Fireball

by John Christopher

  The troop of forty horsemen which had first surprised the Romans had grown to six troops by the time they moved on. Galbus had a wing of cavalry to command, and Brad and Simon had a new troop commander, called Curtius. He was a dark, stocky man, taciturn by nature. Simon at first thought him a poor exchange for the hearty, bustling Galbus, but Brad took a different view, and gradually Simon came to share it.

  Curtius had an observant eye and a sharp, sardonic sense of humour. On rainy afternoons, when exercises were over, he took to joining Brad and Simon in a little wine bar on the seafront. Bos, who commanded the gladiators’ company which was the spearhead of the foot soldiers, completed the quartet. Brad, though so much their junior and without military rank, seemed to do most of the talking. Simon had a feeling both men deferred to him a bit. That was sometimes irritating but, he told himself, unimportant. Before long the war would be over, and there would be better things to do than sit in a poky wine bar. He realized he no longer had any doubt of the outcome; he took the triumph of the Bishop for granted.

  When the storms gave way to calm winter sunshine, the army set out again, refreshed and strengthened. They took the easy road along the coast, north to a city whose name, Genua, had barely changed, then south into Italy. People flocked out to cheer them, and bunches of bright yellow mimosa were thrown in front of their horses’ hooves. The Bishop also rode, but on a donkey, not a horse. Their progress was often halted by crowds wanting to be blessed by him.

  There had, of course, to be resistance at some point; the emperor would scarcely surrender Rome without a fight. The final battle came at a place where the road, having gone inland from the coast, wound between small hills. The imperial army laid its ambush there.

  Once again Brad and Simon had a spectator’s view. The mounted forces were in the vanguard, and the Romans let them through before launching their attack. They heard the trumpet blasts and looked back, to see dark lines of figures descending from the high ground on either side towards the main body of the Christians.

  It was a classic operation, and under the conditions of warfare that had existed for more than two thousand years, the discipline of the imperial army would have guaranteed its success. But the Christian army was flanked along its length by bowmen, who sent their freight of death whistling into the charging lines long before they could get close enough even to throw their javelins. Simon had time to be amazed at the speed with which they fired and rearmed, producing that almost-continuous hail, before his troop was ordered into the attack.

  The cavalry split, charging on either side of the road and striking the shattered Romans on their flanks. Their own cavalry, of course, used horses only for transport, doing their actual fighting on foot. The sight of men riding down on them with upraised swords defied belief, but could not be denied. Coming on the heels of that distant hurling of death, it was too much.

  The battle lasted little longer than the others had done, though some Romans did succeed in coming to grips with the main force of the Christians, and one small detachment broke through to where a black-crossed banner waved above the Bishop’s head. Simon had a glimpse of the Bishop rising up from his donkey to smite someone with his crozier before more pressing matters engrossed him. What would happen, he wondered, if despite the victory the Bishop was struck down, as the emperor Julian had been in his world?

  The speculation was irrelevant. It was soon over, with the black-robed figure still sitting upon his donkey, unscathed amid the carnage, praising God for His mercy.

  • • •

  The palace of the emperor, a marble miracle of pillars and porticoes, of terraces and arches and vaults and domes, was perched on the edge of the Capitoline Hill; from its widest terrace one looked out over the Forum and the whole city of Rome. The fate of the emperor himself was doubtful. Some reports had it that he had fled to the south and taken ship to Africa; others that he had been killed by his personal slaves, and his body thrown in the Tiber. At any rate Simon, together with Brad and Bos and Curtius, lay on his terrace, on couches decorated with gold, cushioned by silk and swansdown, and drank his imperial wine.

  The Bishop’s weather held still. Under the sky’s blue dome the great edifices of the mother city gleamed in their different hues of marble—white and pink, red and ochre and pale green. In the parks trees slumbered with no stir of leaf, and fountains danced in the sunlight. Forum and streets were crowded, but neither noise nor emotions—whatever they might be—carried up here. All was peace.

