The Kingdom of the Wicked

  ‘Well, I believe. And you believe too, don’t you? In the god Osiris. But I wouldn’t die for my belief.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with the god Osiris. Nobody would die for him. He’s only a kind of poem about the winter and spring.’

  ‘You’d better not let the priests hear you say that.’

  ‘He didn’t make heaven and earth and the sea and everything in them.’

  ‘Now you’re talking like a Jew.’

  ‘I am a Jew.’

  ‘That’s something else you’d better not talk about too loud. The Jews are supposed to go into slavery or feed the beasts at the games.’

  ‘Only the Jews who fought the Romans in Judaea. Why did you say what you said?’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘“Now you’re talking like a Jew.” As though there was something wrong with being a Jew.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, except – well, you take everything so seriously. About the God who made everything. And he looks down on you all the time, growling if we kiss or – well—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We ought to get married.’

  ‘You’re starting again. Round and round and round. Like the god Osiris. And I say we’re too young.’

  ‘We’re not. We’re not too young to—Well, if you knew how I felt about you—’

  ‘Oh, I know how you feel. Perhaps we ought to stop seeing each other. Perhaps you ought to go out with that Greek girl who rolls her eyes at you when she’s not pretending to pray to the divine Osiris. What’s her name? Daphne or something. You wouldn’t have to marry her.’

  ‘That’s not a very pleasant thing to say. I’m not – well, like some men, boys. I believe in love.’

  ‘Amor, eros, agape, ahavah. Look at the mountain. Fire. It’s gone now.’

  ‘It’s your God getting angry.’

  ‘That’s stupid and – you know—’

  ‘Blasphemous. Would it help if I became a Jew? Would you marry me then?’

  ‘That’s stupid too. You can’t become one. You just are.’

  ‘A Christian, then. That’s serious too. With a God who made everything and even had a son of flesh and blood that people eat every Sunday.’

  ‘They don’t now. It’s not allowed. It’s death to be a Christian.’

  ‘Is that why your mother’s father gave it up? Because he was scared of being thrown to the beasts? If you’re frightened of that I suppose it’s right to give it up. But it’s not very brave.’

  ‘He was very brave.’

  ‘Yes, when he had the Roman army behind him and in front of him. Not so brave now. Going to worship this god who killed the white bull. With the rest of the old soldiers, making him feel as if he’s a fighting man again.’

  ‘Ferrex, if you say another word against my grandfather I’ll get up and leave. Do you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you. Vesuvius hears you too. And he’s sticking out his big red tongue at you. Now it’s gone in again. I love you, Miriam.’

  ‘I love you too, Ferrex.’

  And they kissed with closed mouths, arms entwined. The great mountain, unseen of them, vomited a little spit trail of lava.

  Charming, are they not? Young love. Oh, I know the bubbling of the juices of the glands comes into it, but I think if there were a God who understood love he would put down his paper games for a moment and bless. His son knew all about it, but Paul was not too sure. And the rest of the disciples? It would not have been possible at this time, seventy-nine years after the birth of their master, to ask any of them, for they were all gone under. Barbarous deaths for most in outlandish places. But stay.

  One afternoon while Julius was deploring the depredations of the birds in his orchard, an old man, older than Julius, came timidly to the gate. He said: ‘Is it Julius? Is that your name?’

  ‘At your service. What can I sell you – a fine melon, some cherries, some squashes, a cucumber?’

  ‘May I come in? May we talk?’

  ‘Yes.’ A very old man, infirm, ragged, with a knotty stick to help him hobble. ‘Let’s sit under this beech tree here. Would you like some of this wine and water? How did you know my name? Did someone send you to me?’ They sat on the rough wooden bench Julius had knocked together. The wine and water had been married in a leather skin. The old man drank shakily but with gratitude. He said, wiping his mouth on his ragged grey sleeve:

  ‘Yes and no. I’d better give you my name. It’s not fair to have the advantage of you. Matthias. From Jerusalem. I was called the new twelfth apostle of the Christ. Does this make any sense to you?’

  ‘But,’ Julius said, ‘you’re Sara’s uncle.’

  ‘Sara,’ Matthias said. ‘Is she alive?’

