by Stant Litore
But then they were silent, and the moaning seemed even louder, as though it was right outside the walls.
One juror remained. A youth, a patrician—his aquiline nose proclaimed it. Slowly he rose to his feet to add his sentence. His eyes looked past the curule seat.
“Absolvo,” Marcus said softly.
Polycarp sucked in a breath. Pride welled up fierce and hot in his chest and, following it, a wave of sorrow that made him close his eyes. Marcus, Marcus. That small act of enormous bravery would be unlikely to go unpunished.
The groaning of the dead seemed to rise from the very earth.
“Light the pyre.” Cold resolve in Caius’s voice.
Regina stiffened, and her face became very white. Polycarp simply watched as a lone guardsman strode to the pit to the right of the curule chair. For the first time, Polycarp saw that this one man held a torch; he’d held it, slow burning, all through the trial, but in the wild heat and brightness of this day, the Ides of Augustus, Polycarp had not noticed it. Now the guardsman bowed his head once to the statue of Justitia and tossed the torch in.
Flames leapt up from the pit, and the air above it shimmered; the temple wall glimpsed through that shimmer became like a painting of a temple wall left in the rain. Polycarp gave the flames a good look. To his own shock, he found in his heart no fear of the fire. He was too distracted, perhaps, by the moaning in the street. And though he felt the fire’s warmth on his arms and face even from here, it was a small pit. Barely would a man fit within it; it was smaller than the baptismal pit Polycarp had once seen carved into the floor of a believer’s cellar in Smyrna. “Do you light so small a fire to scorch a human life from the earth?” he asked. “Such an undertaking should require a furnace large as the sun.”
“It is hot enough, desecrator,” Caius said. “By the votes of the jury, you are condemned to—”
He was interrupted by the sound of something heavy thrown against wood; the noise echoed across the courtyard. The groans beyond the wall were terribly loud, making the hairs along Polycarp’s arms rise.
Then a great thudding and slamming of flesh against wood, and all eyes swung to the gate to the temple grounds. The wooden door that barred it was rattling hard in its hinges. Even as the door had in Polycarp’s dream. He froze, staring at it.
Caius, too, was staring. It was as though the praetor was not seeing the gate but was gazing at some personal horror private to his soul and his soul only—as if that personal horror had lurched now out of his heart and grown to a size monstrous and terrible. The guardsmen looked to him, but Caius gave no direction, only stood there with his face bled of all color. Two of the guardsmen glanced at each other. One of them nodded, and then they both sprinted for the gate. Even as they did, a wooden slat in the gate came loose, then broke; several pale hands reached through the gap, clawing. Fingers caught at the other boards, tearing and pulling, ripping pieces from the gate. The familiar, sickly stench of death came through the opening.
Outside, more groans erupted from what might have been a thousand throats. Polycarp’s mouth went dry; it was all a man could do to listen to that sound without emptying his urine down his leg. The sight of the wooden gate leaping and bucking in its place as the dead tore it apart made his heart race.
Perhaps all the dead in Rome were outside that door.
There are too many hurts to heal, Despair hissed to him from where it perched now beside the curule chair.
Maybe, but a man can make a start. Polycarp took a step toward the failing gate. Even as he did, one of the guardsmen swept at the breach with his blade, and severed hands fell to the earth, but there were no cries of pain from without the door: only that low, anguished moaning. The dead tore away more of the wood, and the weakened frame buckled as their bodies slammed against it. Polycarp could see the empty eyes of the dead through the gaps.
In a voice almost more shriek than articulate words, Caius cried out: “Fire! Fire! Get him to the fire! Let his burning be an atonement to our dead!”
Polycarp’s guardsman seized his arm—and the one remaining guardsman who hadn’t sprinted for the gate, the one who’d held the torch, joined them also.
At that moment the gate crumpled, scraps of wood falling to the ground. The dead lurched through, arms upraised, their mouths open in the wordless wailing of their need. Their clothes were tattered; some wore nothing, their naked bodies mutilated with the terrible wounds made by gouging fingers or teeth. One of the guardsmen at the gate was dragged into the mass of the dead, his screaming cut quickly short. The other fought a retreat, sword out and flashing, but the dead seized him with many hands. As he struggled in their grasp, the corpse of a young woman missing the left side of her face tore into his throat with her teeth. Another of the dead bit away the guardsman’s ear.
