The Kingdom of the Wicked (30 page)

       'Honourable senators. It is with gggggreat ddddiffidence that I that I —’

       His stutter set off farmyard noises from the whiterobed dignitaries farthest from the military escort. Claudius grew red and his neck swelled noticeably. By some temporary miracle his speech impediment was almost completely quelled and he spoke with clarity and vigour, saying:

       'Yes — those among you who greeted with silence or even approbation the excesses of Tiberius Caesar and Gaius Caligula Caesar are quick enough to find schoolboy pppppleasure in my oratorical limitations. I address cowards, self-seekers, murderers, nonentities, ready enough to cringe at the tyrant's whip but not at all willing to see that the sickness of Rome can be cured only by a change of heart, not by a mere adjustment of its pppppolitical constitution. You see standing before you the physician, nay the surgeon who will administer the emetic and excise the ulcer. Rome will be what it was — a polity in which no man need fear injustice, its capital a city in which men may walk freely at night, its people united in a return to Roman virtue and the worship of the Roman gods, untainted by effeminacy or Oriental pollutions. And I call for a wider ccccconcept in the defining of the very term Roman. Those who subscribe to the Roman ethos — whether from Gaul or Germany or Asia — may call themselves true Romans

       There was an outcry at that, but Claudius rode bravely over it.

       'The Romanization of the Gauls has already begun, and with what consequence? That we have not had to raise the sword in Gaul against dissidence or rebellion. I look forward to seeing Gauls in this noble Senate

       C. Silvius Rusticus got up, sneering. Claudius was not sorry for the interruption. His throat rasped and, without the swig of barley water he now took covertly from a flask, might collapse in grotesque cawings. He had more to say, but Rusticus was now saying:

       'Take it further, Caesar. Fill the Senate with Oriental riffraff that despises the ancient Roman virtues and spits on the Roman gods. Make Rome the mongrel centre of a mongrel empire. Bring in the bearded Jews muttering prayers to their tribal deity. Conquer Britain only that the bluebottomed oystercrackers, covered with lice and stinking of the dogskins which barely conceal their nakedness, may mouth their barbarities in this noble house and defile its sempiternal marble.'

       There were loud roars of approval. Claudius wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and cried:

       'Like too many professional rhetoricians the noble senator emits more noise than sense. Britain will be conquered, yes, but it will be many years before it can be converted into more than a sullenly obedient tributary. As for the Jews — they are not waned in Rome.'

       At last he had the Senate's near total approbation. Not the least among those who fisted their palms and cried aye aye aye were the improvident who had mortgaged their estates to Jewish moneylenders.

       'The Jews,' continued Claudius, 'cannot or will not assimilate to the Roman way of life. With their sectarian squabblings they are a disgrace to public order. They are a wandering race. Let them wander back to Palestine or to other of the barbarous places of the Orient. Whether they worship their own god or the deified slave Chrestus — both blasphemies against Rome — they will be content to find a Jewish king awaiting them. A king appointed by Rome. They will continue to belong to Rome but at a salutary distance. They will pay their taxes but will not nauseate us with their superstitious piety and their lack of discipline. And if that is not policy acceptable to the Senate, then the Senate is unworthy to advise its Emperor.'

       On principle there were some catcalls, but there were also some cheers. Claudius turned to look at the leader of his bodyguard, in whose gripe the swordhilt had been relaxed. He nodded with quiet self-approval. The Jews were a useful people. An excellent device of loyal unification.

Herod Agrippa I, his unseemly fatness hidden in purple and gold, was borne on a litter towards the Temple. Before him walked the elders of the faith. Before them strode the discoursers of solemn festal music, the players of sackbuts and citherns and the thumpers of drums of various sizes. Alleluia. Judaea greeted its monarch. He was to ascend to the immemorial sacring place of millennia of kings, there to be endued with the robe and crown of rule. The people roared his name in jubilation. He acknowledged without smiles their plaudits, being, as he had to admit to himself, not well in his body, the salves and potions administered by his physicians having induced only a nausea and a thumping of the heart that was out of phase with the triumphant drums. He would have preferred to be in bed.

