Peter the Apostle was hobbled by bad knees and a constant ache which sent lightning bolts of pain down the back of one leg. The journey ahead was going to be arduous, as it would have been even for a younger man, but he’d risen early, washed himself in a trough behind the small stone house in Golgotha and watched the rising sun brighten the hills.
The house had been owned by a brother of Phillip, one of Jesus’s twelve, and upon the man’s death it had passed to his wife Rachel. She had been the second to awake that morning and when she saw Peter was no longer in his bed she sought him out.
‘Must you go to Rome?’ she asked.
He was seated on the stony orange ground. ‘I must.’
‘You’re precious to us,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to lose you. Matthew is gone, and Stephen, and James, and Matthias, and Andrew, and Mark, all martyred like him.’
The rising sun caught Peter’s eyes and made him squint. ‘When I was a young man, Jesus said something which has stayed with me during my long life. He said, “When you are old you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and take you where you do not want to go.” I do not want to leave you and my beloved brothers and sisters, Rachel, but I fear it is my destiny.’
She did not try to argue with him. ‘Well, come on then, at least let’s get some hot food into you before you climb onto that mule.’
Fresh breezes swirled through the central courtyard and gardens of Nero’s villa at the Campus Martius. Out of sight the vast party heaved and groaned its way toward dawn. Nero sat on a padded marble bench, absently throwing tidbits of food from a crystal bowl to the lampreys in his fish pond while Balbilus and Tigellinus paced and debated.
‘May I enter?’ Acinetus called out from between a pair of peristyle columns.
‘Be quick,’ Nero demanded.
Acinetus tugged two handfuls of cloth, each from the shoulder of a young girl’s toga. ‘Do they please Your Excellency?’
Nero looked the flushed, sobbing girls up and down. ‘Who are they?’
‘The twin daughters of Senator Vellus.’
Nero smiled. ‘Good. I hate that bastard.’
‘I knew you’d be pleased,’ Acinetus said.
‘How old are they?’
‘Twelve or thirteen I should think.’
‘Take them to my rooms and wait there.’ He called Acinetus over and whispered, ‘When I’m done with them be sure to make good use of their tender flesh. My fish, dear Acinetus, are famished.’ He turned back to the other men. ‘You were saying?’
‘I was telling Balbilus what he already knows – that the mood in the city is pleasantly ugly,’ Tigellinus said. ‘The Roman mob has come to hate the Christians even more than they do the Jews.’
‘Of course they do,’ Balbilus agreed. ‘The Christians are an arrogant, loathsome lot who don’t even pretend to pay homage to you. At least the Jews go through a pantomime.’
Tigellinus added, ‘And the Christians grow in numbers by the month. They breed like mice.’
‘I utterly despise them,’ Nero said, yawning. ‘Their piousness is nauseating. The way they pretend that their weakness is a strength – “Turn the other cheek,” they say, “so they may strike you again.” To which I say, when they turn a cheek don’t waste time by striking them again: run them through with a sword and be done with it.’
‘Sound advice,’ Tigellinus said.
‘Listen to me,’ Nero said. ‘The Christian cult grows stronger by the day. They challenge my authority. Their leaders, like this scabby dog who calls himself Peter the Apostle, slip in and out of my city without so much as a lashing. If we allow them to escape our wrath we’ll live to regret it, mark my words. Pontius Pilate had the right idea when he crucified that hideous little man Jesus of Nazareth. Pilate knew this cult was going to cause us trouble and interfere with our interests.’
‘Pilate cut off the cult’s head and twelve more heads grew in its place – Jesus’s filthy apostles,’ Tigellinus said.
‘We need to be smarter than Pilate and eradicate all of them!’ Balbilus stated. ‘Our Emperor tells me that he has conjured a way to use the power of the Roman mob to kill them off once and for all and make ourselves ever richer in the process. My job, as Imperial astrologer, will be to tell him the best date. And you, Tigellinus, your job will be to implement it.’
Nero rose and started to make his way out of the courtyard. ‘What this city of ours needs,’ he said, looking back over his shoulder, ‘is a very large, very hot fire.’
SIXTEEN
ON HER WAY back home from the police station, Elisabetta had the taxi drop her off at the Basilica Santa Maria in Trastevere. Her session with Inspector Leone had been difficult and she was exhausted by the mental challenge of giving him enough to be truthful without violating her Church confidentiality.
The basilica was quiet and peaceful with only a few tourists wandering through, snapping pictures and seeking out the church’s treasured relics – the head of Saint Apollonia and a portion of the Holy Sponge. Elisabetta bowed at the altar, crossed herself and took her usual position directly under the painting on the wooden ceiling, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin by Domenichino. The only others in the pews were a handful of older local women who always seemed to be there.
Elisabetta lost herself completely in prayer. The dry coolness and low light which had preserved the church’s antiquities so well for centuries had a similar effect preserving her sanity. When she had said the last of her amens, she looked around and was surprised to see that there were many more people in the pews. She felt calmer and refreshed. She checked her watch. An hour had slipped by. Back at the school the girls would be finding their desks for geometry.
She rose and tried to keep herself in a state of prayerfulness but it was impossible to control the thoughts moving through her mind.
Vani’s hideous back.
The skeletons.
De Stefano’s bloody head.
Marco’s body laid out in his dress uniform.
And as Elisabetta felt the tears coming the comforting image of Lorenzo’s open, friendly face drifted in. Instead of crying she smiled, but when she realized what her mind was doing she shook her head hard, as if doing so would dislodge his image.
Better to look for her mockingbird mosaic high up in the apse, she thought, and that was what she did.
Elisabetta walked back to her father’s apartment, stopping only at the greengrocer and the butcher. It was Carlo’s day off and she intended to make him a nice supper.
As soon as she let herself in, she heard him calling from the sitting room and fast-walking toward the hall. ‘Where have you been?’ he said irritably. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’
He looked uncomfortable.
‘“We”?’ she asked. ‘Who’s “we”? What’s the matter?’
‘Christ, Elisabetta, you didn’t tell me you were having visitors. They came all the way from England!’
She closed her eyes in embarrassment. ‘My God! I totally forgot! With everything that’s happened …’
Carlo gave her a quick, reassuring hug. ‘It’s okay: you’re here, you’re safe. You had a rough night. I gave them a glass of wine, told them every story I know about Cambridge. Everything’s fine. Give me the bags. Go see your guests.’
Evan Harris looked precisely like his photograph. He was slight, bland in appearance, lean but not athletic. His sandy hair, combed to one side over a rounded forehead, made him appear younger than he probably was but Elisabetta thought he must be approaching fifty. He hadn’t come alone. A woman was with him, expensively dressed, proper in posture, perfectly coiffed and smelling of good perfume. Her unlined Botox-pricked face and her figurine smile made it hard for Elisabetta to judge her age.