The Kingdom of the Wicked (13 page)

       'Take this powder, Caesar, in a little water. You will be sustained sufficiently. Do it covertly, let none see.'

       Gaius, very drunk, shouted across: 'My dear and great great-uncle, how well you look. You will outlive us all.'

       He was given next day in his litter the transcript of recent proceedings in the Senate. He read that the three patricians he had ordered to be brought to trial for treason had been discharged without a hearing: they had, said the report, but been named by an informer. 'Contempt,' he tried to yell. He missed sadly the comforting squeeze of his serpent on his left arm. 'It is contempt. Back to Capri.' Then Gaius Pontius Nigrinus came with strange and terrible news. There had been a brief earthquake on the island, brief but powerful enough to send tumbling the lighthouse on the headland. 'The eye of the world is out,' Tiberius moaned. 'Who played that trick with the fire at Misenum? You are contriving bad omens, all of you.' For in his bedchamber at the villa in Misenum the dead fire had leapt to sudden life and watched him with its diffused vermilion eye the night long.

       'The country house that belonged once to Lucullus,' Pontius Nigrinus said. 'It is but half a mile off. Will your imperial greatness rest there?' 'There is no rest anywhere,' cried Tiberius.

All of the above would seem to have little pertinence to the life of Jerusalem, but the state of Tiberius's health was known in Caesarea, and a rumour spread from there to Jerusalem that Gaius Caligula was soon to succeed to the purple, and that among his first acts would be the elevation of the prince Herod Agrippa to the kingship of Judaea, all this as a prelude to the liberation of the land from the eagle and the restoration of a Solomonic monarchy. It was time for the unity of the Jewish faith, the glorification of the Temple not merely as the house of the Holy of Holies but as the symbol of rule of the sacred soil of Israel. It was no time for the young Stephen to be standing up in the synagogue of the Libertines and preaching the new way. He stood and said to the frowning bearded:

       'Of the new gospel of love and forgiveness you must know two things before you know any other. First, that it supersedes the law of Moses.'

       Saul was there. Saul stood and said:

       'Nothing supersedes the law of Moses.' Stephen said smiling:

       'My old friend and fellow student Saul, I am glad to hear your voice. Let us argue the matter in amity as in the old days we disputed under our dear rabban. Would you not accept that the law of Moses was fitting for its time but not for the new age? For the people newly freed from the prisonhouse of Egypt needed the harshness of the lex talionis — an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. They were yet in no state to hear the milder doctrines of forgiveness and love of our enemies. Then there was no forgiveness for even minor infractions of the covenant. The desert life was brutal and the law brutal too. Moses would have scoffed to hear that we should forgive not merely seven times but seventy times seven. The time for the gospel of love was not yet, but now that love is revealed — love that proceeds from the love of the Father for his Son, the love of both for all mankind.'

       'You said there was another thing,' Saul said. 'What is this other thing?'

       'This,' Stephen replied. 'That the law rests not in the Temple nor in the ministers of the Temple. The true temple is not one made by human hands. I do no more than repeat the words of our Messiah, who was as devoted as any of you here to the holy edifice raised by Solomon but recognized a greater sanctity in a temple no human hands had designed and fashioned — a temple that such hands may indeed destroy but, as he himself showed in this very city, God's grace may bid rise again.' There were mutterings: He blasphemes against Moses. He puts the Temple and hence the nation in danger. Saul said with calm:

       'Proceed.' Matthew and Bartholomew, who had been sitting silently as self-appointed monitors (here was the first Greek Jew to proclaim the gospel) silently got up and left the dark airless square building to gain God's blinding air. They said nothing to each other until they were seated in the small dried up garden at the back of the wineshop of Zechariah the Sober. Here they slaked their drouth with water and then cheered their doubtful hearts with wine. Matthew said:

       'He does it better than any of us. It's the Greek in him.'

       'How?'

       'The Greeks push things through to the limit. I've read a little in Greek, the old Greek, a tough language, and there was this Socrates who went to the limit with his logic as it was called and he was put to death with hemlock. No compromise in him. So with this Stephen. But the light was there, heavenly approval if you like. He was shining with more than sweat.'

