On that first day in the Mamertine prison, Desi was in a funk, and she was racking her brains to understand what was going on.
First and foremost on her mind: what was Feli doing? She missed her “twin sister” and helpmate terribly. And she wondered anxiously how she was coping without any means of communicating with anyone: if only she’d learned to write in Latin!
And then she kept wondering why she was here, locked up with all those Christians: it did not bode well. This ‘deacon’ Plautilla seemed to think that it was Nero who’d had them all rounded up, but Desi was assuming that Piso was ultimately responsible for her arrest. And blaming the Christians for the fire was part of Rufrius’s plot. It didn’t seem to add up: how could the emperor and his enemies be carrying out the same plan now?
She would have liked to discuss this with Plautilla, but the deacon was very busy “tending her flock”, as she called it. Some of the women and girls cooped up in the dank prison cell were having crying fits and nervous breakdowns, which brought in the warders, who started beating up the “noise-makers”. Then Plautilla pleaded with them, asking permission to “lead prayers”, arguing it was the only way for them all to stay calm. With her polished accent and her authoritative matrona’s voice, she could be quite persuasive. So, reluctantly, the guards allowed the Christians to invoke their “sacrilegious deity”.
“Oh our father, you who are in the sky,” they all intoned softly, “you who created the earth and the sky, let your reign begin. Let your will be accomplished here on the earth, just like it is in the sky…”
Desi pricked up her ears: this was just some silly mumbo-jumbo, obviously, and although she didn’t understand a word of it, somehow it didn’t sound aggressive in the least. It was not like these people would want to start sacrificing babies any time soon. What struck her particularly was a line to the effect that this “father in the sky” should forgive his followers’ mistakes, just like they forgave others. Now that was a strange petition, coming from people who had just been rounded up and locked away by their enemies!
Eventually Plautilla had a moment for herself and she came over. She settled down next to Desi, and stroking her shoulder in a maternal way, she asked softly, “Are you holding out, there? You’re looking so sad!”
Desi swallowed hard. “That’s because I can’t weep, matrona, and I can’t hide my feelings either. I miss my parents terribly, and especially my best friend, Feli.”
Desi explained about this deaf girl, Felicitas, who always guided her and looked out for her; and that she, Desi, was the only person in the world Feli could talk to. “She’s my eyes and I’m her ears and her voice.”
Plautilla found the whole thing rather confusing: she could imagine a blind girl miming some simple instructions for a deaf one, but how could the deaf one ever reply? And what’s more: “Your friend spends all her time with you? How so? Doesn’t Feli have a home of her own? Or is she your sister?”
“No, actually she’s my father’s slave.”
“Oh… So you have your personal slave, eh? How many slaves do you have at home?”
“Just the one… You misunderstand; it’s not at all like it sounds; we’re very poor. Feli is more like a twin sister to me, I can give you my word!”
“All right… And now you’re missing her terribly.”
“Yes! I’m no longer whole without Feli!”
After a short silence Desi said, “Plautilla? I have so many questions to ask!”
“I can imagine. Go ahead, ask away.”
“What’s going to happen to us, do you know?”
“They won’t say, but I fear the worst. This whole operation doesn’t make sense unless the emperor, or rather his deputy Tigellinus, intends to have us all publicly executed.”
“Thrown to the lions!”
“Something like that, yes, I’m afraid.”
“So that’s why the guards let you pray: we’re going to die anyway.”
“Yes, maybe. They must know something.”
“And that’s why the others are so distressed!”
“Yes, of course. Even for us Christians it is hard to take. But I tell my sisters that as long as we’re allowed to die together, it will be all right.”
“But that’s the thing: I’m not a Christian and not a slave! You and I are Roman citizens: they’re not supposed to throw us to the lions, it’s against the law. What are the two of us even doing here?”
“Don’t ask me!”
Desi now told Plautilla what she’d heard at the baths. She had to whisper, as they were not allowed not make any noise, and she explained that it had been Lucanus’s idea, originally, to blame the Christians.
