The Presbyter was carried into the surgery and laid on the operating table with a gag of leather to bite on in case the dose of poppy syrup I had given him, had not taken full effect.
The boys held him down while I took a sterilized scalpel from the grid on the brazier and cut swiftly into the purple mound on his thigh. Pus spurted making the hanging lamp hiss. The Presbyter contorted, gave a long, low growl like a wolf-hound, strangling on its chain.
When he fainted I cleaned out the incision, bound up his withered leg with fresh linen to hold the pad of salve I had pressed over the abscess. I ordered the boys to carry him back to his mattress.
I was just washing my hands when Drusus Longinus strolled in. He wrinkled his nose.
“How bad was he?” Longinus asked.
“I’ve seen worse. An infected cut, that’s all. But it was making him feverish – his ranting was worse than usual.”
Longinus held out a document. “I thought you might like to see this, Kleitos.”
The letter he handed me bore the imperial seal though the hand of a mere secretary had penned these neat lines. They informed the commander of the garrison at the quarries of Patmos, that he should return to Rome at the end of the year and bring John Theologos, the Presbyter from Ephesus, with him.
The divine Emperor, Domitian, wished to examine him in person.
Longinus grinned so hard he showed all his teeth. “Home, Kleitos! Back to the imperial city! I can hardly believe it.”
“How wonderful,” I said, busying myself with sponges and bowls. “Congratulations, sir. And I will no longer have to worry about keeping that vindictive bigot alive.”
“But full attention to him in the meantime,” Longinus warned. He ran hands through his cropped curls. “Let him have what he wants, do what he wants, within reason. I’m not sending him back to the quarries, obviously. I want that old bastard alive and well. See to it!”
I pointed to the shrine of Asclepius, built into the wall. “Perhaps you should start praying, sir.” In the god’s niche, I found a box of powdered incense. Longinus accepted it, uncertainly. “Our most prized prisoner has deteriorated lately. Who knows, the son of Apollo might heal him!”
Drusus Longinus snorted but pulled his military cloak over his head, scattered a pinch of sweet dust onto the pan of coals I had placed in front of the shrine. He lifted his hands, muttered briefly under his breath.
“If he survives, I’ll offer Apollo a white sow when I get back to Rome,” he said. He fingered the sacred snake, carved in relief on the altar shelf. “In what way has the old fellow deteriorated?”
“Worse and worse delusions,” I said. “The orderlies swear he’s possessed and will only attend to him under the threat of dire corporal penalties which I, of course, am not at liberty to inflict or to authorize. They say he ought to be dispatched. If you want to keep him alive for the Emperor to interrogate, you’ll have to make sure that every man in this place knows what’ll happen if the Presbyter just happens to suddenly die.”
Longinus was nodding and chewing the edge of his thumb.
“We should have a qualified doctor here, oh, no offence, Kleitos, you’ve done well enough but there’s more to it than giving purges and setting broken bones. The records state that you were an archivist but there’s something about your picking up the rudiments of this trade…”
“In Judaea,” I said and shuddered. “During the revolt, I was pressed into service. I spent a long time with the physicians and their servants because the only available accommodation for me at that time was in the apprentices’ tents.”
I recalled the pungency of salves; the bed I had made among great bales of waste cloth that the boys cut into strips for bandages. I remembered the shrieking that emanated from the surgeons’ tents.
“A man can pick up a new trade, even long after his youth, sir.”
“Evidently!” Longinus was mellow with the prospect of his return home. “But this is hardly fair, at your age. I’ll have to see what I can arrange.”
“It occupies me more usefully than pounding wedges into a rock face,” I said quickly. “And though the Presbyter is not an ideal patient, there’s a certain interest to be had in arguing with him. He thinks he has all the answers, you see. He doesn’t have more than his faith but like all his kind he’s never learned to distinguish between what he knows and what he believes.”
Longinus said, “In religion, one can know almost nothing.” He stroked the bronze head of the miniature Asclepius. “God-men! I may pray, Kleitos, but I can’t be sure, can I?”
“I can,” I said. He raised one eyebrow at me. “Well, I have some knowledge and little belief. The Jesus of these Christians was a god-man, like Asclepius. Some say, and they may be right, that he was actually a being of another order, one of the angeloi who descended into the world, took on mortal form, did what he was destined to do then departed.”
“You’re sounding like a Gnostic, Kleitos!”
“Not so, sir, but I can’t disagree with some of their doctrines. Beyond that, I am like you. I simply don’t know.”
“I know when I am happy,” Longinus said.
Happiness, my father always insisted, results from freedom that only comes when fear has been eliminated; fear of the gods, fear of death.
I feared neither. I had never formally embraced my father’s path of Epicureanism but I had inherited his calm acceptance of the inevitable, against which it is futile to struggle.
I had submitted when resistance was folly and I had been carried along on the unpredictable current which forever swings and turns and changes and brings us all, at last, to some distant landfall, however battered our craft may be, however torn our sails and limp, the rigging of our aspirations.
