The seventh day before the Ides of Germanicus.
Day three of the Games.
The first hour of the day.
The usual crop of drowsy-eyed clients filled Pliny’s atrium. With one significant addition-Martial. Pliny had half expected this, but didn’t relish it. He had hoped to have the poet as a genial acquaintance, even a helpful assistant in the Verpa affair, but not as a client. But by attending the salutatio, Martial was proposing himself for that status, and Pliny didn’t see how he could refuse. In a moment of careless generosity, he’d brought it on himself. Now, as the poet’s patron, he had obligations toward him. If the mos maiorum still meant anything at all, he would have to use what small political capital he possessed to get his poems read by the emperor. This meant fawning on the chamberlain, Parthenius-a thought which filled him with disgust. Well, all that was for another day. He had too much else on his plate at the moment.
When the others shuffled out, clutching their daily handouts of food and coin, Martial made no move to leave. It was an awkward moment for both men. But before either could speak, a strange voice sounded from the back of the room. Pliny, looking up, saw that two men whom he did not recognize lingered near the door. One, the shorter of the two, decently dressed in a Greek cloak; the other tall, shabby, long-bearded, and very old. They approached, the short man taking the lead, bowing as he came.
“I am Evaristus, bishop of Rome,” the man said. “My companion is Ioannes of Patmos. He is a visitor to our city. We are Christians.” He said it as easily as one might say, We are rug merchants. He was a man of middle age, olive-skinned, with gray starting in his beard. He searched Pliny’s face with intense black eyes.
Pliny returned a blank look. “Christians,” he said, trying to remember in what connection he had heard the word before. “You are their high priest?”
“One of them,” Evaristus gave a deprecating smile.
“And your business with me?”
“Today our brothers Pollux and the young man Arminius, and our sisters Modestina, Artemisia, and Graciliana are sitting at the feet of God. They will live forever, hallelujah. But I have come to beg for their bodies, to bury them according to our rite.”
“This is a police matter, I can’t allow it.”
But Martial interrupted with an unpleasant laugh. “Immortal are they? What, merely by dying? Seems a cheap and easy way to achieve immortality. Any gladiator can do it. The Isis priests, so I hear, make you pay through the nose and spend months in initiations.”
The bishop seemed to notice him for the first time. His black eyes flashed. “You are that poet, I believe.”
“I am delighted to hear my fame has spread so far.”
“Oh yes, I know your works: the language of the gutter employed with the skill of an artist for the solitary purpose of drawing blood. The women, whores when they aren’t bald, toothless and eyeless; the men, gluttons, hypocrites and perverts.” Martial opened his mouth but the bishop silenced him with a dismissive flick of the hand. “I know what you’re going to say: you attack the vice, not the person; your verse is lascivious while you yourself are chaste. But I tell you, God sees through that false rhetoric.” “Rhetoric! What does a drag-tail fellow like you know about rhetoric?” Martial sputtered. “I was a professor of it for twenty years before my eyes were opened.” It was said with more than a trace of pride. And, for once in his life, the poet found himself without a riposte.
While the two men stared each other down, Pliny was recalling a public reading he had attended some years earlier, given by the historian Cornelius Tacitus: How these Christians were every bit as atheistical as the Jews, from whom their sect had sprung, though now they claimed to hate the Jews. Like everything filthy and degrading, Tacitus had said, they eventually found their way to Rome. Nero accused them of starting the great fire that had nearly destroyed the city some thirty years ago, and executed some of them with particular savagery-so much so that they excited a degree of public sympathy. It was the common belief, nevertheless, that they engaged in orgies and sacrificed children to their god and even ate them. Probably an exaggeration, but who could say, since they practiced their rites in secret.
Then another thought struck him.
“Fellow, bishop, whatever you call yourself, answer me one question. Is the seven-branched candelabrum a symbol of your cult?”
“Certainly not! That is for the ones who reject Our Lord, who misunderstand their own prophecies. Our symbol of recognition is a fish.”
“Then Pollux and the others you named are not Jews?”