“Lucanus! Well I never! From Rufrius I wouldn’t expect anything else, but from our good friend the poet, no… He seemed to take a genuine interest in us; I had high hopes of converting him.”
“So you know these people, Plautilla?”
“I know all of them, yes. And I’ve known Nero since he was a baby; I’m one of Poppaea’s godmothers, too. When she married Rufrius at the age of fourteen, I knew it would only mean trouble.”
“Really!? So you belong to the inner circle of the imperial court!”
“Yes, and quite a number of our fellow-prisoners are slaves from Nero’s household.”
“Of course: Lucanus said so! But how come the plotters are the ones who’ve spread these rumours first, and then it’s Tigellinus who’s had you all arrested?”
“I think that’s quite plain: both sides find it expedient to use the same scapegoat.”
Desi reflected for a moment, and she thought she now understood: Piso—and Rufrius—must have persuaded someone in high places—probably Consul Mucianus himself—that she was not only an arsonist and a slanderer, but a Christian too.
After darkness came, they were told to go to sleep, and they all settled on the straw. It was very painful for Desi, because for the first time in her entire life she was alone at night. Feli was not there, sleeping right by her side, her body heat always present. Other bodies were pressed against hers, Plautilla was lying next to her, with her arms around a little slave girl, an orphan. The blind girl and the orphan were both aware of the privilege they were receiving. The floor was hard and the straw was scratchy, but those inconveniences were nothing compared to Feli’s absence. At length they all fell asleep and passed a fitful first night in prison.
And the next morning, a few hours after they’d received some stale bread for breakfast, something wonderful happened. The door opened and the warders pushed a new prisoner into the cell. “Another recruit for your gang, matrona,” they told Plautilla, sniggering, “a thieving runaway slave girl!”
“Feli!” Desi thought, as she’d noticed the total silence coming from the new prisoner. She waved her arms and opened them wide, and the newcomer, her chains rattling, rushed towards her, and they fell into a tight embrace. They had never before hugged like this; they adored one another but took that for granted; they were not in the habit of expressing their feelings so freely. So it was with a little shudder of embarrassment that Desi finally disengaged herself and started signing with her hands.
“Feli! How did you get here!? What happened?”
Then she held up her hands to receive an answer, and Feli’s signing was constricted by her chained wrists and produced rattling sounds, but she managed to communicate anyway. “I’ve just been arrested! I snatched the purse off a toff right in front of the prison. I made sure they caught me; the police patrol was just coming our way; I figured they would throw me in here immediately.”
“Champion! So yesterday you followed me and found out where I was?”
“Yes, and then I waited for a long time to find out what they intended to do with you. I was hoping you would be brought over to the tribune of the urban cohorts or something: then I could have alerted your father.”
“But how? How did you intend to do that?”
“I would just have dragged him along to the tribune’s office, double-quick! But nobody came to fetch you. What I did notice, were groups of people, youths mostly, who stopped in front of the prison, laughing, miming wild beasts. You know: with their fingers spread and crooked like claws, baring their teeth. They mimed how beasts attack their prey, and pointed at the windows of the prison, and then walked away, laughing… Then I knew that they were going to throw you to the lions, most probably… Sorry for springing it on you like this.”
“It’s all right, I already knew: the matrona and I had figured it out. And then what did you do?”
“I went back to our new place and I repeated the mimes to your mother. She understood. She was very upset, but at least now somebody knows what is going on. Then I went to have a look at the circus near our camp, you know the one. And sure enough, the same men who erected our shacks, the people from the navy, they were working on the circus near the emperor’s gardens, preparing it for a big event.”
“So that is where it will all end!”
“Probably. I’ve looked around in town: the great circus on the other side of the palace hill is completely destroyed, and the smaller ones outside the walls are badly damaged, and only a pile of charred wood is left of the new amphitheatre. So I’m sure, now: they will throw us to the lions right there, near our new home.”
“But Feli, why did you make them arrest you? Now you will die too!”
“That is what I want. If they kill you and I live, I will be alone. That wouldn’t make any sense!”
“Oh Feli, if only you’d let me teach you Latin!”