  ‘Very much so. She’s in the house now. Let’s go to her. She’ll be amazed.’

  ‘But perhaps not happy. She held things against me – well, one thing. It was in the old days of Pontius Pilatus. Her brother, my nephew, condemned. There was a possibility of bribery. But the new Nazarenes didn’t believe a man should do what he wished with his own money. Besides, I mean no offence, women talk. This is a very secret visit.’

  ‘You’re a Jew,’ Julius said, ‘and a Christian. Those are both deadly things to be – with the way things are. I take it you fled from Rome.’

  ‘I fled from Rome. I came to Pompeii because I was told there was more tolerance here – tolerance, indeed, for too many things – strange faiths from the Euphrates, brothels as a major industry, drunkenness, adultery. And is my nephew Caleb alive?’

  ‘He went to the Judaean war. He never came back.’

  ‘Yes. That was to be expected. Fought for the Temple. And Stephen and James died because they thought nothing of the Temple. Mostly dead I believe, my colleagues, companions. I grow near to death. According to a man’s just expectations, I’m well past it. But, as you see, I’m hale though stringy. My voice still carries. I have work to do in this city.’

  ‘No,’ Julius shook his old head with vigour. ‘There’s no work for you here.’

  ‘Yes. There’s a grove near the foot of that mountain. Fit for meeting. Fit for the breaking of the bread. But you must tell me where the Christians are.’

  ‘This I don’t know and don’t wish to know. I think you’re under some misapprehension. I was a Christian, baptised by the apostle Paul himself, but I repudiate the faith. I follow the cult of Mithras.’

  ‘A very inadequate substitute, if I may say so. You worship a myth instead of a flesh and blood reality. God walks into human history and you turn your back.’

  ‘I must warn you,’ Julius said harshly, ‘to keep out of our way. Sara must know nothing of your coming here. A man has a certain responsibility to his family.’

  ‘I understand. Clearly. That’s why I come to you here under the trees, not to your house. Is that your house – where the chimney is smoking?’ It was a good mile off from these converted paddocks. Julius nodded. ‘It’s easier for a single man to follow the path of martyrdom. But you can help me in another way. Give me work. I can gather fruit, sweep, tug out weeds. Old but hale, as I say. And I have to earn my bread.’

  ‘My son-in-law works here. Today he’s at the games. The Pompeians pride themselves on their amphitheatre – big as the one Vespasian’s building in Rome. Work? Well, you’re welcome to your bread. As for shelter—’

  ‘Oh, I see your problem. Some day I’m arrested and you’re arrested for harbouring a criminal. Surely you have a shed, stable – where I can creep in at night and you can disclaim all knowledge of my being there. Or am I proposing to make life too difficult for you?’

  ‘I give under the pretence of your taking. I leave food and you take it. But soon you’ll find Christian friends with deep cellars.’

  ‘It grieves me that you yourself are not a Christian friend. But I regard your – apostasy as a temporary lapse. You’ll be back.’

  ‘I think not.’

  ‘Julius,’ Matthias said, grinning with few teeth, ‘you’re
better known that you think. You knew a man called Luke, a Greek physician with a talent for writing? He turned up briefly in Rome again when I was there, looking for Paul, and then disappeared – God knows where to. Perhaps to Athens, where they have a bishop named Dionysius and the Romans leave Christianity alone. They seem to regard the faith there as a harmless form of Platonism, if that’s the right term.’

  ‘I knew Luke, yes. He and I and Paul were – close. We suffered shipwreck together. In what way better known than I think?’

  ‘Luke kept the record of the bright days for the dark future. His writing is copied and read. The name Julius is there. A humane and helpful Roman centurion.’

  ‘And how did you know I was here?’

  ‘A very old couple in Rome told me about you and your wife Sara. A tentmaker, very old. He’s survived and his wife too. I think you will survive. You have the look of a survivor.’

  ‘One who has survived. What does it matter now? I have to worry about other survivals.’

  ‘I can say that also of myself, I suppose. But I don’t matter, nor really do the others. The great battles are remembered, but who recalls the names of the soldiers who fought in them?’

