard all of Rome suffering, and he was spent.
Toward dawn as he lay half awake, he’d heard a new sound: the raucous cries of geese rising in the distance above their nests at the river. He listened, his eyes wide in the dark. The dead must be disturbing the geese, as the Celts had disturbed them in the chill at dawn, centuries ago. Perhaps those cries were cries of warning. Perhaps the cries of the geese were no less a sign than the beetle in the field of wheat—were there Romans in the city even now lying awake, listening, even as he was?
The morning light brought resolution. Polycarp’s guards gave him no food and little to drink, but did bring a basin of shallow water to wash his face. He cupped his hands in it, brought the water to his face. The coolness of it had brought fresh life to him; he recalled his baptism in Thessaly. His master was sufficient to this day, even if he himself was not.
Now, as he neared the temple end of the courtyard accompanied by a guardsman, Polycarp turned his head and gave the jurors a more searching look, and caught his breath. Among them was a face he knew. On the back benches, huddled in on himself, silent, sat Marcus Antonius. The boy’s bowed shoulders bore a toga in the patrician cut, and Polycarp sorrowed to see it. What was in the boy’s heart, forced to wear the uniform of all that he’d rejected? It was plain to see that he did not sit there dressed so of his own accord. The boy’s face was dark with bruises. His sullen eyes gazed at the temple grounds; as though ashamed of where he sat and what he wore, he didn’t look at the father.
Polycarp let out his breath slowly. Ah, Marcus, Marcus. Something began to ache in his chest. How bad had the raid on the insula been? Had the hiding place in his larder been found? Had Regina made it out? Had anyone? A momentary guilt sat queasily in his belly. Regina had wanted him to hide all signs of their faith, conceal themselves entirely; he had refused that extremity. What pain had his choices brought now to her and the others?
The guardsman’s hand clutched Polycarp’s arm, and the old man stopped, straightened. He was a few steps before the curule seat. Turning his eyes from Marcus’s face, he could feel the intensity of Caius’s gaze. For Marcus, at least, he must stand tall and represent the gathering well. With an inner growl, he reminded himself: his God was the same within the walls of this temple as he was outside of them. A man who served him must stand no less steadily here than elsewhere.
“Polycarp of Larissa, then of Smyrna, now of Rome.” Caius’s voice was coldly formal. He’d assumed the voice of the praetor urbanus, with the full weight of Roman tradition and Roman justice behind him. “You are called to give answer before the People of Rome in the presence and precinct of the goddess Justitia.”
“And I have come, Caius Lucius.” Polycarp made a show of looking about the temple grounds. Then he shook his head slightly, as though bewildered. “Where are the advocates?”
“You are a Greek.” The praetor’s voice was sharp. “And you have lived many years in the Subura, surrounded by the most disreputable persons. Your citizenship cannot be verified. Therefore none are needed; the jury requires only a questioning of the accused and the confirming testimony of two witnesses.”
“I see. But you are wrong, Caius Lucius Justus. I do have an advocate, and one who will speak directly to the hearts of the jurors. Maybe they will listen. Maybe they will not.” He shook his head. “Where are your witnesses, then?”
“In good time.” Caius waved his hand in dismissal. “First there are questions I intend to ask. It would be best for the admissions to come from your lips. The offenses for which you stand here carry a capital penalty, but I would offer you the opportunity to die well, Polycarp.”
The corner of Polycarp’s lip curved. “I thank you for that respect, Caius. I hope I have lived well enough to die well.” He bowed his head slightly. The chains were heavy about his wrists, and it was difficult in the heat to stay standing; he longed for a chair. But his comfort did not matter. What mattered this day was that he stand with dignity and bear witness only to things that were true, whatever the threat. His words must plant seeds in dry hearts. Those jurors would likely burn him, but he might yet with his words wake them to the futility and falsehood of the roles they played. Something might begin here that would continue in conversations and disputes and questionings around every family room in patrician Rome. It was not only those jurors on their benches who listened. His words here would matter to every member of the gathering in Rome wherever they now hid, whether in Suburan insulae or merchants’ houses or high villas. His words would matter to every member of every gathering hidden in cities across the world and to every gathering in centuries yet unborn. Before so vast an audience, he must stand without giving thought to the weakness of his body or the possibilities of failure. “Ask your questions of me. I am ready.”
The praetor stood very straight, Roman straight, in his seat; his white marble chair had no back. Chairs with ornately carved backs were for barbarian princes and slothful magistrates in frontier towns. A Roman wanted no prop to hold him up.
Caius watched him intently. “You do not deny that you are a leader of the followers of the rabbi from Palestine?”
“No, I do not deny it. Why should I?”
“And that you have, often and frequently, led others, both citizens and otherwise, to these strange beliefs?”