The two girls fell into one another’s arms again.
Plautilla had witnessed their interaction with growing astonishment: so this was Feli and this was how they communicated. Like two little girls absorbed in elaborate hand games! “Good Lord in the sky,” she thought, “thank you for letting me witness this before I die.”
Desi turned to the deacon and told her the news: they were definitely going to be thrown to the lions, in the Caligula Circus by the Vatican hill. “Workers from the navy have already started preparing it.”
“So Feli has been telling you all this? All right. Now we know. Did she try to alarm your father? Will he try to get you out?”
Desi asked her friend, and Feli answered, “I tried, yes, but unlike your mother, your father does not understand me.”
“But Mater will explain this to him! Surely the daughter of a real plebeian cannot be fed to the lions!”
“Your father is not always very effective.”
Desi reported these remarks back to Plautilla, and the deacon said, “You know, Desi, you and I are going to be executed regardless. You, because you were framed. Me, because I volunteered.”
“What!? You’re here of your own free will?”
“That’s right. I did it for the same reason as Feli. I refused to be separated from my flock. If they are killed and I stay alive, that wouldn’t make any sense.”
Plautilla explained that as long as their enemies were only executing a bunch of hapless slaves, they’d learn nothing from it. But if she joined the slaves and if they all managed to die with dignity, then it would make these people wonder. Or at least, that’s what she was hoping. “We have to die like true Romans to make it count.”
Having said that, Plautilla went back to the others. It was clear now that she had serious work to do. Discreetly she moved around, from one woman to the next, and one by one they heard the news: it was confirmed; public execution in the arena; the Caligula Circus near the Vatican hill. The deacon consoled each woman, tried to rub some courage into them with a comforting hand. She even did this with the purse-snatchers and the runaway slaves. Then she organized what she called “a special worship” for the Christian women, to prepare them all for their ordeal, and Desi and Feli did not participate. They sat to the side with the ‘common criminals’ while the faithful huddled in the middle of the cell, whispering prayers.
And life went on; they waited for their fate to unfold. When she was not busy, Plautilla and her special helper, Hosidia, liked to sit in a corner and chat with the girls. Plautilla was very curious about Feli, and Desi about Nero, so they exchanged stories. The matron was thrilled to hear how the two girls had grown up together and developed their language so early and spontaneously, that they couldn’t even remember doing it. “I always thought Feli had taught me, but recently she told me that she’d always assumed I had taught her. So we really don’t know how it happened!”
Desi wanted to know what kind of man Nero was. Oh, Plautilla replied, he was so sweet as a child! But as a youngster he’d become very difficult; don’t boys always? It was hard for the poor kid to have such an ambitious mother. She’d been obsessed with making an emperor out of him, but she never realized that he was not at all cut out for that kind of thing: too shy and week-willed. He was always very serious about his poetry, though, you had to give him that. “And then, when he came to power at the age of seventeen… well, that would be enough to drive any boy crazy. Still, he did quite well, considering… Thank God he listened to the advice of some good people like Seneca and Burrus.”
“When you say thank God,” Desi asked, “do you mean the god of the Judeans? They’re always preaching that there’s only one god.”
“That’s right: we Christians believe in the Judean god, the creator of the world and of all that is in it. But he is also our father in the sky, who cares for us like every father cares for his children.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense! How can there be just one god? Only recently the emperor has built a temple for the worship of his dead baby daughter: new gods are added to the pantheon all the time!”
“Well, I know Nero and Poppaea. They’re also supposed to be divine beings, but believe me, they’re only human, too human.”
Until then Plautilla had not tried to convert Desi or even explain her faith to her, but she clearly delighted in engaging this lively young girl in debate, as soon as she showed an interest and came up with questions. At another time, for instance, the blind girl asked, “Tell me, matrona, what is this thing about a Messiah? A Judean peddler on the Forum told my father that you Christians believe the ‘Messiah’ actually came, and went, and that no one even noticed!”