       'He's not a Greek,' Bartholomew said. 'He's a Jew like the rest of us. He knows his texts better than this damned Saul who was looking daggers.'

       'It's hard for me to explain,' Matthew frowned. 'We were brought up on the Jewish faith and nothing else, surrounded by Jehovah so to speak. In the Greek islands they've got to God, some of them, the hard way, arguing from first principles. All our writings are sacred, theirs not. They've got to God through logic. Another thing, there's no real answer to his arguments, and they know it. Moses was good for his time, but not for ours, and they're scared to admit it. As for the Temple — well, that's where his logic is going to undo him. There's too much vested in the Temple — priestly position, money, trade brought to the city. What he doesn't have is discretion — Socrates didn't have it either — and we lot, we Hebrews have learnt that you can't preach the gospel in this city without being at least a little discreet. Wise as serpents, harmless as doves and so on. Christ fulfils Moses and makes his horns shine with a deeper gold. We preach at the Temple because the gold of the Temple door is brighter burnished with the messianic fulfilment. Damn it, we have two score priests in with us now. Stephen would scare them off.'

       'So what do we do — recommend that he stop preaching?'

       'We have to let God have his way. There's nothing to be done. But I fear we're going to have a death on our hands.'

       Saul went straight from the synagogue to the house of Caiaphas. He said what he had to say and added: 'It's out of duty that I come, of course.'

       'I appreciate that. Though, to be honest, duty is too often, forgive me, my son, a cloak for vindictiveness. You boil at these Nazarenes as if you bore some personal grudge. Pardon my candour.'

       'It's your duty to be candid,' Saul calmly said. 'I've examined my conscience on this matter. Stephen was a fellow student, even a friend, though never a close one. A first duty might well be to talk to him as a friend — point out his errors, lead him back to the right way. But, you see, he voices the belief of a whole sect. He's encouraged to speak as he does. Also he's eloquent, even in Aramaic, a language he regards as inferior to Greek.'

       'How,' Caiaphas asked, 'can one language be superior to another? All our languages were born out of the fall, equally confused in the destruction of Babel.'

       'The tongue of Shem, so he once said in the presence of our master Gamaliel, is tribal, enclosed, unwilling to meet the impact of the world of the pagan.'

       'God forbid that it should.'

       'He says that Greek has struggled to get at a truth unrevealed, and the struggle has made it subtle and muscular. However, this is not the matter at issue. See him, and you'll see that he's taken on the shining look of the fanatic. What the man Peter says can to some extent be tolerated. Indeed, did not my master Gamaliel preach tolerance to the entire assembly in respect of the heretical proclamation of the Messiah? But Stephen — he strikes deeper.'

       'How deeper?'

       'You had best hear for yourself.'

       Caiaphas heard, standing at the back of the synagogue of the Libertines in the shadows, Saul standing beside him. He heard Stephen's clear voice, weak on the Aramaic gutturals, rise over the murmurs of the orthodox:

       'Our fathers had the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness, even as he appointed who spoke to Moses — which also our fathers, in their turn, brought in with Joshua when they entered on the possession of the nations, that God thrust out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David  —’

       'Now it comes,' Saul muttered.

       'But King Solomon built him a house — the golden house that is the glory of Jerusalem. Yet the Most High dwells not in houses made with hands. What does the prophet say? "The heaven is my throne. And the earth my footstool. What manner of house will you build me? Or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?" 'Now you hear,' Saul said.

       'Yes yes, now I hear. God help the boy.'

       'I myself am prepared to bear witness.'

       'No need. There are enough here to do it.'

       'Shall I call in the captain now?'

       'You're always too eager, Saul. I don't think you quite realize the implications.'

       'With respect, holy father, I've thought of nothing but these implications. You wish to have clean hands. There are times when the Jerusalem mob is useful.'

       Caiaphas looked on his shadowed eager face with a certain Sadducee loathing. Fanaticism was always a bad thing.

       Saul strode up to the desk of the synagogue. Stephen said: 'The people of God are not in one place, nor is the home of their worship.' Seeing Saul, smiling he said: 'I welcome argument. In the Greek islands we prized dialectic as the zigzag road to the throne. My friend and fellow student Saul has something to say.' Saul said:

       'Indeed I have something to say. This man Stephen, who was once a friend but is a friend no longer, who learned little when we sat together at the feet of Gamaliel, clothes in Greek eloquence a subversion terrible in its simplicity. He speaks against the law. He speaks against the holy place. I cannot put it more simply. This synagogue is defiled by his utterances. You know what action to take.'

