King of Kings

XVI

The heavy purple curtains erected to make the walls of the court hung down motionless. Although it was still quite early, it was already hot. There was no hint of a breeze. It was going to be another stifling day. It was 27 August. Ballista had been in Ephesus since the seventeenth of the month. Comfortably lodged in the luxurious palace of the Proconsul, he had been in no hurry to begin his work. But the scribe to the Demos, the earnest Flavius Damianus, had been most pressing. The vaguely distasteful task could not be postponed for ever. If nothing else, the prisons were full.

Ballista shifted on his curule throne of office. The court functionaries appeared to have ceased their scurrying about. They must be satisfied. He looked around. The statues of the reigning emperors, the Augusti Valerian and Gallienus, accompanied by that of the latter's son, the Caesar Valerian, had been brought into the Chalcidium, the committee room at the east end of the Stoa Basilica, and set up in front of and below the permanent statues of the founder of the principate, Augustus and his wife Livia — both depicted seated, larger than life, and with severe expressions. In front, an altar had been placed on which a low fire burned, adding to the heat. The incense in the air was already cloying. All seemed ready.

'Bring in the first prisoner,' said Ballista.

The curtains parted, and a thin man flanked by two soldiers entered. His prominent eyes flicked round the room. He had a strange air of unstable hilarity, as if he had been celebrating a festival on his own.

'Name? Race? Slave or free?' Ballista rattled out the formula.

'I am a Christian,' the man replied.

'You may well be, but that is not one of the questions I asked you.'

'I am a Christ-' The man staggered forward to his knees as one of the soldiers hit him across the shoulders with a cudgel.

The eirenarch, chief of police, stepped forward. 'He is Appian son of Aristides, a Hellene from Miletus. He is of free birth.' The soldiers hauled the prisoner to his feet. The eirenarch continued, without needing to consult the notes in his hand. 'He was denounced last year, anonymously. That, of course, strictly speaking, is illegal, but in court he admitted he was a Christian, adding of his own volition that he was a priest of the cult, one they call a presbyter. He was exiled to the village of Kleimaka. There, in flagrant disobedience of last year's imperial edict — the terms of which were made clear to him — he openly attended cult meetings and travelled to one of their burial places that they call a cemetery.'

He stepped back as he finished. The eirenarch, Corvus, had a heavy, not unintelligent face. He flashed an odd look at Flavius Damianus. There is bad blood there, Ballista thought, before giving his mind back to the case.

The prisoner was grinning, although his eyes still slid nervously around the court.

'You were aware of the emperor's orders?' Ballista's words were as much a statement as a question.

'I do not know the orders. I am a Christian.' A quick gesture by Ballista stopped the soldiers knocking the prisoner down again.

'They have ordered you to worship the gods.'

'I worship the one God who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them.' The brave words were a little undercut by a nervous, high-pitched giggle.

'Do you know the gods exist?'

'No, I do not.'

'You might do soon.' Some of those in court smiled. 'If you return to your senses, you can obtain the pardon of the emperor. A pinch of incense in the fire on the altar, a small libation of wine and swear by the genius of our lord the emperor.'

'I do not recognize the empire of this world.' The man spoke out clearly, although his eyes never stopped moving.

'You are a presbyter?'

'Yes, I am.'

'You were.' Slightly irritated with himself for the cheap joke, Ballista turned to consult with his consilium of local worthies. The opinion of course was unanimous — death. Flavius Damianus recommended burning alive. The eirenarch Corvus pointed out that, as a freeborn citizen, the man should die by the sword. No, Flavius Damianus was adamant, an example must be made. The other worthies agreed. Ballista gestured to one of his staff, the scribe from North Africa, who handed him a scroll. Turning back to the prisoner, Ballista unrolled the papyrus.

'Appian, son of Aristides' — Ballista looked in the man's face, then down to read from the scroll — 'you have persisted in your sacrilegious views and have joined to yourself many other vicious men in a conspiracy. You have set yourself up as an enemy of the gods of Rome and of our religious practices, and the pious and most sacred emperors Valerian and Gallienus Augusti and Valerian the most noble Caesar have not been able to bring you back to the observance of their sacred rites. Thus, since you have been caught as one of the instigators of a most atrocious crime, you will be an example to all those whom, in your wickedness, you have gathered to yourself. Discipline shall have its sanction in your blood.'

