by Albert Noyer
The black carriage lurched right at the Via Herculis, onto a narrow street bordered by umbrella pines. The houses along the sidewalk had no shops on the first level, rather, their stucco facades were only broken by wooden doors and a few high windows that were barred by thick cast iron grilles.
Getorius noticed someone waving a lantern from the doorway of a house in the center of the block. “That must be Faustina’s.”
After the deaf-mute halted the mare in front of the open door, the senator’s slave clambered down from the carriage, took the lantern from a boy, and ushered Getorius and Arcadia through a narrow entrance hall toward the right side of the villa’s atrium. As they started across, Publius Maximin hurried from a side door to intercept the trio.
An orange glow reflecting from the torch tinted the white strands that flecked the man’s well-groomed hair. He wore an expensive tunic of fine-spun wool, banded with the twin purple stripes of a senator, and red-dyed leather boots. A scent of bay oil wafted from him.
“I appreciate your coming, Surgeon,” Maximin said, nervously twisting the carnelian signet ring with which he had stamped the wax. “If anything happens to Faustina, I’ll exile that cursed midwife to a godforsaken Dalmatian island for the rest of her worthless life.”
“Where is your niece, Senator?” Getorius asked.
“In a room across the atrium.” Maximin bowed to Arcadia and smiled. “My dear, how lovely you look, even at this ungodly hour. I didn’t expect you to come.”
“I assist my husband, Senator.”
“Of course, of course. I’d forgot—”
A hysterical scream from Faustina’s room cut him off. It was followed by her shrill voice threatening the midwife.
“You fat sow! If you don’t give me something for this pain, I’ll have my uncle rip your furcing ears off.”
Maximin chuckled weakly. “Headstrong girl. Picked up legionary slang when her husband put in his tour as tribune.”
Getorius understood. The furca was an X-cross to which legionaries were tied as punishment. The men used the hated name as a derogatory verb or adjective.
“Go in and calm her,” Maximin demanded.
Faustina’s bedroom was large, brightly lit—and overheated—by several lamps and candles. A sweet smell of camphor hung on the stuffy air. The girl, who looked to be only a little older than Claudia, was propped up against pillows, her face and arms bathed with perspiration. The short, blood-stained tunic she wore revealed a body that was thin to the point of anorexia. Bloody cloths littered the floor. A blanket-wrapped bundle lay in a wicker basket on a nearby chair seat.
“Midwife, I’ve brought the surgeon,” Maximin growled at a stocky woman standing next to the bed.
Getorius thought she looked relieved to see him.
“Onomazome Calliste.” The midwife gave her name in Greek, then asked, “Milate elenike?”
“Mono lighos. I speak only a little Greek,” Getorius replied. “Calliste, you’ll have to talk in Latin.”
“The sow butchered my baby,” Faustina bawled, “and now she’s trying to furcing bleed me to death.”
“Niece, try to stay quiet,” Maximin urged in a weary voice. “The surgeon is here to help you.”
“I don’t want him looking up my Venus love hole. Just have him give me something for the furcing pain.”
Getorius glanced at his wife. Arcadia nodded in understanding and went to the girl’s bedside. “Faustina, my name is Arcadia. Perhaps you’ll let me examine you, then I’ll give you an opion sedative.”
“Opion?” Getorius shook his head. “I didn’t bring any of the drug, only valerian.”
“I did. And acacia extract.” Arcadia unfastened the leather pouch she had brought. “I also have wool suppositories and that copy of Soranus.”
“Will you two quit blabbing?” Faustina shrieked. “And give me that narcotic!”
While Arcadia mixed the drug in a cup that Calliste handed her, Getorius motioned the midwife outdoors.
“What happened?”
“Moro…baby…was too small, born dead. I…I think the girl self-aborted the child.”
Getorius noted that Calliste’s Latin was good. Had she wanted to speak Greek as a foil against the senator’s anger? Or, perhaps, to lie about Faustina’s condition? If the girl died, the midwife would want to absolve herself of blame. “Why do you think she did that?” he asked her.
“Child’s size,” Calliste explained. “It is observed that women who are…pampered, who do not exert themselves, have poor deliveries. Also those who are very thin. In this case the chorion—”
“Chorion?”