  Soon they would be travelling back to Britain; the Bishop had made it clear that having conquered Rome, he had no mind to stay there. Simon listened hazily to Brad talking, about a project he had in mind. He was fairly vague about it. The only thing that emerged was that it was some kind of expedition. Bos and Curtius appeared to be interested. Let them be, Simon thought comfortably.

  He saw it first as a wisp of smoke curling up from the roof of the Temple of Julian and wondered about the fool-hardiness of whatever priests still tended the sacred fire. But the wisp thickened and darkened and, as he called to the others to look, sprouted pink flame.

  Bos said: “Yonder, too. Look.”

  There must have been not one firing party, but several. One after another the temples turned to torches. They watched because there was nothing else to do, and the scene had a terrible beauty. From the temples the fire raisers turned to palaces and public buildings. As dusk fell, the flames were brighter still as they burned to ashes the ancient heart of Rome.

  11

  THEY HAD TO WAIT ONLY three days for their interview with the Bishop. This was, as his secretary explained, an unusual favour; there was a six weeks’ delay on the normal waiting list. Simon thought this encouraging, together with the fact that they were received in the same little room. Nothing had changed, either in the surroundings or the Bishop’s own appearance. He wore the same small pectoral cross, not very well repaired at some time, the same worn robe and slippers. The intensity of gaze had not changed either. Simon was glad they had agreed that Brad should do the talking.

  The Bishop said: “You seek a favour.”

  It was halfway between statement and question, unencouraging in tone. Brad said: “Not for ourselves, Your Holiness.” The Bishop watched him in silence. “For a friend.”

  “State it.”

  “It’s someone called Curtius Domitius. He commanded a troop of horse in your army—the troop Simonus and I were in. He served you well, Your Holiness. He fought in every battle through to Rome.”

  “Christ gives His rewards to faithful servants. I, a poor servant myself, have none to offer.”

  “Well, that’s just it,” Brad said. “Curtius isn’t a Christian. As you know, a lot of those who fought on our side weren’t. They joined us because they were opposed to things like slavery and the empire itself.”

  The Bishop nodded. “He has helped to liberate the Church. And the liberated Church liberates in turn and welcomes. Having been freed from false gods, he can follow the true God, through Jesus Christ, His only Son.”

  “Yes,” Brad said. “I see that. But he doesn’t want to.”

  A silence ensued. The Bishop showed no sign of wanting to end it. Finally Brad did.

  “He’s been told that as an officer in the army he’s got to undergo the pendulum. He offered to resign, but he’s been told that’s not allowed.”

  In a bleak voice, the Bishop said: “These matters are the concern of others, not of me.”

  “But you could help,” Brad said. “You only have to say a word to Marcus Cornelius.”

  There was another long pause, before the Bishop said coldly: “What word? To grant favour to one of our Lord’s enemies?”

  “But he’s not! He just doesn’t want to be baptized.”

  “Christ said: He that is not for me is against me.”

  Simon could no longer stay quiet. “Christ said a lot of things, didn’t he? And nearly all of them were about peace and loving one’s fellow men. Do you think he’d
have approved of the pendulum?”

  Immediately following the return from Rome, the pendulum had been set up in the high-ceilinged state room of the governor’s palace, where it swung its murderous arc from wall to wall. Murderous, because its bob was a heavy cylinder of lead, with a sharp blade of iron set in on either side. An altar, surmounted by the figure of Christ, had been set up just in front of the point where the bob, at the lowest point in its arc, swept some four feet off the ground.

  And at that point a small wooden enclosure had been built, big enough for a man but granting him only sufficient freedom of movement to be able to drop to his knees in front of the altar before the bob came down. Some of the more agile were able to sway their bodies just enough to have the bob miss them—on the first few swings anyway. Escape became continuously more difficult as the pendulum swung to and fro, and fatigue in the end made it impossible. The one time Brad and Simon had been there they had seen bystanders laughing and laying bets as to which would be the killing stroke, before they turned away, sickened.

