Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [50]
They were a curious bunch and, despite his usual reservations about enthusiasts of all varieties, the Doctor had grown to quite like them. They were mostly gentle and serene, afraid of the forces arrayed against them but had a calmness about living under the threat of death that the Doctor found impressive, if a little disquieting. But, despite enjoying the warm hospitality of Daniel and his family, of James and his wife, Judith, and of their aged friend Hebron, among the others in the group, he was keen to see the back of them and leave them to their faith and their destiny.
No information had been forthcoming about his companions as the Christians had few friends within the city itself once they, themselves, had fled to the hills surrounding it. They said that they would try to find out what they could when they had re-established some lines of communication, but things were moving far too slowly for the Doctor's liking. He had no idea if young Vicki, or Chesterton, or Miss Wright was even still alive, but he did know one thing for certain - if they were and they had half a chance, they would make for the TARDIS and try to stay as close to it as possible until he was able to join them.
That thought maintained him through the many frustrating hours as he waited for his strength to return.
He also used the time while he was with the Christians to get to know as much as he could about them. And he was very surprised by what he discovered.
James, for instance, was a second-generation Greek Christian, whose extensive family background in Judaea provided a direct link for many of the newly converted Christians with the actual teachings of Christ himself. James's uncle, he said, had witnessed the sermon on the mount, whilst other family friends had included Mary of Jerusalem, the mother of the apostle Mark, in whose house Jesus and his first disciples had met and worshipped.
The Doctor had many interesting conversations with the man, who told him that he had met several of those major figures in the early church left alive after the Jewish and Roman purges of the previous twenty-five years. James had travelled the empire widely, across the Mediterranean area, to Antioch, Cyprus and Caesarea and into North Africa spreading the gospels. He recently settled in Byzantium with a series of secret parchments which, he said, contained the memoirs of his old friend Mark and Mark's cousin, the priest Barnabas, and included numerous stories given to them by their travelling companion, Paul of Tarsus.
The writings, James said, had been compiled whilst they were all under arrest in Rome and had also contained portions gained from interviews with the first apostle, Peter the fisherman, with whom Mark was currently hiding in or around Babylon.
Although Christianity itself was conceptually alien to the Doctor, he had always found in his studies of the basic principles of the religion, a lot of ideological trappings that he considered to be worthy of considerable investigation, particularly its similarities to Greek philosophy. In his lengthy conversations with James and his friend Hebron by the light of a glowing, crackling fire, the Doctor enjoyed the healthy debates that cut through the rhetoric of the faith's dry language and got to the actual personalities involved - something that the Doctor found much more interesting than moral and ethical questions.
Hebron, fascinatingly, was another former travelling companion of Paul and his group of followers who included the physician Luke and also Barnabas and Timothy. Luke had, similarly, been compiling a testament to the miracles that they believed had been performed by Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth. Both he and Mark had, seemingly, been influenced by an earlier set of spiritual histories written by one of Jesus's original disciples, a Galilean tax official known as Matthew. But there were subtle differences in the three sets of stories told that interested the Doctor