       Caiaphas was appalled. Fists shook, the nearest to Stephen let the sleeves of their garments fall back to show arms with tensed muscles ready to seize. Stephen merely smiled. Saul cried: 'Not here. This is holy ground.'

       Outside the synagogue it was the chief priest himself who had to hold off righteous anger while Saul hurried off for the 'ish har habayith and his armed Levites. For, naturally, Stephen's protection. A mob had collected by the time the police arrived. What has he done? Nothing, but he's said a lot. Said what? That the Temple is a rubbish heap and the priests of the Temple a lot of timeservers. That's bad, is it? Bad, you say bad? Stephen was marched off to jail. The two Jameses, carrying figs and bread for the brethren, saw. They saw but knew better than to interfere. They ran home, that is to the confiscated house of Matthias.

       Peter shook his head in great sadness. Thomas said: 'I had a feeling deep in my bones that there'd be nothing but trouble once ye gave in to the Greeks.'

       'We're all one, all one,' Peter moaned.

       'Ye'll not deny that he's been saying the wrong things. Just when things were going so well. Ay, too well I've been thinking. What will ye do about it?'

       Things,' Thaddeus said, with the prophetic insight he, the small artist, sometimes showed, 'will proceed to their end. He's in God's hands. Things will be done that have to be done and they'll cry to heaven for vengeance. But there'll be no vengeance, only a greater glory.'

       'Go on, make a song of it,' Thomas jeered. 'Play it on yon flute.'

       There was a considerable crowd outside the council chamber the following morning. Said the Temple was a load of rubbish, cursed the priests, said that Moses was a juggler, I always said the Nazarenes were a bad lot, a Godless load of bastards, here he is now, a Greek, the Greeks were always a rotten crowd, my sister married a Greek and where did it get the poor bitch?

       Annas wrinkled at Stephen, a clean-looking boy despite his night in a dirty prison, his beard sparse, his eyes wide but unfrightened. He stood in the heart of the halfcircle the seated Sanhedrin made. The morning sun from the wall of high windows bathed him. Annas said: 'More trouble from you Nazarenes. I quote.' He quoted from the papyrus handed to him by his son-in-law, quoting: ' "This man does not cease to speak words against the Temple and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy it and shall change the customs that Moses delivered unto us." Are these things so?' Stephen looked at the grim assembly, noting a preponderance of Sadducees. One Pharisee, clerk to the court, leaned against the wall without windows, grimmest of all there. Stephen smiled at him and spoke.

       'Brothers, holy fathers, this is a grave accusation and perhaps I may be permitted to answer it by means of a recapitulation which to many of you will seem supererogatory, but I beg your patience: my logic will, granted a little time, shine clearly enough with God's help.'

       'We do not require logic,' Caiaphas said. 'We can manage without such Greekish importations.'

       'Very well, nothing Greekish. Merely the truths of the holy texts. As you all know, God in his glory spoke to our father Abraham at the time when he dwelt in Mesopotamia, before he moved to Haran, saying to him that it was to Haran that he must move. So he left the land of the Chaldaeans and dwelt in Haran in the upper valley of the Euphrates, staying there till the death of his father Terah. Thereafter, under God's direction, he travelled as far as Canaan. Note that this was not his land, nor did he have any part of it. He was, as it were, a resident alien there.'

       'Come to the point,' Jonathan said. 'We know all this.'

       'The point is already before your eyes,' Stephen said boldly, 'if you will but look. Abraham had no land but believed the Lord's promise that there would be a land for his descendants. There would be oppression, exile, slavery for many generations, but the exile would not last for ever. In time God would avenge the injustices done to his children and bring them back to the land of Canaan where in peace they would worship him. A sign was given to Abraham, the sign of circumcision, the outward emblem of an inward grace and a divine promise. When Isaac was born, Abraham circumcised him on the eighth day, and this sign was passed on from generation to generation, from Isaac to Jacob and from Jacob to his twelve sons, these twelve being the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel.'