The Last Gospel (7 page)

‘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.’

‘It was all I could find.’ Claudius took a gulp of wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’d used up all my own ink on the voyage out.’

‘You wrote this?’

‘I supplied the paper, and that concoction that passes as ink.’

Pliny unrolled the papyrus and flattened it on a cloth he had laid over the sticky mess on the table. The papyrus was covered with fine writing, neither Greek nor Latin, lines of singular flowing artistry, composed with more care than would normally be the case for one accustomed to writing often. ‘The Nazarene?’

Claudius twitched. ‘At the end of our meeting, on the lake shore that night. He wanted me to take this away and keep it safely until the time was right. You read Aramaic?’

‘Of course. You have expertly taught me the Phoenician language, and I believe they are similar.’

Pliny scanned the writing. At the bottom was a name. He read the few lines directly above it, looked up, then read them again. For a moment there was silence, and utter stillness in the room. Claudius watched him intently, his lower lip trembling. A waft of warm air from outside the balcony brought with it a sharp reek of sulphur, and from somewhere inland came a distant sound like waves along the seashore. Claudius kept his eyes on Pliny, who put down the scroll and raised his hands together, pensively.

‘Well?’ Claudius said.

Pliny looked at him, and spoke carefully. ‘I am a military man, and an encyclopedist. I record facts, things I have seen with my own eyes or had recounted to me on good authority. I can see that this document has the authority of the man who wrote it, and who signed his name on it.’

‘Put it away,’ Claudius said, reaching out and grasping Pliny’s wrist. ‘Keep it safely, the safest place you can find. But transcribe those final lines into your
Natural History
. Now is the time.’

‘You have made copies?’

Claudius looked at Pliny, then at the scroll, and suddenly his hand began shaking. ‘Look at me. The palsy. I can’t even write my own name. And for this I don’t trust a copyist, not even Narcissus.’ He got up, picked up the scroll and went over to a dark recess beside the bookcase filled with papyrus sheets and old wax tablets, then knelt down awkwardly with his back to Pliny. He fumbled around for a few moments, got up again and turned round, a cylindrical stone container in his hands. ‘These jars came from Saïs in Egypt, you know,’ he said. ‘Calpurnius Piso stole them from the Temple of Neith when he looted the place. Apparently they were filled with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic scrolls, but he burned them all. The old fool.’ He put the jar down, then picked up a bronze-handled dish filled with a black substance and held it over a candle, his hands unusually steady. The air filled with a rich aromatic smell, briefly disguising the sulphur. He put the dish down again, picked up a wooden spatula and smeared the resin around the lid of the container, let it cool for a moment, and then handed the cylinder to Pliny. ‘There you go. It is sealed, as I was instructed in the leaves, according to divine augury.’

‘This document,’ Pliny persisted. ‘Why so urgent?’

‘It is because what he predicted has come to pass.’ Claudius shuddered again, ostentatiously clutching his hand as if to stop it from shaking. He fixed Pliny with an intense stare. ‘The Nazarene knew the power of the written word. But he said he would never write again. He said that one day his word would come to be seen as a kind of holy utterance. He said that his followers would preach his word like a divine mantra, but that time would distort it and some would seek to use their version of it for their own ends, to further themselves in the world of men. He was surrounded by illiterates in Nazareth. He wanted a man of letters to have his written word.’

‘The written words of a prophet,’ Pliny murmured. ‘That’s the last thing a priesthood usually wants. It does them out of a job.’

‘It’s why the r-ridiculous Sibyl speaks in r-riddles,’ Claudius said, flustered. ‘Only the soothsayers can interpret it. What nonsense.’