by Paul Finch
Flavia hung her head. If they still didn’t understand at this stage, they never would. Any action she took, no matter how small, which gave credence to the emperor’s claim that he was of divine stock, was strictly against the teaching of her faith. There was one God and one alone, and He wasn’t located in Rome. The magistrate sighed as if she’d genuinely disappointed him. From the very beginning, he’d seemed like a fair man, but his patience was wearing thin.
“Flavia Juliana Ursus … for a widow, a formerly rich widow in fact, you are exceptionally stupid. Has the confiscation of your property meant nothing to you?”
Flavia tried not to think of the lush country estate near Glevum, with its orchards and wheat-fields, or the handsome townhouse in Corinium, with its pillared veranda and private garden – all now possessed by the governership and shortly to be auctioned off.
“The Lord …” she said, voice wavering. “The Lord said … it is harder for a rich man to enter Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”
“Bah … you Christians infuriate me!” The magistrate banged down his pen. “You have only one lord … Publius Licinius Valerian. Under the protection of whose legions you live, on whose roads you may freely travel, in whose commerce you are allowed to trade. And all he requires of you is one simple gesture of loyalty … a token gesture. By all that’s holy, woman … make the sacrifice and the matter is closed.”
“It’s a heathen sacrifice,” she replied.
“Then render it meaningless by praying to your god as you do it. Ask forgiveness of him, say you were forced unto it, say it means nothing to you …”
“Do you think I haven’t already considered that, my lord?” she said. Again, she hung her head. “But I can’t. The pretence alone would be too much.”
The magistrate sat back. “He must be a very tyrannical god, this Christ … all the other sects have complied with the law. Is this Christ so fierce in his wrath that you chance a terrible death just to please him?”
“He would know no wrath, only grief.”
There was silence as the magistrate contemplated his options. They were decidedly few, yet he didn’t want to condemn another free citizen to death, especially a citizen of great family name, who up until now had led an apparently law-abiding life. This was the unique problem with the Christians; aside from their heresy, they’d largely led irreproachable lives – many of the tenets they conducted themselves by were admirable and wouldn’t go amiss being officially incorporated into law. Another problem, of course, was this bizarre meekness, this passive acceptance of torture and death; it sent spears of doubt through everyone charged with their punishment. He glanced at the Praetorians ranked behind the woman. To a man, they were tall, square, brutal-looking men, fearsomely clad in glittering iron plate, and cloaks and tunics of heavy black leather; the Empire’s crack fighting-corps, its military elite, now sent far and wide in small contingents to assist in rounding up the Christians because the regular troops didn’t like doing it. Many legionaries were themselves secretly Christian, while vast numbers of others were devoted to Mithras, the god of light, who like the Christian god, preached forgiveness and love in the struggle against evil. It had come to something when only these handpicked few – chosen not simply for their strength and discipline, but also for their strict loyalty to the emperor – could be relied on to enforce the basic law, and all because of pretty, petite, elfin little creatures like this Flavia.
“Take her away,” the magistrate said. “You can have one more night in the dungeon, madam, and if in that time you haven’t reconsidered … your fate is decided.”
The Praetorians led Flavia away, steering her down a flight of stone steps to the court-house cells. A moment later, she was in half-darkness, sitting on her straw-strewn pallet, a wall of bars between herself and a flickering stub of candle on the jailer’s shelf. From the farthest corner came a skitter of claws, a rustle of whiskers and rat-fur. The vermin were invisible in the dark, but evidently snuffling at the chamber-pot. During her first hours of incarceration, Flavia had found this odious – loathsome, intolerable. Yet how quickly she’d got used to it. She lay down on her pallet, drew her long dark tresses over her arms for warmth, and prayed for strength to face the ordeal ahead.
“I admire your courage,” a voice said. “But the chopping-block is no place for any person to end their life, least of all the wife of a renowned soldier of Rome.”
Flavia looked up, surprised. The Praetorian tribune, the one called Maximion, had appeared on the other side of the bars. He was still fully armoured, and held his cloak around him, but he had removed his plumed helm, and as such seemed a little more human. His grey hair was cut very short, in the military fashion, and his oddly young-old face was stony and seamed by battle-cuts. Yet he was handsome in an honest, dignified sort of way. It was easy to imagine him living the quiet life of a patrician, with a happy family around him.
Flavia curled up into a ball. “My husband gave his life. Why can’t I?”
“Your husband died defending our Gallic dominion against the Franks … that was his duty.”
“This is my duty,” she replied.
The tribune considered. “You know, Emperor Valerian did not come to his throne eager to crush you people. At the outset of his reign, he was well-disposed towards you … in comparison to Gaius Decius, even kindly. But your clergy have antagonised him.”
“That is not true,” Flavia said.
“Pardon me … but you know nothing. This is Britain, the farthest flung outpost of the Empire. I have served in Italy, Spain and Carthage … I have heard the sermons, I have witnessed the great gatherings in the catacombs and cemeteries. It is subversion.”
“Subversion? You talk as if we are terrorists or spies. Our Lord preaches peace and forgiveness … even to our enemies.”