Julia and Regina’s escorts left them and moved toward the gate, though what they might do against the tide of dead pouring through was unclear.
Polycarp’s guardsmen stood very still, and Polycarp did also, unable to take his gaze from the bodies that were moving through the door and stumbling into the courtyard like a slow flood; behind those entering, the street was overwhelmed with dead: they were packed like sacks of grain in a merchant’s hold. They swarmed to the door, arms lifted, beating on the ones before them, groaning in their need to get at the living.
A few of the jurors began to scream.
At the screams, Caius’s body jolted. Every nerve in him came awake, every sinew went taut. His glanced at the jurors, Roman citizens for whom he was ultimately responsible. He had failed to protect and provide for his family, but in this moment, with the Emperor away, the Senate ineffective at best, and the dead coming through that door, he as senior justice stood in the role of paterfamilias for the vast family of Rome. The realization of this ran cold through his veins. For half a year he had been playing the role of the failed father to a failed son; but in this moment the screaming jurors, the lictors standing helpless, the guardsmen dying at the gate, and the guardsmen standing by Polycarp were all sons of Rome, all sons in need of their father.
Caius’s snarl was feral. Shouting for the guardsmen to hold the gate, he snatched the bound rods from one of his lictors and tore loose the binding cloth. The narrow staves clattered to his feet, discarded symbols of office, but he retained two, one in either hand—thin, stout rods the length of a man’s arm, with ends whittled to points. “Lictors, jurors, all of you—into the temple!” He could delay the dead while the others got inside and barred the temple door. His face livid, he strode toward the gate, even as the jurors darted past him, hurrying for the refuge of the temple. Moments before, Caius had stunk with fear; now that there was something visible and embodied to fight, his eyes burned with that cold violence that must once have kindled in the eyes of Caesar or Marius or Cato the Elder.
Caius spoke aloud to his ancestors as his steps carried him to that mass of swarming, hungering bodies. The stench of those bodies was overwhelming. “Di parentes,” he said under his breath, “I am the last. The last paterfamilias of my house. Accept this sacrifice, this atonement. I will recover our honor. Fight with me. All you ancient Lucii, fight with me. I beseech you.” With a cry, Caius broke into a run. He threw himself against the lurching crowd with a speed and ferocity that showed his military past; in his hands, the rods of office were both shield and thrusting weapons. With the length of a rod pressed to a corpse’s throat, he held back the snapping teeth. A jerk of his hand shot the other rod’s point into another corpse’s skull. Even as the corpse’s face slackened, Caius slid the stake free and leapt back, then stabbed again with both; two more dead slid to the ground. Hands grasped and clutched at his toga, and Caius spun, unraveling it from his body. The toga crumpled to the ground, to hinder the feet of the shambling dead; the Roman officer stood in his loincloth, brown gore dripping from the rods he held onto the trampled, sandy soil of the courtyard, his chest heaving, his face flushed, his short Roman hair damp with sweat.
The dead were closing about him, so many, their arms lifted to grab at him; in their midst he spun and stabbed, screaming hoarsely; two guardsmen, knives out, fought behind him. Caius called out the names of his ancestors, one after the other, as he spun and jabbed with the pointed rods. The names of his ancient and patrician house became battle cries as he cut into the dead. He felt their hands on him, then the sharp burn of teeth biting into his arm. Screaming, he turned and speared his rod into the creature’s face. Then the others were dragging him down—such weight! He was pulled from his feet; almost he was on his back in the dust. He surged to his knees with a howl of panic and rage, one hand held immobile, the other striking, driving through one corpse’s eye and into its skull, where the rod caught. He pulled at it wildly. At the weight of the corpse, the rod slid from his grip. Fingernails scraped at the back of his scalp, but his hair was too short to be gripped. Other hands caught his shoulders, his arms. Screaming, he was tugged down, their faces blocking out the sun above them—gashed and decaying faces, with ravenous, open mouths, Roman faces, old men and young men, daughters and matrons, patrician noses and the flatter noses of the Roman poor, all hissing and snarling, all ducking toward him to feed, all the Roman dead. Hands clawing at his body, fingernails digging sharply into his skin, gouging and tearing. A shriek of pain. He twisted, struggling to wrench his arms free of them, horror seizing him: the last of his house, devoured by these unclean dead; would his body rise from the earth to walk eating through the streets, unremembered and unrevered? “Di parentes!” he shrieked. Agony in the right side of his face, one of the dead biting into his cheek. “Livius!”
