The Kingdom of the Wicked (27 page)

       'Any advance on that?' the auctioneer cried. 'Good Syrian muscle there, not an ounce of fat.' He referred to a scowling slave woodcutter. 'Come, come, citizens, straight from the Emperor's own household. No rubbish here. You can do better than that — did I hear two thousand five hundred?' The Syrian's scowl could not compare with that of Sara, who had contrived also to make one leg appear shorter than the other and twist her shoulders into a pose of paralysis.

       'A girl from Jerusalem, magic city of the East. Stand up straight, lass, wipe that dirty look off your face. A great joker, as you see, but speaks Latin and Greek, a real asset to any household. Broken in, if you gentlemen know what I mean. Who'll start the bidding at five hundred sesterces? Seven hundred and fifty that noble senator there. Good day, my lord Lepidus. Anyone make it a thousand? Fifteen hundred? Nobody? Sold to the citizen in the green toga for one thousand. Gold and silver, please. No promissory notes. Emperor's orders.' Sara was led off scratching by an unknown buyer. He said nothing. He led her to a small park near the Vicus Patricius. Then he took a small shears from a pocket under his robe and began to cut off Sara's chain. She looked down, astonished. Marcus Julius Tranquillus appeared from behind an umbrella pine. He said:

       'Thanks, Gracchus. I'll see about getting the bangles off.'

Peter was considered by his colleagues in Jerusalem to have spent more time in Joppa than was necessary. They had a grave charge to raise against him, and he had reverted, they said, to being a fisher of fish and not of men. 'I fished enough men there,' he said, 'and women too. There was plenty of work, believe me, and if I went back to my old trade it was to earn enough to get the work done. I couldn't stay in the house of Simon the tanner any more, the stink was killing me, and I found my own lodgings. Lodgings cost money. I joined a kind of fish thing —’

       'Syndicate?'

       'Yes, that's the word they used. Then I bethought me that I'd better come back here, though I liked the sea, good air, not like here, better come back here to see how things are going. After all,' he said defensively, 'I'm in charge.'

       James the son of Zebedee forbore to say that he had himself taken charge of the church in Jerusalem. 'Thomas,' he said, 'told us something rather disturbing.'

       'Where is Thomas?'

       'Thomas has gone south.'

       'South? What does that mean?'

       'He said he fancied travel before he was too old to take it. He left his good wishes. Whether he was to spread the word or not he wasn't all that sure. Meditation under the sun, he said, whatever that meant. We'll hear from him, he said.' Both the two Jameses looked gravely at Peter. There were only three of the disciples left now in Jerusalem. The others assembled in the house of Matthias were mostly new converts, Pharisees chiefly, one or two robed priests among them. They looked even graver than the two Jameses. James the Little said to his namesake:

       'Shall I speak?'

       'Speak.'

       'Well, then. The story is that you've flown in the face of the law of Moses.' Peter frowned ferociously. 'Everything we practise is laid down in the scriptures, Peter. The law of Moses isn't changed by the new law.'

       'What am I supposed to have done that flouts the law?'

       'You've eaten unclean food for a start. And you said that there was no such thing as unclean food. You claimed to have heard the voice of the Lord saying that everything was equally good — pigs, lobsters, for all I know toads and spiders —’

       'I had this dream,' Peter said, 'and it was a dream from God. You only have my word for it, but perhaps you've got beyond accepting the word of the rock on which the church is built. As for eating stuff with blood in it, yes, I did. It was in the house of this Roman that I baptized into the faith. What was Ito do — scorn his hospitality?'

       'Yes,' James son of Zebedee said. 'You shouldn't have been in his house in the first place. It was a Roman centurion, wasn't it?'

       'It was,' Peter said. 'And he and his family and a lot of his men wanted to become Nazarenes. The grace of the Lord lit them up. I suppose the grace of the Lord had done wrong.'

       'We understood,' a priest named Kish said, 'that the destiny of Israel was being fulfilled with the coming of the Messiah. A Roman centurion seems rather remote from Israel, except of course for helping to bleed Israel dry and sending blasphemous statues to desecrate the holy city.'

       'What's all this about blasphemous statues?' Peter asked.

       'We'll come to that later,' Little James said. 'One thing at a time.’