The man's eyes had stopped sliding around the court. Trembling, he stared at Ballista.

'Appian, son of Aristides, in the consulship of Tuscus and Bassus, six days before the kalends of September, you are sentenced to death. You will burn.'

The man's mouth opened and closed. Nothing audible emerged. Ballista signed for the soldiers to take him away.

The morning was devoted to the priests of the cult. Much to the disappointment of Flavius Damianus, no bishops had been caught in the round-up, but there were another five presbyters, no fewer than ten deacons, servants to the presbyters, and two slavewomen ministrae. Ballista never really ascertained the role of the latter in the cult. As slaves, they had been routinely tortured and, most probably, repeatedly raped. It seemed to have driven out what wits they may once have had. The only intelligible answers that were extracted from them were affirmations that they were Christians. Ballista's court condemned to them to the beasts.

In the course of the whole morning, only two of the accused denied their faith. One presbyter hotly denied that he was a Christian. He claimed he had been falsely denounced by his neighbour, who was having an adulterous affair with his wife. He was eager to offer sacrifice to the imperial images and, unprompted, cursed the name of Christ. Ballista ordered him to be set free and the neighbour arrested on suspicion of a malicious accusation. One deacon hesitantly admitted that he had been a Christian, but he said that it had been a long time ago — it was years since he had returned to the rites of his ancestors. He too made sacrifice and went free.

After lunch, a solemn affair in the dining room of the Prytaneion a few paces from the Chalcidium, the afternoon was given over to the lay members of the cult. There were twenty of them. Two were imperial freedmen. Following the guidelines of the latest edict of Valerian, the possessions of the ex-slaves were seized by the imperial fiscus and the condemned were sent in chains to hard labour on the estates of the emperors. It was generally thought that, after a few years of that, they would wish they had been killed. The rate of apostasy was higher than the morning. Eight of the accused offered sacrifice and were released.

About midway through the afternoon, Ballista was presented with the case of one who did not renounce the cult which he found particularly disturbing. She had been denounced by her husband. Young, with a small baby on her hip, she stood straight and answered clearly: name, race, status — yes, she was a Christian. A breeze had got up and was gently moving the heavy curtains behind her. She looked Ballista in the eye.

Her father asked permission to reason with her. On his knees, taking her hands in his and kissing them, he gazed up at her. For a time, he could not speak, and his voice, when it came, was little more than a croak. 'Daughter, give up your pride. You will be the death of all of us.' There were tears in his eyes. 'Perform the sacrifice — have pity on your baby, my grandson.'

She looked sternly at him. 'I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian.'

Ballista leant forward. 'Have pity on your father's grey head, have pity on your infant son, offer the sacrifice for the welfare of the emperors.'

Unnaturally calm, she looked at Ballista. 'I will not.'

'Have pity on your child.'

'God will have pity on him.'

'You would make your child motherless?'

Still she betrayed no emotion. 'If he, too, sees the light, we will be reunited in the hereafter.' There was an inhuman confidence in her tone.

The consilium was divided. As expected, Flavius Damianus argued vehemently for the severest measures. Free women must not think that their status and sex protected them. This one should be thrown to the beasts with the slave ministrae. Indeed, a harsher punishment was fitting. Until execution, she should be confined to a brothel, naked, available to all, on a diet of bread and water. The eirenarch Corvus, in far fewer words, and those evidently carefully chosen, pointed out that the law demanded none of this.

As he listened to the members of the consilium, and it was clear that the majority inclined to Flavius Damianus, for whatever reasons, Ballista looked at the woman and child. She was immobile. The child wriggled. He was a fine-looking boy. How old? Less than a year. Maybe about ten months. A good head of hair, serious, light-brown eyes. His podgy fists reached up to grasp the woman's necklace. She ignored him.

Flavius Damianus was finishing another impassioned speech. The members of this deadly cult threatened the very existence of the imperium. War was coming with Persia. If the Christians were not destroyed, the gods would desert Rome; Shapur would triumph. The emperors demanded the sternest measures against the Christians. Those closest to the emperors urged the same.