Submission to Tyche was strongly endorsed when I was a boy, living in Caesarea. The Lady Fortuna had been good to me then, though I seldom attended at her shrine.
It was Tyche-Fortuna who drew me back there, numb with the loss of my Thalia and the shock of losing power, privilege, and all the worldly comforts of high office under Nero.
Over the choppy Mediterranean I had been drawn by Tyche, back to the city of my childhood and into the service of Gessius Florus who resided in that same splendid palace overlooking the sea where Pilatus had lived in the days when serving a spit-roasted pig to his Jewish guests like my father, had constituted a major crisis.
Diplomatic outrages of that kind had long-since become commonplace, I learned. Caesarea and all of Judaea - and Galilee and Samaria as well - knew what a real crisis might be.
There had been synagogue burnings, women ravished in broad daylight and scholarly boys pelted with rocks on their way home from their synagogue studies. The Greeks and all of the Hellenised and the Romans with them had become infected with a loathing for the things of Judaism. There had been street brawls; Jewish shops looted; old women taunted by soldiers who had taken to lifting their tunics and exposing themselves in the streets.
I went into the service of Gessius Florus. The Emperor had decreed it but Florus rarely consulted me. Most of the civil service were Greeks or Hellenised Jews who had less interest in their ancestral faith than I had. I was at worst reviled, at best ignored.
I buried myself in the palace archives, ate alone in my room. Looking out on the bright water of Caesarea’s harbour, I day-dreamed of my childhood: of my parents and of bar Abbas. I recalled Pilatus and how my father had detested him. Florus would have disgusted him more.
Florus was an upstart from Syria whose wife was a crony of Poppaea’s. It was the empress, naturally, who had contrived to have Florus appointed Praefectus of Judaea. He grew rich on bribes and confiscations. He colluded with brigand leaders, took his share of spoils then had whole bands of outlaws arrested and crucified, claiming their hoards of plunder for himself.
Even Jerusalem’s colluding Sadducees reached a point when they could take no more. Their opportunity came at Passover, two years after my return.
Gallus, the governor of Syria, made an official visit to Jerusalem. Comfortably ensconced in the Herodian palace which had long since become once more the Roman Praetorium, he was approached by a delegation of Jewish priests and leading citizens who laid formal complaints against Florus.
I was told that Florus, learning of this, laughed in their faces. He also reminded Gallus that being a close personal friend of the divine Emperor carried certain privileges.
Gallus was weak and vacillating. He gave the Jews vague assurances, came down to Caesarea to be feted by the city then went back to Antioch, leaving Florus to do as he liked.
His indifference to religious sensibilities led to new outrages. There was a sacrilegious rite performed on the steps of the orthodox synagogue and in the ensuing uproar, the garrison was called out to intervene. I slammed my shutters, bolted them and listened to brawling in the avenues below.
By next morning, most of the synagogue Elders had fled to a neighbouring village, their arms full of what sacred books they could rescue from pillaging mobs.
Florus went off to Sebastos, leaving the rival factions of the city to fight it out.
I began planning how I might disappear. It occurred to me that if I grew my hair and my beard, I could lose myself in a place like Jerusalem. I could teach and live quietly under an assumed name and never be detected by agents of the Praefectus.
The Presbyter opened his eyes, gave something that resembled a smile.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “I feel better.”
“I am glad.” His head was damp when I lifted him to sip water. “You are to be spared a return to the quarries, did you know?”
His eyes flew open. “Really? God of Israel be praised! He has heard my prayers…”
“They want you in Rome, John,” I said, laying him down and straightening his cover. “There will come a day when the Emperor will demand your presence.”
He gave a small sigh. “As the Lord wills it. He is my father… I am his child to direct.” He frowned. “You spoke of a child of your own, didn’t you? Where is he?”
I shrugged. “If he still lives, I expect he’s in Rome where I last saw him. He was…prevented from leaving with me, after my wife died in the purge of Nero Caesar. I have tried to forget him. It’s easier that way.”
The Presbyter gave a nod. “Yes, I can see that. It is a mad and cruel world we live in. But the end is near, physician! The great day of wrath is coming. Those who murder, those who fornicate and lie and steal…”
I got up as quickly as my stiff joints would allow. “Be quiet now,” I said. “The men want sleep, not your prophecies.”
Theft had never appealed to me, raised as I was by an upright father. When I crept into Florus’s tablinum one morning before sunrise, I found my heart slamming. I stood in the chink of light that came through the shutters and heard the scrape of the guards’ sandals on the parapet outside.
Florus had acquired such vast wealth he had become indifferent to security. His strong-box was unlocked as it had been often enough when I had come in on some business and seen from the corner of my eye, how the fat brute actually played with coins, letting them tip through his fingers while he spoke.
I opened the coffer. Nero’s head was shown a thousand times over - Nero or Jupiter’s eagle. I plunged in my hands and stuffed gold coins into a bag that I tucked down the front of my tunic.
Dry-mouthed, I went on shaking legs back to my room, meeting no one but two maids, staggering under the weight of their hot water buckets. I locked my door, found needle and thread. With trembling fingers, I stitched a strip of cloth to fit inside my belt and filled it with glittering currency.