  In Rome things went well for the Romans who did due, if cynical, reverence to the Roman gods. But a return to the bad times was in preparation. Titus Flavius Domitianus, second son of the Emperor, whom I shall call simply Domitian, was, though in his late twenties, not inclined to follow paths of virtue and wisdom. He drank, gambled, whored, paraded the streets with a flock of bad-mouthed cronies and a bloodthirsty wolfhound from Neapolis called, with no onomastic originality, Lupus. He had no skill as a soldier nor even as a sportsman, though he showed a certain aptitude for archery. When, one day, a slave came out of the imperial apartments to the walled garden on the Palatine where Domitian and his friends were pelting each other with fallen fruit, Lupus emptily barking the while, he would not allow the man to deliver his message without making him submit first to a sportive torture. The slave had to stand against a white-painted board set against the wall, his right arm extended laterally and the fingers spread. Then Domitian took his arrows and his bow and, from a distance of many yards, aimed at the fingergaps. He hit no flesh and was duly if wearily applauded by his friends. The slave said:

  ‘My lord Domitian—’

  ‘I know, I know. My imperial father awaits. Come, Lupus, let the two beasts march together to the sacred presence. Why does he want us?’

  ‘You, my lord, not the dog. He gave strict instructions which were passed on to me to pass on to you. He doesn’t want to see your dog. You alone, sir. Why, I don’t know.’

  ‘Stand there. Don’t move.’

  Domitian shot a final arrow which parted the slave’s hair.

  ‘Some day,’ he said, ‘I’ll shoot lower. Much lower. You know where. You talk too much.’

  When he had gone, one friend said to another: ‘Exeunt the beasts.’

  ‘You’re not being fair to his wolfhound.’

  Vespasian was taking his frugal luncheon alone in the small dining room of the very limited, but, he said, entirely sufficient, imperial apartments. Bread, cheese, garlic, ale imported from Alexandria. He could hear the dog whining outside, tied to a post, so he lifted his head in the expectation of seeing his second son. Domitian, sleek, stocky, insolent, came in with a mock salute, crying: ‘Hail, Caesar.’ Then he took a wedge of cheese for himself and chewed it noisily.

  ‘I don’t like your manners, son. If you behave like this with me, the gods alone know how you behave with your slaves. You may sit down.’ Domitian sat chewing, grinning, showing what he chewed. ‘You don’t have much knowledge of imperial history, do you? Indeed, you don’t have much knowledge of anything except dice and whoring.’

  ‘Fair shot with the bow.’

  ‘You don’t know how I, with the help of your brother, have brought this Empire back on the road to sanity after decades of total disaster. Titus follows me. You follow Titus.’

  ‘If I live. If Titus lives.’

  ‘We assume you both will. Only I wouldn’t blame any slave who strangled you in your sleep. Or any whore who secreted a razor—never mind, I say no more. I know it wearies you to be reminded of your future responsibilities. I propose granting you a provincial quaestorship. I want you out of Rome. You do the Flavian reputation no good.’

  ‘But I don’t want to be a provincial quaestor. I want to stay here and help you, father. As I’ve done already. Help with the collecting of the taxes.’

  ‘The tax on the Jews is useful, I never doubted it. Any tax is useful. But listen to me—’

  ‘A tax is useful when it doesn’t involve loss of imperial dignity, I would say, father. People going to the public urinals have started to call them vespasians. That impairs your dignity.’

  ‘I don’t mind. It’s a wholesome tax. Money doesn’t smell. But at least men going to a urinal uncover their private parts privately. You, I’m told, make men prove that they’re not Jews by doing that publicly. It’s unseemly.’

  ‘But the Jews are the enemy. They’re lucky not to get worse.’

  ‘The Jews are the conquered enemy, which is slightly different. The only salt we rub in their wounds is the salt of exorbitant taxation. The Christians are a different matter. The Christians defy our gods and spit on the new temples I’ve built. And you can’t uncover a Christian by uncovering his genitalia. You have my permission to persecute whatever Christians you can find out. But not in Rome. We can take care of the Christians without your help. I’m sending you to Pompeii.’

  ‘But I want to stay in Rome. My friends are in Rome.’

  ‘You’ll make new friends in Pompeii. Decent retired centurions and Greek businessmen. And you’ll find a decent city council that will keep you in your place. On my orders. I’m asking for monthly reports. If you do more than usually badly I’ll send you off somewhere savage and remote. Britain, for instance. Now, get ready.’