       On the outer fringe of the crowd that filled the Temple precincts, whipped away from the path of the procession by guards in newly polished breastplates, Peter stood with James the son of Zebedee. James said: 'This should quieten the Zealots. They have what they want at last.'

       But it was like a dissatisfied Zealot that Peter spoke. 'Don't you believe it. It's only Rome in fancy dress. The worst of both worlds, if you want my opinion. Roman arrogance and priestly intolerance. At last he gives our enemies an official whip.'

       'Do we wait for the whip?' James asked. 'Or do we travel?’

       ‘Some of us travel. Some of us stay where we are.'

       The royal procession was mounting the streetwide steps to the great portal. The musicians had ceased to play. Voices of men and boys intoned an anthem within. Herod Agrippa I was carried to his crowning. He would be glad when it was all over.

The Jews had not yet been driven back from Rome to their royal homeland. The expected act had still to be promulgated. But those Jews who had official if lowly positions in the state — treasury accountants, municipal functionaries — were being summarily dismissed. Some of these had pretended to be indigenous Romans, ready to prove their respectable paganism by sacrificing to the gods, but there was much grim lifting of kirtles, certain things could not be dissimulated. In one of the imperial gymnasia Caleb alias Metellus looked sadly for the last time as he believed on wrestlers and gladiators in training. He snuffed the lively sweat and heard the thump of falling bodies as the games editor kindly broke the bad news.

       'It's like this, Metellus — or do you want to be called by your real name?'

       'There's no further point in pretence, is there?'

       'If you were rich, like one of those fatbellied usurers, well, you know what you could do. Buy it. Not officially, of course. But it's being done. Her whorish majesty the Empress Messalina is making a quiet fortune. It's never been known before — citizenship for sale.'

       'Well,' Caleb said, 'so much for a promising athletic career.'

       'I'd keep you on, you know that — Greek, Jew or blackamoor makes no difference to me. You have the qualities, boy — but it's more than my job's worth. They've got it in for you people.'

       'You know why I came to Rome,' Caleb said.

       'To half-throttle the Emperor. Well, you did that. No, I know. Do you know the name of the man?'

       'An army man, that's all they could tell me. Talk about — what's the word — pollution they'd call it back home. A Roman marrying a Jew.'

       'That turns her into a Roman. She's safe anyway. And don't start this talk about clean and dirty blood with me, son. All blood's the same. I've seen enough of it to know. I'm as good a Sicilian Arab Roman as you'll find anywhere. There's nothing wrong with being a Roman. So there it is. Sorry. Good luck.'

       He shook hands with Caleb, a decent nutbrown man with a nose like a beak, his former muscle settling to middleaged fat. Then he shuffled on his worn sandals through the sand towards the new Pannonian giant, seven feet if he was an inch, who was waiting to be taught how to gouge out eyes and break fingers. Caleb sadly left.

       He walked sadly through the lively streets, set in the habit of hopelessly looking for her. Women. Roman matrons of the patrician class on curtained litters, beggars cawing for alms, the occasional white bangleted wrist revealed from the curtains, throwing a coin. Crones selling figs. Pert Roman girls giggling among themselves. He passed through one of the lesser markets, where mimosa was on sale and crocuses in small tubs, and lowly housewives did their own shopping for carcases of young lamb, wine-red joints of beef, little birds, palm grapes and fat gourds. There was a woman chaffering with a vendor much in the lively manner of Jerusalem. He could see her only from the back; her black hair flowed. A lump like hard bread filled his throat. He was ready to call 'Sara!' but it was not Sara. What was he to do now? Join the beggars? He was sturdy, young, employable, but he was a Jew. Perhaps outside the city, in the farmlands where a man could work as a daylabourer and nobody was interested in checking on the covenant with Jehovah, he might find dull work with plough or hoe. As well take ship for Palestine if he were to abandon his quest in the city. He saw and heard a tuneless streetsinger. Sing us one of the songs of Zion. He tried a limp: old soldier, lady, hacked at by dirty Jews in a far place, serving the Empire. But he was not old. He was hungry, though. When a loafseller turned his back to take two-pound loaves from his basket behind the stall, Caleb snatched a plain bun from the pile unattended. He shoved it beneath his Roman cloak. There was plenty of free water spurting from the Roman fountains. A few streets away he sat in the mild sun not far from a tentmaker who seemed to be of his own race, though neither spoke greeting to the other. Caleb munched his dry bun and later had a couple of mouthfuls of spring water. God knew what he was to do about the future.

