The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  ‘What is repent?’ asked Nubia.

  ‘Metanoia,’ chuckled the man with the white beard. ‘Change of mind. It’s when you turn your life around and go in a new direction.’

  Ursus looked up eagerly. ‘Yes! I am going a new way. I repended and God healed me. Gave me my dung.’

  ‘Your what?’ said Nubia.

  Lupus grinned and pointed into his mouth.

  ‘My dung.’

  ‘I think he means tongue,’ said Aristo, and then to Ursus. ‘You were mute?’

  Ursus nodded.

  ‘Like Lupus?’ said Nubia. She was aware of all the children behind her.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ursus.

  ‘Your tongue was cut out and then it grew back?’ said Aristo.

  Ursus frowned and shook his head. ‘My dung was burned when I was liddle. Never could speag.’

  ‘When were you healed?’ Nubia asked Ursus.

  ‘In Halicarnassus,’ said Ursus. ‘In da dee ah dur.’

  Nubia and Aristo frowned at one another.

  Lupus wrote on his wax tablet: THEATER

  ‘In the theatre!’ cried Aristo. ‘The day we saw you running and yelling?’

  ‘Yez,’ said Ursus. ‘I wuz yelling for joy. Run do dell Minduz. He came do see proffid and he repended, doo.’

  ‘Mindius repented?’ breathed Nubia.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ursus happily. ‘Mindius repended, doo. He vows do be good, now. Jusd like me. The proffid healed him, doo.’

  Lupus turned and stared in disbelief at Ursus: Mindius had repented?

  ‘Wool fluff!’ said Aristo. ‘If Mindius had repented then he wouldn’t have kidnapped Miriam’s baby.’

  They were still standing in the canal garden, in the cool of the evening. Behind them, thirty-nine children were watching.

  Ursus frowned and shook his big head. ‘Mindius duz nod kidnap babies. He only dakes children. Bud nod any more. Now he is gud.’ Ursus looked over Aristo’s shoulder at the children. ‘He renounced his evil ways. He is sorry.’

  ‘But he kidnapped Popo,’ said Aristo. ‘Do you deny that?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Popo. Philadelphus. The baby from Ostia. And his nursemaid, Lydia,’ said Aristo. ‘If Mindius had repented he wouldn’t have kidnapped them.’

  ‘Mindius didn kidnap baby.’

  ‘Then why did he ride off with them?’ asked Aristo.

  Ursus’s crinkled forehead relaxed. ‘Oh! Dad baby.’ He looked at Lupus. ‘Dad baby you saw when we ride fasd?’

  Lupus nodded.

  ‘That was Popo, wasn’t it?’ said Nubia.

  ‘No!’ Ursus chuckled. ‘Dad baby is Mindius’s baby. Chloe one of his girls and baby is his baby.’

  ‘But,’ stammered Aristo, ‘When Bato asked Magnus the dwarf if it was Miriam’s baby, he said yes. Magnus said Mindius planned to sacrifice it.’

  Ursus shook his head angrily. ‘Magnus da dwarf is a big fad liar,’ he said. ‘He probably sez dad for revenge on you.’

  Lupus stared wide-eyed at Nubia and then at Aristo.

  All this time they had been pursuing the wrong baby.

  The slave-trader Mindius was hanging from the calcite cliff and begging for help, but Jonathan ignored him and went to help Lydia.

  ‘Stay away from me!’ cried the woman. ‘Stay away from my baby!’ As she twisted away from him, her headscarf slipped to her shoulders.

  Jonathan stared in disbelief: the girl was not blue-eyed, fair-haired Lydia. This woman had dark eyes and hair. He looked down at the crying baby. It was not Popo.

  ‘Help me, for the love of God!’ cried Mindius. ‘Can’t hold on much longer.’

  Jonathan turned and looked back down at Mindius and for the first time he saw him up close. He saw that Mindius had unusually hairy ears and that his skin still had a sickly yellow tinge from an excess of bile.

  The revelation came to Jonathan like a thunderbolt from a blue sky.

  Mindius was like Midas.

  Midas, with his satyrs’ ears and golden touch, the king brought down by hubris. Mindius was Midas, and Midas was the Key.

  ‘If you let me die,’ grunted Mindius, ‘then my blood will be on your hands.’

