Chapter 8

For Longus, each step was agony. The harsh iron manacles around his ankles rubbed painfully against his skin with each move in any direction. A trickle of blood marked his passage along the wooden deck. He shuffled slowly, just one in a long string of slaves leaving the trireme. Rows of laborers manning the three banks of oars stayed behind. Neither group could have been envious of the other.

Longus blinked in the bright sunlight and shivered as a cool breeze weaved through his shredded tunic. The slave in front of him stumbled. A whip whistled by Longus’ right ear and cracked against the man’s bare back. A bloody welt immediately appeared. The man stifled a cry, straightened and continued on, silently bleeding.

No one said a word. There was nothing to say.

Longus estimated that he was one of 20 men, all bound together, inching down the wooden ramp onto Spanish soil. For the past six days, sailing from the Roman port of Ostia to Spain, they had been kept below deck, huddled together with no protection from the cold sea seeping through cracks or the crisp wind at night. Food was little more than bread and water. He often awoke with a deep stomachache, buried under the ever-present stench. His lips were swollen and cracked. Salt encrusted his eyes.

At first, Longus wished he were dead. In that, his hopes were shared by his companions as they wallowed in human waste and dirt. Then, he turned his attention to Hyperion, cursing him often and loudly as if anyone else cared or was listening. Hyperion could have had him executed. It would have been a simple manner after Longus was hauled into his office at the end of a Roman guard’s lance. Instead, calmly, glancing up as if idly thinking and then turning back to whatever innocent scrolls lay on his desk, Hyperion quietly told the guard, “Send this slave to the silver mines in Spain.”

The memory of that brief moment sent chills through Longus’ body. Hyperion was so ho-hum, as if directing Longus to a picnic or to make a sacrifice on behalf of the Emperor. From that moment, Longus hated Hyperion with all his being. He could accept death. Romans lived on the edge of a sword normally. But, damned to the silver mines? That was unforgivable. Someday, Longus swore silently, he would get even. The emotion fired him even if reality promised little chance for revenge.

There had been virtually no delay between Hyperion’s decision and the placing of iron on Longus’ legs. A guard must have been waiting nearby with manacles. Longus’ hands were bound in chains, too. He was yanked down the marble stairs to a waiting four-wheel ox cart and then carried almost directly to the port at Ostia. The process took three days. They would bounce along for about five straight hours before the drivers and animals would rest while Longus was left chained in the cart. On occasion, someone threw him a piece of bread, which was retrieved painfully and awkwardly, or gave him a cup of water. Every now and then, his thoughts would shift to the brief weeks in the catacombs. He even looked back longingly at the garlic, leeks and rough bread of those days. How could he have known that would be luxury?

He also looked ahead. He knew they were headed to Rome’s biggest port. His sister lived there. Maybe she could come and ransom him. How would he reach her? He fashioned a few plots before that idea dissipated. She wouldn’t help him at all. Instead, she’d be on the dock happily waving as a ship carried him to the mines and slavery. She hated him for dissipating the family fortune and tarnishing the family name. And, he thought sourly, she was his closest relative.

In truth, he had to admit to himself, no one knew where he was or cared. The Christians were the last ones to see him; he was not really a member of their strange sect. Rachel had said they would not desert him, but they would have to locate him first. That was impossible. He wasn’t even a flyspeck in an empire. To them, he could be anywhere.

He laboriously picked up a piece of bread by the edge of the cart. What a poor meal, he thought, while gnawing on it and silently mourning.

During the bumpy journey to the Roman port, several other prisoners joined the procession. They were clamped together: three, four, five and finally six to the cart. All were male. None spoke. Longus saw the pain in their eyes and knew they saw the same emotion in his. After a while, one or two muttered something, but were focused more on their own dismal situation than on camaraderie. At least two of the men seemed completely insane, drooling and spouting gibberish. Eventually, they were removed and taken to an unknown fate. Longus prayed he would find the same release, but remained too aware of his nightmarish situation.

His hair, already straggly from his time with the Christians, now hung down across his face in black ringlets. The day before, his guard had made a disgusting comment and simply hacked off a good portion with his knife. Longus now had a scratch on his right cheek to remember the occasion. Glancing around later, he figured the other prisoners had received the same tonsorial treatment. Most had scruffy beards. Longus, however, was still clean-shaven after years of having his facial hair plucked like all higher-class Romans. Still, a few dark hairs were resolutely sprouting.