“Then why not make the sacrifice?” Like the magistrate, Tribune Maximion seemed genuinely concerned to save her. “It is the simplest thing you can do. It doesn’t mean you can’t worship your god, it doesn’t mean you have to worship any of ours. It is an oath of spiritual loyalty, nothing more.”
“An oath I can’t give.”
“You really want to die?”
Flavia couldn’t suppress a shudder. “I don’t want to. I fear death, of course … and the pain of death. But if I must face it, I will try to be strong.”
At this point, her interrogators normally shook their heads in bewilderment and wandered away. The tribune remained, however. He regarded her through the gloom. “Do you have children?”
“Yes,” Flavia said. “Do you threaten me through them, now?”
“How will they fare if their mother is dead?”
“They are old enough to fend for themselves.”
“And are they Christians?”
Flavia paused before replying. “They … have been instructed that way. Whether they remain so is their own choice.”
“An astute answer. I take it, then, that you Christians are not totally averse to … negotiation?”
“I don’t understand.”
He leaned closer to the bars, his voice lowered. “If a Roman of repute was to certify that you had made the offering, even if you had not, how would that rest with you?”
Slowly, Flavia sat up. Her clasped hands tightened together. The slimmest chance that she might emerge from this nightmare unscathed should be seized upon. But hope was tempered by uncertainty. “I … I don’t know.”
“It would save your life and your soul,” he said.
“It would certainly save my life,” she replied, “but not my soul, if the price for this favour is what I suspect it to be.”
Flavia knew that her thirty-five years had been kind to her. Though of slender build, she was still a fine, shapely woman. There wasn’t a streak of grey in her lustrous black hair. She might be a prisoner, but she was not undesirable.
The tribune shook his head. “I’d hoped you’d credit me with greater integrity.”
“Nero died over a hundred and ninety years ago, and much of his cruelty with him.”
“Much … but not all,” she replied.
“More than you may think.” Tribune Maximion pondered. “Listen to me … I am prepared to escort you from this prison and return you in the morning, having vouched that you went to the pantheon and performed the sacrifice … even though you won’t even have been near to it.”
“And where will you have escorted me to in reality?” she asked.
“I have a villa not far from here, on the lower reach of the Usk.”
“I thought you were a man of integrity.”
“Boundless integrity … but not boundless courage.” He glanced over his shoulder before continuing. “In the service of Rome, I have fought and killed every kind of enemy, from the Vandals to the Palmyrans. But there is one breed of foe I am helpless against.” He paused. “The dead.”
Flavia was puzzled. “The dead?”
“At least … the not-living.”
She shook her head, baffled.
“This man whose teachings you follow … Christ?”
She nodded.
“I hear that he cast out devils?”
“I have heard that, too,” Flavia said.
“I hear that he exorcised spirits from possessed men and banished demons back to Tartarus?”
“What is this?” Despite the slim chance for salvation, Flavia felt a flutter of fear in her belly.
“In short …” The tribune again hesitated. “In short, my villa on the Usk, built at great expense and originally planned as a retirement home for my wife and I, is uninhabitable.”
“A ghost?” Flavia asked, stunned that she was even having such a conversation.
“Something of that nature. Something evil and terrifying … no-one has yet spent a night there without arousing it. I tried once … this was my reward.” He tapped his temple. “This mane of prematurely grey hair.”
She shook her head. “You must find one of our priests. He will cleanse the villa for you.”
“Your priests are all in hiding.”
“But I can’t do it.”
“Aren’t you all equal in the eyes of your Lord?”
“Well yes …”
“Don’t you intend to lay down your life for him?”
“If I must …”
“Then the least he can do is work through you.” The tribune’s voice had risen. Suddenly, there was a wild desperation about him. It struck Flavia how frightened and helpless he genuinely was, how bereft of allies. One of the Roman Army’s deadliest, a specialist killer who had wrought blood and chaos all over the Empire with his spear and gladius, a warrior who could not imagine defeat – was now being terrorised in his own garden by a being against which edged steel was a feather, against which the emperor’s angry edict meant as much as an idiot’s twitter.
Still, she shook her head. “I don’t know the correct words.”
“Is your god so pedantic?”
“It wouldn’t be right …”
“Don’t you realise, woman, I’m giving you a chance to save your life without breaking your faith! If anything, you’ll be enhancing it … calling on your god to assist you in repelling evil!”
Flavia tried to think. Was there anything she had been taught, or had read in the scriptures, which forbade this? Nothing sprang to mind. Even the apostles, as she recalled, had been given the power to expel demonic forces. And more than once, they had used that power.
She glanced up. “And if He doesn’t assist?”
Maximion lowered his head, as if ashamed by his show of emotion. “In aiding you, I’ll be risking not only my name and reputation, but my commission too. Maybe even more … because in calling on your god for help, it will appear that I too am a Christian. If I am to take such a risk, I will expect a result.”
