Doctor Who - Byzantium! by Keith Topping

Author:Keith Topping
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446417850
Publisher: BBC Books

Chapter Eighteen

Searching for the Young Soul Rebels

But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not

Mark 10:14

‘CEASE THAT INFERNAL wailing, you ignorant, flea-ridden peasants,’ tribune Edius Flavia told the assembled crowd as the Christian heretic Malachi was hoisted upright to join Obediah on the stauros. Flavia pointed his riding crop towards the group and told the sergeant of the guards that he should ‘watch this rabble closely. I smell trouble at the heart of them.’

‘Yes sir,’ said the sergeant, clutching his gladius threateningly in his hand. In his eyes, Flavia could see an obvious desire to use his sword if the opportunity presented itself. Or even if it didn’t.

On the other side of the hill, Flavia spotted the two senior Pharisees who had requested an isolated spot from which to observe the crucifixion. They, at least, seemed satisfied. But now they were ready to leave.

Flavia rode across to them on his sea-grey horse. ‘Going so soon, gentlemen?’ he asked. ‘We have yet hours of fine entertainment and revelry to endure before this thing that you requested is done.’ So typical of the Jews, he thought angrily. They get us to do their dirty work for them but they have not the stomach to see it through.

‘We are merely here to observe that the judgment of the court of the law of Moses, as ratified by his most gracious excellence, the praefectus Thalius Maximus, has been carried out,’ said Titus with a rather watery smile.

Edius Flavia did not like this man at all. Too cunning by half.

The other one, Phasaei, was more thuggish and easy to manipulate into compromise. He said little that wasn’t a quotation from their holy texts. A man who speaks in riddles and verses, Flavia decided, presents no threat to those who favour more direct action at the point of a gladius or a javelin.

‘What crimes did these men commit, exactly?’ he asked.

‘They defiled the word of the Lord,’ Phasaei told him.

‘The Jewish equivalent,’ Titus explained, ‘of calling the emperor of Rome a bloated, pox-riddled, worthless son of a whore.’ Again, he smiled. ‘Not that any Jew would utter such damnable slander, of course.’

Flavia turned his horse away from the men without further comment and rode back towards the execution, leaving them to go on their way.

Back on the hill, the situation was in the process of turning ugly. The crowd was in a restless and feverish mood. ‘Something bad is going to happen here this day,’ Flavia told the captain who offered to help him down from his horse. ‘No, I shall remain saddled in the event that we have need of urgent retreat.’

From out of the crowd, suddenly and surprisingly, a group of fifteen or so young men burst forward carrying a variety of homemade weapons. Aaron was leading them and he strode confidently towards Flavia, his group behind him, shouting angrily. Others in the crowd were joining them.

‘This obscenity is wrong,’ shouted Aaron.

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