  Domitian rose, took a crumb of cheese, mocksaluted and gave his father vale. Then he left. Vespasian could hear the dog barking now, not whining. Then the noise receded in the direction of whatever mischief Domitian had arranged for the afternoon.

  He spent the afternoon, like most, including his last one in Rome before assuming his commission, in a low gambling den, playing dice with a one-eyed man named Scrupulus, while Lupus sat panting at his feet (‘Bring your master luck, boy’) and whores sat around drinking wine fortified with grape syrup, ingesting at the same time the lead of the bowl, which was conceivably a factor contributing to Roman madness. Scrupulus said:

  ‘Got you there, your lordship. I make it three hundred sesterces.’

  ‘Roll you for double. No, wait – double and double and double.’

  ‘Six hundred and sixty-six, the holy number. Good, my lord.’

  Domitian lost and said: ‘Loaded.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have said that if you’d won, your lordship. Six six six sesterces.’

  ‘Don’t spit at me. On to him, Lupus. Bite him.’ The dog obligingly snarled and made for Scrupulus, who retired to a dark corner where the dripping fangs held him. Domitian chalked the sum on the wall: DCLXVI, saying: ‘Very well, that’s what I owe. I’ll pay you when I get back from Pompeii. But I still say those dice are loaded. Come, Lupus.’ And he left. This number has ever since been the mark of the beast, expanded in the secret writings of the Christians to an abbreviation of Domitianus Caesar Legatos Xsti Violenter Interfacit, meaning that the Emperor Domitian is violently killing the legates or representatives of Christ. The collocation of office and act was still to come and is proceeding as I write, but Domitian, as I shall show, was brisk enough in persecution while still merely a prince.

  He rode to the assumption of his office in Pompeii with the dog Lupus in a saddle basket, followed by his personal slaves and the dour Greek Amilon, a very starchlike man, whom Domitian called his secretary. He was fed and wined amply by the town officials, installed in the rarely used
imperial lodging on the Street of the Flowers, and he spent his first few days and nights in pursuing the ample pleasures of the town. He whored, gambled, drank, attended the games in the imperial box, became well known as a roaring boy on whom a dangerous authority had been plastered. One day he pursued a young man named Keravnos, so called for his loud voice, with a party of lictors: he wanted the young man to raise his robe and show the end of his penis, but Keravnos, who thought this to be merely a heavy joke in bad taste, ran away very quickly, Lupus lolloping after him, and entered the house of Marcus Julius Tranquillus, whose door was ever open. He slammed and bolted this door, hearing the scratching and whining of the dog and then the thunder of the lictors’ fasces on the wood, demanding admittance. The widow Hannah was sitting there with a new suitor named Achilles. This had been their conversation:

  ‘I mean, I know.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘About loneliness, I mean. When my second wife died – well, I drank you know. Drank. It doesn’t do a man any good.’

  ‘Drink, no.’

  ‘Loneliness. Or a woman either. I got over the drink. My business suffered. But I’ve never got over the other thing. So I ask you to think.’

  ‘Oh, I think all the time.’

  ‘Think. We’re all entitled to our little comforts.’

  ‘Spoken like a Greek.’

  ‘I am a Greek.’

  ‘Well, that’s why you speak like one. Now I’m being – what’s the word? – pert. I’m being pert. I apologise. I’m grateful you should ask.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t asked yet, to be truthful. But, with your permission, I will ask. There’s no need to give an answer now. Tomorrow, say.’

  ‘Or the day after.’

  It was at this moment that Keravnos ran in and bolted the door. ‘The lictors,’ he panted, ‘asking for something ridiculous. And the new man, Dom something—’

  ‘Domitian,’ Achilles said, going pale. ‘That’s the Emperor’s son.’ There seemed to be an attempt to tear the door from its hinges while a kind of wolfhowl, representing authority derived from Romulus and Remus, combined with loud male shouts to open up. ‘We’d better—’ Then Sara came in from the kitchen. She went straight to the door, frowning, and unbarred it. Domitian and his dog tumbled in. She looked at Keravnos, still frowning, asking: