‘Persecutions have started in Rome,’ Andrew says. ‘They’re blaming Peter for starting the fire.’
‘I didn’t know, I threw away my phone.’
‘You need to be careful. Nice beard, but you’re beginning to look like one of us.’
In the Agios Andreas Gallio’s eyes sweep across images and icons but he blocks them into manageable shapes. Andrew is talking but Gallio isn’t listening. His heart is calloused, and Andrew says the dead in Jesus are not dead, Gallio hearing the words but not understanding. He refuses to be tempted into weakness. He’d rather kill himself, confronting death with courage, knowing that death is the end. Cassius Gallio sees no virtue in dying for the selfish reward of a perfect life in heaven.
When he finds his voice he is cruel. ‘Your brother Peter shouldn’t have gone to Rome, which isn’t the wisest place to be, for a disciple of Jesus. He makes himself easy to blame.’
Gallio’s statement becomes a question, a default process for a Speculator. ‘CCU know Peter is in the city. Is he co-ordinating some kind of attack?’
‘We have high hopes for Rome,’ Andrew says, ‘if everything goes to plan. Is Peter imprisoned in the Mamertine dungeon? Or not yet? He’s going to be a great comfort to the other prisoners, even though the jailers will make him suffer. My own fate is kinder. I’m a lesser man than my brother, the least of the disciples, but I expect to arrive earlier into the kingdom.’
‘You mean you’re going to die?’
‘Thanks to you, Cassius Gallio, yes. I’m grateful to you for bringing me to Patras.’
Cassius Gallio adapts his strategy, takes control of his destiny. He refuses to make himself vulnerable on a boat, where they could trap him with no place to run. Either the disciples or the CCU, whoever catches up with him first. Out in the countryside he’d be equally exposed, so he needs to stay hidden in a city.
He decides that paranoia is preferable to being burst asunder or skinned alive. Everyone wants their share of him, and in the centre of Patras Gallio searches out unforgiving faces, hard-skinned palms that can handle ropes and stones. He catches a drunken Greek god looking his way, and is spooked when a boy bangs a drum. He does not want to die.
‘You’ll be back,’ Andrew had said, calling out to him over the rows of seats, walking fast to keep up as Gallio headed for the door. But Andrew was wrong. Gallio wasn’t going to join them, not now. He’d slept with Claudia in Caistor, to make Jesus pay attention. Look Jesus, with a married woman I don’t love. A married woman with two baby girls, and I don’t love any of them. No response. Andrew wouldn’t let him go, followed him through the doors and out of the basilica into the sunlight. Gallio stumbled through solid heat, collided with a topless man in britches and a wolf-mask. He spun, lost his balance, righted himself. He ran, pursued by the howls of the wolfman.
In the streets of Patras Andrew had been busy, presumably on his way to the basilica. He’d made an exhibition of himself, preaching against the sins of Carnival and taking public exception to the Bourbilia, a popular rite where women danced lasciviously for men. Andrew had dared question the supremacy of Bacchus, he’d criticised the local football team and the morals of the mayor’s son. Since the last time Gallio walked these streets, Andrew had been asking for trouble, and as an endangered disciple he ought to shut his mouth. He has offended everyone, making all of Patras a potential assassin.
Cassius Gallio needs cover, and the Botanical Gardens contain copses of mature broadleaf trees. He weaves through the tree trunks, finding the centre where up above a canopy of leaves greenly deflects the sunlight. Mustn’t be visible from the air. A noise slides from his mouth, a whine of animal fear, and Gallio lies down and covers himself in leaf mould and litter. He crawls into the soil, hiding from the eye of god. He plants himself, and is still.
He’ll wait this out. With one eye open he spies on joggers running off the edge of the path to save their knees. He spies on mothers with pushchairs. Cassius Gallio is buried alive, and he pisses where he lies. A madman, a timeless vagrant without papers, he shall ripen in the warm until he rots.
His visible world is cigarette butts, a used plastic water bottle and a pair of torn Patras cinema tickets. However hard he tries, he finds it impossible to do nothing. He dehydrates, and as his brain dries out he hears voices, ghost versions of Jesus. James and Bartholomew, Jude and Thomas, Philip and James and Simon. They say: ‘I am the least of all the disciples.’
Time passes. Cassius Gallio doesn’t know how long. He may have slept but however many centuries he missed, when he wakes the problem of Jesus remains unsolved. He blinks. He raises his face from the forest floor, and bark flakes from his cheek. He spits a seed off his tongue.
A revelation is making itself known. One of the voices has something to say, and Gallio tries to isolate what is important from what is not. Eight disciples dead, he thinks, but their message continues to spread. Gallio bites the inside of his cheek, tastes blood and soil. Whoever is responsible for killing the disciples, for whatever reason, is not fully informed. Killing them is counter-productive, because every martyrdom is a fresh story that nourishes the original lie: life after death. He remembers the icon of Andrew in the basilica, and realises the disciples continue their work when they’re gone.
He pushes himself up onto his elbows. He’s a Speculator, and should question everything. That’s why Valeria hired him, and at last Gallio sees a truth emerging: they’ve had everything the wrong way round. In Caistor Simon could have escaped from Baruch, if an escape had suited Jesus. James in Jerusalem had jumped from the roof, with no more encouragement than a silent phone call. Jude could have arranged professional security in Beirut, and Thomas had chosen to live in Babylon, a city of famous jeopardy.
Now Andrew has followed Gallio to Patras, where every year on this day the carnival celebrates the death of Andrew the disciple of Jesus. The disciples want to die, which means this story is not like other stories. Gallio sits up, brushes leaf scraps from his hair and shoulders. Lazarus went first, then Jesus at the crucifixion, until these subsequent killings look like entrants in a competition: which disciple of Jesus can die most horrifically, to prove he has no fear? The assassins, whoever they are, say yes you may want to die but not like this, surely, you must surely be frightened by this? Or this, Bartholomew, no one chooses to be skinned alive.
Finally, Cassius Gallio understands. The disciples don’t feel pain, not like he feels pain, because their eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord. They believe in a better place, so why linger here? Beheaded, shot with arrows, stoned, speared, hung upside down, clubbed, sawn in half, skinned alive — to the disciples death is a happy ending. Heaven is real, and they love their enemies who send them there.
Jesus is a ruthless opponent and he welcomes violent death, time and again, upon the disciples he claimed to love. His will is done. Jesus co-ordinates every move his disciples make, as one after the other they die hideously and happily.
Cassius Gallio rises up from the forest, the truth revealed to him. Jesus wants his disciples to die, and knowing their secret Gallio has to act, as Baruch did, with Simon. Except Baruch took the wrong type of action. The answer is not to make the disciples suffer, hoping to taunt Jesus into an appearance, but to refuse the idea of a Jesus in control of whatever happens next. Andrew will not die in Patras. The future is not shaped in advance, but can be changed by willed human action. This is a core principle of civilisation, as Gallio has been taught to defend it.