Several days later, I went back at cock-crow and by rummaging silently among the boxes stacked under Florus’s desk, found a little trunk filled to the lid with pearls and precious stones.
Rome owes me this at least, I thought, scooping up enough to make a man wealthy for life. In the privacy of my room, I poured them into the opened hem of my mantle and sewed the cloth securely.
No theft was reported. The secretaries and servants, who came freely to the tablinum, were no doubt helping themselves also, at the risk of their lives. Florus noticed nothing although a serving boy was soundly thrashed one afternoon for drinking left-over wine. A gross offence: I suffered with him. The cool weight of gold against my belly was a consolation.
That night, I drew a sacred circle in charcoal on the floor of my room. Seating myself in it at midnight, I invoked the spirit of bar Abbas to help. Somewhere out on the harbour, or perhaps from the mariners’ quarters that surround the great circular mole, there came the sound of a man’s voice singing.
I listened to the words, slurred by drink and recognized the chant as one bar Abbas often used when he was occupied on some task that did not require his concentration. There was a rustle from one corner of my room. I swung around in time to see my mantle fall from its hook. Collapsed on the floor, it took on the form of a huddled figure. My scalp crawled.
I felt the weight of my stolen hoard against my waist, recalling that among the sacred prohibitions of the Decalogue, is the stern injunction against theft. My mother’s voice, raised in praise of the Most High who gave His Law to Moses, rang in my head.
Out on the harbour, the singing died away. I spoke my heart to bar Abbas, to the Most High whom my mother loved. Long before dawn, I fell asleep where I sat.
Shortly afterwards Florus committed the most unspeakable of offences. He raided the temple treasury. The Most High’s response was to inspire a demonstration against him at which a mock collection of bronze coins was taken up all over Jerusalem, for this poverty-stricken Roman. Enraged by the jesting insult, Florus rode up there with his enormous contingent of body-guards, bent on revenge.
Within days we heard it all: how he ordered his troops to loot the Upper Market - the forum of the city - and to kill all who resisted. Citizens were cut down in the surrounding streets, traders were arrested and dragged before Florus who had them flogged then crucified. Over three thousand died.
Judaea was a bee-hive, kicked over by a mad bull on a hot afternoon.
Within weeks, the Zealot forces had come out of the hills and their desert retreats, to further inflame the agitators, appearing now in every city and town and rural village.
Young Agrippa, son of my royal patron, had been residing in his father’s palace at Tiberius. He went down to Jerusalem and attempted to placate the mob by pointing out that Rome was invincible. Any foolish rebellion against Roman authority, he argued, could only result in misery and ruin for a nation which had prospered when it was peaceful, as it had been under his late father of glorious memory.
We heard these reports in Caesarea and waited apprehensively for Florus’s return. One night, I slipped out of the Praetorium with a bag of possessions on my shoulder and a bundle of books on my back, giving thanks that I knew the servants’ entranceway and had always maintained the best of relations with the lowliest of those who came and went with provisions for the Praefect’s table.
At the harbour, I bought passage on a trading ship, bound for Ptolemais. Cavalry do not easily pursue a man across the sea.
The weather was calm; the few other passengers indifferent to my identity. Two days later, Philemon, an Epicurean teacher, disembarked at Ptolemais, purchased an ass and rode slowly south-east into Galilee.
The sweetness of the region enfolded me. Cool breezes blew up from the lake and the orchards were full of birds. I came down into Tiberius, unshaven and dirty but more light-hearted than I had been since the days before Thalia died.
Two rooms became my home, in an insula near the forum. I opened a small school, for boys needing a reliable grammaticus. I let my beard grow but cropped my greying hair so closely that in the bronze mirror, I scarcely knew my own face.
There were shop-keepers I thought I recognized from the old days and there was a hetaira whom I felt sure had been a servant under Antipas. She sometimes gave me a second glance when we passed in the forum but I carefully avoided her eye and in time she ignored me.
I avoided her little fornix too, purchasing myself the services of a Gadarean girl with red hair, when I found myself in need of carnal consolation. Unlike most hetaerae, she was slender, small-boned. On the first night she came to me, Priscilla giggled as she stripped, happy in her work. I touched her breasts with tentative fingers, thought of Thalia and swallowed tears. Unmanned, I lay on my bed and found to my surprise that Priscilla did not demand part-payment before going her way. Instead, she lay next to me, stroked my face and told me that if I was indeed a sad man as she surmised, then I should cry.
I did so, wetting my pillow with a rush of tears that had been long denied me. Gentleness coaxed grief that fear and insecurity had long denied me. I slept then and before it was light, found Priscilla’s rump pressed against me under the covers. When I stroked her breasts again, she wakened, kissed me and pushing me down, straddled me in the practiced way of such women. I thrust up into her like a boy discovering himself. She yelped, appeared thrilled and praised me for my ardour.
I paid her and when she was gone, found myself singing as I washed in the half light. Galilee had always been good to me.