The slaves sat in the ox cart, swaying back and forth as the animals walked relentlessly around 35 mille passuum west from Rome to Ostia. Here and there, a few people walked nearby. Few spared the slaves a glance. Occasionally, Longus glimpsed young children playing. The carefree scene lightened his burden a moment. Then, the gloom would descend. They rode through rain and sun. The guards regularly watered the huge white animals pulling the cart. The prisoners often got nothing. Any kind words were reserved for the oxen, although they felt the lash more than any encouragement.

Nearing Ostia, Longus saw a row of large, round, wooden spikes extending perhaps 10 feet from the ground. It was as if the Earth had grown fingers that pointed skyward. He idly counted 11 in a row, all a few yards apart. Then, the cart reached the 12th one. It had a crossbeam with a dark, naked man hanging from it. Longus stared. His arms were outstretched and held by ropes wrapped around each wrist. His legs were bent sideways with what looked like a long spike driven through both ankles to pinion him. As a result, his body was twisted awkwardly. His head bent forward with long hair covering his face. Beside him, two placid crows sat on the crossbeam. One was poking at the man’s head.

Next to the crucified man was another cross with a man attached. His arms had been placed behind the cross and tied with ropes so that he faced forward. Also naked, he sat on a small wooden board attached to the upright beam. His legs hung straight down and were tied in place. His face seemed shrouded in a black cloud of hair, including a fluffy beard. The man on this cross seemed to be staring at Longus. Their eyes met in mutual agony. His crossbeam, too, featured large crows that edged toward the hanging figure and pecked at it. One guard stood languidly in the shadows and watched. In the background, three or four people in tunics and shawls huddled together.

Then, the cart lurched on. More single shafts of wood followed. Each was unoccupied, waiting.

Longus closed his eyes. He had heard of crucifixions before. That was what the Christians had talked about. Their god had died that way, Rachel had said. The memory of that conversation made Longus shudder. He had casually tossed off Rachel’s comment. Crucifixion was a mere chimera, something for slaves. If the topic arose in his previous life, usually because some slave had managed to get himself killed that way, someone in Longus’ former circle would laugh about the punishment or suggest that some opponent should be nailed up. That was all in jest, a light reference to some distant and strange idea. Seeing an actual crucifixion in stark reality left Longus cold and frightened. Of all the ways to die, that had to be the most awful.

He would see four or five more crucified men en route to Ostia. Several victims still wore loincloths. One was held with nails through the wrists and ankles. Most, however, were tied, facing out with legs apart. One man had been bound so he stared at the wood. His back was laced with welts and was still bleeding.

The images filled Longus’ already troubled nights.

Once on the boat, he was joined to those who preceded him there. All were barely dressed, thin and bruised from multiple beatings. Only one or two of the older slaves even looked up as the newcomers joined them. Chains were removed from hands, but the manacles were attached to iron rings protruding from the wooden beams. If the ship sank, they were going with it. Longus prayed for that, but no such luck. Pirates would have been a welcome relief; they stayed away as well.

For a short while, Longus looked for weakness in the manacles, but could see none. He yanked on the chains, twisting the metal. He pounded the manacles on the wooden flooring, generating only noise but no progress. They had been forged in a solid unit and required more strength to separate than he possessed. He finally gave up in abject frustration.

Longus could not look for his listless companions for help. They were clearly resigned to their dismal fates. They huddled on the floor, drooling and staring vacantly into a nonexistent future. Only one person seemed alert, a scrawny creature wearing only a loincloth and located near the front, far from Longus’ position. He glanced around curiously, smiled once or twice and even helped a slobbering neighbor get some food. Nothing seemed to faze him. Longus wanted to talk to him, to find out how he seemed to maintain such an attitude, but could not get close.

Once, he did see the man surreptitiously pull out a small scrap of parchment and read it. Then, he almost religiously tucked it inside his loincloth. Longus wondered what it could possibly say, but the man always seemed encouraged after reading it. It had to be something especially inspirational, Longus decided. If only he could get a chance to read it. He needed all the encouragement he could get.

