‘Is Jesus planning his second coming for the Circus?’
John smiles, his face lights up. Then the smile becomes a wince, and he blinks rapidly. ‘I’d very much like to have seen that.’
‘But I suppose you can’t, because you’re blind.’
‘No,’ John says. ‘When Jesus comes back I’ll probably be healed. But I couldn’t get hold of a ticket.’
Cassius Gallio uses the last of his Patras euros on a taxi, but the roads are blocked a long way out from the stadium. Fans ring cowbells and wave flags for their chariot teams. They break into chants, not always good-natured. Circus posters say Eat Chariots Sleep Chariots Drink Coca-Cola but Rome is drinking Italian wine, and plenty of it. Nearer the stadium, on foot, Cassius Gallio and John navigate random tailgate parties, and raised bottles salute them for embracing the spirit of games day — a man who looks like Jesus, in a sleeveless high-viz jacket, leads a man who looks like Jesus who is blind.
John attaches himself two-handed to Gallio’s elbow. They have left Alma in the care of the orphanage, because now that Gallio has John he has less to fear from Valeria. Faced with the choice of taking John to the Circus or kidnapping his own daughter, John is the percentage decision. For the time being Alma is in a safe and caring environment, and one way Gallio can save himself is to be the Speculator who delivers the final disciple. If John is right and Jesus reappears at the Circus, then he’ll deal with that when it happens.
The air temperature dips, unusual for this time of year. John will sense the chill but he can’t see, as Gallio can, other signs that make him anxious. Gallio spots apostles in stained-glass windows, and sculpted disciples in the alcoves of Roman chapels. For the murdered disciples, death is not death. The disciples dominate the Vatican skyline, flanking a triumphant Jesus, mocking their versatile assassins. Simon carries a saw and Thomas a spear and Jude an arrow, their victorious marble whiteness made brighter by the bank of dark cloud descending. John tightens his grip on Gallio’s arm, aching with small-boy excitement.
At the Circus Maximus, increased security means only half the turnstiles are open. Gallio ditches the high-viz jacket because John attracts enough attention as it is, and they join a queue for the bag search. Every bag gets checked. They don’t have any bags. A temporary steward, a woman in a blue suit and white shirt, pats them down. She has no idea how long it will take to get everyone in.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ she guesses. They join another queue, and for John with his limited vision, Gallio thinks, the outside of the stadium probably loses detail — he’ll see no more than a dark mass with an incomplete upper tier of arches, a symbol of Roman ambition defeated by time. After fifteen minutes Gallio stops a second steward who says ‘Fifteen minutes for sure.’ Fifteen minutes later the queue begins to move.
Cassius Gallio and John have tickets for the popular third tier, but nearer the front than the back, on the opposite side of the stadium to where Gallio met Valeria the day before. Not the best seats, but good enough for an unobstructed view of the second coming, which if the Circus ever gets started may end the world by teatime. Gallio excuses himself and his partially sighted friend along the row, making people stand and suck in their stomachs. At their designated places they make themselves comfortable. John puts his hand on Gallio’s arm, then on his knee. Claudia’s seat, on the other side of Gallio, is empty.
‘Bet you can’t believe your luck,’ Gallio says. ‘A spare ticket out of nowhere.’
‘Bet I can.’
‘Look at this place, it’s packed.’
John can distinguish between light and dark but not much else, so Cassius Gallio describes the changing shapes made by a troupe of willing majorettes. They finish their routine as a perfect square and bow to scattered applause. The band of the Ninth Legion marches in, another prelude to the main event. If Jesus has planted a bomb, Gallio thinks, the casualties will be incomparable to those of any outrage before or since. He talks John through Carthaginian drummers, a motorcycle display team, and from the upper tiers behind them some anti-Semitic chanting.
A steward at the end of the row points Claudia to her seat, and gives her a cushion to bring to John. A convert, Gallio suspects, who on his daily guided tours will include a lurid description of Peter’s execution, complete with the number of spectators in attendance and an incontestable date. He will fix Peter’s story on a sharpened point in history, and he’ll ask aloud why this religion among so many rivals survived to the present day. Possibly because the stories told by the disciples are true, he’ll suggest. Jesus did come back from the dead. His disciples were witnesses, and Peter was so convinced by the reality of miracles he died for his beliefs in this very place.
Otherwise, apart from John and a sympathetic steward, few of Rome’s believers will have laid hands on a ticket. The performance is a sellout, the first full-length programme at the Circus Maximus since the fire, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Peter the favourite disciple of Jesus. He will be alive then dead, all a man can ever be, with as a bonus attraction the possible second coming of a Messiah.
A blare of copper horns, silencing forty thousand voices. The Circus has a producer called the editor, who controls the running order. Today, the editor has decided, the early part of the entertainment will be understated about pain and death. A singing competition is won by the son of a government official. A theatre company performs an extract from a contemporary play — the plot a timeless mixture of coincidence, mistaken identity and a moral dilemma, but with the twist that demigods can intervene to advance the action. At the Circus Maximus the demigods of both sexes are young, oiled and intervene half-naked.
‘We could leave now.’ Claudia leans in close to Gallio, whispers into his ear. John is on his other side. ‘Get him out while we can. Beat the rush.’
‘He’s blind, not deaf. In any case, we’re staying for Jesus.’
‘You mean Peter. You’re getting the two of them mixed up.’
‘For Peter, then.’
But before Peter there’s chariot-racing, early rounds of Greens vs Reds and Blues vs Whites. The Blues crash, but the races never turn brutal until after the editor decides to spill some blood. With every new act and entrance, Gallio is terrified of seeing Alma. He knows about Valeria’s ruthless streak, but he can believe she’s crucifying Peter because she thinks it a reasonable step to take. Peter’s public crucifixion is a deterrent to say look, look again, Jesus isn’t much help to his friends. Targeting Alma doesn’t count as reasonable in any comparable way.
At close to four o’clock a carpet of flares announces the imminent arrival of the show’s star victim. The tunnel of smoke clears and the countdown begins: the beloved disciple of Jesus is in the arena. Peter carries a cross, and like Jesus he falls. No one vaults a barrier to help him, not in the Circus Maximus, with security as tight as it is.
A guard of four soldiers whips Peter into taking up his burden. Peter is the rock but the weight of the cross sways him, a fisherman on deck in a storm. His clothing has soiled in prison to shades of brown, and he is honestly unarmed for the fight. Grey-haired, bent-backed, Peter stumbles but does not fall, not again.
He suffers, but suffering is the price of salvation. For Peter eternity is within reach, where pain will have no meaning: he bears his burden because the soul will decide, not the body. He reaches the centre of the arena, drops the cross flat into a splash of sand. The soldiers offer him a gladiator’s trident to defend himself. Peter turns the weapon away, refuses to entertain.