“Placenta, Surgeon. Afterbirth. The girl retained the chorion in her uterus. I tried to draw out the umbilical, but her humors of blood are unbalanced. The vaginal area is inflamed.”
“I have no experience in this,” Getorius admitted. “What do you advise?”
Calliste shook her head. “The girl is stubborn. I can do nothing for her. Tipota. Nothing.”
“Where’s her husband? He could order her to cooperate.”
“From Thessalonika?” Calliste scoffed. “Or perhaps Constantinople? He attends to his business.”
“I see. Let’s go back in. My wife may have been able to calm the girl.”
Faustina was quiet, exhausted from the trauma and on the verge of falling asleep. Maximin was slumped in a corner chair, still toying with his ring and staring at the bloody rags.
Arcadia turned when the two entered, and brought a finger to her lips. “The papaver extract is taking effect.”
“Calliste thinks the placenta has been retained.”
“Yes, I’ve read a section in Soranus that deals with that. I inserted a wool suppository soaked in acacia juice to control bleeding. Once inflammation is less severe, we can try to remove the placenta before black bile forms.”
“I’m…amazed at what you’ve done,” Getorius stammered. “Good…excellent, Arcadia.”
She nodded acknowledgement, then suggested, “Let the girl sleep. Perhaps Calliste could stay with Faustina until the sedative wears off.”
“No!” Maximin hissed, bolting up. “I want that Greek out of this house. I’ll have the cook stay with my niece.”
“There are other treatments, Senator,” Arcadia said. “Soranus recommends heated cupping vessels.”
“Fine, fine. Let’s talk about that over some mulled wine.” Maximin glowered at Calliste. “Now get out, you infernal sorceress!”
Calliste dashed through the door. After a glance at his niece, Maximin escorted Getorius and Arcadia outside.
The slave who had summoned Getorius was lounging against a wall. Maximin paused to whisper to him, then led the way across the atrium to a reception room in his villa.
“Faustina’s husband is Marcus Cossus, from Mutina,” he volunteered. “Away a lot. Poor girl gets lonely.”
“I’ll look in on her again in a few hours,” Getorius promised. “That is, my wife will.”
“Yes, thank you my dear.” Maximin leaned forward to pat Arcadia’s hand, then looked back at Getorius. “Damnable business, Surgeon, that castrated slave found in the heretic church. I heard you examined his body. Did you find out who his owner was?”
“N…no, sir.” Getorius was surprised by the unexpected comment about Atlos. In the light of Faustina’s condition, it was the last subject he expected to be asked about. He glanced at Arcadia. A slight lift of her eyebrows indicated that she thought the same thing.
“There was a girl with the dead youth?”
How could the senator know that? “She’s named Claudia, sir. Her father came for her today.”
Maximin nodded. “Gaius Virilo. I use his galley, Cybele, for importing and shipping out some of my commodities.”
Getorius thought this might be a good time to find out more about Diotar. “There was a strange man with him. An actor I think. Called himself Diotar.”
“Diotar an actor?” Maximin gave a mocking chuckle. “I suppose
he could be pretending to be a man.”
“Sir?”
“He’s reportedly the leader of a Phrygian sect whose priests castrate themselves, but there’s nothing to the rumor. The law prohibits castration, even of slaves—”
A servant interrupted Maximin by coming in with cups of mulled wine. Getorius touched his stomach and shook his head hoping that Arcadia would understand the signal—he didn’t want her to mention Claudia’s pregnancy.
After taking a gulp of wine, Maximin continued, “Oh, there are eunuchs around, like that Heraclius the Augustus uses to, ah, service his bedroom.” He stifled a yawn with the cup. “It must be well after the tenth night hour.”
“We should go, Senator.” Getorius stood and motioned to Arcadia. “I’d like to look in on Faustina once more.”
“Fine,” Maximin agreed. “I’ll have one of her servants send your fee in the morning.”
“There’s no hurry, Senator. We’ll still be treating her.”
“Yes, well, I’ll have Ankios bring the carriage around.”