Paul's future began. He sat in the sun stitching at his tentwork on the main street of Tarsus and saw a man he was sure he knew looking lost in the crowd. He sightlessly stepped into an ample mound of camel dung, cursed soundlessly, removed his sandal and hopped to the wall, where he began scraping off the ordure with a bit of shard. Paul thought the man had been thinner when he knew him in Jerusalem. He could not remember the name, but then the word encouragement swam into his head. That was it: son of encouragement. 'Barnabas,' he called. Barnabas smiled and hopped towards him, his sandal not yet wholly clean. 'I wondered,' Paul said, 'when somebody would come.'

       'It's been a long time,' Barnabas said, shaking the proffered hand, the fingers hard from the pressing of the bone needle.

       Not too long to learn. Read. Think. Preach a little. But I have to confess to a certain impatience. Life is not long, even when it's everlasting.'

       Barnabas nodded. Epigrams, subtleties, paradoxes. He would have to shed all that when he —’I made the mistake of going to your parents' house. They turned the dog loose. I've come from Antioch. You and I are to work together there. You know the place?'

       'I've been there twice. But not in my new incarnation. A town full of prostitutes.'

       'They prefer to call themselves servants of the goddess. But believe it or not, it's the Gentile pagans who want conversion. Not the Jews.'

       'I believe it. Pagans don't have prejudices.'

       'Well, there's no trouble about preaching the coming of a messiah when they don't even know what a messiah is. They understand Kyrios and they understand soter and they understand Cliristos. They call us Christianoi. That's our name now, Christians.'

       'You look well fed. I see no bruises. The work goes well, does it?’

       ‘I need help.'

       Paul made a vague noise of discontent. 'No arguments, no theological engagements. Clay, not stone. Like that, is it?'

       'We preach to the Jews first. That's laid down. But there are a fair number of halfway Jews — you know, those who want God without having to have their prepuces torn off to get him. A lot of those come to the synagogue and when they hear about Cliristos they see that's the answer.'

       'I never thought of the new way as a compromise,' Paul said. 'What do you preach — redemption from sin and the need for brotherly love?'

       'I preach the essence of the faith,' Barnabas said. 'And love is the essence. Of course, you have to redefine the word. For a lot of them it's tied up with the goddess and what the Romans call Daphnici mores.'

       'I don't think I know the expression.'

       'The morality of Daphne, Daphne being this place about five miles out of the city where they worship Astarte or Artemis or Diana or whatever she's called. I can't see much difference between her and Venus or Aphrodite. You worship fertility and you have a bigbreasted earth mother, but then you leave fertility to nature and worship what they call the act of love. You'll see the place.'

       'I've seen it already. Do you preach the resurrection?'

       'The resurrection of Christos? Well, that's the cornerstone, isn't it?'

       'I mean our resurrection. If he rose again we rise again. If he took his flesh to heaven we take ours. And I don't mean cart our bones and guts up to the sky. I've been thinking a lot about this, Barnabas. It's a subtle business. The flesh is transfigured. We don't join the angels, who've never known the flesh. We're a new order — those of us who are saved, of course.'

       Barnabas sighed. 'They're simple people. They understood about sin and love and redemption. I don't think they're ready for anything deeper. Not yet.'

       Paul had been stitching away, his eyes on his thoughts, his fingers displaying a skill independent of their master. 'When do we leave?' he asked.

       'As soon as you're ready. I have passage money. It's a big city, Antioch, third biggest in the world. There's plenty of wealth there. No trouble about money.'

       'We don't trudge overland then. A quick boat across the bay.’

       ‘You're ready?'

       'Spare sandals and a spare gown. I've been sleeping over the shop here. I must make my farewells. Pedaiah, the man I've been working for, he has a rather good young apprentice. I won't be missed.'