My stolen wealth went untouched while I earned a small living from the men who brought their sons to be educated. Sometimes I fingered coins at night through the lining of my belt or rolled the hem of my mantle between finger and thumb, feeling security in the small pellets lodged there under the fabric.
Tiberius seemed calm after the tensions of the south. Then came a day when the city seethed with news of rebellion in Judaea.
A certain Menahem, son of that notorious Yehuda who had led the first great Zealot uprising against Rome in the days before I was born, led his forces in a lightning attack on Masada, the stronghold above the Sea of Judgement. Reports came that the entire Roman force, garrisoned there had been massacred. Menahem had seized the arsenal and carried away its contents for distribution among the Zealot forces.
There were arms and armour sufficient for ten thousand men it was said, much of it dating back to the days of the great king, Herod, who had always feared an invasion from the south by the forces of Cleopatra of Egypt.
I thought of Gessius Florus and gave thanks I had fled his service.
Priscilla clung to me in bed and kept asking if it meant there would be a general revolt - she would go back home to Gadara if so. I told her only a little of what I had heard in the wine shop that I usually frequented. Men hunched over their cups, babbled excitedly each night. Rumour was rife. Menahem had appeared in Jerusalem to proclaim himself king; Zealot forces were in open conflict with the temple priesthood, the Sadducees, who had always collaborated with Rome. Rival factions among the Zealots were struggling for supremacy in the heart of Judaea.
I stroked Priscilla’s narrow shoulders and made light of it all but suggested that although I would greatly miss her, it might be advisable to seek refuge in the Decapolis, at least until the crisis was over.
I told her nothing of Agrippa leaving Tiberius with two thousand cavalry, riding to Jerusalem in a show of support for the Roman administration. The chaos in the holy city filled me with foreboding.
My students wanted to talk politics but I insisted that a man’s mind is better occupied with those things that do not change over the centuries. The pursuit of wisdom I said firmly is always preferable to the transitory affairs of governments. Pursue wisdom and live well, I said, regretting that I had never done so.
They looked at me doubtfully even with their heads bowed over their styluses. One of them, dark and lean with a ready laugh, put me so much in mind of my lost son, I found myself looking at him until my gaze made him uneasy and he would turn away.
Priscilla came to my rooms for a last time. We made love twice and she cried when I pressed extra money into her hand, kissed her at the doorway. With her gone, I felt the cold wind off the lake beginning to chill me and it came to me then that I was growing old.
I dreamed before morning that a crow fell into my soup bowl, turned baleful eyes of red on me. When I lifted my spoon, the broth was thick with maggots. I woke with a start and crawled stiffly from my bed to heat water and wash. Priscilla’s scent clung to my skin.
At mid-day, a clamour arose in the forum. I joined crowds jostling down the street. There were couriers on lathered horses. Wild-eyed, the messengers shouted their news.
The Roman garrison stationed in the Tower of Antonia in Jerusalem had been massacred.
I turned my eyes to the blue of heaven: we were in need of salvation that I could not believe would ever come. In the uproar that followed, I pieced together something of the mounting crisis. The Hasmonean palace where once I had briefly stayed, had been ransacked and burned. All loan contracts had been destroyed in the firing of the city archives. The palace of the High Priest had been pillaged and burned. He and other notables had fled to the sanctuary of the Herodian palace on the western hill which now sheltered Agrippa’s cavalry force also.
Fire from heaven had destroyed Rome, that was how Thalia had described it. Now the holy city would burn too.
The crow that had flown into my sleeping head could not be shaken off. I found myself looking for signs as bar Abbas would once have made me do.
Birds screamed above the lake but no eagles pursued them. There was a two-headed calf born on a farm near Taricheae and exhibited in the forum at Tiberius. It lay on the flagstones, kicked and rolled its several eyes. When a thunderstorm sent a bolt of lightning to strike one of the gilded akroteria on the royal palace, I half expected to hear that Agrippa the Younger had been struck down as his father had been, in the days when I had served him and believed that my life was secure.
I dreamed of bar Abbas, waving a sword to defend the walls of Jerusalem. He slashed out at soldiers and his blade became a broken reed; he fell, screaming. When I wakened, there was a woman wailing like a peasant widow in a Roman comedy.
My students were restless and losing concentration. I snarled at them, threatened them with the lash, pretending I had never come across less diligent boys in all my years of teaching. Life in Tiberius I insisted, would remain largely undisturbed. They accepted my lame assurances but their eyes betrayed them. Fear that rippled in the streets of the city seeped in through my door and lapped at their feet.
I told myself that the crisis gripping the region worked in my favour. My sudden departure from Caesarea would long since have ceased to concern anyone. It seemed certain that Rome’s forces would be supplemented by legions sent down from Syria. The Zealot uprising would be crushed. I fell to contemplating how much a journey to Gadara would have pleased my father: in his city, I might find men who once knew him. Gadara could yet become my home.
I would study the Epicurean way as he would have wished. I could marry again, live in peace. It seemed to me that I deserved this, after the pain of loss, the disappointment of parenthood.