The jurors leaned forward on their benches, the low rustle of their togas and the low murmur of their voices sounding like the coming of a flood, rushing slowly nearer out of the distance.
Polycarp paused and lifted his head. For a moment his eyes shone bright. “I am an old man, Caius.”
“Answer the question—”
“—I am answering the question.” He swallowed his anger; he must not allow this praetor, who stank of fear and eagerness for blood, to prod him. “But I am old, and I talk—slowly. Also because I am old, I like to have company when I break my bread and when I go to worship. I used to have old men like myself to talk with, but now I am the only one left. Sometimes it is good to have young people who will pass you a bowl of wine and listen to your stories.”
He looked at the jurors. Many of them wore frowns of discomfort. The youth who had beaten his chest with his hand and cried out Give us back our fathers’ Rome! looked stunned, as though he’d been slapped. One middle-aged man on the back bench was chewing on his cheek—as though chewing on unexpected thoughts—much as a goat might chew its cud while resting in the pastures of Thessaly. Marcus appeared to be holding his breath.
Polycarp’s words gave their anger nothing to feed on. He could see in their faces and in the way some of them turned to whisper to each other that he was not what they’d expected. After all, they had come not to perform the true duty of a jury but to see with their own eyes the desecrator, the one who starved the dead of
food and then touched the dead with his hands. They had come for a quick trial and a quick killing.
It was harder to grasp the iron spear of rage in clenched fists when you had confronting you no visible monster but only an old man who talked about his life, one not unlike the grandfathers in their own families, those men who were soon to join the honored dead and to whom those families looked for wisdom and moral grounding. It was likely that when the jurors heard stories of the desecrators—those who led astray the youth of Rome and woke the resting dead—they didn’t think of them in the shape of an old man. The accused who now stood before them on the sand: was he a betrayal, a perversion of everything they looked to in an aged man, or was he one of their elders calling them to account? Their faces bore the confusion of this moment.
“You will not deceive us with the smooth rhetoric of a Greek, Polycarp.” Caius’s voice, clear and cold, cut through the rustle of noise, his words a reminder that it was at least not a Roman elder to whom they listened. “You will answer questions with an I do or an I do not, with the plainness that the good citizens of our jury expect. We are not here to hear your stories but to do justice.”
“I see.” Polycarp met Caius’s eyes, and after a moment the Roman blinked and looked quickly away. Polycarp sighed. In that brief gaze, he’d seen a grief that would howl like a wolf in the hills, if it were not tightly chained and muzzled; the praetor had blinked before he could see more. Caius was not a youth, but he was too young to carry such a weight of sorrow and remorse within him. How had he been hurt so badly? Had he no wife to soothe his cares? No children to bring him the healing of laughter? He had no gathering to confess his sins and his suffering to, and his gods were impatient with confessions.
“What else do you have to ask?” Polycarp said.
Caius looked shaken, as though he’d sensed Polycarp’s searching of his heart. He drew a breath, but his voice now was hoarse. “Polycarp, do you teach to others the perverse religion of the Jews, taking from them the religion of our fathers?”
Polycarp would have liked to quibble with teach, perverse, Jews, and taking, but decided there was nothing to be gained in it. It was a simple enough question. “I do.”
“Do you teach them that by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of your cult’s dead founder, that they can attain immortality?”
They were speaking different languages and different scripts, the praetor and the father. Polycarp held the silence a moment—the murmur from the jury was getting ugly again—“I do. However—”
“Do you then consume flesh and blood?”
“I consume bread and wine.” Polycarp’s voice became a growl.
“An I do or an I do not will suffice, Polycarp. Do you take into your body flesh and blood?”
“I do not.”
“Do your followers?”
“Certainly not.”
“And is it untrue that you meet for your rites among the bodies of the Roman dead?”
A weight of dread settled over Polycarp. So Julia had revealed that. He’d feared it. The Catacombs might be watched in the future. It seemed certain now that he would not be a lone sacrifice. As in the time of Nero, there might be widespread arrests. Rome had burned once in a time of plague, and his people had burned even after the other fires were put out. Was that what his dream had foreboded? He could hear the muffled click of Despair’s claws on the sandy ground. A glance across the courtyard showed the great beast settling into a crouch beside the cold fire pit. The beast was hungry.
A strange feeling of continuity came over him as he gazed across the dusty courtyard at the Roman praetor. How many had stood here—not in this walled compound, but in a hundred arenas like it, in different cities, questioned in different languages yet speaking the same lines he now must speak, held because they had devoted themselves to sharing bread and had denounced those who kept their larders locked, or because they had shared at times with their neighbors a fierce certainty that there were some things that locked doors and high walls and hired swords cannot turn back—and a fierce hope that something else could. He remembered Paul, who’d worn chains much like these a few generations ago. He remembered Yirmiyahu before the king of Yerusalem and Daniel before the princes of Babylon. He glanced once at Marcus, who sat with lowered head on the jury, wondering if he too might one day have to stand in chains like his. He wondered who else would stand and give witness, after him. His lips were dry with thirst, and the heat against his scalp made his body want to sway where it stood, but he stood firm, and his heart hardened within him. This was the crucial day: he would not be standing here if his master did not have something for him to say and something for that jury to hear. He believed that. He had to. He turned his back on the beast and the pit.
