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In spite of the brand on his cheek and the simple dark tunic of a rich man’s slave, there was pride in him—a barbarian, thought Marcus, taken young in war. He remembered how he’d dashed to Tullia’s rescue, charging up the alleyway after her kidnappers, and to judge by the smear of crusted blood down the side of that angular face, he had doubtless been felled by an ambush the minute he’d turned the comer. But in spite of that he’d come up fighting. Which would cost him his life, Marcus realized, if he was charged with all but bashing the brains out of a Roman citizen.

He blinked stupidly for a moment and nodded, though the effort brought a blinding pain to his neck. “It’s all right,” he managed to say. “I—I’m glad you were so ready to fight, even for a total stranger. To go against them unarmed.”

No slave was ever armed.

The young man shrugged. “They only had clubs.”

Marcus managed to touch the tender swelling at the back of his head. “So I learned.” The quick, silent gratitude that flickered in those dark eyes embarrassed him, so he turned to Quindarvis and asked, “Did they catch them?”

The praetor was silent for a long time. Lady Aurelia’s cries had faded to a muffled undercurrent of sound. Among the grotesque looming shadows of the room it seemed that the only noise was the hissing of the oil in the lamps. After a moment he said, “Naturally, there’s a hue and cry throughout the Quirinal Hill. All the men in the household are out—we’ve sent to the watch—it’s early yet to hear.” Those little black stone eyes slid to the young slave. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Churaldin,” he returned quietly. “My master is Claudius Sixtus Julianus.”

Marcus had never heard the name before, but the praetor, who made it his business to stand among the fashionable and the great, looked at him with renewed interest. “Really?” His manner perceptibly warmed. “I thought he was dead.”

“No, sir,” replied Churaldin, with the manner of a well-behaved mastiff under an unwanted caress.

“Well,” said the senator, “he’ll doubtless be worrying for you, boy. Some of the prefect’s men will go with you... ”

“It isn’t necessary, it’s only a little way farther up the hill.”

“Well, if we find you in the morning eaten by the pigs in the street, don’t blame me,” granted Nicanor, returning to the group beside Marcus’ couch. “Here, I’ll show you the door... ”

Quindarvis followed them as far as the curtained doorway that led into the hall; Marcus could hear the murmur of their voices there for a time. He stared up at the ceiling, where the three shadows clumped like harpies awaiting their prey, remembering how on the hot afternoons of other years he and Tullia and his younger brother had played chase and leapfrog over these very couches. The linen couch cushions had been white then instead of red, he recalled, but the dark polished surface of the ebony table was the same, the oiled claret-red gleam of the lion’s-foot couch legs, the frescoed frieze of horsemen around the wall. He remembered the priceless vase that had used to stand in the niche between the lampstands, that Tullia’s father had beaten her for breaking.

The Tyrian curtains fell shut behind Nicanor and the departing slave. Quindarvis turned back toward the couch, his head bent in thought, his thin, ungiving mouth drawn into a single hard black line. He had something in his hand. “Did you see the men who did it, Marcus?” he asked abruptly, standing over the couch again.

Marcus blinked up at him for a moment. “Yes, one of them. A—a sort of brown man, Cretan, or Carthaginian... ”

Quindarvis held out something in his fingers, small and flame shaped, that caught the light like a slip of mercury. Gropingly Marcus held out his hand for it; it was scarcely longer than the joint of his thumb.

It was a stylized fish, flat-cast in pure silver. A hole near the head showed where a chain had passed through. It was smooth and polished and bore little nicks and marks of wear. Turning it over he saw the initials inscribed on the back.

ICTHYS

“What is it?” he asked stupidly.

“I picked it up from the mud,” said Quindarvis slowly.

“It must have been torn loose from the neck of the man you struggled with.” He paused, the tiny muscles jumping suddenly in his thick jaw. “It’s a Christian medal.”

“Christian?” whispered Marcus, and the horror was like the touch of cold fever on his bones.

“I’m afraid it’s they who’ve taken her.”

