Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [1]
"Istanbul, not Constantinople?!"
'Was there once. A long time ago,' noted Barbara in passing.
Òh lovely,' said Julia. 'It'd be pure joy to have a foreign holiday but the costs are so expensive. I must find Robert soon,' she added. 'He's up at New Scotland Yard. We always do this when we get a weekend in London. He swans off drinking with the Flying Squad and gets completely slaughtered and I have to amuse myself up and down Carnaby Street and then fish him out of the Bent Copper's Arms and drag him back home to the rolling pin. It's like a little ritual with us.'
Barbara was surprised at her new friend's acceptance of such a regimented lifestyle. 'I'm amazed you put up with it,'
she said as they stared at another of the Roman empire exhibits, and shared tea from Barbara's thermos flask in a pair of dirty-yellow plastic cups. Ahead of them, Johnny happily ran in circles around the exhibit case.
`Haven't you ever been in love?' Julia asked.
'Yes,' replied Barbara cheerily. 'Like Byzantium, I was there once. But there are some places that you visit briefly and leave and then there are others where you stay all of your life.’
EPISODE ONE
LXIV, AND ALL THAT...
And Jesus said unto them, Game ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.
Mark 1:17
Chapter One
Direction, Reaction, Creation
And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews?
And they cried out again, Crucify him.
Mark 15:12-13
Sharp, like a needle.
As hot as burning coals, the spikes were hammered through flesh and muscle. Through sinew and bone. And finally through the gnarled wood of the flat-board, to the dirt beneath.
As sparks from the clashing metal danced in the air, blood spurted in a fine mosaic mist onto the arms and face of the legionnaire. The soldier winced and spat, though not at the touch and taste of the blood, for he was well used to them both after half a lifetime in the service of his emperor.
He wiped away the red specks with barely a second thought, leaving an ugly slash streaked across his cheek.
No, the blood didn't bother him too much.
It was the screaming that really annoyed him.
Why didn't these snivelling scum just die quietly, and with some dignity?
Like a Roman.
'They squeal and wrestle like a sticked-pig,' he told his watching comrades as he struggled with the tool in his hand.
'Keep him straight and still,' he continued, shouting at the hapless foot-soldier gripping the victim's shaking hands. 'Or you shall find yourself nailed up there with him.'
The hammer struck again and the hands were joined together at the wrist. At that very moment, when the sickening frenzy of pain was at its most intense, the victim lost all control of his bowels. It was something that the legionnaire had experienced on more than one occasion and the stink was, also, of no concern to him. But, again, he wished that this wretch would cease his infernal noise.
`Rot in Xhia's pit, you Roman bastard,' cried the victim in a hoarse and guttural voice, and through tightly gritted teeth.
He would undoubtedly have enjoyed spitting in the legionnaire's face as an afterthought. But this wasn't an option as the prone victim's throat was bone-dry. A consequence of the blood-chilling pain in his wrists and at his feet.
'Stick him up there,’ the legionnaire told his colleagues.
'Stick him up straight and hard and let him dangle. Let us see what an hour of that does to his opinion of his superiors.'
Sycophantic laughter filled the air as a group of troops heaved the dead weight of the victim upright, and fixed him to the stauros on which he would die a horribly slow and painful death.
The judgement was read. 'Jacob bar Samuel. Having been accused by his own people of being a common