The Devil Will Come (25 page)

‘I’m sorry your palace is burning,’ Tigellinus said glumly.

Nero shrugged. ‘It will all be for the good. Meanwhile, let’s stay here and watch the fire. It possesses a certain beauty, does it not?’

On the fifth day of the fire Nero toured the city, acting like a proper emperor: directing the firebreaks, ordering temporary shelter for the refugees on the Campus Martius and calling for grain stores to be delivered from Ostia. Yet despite his public overtures, there were widespread rumors that he and his henchmen were behind the conflagration and there was growing resentment
that
he had taken so long to return to Rome.

When informed of the rumors, Nero’s creative response was ‘Fight fire with fire.’ Soon every Praetorian and vigiles commander was ordered to pass the word to the citizens of Rome that they had evidence that Christian arsonists were to blame – their retribution for the Roman crucifixion of Christ. Before long, vigilantes were patrolling the city, hauling known Christians from any unburned dwellings and shops and killing them on the spot.

By the next morning the winds had died down and the fires had stopped spreading. But one piece of news sent Nero into fits of rage. While he had completely lost his Domus Transitoria and would have to make ready a temporary palace, he learned that Tigellinus’s pride and joy, the Basilica Aemilia, had survived the inferno without so much as a scorch mark on its marble façade. Tigellinus was even said to be boasting of his good fortune.

Nero’s underling had fared better than his emperor! So he sent word over to Balbilus’s estate that some rough justice was in order. That evening a fire broke out in a fancy silk and linen shop on the lowest floor of Tigellinus’s building.

It soon engulfed the entire complex – and so began the second phase of the great fire. It would spread up the Capitoline Mount and ravage the sacred temples that had escaped earlier destruction. The Temple of Jupiter the Stayer would be lost, the Temples of Luna and Hercules, the Theatre of Taurus. On the
down-slope
of the Capitoline Hill the fire would breach the Servian Walls and demolish large public buildings on the southern edge of the Campus Martius where hoards of refugees were huddling. Had it not been for an expanse of stone colonnades and a sudden drop in the wind, the fire would have burned through the refugee camp and killed thousands more. When it finally ended two days later only four of Rome’s fourteen districts would have escaped destruction.

When word spread that the Basilica Aemilia was burning, the priest Cornelius was summoned because several members of his congregation had stores within the building and Christians were duty-bound to help their brethren. Peter the Apostle was by Cornelius’s side when the messenger arrived and the two of them rushed to the scene with a contingent of Christian men.

Vibius had not been pleased by the order to torch the Basilica Aemilia in broad daylight but Balbilus had been unwilling to disobey a direct command from the Emperor. As Vibius emerged from a rear window just before a plume of fire burst into the rear alley, a shopkeeper saw him and gave chase but lost him in the winding side streets.

When Cornelius, Peter and their lot arrived, the complex was fully ablaze and there was little for them to do but join the swelling crowd and comfort distraught shop-owners.

Peter placed his arm around the shoulder of a sobbing wine merchant and whispered that Christ
would
look after the man and his family. The merchant suddenly stiffened and pointed. ‘That’s the man I saw who started the fire.’

Vibius had returned to watch his handy work from a vantage point six-deep in the crowd. At the sight of the merchant pointing at him he hurried to the rear of the throng.

In his youth in Bethesda Peter had been a fisherman; he and his brother Andrew had gotten into plenty of hard scrapes to protect their fishing grounds. Jesus had preached non-violence but Peter never shied away from an injustice. ‘Let’s give chase!’ he shouted and the group of Christians moved as one.

The younger men kept close with the fleeing Vibius but the older ones stretched out, struggling to keep their nearest comrade within view. Peter and Cornelius took up the rear, trotting southwards as best they could through the crowded smoke-filled lanes.

When Peter and Cornelius reached the Porta Appia, Peter was obliged to stop and rest. ‘We’ve lost sight of them,’ Peter said ruefully. ‘I’m sorry to be burdensome.’

‘I hope I’m half as fleet when I’m your age,’ Cornelius said.

Soon one of their group was running back toward them. ‘We’ve got him trapped,’ the man said breathlessly. ‘He’s nearby in a villa.’

Balbilus’s villa had become a haven.