Ballista thanked the members of the consilium. He turned back to the woman. Expressionless, she returned his gaze. There was an expectant hush in the courtroom.

'It is my understanding of the edict of the emperor Valerian that a free matron convicted of being a Christian should have her property confiscated and she herself should be sent into exile.' He paused. 'You will return to jail until such time as I have determined your place of exile and the fate of your child.' He looked sharply at her, wondering what reaction his last words would provoke. There was none.

The curtains were parted for her to be led away. For a moment, Ballista had a glimpse down the long colonnade of the Stoa Basilica, bands of afternoon sunlight shining across it from the left, the backs of the auxiliary archers keeping the crowd at a small distance. He very much wished he were somewhere else.

The last prisoner of the day had caused the biggest stir in the city. Aulus Valerius Festus was a member of the Boule of Ephesus and held the rank of a Roman equestrian. He entered court dressed in a Greek tunic and cloak. He stood quietly. He was newly shaved, his thinning hair carefully combed back, hands clasped in front of himself in the pose seen in statues of the great antique orator Demosthenes. He looked for all the world a model of Hellenic civic responsibility.

Aulus answered the standard questions and, without fuss, averred that he was a Christian. Ballista wondered why he should have chosen to enter a Roman court in a Greek tunic and himation rather than a Roman toga with the narrow purple stripe to which he was entitled. It might be an unspoken rejection of the imperium of the Romans but, there again, there might be any number of more prosaic reasons. It was important not to overinterpret a man's every action.

'Tell me, Aulus Valerius Festus, why a man of your rank, one of the honestiores, should choose to associate with a cult composed of the unwashed, of the humiliores?' Ballista pitched his voice at an amiable, conversational level.

'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.' Aulus intoned the poetic-sounding but mysterious words with assurance. Only a small fidgeting of the thumbs of his clasped hands betrayed any inner turmoil.

'The cult stands accused of cannibalism and incest.'

'It is a lie. We neither indulge in Oedipean marriages or Thyestes-like dinners. It would be sinful for us even to think of or speak about such things.' Aulus smiled. 'I doubt such things have ever happened among men at all.'

'You are an educated man. Most Christians are not.'

'It is written, "I shall destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the learning of the learned." '

Ballista decided to try a different approach. 'What is the name of your God?'

'God has no name as men have.'

'Who is the Christian god?' Ballista persevered.

'If you are worthy, you will know.' A low, angry muttering ran through the court. The vicarius might have barbarian origins, but in this courtroom Ballista was the embodiment of the majesty of the Roman people. The maiestas of Rome was not to be insulted.

Ballista silenced the courtroom with a gesture. He had had enough of this. 'The edict of the emperor is explicit concerning men of rank, concerning the honestiores — you will lose your status and property. The emperor's mercy, his clementia, allows you a chance to reconsider. You will remain in jail. If you persist in your evil, you will die.'

After Aulus had been led out, there was a shout from beyond the curtain.

'I am a Christian, and I want to die!'

'Who said that?' Ballista snapped. 'Bring him in.'

There was a scuffle, and two soldiers propelled a youth into the court. They pinioned his arms. He was already bleeding from a cut to the head.

'Name? Race? Slave or free?' Ballista could feel his grip on his temper slipping. This was degenerating into farce.

'I am a Christian, and I want to die!' The youth was wild-eyed, shouting.

'There are plenty of cliffs here, and I am sure ropes can be found down at the docks.' Ballista waited for the laughter to fade before repeating: 'Name? Race? Slave or free?'

The youth did not answer. Instead, he jerked forward and spat at the images of the emperors. 'The gods of the nations are daemons,' he yelled. 'It is better to die than worship stones!'

'Which?' Ballista said.

Confused, the youth glared defiance.

Ballista pointed to the imperial images. 'Which? Stones or daemons?'

The youth snorted his contempt. 'I wish to be with Christ!'

Ballista smiled a savage smile. 'I will send you to him directly.'

Laughter rang round the court. Ballista felt a strong wave of disgust; at the obstinate zealotry of the Christians, at the cruel, sycophantic laughter of the courtiers, at his own role in all this. 'Enough,' he shouted. 'Take him away!'