Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues of Men or Angels

‘Even you, Barnabas, even you?’ Paul looks through him. ‘So be it. I will follow my own way then. We’ll all know soon enough who was right. Already the axe of God’s judgment is poised, eager to sever the roots of the trees. And every tree that does not produce good fruit will be hacked down and thrown into the fire.’

‘Fire!’ Useful says. He stares out of the window at Rome’s night sky, now lit with a scarlet glow to the south like a shipboard sunset.

Paul looks too. ‘It’s a long way off,’ he says, and pats Useful’s knee with an affable hand. ‘Nothing for us to be concerned with. Let’s finish the dictation.

‘So, when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he drew back and separated himself from the Gentiles, because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, and by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.’

Useful shakes his head in bitter wonder. It is hard to believe the troubles Master Paul has been put through by those Judaizers.

Timothy enters; his face is smeared and spattered with ash, as if in some sackcloth ceremony of mourning. ‘The Circus Maximus is completely aflame,’ he says. ‘It’s already spreading to the streets nearby.’

The Circus Maximus is the largest wooden structure ever built. Yet beneath the imported Syrian-cedar rafters of its benches and floors are the cooking fires of bakeries, pastry shops and hot-food booths; lamp-lit taverns ply their trade the night through, so the inebriated can cavort and brawl next to naked flames, all among rows of plank-walled shops, stocked with combustibles, like cloth and oil.

‘That it is now ablaze is perhaps less astonishing than the fact that it has never happened before,’ Paul says.

Hand bells of the Cohortes Vigiles — the night watch — ring out across Rome, summoning their fellows to assist and warning residents to flee.

The Vigiles try to extinguish the fire. But they have only buckets against what is by now a whole district in inferno. It is as fruitless as pushing the wind. They try instead to make a break against the flames — a fortress of absence — removing flammable objects from the fire’s path, ramming buildings to collapse them. There are seven thousand Vigiles , porting heavy loads like a baggage-train of termites. But they are not enough.

The flames laugh as they leap the ancient Servian walls, once the boundary of a city long since swollen and spread beyond them. The walls are of volcanic rock, impervious to fire; but this barrier, which might have stopped Hannibal, does not block the flames for an instant. So perish all who cross my walls , said Rome’s founder, as he murdered his brother. But the fire doesn’t perish as it breaches from within. Embers fly and land behind. And more floating windblown sparks start further blazes, apparently spontaneously right across the city, adding to the rumours of arson.

Arson isn’t needed for this conflagration. Rome is dry as an Ethiope’s tinder; these are the dog days. Mutt-star Sirius is in the ascendancy, rising as fast as the new movement of the Christianoi, whose speed in gathering converts is suddenly outstripping the cults of both Isis and Atargattis. The poor of Rome gaggle after every new thing.

The wealthy have largely deserted the city for their country estates, as they do at the worst heat of every summer; only those obliged to by high office remain in Rome. Many among the landed rich should shoulder some blame for the fire’s spread: owners of the four-, five- and six-storey tenement blocks that form most of Rome’s housing have over many decades kept extending their rentable space. Now the faces of square-jawed apartments jut out well over the streets, smelling the breath, staring into the eyes of the blocks opposite. Almost touching, as if about to deliver a head-butt or a kiss, the streets beneath their chins too narrow for two carts to pass. Many of Rome’s roads are sunless even at midday, so complete is the enclosure of buildings. But now they are lit up in the black of night. Now the near-kissing frontages are finally locked — sharing spark spittle — tongues of flame licking like over-eager youths.

Horses can scream. Those trapped by the fire make a noise that most of the fleeing people have never heard before. A screech of horror more than human and less than it. The shriek of a flight animal denied its basest urge even in death. Do horses know of their own mortality? The screams proclaim that they fear death at the finish, but do they know of it before that? Perhaps they think it isn’t so. Perhaps they believe in an equine afterlife, delivered by a stallion saviour.

The fire is a tidal wave now. The flames roll unstoppably onwards like the foam of breaking surf, surging and bursting through every crack and fissure, breaching the portals and the fenestrations.

On the narrow streets the people push and crush. Some draped in blankets they have soaked, which cling about them tight as clothes carved on a statue. Many holding sacks and sheets filled with their precious belongings, or objects looted, if they had nothing of their own worth saving. The encumbrances add to the struggle of making progress and to the disarray. The strong try to force their way forwards, as the strong will, shoving swirls of the frailer into the walls, slowing the whole mass. Parents try to gather little ones in danger of submerging, but can only grasp an arm and hope. Here and there a person desperate to return for a loved one or a treasure tries to fight against the tide. Struggling contraflow towards the swarm. Shouting: my wife; my sister; my son . Words hard to hear amid the noise of a crowd in panic and the roar of fire and the crackle of shattering timbers and the tumble of buttresses and the screams of such infidel horses as don’t believe in the Great Stallion in the sky.

The air is cut with smoke and so scorching that it feels like skin itself could ignite. And some citizens flee into the sewers, preferring to take their chances with darkness and effluent. History does not record if that decision was wise, but above ground walls fall and roofs fall and Rome falls. Unconquerable Rome flees on bloodied knees, bent from the baggage on her back. Rome who rules the world is violated by flame. Walls built against siege engines are felled by embers; men who have led legions are trampled beneath the cinder-stained sandals of slaves and immigrants. And toothless children wail and toothless crones sob and dogs as toothed as Cerberus bark and howl, because even their brave jaws cannot protect their homes now.

As the fire draws closer to the apostle’s apartments, Manius the one-eyed Praetorian puts a shackle on Paul and attaches it to himself, more afraid that they will be separated in the chaos than that the prisoner would actually try to escape. But it is in any case a guard’s duty to chain his own wrist to his captive’s, if forced to leave the site of house arrest.

They exit the building, in a ring of the followers and servants, into a stench of smoke and cries of warning and panic and loss. They head up into the hills, from which distance the city below glows, like the coals of a dying cooking-fire. Though this inferno is far from over.

For six days and seven nights the fire burns, before it is finally brought under control. By the finish, ten of the fourteen districts of Rome are levelled utterly or left as but blackened shells, husks as desolate and charred as Carthage. The Temple of Jupiter; the Palatine and the Capitoline; the Temples to Apollo, Luna and Hercules; the Villa of the Vestal virgins and numberless brothels; the palaces of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and Nero; the mansions of the wealthy and the tenements of the poor; booths, boutiques, barrow-shacks, pothouses, emporia and workshops; the libraries and archives for the erudition of the elite and the corn-dole warehouses that placate the plebs. All are tumbled and burned, rubble and ash, collapsed and consumed.