To get closer, however, he had to get himself unchained. At one point, Longus considered grabbing a guard and forcing him to unlock the manacles. However, no guards got close enough even to seize a weapon. That such an idea occurred to him, he thought later, revealed just how desperate he had become. He had never used a sword in his life. His choices of weapon had been a knife to cut into a hapless capon and then grasping fingers to shove the meat into his mouth. He never had to defend himself, not a prominent Roman citizen like himself. Nor had he any requirement to serve in the military. That was for the aristocrat with ambition, not him. His thoughts had been focused on his next meal or sexual escapade. He definitely had no illusions of grandeur. He didn’t even read Caesar’s Gallic Wars, which seemed to inspire so many young men, although fragments of the Iliad and the Aeneid, mainstays of Roman education, still clung to his memory.

Now, needing to survive the dismal days at sea, he was glad that his focus had been on pleasure even if it was just a distant pang of a misty past. It was something to distract him, and far better than having the memory of the slogging through cold mountain snow to face a horrid, blue-painted enemy. He had conquered sweetmeats, not Celts.

Longus had plenty of time to think about his past. He and his decaying companions could only sit amid the waste and moldy wood. Timbers creaked about them. Seawater seeped through small cracks in the caulking, leaving them constantly wet. A narrow trench behind them carried waste toward a pool in the aft of the boat, but the smell remained. The only break came when the overhead door would open and a guard would descend the wooden steps. At an unexpected interval, like a visit from a god, they could hear the wooden covering slide back. Everyone would almost stop breathing, staring, waiting, focusing on the heavy step of sandals on the wood. The guard would survey them. He would then reach into a leather sack and throw bread at them. It would land in the seawater, but not linger there. The slaves grabbed every piece as quickly as possible with filthy hands and swallowed without chewing, avid for more.

Every crumb was fought over. Longus lacked the strength built up by years of hard work, but he was successful using agility and cleverness. Then, too, the steady deprivations had melted away most of his remaining excess fat. He discovered new stamina hidden beneath the old layers. He also began to develop ploys that helped him secure food and outfox his companions, who only showed any signs of life when food was tossed toward them. A half-turned shoulder provided a screen; a quick feint in one direction sometimes confused. Several prisoners were surprisingly strong, given their deprivations. On several occasions, Longus found himself effortlessly brushed aside by a powerful shove or quick kick. He resolved to build up his muscles to counter that. For the moment, though, his reflexes sufficed to avoid complete starvation.

Water was not such a struggle. Two guards took care of that with a bucket and a ladle. Each would get a sip in turn. The guard instantly slapped anyone attempting to hold the ladle for too long.

Once mealtime ended, all but that one man near the front lapsed back to idle hopelessness. Longus soon realized, too, there was no real escape from the dreadful situation. This was his present and his future. Mostly, then, he sat in a kind of stupor. Finally, he would fall asleep, leaning against the heavy man to his right. He would find himself hours later, sprawled together in some gruesome heap. They did not talk. Longus didn’t know his name. He also didn’t care.

Then, finally, voyage ended. They could hear the sound of shouting. The whoosh of the oars through the water ceased. Many of the men stared at each other. All were caked in excrement, had become barely human and hardly able to breathe. Longus readied himself. He had grown accustomed to his degraded home. Now, he had to be ready for something new, maybe even worse.

Guards filed in and ordered the prisoners to stand. Those half-asleep were roused with whips and fists. Then, the bound men trudged through the shallow water onto the land. The handful of guards there said nothing, but walked about armed with long, black whips in hand and hard, hateful glares.

“Baetica,” someone in line breathed.

Longus shivered at the name of that fearsome community. The silver mines here were infamous. Slaves supposedly lived only a few months, working underground in wet, cold conditions. The sheer reality of the torture facing him caused him to get nauseous. He turned his head, knelt and vomited what little remained in his stomach onto the beach. Immediately, he felt the harsh sting of a whip across his right shoulder. A guard glared at him.

“Stand up,” the guard snarled.

Wobbly, Longus straightened. When the slaves were all shore and standing on the brown sand, backs to the ship, they were splashed with water. Several soldiers walked along with a wooden basket and threw the contents on the men, filled it and tossed more. In a moment, the prisoners were all drenched and shivering despite the bright sunlight.