In Gadara, I would pursue wisdom and put the past behind me.
“Why did you never marry?” I asked the Presbyter.
“I have told you,” he said, shaking his grey head. “I took a vow, just as the Nazarites do, and dedicated myself to holiness.”
“What is unholy about the body?” I asked. “Is a man made unholy if he obeys the Law of Moses and takes a wife? Is coupling, ordained by the Most High, unholy?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said, shuffling his papyrus sheets and not looking up. “You have strayed far from the path of purity. I know that.”
“I lack your perfection, John,” I said and picked up the sheet he had been writing on. “At least you are well enough now to continue this - this what? Letter to the faithful of the seven cities? It’s becoming an entire book!”
He tried to take the sheet back but I turned it to the sun and glanced across his crabbed lines. He had brought the image of a woman into it, a variation on the personification of Holy Wisdom, crowned with twelve stars in fleeting acknowledgement of the zodiac which his readers all recognized. Like Isis of Egypt, Lady Wisdom had the moon under her feet.
“It surprises me to find you’re a devotee of the Queen of Heaven,” I remarked. “I suppose living in Ephesus all those years, the cult of Artemis-Diana with her moon insignia and her seven dancing consorts was bound to have influenced you, however hard you tried to resist it.”
The Presbyter clutched his dagger like a stylus. “It has nothing to do with the abominable worship of that daemonic whore!” he quavered. “I look up into the clouds and Hagia Sophia is revealed to me in all her glory, giving birth to the child of salvation.”
“And it’s up there you saw this dragon too?” I asked, pointing to his description. “Strange – in astrology, Hydra, the Water-Snake is directly beneath Virgo. That’s an interesting parallel, isn’t it? But I have to tell you that in Egypt, Isis, the Queen of Heaven and purest of Virgin Mothers, is pursued by the monster, Seth and gives birth to the divine boy-child, Horus.”
“What is that to me?” he demanded, trying to snatch back his work. “The false doctrines of the damned do not interest me.”
“Who then is this woman who flees into the wilderness?” I asked. “Will your followers understand that reference?”
He breathed hard through his nose before replying. “If you must know, she represents the company of true believers, the faithful of Jerusalem who fled across the Jordan before the end and took refuge in Pella. The Holy Spirit goes with her people in exile. My followers understand these things.”
“I recognize Michael, the Warrior angel,” I said, pointing again. “At war against the forces of darkness though, where was he, I wonder, when the armies of Rome came and laid siege to the holy city itself?”
“He was powerless against the hosts of Satan,” the Presbyter said between his teeth. “Yes, even Michael - though it is possible that the Holy One prevented him from leading the armies of light into battle since Jerusalem failed to acknowledge Christ, rejected the King of high Heaven when he had once appeared in their streets and offered sacrifice in the temple. It is possible that for that offence, Jerusalem had to die.”
I was so aghast at this I was tempted to tear up the entire document.
“That is one of the most disgusting suggestions I have ever heard,” I said, rolling up his letter. “Come on you’ve written enough. They’ll be serving food soon.”
I ignored his protests, taking the document back to my cell as I did every evening, insisting that it was the only way to safeguard it against clumsy and careless servants.
I glanced through his day’s work again. His use of code was quite skilful, I had to admit that much. Rome was never openly referred to but by using the time-honoured methods of the Apocalyptics, he could disguise what he most hated in a variety of ways.
Allegory and symbolism constituted the garb that concealed Rome’s identity in the same way that his Woman in the Wilderness had prevented me from identifying her.
It was not exactly subtle but effective enough if the writing fell into the wrong hands. Judaea’s ancient enemy, Babylon, stood for Rome. His readers would recognize that staple of ancient literature. So too, the seven-headed beast, rising out of the sea: Rome’s seven hills. Out of the sea had come the galleys of every Roman fleet, sent to invade and conquer, subdue and stamp with the insignia of the Senate and the people.
Leviathan, the sea-monster, was a terror which had stalked through the folk-tales my mother once told me but here the loathsome creature had taken on imagery used long ago. The writer of Daniel’s Apocalypse, I recalled, had described a lion from the sea that represented the Babylonian kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar.
Like Daniel, the Presbyter had used monstrous images: a bear to represent the Median kingdom; a leopard for Persia and a beast with iron teeth which devoured everything – the vast dominions of the conquering Macedonian, Alexander.
To Drusus Longinus or any casual reader, this letter would be a nonsensical string of unrelated images. To Jewish mystics, recently converted to the cult of Christ Jesus, it would be a veritable revelation…
There were images set up at the edge of the baked clay that passed for a parade ground. The divine Domitian and his father and brother in polished plaques on standards, caught the morning sun. A gleaming military eagle with outspread wings presided over a portable altar that had been strung with a roughly-shaped garland.
The Ludi Apollinaires had always been a week of wildly extravagant games and theatrical performances in Rome, especially under Nero, I recalled – so devoutly committed to the cult of the sun god, Helios-Apollo.
