Part 32 (1/2)

Chapter Thirty-Two.

A New Dawn Fades

What manner of man is this, that even the wind and, the sea obey him? and, the sea obey him?

Mark 4:41

As the pale light of dawn broke through a heavy and overcast sky, Georgiadis lifted the bar from the back of the door and ushered Tobias and Dorcas outside. Ian and Barbara followed but Vicki lingered for a second in the doorway.

'I'll miss you all,' she said before she kissed Evangeline and Iola. 'Look after Felicia. I think you'll find her slightly less of a handful than your last guest.'

'If not a tenth as alive,' Evangeline said, holding Vicki to her. 'Remember us, little one, for we shall most a.s.suredly remember you.'

Iola didn't speak, but ran back inside, her eyes filled with tears. 'Tell her that I'm not keen on goodbyes either,' said Vicki, as both Barbara and Ian indicated that they should move quickly. 'I will remember you,' she told Georgiadis and his wife and then turned and ran to Ian and Barbara, trying to fight back her own tears.

'Come on,' Ian said, as the three of them crouched low on the corner and looked both ways for signs of movement.

'Take me to the river, we've got to see a man about a TARDIS.'

The Doctor moved slowly out of yet another blind alley. His entire night seemed to have been taken up running in and out of them, and avoiding the shouts and the cries that seemed to have always been happening just around the next corner.

He was tired and lost and he still didn't have the faintest idea of what he was going to say when he did finally find the Roman barracks. It wasn't the sort of place where you march up to the gates and demand to see whoever was in charge.

Just then, in the middle-distance, he finally saw the full horror of this night in Byzantium. A young man, seemingly a Roman, stripped of his clothes, was being chased by a gang of legionnaires. A hundred yards from the Doctor, the soldiers caught the man, threw him to the ground and then bludgeoned him into oblivion with staves and sword b.u.t.ts.

The Doctor wanted to turn and run but his eyes were transfixed with an insane need to see what they were doing to their unarmed victim. A need to be witness to a tiny fragment of history that would never be recorded in any of the books that Barbara Wright so diligently read for their accuracy.

Here was less than a footnote. But for one man, it was the final paragraph and the ultimate full stop.

A p.r.i.c.kling sensation in his back told the Doctor that he was not alone. Turning to one side, he saw a couple of pa.s.sing strangers, a man and a woman who looked at him curiously. He must, the Doctor reflected, have stuck out like a sore thumb in the ravages of Byzantium.

'Good morning,' he managed to say, feeling ridiculous as he did so. Then he quickly glanced back in the direction of the Roman soldiers. But they were gone.

'You seem to be lost,' the man told the Doctor. 'Allow us to show you the way.'

At Basellas's base, the Zealot leader found himself alone.

They had all deserted him during the night. Even Ephraim, whose toadying had been broken by the noise of the ma.s.sacre going on in the streets.

He had fled, as they had all fled, denying Matthew Basellas in his hour of need.

Just as the scriptures had predicted.

It was something he had thought about much in recent days, but now the answer was so blindingly obvious. He was the predicted messiah of the Jews.

The enormity of the task that lay ahead of him, to reunite his people, scared Basellas slightly. As he pondered on what to do first in his quest, the door to the safe house burst open and Hieronymous stood in the doorway. He was still, even despite the ravages of age, an impressive figure.

'I was told that I would find you here,' he noted.

'Who...?' began the Zealot.

'Phasaei. A man of limited intelligence. If one is to trust another with secrets of such deadly import as locations like this, it is wise not to tell greedy and deceitful wretches such as he.'

'I shall kill him,' said Basellas, with a manic laugh.

'You are too late,' noted Hieronymous. 'He has proved unworthy.'

Hieronymous sat in Basellas's chair whilst the Zealot watched him closely as he circled the room, catlike. 'Why have you come to this place, old man?' asked Basellas. 'For you must surely know that I will put you to death.'

The old Pharisee shrugged. 'Once, such a threat would have chilled me to the marrow,' he noted. 'But no longer. For I was once like you, Matthew, hot-headed and full of p.i.s.s and hatred.' He paused and was amused by the scowl on the Zealot's face. 'But I learned to follow the scriptures, and follow them diligently.'

'You can only go so far in life on the Torah alone, Pharisee,' Basellas told him. 'The Torah does not teach us how to fight the Roman occupiers. It does not reveal how the Christians shall be slain in their great mult.i.tude.'

Hieronymous shook his mane of greying hair. 'I no longer see a threat in the followers of the Nazarene,' he told Basellas. 'Their ways are not our ways, but they are good good ways. Maybe He was the Christ, after all?' ways. Maybe He was the Christ, after all?'

'Blasphemies from you, old man?' asked Basellas. 'This truly is a day for signs and wonders.'

'Indeed it is,' said Marcus Lanilla as he and Fabius Actium stepped through the opened doorway. Basellas turned, but he was dead before he could properly face his Roman adversaries. Marcus thrust forward, expertly, with his sword which sank into Basellas's chest just below the breastbone. A quick and brutal twist of the gladius gladius finished him off. finished him off.

'Not like this,' Basellas cried his final words as he slumped to the floor, bleeding his life away.

'That was murder,' said Hieronymous, angrily, standing.

'He was unarmed.'

'So is this,' replied. Fabius, with a savage slash of his own sword that killed Hieronymous instantly. 'But who shall be witness to such capital crimes?'

Marcus stood cleaning his sword with patience and care.

'And so, in one fell swoop, we have solved the Jews' internal disagreements for them.'