       ‘Very well,' Peter said. 'So a man has to have his foreskin sliced off before he can have the baptismal waters —’

       'That's a crude way of putting it, 'Kish said. 'Circumcision is the pledge of God's choice of one people. That one people is redeemed by the coming of God's son.'

       'So,' Peter said, 'I have to turn a Roman centurion into a Jew before I can turn him into a Nazarene?'

       'You can't turn a man into a Jew,' another priest named Nathan said. 'You have to be born a Jew. And if you're born a Jew then you can become a Nazarene. It's as simple as that.'

       'And so,' Peter said loudly, 'we ignore the Gentiles? As I remember, we were told to get out over the whole damned world and take the message to whoever would listen, and no question of lifting their kirtles up to see if they were circumcised. And we were told nothing about being made unclean if we went into the houses of Gentiles. Damn it, the Lord himself was ready enough to go into the house of another Roman centurion to cure his servant or whoever it was.'

       'He didn't go,' James son of Zebedee said. 'The centurion said he was unworthy, which he was —’

       'And the Lord,' Peter cried, 'said he hadn't met such faith among the damned Israelites.'

       'We didn't have to be told,' Little James said, 'about going into the houses of the unclean. We knew it already. It's all laid down in the old law

       'Right,' Peter said, breathing heavily. 'So I baptize a dozen Roman soldiers who believe Jesus is the Son of God and I do wrong. Is that it? And I eat a piece of Roman beef and wash it down with a cup of Roman goat's milk, and that's wrong too. Is that it?'

       'Urrrgh,' went someone in the assembly.

       'You gentry,' Peter said, 'seem to forget sometimes who was put in charge. He sends down a vision. And I accept the vision. And you say I'm wrong. I get the call to convert a gaggle of Romans. And that's wrong too. You're slow to learn. Poor young Stephen wasn't slow. That's why they killed him. Stephen saw that the old way was finished. Priests, synagogues, circumcision, the bill of fare laid down in Leviticus — the lot. We're not what we used to be.'

       'I can't take it in,' James son of Zebedee moaned. 'I can't.'

       'Won't is more like it. Some of this damned stubbornness has to be knocked out of you. And if the bloodstained Caligula himself saw the light and said he wanted to turn Nazarene — what do we do? Do we say no, your bloodstained majesty, you can't be a Jew so you can't be one of us, better go back to slicing heads off and having ten wives and buggering little boys? It strikes me you've all got a lot of rethinking to do.'

       And how about the Temple?' James the Little asked.

       'What about the Temple?'

       'Is it still our Temple? Do we join up with the Jews who aren't Nazarenes and die for the Temple?'

       'Nobody,' Peter said, 'dies for a chunk of stone even though King Solomon himself raised it.' Peter saw that the devil was in him today, but it seemed a clean and salutary devil. 'When he could take time off from the Queen of Sheba and ten thousand concubines.'

       'This is all very unseemly,' the priest Nathan said. 'We did not expect such frivolity. The matters under discussion are of a considerable gravity.'

       'You don't seem to understand what I'm saying, Peter,' Little James said. 'We're still part of the history of the Jews. Which means we have to defend the Temple. He would have stood up there in the Temple with a whip — You know that.'

       'Defend the Temple against what?' Peter was plainly bewildered. He had been away. All sighed.

       'The statue of the Emperor Caligula,' John son of Zebedee said, 'is waiting on the outskirts of the city. Surely you must have seen that?'

       'I saw a cart with troops and a load of Syrian slaves. There was something on the cart covered with a purple cloth. I didn't think more about it. Some new Roman nonsense, I thought. So it's the Emperor's statue. Ah. You don't mean —’

       'The Emperor has declared himself to be God,' a priest named Nebat said, the rise and fall of his Galilean accent seeming to set the ghastly blasphemy to harmless music. 'He demands that his effigy be placed in the Holy of Holies. We await the arrival of King Herod Agrippa to arrange for its installation. Or, we pray and hope, to make some statement which will save Judaea from bloodshed. He will probably merely temporize, so we hope and pray. He has become a pagan Roman and has long been a friend of the Emperor. But he is also of the faith of our fathers. One thing will doubtless now be fighting against the other. The Zealots are arming. He will not want bloodshed.'