Details of the initiation of neophytes [into the Christian church] are as revolting as they are notorious. An infant, cased in dough to deceive the unsuspecting, is placed beside the person to be initiated. The novice is thereupon induced to inflict what seem to be harmless blows upon the dough, and unintentionally the infant is killed... the blood—oh, horrible—they lap up greedily; the limbs they tear to pieces eagerly, and over the victim they make league and covenant, and by complicity in guilt pledge themselves to mutual silence... . Their form of feasting is notorious;... they gather at a banquet, with all their children, sisters, and mothers, people of either sex and every age. There, after full feasting, when the blood is heated and drink has inflamed the passions of incestuous lust... the tale-telling light is upset and extinguished, and in the shameless dark, lustful embraces are indiscriminately exchanged.

Fronto (quoted by Minucius Felix)

“W
HAT DO YOU KNOW
about Christians?”

Morning had come, after a night of hideous dreams. Clothed in a borrowed tunic, Marcus sat before a little table set up in the garden, unable to touch the thinned wine and white bread before him. Across the table Priscus Quindarvis was talking with a man named Arrius, a centurion in the Praetorian Guard.

When Quindarvis didn’t answer, Marcus ventured, “They’re a sect of the Jews, aren’t they? Who caused the great fire? Wasn’t there some kind of general arrest of Christians about three years ago?”

“About that,” grunted Arrius, and those shrewd greenish-hazel eyes narrowed in the dappled light. “It was hardly a general arrest. On the whole the Christians keep pretty quiet, and the emperor’s been fairly tolerant of them.”

Quindarvis looked up, his square, dissolute face clouded with rage. “And look where it’s got him,” he snorted. In contrast to Marcus’ crumpled and unshaven state, the praetor looked oiled and sleek, having availed himself of Varus’ private baths and barber. He did not look as though he had slept, but he was dressed in fresh clothing and smelled of balsam. “They should have stamped those lunatics out from the beginning.”

The centurion cocked one long, curling, sun-bleached eyebrow at him. “You ever try to find a Christian? We thought we’d gathered in the lot three years ago. But you’ll still hear rumors of them from time to time. Marks chalked on walls. Hymns somebody hears as they walk down an alley at night in the Tiberside or the Subura districts. Sometimes you’ll hear of a child disappearing.”

Marcus looked up with a jerk, his throat seeming to constrict. “It’s true, then? They eat babies?”

The soldier frowned in thought. “I don’t know how true it is. A woman friend of my cousin’s had a neighbor whose little girl disappeared, and she claimed the Christians got her. But there are others who steal children for other reasons.” His eyes shifted to Quindarvis. “What do you know?”

He took a sip of his wine, and his mouth tightened distastefully though the vintage was excellent. “Only what everyone knows. They’re scum, mostly, Jews and dirt-poor Greeks that somebody’s managed to delude into thinking their morbid superstitions and filthy rites will render them immortal. They abhor the empire as ritually unclean; they’ll work to destroy both it and the city of Rome in the hopes of winning Jehovah’s approval. That was the reason behind the fires, you know.”

“You think they set the great fire, then?”

“I didn’t think there was any question,” retorted Quindarvis. “Why would Nero have done such a thing? He was the emperor. His cousin Caligula had had islands made in the deepest part of the sea, cities built on boats stretched across the Bay of Naples. Why would he have had to resort to a subterfuge like burning the city to get ground for his building projects? He could simply have ordered the land cleared. No—the Christians set the fires and threw the blame on him to discredit him, and they evidently found enough people sufficiently discontented with their lot to believe them.”

He glanced up irritably as Varus’ butler appeared in the garden, a Carthaginian Greek with smooth manners and in general an absolutely chilling demeanor. He looked haggard now, and more than a little frightened. Quindarvis listened to his murmured words and made an impatient gesture. “Send them away. I haven’t time to waste on a pack of good-for-nothing sponges who have nothing better to do man clutter up the prefect’s doorstep. Certainly Aurelia Pollia’s in no fit case to see them. Damned clients,” he muttered, turning back as the butler bowed his way from the arbor. “What a price to pay for consequence! To support a bunch of second-rate sycophants who hang around your door hoping you’ll further their ambitions or at least invite them to dinner... ” He shook his head, like a bull goaded by flies.

“But the Christians!” cried Marcus, horrified that anyone could be so calm in the face of such hideous events.

