Search the Seven Hills (20 page)

The Arab bearers stepped through the gate. They were clearly recognizable as they passed under the torches and seemed to have barely broken a sweat. Marcus stood up as casually as possible and slipped between a farm cart and a team of oxen dragging a sledgeload of bricks, circled through the press of carts, and followed the stream of traffic along Ardeatine Street, keeping them in sight as best he could.

The street itself was wide enough to admit a broad streak of moonlight, and enough of the farmers and carters bore torches for him to see his quarry at a distance. He kept to the same side of the street, knowing he’d never be able to cross the crowd in time if they turned down one of the small pitch-black alleyways. They walked quickly, talking softly under the noise of the crowd, but seemed to be in no particular haste. It was only after they crossed under the black towering arches of the aqueduct that they left the main way, turning left into the crowded slums that surrounded the circus.

One of the men had a lantern, which he now uncovered; the grimy light bobbed ahead of him as Marcus slipped along at their heels. He had to close distance a little; if they turned a corner, he would lose them in the maze. What he’d do if they came upon one of the gangs of toughs that haunted these sightless canyons by night he couldn’t imagine. It would be beyond bearing if he lost perhaps his last chance to save Tullia’s life because he was being robbed or rolled in the mud by a band of drunk blue bloods.

From the darkness above him he heard a shutter creak and flattened himself against the wall just in time. A stinking shower splattered into the squishy stream that already ran down the center of the alley. Up ahead, he heard one of the bearers curse in Arabic.

They turned one corner, then another. They seemed to be making for the river; above him and to his right he glimpsed the white wall of marble with its statues standing eternal guard. The circus, where some poor sand-raker—or a team of them, considering the size of the place—would be sieving broken shards of wood and bronze dyed with the blood of men and horses from the sands. Tomorrow the games would be back at the Flavian again. Bound to stakes and wrapped in the bleeding hides of slaughtered beasts, Telesphorus and his little crew would meet the lions.

He wondered if Quindarvis, as sponsor of the games, had anything special planned for the women.

The Arabs muttered among themselves, evidently debating the way. Distantly Marcus could catch the din of the markets along the Tiber, a less exotic cacophony than one heard under the Flavian, but no less loud. The meat market was somewhere ahead, with its cattle pens and hog wallows, its coops of chickens and geese. Even at this hour hunters would be coming in with game from the woods and fields—hares, partridges, pigeons, the bounty of all those half-forgotten goddesses of me countryside, Flora and Fauna and Pomona. And beyond the meat market lay the river itself, and the bridges to the dense Tiberside district around the feet of the Janiculum Hill, like a suburb of Damascus or Antioch transplanted to the outskirts of Rome.

Marcus wondered if they were making for the river. The Arabs went on, after a momentary pause for consultation, but they halted several times more, the echoes of their footsteps erratic against the black walls that closed them in. They turned twice more and crossed a tiny square, where the moonlight flashed on a public fountain under the guardianship of a particularly gross bronze Priapus. Marcus almost lost them at the square, hanging back in the shadows of one street until they had crossed that small space of paving stones and moonlit mud, then hurrying as silently as he knew how to catch them up on the other side. Only by the reflection of the lantern light from the walls of the dark tenements was he able to follow them. He began to wonder how he’d manage if they did cross one of the Tiber bridges.

They reached a larger square, at the foot of the Publician Rise. The noise of the markets was clearer here, the bellow of beasts in terror at the smell of the shambles, the yelling of stevedores at the docks. Every window around the dark open space was black; there was no sign of life but the two shapes of the men and the gold puddle of light bobbing around their feet. Somewhere in the tangle of streets to his right, Marcus could hear a gang of rowdies beating on a door, yelling drunken words of love to the woman within. He huddled in the darkness, watching the light retreat across the square and into the black canyon of another street. As soon as it was out of sight he scurried forward, trying to muffle his own footfalls as he headed for the entrance to the Publician Rise...

The men were waiting for him just around the first corner. They’d doused the lantern; the first he knew of it was the brutal force with which a great weight slammed into his back, the rasp of breath in his ear, and the bone and muscle and leather that crushed his throat. His ears filled with a dim roaring, and his nostrils with the stink of sweat and mud; his knees gave way and he fell into a hole of ringing blackness.

