The Last Gospel

by David Gibbins

  He looked across the bay to the west, past the old Greek colony of Neapolis towards the naval base at Misenum, on the far promontory beside the open sea. The shadow of the mountain darkened the bay, and all he could make out were a few merchantmen anchored close inshore. He was used to looking out for the phosphorescence left in the wake of the fast galleys, but tonight he could see nothing. Where was Pliny? Had Pliny got his message? It was hardly as if he was away on naval manoeuvres. Claudius knew exactly what the commander of the Roman fleet at Misenum did. The fleet had not put out for action since Claudius’ grandfather Mark Antony had been defeated at Actium, over a century before. Pax Romana. Claudius nodded to himself. He, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, Imperator, had helped to keep that peace. He looked back towards the half-empty pitcher on the table. Pliny had better get here soon. What he had to say tonight demanded a clear head. It was getting late.

  He reached out to pour himself another cup, letting the wine overflow and trickle down the table to join the wide red stain that had permeated the marble floor over the years. He could see back into his little room and the line of wax images ranged along the wall, caught in the moonlight. Ancestral images, the only things he had saved from his past. His father Drusus, cherished in memory. His beloved brother Germanicus. With his waxen skin, Claudius felt he was already one with them. He was old, old enough to have lived through the Age of Augustus, the Golden Age tarnished for ever by the debauchery of Tiberius and Caligula and then Claudius’ successor, Nero. Sometimes, in his bleaker moments, usually after the wine, he felt that time had made a monster of him just as it had ruined Rome, not by some hideous malformity but through a slow and inexorable wasting, as if the gods who had inflicted the ailment on him, the palsy, were making him endure the full extremity of torment in this life before they pitched him into the fires below.

  He shook himself out of his trance, coughed painfully and looked over the balcony of the villa again, over the rooftops of Herculaneum. When he had faked his own poisoning and escaped Rome, when his work there was done and he craved his former life as a writer and a scholar, his old friend Calpurnius Piso had blocked off an annex to his villa and made a home for him here, his hideaway now for almost a quarter of a century, overlooking the sea and the mountain. He missed nothing in Rome that was not already gone, and had all that a scholar could need. He knew he should be more grateful, but there were irritations. Calpurnius’ grandfather had been a patron of the Greek philosopher Philodemus, whose library of unreadable nonsense was always in the way. And then poor Calpurnius Piso had been forced to commit suicide, here, in front of Claudius’ very eyes, after his failed plot against Nero, leaving the villa to a grudging nephew who did not even know who Claudius was, who thought he was just another one of the Greek charlatans who seemed to beg their way into every aristocratic household around here. It was exactly the anonymity that Claudius sought, but it was also the ultimate humiliation.

  But he had the memories, one above all others. The fisherman by the inland sea, that afternoon all those years ago. The promise Claudius had made him. Everything the fisherman had predicted had come to pass. Now forces beyond Claudius’ control were closing in on him. Claudius would not let him down.

  ‘Ave, Princeps.’

  Claudius straightened with a start. ‘Pliny? My dear friend. I told you to stop calling me that. We have known each other well since you were a young cavalry officer with my legions in Germany. You have been my closest companion since I summoned you to visit me here when you took up your appointment with the Fleet. I stopped being Princeps when you were still a young man. It is I who should be honouring you, a veteran and an admiral. But we are both citizens of Rome, no more, no less, for what that is worth these days.’

  Pliny came quickly in and helped Claudius back to his seat, taking his cup and filling it. He passed it over and poured himself one, holding it up formally. ‘The gods give you salutations on your ninetieth year.’

  ‘That was three weeks ago.’ Claudius waved his hand dismissively, then looked at the other man with affection. Pliny was tall, unusually so for a Roman, but then he did come from Verona in the north, the land of the Celts. Rather than a toga he wore the emblazoned red tunic and strap-on boots of a naval officer, and he had a sinewy toughness about him. He was everything that Claudius most admired, a decorated war veteran, a natural leader of men, a prodigious scholar who was author of countless volumes, and now the new encyclopedia. Claudius clenched his fist to stop his stutter. ‘Have you b-brought me the book?’