       'Desecration, desecration, desecration,' the priest Kish intoned.

       'Well,' Peter said, 'he said, he said — he said it's not what goes in that makes a man dirty but what comes out. We've work to do. We can't afford to be knifed or strung up on a cross — not yet awhile. We've work to do. I'm not going to be sliced by a Roman sword because I —’ He did not finish; he saw that he was going too far. 'The statue of Gaius Caligula in the Temple. We can't have that, oh no. What a filthy blasphemy.' And then: 'What's all this about Agrippa being king? You mean king of Judaea?'

       'He's already king of the other places,' James son of Zebedee said. 'Now he says he's waiting for imperial confirmation of the greater appointment. The Emperor sent the procurator off to Syria. It looks as if Judaea's going to have a king again. Not for long, though. He takes his choice of being butchered by the Romans or his own people.'

       'We have to speak out,' Nebat sang. 'We even have to take the lead in speaking out. We have the responsibility of an Israel fulfilled by the redemption of the anointed one. We are Israel's true voice.'

       'And,' Peter said, 'we have to deny the first of our martyrs. We have to die for the Temple. There's something wrong somewhere.'

       'It may not come to that,' Little James said.

       But next day, in the glare of noontime, a huge golden smirking effigy was unveiled before the eyes of a sullen people. It still stood on its cart, and it was insolently just outside the Temple precincts. It awaited a further brief and final journey. Troops from Caesarea had raised a forest of spears around it. None of the Zealots dared yet to strike. They only murmured or cursed.

       Herod Agrippa, elegantly enrobed, was carried on a litter towards the holy city. At the city gates the senior members of the Sanhedrin awaited him, headed by Caiaphas. A choir sang one of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. The mournful melisma accompanied the slow procession to the palace built by Herod the Great, at present untenanted. Herod Agrippa deigned to mount the exterior marble steps, each step long as a short street, on foot. The throneroom was dusty, but the throne had been dusted. He did not seat himself on the throne. He chose a humbler seat some yards away from it. This seat was dusty. A chamberlain dusted it with the edge of his robe. Herod Agrippa sat. The members of the Sanhedrin remained standing. To Caiaphas Herod Agrippa said:

       'I know the protocol, your eminence. Forgive my speaking Greek, by the way. My Aramaic needs — ah, dusting. I recognize,' and he twanged off the like terminations with sardonic relish, 'that my elevation requires imperial confirmation and the ratification of my coronation. You will know that I am king when I sit on that throne. I understand that a ship is just now putting in at Caesarea. It carries a particular document — with the imperial seal. In that document will be the imperial confirmation of Judaea's restoration, God be praised, to the company of the kingdoms.'

       'A client kingdom,' Caiaphas said.

       'The whole world acknowledges its clientage. Freedom has always been a relative term. Caesar is Caesar.'

       'As you are not yet quite the king of Judaea,' Caiaphas said, 'I can speak without excessive humility. If the statue of Caesar goes inside the Holy Temple of Jerusalem —’

       'The Jewish people will cut their throats. I know.'

       'The Jewish people will cut Roman throats first. And then accept their annihilation.'

       'Your eminence, be reasonable. The Emperor Gaius believes himself to be a god — indeed, to be the one and only god. You and I know that the Emperor is mad, but madmen have to be humoured. Place the statue within, as a gesture of acceptance of Roman rule, and no great harm is done. It can be regarded as a mere decoration.'

       'You must know the answer to that.'

       'I do know the answer. And therefore I temporize. Let the effigy stay where it is for a while. Put it about that it symbolizes the deference of Caesar to the God of the Jews. Gaius the god acknowledges the existence of a greater than he. His statue stands at the border of the Temple precincts as a symbol of his fealty to the Lord God of Hosts. Put this around. Your people, my people, will be content to believe it.'

       'Put round a lie, you mean.'

       'What is truth? Let the people grow used to the imperial image. The next step may be deferred.'

       'For how long?'

       'Who knows? The next step will be to move the statue into the Temple precincts themselves. One step at a time. Habituated to its presence, even the Zealots will forget to object. Besides

       'Besides what?'

       'Nothing. Nothing for the moment.'