“By the grace of Christ he’s alive,” someone whispered. The stench of mud and decayed fish and pig’s offal wrapped him up like a winding-sheet. He wondered if he’d ever be able to swallow again.

He was turned on his back. Cold hands searched his face, his throat. From the inky darkness above him a woman’s voice whispered, “Thank God—but Christ could only be a recipient, or at most the vehicle, of grace. Your priest must have told you—”

“Our priest has told us that that’s an error common to those who
think
they understand the true meaning of Christ’s words,” hissed the first voice back. “But in point of fact, the God of the Books of the Jews is clearly a god of cruelty, imperfection, and repulsiveness—the god of this world, in fact.” The cold hands, surprisingly strong, dragged him over something that oozed and stank horribly, and propped him up against a wall. “The grace of Christ supplanted that old god with a new law, and the unknown god, as Paul proved in his first letter to the—”

“Paul!” retorted another voice out of the gloom. “That self-seeking little Pharisee’s limitations of thought were the only things that his letters ever proved. John understood more about the emanations of the Divine Soul, and Plato...”

Wonderful,
thought Marcus.
I have been rescued by the Christians.

“Who were they?” hissed the woman.

“Well, the Divine Father himself is known as Bythos and Chaos, and at his side sits Sige, or Charis, the incomprehensible silence and grace of—”

“Not the emanations, you pox-ridden Gnostic, the men who slugged this poor fellow!”

“I heard them speak in Arabic,” said someone else. “But they could have been hired killers or just thugs out to rob him—not that he looks like he has anything to rob, poor little scruff. What do we do with him?”

Another group of Christians?
wondered Marcus. Sixtus had said there were factions. Actually members of two other groups, by the sound of it...

“We can’t leave him here,” whispered Cold Hands.

“We can’t take him anywhere, we haven’t the time,” replied the voice that had championed Plato over Paul. “It’s nearly the end of the watch, and Papa said it would be at the start of the third watch of the night. We have barely time to get there now.”

“Right,” whispered the woman’s voice. “Anthony, Sulpicius, you stay with him...”

“I refuse to stay here and listen to that heretic prate about the letters of Paul!”

“Look, offal-brain...”

“All right, Josephus stay with Anthony! By the Three, I should have let you people find your own way there...”

“How can you heretics swear by the Three, when God is One...”

“Three or One, Papa’s going to have all our hides if we’re not on the spot with the blankets when the doors are opened!” Quibbling, the voices retreated into the darkness, among the squishing of many feet in the muddy lane. Marcus’ dazed mind groped for some kind of meaning behind their speech, but found none. Did “stay with him” mean guard him until they could return to dispose of him properly? But in that case why not simply let their brethren murder him in peace? Had they had some kind of conflicting order from Papa? Were they going to take him prisoner, perhaps to where Tullia was?

But even that theory was dashed when the woman’s voice called back from some distance off, “You’ll see that he gets home?” Someone must have nodded—though how anyone could see in the absolute blackness of the alley was beyond knowing—for the footsteps faded moistly into the gloom.

He struggled to rise, and a firm hand pushed him back against the wall. “Are you all right?” asked the voice that had referred to him as a “poor little scruff.” “You were set upon by robbers.”

“Was I?” he mumbled. Against the lighter gloom at the mouth of the alley, he could see a group of dark flitting shapes, but here the shadows hid everything but the silvery glitter of eyes. “Who are you?” he asked, hoping they wouldn’t think he knew too much.

“We saw you being attacked,” replied the Christian’s deep voice—not, Marcus noticed, answering his question. “The men who struck you down ran away. We’ll see you get home, as soon as you’re fit to walk. Whereabouts do you live?”

“In the Subura,” he answered groggily, “near the Neptune shrine,” and then realized how stupid it was to give away his lodgings to the Christians. If they ever learned who it was they had rescued, they could simply show up some night and murder him at their leisure. “But I’m fine now, I can get there alone...”

“Easy, boy,” said a second voice, with a strong accent of an Alexandrian Jew. “There’s no need to be running, you’ve had a bad shock.”

