‘It is cruel,’ Olivia whispered. ‘He was a good man. He does not deserve this.’
Valerius looked at his sister. She was still pale, still thin, but she had insisted on riding from the estate to Rome and showed no sign of fatigue. The house on the Clivus Scauri had been burned along with thousands of others in the great blaze in July which had consumed seven whole districts of the city and incinerated thousands of men, women and children. Fires were a common enough occurrence in Rome, but Nero and his officials quickly found evidence that the Christians had been to blame for this one. Petrus’s execution was only the beginning.
‘He asked for it to be this way.’ Valerius placed an arm round her. ‘He said he was not worthy of dying in the same manner as his Lord. He is an old man. It won’t take long.’ He knew that the head-down position in which Petrus was hanging meant his inner organs would slump down and crush his lungs and heart. No man of his age could live for more than a few minutes in such agony. But he had underestimated Petrus’s resilience. It was forty minutes before the fisherman who had watched his Lord walk on water died with the name of Christus on his lips.
Valerius thought he heard a whisper in the air, and for a moment he had a vision of the tall man beside Poppaea’s waterfall. He realized that if he did not have faith, at least he had hope.