On this outpost of Patmos, the small garrison prepared now to hold their own observances. There was to be a series of bouts between local fighters down in Skala I had heard and a musical contest of sorts.
The Presbyter sat under his olive tree, snarling at the profanity of yet another holiday. I ignored him and went to the quarries where there were two slaves to be put down, both so badly injured in a fall, they were not worth saving.
When I first assumed duty as a medico, I had protested at the use of either the dispatching mallet or the leather thong for strangulation. I carried with me a small bottle that contained for their release, the salvation of numbness to take them into eternal dark.
The slave hut was fetid with the stink of unwashed bodies and of the rancid straw in which they slept. I crouched beside the men I was to dispatch. They were grey with agony and whimpering. Their broken legs were like branches torn from some blighted tree in winter.
I lifted their heads and quickly tipped the mix of hemlock and poppy syrup into their trembling mouths.
They were both quite young: there would have been years of work to be had from them under normal circumstances. As they died, they muttered like children disturbed in their sleep by bad dreams.
I held their hands. The slaves sent in to hold them down if required, watched, mystified. I knelt and put my mouth to the ears of each man in turn.
“Go in the name of Christ Jesus,” I murmured. “Look for light and do not fear the things that are coming. Ask for Christ Jesus.”
It was as good as any charm or prayer. It might, I reasoned, give them a little comfort.
One of them half-opened his eyes, attempted to smile. His teeth were yellow, broken. He gave a little moan, perhaps of pleasure as the cool numbness crept over him, fluttered wet lashes and let go so gently, I had to feel for his pulse to determine whether or not he had found release.
“Christ Jesus?” one of the watching slaves queried. “The sun-god from the east? I knew a man who was baptized into that society of believers. Are you one of those?”
“I am not but I have reason to believe he would welcome your two comrades here if indeed there is a realm beyond death and he is there. It is said he felt deeply for those who suffer. Who knows? Perhaps he has been designated the receiver of souls, even the souls of slaves.”
They nodded, satisfied with that. The bodies were carted out to be dumped and I went back up the steep path, panting in the heat while the whole slave force sat on the ground in silence. Their celebration of the Ludi Apollinaires would amount to a day without work while their overseers absented themselves for the holiday. The blaze of the sun would remind all wretches normally at toil of the man celestial.
To my surprise, the Presbyter had remained at his seat despite the games having begun. He glowered at the guards who had stripped naked and smothered themselves in oil for the wrestling bouts. At the first coupling, he sneered and turned away. There was grunting from the clumsy embrace on the dirt, hooting and whistling from the spectators who pelted the combatants with small pebbles.
“I thought I’d find you praying, Presbyter,” I said. “Surely this offends you?”
“Behemoth offends me,” he muttered, nodding towards the wrestlers. “The Beast comes out of the earth, it has two horns. The Beast is in all places. Look on the image of Satan, unbeliever.”
One of the men went down on his back, straddled and gripped by his opponent. Even in submission, his phallus reared against his belly. Both of them snorted with laughter, dripped sweat. The umpire beat the ground with his baton. When he began to count, the spectators of the garrison roared their approval. The victor got up slowly, hugely tumescent himself but in victory. His groping hand raised a howl of laughter.
Whooping in his triumph, he jogged to the end of the field where the trophies, cheap jars of wine, were displayed. Glistening and dust smeared, he loped back, still clutching his baton of engorged flesh and with a jar tucked under one arm. He seemed to notice us in the shade of the olive. His fist came up again, the central digit raised in contempt. I attempted to smile, applauded a little. The Presbyter’s dollop of phlegm when he spat, fell damply next to my sandaled feet.
“The Beast is among us,” he muttered.
“I stopped believing in Behemoth when I was a child,” I said. “The world is full of monstrous creatures, no doubt, not poor fellows like these bored and lonely soldiers but men like animals, wielding great power.”
“Domitian!” the Presbyter snarled.
“Not so loud,” I cautioned, keeping my gaze approving as the next contest began. “He is of course, a monster in the mould of Nero. The mystery is why God permits such creatures to come to power at all.”
“Not the Most High but his ageless foe,” the Presbyter said. “He is in perpetual war against the Ruler of the Heavens. He is served by beasts such as Domitian. He is served by false prophets like Flavius Josephus.” He spat again with such vehemence, his pellet of slime made a hollow in the dust. “The wonder worker, the deceiver!”
“You never met him, did you?” I asked. “There are worse men than Flavius Josephus.”
“Don’t tell me you knew him?” the Presbyter demanded.
“I once knew him. In fact, he was a friend.”
The Presbyter swayed on his rock. “The most false of false prophets! A creature condemned to eternal torment!” Several men of the audience had turned to scowl at us. I put a restraining hand on the Presbyter’s gaunt shoulder. “He serves the Great Beast! He serves the Beast who causes all to receive his foul mark upon their right hand, their forehead…”
It had been foolish to provoke him – he was half-entranced or pretending to be.