Plautilla and Hosidia had a giggling fit when they heard this. “Sorry, Desi, blame the nerves… The Messiah, absolutely. But the Judean peddler was probably thinking of a king who would take over and rule the world…”
“Yes, I even wondered if Nero could be the Messiah, in reality.”
“You’re a great fan of Nero, eh? He would like that… No, but the thing is, we believe that a man called Jesus was the Messiah, indeed, the son of God, the first-born, the one-and-only Son. But he did not come to rule the world, he came as our saviour.”
“That I don’t understand.”
Plautilla took her time and made an effort. “Just imagine that the creator of all things decides one day to come down to the earth, as a human being… just imagine. Would he appear at Caesar’s court? How boring! And who needs another king, raising yet more taxes and armies? No. God would want to meet ordinary people like you and me, simply become one of us, a member of the millions, embracing us with all his heart. That is what the Messiah came for; that is why Jesus was just a carpenter.”
“A carpenter? The Messiah? You’re not making sense!”
“Well, that is what we Christians believe. We’re not claiming that it makes sense, but Jesus Christ came, and went, and no one even noticed, that’s right, but he was our saviour. He gave his life for our salvation. You have to understand—this is the core of our faith—that God decided that he himself, as the Son, had to become a sacrificial lamb. He was crucified by the roadside just outside Jerusalem, thirtysomething years ago.”
“Crucified! Like a slave! What did he do wrong?”
“Nothing, really… it’s a long story… and don’t forget: they’re going to throw us to the lions too, and did we do anything wrong?”
During this whole conversation Desi kept signing for Feli, frowning with the effort. The deacon looked on and marvelled: the blind girl seemed to be able to speak Latin with her mouth and… something else with her hands simultaneously. Astonishing.
“Does Feli understand what you’re telling her about our faith?”
“Yes, yes, Feli and I are always mighty interested in religions, you know.”
Desi told her new friend about the temple of Asclepius, how its forecourt used to be the marketplace of the religions in Rome.
“Yes, well, that’s the problem,” Plautilla grumbled, “our faith is not some fancy new thing you can take on next to your other gods.”
“Is that one of your rules? That all the other gods have to go?”
“Not a rule, no, but a consequence. Once you’ve embraced Christ, believe me, all the other business no longer makes any sense.”
“Feli says: if that’s the case, no wonder becoming a Christian means trouble!”
“Well, tell her it’s the others who have problems with us.”
“Feli says she likes your religion already! But what I can tell you is that your faith is really hard to swallow for a true Roman.”
“Don’t I know it!”
A few days—and nights—went by. The death that awaited them was too horrible to contemplate. The two girls tried not to think of it; they lived in the moment, enjoying one another’s company. The Christian women and children, on the other hand, kept praying to the Father and the Son, and asked what they called the Spirit to give them strength. And each morning, when the guards brought in the stale bread to feed the prisoners, the Christians would perform some kind of ritual, breaking a small piece off and eating it very slowly, to start with. Still complete mumbo-jumbo, Desi concluded, and Feli agreed. The only thing they approved wholeheartedly was the idea, that Plautilla kept repeating, that they would die together and give one another the strength to bear it. Desi said to Feli, “That’s true. As long as you and I can hold on to each other, let the lions do what lions do… I’m so grateful you came to me, Feli, it’s the greatest gift I’ve ever received!”
“You’re welcome, blind one. You’re my twin sister.”
“Wait…”
Desiderata fumbled with the cord around her neck, pulled it over her head, brought out her silver lunula from inside her tunic and hung it around her friend’s neck.
“There, deaf one, it’s yours. Now you’re a freedwoman.”
“The greatest gift I’ve ever received!”
And then, on the fourth night, the guards burst into their cell with a detachment of uniformed police, and they were rudely roused from their sleep and bundled into an oxcart waiting in front of the prison. They were all chained together, even the real citizens, and the cart trundled off, leaving the deserted Forum, the uniforms marching left and right with lighted torches. Every precaution to make sure no one tried to escape. Behind them, at a distance, they could make out another cart, containing the men, with another torch-bearing escort.