  But Jonathan was already stepping forward and extending his right hand.

  Mindius grasped it with his left and started to pull himself up. But his foot must have slipped for Jonathan felt himself suddenly jerked forward.

  Time seemed to slow as he pitched forward over the curved lip of the pool, towards Mindius’s horrified face. And now he was falling, they were falling, Jonathan and his enemy: falling together.

  ‘If the baby wasn’t kidnapped,’ said Aristo to Ursus, ‘why was Mindius fleeing with it?’

  ‘Baby was son of girl Mindius dook from Smyrna. Baby has derrible rash over skin. Mindius is sick, doo. He has yellow skin, yellow eyes. When I dell him proffid healed me, Mindius dakes girl and baby and we ride fasd as we can do see proffid.’

  Lupus looked up in surprise and began to write on his wax tablet.

  Aristo leant forward and read it out loud: ‘When I saw you riding away, you were going to see the prophet?’

  ‘Yez!’ Ursus nodded at Lupus. ‘For proffid do heal baby. Bud crowds are big and someone dells us wrong way becuz dey all hade Mindius. We ride and ride and den durn around and ride back again and finally we find him on hillside. We hear him preach and see him heal people. We sday wid him and finally he prays for Mindius and Chloe and for da baby. Den he says go dip baby in holy pools of Hierapolis and he will be healed.’

  ‘So that’s why Mindius and the girl are going to Hierapolis,’ said Aristo. ‘They’re not running away. They’re running towards.’

  ‘Mindius is trying to help the baby,’ said Nubia.

  ‘But why?’ said Aristo.

  ‘Because he repended,’ said Ursus patiently, as if to a small child. ‘Now he is gud.’

  Beside him white-bearded John nodded. ‘There is great rejoicing in heaven,’ he said, ‘when such a sinner repents.’

  ‘Don’t move,’ came the man’s voice in Jonathan’s ear, above the sound of rushing waters. ‘Don’t move or we’re both dead.’

  Jonathan opened his eyes to a vast sky. He slowly turned his head and his stomach writhed at the precipitous drop below: a tumbling, slippery slope of crystalline rock, pink in the light of the setting sun. He was lying in two inches of warm water. And a man was embracing him from behind. Mindius.

  Couldn’t even do a proper job of killing yourself, said the voice in Jonathan’s head.

  ‘If you move,’ said Mindius. ‘We’ll both go over the edge and fall down the mountain.’ There was a strained note in his voice, he seemed to be in pain.

  ‘The world would be a better place without either of us,’ said Jonathan. But he lay still, his heart pounding and his body trembling.

  ‘What on earth can you have done that was so terrible?’ said Mindius. ‘You can’t be much more than thirteen.’

  Around them the waters sighed and muttered.

  Go on, said the voice. Tell him.

  ‘I started a fire in Rome that killed twenty thousand people.’

  Mindius was silent for a few moments.

  Then he chuckled.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ said Jonathan. His left ankle began to throb. He must have twisted it in the fall.

  ‘And I thought I was a sinner,’ he said.

  Jonathan stiffened and Mindius tightened his grip. ‘Before you kill us both,’ he said softly, ‘hear me out.’

  Don’t listen to him, said the voice. But Jonathan had no choice.

  ‘Do you think you deserve to die?’ said Mindius.

  ‘We probably are going to die,’ said Jonathan. ‘If we fall off this ledge. . .’

  ‘Do you think you deserve to die?’ repeated Mindius.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘And so do you.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Mindius. ‘We both deserve to die.’ He was silent for a moment and then added.
‘But someone died for us. God sent his son as a sacrifice, that we might live.’

  Jonathan gave a bitter smile at the irony of being preached the gospel by a criminal mastermind.

  ‘You’re Jewish, aren’t you?’ said Mindius.

  Jonathan nodded.

  ‘Then you know what a mikvah is: a ceremonial cleansing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A few days ago,’ said Mindius, ‘I underwent the ceremonial cleansing in the Little Maeander, at the hand of a prophet called Tychicus. A Jew, like us. Only he believes the Messiah has come. The Messiah – the Christ – was a man called Jesus, and he was the ultimate sacrifice. This Jesus taught a mikvah – a baptism – for the forgiveness of sins. You go down into the water and when you come up the old you is dead and there is a new you. One who can start fresh.’