I knew what he spoke of. The stamp of the eagle, branded with a hot iron on the brow of every state slave to prevent him from ever running away, might indeed be called the mark of the Beast since Domitian had decreed it. The brand on the right wrist of such slaves is common enough also. There were several such men among the servants consigned to the outpost on Patmos.
Private slaves let it be remembered, do not suffer the ignominy of it, receiving instead the owner’s brand on the left buttock. But such property usually stays in a specified place - if ever foolish enough to run away, it is a simple enough matter for a suspicious soldier to lift the hem of a cheap tunic to ascertain the wearer’s status.
“Hold your tongue, John,” I said. “If you interrupt the men in their sport, you’ll suffer for it. Come on - I’ll carry your things for you under the cypress trees where you can look at the sea.”
He was still muttering when I made him sit with his back against one thin, grey trunk. His eyes were half open and froth whitened his lips. Tilting his head, he turned his face towards the sun.
“Here is wisdom!” he said slowly. “Here! The Beast has a number. It is six hundred, three score and six.”
He stretched out one trembling arm and with his index finger, traced in the dust, the letters: NRWN QSR.
“Neron Caesar!” he quavered, “the first of the Beasts! Domitian is the second. He is Nero redivivus!”
“Greek letters hitched to the Jewish numbering system?” I queried. “What nonsense have we now? If you write this sort of thing to your flock, they’ll go looking for a new shepherd.”
The Presbyter shook his head. “It is revealed to me and will be made plain to the blessed among the flock also. And when I write it, no Roman eyes will understand. Thus does Christ Jesus defeat the servants of Satan!”
A howl from the parade ground made me turn. There was a man lying on his belly with one arm twisted up his back. The winner of this bout squatted on his opponent’s shoulders, forcing the arm higher to wild cheering. There was a sharp snap and the loser shrieked. I was beckoned and went hobbling to them. A snapped wrist needs to be set and bound as quickly as possible if it is to mend.
It took me longer than usual to bind the injury. I dosed the poor fellow to make him sleep and went back out. The sun was setting and the games ending. Men scraped themselves down with strigils and went singing to the common tub, a rectangular pool in the barracks yard where they could splash themselves shout their lewd jests and sport indecently with one another.
The meat of sacrifice was being grilled over charcoal, filling the compound with fumes so sweet my mouth watered. Since Giton no longer visited, I had seen little flesh in my diet. The guards tore at charred ribs and downed their extra ration of wine with song and laughter that slurred and weakened as the light faded. I chewed on scraps that came my way from the men I had treated. It was dark when the trumpet sounded for bed.
Unable to sleep, I went out to the edge of the parade ground. The Presbyter was back by the cypress trees, gazing out at a silver sea.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “It is forbidden to leave your bed after the lamps are put out.”
“Be silent, apostate,” he said mildly. “Look how the Lord’s light plays on the water.”
“That is the moon,” I said.
“Yes, the Lord’s light! I am commanded to be here. I answer to the Ruler of all who took on human form and came into the world to redeem it from sin and to lead men into everlasting glory when they repent of their iniquities…”
He was off again. I let him ramble and watched the way he shook like a dog when it is cold and how damp-lipped he became when he reverted to his favourite theme, the punishment of the damned.
Suddenly he cocked his head.
“Listen!” he whispered. I heard the distant swish of waves lapping stones. “I hear a voice from heaven!”
“Oh, really?” I was impatient now to get him back but his intensity was oddly compelling. “Whose voice is it this time?”
“The voice of many waters,” he said, “of great thunder… of musicians plucking the strings of their harps like the harpists in the temple. They are singing a new song. They offer their hymnos before the Throne Ineffable and the Four Beasts and the Elders…”
“Not the Beasts again,” I groaned. “Come on - back to bed.”
“No, wait,” he said, resisting me with outspread arms. “I can’t go yet. I must see them first…”
“The Beasts will be back,” I assured him.
“The redeemed of the world!” he said excitedly and lifted his head as though glimpsing them among the thin clouds that veiled the moon. “One hundred and forty-four thousand of them. Imagine it!”
“Of course,” I said, wearily. “The Twelve Tribes of Israel, times the Twelve disciples, times one thousand, to ensure that the Elect are all accounted for. I’ve heard all this before, Presbyter.”
He did not reply but abruptly got up and tottered across the parade ground until he reached the place where the emblem had been erected for the games. A ram’s head with fine, curling horns had been reserved after the sacrifices and jammed onto a sharpened stake. Its dead eyes were lumps of dull amber. The Presbyter spat on it.
I shook him by one arm. “Are you mad?” I hissed, glancing nervously at the low parapet where the night watch paced, “If anyone saw that, then you’re a dead man and I could go with you for permitting such sacrilege.”
“The two-horned beast!” he snarled. “The emblem of that city of abominations.”
“If you insist,” I said. “But if you want to live, go on calling it Babylon because if you mention Rome and that document of yours is ever examined closely, we’re done for.”
An owl flew up from the direction of the sea, hovered above us as if we were prey. The Presbyter pointed to it.