“I’d like to walk back,” Arcadia said quickly. “Wouldn’t you, Getorius?”
“Ah…certainly, Cara. We’ll walk back, Senator.”
When the couple looked in on her, Faustina was asleep. An older woman dozed in the chair where the wicker basket with the blanket-wrapped fetus had been set earlier. It was gone.
Outside, the mist was lifting. To the east a light wash of blue-gray began to reveal a silhouette of warehouses and the masts of merchant galleys moored in the harbor. Birds chirped tentatively in the pines along the Honorius, while in the distant countryside roosters crowed a lusty greeting to the new day.
Across from the public baths, in Ravenna’s main market square, fires blazed in iron braziers, giving light to early vendors who were helping to unload carts of produce brought in from local farms.
Arcadia grasped her husband’s hand to cross the busy road. “I don’t know if I’m more sorry about Faustina or that poor midwife.”
“Calliste. Did you notice the fetus…the baby…had been taken away?”
Arcadia nodded. “Faustina has a fever and isn’t out of danger yet. Soranus prescribes a treatment of rest and soft foods like porridge, along with the cupping I mentioned.”
“She wants nothing to do with me, but perhaps she’ll respond to you.” Getorius walked in silence for a while before commenting, “I can’t believe that Maximin knew all about the death of Atlos.”
“It may be palace gossip by now,” Arcadia said, “but he did seem to be probing.”
“What possible interest could the senator have in a slave that wasn’t even his?”
“If he knows Virilo, he must know Claudia,” Arcadia pointed out. “Unless her father keeps her isolated.”
“He seemed to know all about Diotar, too, probably through Virilo. Diotar may run a private club for men with tendencies for ‘Greek love.’ Bishop Chrysologos doesn’t take kindly to open homosexuality.”
“There must be all kinds of Eastern cults that come and go in the port area,” Arcadia said. “Remember last month? We watched a procession of Isis worshippers bless the opening of the navigation season.”
“The bishop opposed that too, but people want to be entertained, if nothing else.” As Getorius guided his wife onto the Vicus Caesar, the savory smell of freshly baked bread drifted out from the shop on the corner. “I suppose you’re right, Arcadia, about the short life of these cults. Diotar’s club…sect…whatever it is, will undoubtedly melt away as fast as…as snow would on one of the ovens in that bakery.”
Chapter five
Filthy scavengers,” Diotar muttered, eyeing the row of gray-white gulls preening themselves on the wall that surrounded Gaius Virilo’s house and the Temple of Cybele. Other sea birds circled before landing in raucous flappings to squabble with their shabby neighbors and stain the ancient brickwork with yet another layer of chalky droppings.
As they descended, the gulls’ ashen plumage was abruptly transformed into a beautiful pale-rose tint. A scarlet morning sun had cleared the flat Adriatic horizon in the east and thrown its warming rays on the quarreling birds, coloring their plumage the same pinkish shade as the stucco portico on the front of Cybele’s temple. The gleaming metamorphosis lasted a scant moment before the gulls’ feathers again reverted to a dirty white.
Diotar turned away, pulled shut the gate to the villa’s garden, and secured a bolt that locked it against the awakening residents of the crowded streets in this northeast quarter of Ravenna’s port area.
The flush of newborn light had summoned yawning slave and freeman artisans to their workshops near the Anastasia Gate. Shutters banged open in silver and gold workers’ shops, from which craftsmen emerged to eye the weather and stretch briefly in the mild breeze, before going back into cramped spaces to hammer out or cast their metal wares. Potters began the daily, back-bending chore of wheel-throwing dishes and pitchers in workrooms clogged with barrels of stagnant clay. A faint, sweet smell of lumber came from pine and oak shavings in carpenters’ shops, but it was not strong enough to cover the sour smell of sewage and decay pervading the air.
Beyond the wall, Diotar heard the wail of infants and the sporadic coughs of workers. The daily pall of acrid smoke from iron forges and bitumen ovens had already begun to smudge the pale blue of the sky with a sickly yellow-gray. He brought a linen cloth from his sleeve to cover his mouth, reminded again that this was not an area he would have chosen for a temple in which to worship Cybele. The house Virilo owned was located in the noisy artisans’ quarter, but the property was a secluded enclave among the narrow alleyways and crowded shops that clustered around its wall. The high brick barrier effectively enclosed an area that had once been a marketplace—Virilo’s land went from the Street of the Artisans to that of the Judean quarter just north of it.