  Jonathan was silent. He knew this. How could he have forgotten it?

  ‘Tychicus baptised me,’ continued Mindius, ‘and when I came up out of the water, I felt clean. And I remember thinking: Now I can be good.’

  Don’t believe him, said the voice. He’s a criminal mastermind.

  ‘The old me died three days ago. The new me is going to devote the rest of my life to doing good,’ said Mindius. ‘And you can, too. God’s atoning sacrifice was so great. It means no crime is too big for him to forgive.’

  Do you really believe that? said the voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonathan quietly. ‘I believe that.’

  ‘Then accept his sacrifice,’ urged Mindius, ‘and be baptised. Die to your old self. Be born from above and become his servant. Live your life for good.’

  Jonathan’s head was throbbing. Mindius was a despicable monster. A criminal mastermind. But he was also Midas, the Key. Maybe this was the answer Jonathan had been seeking.

  ‘Will you do that?’ Mindius’s voice seemed to be getting weaker.

  Don’t listen to him, said the voice.

  ‘Will you be baptised?’ whispered Mindius. ‘Right here? Right now? In this pool of water?’

  Jonathan took a deep breath and gave single nod. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  There was a pause: ‘I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘Jonathan ben Mordecai.’

  ‘I have no authority,’ said Mindius, ‘except that given to me by God through his Spirit. Are you sorry for what you’ve done?’

  ‘More than I can say.’

  ‘Then in the name of God the father, God the son and God the Holy Spirit, I baptise you, Jonathan ben Mordecai.’

  ‘Jonathan?’ came Flavia’s voice from above. ‘Are you alive?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said.

  ‘Oh praise Juno! We thought you were dead!’

  ‘Is Mindius with you?’ came Bato’s voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘I think he’s unconscious. There’s blood in the water and it’s not mine.’

  ‘We’re going to lower a rope down,’ said Bato. ‘Tie it around him. We’ll lift him up first, then drop it back to you.’

  ‘Are you all right, Jonathan?’ came Flavia’s voice. ‘Did Mindius hurt you?’

  ‘No, he didn’t hurt me,’ said Jonathan. And he added quietly. ‘I think he saved me.’

  They spent the night at the house of an asiarch in Hierapolis. A doctor had set Mindius’s broken leg and wrapped it in a splint. Now Mindius was sleeping in a room guarded by Bato and his two soldiers.

  Jonathan had soaked for nearly half an hour in one of the thermal hot springs and the doctor had bound his sprained ankle. The asiarch’s wife had given them cold chicken and bread for supper. Now Jonathan and Flavia were lying on soft felt mattresses on the flat roof of the house, lulled by the murmur of the water in the cascades below the city.

  Jonathan gazed up at the myriad stars in the sky above. For the first time in years, maybe in his whole life, he felt free.

  ‘Jonathan?’ came Flavia’s voice from the darkness beside him. ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I feel so foolish,’ said Flavia. ‘We were chasing that baby and we never even had any proof it was Miriam’s.’

  ‘Miriam’s baby disappeared at the same time as other children from Ostia,’ said Jonathan. ‘And most of them ended up here in Asia. Also, Magnus the dwarf told us it was Miriam’s baby.’

  ‘Only after we asked him why Mindius had kidnapped Popo. That probably gave him the idea to lie, to taunt us.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Jonathan. ‘He probably just said that to get revenge on us.’

  ‘He’s a horrid, spiteful little dwarf,’ said Flavia. ‘I can’t believe he tricked me.’

  Jonathan sighed. ‘It wasn’t just you. We were all convinced it was Miriam’s baby. Including your father and Bato. That’s why they came to Asia.’

  Flavia was silent for a few moments. Then she said: ‘I miss home.’

  ‘Me, too. What do you miss most?’

  ‘Pater, of course. And Scuto and Alma and Caudex. And Alma’s cooking. I never knew how lucky I was.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Jonathan. ‘Neither did I.’

  ‘What do you miss?’

  ‘I miss father and mother,’ he said. ‘And Miriam. But I miss them the way they used to be. And it will never be like that again.’

  ‘Does that make you sad?’

  ‘Yes. And no. Life goes on. It never goes back. We have to face the future.’

  ‘That’s very optimistic of you,’ said Flavia, and he heard her yawn. ‘You must be feeling better.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, look! A shooting star!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘In the constellation of Virgo.’