  ‘The first twenty volumes. My present for your birthday, Princeps, even if a little belated. I could not imagine a more auspicious occasion or a more exacting reader for my work.’ Pliny pointed proudly to a leather basket beside the door, carefully placed away from the wine, brimming over with scrolls. ‘A few details on the flora and fauna of Britannia I want to check with you, and of course the space you asked me to keep in the section of Judaea. Otherwise complete. The first natural history of the world not written by a Greek.’

  Claudius gestured at the half-empty shelves in the room, then at the scrolls lying in bundles on the floor. ‘At least now I’ve got space to store them. Narcissus has been helping me to box up these other scrolls. I’ve never been able to bring myself to throw any book away, and I never had the heart to tell old Calpurnius, but these ones by Philodemus aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.’

  ‘Where do you want them? My books, I mean. I can shelve them for you.’

  ‘Leave them where they are by the door. Narcissus is making space in my library tomorrow. Yours will have pride of place. All of that Greek nonsense will be removed.’

  ‘Narcissus still does all your writing for you?’

  ‘He castrated himself, poor fellow, so he could serve me, you know. It was when he was a boy, a young slave. I was going to free him anyway.’

  ‘I’ve never quite trusted Narcissus,’ Pliny said cautiously.

  ‘You can always trust a eunuch.’

  ‘It’s always been your Achilles’ heel, if I may say so. Wives and freedmen.’

  ‘Achilles is one thing I’m definitely not. I may be a god, but I’m no Achilles.’ Claudius stifled a giggle, then looked serious. ‘Yes, Narcissus is a bit of a mystery. I sometimes think his fall from being Prefect of the Guard in Rome to being little more than the slave of an old hermit must be hard for him to bear, being part of my own disappearing act. But Nero would have executed him if he hadn’t faked his death too. Narcissus has always been a shrewd fellow, with his business interests in Britannia. And his religion, the quirky stuff he picked up when he was a slave. He’s a very pious chap. And he’s always been very loyal to me.’ Claudius suddenly smiled, lurched up, and caught Pliny by the arm. ‘Thank you for your books, my friend,’ he said quietly. ‘Reading has always been my greatest joy. And there will be much to help me with my own history of Britannia.’ He pointed to an open scroll pinned on the table, one edge splattered with wine. ‘We’d better get to work while I’ve still got a modicum of common sense left in me. It has been a long day.’

  ‘I can see.’

  The two men hunched together over the table, the curious hue of the moonlight giving the marble a reddish tint. It was unseasonably hot for late August, and the breeze wafting over the balcony was warm and dry like the sirocco that swept up from Africa. Claudius sometimes wondered whether Pliny the great encyclopedist was not just flattering him by calling on his expertise on Britannia, a hollow victory if there ever was one. Claudius had been there, of course, had ridden out of the freezing waves on a war elephant, pale and shaking, not in fear of the enemy but terrified that he might have a seizure and fall off, bringing dishonour to his family name. Yet Britannia was his one imperial achievement, his one triumph, and he had devoted himself to writing a history of the province from the earliest times. He had read everything there was to read on the subject, from the journal of the ancient explorer Pytheas, who had first rounded the island, to the b
lood-curdling accounts of headhunting that his legionaries had extracted from the druids before they were executed. And he had found her, princess of a noble family, the girl the Sibyl had told him to seek out, she who would rise and fall alongside the warrior-queen.

  ‘Tell me,’ Claudius suddenly said. ‘You saw my father in a dream?’

  ‘It was why I wrote my History of the German Wars,’ Pliny replied, repeating the story he had told Claudius many times before. ‘It was while I was stationed on the Rhine, in command of a cavalry regiment. I awoke one night and a ghost was standing over me, a Roman general. It was Drusus, I swear it. Your revered father. He was committing me to secure his memory.’

  ‘He d-died before I even knew him.’ Claudius glanced at the bust of his father in the room, then clasped his hands together in anguish. ‘P-poisoned, like my dear brother Germanicus. If only I had been able to live up to his legacy, to lead the legions like Germanicus, to earn the loyalty of the men.’

  ‘But you did,’ Pliny said, looking anxiously at Claudius. ‘Remember Britannia.’

