‘The gods willed it.’
‘No they did not.’ Claudius took a long shuddering drink. ‘Remember the temple you told me about during your last visit? The one Vespasian had erected in Rome? To the deified Claudius. I’m a god too now, remember? I’m a god, but this god did not will the destruction of the Jews. You have it on divine authority.’
Pliny quickly rolled up the scroll and slid it into a leather satchel beside the table, away from the splatter of wine, then hesitantly pulled out another. ‘You were going to tell me something about Judaea. Another day?’
‘No. Now.’
Pliny sat poised with a metal stylus over the scroll, eager and determined. Claudius peered at the writing already on the scroll, at the gap in the middle. ‘Tell me, then,’ Pliny said. ‘This new Jewish sect. What do you think of them?’
‘That’s why I asked you here.’ Claudius breathed in deeply. ‘The followers of the anointed one. The Messiah, the Christos. I know about them from my visits to the Phlegraean Fields. They are just the kind of people the Nazarene wanted to follow him. The crippled, the diseased, outcasts. People who so desperately crave happiness that their yearning becomes infectious, leading others to find their own release from the burdens of life, their own salvation.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Because I am one of them.’
‘You are one of them?’ Pliny sounded incredulous. ‘You are a Jew?’
‘No!’ Claudius scoffed, his head jerking sideways. ‘A cripple. An outcast. Someone who went to him for a cure.’
‘You went to this man? But I thought you never travelled to the east.’
‘It was all Herod’s doing. My dear friend Herod Agrippa. He tried to help, to take me away from Rome. He had heard of a miracle-worker in Judaea, a Nazarene, a man they said was descended from King David of the Jews. It was my only trip ever to the east. The heat made my shuddering worse.’
‘So the trip was wasted.’
‘Except for a few hours on a lake.’ Claudius suddenly had a far-off look in his eyes. ‘The town of Nazareth lies on a great inland body of water, the Sea of Gennesareth they call it. It’s not salt water at all, you know, but really a vast lake, and lies several stades below the level of the sea.’
‘Fascinating.’ Pliny was writing quickly. ‘Tell me more.’
‘He was a carpenter, a boatwright. Herod and I and our women went out with him on his boat, fishing, drinking wine. I was with my lovely Calpurnia, away from the clutches of my wife. We were all about the same age, young men and women, and even I found an exuberance I thought I could never have. I spilled wine in the lake and he joked about turning water into wine, catching the fish that way.’
‘But no miracle.’
‘After the fishing we sat on the shore until the sun went down. Herod grew impatient, and went off to the town seeking his pleasure. The Nazarene and I were left alone together.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said I must bear my affliction, that it would protect me and propel me to a greatness I could scarcely imagine. I had no idea what he was on about: me, Claudius the cripple, the embarrassing nephew of the emperor Tiberius, barely tolerated in Rome, hidden away and denied public office while all the other young men were finding glory with the legions.’
‘He saw a scholar and a future emperor,’ Pliny murmured. ‘He knew your destiny, Princeps. He was a shrewd man.’
‘I don’t believe in destiny. And there you go again. Princeps.’ Pliny quickly steered him back. ‘What of the man’s own future? The Nazarene?’
‘He spoke of it. He said that one day he would disappear into the wilderness, then all the world would come to know of him. I warned him not to be brought down by the sticky web of those who would exploit and deceive him. That was my advice for him. Nazareth was a pretty out-of-the-way place, and I don’t know if he realized then what men are capable of. I doubt whether he’d ever even seen a crucifixion.’
‘And Herod Agrippa?’
‘Herod was still with us when the Nazarene had said he wanted no intermediaries, no interpreters. Herod used a Greek word for them, apostoles. Herod was a straightforward man, blunt, a dear fellow. He had no interest in the visions of the Nazarene, but he could see I had been affected, and he was fond of me. He determined that if he came to power he would tolerate the Nazarene.’
‘But this man was executed, I believe?’ Pliny said.
‘Crucified, in Jerusalem. In the final years of the reign of my uncle Tiberius. The Nazarene had told me he would offer himself as a sacrifice. Whether he truly foresaw his own execution, his crucifixion, is another matter. The man I met had no death wish. He was full of the joys of life. But we talked about the ancient legends of human sacrifice among the Semites, the Jews. He knew his history, how to reach his people. I think the sacrifice he meant was symbolic.’
‘Fascinating,’ Pliny murmured absently. ‘The Sea of Gennesareth, you say? Not the Dead Sea? That sea is remarkably briny, I believe.’ He was writing in the final narrow space he had left on his scroll, dipping his quill in an ink pot he had placed beside him. ‘This will make a splendid addition to my chapter on Judaea. Thank you, Claudius.’
‘Wait. There’s more. I haven’t even given it to you yet.’ Claudius got up and hobbled unsteadily over to the bookcase where Philodemus’ library had been, sweeping aside the few remaining scrolls on the middle shelf and reaching into a dark recess behind. He lurched back to the table, sat down heavily and passed a small wooden scroll tube over to Pliny.
‘There it is,’ Claudius panted. ‘That’s what I wanted you to have.’
‘Acacia, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Pliny sniffed the wood. ‘What the Jews call sittim, from the stunted tree that grows along the shores of the east.’ He uncorked the tube and reached gingerly inside, extracting a small scroll about a foot square. It was yellow with age, though not as old as Philodemus’ papyrus scrolls, and some of the ink had crystallized and smudged on the surface. Pliny held the sheet close and sniffed the ink. ‘Probably not sulphate,’ he murmured. ‘Though it’s hard to tell, there’s so much sulphur in the air today.’
‘You smell it too?’ Claudius said. ‘I thought it was just me, bringing it back from my visits to the Phlegraean Fields.’
‘Bitumen.’ Pliny sniffed the ink again. ‘Bitumen, no doubt about it.’
‘That makes sense,’ Claudius said. ‘Oily tar rises to the surface all round the Sea of Gennesareth. I saw it.’
‘Indeed?’ Pliny scribbled a note in the margin of the text. ‘Fascinating. You know I have been experimenting with ink? My Alexandrian agent sent me some excellent gall nuts, cut from a species of tree in Arabia. Did you know they are made by tiny insects, which exude the gall? Quite remarkable. I crushed them and mixed them with water and resin, then added the iron and sulphur salts I found on the shore at Misenum. It makes a marvellous ink, jet black and no smudging. I’m writing with it now. Just look at it. Far better than this inferior stuff, oil soot and animal skin glue, I shouldn’t wonder. I wish people wouldn’t use it. Whatever this writing is, I fear it won’t last as long as old Philodemus’ rantings.’
‘It was all I could find.’ Claudius took a gulp of wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’d used up all my own ink on the voyage out.’
‘You wrote this?’
‘I supplied the paper, and that concoction that passes as ink.’
Pliny unrolled the papyrus and flattened it on a cloth he had laid over the sticky mess on the table. The papyrus was covered with fine writing, neither Greek nor Latin, lines of singular flowing artistry, composed with more care than would normally be the case for one accustomed to writing often. ‘The Nazarene?’
Claudius twitched. ‘At the end of our meeting, on the lake shore that night. He wanted me to take this away and keep it safely until the time was right. You read Aramaic?’
‘Of course. You have expertly taught me the Phoenician language, and I believe they are similar.’