  For a moment they lay in silence, gazing up at the vast heavens. ‘Jonathan,’ said Flavia. ‘Do you really think Mindius has turned good?’

  ‘Yes, I do think Mindius has turned good. I think God is going to use him for great things.’

  ‘I don’t think god would use an evil man like that.’

  ‘Moses and King David were both murderers,’ said Jonathan. ‘God used them.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think Mindius turned good. I think he’s trying to trick us.’

  Jonathan gazed up at the stars he knew so well and smiled. ‘There’s only one way to find out for certain.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘By their fruit you will know them. We’ll just have to wait and see.’

  In his vision he sees a man building a palace in heaven.

  The man does this by giving his property to the poor. When he gives to widows and orphans he lays the foundations. Each coin in a beggar’s palm buys a celestial brick. Every redeemed slave is a column for the peristyle. When he builds a nymphaeum for the town, his inner courtyard gains a fountain. And his alms to the synagogue build the roof.

  The man has nothing left on earth.

  All his treasure is stored up in heaven, and his mansion stands ready and waiting.

  Bato assigned the blue-eyed soldier called Demetrius to accompany Jonathan and Flavia back to Ephesus. Jonathan’s mare Tiberina seemed to sense a change in him, and she stepped out cheerfully, eating up the miles. The journey took three days. They spent both nights beside the Maeander River and when Jonathan awoke on the third morning to birdsong and sunlight, he realised what was different.

  The voice had not spoken to him since the evening on the mountain. And he sensed he was free of it for ever.

  As soon as Flavia saw Nubia and Aristo standing in the vestibule of the Villa Vinea, she knew something had happened.

  ‘What is it?’ said Flavia, looking from Nubia to Aristo and back. They stood side by side, both smiling. Their eyes had a strange shine. Nubia wore a beatific look on her face and Aristo looked almost boyish. ‘Great Juno’s peacock!’ cried Flavia. ‘You’re betrothed!’

  A look of utter astonishment flitted across Aristo’s face.

  Nubia’s smile faded and her golden eyes grew wide. ‘No!’ she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. ‘It is not that.’

&
nbsp; Aristo laughed. ‘Of course not! It’s something even better.’

  Jonathan limped past Flavia into the courtyard. ‘Is it Lupus? Has he been healed?’

  ‘He still has no tongue,’ said Nubia. ‘But he has been healed inside. And we are born from above!’

  Flavia opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  Aristo beamed. ‘A man called John has been staying with us. He’s been telling us about The Way.’

  ‘The way? What way?’ said Flavia. ‘What are you babbling about?’

  ‘My faith!’ cried Jonathan. ‘You believe.’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Nubia. ‘It is wonderful. And, Flavia, we do not have to sacrifice animals ever again.’

  Jonathan limped forward to give her a hug, then turned to Aristo. ‘You, too?’

  Aristo nodded. ‘I’ve had many conversations with your father about his philosophy. I always said I would believe it if I could see it. But old John said I wouldn’t be able to see until I believed. He urged me to take the leap of faith.’

  ‘Leap of faith?’ said Flavia. ‘It’s not logical. Aristo, you taught me to use logic and reason. Flaccus says this religion is irrational. They believe without reasoning out their argument.’

  ‘I taught you to use logic and imagination,’ he said with a smile. ‘Faith is a kind of imagination. It’s imagining a world we can’t see, but hope is there. When I prayed with John, a kind of veil was taken from my eyes. Flavia!’ He took her excitedly by the shoulders. ‘For the first time I understand the cosmos.’ His eyes were shining.

  ‘Lupus believes, too,’ said Nubia. ‘You should see him.’

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Jonathan, looking around happily.

  ‘With the other children. And John and Ursus.’

  ‘Ursus? Mindius’s big thug of a bodyguard?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nubia giggled behind her hand. ‘He is like a big toddler now.’

  Jonathan began to laugh, too, and Flavia stared at the three of them.

  ‘Great Juno’s peacock,’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s got into you all? You’re all acting as if you’ve drunk too much wine.’

  Bato arrived back in Ephesus two days later, three days after the Ides of August. He came into the palm tree courtyard shortly before noon as Flavia, Jonathan and Lupus were draping garlands from the columns.