“Not since they chose the true path to salvation. I converted Pollux myself some years ago, and from that day onward he never struck a man.”
“You mentioned four others besides Pollux. We found a sixth body, a boy of twelve or thirteen, Hylas he was called. Is he not one of yours?”
Evaristus shook his head. “He is not known to me.”
Pliny motioned Martial to come closer and they exchanged a few whispered words. If Pollux was, in fact, one of these Christians, then perhaps the sketch of the candelabrum and the Jewish dagger had been planted as clues to implicate him by someone who thought he was still a Jew. And who would that someone be? Lucius leapt to mind; he certainly had the motive. But the question remained, how was it done? Who had come through that open window, if not a Jewish assassin? And how could Pollux not have heard sounds of the struggle? And then why was the boy Hylas killed by the other slaves if he was neither a Jew nor a Christian? Whatever theory he had had about the case before was now shipwrecked. He would have to begin all over again. There were too many puzzles, and Pliny, whose whole professional life dealt with certainties, with documents and numbers, hated puzzles. He discharged his annoyance at Evaristus.
“They say you are atheists and haters of mankind. You gather secretly like rats in the sewers. You do not sacrifice to our emperor. If even half what they say about you is true, you deserve to be punished. What gives you the nerve to come here and ask me for a favor?”
The bishop returned his angry gaze with eyes as bright as steel; there was no fear in them. “We are men of peace, we obey the laws and those who are set over us. We pray for the emperor, though not to him. We mean no harm to anyone. I say to you, Senator, save yourself, be born again in Christ Jesus-”
“Macro!” Pliny shouted to his door keeper. “Escort these men out.”
Until then, the bishop’s companion, the cadaverous, bearded ancient in his threadbare cloak, had stood silently by, giving no sign that he understood what was being said. Macro’s firm hand on his shoulder set him off. Without warning, he flung his scrawny arms wide and burst into shrill Greek. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. Babylon, the harlot of the seven hills. Alas, alas for the great city that was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet. Alas that in a single hour she should be laid waste…” He stared with all his eyes, seeing something that was invisible to the rest of them. While his breath came short and sharp between his teeth, he poured out a torrent of words.
Bishop Evaristus, for the first time showing fear, looked this way and that. “The vision comes upon him sometimes, unfortunate timing, please excuse us…” He tried, with Macro, to push Ioannes toward the door but the holy man was not to be silenced. The Greek was so rapid, the man gasping in the throes of his vision, Pliny could only understand bits of it-a woman riding on a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns-the seven heads were the seven hills of Rome and the woman was drunk on the blood of God’s people-foul and malignant sores on those who wore the mark of the beast and worshipped its image, plainly the emperor himself-the seas, the rivers, and springs were turning to blood and every living thing dying-now the kingdom of the beast, plunged in darkness and men gnawing their tongues in agony-tormented in sulfurous flames…
“Enough!” Pliny sprang from his chair. “Monsters! Out of my house!”
When they were gone, the old man’s voice echoing down the street, Martial groped for a stool and sank on to it. There was a moment of shocked silence while the two men looked at each other. “What on earth was that about?” breathed Pliny. Martial shook his head. “Sounds treasonous to me.” “Well, that’s not our concern right now.” “Yes, but d’you think one of them could be Verpa’s killer? Blame it on the Jews?” “I doubt it. Why bother if we’re all going to go up in flames soon anyway?” The sound of a girl weeping came from behind the half-open door of one of the side chambers.
“Calpurnia!” Pliny ran to her at once and clasped her in his arms. No telling how much she had understood but the girl seemed scared out of her wits. A moment later, Amatia appeared from her bedroom, her face still puffy with sleep. Between them they got Calpurnia to a couch.
Martial watched discreetly from the sidelines. When some calm had been restored he asked Pliny if he was going back to Verpa’s house today.
“I’m staying with my wife. Tomorrow the will is going to be read. I will attend that. Wills, at least, are something I understand. Come with me if you like.”
The poet bowed himself out.