Pliny scanned the writing. At the bottom was a name. He read the few lines directly above it, looked up, then read them again. For a moment there was silence, and utter stillness in the room. Claudius watched him intently, his lower lip trembling. A waft of warm air from outside the balcony brought with it a sharp reek of sulphur, and from somewhere inland came a distant sound like waves along the seashore. Claudius kept his eyes on Pliny, who put down the scroll and raised his hands together, pensively.
‘Well?’ Claudius said.
Pliny looked at him, and spoke carefully. ‘I am a military man, and an encyclopedist. I record facts, things I have seen with my own eyes or had recounted to me on good authority. I can see that this document has the authority of the man who wrote it, and who signed his name on it.’
‘Put it away,’ Claudius said, reaching out and grasping Pliny’s wrist. ‘Keep it safely, the safest place you can find. But transcribe those final lines into your Natural History. Now is the time.’
‘You have made copies?’
Claudius looked at Pliny, then at the scroll, and suddenly his hand began shaking. ‘Look at me. The palsy. I can’t even write my own name. And for this I don’t trust a copyist, not even Narcissus.’ He got up, picked up the scroll and went over to a dark recess beside the bookcase filled with papyrus sheets and old wax tablets, then knelt down awkwardly with his back to Pliny. He fumbled around for a few moments, got up again and turned round, a cylindrical stone container in his hands. ‘These jars came from Sais in Egypt, you know,’ he said. ‘Calpurnius Piso stole them from the Temple of Neith when he looted the place. Apparently they were filled with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic scrolls, but he burned them all. The old fool.’ He put the jar down, then picked up a bronze-handled dish filled with a black substance and held it over a candle, his hands unusually steady. The air filled with a rich aromatic smell, briefly disguising the sulphur. He put the dish down again, picked up a wooden spatula and smeared the resin around the lid of the container, let it cool for a moment, and then handed the cylinder to Pliny. ‘There you go. It is sealed, as I was instructed in the leaves, according to divine augury.’
‘This document,’ Pliny persisted. ‘Why so urgent?’
‘It is because what he predicted has come to pass.’ Claudius shuddered again, ostentatiously clutching his hand as if to stop it from shaking. He fixed Pliny with an intense stare. ‘The Nazarene knew the power of the written word. But he said he would never write again. He said that one day his word would come to be seen as a kind of holy utterance. He said that his followers would preach his word like a divine mantra, but that time would distort it and some would seek to use their version of it for their own ends, to further themselves in the world of men. He was surrounded by illiterates in Nazareth. He wanted a man of letters to have his written word.’
‘The written words of a prophet,’ Pliny murmured. ‘That’s the last thing a priesthood usually wants. It does them out of a job.’
‘It’s why the r-ridiculous Sibyl speaks in r-riddles,’ Claudius said, flustered. ‘Only the soothsayers can interpret it. What nonsense.’
‘But why me?’ Pliny insisted.
‘Because I can’t publish it. I’m supposed to have died a quarter of a century ago, remember? But now that your Natural History is nearly finished, it’s perfect. You have the authority. People will read you far and wide. Your work is one of the greatest ever written, and will far outlast Rome. Immortal fame will await those whose deeds are recorded by you.’
‘You flatter me, Princeps.’ Pliny bowed, visibly pleased. ‘But I still don’t fully understand.’
‘The Nazarene said that his word would first need others to preach it. But there would come a time when the people would be ready to receive his word directly, when there would be enough converts for the word to be spread from one to the other, when they could dispense with teachers. He said that time would come within my lifetime. He said I would know when.’
‘A concilium,’ Pliny murmured. ‘They are forming a concilium, a priesthood. That’s what he was warning about.’
‘In the Phlegraean Fields. They use that very word. Concilium. How do you know?’
‘Because I hear it among my sailors at Misenum.’
‘I told you about those in the Phlegraean Fields, the followers of Christos,’ Claudius continued. ‘More and more are going into the fold, the concilium. They are talking about a kyriakum, a house of the Lord. There is already dissent, there are already factions. Some say Jesus said this, some that. They are speaking in riddles. It is becoming sophistry, like Philodemus. And there are men who call themselves fathers, patres.’
‘Priests,’ Pliny murmured. ‘Men who would rather nobody knew what we now know.’
‘While I was still emperor in Rome, one came here, a Jewish apostolos from Tarsus named Paul. I was in disguise, making one of my visits to the Sibyl, and I heard him speak. He found followers in the Phlegraean Fields, many who are still there today. Yet none of these people knew the Nazarene, not even Paul, none of them touched him as I did. To them the man I knew was already some kind of god.’ Claudius paused, then looked intently at Pliny. ‘This scroll must be preserved. It will be your ultimate authority, for what you write in the Natural History.’
‘I will keep it safe.’
‘It’s worse.’ Claudius suddenly looked down in despair. ‘The poppy makes me talk, makes my mind wander, makes me say things I can never remember afterwards. They know who I am. Every time I go now they seem to appear out of the mist, reaching out for me.’
‘You should be more careful, Princeps,’ Pliny murmured.
‘They’ll come here. All my life’s work, all my manuscripts. They’ll destroy everything. That’s why I’ve got to give it to you. I don’t trust myself.’
Pliny thought for a moment, then took the scroll of the Natural History he had been writing on and placed it on the bookshelf. ‘I will return for this tomorrow. It will be safe here for one night, and I will add more to it about Judaea, anything more you can tell me. I will return. There is someone else I must visit here tomorrow evening. Maybe even tonight. I have been starved of her for too long. You will join me?’
‘I sometimes avail myself. But these days I think more and more of my dear Calpurnia. Such pleasures are in the past for me, Pliny.’
‘Tonight I will take my fast galley straight to Rome, I’ll be back here by the morning. After I see you again, I will make the same additions into my master version, then send it to the scribes in Rome for copying,’ he muttered, half to himself. ‘The Natural History will be complete at last. The final edition. Unless you can tell me anything more about Britannia, that is.’ He thought for a moment, drumming his fingers on the table, then tapped the cylinder Claudius had given him. ‘And I think I know just the place for this.’ He tucked it in a pouch under his toga, then took down the Natural History scroll on Judaea from the shelf, placed it on the table, picked up the stylus and wrote a few lines, paused for a moment, smudged the lines out with his finger, then made a note in the margin. Claudius watched, and grunted his approval. Pliny let the two ends of the scroll roll loosely together and replaced it quickly on the shelf, suddenly remembering the time and his visit to the woman that night. At that moment there was a shuffling sound at the entranceway, something that might have been a knock, and a stooped old man appeared, dressed in a simple tunic and carrying two woollen cloaks.
‘Ah, Narcissus,’ Claudius said. ‘I am ready.’
‘You go to the Sibyl?’ Pliny asked.
‘One last time. I promise.’
‘Then one last thing, Princeps.’
‘Yes?’
‘I do this for you as a friend, and as a fellow historian. It is my job to present the facts as I know them, and to hold nothing back.’
‘But?’
‘You? Why is this so important to you? This Nazarene?’