The guardsman’s grip on Polycarp’s arm tightened, and the father was pulled a step nearer the fire; it was very near now. The other guardsman was gazing at the disaster at the gate, and he was pale as a Celt, his eyes showing their whites. Caius’s shouts could be heard above the groans of the dead.
In a quiet, cold voice, Polycarp said, “Do you really mean to burn me while your temple is overrun?”
The guardsman who held his arm didn’t look at him. His voice, too, was carefully controlled. “I am a Roman. I do my duty.”
“So do I,” Polycarp said grimly.
The heat of the fire on his face was like a second noon sun. Fear and anger and shame rushed through him like some dark alcohol, muddying his mind. He would burn then, as the dream had warned. And he had achieved nothing. The dead had come and would devour everyone here. What did it matter then, that his words and Regina’s had shaken the jurors, or that seeds had been planted in unready hearts? Those seeds would not last the day.
Cursing, the guardsman gripped both of the old man’s arms and began to move him across the dust—only to draw up short. A long knife was pressed sharply to his throat, the blade glinting in the sunlight.
“No more.” The other guardsman’s words were hardly louder than a whisper. “Keys. Now.”
The guardsman who held Polycarp didn’t move, didn’t release his prisoner’s arms. His eyes just flicked from one side to the other. His adam’s apple twitched slightly, just above the knife. “Cassius had them.”
The other man’s gaze shot back to the gate, and he cursed. “All right, let him go.”
Polycarp felt the grip on his arms release, and he stepped to the side, unsteady on his feet. The cracking voice of the fire and the heat of its hunger on his face made him feel faint. He stepped back, saw the two guardsmen, the younger one now removing his knife from the other’s throat. Beyond them, the dead were milling about the other end of the courtyard; they had dragged Caius beneath them and were feeding. But already a couple of them, unable to get at the meat that was twisting and shrieking on the dry ground, were turning and stumbling toward Polycarp and the guards. And others appeared to have some of the jurors trapped in a corner. Polycarp couldn’t see Regina or Marcus or Julia. He began to pray softly under his breath.
The younger guardsman stepped to him, took the prisoner’s right wrist, began picking the lock on the manacle. Polycarp could feel the rattle of it all the way up his arm. He stood with the fire at his back, begrudging every second that kept him from moving to face that crowd of dead, from moving to help his people.
“Brutus—” The other guardsman stood by, his face aghast.
“Shut up.” Brutus wrenched the manacle free of Polycarp’s wrist and dropped it; it dangled at the end of the chain from his other wrist. His eyes met Polycarp’s; they were wide with fear and there was a plea in them. “We need you, father,” he said softly.
In the next instant two of the dead were upon them, hissing; Brutus leaped back, and the other guardsman plunged his own knife into one’s chest; the thing seized his arm, and the guardsman let out a screech of fear that would have shamed him in any place or any moment other than this one.
“Not yet time to rest,” Polycarp murmured. Taking up the chain in his left hand, he lifted his right and stepped between the hired guardsman and the dead.
Even as Caius threw himself into the dead, Julia froze, her face white, staring at the approaching corpses. “Come on!” Regina cried to her. The deaconess glanced wildly about the courtyard, taking in the temple door, the jurors rushing past the blind statue and through it, and Polycarp standing between the guardsmen near the fire. Some of the dead were very close, lurching and stumbling, and they came between Polycarp and the witnesses. Several turned toward Julia and Regina, closing on them, hands reaching, clutching—it was like that night fleeing the Subura, except here in the bold sun the dead looked more terrible, because they looked more human. Not silhouetted shapes looming in the dark, but bodies horribly torn and broken, jaws slack in their moaning hunger.