Nearly a hundred Lemures were gathered in Balbilus’s
reception
rooms, their own homes threatened or burned. Most of them were wealthy, the women and children spoiled, and the lack of their usual comforts had made for a surly competitiveness for basic necessities. Balbilus had good personal stores of grain and wine but he would need to ask Nero to send special provisions within a short while.

He was in his bedchamber on the top floor of the villa bitterly muttering at the ruckus that had erupted below when his servant Antonius knocked urgently at his door.

‘What is it?’ Balbilus asked the man irritably. ‘What are my visitors complaining about now? Aren’t they grateful they’ve a roof over their heads?’

‘There’s a mob,’ Antonius said breathlessly. ‘They’ve entered the gates.’

‘What mob?’

The servant pointed out the window.

Balbilus slipped on his sandals and went onto the balcony. A crowd was in his garden, wielding torches, and when they saw the tall olive-skinned patrician peering down at them they began shouting.

‘What is it you people want?’ Balbilus called down.

One shouted back, ‘We want the man who started the fire at the Basilica Aemilia! We know he’s here!’

‘I assure you, there’s no one here who started any fires,’ Balbilus bellowed back.

Another man yelled, ‘Give him to us or we’ll burn you out.’

‘I am the Emperor’s astrologer! Leave here at once or you’ll have to answer to the Praetorians!’

Balbilus turned away.

‘Go away, scum,’ Antonius shouted down at them before closing the window.

‘Who are they?’ Balbilus asked him.

‘I don’t know, master.’

‘Find out.’

Balbilus hurried down the stairs and found Vibius drinking wine in the crowded courtyard.

‘You were followed,’ Balbilus growled at him.

‘So I hear,’ he answered coolly. ‘I told you we should have waited until nightfall.’

‘Maybe so. Now what do we do?’

Vibius finished his drink, tossed the goblet into the reflecting pool and unsheathed his sword.

‘What good will that do against a mob?’ Balbilus asked.

‘While they’re chasing after me, take everyone down to the columbarium. It’s your only hope. They may burn the villa but they’ll leave as soon as their stomachs start growling. Get word to Nero. Go to Antium. You’ll think of something. I’ll kill as many of them as I can.’

There were more shouts from the garden and a torch flew through one of the reception room windows. A young Lemures quickly plucked it from the floor and doused it in the pool.

In the garden Peter and Cornelius had arrived. ‘Cease your violence!’ Peter shouted at the torch-thrower. ‘Know you whether there are innocents inside?’

Vibius waved his sword and ran out a side door. Roaring and swearing fiercely at the assembled throng
he
fled toward the Via Appia. The younger Christian men were upon him like dogs on a hare.

A strong young Christian caught up with Vibius and tackled him from behind. The two men grappled fiercely on the ground for a few seconds. At first contact, Vibius had dropped his sword but he managed to get his hands around the young fellow’s neck and pressed his thumbs hard against his windpipe. Gasping, the man pushed Vibius away with a foot to the chest. As they separated, a chain around the man’s neck broke off in Vibius’s hand.

Vibius cast it away and grabbed the nearby sword. Rising to one knee, he sliced the Christian’s belly open in a deft move, spilling coils of guts. On his feet again, Vibius fled toward the Appian Way, the men in hot pursuit.

‘Quickly!’ Balbilus yelled at the Lemures. ‘To the columbarium! Follow me!’

They streamed from the villa through his fruit grove and entered the rectangular mausoleum with its barrel-vaulted roof. Antonius held the trapdoor open until his master and all his guests had descended the narrow stairs. Then he pushed a small altar over the trapdoor to conceal it and ran toward the grove, hurdling over the man with spilled guts. Something he saw on the ground caused him to stop: a silver medallion attached to a broken silver chain. He picked it up, swore an oath and ran back to the columbarium.

Satisfied that the coast was still clear, Antonius slid the altar aside and banged on the trapdoor.

‘Master, it is Antonius! I know who they are! Open quickly!’

Balbilus did so and looked up the gloomy shaft. Antonius dropped the medallion into his hands, closed the trapdoor and once again concealed it with the altar. In the grove he stopped under a tree, sat down and without a second’s hesitation defiantly slit his own throat.

By the light of a smoky oil lamp Balbilus examined the pendant.