“Christians!” spat Quindarvis, his eyes smoldering with fury. “You ask me what I know about Christians, centurion. Unfortunately I know too much. I know that they hold everything in contempt that’s good and decent. They hold their women in common; I gather sexual abominations of various sorts are a regular part of their rites. Their rituals include the sacrifice of children—babies, usually, but I’ve heard of cases of boys and girls up to the age of seventeen or eighteen being killed, their flesh eaten and their blood drunk.”

Marcus whispered, “No!” and the centurion looked thoughtful, folding his brown, broken-knuckled, soldier’s hands on the sun-dappled marble. He was a medium-size, sinewy man who reminded Marcus of something braided out of leather, relaxed within the weight of his chain-mail shirt, the transverse crest of his helmet brushing the curling tendrils of the vines above his head. Like an animal, thought Marcus, a cold-blooded and bony-faced outsider to whom this anguish is only another problem to be solved, another body to be found.

Marcus lowered his head to his hands, his eyes aching, his skull throbbing even with the diffuse green light beneath the grapevines. Quindarvis’ voice went on, “That isn’t the worst I’ve heard, either. I’m told the Christians raid tombs and eat the flesh of the corpses after burial. Maybe the emperor hasn’t been able to come up with confessions from them, but they’re murderers, centurion. Children mean no more to them than sacrificial doves.”

He heard the centurion grunt. “You been down to the Flavian Amphitheater lately, praetor? I’ve seen ten-year-old girls fed alive to bears there, and a hundred thousand people cheered.”

“That’s a little different,” pointed out Quindarvis. “They were the children of criminals, or criminals themselves—cut-purses, whores, bait to lure drunks to their death in alleys.”

“Maybe,” agreed the soldier. “But I don’t think all those people were cheering because they were seeing Roman justice in action. My point is that a lot of people will spend their festival days watching children die, for whatever reason.”

“But that’s the whole point!” cried Marcus, raising his head again. “The city
is
filled with vulgar, vicious, uneducated mobs. Only most people know the difference between what happens in the games and what is lawful for them to do or not to do.”

“Do they?” murmured the centurion, regarding him with thoughtful eyes. “It’s interesting that you brought up that incident three years ago, though,” he continued after a moment. “Do you remember it at all?”

Marcus shook his head. “I heard about it. I suppose everyone did.” If Timoleon hadn’t mentioned it peripherally in a discussion on moderation and excess, he doubted he would have been aware that there were Christians in Rome at all.

“I was in the law courts at the time,” said Quindarvis. “I was pleading a case at the other end of the Basilica, but I remember the din was such that we could scarcely hear one another speak.”

“Well, I was there,” said Arrius dryly. “They called in the Praetorian Guard to keep order, and by Mithras we were needed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a madhouse in my life. Christians screaming curses against the emperor at the top of their lungs, people coming in from the Forum and throwing things, the Christian women shrilling and keening like a pack of harpies. We had to clear the court... ”

“Then you’ve actually seen Christians?” said Marcus, and the soldier chuckled grimly.

“Oh, I’ve seen them, all right, and a bunch of dirtier, smellier, more vicious ruffians you aren’t likely to meet this side of hell. Their priest was like a mad sibyl, with a great mane of dirty gray hair streaming around his face like fire. When they were sentenced to death he broke from his guards and jumped up on the table before the judges and shook his fists in their faces. And I remember he cried to the head of the tribunal”—and here the centurion’s voice grated suddenly harsh—“‘The Lord Jesus Christ will avenge upon you what you have done to us today. He will smite thee and all thy children, and bring you down in sorrow to your grave.’ And then, as now,” continued Arrius quietly, “the head of the tribunal was the city prefect, J. Tullius Varus.”

“...thee and all thy children,” repeated Quindarvis softly.

“That’s what he said.”

“And were they executed?”

The centurion nodded. “They were smeared with pitch and torched. That was at the games of Ceres in April of that year. Varus was up for reappointment to the prefect’s office. He was out to win friends. Maybe he took advantage of the situation and condemned them to death for the sake of the show—but he’s still city prefect.”

“Now, that I
do
remember,” smiled Quindarvis reminiscently. “He must have laid out three hundred talents in gold, enough to support his entire household and all his slaves for three years, on three days’ worth of games. An enormous investment,” he added, with a wry grin, “as I have call to know—but worth every sesterce of it.” His brow darkened suddenly. “But I see your meaning.”