Then, they were shoved ahead and ordered into transports being pulled by six oxen each. They were divided into three groups and shoved unceremoniously onto the straw covering the back of each cart. Soon after, the carts lurched forward. Guards walked beside them.

Longus had a fleeting impression of trees and grassy fields, but the images faded together along with the faces and small huts along the way down a rocky, dusty road. Around him, a couple of the slaves muttered and shouted. Several more vomited, not caring where the bile went. Others merely defecated where they stood, adding to the smell and the horror. People walking on the road looked up in obvious disgust.

The cart jolted across multiple rocks and ruts. Each movement sent the men hurtling onto each other or against the side of the cart, adding to the bruises. After being run into several times, Longus finally shoved the prisoner behind him, hoping to prevent more painful contact. The man gazed at him with such amazement that Longus drew back. What was the point? They were all victims.

He would have blamed Bacchus, but this horror seemed so removed from anything the playful god could have conceived of. This was more in the Harpies’ line of work, pursuing the victim. If only he knew what he had done to cause such agony. His past thoughts now seemed so trivial. He had caused great offense. All these men must have.

He gazed around, for the first time really looking at his companions. There seemed no common denominator except gender: they were all male, but ages, sizes and color varied widely.

He nudged the man next to him. “Why are you here?” he asked.

The man glanced up. “Robbery,” he said flatly.

“And you?” Longus asked another.

The man shrugged. “My master grew tired of me,” he said.

Longus gave up soon after. One prisoner was a urine collector who failed to please his employer; another had made a comment about the new Emperor that offended a senator; and the third was a former soldier cashiered for refusing to obey an order. At least one had no idea why the fates had assigned him here. Longus could see no pattern. They had been randomly thrown together. If gods were involved, their actions were very capricious.

He tried to brace himself against the side of the cart. The large wheel turned inches from his hand. He could hear it grinding across the dirt and stones and imagined himself falling beneath it. He tried to conjure up the strength to hurl himself over the side, but soon realized he couldn’t even do that. There was not enough slack on the chain. He would simply hang across the top. It might lead to decapitation if a guard reacted quickly, but, more likely, just to more abuse.

While considering what he could possibly do, Longus found himself staring at a small group of people gathered by the side of the road. He could see them as the cart neared and then found himself across from them. He tried to focus through his mat of hair, but could not. He had a fleeting impression of several men and woman in a tight circle. Only after the cart pulled past did he realize that one of the women looked like Rachel. He was startled and then lost sight, when the bony creature in front of him fell backwards and blocked his view.

“Move,” Longus growled.

The man looked at him blankly.

Longus roughly pulled him away from the side. Too late. The cart had gone around a small bend, and the group was lost from view. He sagged.

Was that Rachel? Was she a slave, too? He didn’t see any manacles, but had only looked for a couple of seconds. There may have been chains. Were the guards? He replayed the scene repeatedly in his mind. It kept changing: soldiers, no soldiers; many people; a few. She looked at him; she didn’t see him.

He stared at his blackened feet. He was fooling himself. She couldn’t be here. How would she know where he was? He tried to be realistic: that could have been just a young woman who resembled Rachel. After all, Rachel had no money for a trip to Spain. Even if she somehow managed to get here, how could she help him? She couldn’t get past all the guards. She couldn’t remove the manacles. Still, just the idea she might be there, however, gave him hope. He had something to live for.

Someone bumped into his back.

Longus drew himself up. “Get off me,” he demanded.

The man inched backwards. Lingus grabbed the wooden top of the cart. He was going to the mines, but was going to arrive erect and strong, a Roman. His shoulder hurt; his ankles ached. He did not care. They could call him a slave, but he wasn’t going to act like one. He pulled in his stomach and straightened his shoulders. Unlike the others, he would die with dignity.

“That’s the spirit,” someone said.

Longus shifted slowly. He saw the thin man next to him. The manacles allowed a little movement, enough for the prisoners to shift positions. “Who are you?” Longus asked.

“Barnabas,” the man replied almost jauntily. Another jolt from a stone on the road almost sent him sprawling. “On the road to heaven,” Barnabas said.