The chi-rho monogram.

It was the Christians!

Damn them to the heavens! May Nero slay every Christian man, woman and child. May they be cursed for eternity!

A hundred Lemures crammed into the columbarium, fighting for every centimeter of floor space.

Balbilus stood under his fresco of astrological signs and demanded quiet. A small child cried. He threatened to kill her if someone didn’t shut her up.

‘Hear me,’ he hissed. ‘We need only to survive the night. In the morning we’ll find sanctuary elsewhere. We’re stronger than they are. We’re better than they are.’

Above ground one of the Christians had seen Antonius running away from the mausoleum. He found him still twitching and warm, blood pouring from his neck. Soon the Christian man was running to find Cornelius and Peter. ‘Come!’ the man insisted. ‘You must see this!’

When they stood over Antonius’s corpse, the man pulled down the slave’s breeches.

‘Dear Lord!’ Cornelius cried.

Peter steadied himself with an outstretched arm against the trunk of a tree.

Antonius had a tail
.

When the young Christian men returned to the villa, their fists and sandals stained with Vibius’s blood, they found Peter by the tree. One of them had a knife in one hand – and something else in the other. He showed it to the Apostle. It was a bloodstained pink length of tail.

‘There is no denying it,’ Peter said, shaken. ‘They are not ghosts. They are real. What must we do when we find true evil – evil such as can only be the work of the Devil himself – in our midst?’ he asked.

‘We must purge it,’ Cornelius said.

‘There is no other answer,’ Peter whispered. Then he raised his voice. ‘In the name of Almighty Christ you may set the torch and send these devils back to Hell.’

Balbilus looked to the dark ceiling and heard the muffled shouts of the Christian marauders and the sound of their stamping feet.

The Lemures squatted in front of him, packed tight like salted fish in a barrel: the men stoic, the women angry, the children fidgety. Above their heads, the loculi in the walls were full of ash-filled urns and the skeletal remains of their recent ancestors. The pungent smell of rot filled their nostrils.

Suddenly the muffled shouting above their heads stopped and all grew quiet.

Balbilus strained and listened.

He heard the voice of Peter but couldn’t make out the words.

Balbilus heard a faint whooshing sound and felt his ears pop as a roaring fire took hold above and sucked some of the air out of the chamber.

He felt his skin tingle as the temperature in the vault crept higher by the minute.

After a long while he heard a thunderous rumble when the vaulted roof crashed down onto the mausoleum floor.

More time passed and he saw the oil lamps sputter out one by one in the depleted air. When the last one died they were in complete darkness.

And in that darkness he heard the gasps and wheezes of a hundred men, women and children.

He was the strongest and the last to go. Sinking to his knees in the blackness and angrily clutching the chi-rho pendant so hard that it made his hand bleed, his final emotion was a shuddering rage so great and hot that it seemed to incinerate his brain.

It would be weeks before the soil of Rome was cool underfoot but Nero swiftly set about bringing some cheer to his beleaguered citizens.

His soldiers rounded up every Christian who had survived the fire and had been foolish enough not to flee. There were few public spaces left to celebrate
their
mortification properly so Nero invited Rome’s refugees to the gardens of his only untouched estate, across the Tiber.

There, at his personal racetrack, as hungry citizens feasted on fresh bread, Nero made a grand entrance dressed as a charioteer astride a golden quadria. To a blare of trumpets Peter the Apostle was dragged onto the track. He’d been arrested along with the priest Cornelius and several followers at a Christian house near the Pincian Hill. When the soldiers arrived Peter had smiled at them as if he were welcoming old friends.

Pater was hauled onto a high wooden platform at the center of the racetrack for all to see and Tigellinus loudly proclaimed him to be the ringleader of the plot to destroy Rome. When he finished his speech he sat beside Nero in the royal stands and they watched together as the Praetorians began their work with hammer and spikes.

‘We have it on good authority that this man Peter and his mob were the ones who trapped Balbilus and the others,’ he told Nero.

‘My hate for them was already great,’ Nero said through clenched teeth. ‘Now it is a thousand times greater. They killed my great astrologer and have taken from us the cream of the Lemures. Members of their Church will forever be our foremost enemies. Kill them. Crush them. Damn them to eternity.’