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.‘Discretion, Thomas,’ Peter said.‘Where is the er—?’ They led the two of them up a short flight of steps to a bedroom.The shutters were closed but the scent of nard was overpowering.Also (Thomas sniffed cautiously) camphor.A candle at her head and one at her feet.A quite young girl, a gazelle no longer footfleet, pretty too, not unlike that daughter of what was his name, Jairus.‘Aye, she seems dead all right, but ye can never tell.’‘What were his words? Yes, Talitha cumi.’‘And now ye have to say Tabitha cumi.Ye have to do what he did, Peter.He said we had to.’‘That’s not for us.’‘Sometimes nature plays tricks like that Simon Magus did.Seems isn’t the same as is.’‘I don’t like it,’ Peter said.‘But there’s no harm in trying.Tabitha cumi.Rise up, girl.’There was no response from the girl’s body.‘It’s a lot to expect,’ Thomas said.‘Too much.He was him.We’re just us.’But Thomas, his eyes widening, put his hand on Peter’s sleeve.He muttered something like a prayer that what seemed to be happening should not happen.Both looked with mouths stupidly opening at a mouth gently opening to let out what seemed a small store of breath kept shut in there.One of the candleflames flapped.That old breath once let out, new breath possessed the body, its rhythm as feeble as in a body about to die.Both men dreaded the opening of the eyes, with their message of light from a world nobody wanted to visit if he could help it.So falling over each other they got out of that room.Having fallen downstairs, Peter said to the women: ‘You can go up there now.’ The herb decoctions were spilt on the worn Greek carpet with its key pattern.Peter now saw for the first time a gaudy bird in a cage that looked at him, head cocked, as though from another world.A flight of heavy black birds went up those stairs with black wings flapping.In a minute, in the manner of women, they would start wailing joy that sounded like grief.The two men got out of that house with the speed of robbers.At that moment the centurion Cornelius was holding a meeting of the senior under-officers of his century.It was in his own house overlooking the bay of Caesarea.His wife was singing in the kitchen and his small son dribbled on to a toy centurion the garrison carpenter had kindly carved for him.‘Look, lads,’ Cornelius was saying, ‘the situation’s not clear.No situation ever is these days as far as Rome’s concerned.We stay but he goes.’‘No procurator?’ said the decurion Fidelis.‘Ever again? Who are we responsible to?’‘You’re responsible to me for the moment.And it looks as if I’m directly responsible to the man in Syria, Lippius.’‘Caius Lippius,’ young Junius Rusticus said, a boy given to needless pedantry.‘But we also have to take orders from this Herod Agrippa who’s on his way from Galilee.The King of Palestine, as he calls himself.Sort that out if you can.’‘So we get moved to Jerusalem?’ Fidelis said.‘We’ll be needed more in Jerusalem than in Caesarea,’ Cornelius said.‘Especially if he has that statue moved in.’‘I can’t see that,’ the decurion Androgeus said, a half Greek and very olive-skinned, one who was on his third decurionate after two demotions for brawling.‘I can’t see how a Jew can do that.Even if he calls himself like a king.The other Jews will cut his bleeding gorge for him,’ proleptically.Cornelius said:‘It seems to be up to the Roman army to see that they don’t.Meaning us.And the lads from Syria, a mean lot.The god Caligula, eh? For Jews and Romans alike.I don’t think I can stand much more,’ he said, singing in unconscious unison with another centurion many miles away, ‘of the world’s madness.’ He went to his little balcony and looked out on the sea and the massed shipping.All that seemed sane enough.Then he turned and surveyed the room, not seeing his men.He was in his home, such as it was.Full of ornaments picked up in a variety of foreign bazaars, most of them cheap except for that bronze buffalo, all of them probably tasteless.He said: ‘You know where sanity lies, don’t you?’‘You’ve said something about it, centurion,’ Junius Rusticus said.‘We need somebody to talk to us,’ Cornelius said, eyes down.‘The man I have in mind was here a couple of days ago.The Greek man in the chandler’s store, he said he’d gone off to Joppa or Jeffa, whatever they call it.He’s a fisherman, this man Peter I mean.He’s in charge.They say he’s done strange things.A humble man for humble men, just the same.’‘Strange?’ Fidelis said.‘Oh, you know what I mean.I don’t know what word to use.Even words are losing their meaning in these days of the world’s madness.Ask for the man Peter in Jappa or Juffa.Everybody’s bound to know where he is.You, Rusticus and Androgeus, you two can volunteer.’Where Peter was now was on the roof of his host Simon the tanner.He had got up there for two reasons.One was that the fumes of dinner cooking below could not easily overcome the stench of the trade that was carried on in the sheds at the back of the house.A hunk of elderly mutton was being turned on a spit by an elderly woman who turned the handle grousing, Simon the tanner’s mother.You’ll have to wait for it, she had said ungraciously.Time and tide wait for no man, irrelevantly
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