  ‘I do.’ Claudius slumped, then smiled wanly. ‘That’s the trouble.’ He began fingering a coin on the table, a burnished sestertius with his portrait on it, turning it over and over again, a nervous habit Pliny had seen him indulge many times before, but he let it slip out of his fingers and roll towards the scrolls by the door. Claudius sighed irritably and made as if to get up, but then slumped down again and stared morosely at his hands. ‘They’ve built a temple to me there, you know. And they’re building an amphitheatre now, did you know that? In Londinium. I saw it on my secret trip there this summer, when I went to her tomb.’

  ‘Don’t tell me about that again, Princeps, please,’ Pliny said. ‘It gives me nightmares. What about Rome? Your achievements in Rome? You constructed many wonderful things, Claudius. The people are grateful.’

  ‘Not that anyone would see them,’ Claudius said. ‘They’re all underground, underwater. Did I tell you about my secret tunnel under the Palatine Hill? Right under my house. Apollo ordered me to make it. I worked out the riddle in the leaves, in the Sibyl’s cave. Let me see if I can remember it.’

  ‘And Judaea,’ Pliny said quickly. ‘You granted universal toleration for the Jews, across the empire. You gave Herod Agrippa the kingdom of Judaea.’

  ‘And then he died,’ Claudius murmured. ‘My dear friend Herod Agrippa. Even he was corrupted by Rome, by my vile nephew Caligula.’

  ‘You had no choice,’ Pliny continued. ‘With nobody to replace Herod Agrippa, you had to make Judaea a Roman province.’

  ‘And let it be ruled by venal and rapacious officials. After all that Cicero warned a century ago about provincial administration. The lessons of history,’ Claudius added bitterly. ‘Look how I learned them.’

  ‘The Jewish Revolt was inevitable.’

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it? Fifteen years after Rome grants universal toleration for the Jews, she does all she can to eradicate them from the face of the earth.’

  ‘The gods willed it.’

  ‘No they did not.’ Claudius took a long shuddering drink. ‘Remember the temple you told me about during your last visit? The one Vespasian had erected in Rome? To the deified Claudius. I’m a god too now, remember? I’m a god, but this god did not will the destruction of the Jews. You have it on divine authority.’

  Pliny quickly rolled up the scroll and slid it into a leather satchel beside the table, away from the splatter of wine, then hesitantly pulled out another. ‘You were going to tell me something about Judaea. Another day?’

  ‘No. Now.’

  Pliny sat poised with a metal stylus over the scroll, eager and determined. Claudius peered at the writing already on the scroll, at the gap in the middle. ‘Tell me, then,’ Pliny said. ‘This new Jewish sect. What do you think of them?’

  ‘That’s why I asked you here.’ Claudius breathed in deeply. ‘The followers of the anointed one. The Messiah, the Christos. I know about them from my visits to the Phlegraean Fields. They are just the kind of people the Nazarene wanted to follow him. The crippled, the diseased, outcasts. People who so desperately crave happiness that their yearning becomes infectious, leading others to find their own release from the burdens of life, their own salvation.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Because I am one of them.’

  ‘You are one of them?’ Pliny sounded incredulous. ‘You are a Jew?’

  ‘No!’ Claudius scoffed, his head jerking sideways. ‘A cripple. An outcast. Someone who went to him for a cure.’

  ‘You went to this man? But I thought you never travelled to the east.’

  ‘It was all Herod’s doing. My dear friend Herod Agrippa. He tried to help, to take me away from Rome. He had heard of a miracle-worker in Judaea, a Nazarene, a man they said was descended from King David of the Jews. It was my only trip ever to the east. The heat made my shuddering worse.’

  ‘So the trip was wasted.’

  ‘Except for a few hours on a lake.’ Claudius suddenly had a far-off look in his eyes. ‘The town of Nazareth lies on a great inland body of water, the Sea of Gennesareth they call it. It’s not salt water at all, you know, but really a vast lake, and lies several stades below the level of the sea.’

  ‘Fascinating.’ Pliny was writing quickly. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘He was a carpenter, a boatwright. Herod and I and our women went out with him on his boat, fishing, drinking wine. I was with my lovely Calpurnia, away from the clutches of my wife. We were all about the same age, young men and women, and even I found an exuberance I thought I could never have. I spilled wine in the lake and he joked about turning water into wine, catching the fish that way.’