Longus looked disgusted. He had heard that term before. To Rachel, it had been some distant place in the sky where believers lived in happy communities with their God. It all seemed so silly to Longus, so distinct from the assured ancient belief in an underworld with the boatman, the three-headed dog and the river of forgetfulness.

“That’s just not real,” Longus had finally told her.

Rachel smiled. “Maybe not,” she said, “but wouldn’t you rather believe in something beautiful?” Longus had hesitated. “I don’t see any harm in that,” she said.

At that moment, he didn’t either. He didn’t now. There had to be some place to reward those, like him, unjustly punished. They all couldn’t simply end up in the same fields, wandering endlessly, the good and bad mingling with no differentiation between them.

“I don’t believe in heaven,” Longus told Barnabas.

“No matter,” the smaller man replied. “That’s the fun part about belief. You can believe that Neptune rules the fish of the sea, but either Neptune does or Neptune doesn’t. Your belief doesn’t have any effect on that.” He patted Longus’ arm. “I believe I am going to a better place.”

“Any place would be better than the silver mines of Baetica,” Longus told him.

“I believe you,” Barnabas said.

The cart lurched to a stop. “Out!” a guard yelled. Whips cracked. The men tumbled from the cart. The ones in front inadvertently pulling those behind until they almost all tumbled together into a heap. More whips guaranteed they got up quickly.

Longus glanced around. The area seemed like a small camp with tents set up on one side. Across from him, he could see a gaping hole leading straight into the ground. Nearby was a second entrance, an adit, which led into the main shaft. He could see at least two more adits on the other side. One was being used to transport dirt from below ground via wooden baskets. The head of a small boy poked above ground. He laboriously, apparently with help from below, shoved a wooden basket to the surface. There, eventually after much straining, it was taken by adult slaves waiting for it. Two men carried it toward a clearing where men were poking through piles of dirt and separating the contents.

At another adit, men stood in a long line, passing along wooden buckets of water. The line stretched back into a wooded area where the water must have been dumped.

“Hope you are placed there,” Barnabas whispered, nodding toward the line of water carriers. “At least they are not below ground.”

Other men seemed to be working on some kind of mechanical device. It looked like a wooden cylinder with a screw inside. Another man was testing a crank.

Near them, men were building some kind of wooden wheel.

All of the activity seemed so strange to Longus. Mines, like weapons, were alien to him.

A guard removed the leg manacles. Longus could see that his ankles were bruised and cut. He had actually felt little pain before, but now, fire seemed to dart up his legs. He almost fell over. A whip to his back quickly convinced him to stay upright. Barnabas steadied him.

A tunic was shoved at him. It was gray and old, but it was clean. He quickly put it on. He had not had clean clothes for such a long time. Sandals followed. They were shoddily made, the kind sold at the Forum. He stepped into them and strapped them. Once, he would have never disgraced himself with such clothing. Now, he welcomed it.

“Don’t get excited,” Barnabas told him while donning the tunic over his loincloth. “You won’t get new clothes for a year. If you last that long.”

With that, he opened his hand to reveal the small scrap of paper. His lips moved as he read it again. Longus peeked. The writing looked to be Greek.

“You know Greek?” Longus whispered.

Barnabas shook his head. “I do not know what it says. I only know that I am to look at it and know that God loves me.”

“Let me see,” Longus offered, checking around to see if a guard was paying attention. None was. Barnabas timidly offered the piece of parchment. It had been clearly torn from a larger document. “I don’t know where it came from,” Barnabas said, anxiously watching both Longus and the guards.

Longus glanced at the writing. It seemed familiar somehow. He read softly: “Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that lives, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.” Longus knew he had read that before.

“It is a revelation from God,” Barnabas said. He retrieved the piece of paper and carefully placed it back in his loincloth.

Longus started to say something, to tell him that the writing came from a letter sent from Patmos, a letter he had read while in the catacombs. He hesitated. The few sentences were keeping Barnabas alive. They were giving him hope. And, did it really matter if God had a hand in the writing or not? Besides, who could tell? In the end, Longus kept silent. He could see how Barnabas’ face lit up while listening. He actually seemed to gain color in sallow, aging cheeks. Instead, Longus decided to respond with a lie: “Yes, you are right.”