Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [33]
'We shall endeavour to find out when the sun is risen anew,' James told him 'For now, Byzantium is not safe for anyone, except the legions of Rome.’
Chapter Twelve
The Culture Bunker, Part Four —
Everybody's Been Burned Before
And when the centurion, which stood
over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said,
Truly this man was the Son of God.
Mark 15:39
Indignant at his harsh treatment, Ian Chesterton's patience finally snapped. ‘I am telling the truth. I keep telling the truth.
Why the hell is it that no one will believe me? I mean, am I speaking a foreign language here or something?'
The Roman sergeant grabbed Ian by the collar of his tunic and thrust him up against the wall of the barrack dungeon, wrapping a piece of rusted chain around his prisoner's neck.
'Spy,' he spat. `Filthy, conspiring insurgent.'
‘Not so,' Ian shouted, ignoring the constriction at his throat.
‘I am from Britannia. That's part of the empire, right?'
The sergeant relaxed his grip and let the chain fall away.
Then, as Ian relaxed and sank to his knees, gasping in grateful lungfuls of air, the sergeant brought the chain down, hard, across Ian's back, making the Doctor's companion cry out.
He spilled to the floor, amid the dung and straw, and for several moments found himself unable to move Finally he spun onto his back and stared up at the leering face of his torturer. He looked, Ian was forced to concede, pretty damn hard. If you live in a vacuum, chum, you die. Don't you know that?' he asked.
‘What say you?'
Òh, just something that'll be discovered in about eighteen hundred years time,' Ian said, sardonically. ‘Do you mind awfully if I get up, only it pen and inks a bit down here?'
Chesterton had become the subject of much attention at the cadet guards' barracks. Through an observation hole in the roof of the dungeon, Erastus, the cadet trainer, gave the new arrival another look.
`No,’ he said at last. 'I do not recognise that man. If he is a Roman solider, he must be a deserter. Or perhaps he is a slave.'
Marcus Lanilla nodded. ‘Then we should put this slave to death for such infamy.'
Erastus shrugged. 'Perchance he speaks the truth,' he noted.
Marcus gave the prisoner one last, cursory look and strode away. 'You decide,' he said, abdicating all responsibility for Ian Chesterton's life.
A moment later, Erastus was in the dungeon with the sergeant towering over Ian, who was again lying on the ground, his lip bloodied by a savage punch from the soldier.
Again, and with commendable if foolhardy determination, Ian tried to stand, but was thrown back. Erastus placed his foot on Ian's hand and began to apply his full weight to crushing the bones in it to dust.
`Stop it,' shouted Ian with what seemed to be the last of his strength. `Stop it, you big bully.'
Erastus removed the foot. He was a huge bear of a man, incredibly hairy and muscled. 'They say you are an escaped slave. Or a deserter. Or a spy' he told Ian. 'Spies are traitors.
Traitors are to be crucified unto death.'
`Then they are wrong, whoever they are.' Ian said angrily.
'I am not a slave. I am not a deserter. I am not a spy. I am not a traitor. I am none of those things. What I am is a free-born man of the British Isles. Part of the Roman empire. Is this any way to treat a Roman citizen?'
This made Erastus pause. As the Roman world had expanded over the last hundred years, a new social class had become important within the empire, consisting of prosperous landowners and business people who were called equites. Citizenship for all peoples of the empire meant equal protection under Roman law. The privilege of citizenship helped to promote loyalty to the empire and gave peoples of all classes and all nationalities a greater stake in its success.
`Roman law permits the torture of slaves and people considered dishonourable,' he told his prisoner. But, he had to consider