“An angel in the midst of heaven…he preaches to all who dwell on earth and to all men who speak with a loud voice…”
“It’s too hungry to speak,” I said. “It needs mice, not Messianists.” I felt his head and found it hot. “That leg wound is not healing, is it? Fever still holds you.” I steered him towards the buildings. “You’re going to sleep if I have to tie you down.”
“Babylon will fall!” he chortled. “The great city falls because she made all nations drink the hot wine of her fornication! If any man worships the beast and his image, receives his mark; he shall drink the wrath of Adonai.”
“Enough of the Beast,” I said, pushing him through the door. “You’re a long way from Ephesus, holy-man! The great image of Domitian does not concern you now.”
I thought: poor fool! He’s going to have to face the Beast in the flesh before long and I cannot tell him that. He’ll have something to spit at then.
The stench of charred bones and of drying hides, wafted from the kitchen courtyard. The Presbyter inhaled deeply, like a woman offered a new perfume.
“Torment with fire and with brimstone,” he mumbled, submitting to my grip and steady propulsion. “In the presence of the Lamb…The smoke of their torment shall rise up for ever and ever! Those who worship the Beast shall have no rest, day or night.”
“I can sympathise with them,” I said, pushing him more roughly. “You should give thanks that I am nearly your age. A younger man would be rough with you.”
He skidded in a pool of spilt wine - I caught him before he fell. Stooping, he dabbed fingers in it as a child might, sniffed at sour dampness and nodded as though it confirmed something.
“The wine-press of the wrath of Adonai!” Stiffened against me, he had become difficult to move. “Outside the holy city, the wine press was trodden but it was blood that came out of it, blood up to the horses’ bridles and for a distance of…what was it? Sixteen hundred stadia…”
“As I well remember because I was there,” I said, wondering if I should hit him. “The distance from Tyre to the Egyptian frontier; yes, the blood of the rebellion was enough to cover the entire coast of Judaea and then Galilee. Jerusalem was the penetrated heart of that injured body, or the wine-press, if you prefer it.” Something caught in my throat. “I don’t wish to remember…”
“Yes, you do,” the Presbyter said.
His head was turned towards me now. The fit that compelled him to see an owl as a heavenly messenger, had slipped from him and he was suddenly calm.
“Grief it is that burns a hole in the fabric of your faith, faithless one! Tell me about the rebellion – what was it like?”
“Tell you? At this hour?” Exasperation made me harsh: I hustled him past snoring patients to his own mattress. “Don’t be absurd.”
“Tomorrow then,” he said, lying down slowly. One thin hand caught at my hem. “I need to know.”
“Lower your voice,” I hissed, “or you’ll have every man awake.” One or two were stirring and there was a muttered curse. “Very well - I’ll tell you if you promise to shut up now and sleep.”
What you will make of it, I thought, and how you will carry on with your garbled letter then, I cannot imagine.
He reminded me of my promise when I came back at sun-rise. I told him he’d have to wait until I had my free time, in the afternoon. I longed to be called away but when heat baked earth and buildings, I went reluctantly to his patch of shade. He was as expectantly eager as a child.
I decided to be candid with him. “Do you realise that you keep stitching the images of this place and its people, into that never-ending letter of yours? Oh, don’t start your protests or I’ll go away. Perhaps you can’t see what you’re doing but it’s perfectly obvious to me.”
“You’re wrong but I won’t argue,” he said companionably and patted the dry grass beside him. “Here, sit down. I want to know it all.”
“Things best forgotten… why add to your misery?” I was glad to sit. “And besides, you must have met a few people who know what happened - men who lived through it and survived, as I did.”
“Strangely enough, very few.” The Presbyter’s tones were warm. “Oh, there were slaves in Ephesus, of course, who had been sold as children, after the rebellion. But their memories were vague, blotted out by the mercy of God, perhaps. Men like you are rare, physician! Most died at the time, I am told, or perished afterwards when they were sold into the mines and the galleys and the arenas, isn’t that so?”
I nodded, said nothing.
I remembered how the old and the sick had been led off in their thousands for the quick mercy of the sword stroke because there was no point in keeping such liabilities when food supplies were short. Besides, the worthwhile merchandise had to be fed and watered.
The strongest of the men were deemed worth keeping. They could be counted on to put up some sort of a fight when pitted against wild animals and might provide reasonable entertainment. Or they could be a useful supplement to the nearest work-gang in a quarry or naval base.
Young women I recalled, though crazed and gaunt after weeks of starvation, were corralled and fattened on grain porridge. If well-scrubbed, women could always fetch a fair price from the dealers who supplied the brothels of the empire. And children were of the greatest value: pretty girls and boys could be cleaned up and made to simper when the rich came shopping for new body servants.
“Yes, I am a rare man,” I agreed. “I am a grown man who survived.”
Grey pathos threatened to engulf me. I plucked at dry grass, took a deep breath.
“Listen then, and if you interrupt, I will leave you.”
The Presbyter wriggled a little, leaned his back against the tree trunk.
“I am listening,” he said. “Start at the beginning.”