Surrounded as he was by dirty shops and unending noise, Diotar consoled himself by remembering that living in the city was a temporary arrangement, an expedience. Once he had recruited enough wealthy patrons he would move the shrine of Cybele to a quiet place in the countryside. A temple in the Apennine foothills, perhaps around Forum Livii, fifteen miles to the west, would be a pleasant location in which to carry out rites to the Great Mother. As ArchGallus—Chief Priest of the cult—he felt that he deserved a better site for Cybele’s devotions, and was determined to have one soon.
As Diotar crossed the garden, his musing was interrupted when a handsome youth ran out from one of the villa’s rooms. He wore his hair as long as a girl might, and his short tunic was also styled like a woman’s. His cheeks were lightly rouged. Dark make-up outlined his brown eyes.
“Kastor is sick, ArchGallus,” the young man called out. “There’s a terrible pain in his back.”
Diotar gave a grunt of annoyance. Kastor was always complaining. “Nevertheless, Adonis, you will bring him to morning services. The Great Mother shall hear his cry and heal him.”
“But ArchGallus,” Adonis protested, “Kastor can’t get out of bed because of the pain.”
Diotar reached out to caress the youth’s smooth, rouged cheeks. “Soon you will be one of Cybele’s priests, Adonis,” he said more gently. “Finish your make-up and put on your jewelry. I will pray to Cybele for Kastor, but he must join us and the others. This is the last ritual to the Great Mother before we leave in the morning, to celebrate her festival in the temple outside Olcinium.”
“The Megalensia?”
Diotar nodded. “The feast that commemorates the arrival of Cybele’s statue in Rome during the city’s ancient war with Carthage. Poor weather prevented us from celebrating on April fourth, the proper date, but the goddess will forgive us for being a few days late. Go now, but bring Kastor back with you.”
“Atlos was…was not in his room this morning.”
“Strange. Your twin was to be initiated at the Megalensia. I’ll look into it.” Diotar waved him off with a limp gesture of dismissal, and then turned toward his quarters. “G
ood,” he murmured to himself, “none of the novices yet knows of Atlos’s death. The young fool had to go and impregnate Claudia, then bungle his castration. I can’t have the girl give birth to the child. Perhaps that surgeon can prescribe something to abort the fetus.”
Diotar stopped and looked across at Claudia’s room. Is she there or still with her father? He squinted at the eastern sky. The sun’s rays had not yet reached the window opening that illuminated Cybele’s statue inside her temple. There was time to speak to Virilo before the morning service.
A slave answered his knock on the door that separated the quarters for cult members from Virilo’s area of the villa. Claudia was in the dining room with her father, sitting, head lowered, absently stirring a bowl of millet porridge with a silver spoon. Virilo looked furious.
“Never should have allowed you into that cult,” he was shouting. “What will happen now, with the bastard and all?”
“Enough, Galleymaster,” Diotar commanded, coming up behind Claudia and putting an arm around her shoulder. “The girl has suffered already in seeing Atlos…liberate himself from the prison of the flesh.”
“He took advantage of her while she was in the Disease.”
“No doubt. And he has repented in kind.” Diotar lifted Claudia’s chin and shook it gently, until she looked up at him. “Child,” he murmured, “it’s almost time for our morning devotion to Cybele. Go put on your vestal robes.”
Claudia sniffled and wiped her eyes on a sleeve, then nodded obediently. After Diotar watched her leave, he turned to Virilo. “You’ll bring on an attack, scolding her like that. According to the surgeon, Claudia’s pregnancy is a fact, yet no one else need know just yet. We will deal with it after our return from Olcinium.”
“The surgeon and his wife know,” Virilo reminded him.
“Then ask them on the Oath to keep Claudia’s condition secret. Tell them it’s for your daughter’s sake. The penalty for a Vestal Virgin who violates her chastity is to be buried alive.”