  Rumour had it that the pendulum had been devised by the Bishop himself—that the idea had come to him in a dream or vision. They had hoped that wasn’t true; there were plenty of other ruthless fanatics about these days. But they had decided, anyway, to keep reference to the pendulum brief and unprovocative. As the Bishop’s eyes burned into his, Simon had time to reflect that first thoughts had been best.

  The Bishop spoke at last. “You are impertinent, Simonus. The devil, it is known, can quote Scripture. You would do well to remember that you no longer dwell in your old world of lawlessness and licence—that world in which any fool or knave feels free to mouth his corruption of the holy word—but in a world that has seen the triumph of divine truth, a world in which the Church, which is the Body of Christ, is one and indivisible, and victorious. Listen to your priests, both of you, and pray to God for deliverance from doubts and temptations.” He gestured dismissal. “You may go now. The Lord go with you.”

  Outside, Simon said: “That wasn’t too good.”

  “No.”

  “How long has Curtius got?”

  “Before the pendulum? Days rather than weeks. The waiting list gets shorter all the time. There’s getting to be quite a rush for baptism.”

  “Do you think he will—be baptized, that is?”

  “Do you?”

  One really only needed to put the question to know the answer. The Church might conceivably have talked Curtius into membership, but he would never be coerced into doing so, particularly when the coercion involved making him bend a naturally stiff neck.

  “We could try again.” Brad looked at him. “Maybe go to Marcus Cornelius instead.”

  “We could waste time doing that.”

  Brad was right—it was impossible to imagine Marcus Cornelius doing anything the Bishop might disapprove of—but the casual dismissal of the proposal was irritating. Simon said: “Do you have a better idea?”

  “I might.”

  “Tell it then.”

  “Not right now. Let’s go and find Curtius first. And Bos.”

  • • •

  They sat in Bos’s tavern, literally his now because with some of the gold they had brought back from Rome he had bought the freehold. He had brought some Frascati wine back, too, of a good vintage, and it filled a gold jug with a dolphin handle that once had served the emperor. Brad reported on the fiasco of their visit, and Bos growled angry comments. Curtius stayed silent, but looked stubborn. Simon had thought of trying to persuade him to be sensible and go through the ritual of baptism—it didn’t mean anything unless you wanted it to, and you had only one neck—but he decided there would be little point.

  Brad outlined another possibility: Curtius could flee from Londinium. They could fix it so that he had a couple of days’ start before he was missed. But long term the chances were he would be picked up, and if not, he would be forced to spend the rest of his life as a fugitive. The Christians were in control everywhere, and it looked as though the persecution of pagans would only get worse.

  They listened gloomily, Bos cracking the fingers of his large hands.

  Brad said: “Obviously that’s preferable to being put through the pendulum. But there’s something else we can do. First I should say something about Simonus and me—about where we came from.”

  Simon looked up quickly; surely he wasn’t going to talk about parallel worlds to Bos? Brad met his eye blandly. He said: “You know we come from across the sea. You thought it was one of the barbarian lands—the country of the Celts or the Norsemen. But it’s neither of those. Ours is a great land—greater than Britain and Gaul and Spain and Italy and Africa put together—which lies far out in the western ocean.”

  Curtius stared at him with narrowed eyes.

  Bos said: “There is no land in the western ocean, beyond the land of the Celts. Only the world’s edge.”

  “We are from the land that lies at the world’s edge. Isn’t that so, Simonus?”

  Simon could see now what was coming. The least he could do was nod.

  Curtius said: “How did you get here? And why haven’t others come before you?”

  They were two good questions, but Brad dealt with them neatly. “The ocean is very wide. Wider than from here to Egypt, with no harbour for shelter in between. We were travelling from one part of our own coast to another, but our ship was blown off course in a storm. We lost both sails and rudder and drifted for weeks before she foundered. Simon and I took refuge on a raft, which cast us up, nearly dead from hunger and thirst, on the shore of Britain.”

