Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues of Men or Angels

After this last dish, she might command that pastel Nordic slave to perform an erotic dance, perhaps with one of the other slaves. That might be rather nice. See if it shocks the stuffy, amber-rubbing banker’s wife.

It is a little tedious to have to entertain, but not so bad, and one must try to ingratiate oneself with the influential locals. Drusilla is contented in this prettiest of Italy’s resort towns, cooled by gentle zephyrs of breeze, surrounded by farmlands and the plump grapes growing on the fertile slopes of Mount Vesuvius. A mountain that has started smoking of late, like the gentle breathing of a contented god; like the billows that once flowed up from the Temple at Jerusalem. The local wines aren’t nearly as good as those from Lesbos, of course, but still, it is a fine hideaway in which to settle and enjoy a blessed life: Pompeii.

For two years Paul was detained in the palace at Caesarea — less than guest and more than prisoner — with the governor Felix and his wife Drusilla. But after Felix is recalled, Porcius Festus is made prefect.

Porcius arrives in an increasingly unstable land, nationalist banditry rife in the countryside and Sicarii, crowd-mingling, sickle-daggered assassins, murdering collaborators and the impious in the cities with rising regularity. Compared to Porcius’s other problems, the issue of what to do with Paul is just a minor irritation. But it is an irritation nonetheless.

Felix used to enjoy talking with Paul, but upon hearing the apostle preach for the first time, Porcius Festus declares, ‘You are raving mad, Paul. Learning has sent you insane.’

Aware of this altered stance in governance, the Jerusalem authorities renew their petition that Paul stand trial for blasphemy before them. But Paul once again claims Roman exemption.

If Porcius Festus dismisses the charges outright he may face uproar, but if he condemns a citizen, simply to placate the ire of provincials, his political prospects could be lastingly marred. So Porcius comes to a prudent and plain solution: Paul has appealed to Roman justice so let him face justice at Rome.

For the journey, Paul is transferred to the custody of a centurion called Julius of the Frumentarii , a group of detached legionaries who secure supply lines, courier messages and perhaps spy. Julius has a ruddy, broad farmer’s face, which belies a mind dark and supple as a mole viper. For the assigned task, Julius commands a unit of auxiliaries from the Augustan cohort and they all board ship on the fifteenth day of the Augustan month.

The soldiers are necessary because Paul is not the only prisoner under transport. A group of manacled damnati — thieves, tax absconders and the merely unlucky — are also on their way to Rome, so that their blood can fertilize the arena’s barren soil.

But Paul is not herded with those others. He is no convict, but a person awaiting Caesar’s court, who should be extended some courtesy. Paul is a man of substance and a citizen. During his time at the prefect’s palace, the apostle has even taken to wearing the toga, a hot, woollen encumbrance. A cloth sixteen feet long and ten across, which drapes upon the body, held in place under its own weight. But which carries weight also in what it signifies: that one is a person of wealth and standing. To add to the picture, Aristarchus and Timothy pose as Paul’s slaves and because of this are allowed to accompany and attend to him.

Centurion Julius accords Paul so much respect that when the ship ports at Sidon in Syria, on the first leg of the journey, Paul is allowed into the town to visit supporters there and to stay with them while the vessel’s captain awaits favourable winds. The other prisoners remain on board, manacled and caged, sickening from the swells and close-confinement.

As soon as the weather allows, the ship travels onwards, skirting the coast, far to the sheltered east of Cyprus. A voyage of ponderous progress, making creeping use of the changeable local land breezes and the steady westward currents, frequently anchoring as advance is thwarted. When the days are clear, the ship passes within sight of many places that have shaped Paul’s life: Antioch, which once was his great base, until he was driven from it by those Judaizers; the Taurus Mountains, behind Tarsus, his boyhood home; Perga, where John-Mark deserted; and numberless sites of triumphs across the shores of Pamphylia and Cyprus, where communities of the sanctified were founded.

More than two weeks it takes, of nautical dawdle, to make port in Myra. The ship is ultimately bound for Troas, where it will harbour for some months. Sailing becomes ever more dangerous as autumn progresses and not even the unhinged take to the seas in the turbulence of winter.

The centurion Julius had planned to travel overland for much of the route from Troas. But by chance, while at Myra, a grain-ship docks, having come from Egypt. More than half of the Nile delta’s crop props up the Roman corn-dole. A premium is paid to those captains brave enough to deliver late in the sailing season and this ship, large enough to cross open seas, still intends to make direct route to Rome.

Julius’s rank secures passage for his soldiers and prisoners and the ship is then a skillet of grain and blood, all that buttresses the Emperor Nero from the urban beast he rides.

Including crew, Paul counts seventy-six souls on the ship that might be saved, but few are of a mind to listen to him. The west wind continues to run against them; progress is hard and slow. A distance past Cnidus, which could have been done in a single day with a following draught, instead steals the best of a week.

When the wind shifts even worse, to north-west, exactly opposing the direction they should be travelling, the captain is forced to sail past Crete and seek refuge in the natural harbour called Fair Havens, on the southern side of that island. And there they are stranded, at anchor for so many days that the Israelite Day of Atonement passes while they are there. Not that any on board fast, but it is a measure of how perilously late into the sailing season they are running. It begins to seem likely they will be forced to spend all winter in the bay.

As it is, the ship is marooned deep into the month of Octobris, but then a slight southerly breeze starts to blow, and a council is taken on how to proceed. A person of rank and an experienced traveller, Paul is allowed to attend and give his view, which is that they ought to remain precisely where they are. But the captain thinks it better to use the beneficial zephyr at least to sail further around the Cretan coast to the port of Phoenix, which is better shielded for the ship to winter in and will allow them freer access to supplies and is in any event in the direction they must ultimately travel so might promise a faster spring departure. The grain-ship being under the command of Rome, the centurion Julius has the final decision and naturally he favours the advice of the mariner; they hoist anchor and resume sailing along the shore of Crete.

But the ship hasn’t covered half the distance to Phoenix when there tears down from the Cretan mountains the wind they call Euraquilo: a violent north-easter, typhonic in ferocity. The squall strikes with sudden force, near to tearing the single square sail from the mast, or the mast from the ship. The hull groans with the leverage of the great beam, and old hands cry that the clinkers will burst and send them all to choking death.

Such oars as the ship has are only for manoeuvring close to port, useless in a gale. The crew has no choice but to let the ship be ripped away from the Cretan shore and further out to sea, running with the wind to avoid being sunk by the strain of resisting it. Rain comes thick as ropes, so dense the passengers fear they will drown each time they breathe. Waves lift the ship high as city walls. The decks shudder and the sea grows black.