Flavia slowly nodded. She ought to have known there would be a catch – that saving her skin and her soul could never be anything less than extremely difficult, if not impossible. “So I must clear this entity from your house? Nothing less will suffice?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Fail and I return you to your cell for execution of sentence.”
“Tribune, you’re asking me to work a miracle.”
“No! I’m asking your god to work a miracle. Is that so much … this so-called healer of lepers and cripples?”
“I warn you, He won’t be tested.”
“It would be in his interest to tolerate being tested just this once. Think about it … not only will he be saving you from a terrible penalty, but he might win himself a new and valuable convert.”
Flavia regarded him dubiously.
Maximion gave a calculating smile. “A Christian in the senior ranks of the Praetorian Guard could only benefit you and your people, could it not?”
*
They took the road north from Venta Silurum, through sparsely wooded meadows towards the distant, snow-clad Black Mountains. Flavia rode in a two-wheeled cart, a burly Praetorian at the reins. Tribune Maximion trotted alongside her on horseback. A small troop of his men, also mounted, brought up the rear.
The villa was situated on a low ridge, and Flavia first saw it from some distance away; its outer wall of yellow stone and the red-tiled roofs within dominated the lower valley, where the broad Usk meandered through fertile river-terraces. The area immediately surrounding the property was broken up into a patchwork of vineyards and hayfields. To one side of the road there was a strip of pasture; several sheep and their lambs stood grazing, oblivious to the passing company. When they were still a league short of the main gates, the tribune brought them to a halt.
“I will be camped here,” he told Flavia, staring at her from under his low, burnished helm. “In case you’re entertaining ideas about absconding during the night, Centurion Fulcra and his men will be stationed at regular intervals around the property. It’s a net you won’t be able to slip through.”
Flavia looked across the Usk to the steeper, more densely forested region where the last of the Silure hill-men had resisted the Romans so fiercely. “This is an ancient and mysterious part of the land,” she said. “The native Britons refer to this place as an ‘edge’.”
The tribune followed her gaze. “An edge to what?”
“To the world we know. An ‘edge’ is allegedly the point where our universe borders with the spirit-land.”
“You Christians believe in that?” He sounded surprised, but interested to know more.
She glanced at him, wondering what could have reduced so brutal and domineering a soldier to the ill-at-ease, child-like thing she saw now. “Not as such. But we do believe spirits can return to the corporeal world. And it stands to reason that somewhere there must be a doorway for them.”
“And my house stands at such a doorway?”
“Maybe,” she replied.
“In which case it’s a doorway you need to close.” He reined his mount backwards, so that she could descend from the cart. “Believe me … your life depends on it.”
Obediently, Flavia climbed down and proceeded on foot. As she did, she glanced back and saw Maximion conferring with the rest of his men. They’d gathered in a nervous clutch, as if expecting attack. She couldn’t help marvelling; the masters of the world – even now dressed in black plate and heavy chain, each man sporting the lethal gladius at his hip – frightened of shadows. At first she wanted to scoff, but then she looked at the approaching villa, and it struck her that she too was afraid.
It wasn’t an especially forbidding structure. The outer wall was crawling with ivy and honeysuckle, while close to its foundations rose-gardens had been planted and were now ready to bud. If anything it was pleasantly rustic, yet having heard the things she’d heard, Flavia did not want to go inside. She recalled the tribune’s exact words: “Something evil and terrifying!” She reca
lled his extraordinary claim that one night in that house – just one night – had turned his hair as grey as ash.
Only that other memory – that great grisly block of wood, hacked and bloodstained, where so many quaking limbs had been lopped, so many pleading heads severed – kept her on course, until at last she reached the outer gate.
It was not locked, and it creaked open to her touch.
Beyond it lay an admittance courtyard, with temporary stable-blocks and a wide balcony over the main doors, which were made of varnished cedar wood, but which now stood partially ajar, allowing the drifts of dead leaves already flooding the yard to infiltrate the house itself. Flavia held her ground for a moment. Aside from the distant wind hissing on the peaks of the Black Mountains, there was a silence that was more complete than any silence during daytime had a right to be; it bespoke emptiness, solitude. Warily, she ventured on, her sandals’ leather soles clipping on the paving stones, echoing faintly. The cedar wood doors opened on an atrium cloaked in shadow from the shuttered windows, but airy and painted around its walls with images of dancing figures and accompanying musicians. The floor was an intricate mosaic, bearing a startling image of the great she-wolf rumoured to have mothered Romulus and Remus. But the few furnishings visible had been draped with sheets, which were now stained with greenish mould. There was a dusty stillness in the room.
Flavia surveyed it warily, before stepping forward.
Immediately to her right, a flight of steps ascended to the upper cubicula. To the left, an arched passageway led off into dimness. It struck Flavia that dusk was drawing down, and that she had no means to make fire. Aside from the shift she’d worn since being imprisoned, the only other thing she’d come into possession of was a woolen cloak, which, on the instruction of his tribune, one of the soldiers had given to her for the ride from Venta Silurum. She had no tallow, no kindling, which mean she’d better hurry up and explore the house, just to get her bearings before darkness fell.