“It is true,” he murmured, “that we meet in whatever places seem safest.”
“Your own words convict you.” Caius’s lip curled, though his eyes remained unsettled. “I give you this chance, Polycarp, to make amends. Do you now recant your superstition and pledge to do what you can to return the children you have corrupted to the ways of their fathers?”
Recant. A hard knot of anger burned in Polycarp’s chest. “Forty years and six I have served my master, and in all that time he has treated me well. Why should I turn my back and blaspheme him now?” He faced the jury, his voice rising, his patience fraying. “In our father Peter’s time,” Polycarp declared before Caius could interrupt him, “the Emperor of Rome threw many of the gathering into the Colosseum, where they were eaten. Your fathers wished to believe that those who died in the Colosseum were bread to satisfy the ancestors. Now we all stand here again, in this arena. Your praetor intends my death to atone for the dishonor you believe my gathering has done to your ancestors. And just as the Emperor casts bread to the crowds, your praetor intends to cast some bread to you, good jurors. Because you are hungry. You are in crisis. It is hoped that my death may relieve the bite of your hunger for certainty and safety, and that it may relieve the bite of the dead’s hunger for honor. I fear you are much deceived. My death is not the bread you need. Nor are you the people in Rome who need bread most.”
Polycarp grunted as though dismissing the jury and turned to the curule chair, his voice stern now. “But come, let us finish these games, Caius Lucius Justus. I do not know how long my body can stand on this hot sand.”
Caius observed him a moment with narrowed eyes. The jury seemed to be holding its breath. The youth who’d called out was frowning as though a forest had sprung into being in the soil of his mind and he was now trying to find his way through it. The man of middle age was still chewing slowly on his cheek, watching the father now with a cold, concentrated look, as though to say, Your words do not move me, old Greek. Marcus still looked weary, resigned. Polycarp sighed softly. Though it was the others he must persuade, it was Marcus’s heart that mattered to him most. It was painful to see him so. He would like to put some strength into the boy’s heart, some firmness into his back. He yearned to call out to the boy: Remember you are a child of God, Marcus. He has wakened you and adopted you from your old life. He has fed you, bread and wine. He has clothed you in his love, a finer garment than any toga. He has commissioned you, equipping you with a gift invisible yet potent: your desire to seek out truth, whatever the cost, and prune from your life all that is untrue. You are brave, my son, and you have been adopted into the family of the bravest, by one who is paterfamilias to all who live and breathe. Take pride in your sonship. No son of our God need lower his head at the world’s scorn or its bruising. Remember who you are, my son.
But of course he could not call those words across the sand. He could only speak the words that were right for this day and this place, and hope that Marcus heard in them the words he could not say and found strength.
Caius stirred. “So be it.” His eyes were dark. “Guardsmen! The first witness. Bring her.”
There was a rustle; someone was being brought out from around the back of the temple. A murmur passed
through the jury as a woman was led out into the courtyard—without chains.
It was Julia. Plump and red faced in the heat, she avoided looking at Polycarp, but went to stand a few strides to his left, between him and the jury. Her garments were finer than he recalled—she wore thick-soled, freshly made sandals and a gown of purple, with pearls about her throat. Though her face shone with sweat, she looked very much like an equestrian merchant’s wife, and not a baker’s. Polycarp glanced about, but did not see Piscus. Perhaps he was waiting behind the temple too. Two witnesses, Caius had said.
Well. Now the test truly began.
“Julia,” Caius said quietly. “You carry an august name, the name of one of our most revered houses. A caprice and a prideful overreaching on your parents’ part, I expect. But today you can show that you merit such a name as that of the Julii. Your words will help us decide on a just verdict and just action, and will aid us in protecting Rome.”
Julia’s shoulders were very tense. Polycarp watched her, a flicker of anger swiftly dampened by sorrow. The line of her shoulders spoke of pain from old wounds reopened, of regret, of bitterness directed against herself and others. He marveled that the jury could not see the way she stood; to his eyes, her pain this day was so visible, it hurt to gaze at her. What Pandora’s box had she unlocked within her breast when she left the insula?
“You stand in the precinct of the goddess Justitia,” Caius was intoning. “Will you speak truth and verity?”
“I will.” Julia’s voice was firm, calm. None of the tension in her shoulders made it into her tone.
“You lived for some time in Polycarp’s insula, did you not?”
“I did. For half a year. My husband rented another place before that.”