After a long trek through the darkened streets, in the middle of the night, they arrived at the circus near the Vatican hill. They were led down a narrow stone tunnel into the vaulted basements under the stands of the racing track. Straight away, they could hear and smell the lions—who’d already been brought in—even before they could see them. It was awful.
Cages had been erected in the dimly lit dungeon, and the prisoners were herded into a holding pen, separated from the beasts only by iron bars. “That way they can get to know their next lunch,” the guards joked, “stay clear of the barrier, you hear?”
And indeed, the lions, more than a dozen of them, showed great interest in their new neighbours, the tiny flames of the oil lamps reflected and multiplied in their staring eyes. The guards—different from those of the Mamertine—took away the prisoners’ chains, joking again that all that iron was not good for the teeth and stomachs of their “darlings”. And then, very suddenly and swiftly, they grabbed a couple of young girls and started to drag them off. The girls screamed and their mothers tried to tear them loose from the guards, but they were mercilessly beaten back with truncheons. The men slipped out with their catches, slammed the door of the cage shut, and locked the others up.
“Hey!” Plautilla shouted, “what do you think you’re doing?”
“Just lend us those two, boss. It’s for the gladiators. We’ll bring them back later. You’re all gonna die anyway, so it would really be a shame to let such a pair of lovelies go to waste.”
Plautilla scolded and pleaded, “Have you no human decency at all?” But it was no good; the guards persisted stubbornly, and the two girls wailed in desperation as they were dragged away. The guards led them through the access tunnel to the makeshift barracks on the Via Cornelia, in front of the circus, where the gladiators were staying on their last night before these games. Some of them, they knew, would not live through the next day. The sobs of the girls died off as the outside door was shut on them.
Desi realized that they sounded quite young; their mothers kept wailing pitifully. “Poor Christian girls,” she thought, “it could just as well have been me!” How lucky she was that men were always so put off by her blindness; she’d been told often enough that she was an attractive girl too, in a way, but that the ghoulish slits of her eyes were just too horrible to look at. A Gorgon mask. Desi thought, “If only I could put off the lions the same way, tomorrow!”
“You rapists!” Plautilla screamed very unceremoniously when the kidnappers returned without the girls, after delivering them to the gladiators. She was trembling with rage. “Now we know who the real wild animals are!” And Desi reflected that it is not always possible to forgive others their trespasses.
And then the male prisoners were brought in, and were herded into another cage next to theirs. The Christian women and children rushed to the barrier separating them from their men, and they all started to cry out at once. They grabbed the men’s hands through the bars, and held on to them; the same emotional reunions played themselves out over and over again. The mothers of the two abducted girls told their husbands about what had happened, they wailed again, and the fathers wept with despair. Plautilla was also talking to a man, an old chap by the sound of it, but she was speaking in a foreign language Desi did not recognize. Probably not even Greek, but some Judean dialect. The only thing she could make out was the man’s name: Plautilla called him “Cephas”. The two seemed to be very close, but more like siblings than spouses. The old man must have been the “real” deacon.
After a long while things settled down a bit, and the Christians started to pray and sing softly, standing close together by the barrier that separated them. Desi and Feli moved over to another corner of the pen and started to converse silently with their hands.
“Tell me, Feli, those lions, do they look fierce… or not?”
“No. They look very puzzled. If they weren’t so big and dangerous, it would almost be comical. They all seem to think that we’re a bunch of awfully excitable monkeys!”
“Exactly! They’re not used to so much noise. And you know why? They must have been brought in from the zoo in the gardens of Lucullus. They’re used to people who laugh and are relaxed. Nero has forbidden executions by beasts for so long, that these lions have probably never done this before. And do you remember what the men at the baths said, on that very first day? It’s not so easy to get big cats to attack human beings. You have to train them for that. I’m pretty sure these goons, here, haven’t had the time to do that properly.”
“So what do you have in mind? I can see that you’re starting to make plans!”
“Yes. It’s a remark the matrona made a moment ago: she said those goons are the real wild beasts. And now I’m just thinking: she could be right, and these lions could really be quite domesticated.”