  He said it convincingly. Bos was nodding, and Curtius looked more cheerful than he had done since their return to Londinium.

  Brad went on: “With the gold we got in Rome we can buy a ship and sail it westwards. In our country there is peace, and men are free. No emperors and no bishops. No slavery and no pendulums. What do you say?”

  “I am no sailor,” Bos said. He grinned widely. “But I think I can learn!”

  Curtius said slowly: “My father was a sea captain. If we could find a ship . . .”

  “I’ve found one,” Brad said. “She’s lying here, at Londinium. She’s twenty years old, but I’ve had her checked for seaworthiness. She worked the Africa run, so she’s used to deep water.”

  Curtius said: “Then this is something you had in mind before you went to the Bishop?”

  Brad nodded. “It would have been useful to have had more time. As it is, I guess we ought to move right away. We’ll need to lay in provisions and stores, but I don’t think we should do that here. Dubris would be safer.”

  Bos stood up. “I am ready now. Macara will be all right; she has the tavern and will find herself another man within a week.” He clapped a hand on Simon’s arm. “And by then, maybe, you will be showing me the wonders of this land of yours. It has women in it, I suppose?”

  A week might just about see them clear of Land’s End, but that was something for Brad to sort out.

  Simon said: “Bradus will show you the wonders, Bos. I am staying here.”

  He hated saying it, but it had to be said right away. Curtius looked at him, suspicious again.

  “If it is as good a land as Bradus says, why do you not wish to return to it?”

  Brad intervened before he could answer. He said, with a grin: “What is there could make him choose not to go back to his own country? Only one thing, surely. He has found a girl he would rather stay with. Not so, Simonus?”

  Simon nodded.

  Bos said, puzzled: “I have a girl, too. What of that? There are girls everywhere.”

  “But you’re older, Bos, and wiser! He’ll learn in time. And when he has learned, perhaps he’ll find another ship and come after us.”

  It hung in the balance for a moment; then Curtius relaxed and smiled.

  Bos squeezed Simon’s arm. “Soon, young Simonus. Grow up, and make it soon.”

  • • •

  The usual feeling of excitement a
nd anticipation was missing as Simon rode down to the villa. Thoughts of Lavinia were elbowed out of his mind by recollections of the others, particularly of the last time of seeing them, at the quayside.

  She was called Stella Africanus, an impressive name for a less than impressive craft. She was not much above forty feet long, a minnow to the vessel tied up next to her, which was three times her length. But she could be handled by three men, Brad pointed out. Prow and stern were high, compared with the low section amidships where the mainmast was fixed, rigged for a mainsail and smaller topsails. In the bow a spar, canted steeply upwards, carried a small square sail. A sternpost featured a carving of a swan with a star on its breast.

  He had cut the good-byes as short as possible, desperate to get away, and then had felt worse at the sight of Bos’s puzzled, unhappy face. He had wished them luck, hearing the words come out cold and stiff. Brad had done his best to make light of it, saying they wished him luck, too, and capping it with a joke that brought a grin from Bos. Simon had walked quickly to where his horse was tethered and ridden away without looking back.

  He visualized the ship in an Atlantic storm, with huge seas breaking over that matchstick mast. Curtius was the only one with any skill in seamanship, and that unpractised since boyhood. Brad had done some pleasure sailing off the coast of Maine, and Bos had the sort of hands that turned easily to most tasks, but it added up to desperate odds. They would be at sea now, beating south around the coast to Dover. He felt the wind in his face, fresh and from the west. They would have some tacking to do.

  The sight of Lavinia helped. She came to greet him on the porch, with outstretched hands, wearing a dress he had not seen before, a tunic of shimmering grey silk which showed up the darker grey of her eyes. As he grasped her hands, he became aware of her grandfather approaching, too.