‘Then what? What did John do with the money?’
The researchers and academics are desperate to make connections, to speculate, to move on to what a story means and why it matters.
‘He gathered the gold coins together,’ Gallio said, ‘every last one of them, and he hurled them into the sea.’
The taxi drove against the headlamps of construction trucks carrying sand and gravel for the never-ending restoration of the city. Beyond the tourist highways, where no one would think to look, the final lit windows in the glass Siemens building darkened one by one. It was getting late.
The gateway to the Abbey of the Three Fountains was quiet, apart from traffic noise from the flyover, and the daytime trickle of visitors was a memory. In a sweep of full-beam light the taxi U-turned towards the city, leaving Gallio in the dark committed to John and Claudia. He acted as if he belonged, but was grateful for the night’s half-moon that silvered the tree-lined avenue to the Abbey building. He wouldn’t want to die in total darkness. Lamps at ankle level illuminated the path leading to the raised terrace in front of the arched Abbey doorway. At the top of the steps, he could see Valeria waiting.
‘A pathway,’ Gallio said, ‘I’ll guide you along it. At the end of the path we have some steps. Keep hold of my elbow. Don’t be afraid.’
‘Is it the assassin?’
Along with Valeria, up on the Abbey terrace, Cassius Gallio could make out two more figures, dark in the shadow of thick stone walls.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘All of them are here.’
The disciples have disciples with disciples who over the years become implacable. Cassius Gallio can’t deter them from building their monasteries, from ringing their ecumenical bells. When John hears the faithful called to prayer he hides in his cave, a hollow in the rocks beside the path. The cave has room enough for two but Gallio prefers to wait outside: Jesus will descend from the clouds, according to Jude, and Gallio would like to be the first to know.
As luck would have it, a contour in the rock beside the cave entrance is a perfect fit for the shape of Gallio’s back. That’s where he sits, shaped into the island stone and warmed by daily sunshine. Sometimes, especially if he falls asleep, believers will leave him coins or handwritten messages: Please God, let me find myself in Jesus.
Cassius Gallio is not John’s keeper; that would not be a reasonable position for him to take. More accurately he remains constantly alert to ways in which a beloved disciple could die. Accident, illness, violence. Gallio watches John closely around traffic and water. Strangers have his attention — any of them could be Satan, or a killer from Rome, or both — and Gallio sleeps less well when John catches a cold. He can’t be certain that Jesus will appear, but if Jesus does appear, in the final instant of his beloved disciple’s lifetime, then he’ll find that Cassius Gallio is at hand.
He lives every day as if the world might end, as does John, which is not as exciting as it sounds. Eat, watch for clouds, sit outside the cave. Sleep. Avoid evil, because on Patmos with the monasteries and churches that’s the dominant mood. Despite a memorable episode of food poisoning, and a nasty chest infection, John is healthy and strangers are kind and Gallio wakes to endless sunny days by the sea.
John often complains that life isn’t fair. His brother James — his brother! — was beheaded and went first to sit at the right hand of Jesus in heaven. They killed his brother an age ago in Jerusalem, so the right hand is taken. As is the left hand. Thomas is on the left hand, or possibly Jude, and the two seats outside those are filled by Philip and Bartholomew, and the next places along by Andrew and Matthew and Peter. One disciple after another fast-tracked to paradise, with John left a vacant chair at the distant end of the table.
‘Next to Judas?’
‘Even Judas got there before me.’
John feels abandoned. Of the original twelve disciples, only John is absent from the kingdom.
On the terrace of the Abbey of the Three Fountains, Paul stepped out of the shadows and John embraced him. The short bald man and the blind disciple, solid in each other’s arms, even though by Valeria’s accounting they weren’t supposed to be fond of each other.
‘In your own time,’ Gallio said. ‘Let’s get this done.’
He was impatient, wary of any delay because in the open he felt exposed, out in the light: fat-winged flies bashed into the low-level glass of the lamps. Left, right, above, below. Gallio scrutinised the grounds of the Abbey. If Valeria had called in backup then her hired assassins were behind the hedges, or moving tree to tree. He watched for black to detach from blackness, as evil would, from the dark of the barn or the lodge, shadows with knives, clubs, a pump-action shotgun.
Nothing moved, nobody took aim from the darkness. Or not that he could see.
Paul’s bodyguard, the third person to arrive ahead of them on the terrace, was armed. The curved blade of his sword was dulled with blacking, a professional touch, Gallio thought, and proof that Paul trusted no one.
‘Break it up, gents.’ Valeria had seen enough hugging, or shared some of Gallio’s operational anxiety. ‘We’re busy people, with problems to solve. No time like the present.’
In the uplight she looked years younger, the Valeria Gallio had once almost loved in Jerusalem. No jacket, no bag, no weapons. Paul and John broke apart but held each other at arm’s length, like friends before a long separation. Or afterwards, reunited.
‘I missed you,’ Paul said. ‘Now I have to go.’
Claudia coughed, held out the padded envelope containing Paul’s fee. ‘I brought your money. You can count it if you like.’
‘Which one is the assassin?’ John asked. He pulled away from Paul and raised his chin.
Part of growing old is the forgetting. The days grow longer then shorten then lengthen again. On Patmos Cassius Gallio loses track of how the starlings come and go, flocking as they depart, then arriving again with a sound like circling bells. The sun goes down and the sun comes up. Light reflects from the sea onto the under-wing of a seagull. A black cat jumps from a seaside trellis, lands safely on all four feet.
The Jesus church continues to grow, travelling along the trade routes on the words of dead disciples, promising that Jesus will have dominion over the earth. It looks like he may. For every one of the original disciples there are twelve more, and those twelve breed another twelve, blowing across the region like seeds. The Jesus believers are many but mostly harmless, allowing the first to remain first, leaving the rich and powerful unchallenged.
Some of the stories that reach Patmos are ludicrous. Cassius Gallio hears about memorials to Peter in Rome, of all places, a basilica over his tomb and a piazza that can welcome eighty thousand believers to prayer.
‘Is there singing?’ John asks, and the Vatican has a choir of twenty tenors and basses and thirty boy choristers and yes John we can confirm that there is singing, along with domes by Michelangelo and stonework by Bernini, sunlight through arches onto pillars.
‘Sculptures?’
‘In bronze, in marble, in purple alabaster.’
John laughs. This is not what Jesus had in mind, or not that he ever said.
‘They pay their taxes,’ Gallio reminds him. ‘At least some of them do.’
‘I’ll take John now,’ Valeria said. ‘Thank you Cassius, for finding him and bringing him here. I’m grateful for all you’ve done, and I’ll keep my promise. You can go, leave us, disappear.’