“I’m all right, I really am,” he protested, struggling ineffectively to free his arm from the man’s prodigious grip. He struggled to keep the panic from his voice. “I have to be going.” To his surprise they helped him to his feet, as if they feared he’d collapse again. “I’m all right,” he repeated groggily. “I wasn’t hit on the head...”

“You’ve the earth’s own lump,” pointed out the Jewish Christian doubtfully.

“No, that’s all right, that happened days ago. Really, I’m fine.” He made a move to flee, missed his footing on the slippery cobbles, and all but fell into the Christian’s arms.

“You make a habit of bein’ assaulted?” He could see the wag of the Jew’s gingery beard, silhouetted against the moonlight of the square. “Eh, well, none of my affair. Let’s go, son.”

Marcus felt too exhausted to make further protest. Whatever nefarious plots the Christians had in mind for him, he was too tired to flee. He stumbled along between them through the darkness of the alleyways, until they reached the relatively straight stretches of Tuscan Street. The lane was narrow, and the moon westering, and beyond the fact that the Jewish Christian with the gingery beard was the taller of the two, and that both were wearing the worn dark tunics of poor laborers or slaves (much like his own), he could see very little of them. He wondered if he could ask them about the feasts of the Christians, about the times of sacrifice, but knew it would be foolish to reveal to them that he even knew what they were.

The noises of the markets faded behind them. The dark looming mass of the Palatine on their right overshadowed the narrow street. Looking up, Marcus could see the last light of the sinking moon as it touched the gilded roofs, making slivers of electrum among the velvet darkness of the trees.

Discordant singing caught his attention; he turned, startled, as a gang of rowdies emerged from me darkness of an alley-mouth opposite them, lantern light illuminating grinning distorted faces, slippery with scented oils and rouge. There were half a dozen of them, their elaborately brocaded dinner suits smeared with food and wine, leaning drunkenly on one another or on their staggering girl friends. They seemed to have picked up some unfortunate citizen in their inebriated wanderings; a little man in a plain toga was among them, wreaths askew on his balding head, anxiously casting glances left and right as if seeking escape.

One glittering youth yelled out across the road, “Hey! Wh’re y’all going? Party—party at Shenat’r Shevr’s housh—Y’know where we’re all going?”

“To perdition, I should imagine,” retorted the deeper-voiced Christian—a rash remark, thought Marcus, in momentary terror. But the bejeweled drunks went into gales of laughter, slapping their thighs and punching one another (and their distressed little captive) in the ribs, and went reeling on their way, falling in the mud and bouncing against walls as they went. The respectable citizen’s voice drifted after them, helplessly expostulating that he didn’t really wish to attend a party at all...

“And there’s some as seeks to be rich,” sighed the Jewish Christian, shaking his head.

They emerged into the Forum, magical in its empty silence. The pillars of its porches gleamed all around them like a monochrome forest of marble; the statues of gods and Caesars, their colors deadened and flattened by the silvery light, stood like guards on their plinths, staring ahead with somber, shadowed, agate eyes. The shorter, deeper-voiced Christian whispered to the Jew, “What time do you make it to be?” and the gingery beard moved in the moonlight as the man shook his head.

Then Marcus heard it. A faint sound, over the distant clamor of the market carts, noises that were almost drowned. Then the sound rose suddenly. A riot of voices, cries, curses, borne on the drift of the night winds, a shouting confusion and the sudden wild clattering of hooves from the direction of the Flavian Amphitheater. Not the sound of one chariot team, or even a dozen. A roaring surge of hoofbeats, echoing from the warren of close-seamed walls that surrounded the gladiator schools, the stable complexes, the wineshops and holding jails attached to that great arena. Marcus gasped involuntarily, and almost choked on the pain in his windpipe, “What’s that?”

The Jew whispered, half to himself and half to the other Christian, “He’s done it!” and in the zebra shadows of the porch where they stood his eyes were shining.

Marcus blinked for a moment, not comprehending. Then like the bits of a puzzle falling together he understood what the little bands of Christians had been doing, abroad in Rome at night—and what it was that Papa had done.