The Tongues of Men or Angels

Thirty-four Years after the Crucifixion

Useful is his name. One of them, at least. Everyone has multiple names in this mixed-up modern world — Roman names, Greek names, state names, slave names, religious names. It can’t always have been like that. It wasn’t. But Useful is a good name for a slave. Even if he isn’t.

If it wasn’t for that name, Useful would be dead. Or, rather, the act that saved him also gave him his name. A foundling on the steps of the shambles, exposure the preferred form of family planning among the Phrygians. A child so young he was still draped in birth offal, left amid the blood and mess of the meat market.

‘We could take the babe home, bring him up as a slave,’ the master had said. ‘He’ll be useful one day.’

He wasn’t.

Useful’s master is an atheist now. He no longer worships our Divine Lord and Saviour, the Prince of Peace, God and Son of God, Bringer of Grace, Redeemer of Mankind, the Deliverer of Justice: Augustus Caesar.

Neither does the master now believe in the Great Mother Cybele, or Artemis, or Apollo. Not even Sabazios, the city’s patron god. Patron of pit latrines and emptied bed pots, to judge by the summer stink.

The master worships only one god now, or two, perhaps, at most; there is some confusion as to whether one is a god or not. It seems to be complicated, this Jesus stuff, jealous and complicated …

Under his new faith, the master won’t even eat meat if it was previously offered as a sacrifice to other gods. Which is near enough to say any meat. Sometimes he sends Useful to buy mutton or goat from the Jewish quarter. About the only place you can find flesh that wasn’t first dedicated as an offering, unless you slaughter the beast yourself. You can see why the Jews are so strong, even though spread so wide: they separate themselves from the world, but in every city they are at home already. Their strange ways and laws are deeply familiar to them. Mostly the Jews seem to be a very moral people; many of the Greeks admire them for that. Though Useful has seen a stoning, which didn’t look so moral. A choke-screaming girl dragged barefoot outside the city walls, crying that she hadn’t done whatever it was they said she’d done, whatever it was that merited stoning to death.

It’s hard to kill someone by stoning, it seems: requires a lot of stones. The mob struggled to find sufficient. People are surprisingly sturdy, when it comes down to it, even though death is all about: sickness strides through the slums, splashing in the street sewers; children drop from unknown ailments — perhaps two-thirds of those who survive birth are dead before sixteen — and even the kin of emperors and ethnarchs are not immune. Mortality in the cities is so high that their wall-confined claustrophobia would be emptied entirely, were it not for the hordes always pouring in from elsewhere. Death is not some distant future end to life. Death is life’s constant companion. Death is the unloved neighbour of all who live crammed in unsanitary single workshop rooms. But if you actually try to kill someone, it takes a lot of effort. The girl being stoned, she survived long beyond the anger of the crowd. It took persistence to finish her off, her smashed-crab fingers still clawing at the dented earth as though some doorway might be found. Finally one of the kinder ones brought down a big corner-stone rock to crush her skull. Imagine such kindness as that: the kindness of crowds.

Useful is an over-sized urn-faced youth, with hips wider almost than his shoulders, but not in a womanly way, just as a bear’s are. Possibly it is this that gives him his ambling gait, which makes him look as if he’s taking longer than he ought. Which is not a good look for a slave.

Slavery is the way of things: you can’t complain about it. It has always been there and always will be. Useful would likely be dead if it weren’t for slavery: who but a wealthy man in need of slaves would save a foundling? Many slaves are freed on the death of their master, or can save up to buy their freedom. A favourite slave in a rich household often lives better than a poor freeman. In many ways, there are worse things to be than a slave.

But a slave is still property. A slave can be thrashed. A slave can be scourged. A slave can be raped. Or, rather, a slave can’t be raped, not by their master. It is the master’s right and therefore it is not rape. A slave is their master’s to do with as he wishes. Even to kill, if he wills. A waste of a valuable asset, but it happens. More slaves achieve manumission than are murdered, but it happens …

And, of course, a slave who runs away is a challenge to the Roman state. Thereby receives the penalty reserved for those crimes and those crimes only: the lingering, gasping agony of crucifixion. The body left on the tree, so dogs can chew the blood-scabbed toes and crows can peck away the face flesh and claim the soft marrow eyes. Useful heard of a man who took nine days and nights to die on the cross. Nine days spent hanged from a tree, shoulders and wrists dislocated from the strain of hauling up on the holding ropes, bereft of hope of reprieve or release, without even the means to end it himself: his final right removed.

The master’s new god was crucified, apparently. It’s a strange sort of god that lets himself be crucified by the Romans. But, then, Philemon is a strange sort of master.

He’s in the cloth and robe business, Philemon. Travelled frequently the length of the coasts, from Mysia to Cilicia, in his day, making the connections that still serve him well.

When Useful was growing up, Philemon had a shrine of figurines and idols he’d collected from all the great cities he’d visited. Carved from wood, moulded from clay, cast from bronze and then silver, the homely family gods echoed not just his travels but his rise in wealth. He smashed them all with a splay-ended tent mallet in the end, though. His new god doesn’t like other gods, except maybe this Jesus.

Even later, in relative dotage, Philemon still journeyed, when business required it. Sometimes he’d take Useful with him, hoping he might prove himself worthy of his name. He didn’t. They’d camp on the damp-dilated planks of the deck by night. By day watch the shores; rarely allowed out of sight; sometimes close enough to count the cliff-top flocks. Hair clogged with salt from the spray. Legs shaking from the roll of the waves. And, though he knew he was just a slave, Useful always felt a bit more than that, on those voyages. There will be no more of such trips. Not him and Philemon together. Not after what Useful has done.

Useful is on a solo journey now, compounding his first crime with two more: the theft of the gold coins required to make his escape and the escape itself. But this is his only hope. A slave has just one legal chance for life, when he has committed an act his master deems worthy of death: he can flee to the sanctuary of a higher-status friend or patron of his master, plead his case to them and hope they see fit to intercede. There is only one man Useful knows of whom his master respects to that degree and who might, just might, believe that Useful deserves his life. So Useful is on his way to Rome. The ambling foundling from the shambles on his way to the greatest city on earth: the centre of the empire. He could weep for the fear of what he’s done and what he faces, but tries to stay cold and calm as a carved idol. For fugitivarii — slave-hunting bounty-killers — wait at every port, on the lookout for strangers who might be runaways. And any fellow passenger or traveller on the road would likely be ready to turn him in, for reward and through duty. The outlaw slave lives a knife-edge life of desperation and trust-less torment. Useful keeps a blade under his cloak, but doesn’t know if he would have the strength or skill to kill, if it came to it.

The coins Useful stole, they tell you a lot about this world: minted with images of different deities. Rome rules over all, but embraces all; there is no such thing as heresy. Every god is accepted and welcome to mingle in the imperial pantheon. But the master’s god won’t have that: the master’s god says you can praise no god but him. Indeed, he says there is no god but him. It seems a bit selfish somehow, to Useful, a bit childish. Did no one ever teach this god to share?