Julia voiced a long whine of fear, still unmoving, and Regina grabbed her arm, her heart pounding. “Wake up!”
“They’re inside,” Julia whispered.
“It’s what the man you betrayed wanted to prevent,” Regina cried, wanting to scream in exasperation and fear, every nerve in her body sharp with the need for flight. She had to get Julia moving inside where she’d be safe, and she had to get to Polycarp.
The dead closed in, and Regina yanked Julia with her, scrambling back across the dust and grit. Julia came with her, shaking, and for a moment Regina felt pity pierce through her. Everything Julia had taken refuge in had shattered with that splintering of the temple gate.
“Come on, run!” Regina pulled Julia with her, stumbling toward the temple steps. One of the dead lurched to their side, and Regina sprang away, her heart pounding, not loosing her grip on Julia’s arm, but the corpse reached in and seized Julia’s hair. Regina heard Julia’s shriek and kept pulling her, but the corpse held her, and then there were other corpses on them, hands grasping. Desperate, Regina drove her foot into one’s shin, a panicked kick, but it didn’t buckle or even wince, just hissed at her, its blind eyes fixed on her. Then the dead were fastened on Julia, strong hands pulling her back, tearing her from Regina’s grasp; with a cry Regina fell back, other hands reaching for her.
“Regina!” Julia’s shriek. “Caius—Regina—help me!” She had fallen, was on her belly; Regina caught a glimpse of the dead covering her, one dragging her back by her ankle, several crouching over her, one on top of her—she disappeared beneath them. Regina stumbled back, one of the dead pursuing her, then turning at Julia’s shriek. One raw shriek, then nothing but the cracking and sucking sounds of the dead feeding. The corpse that had taken a step toward Regina hissed, then stumbled back to join the pack crouching over the other woman. Regina shook with horror, her hands trembling as though she were naked on the ice on a winter night.
She was gone. Julia was gone.
Just like that.
Gone—all of her regrets and her fears and her rage and her self-loathing and her bitterness, and any moment that had ever made her laugh or ever made her smile. Her husband, wherever he sheltered, was severed from her. She was gone. The suddenness of it was a spear of ice. There had been no moment to hold her as she died, or remonstra
te with her, or curse her, or forgive her, or absolve her. She was simply gone, without farewell. Everything broken and unfinished. With a clarity as violent as lightning on a hill, Regina grasped the import of Polycarp’s Gift, as she never had before. To finish what had festered unfinished, to say goodnight, with grace, to those who had lain terribly awake. She stood stunned, gazing at the feasting dead where they hunched over that unseen body on the earth.
A hard hand grasped her arm, and she jumped. A voice at her ear. Marcus. “Come on! We have to hide!”
“No,” she whispered. “We have to stand.” Something in her hardened. “Where is he?” She ignored Marcus’s pulling at her arm, his pale face; she scanned the courtyard. There. Her breath caught.
Father Polycarp was walking toward them. He was maybe twenty feet away, across the courtyard. He was walking in the midst of the dead, like Moses parting the sea. A haze of gold about his hair. His hands touched their shoulders or their faces, and with his gaze into their eyes, emptied bodies slid to the earth.
Yet there were so many. Even as Polycarp came near, several of the dead grasped the loop of chain that hung from one of his hands, pulling him toward their jaws; others grasped his shoulders. One bit deep where Polycarp’s neck met the shoulder. A scream tore its way up Regina’s throat, and she tried to leap toward him, but Marcus held her. “No!” the youth yelled in her ear.
“Let me go! He’ll die!”
“It’s too late!” he cried.
In panic, Regina slammed her elbow into his gut, then tore free. But even as she ran, she felt herself shoved to the side; then the guardsman, Brutus, was before her, swinging a great torch in his hand; she felt the warmth of it on her face. Grim, he lunged in, stabbing with the torch at the faces of the dead, who hissed and snarled and gave way before the heat. One’s hair went alight, a woman whose eyes had been torn from her but whose mouth still gaped open, the gums drawn back from the teeth. The creature fell backward, its face wreathed in flames.