  ‘But no miracle.’

  ‘After the fishing we sat on the shore until the sun went down. Herod grew impatient, and went off to the town seeking his pleasure. The Nazarene and I were left alone together.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said I must bear my affliction, that it would protect me and propel me to a greatness I could scarcely imagine. I had no idea what he was on about: me, Claudius the cripple, the embarrassing nephew of the emperor Tiberius, barely tolerated in Rome, hidden away and denied public office while all the other young men were finding glory with the legions.’

  ‘He saw a scholar and a future emperor,’ Pliny murmured. ‘He knew your destiny, Princeps. He was a shrewd man.’

  ‘I don’t believe in destiny. And there you go again. Princeps.’ Pliny quickly steered him back. ‘What of the man’s own future? The Nazarene?’

  ‘He spoke of it. He said that one day he would disappear into the wilderness, then all the world would come to know of him. I warned him not to be brought down by the sticky web of those who would exploit and deceive him. That was my advice for him. Nazareth was a pretty out-of-the-way place, and I don’t know if he realized then what men are capable of. I doubt whether he’d ever even seen a crucifixion.’

  ‘And Herod Agrippa?’

  ‘Herod was still with us when the Nazarene had said he wanted no intermediaries, no interpreters. Herod used a Greek word for them, apostoles. Herod was a straightforward man, blunt, a dear fellow. He had no interest in the visions of the Nazarene, but he could see I had been affected, and he was fond of me. He determined that if he came to power he would tolerate the Nazarene.’

  ‘But this man was executed, I believe?’ Pliny said.

  ‘Crucified, in Jerusalem. In the final years of the reign of my uncle Tiberius. The Nazarene had told me he would offer himself as a sacrifice. Whether he truly foresaw his own execution, his crucifixion, is another matter. The man I met had no death wish. He was full of the joys of life. But we talked about the ancient legends of human sacrifice among the Semites, the Jews. He knew his history, how to reach his people. I think the sacrifice he meant was symbolic.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Pliny murmured absently. ‘The Sea of Gennesareth, you say? Not the Dead Sea? That sea is remarkably briny
, I believe.’ He was writing in the final narrow space he had left on his scroll, dipping his quill in an ink pot he had placed beside him. ‘This will make a splendid addition to my chapter on Judaea. Thank you, Claudius.’

  ‘Wait. There’s more. I haven’t even given it to you yet.’ Claudius got up and hobbled unsteadily over to the bookcase where Philodemus’ library had been, sweeping aside the few remaining scrolls on the middle shelf and reaching into a dark recess behind. He lurched back to the table, sat down heavily and passed a small wooden scroll tube over to Pliny.

  ‘There it is,’ Claudius panted. ‘That’s what I wanted you to have.’

  ‘Acacia, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Pliny sniffed the wood. ‘What the Jews call sittim, from the stunted tree that grows along the shores of the east.’ He uncorked the tube and reached gingerly inside, extracting a small scroll about a foot square. It was yellow with age, though not as old as Philodemus’ papyrus scrolls, and some of the ink had crystallized and smudged on the surface. Pliny held the sheet close and sniffed the ink. ‘Probably not sulphate,’ he murmured. ‘Though it’s hard to tell, there’s so much sulphur in the air today.’

  ‘You smell it too?’ Claudius said. ‘I thought it was just me, bringing it back from my visits to the Phlegraean Fields.’

  ‘Bitumen.’ Pliny sniffed the ink again. ‘Bitumen, no doubt about it.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Claudius said. ‘Oily tar rises to the surface all round the Sea of Gennesareth. I saw it.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Pliny scribbled a note in the margin of the text. ‘Fascinating. You know I have been experimenting with ink? My Alexandrian agent sent me some excellent gall nuts, cut from a species of tree in Arabia. Did you know they are made by tiny insects, which exude the gall? Quite remarkable. I crushed them and mixed them with water and resin, then added the iron and sulphur salts I found on the shore at Misenum. It makes a marvellous ink, jet black and no smudging. I’m writing with it now. Just look at it. Far better than this inferior stuff, oil soot and animal skin glue, I shouldn’t wonder. I wish people wouldn’t use it. Whatever this writing is, I fear it won’t last as long as old Philodemus’ rantings.’