by Albert Noyer
“Break through…” Leudovald looked up through the windows. “It will be dark when we return here. By then lanterns would only show that the sewer walks were flooded over and we could not reach this room.”
“His villa faces the Vicus Judaeorum.”
“Vicus Judaeorum. Then let us retrace our steps, like drenched rats, and confront him at dawn.”
“Dawn? No, that’s too late,” Getorius objected. “Something might happen to Arcadia by then. Look at Chen there.”
“The Oriental was an expendable accomplice. Your wife is being held hostage for reasons we do not know. I believe the galleymaster will not harm her until he makes his demands clear.”
“I hope to God you’re right.”
“I shall alert Tribune Lucullus. A squad of his guards will be in front of the galleymaster’s gate, to await the dawn light.”
Getorius arrived at home as soaked as the sewer rat Leudovald had mentioned. He only nodded when Childibert told him Arcadia had not been found and went straight to the bathhouse’s hot pool to steam off the chill. Concern about his wife made it hard for him to completely relax.
I could enjoy this if I weren’t so worried about Arcadia, and Leudovald’s hesitation. The earring proves that she was held in that room, and yet Leudovald merely doubts that she’ll be harmed? I’ve thrown my dice down in a gamble to trust the man, yet he insists upon not going back to Virilo’s until morning.
Now that I’ve told him where the galleymaster lives, where the counterfeiting is carried out, he still seems only minimally interested. That tribune could come for me before dawn. If Leudovald is connected in any way to the smuggling operations, Arcadia and I could end up like poor Chen.
Zhang Chen. Why was he at Virilo’s, instead of the senator’s farm? What happened to his writing materials, and to the small crates with the Dragon’s Cough candles? Has Virilo seen the bursting tubes and realized their destructive potential?
“It will be a long night of waiting until it’s time to go back to Virilo’s and free Arcadia,” Getorius muttered as he climbed out of the pool to towel himself dry.
Chapter twenty
In the morning, when Getorius arrived at the gate of Virilo’s compound, a golden sun had just risen, adding a glaze of reflected color on paving stones still wet from the night’s rain. No one was in the narrow street. A distant pealing of bells from the Ursiana Basilica, together with those of the more distant Holy Cross, reminded citizens that it was Sunendag, the Lord’s Day.
Leudovald was already at the portal with Tribune Lucullus and ten guards from an elite Germanic palace unit. The men were lightly equipped, without helmets, and wearing black wool tunics under scarlet capes, with leather trousers tucked into heavy boots. Each man carried a spear and had a sheathed longsword attached to his belt.
Four of the men stood near two ladders they had propped against the brick wall of the compound. Lucullus peered through a crack separating the gate’s double doors, trying to see if anyone was inside.
To Getorius it seemed that they expected little trouble in arresting Virilo, yet he still felt uneasy. “When are the men going in?” he asked Leudovald. “Why are you waiting?”
“Waiting. Fortunately, few crafters are at work today, and I want as little disturbance as possible. The Tribune will wait awhile to see if anyone comes out.”
“How long? It seems too quiet in there, even for Sunendag.”
“If no one comes soon, the guards will climb over the wall by the ladders.”
Getorius looked across the street. Pharnaces’s shop was shuttered, and the narrow door on one side closed. “Leudovald, that’s where I found out that Virilo lives here. Perhaps the silversmith warned him, or saw someone already leave earlier this morning.”
“Ask him, Surgeon.”
After Getorius knocked on the door several times with the handle of his knife, a window shutter was pushed open on the second story. Pharnaces peered out, scowling at the interruption, his hair tousled and dark eyes bleary from sleep.
Getorius called up to him, “I’m the physician who was here two days ago. Did you—”
“No one in this house is ill,” Pharnaces interrupted curtly. “Great Zeus! Cannot a man have peace one day in the week? You are the third idiot so far to come here this morn…” He stopped in mid-complaint after he saw the guards at Virilo’s gate. “Ti? What is happening?”
“Was it someone from that villa who came to you?” Getorius asked. “The galleymaster? Diotar?”
“Ohi, no, a brazen woman and her one-armed Herakles. She demanded the silver hand that I was making to fit on a wooden arm being carved for the brute.”
“A woman and a companion with a single arm?” Giamona? Tigris? The amputation was only a week or so ago. “Was she stocky? Short blond hair?”
“Veveos, and bold as an Ephesian temple whore,” Pharnaces whined. “She threatened my manhood if the silver hand was not finished. Already I had not slept well, from that infernal noise during the night. Carts coming and going at the eunuch’s den.”
“What? Virilo has moved out?” Getorius called out to Leudovald, “He’s gone!”
“I heard. Tribune, order two men up one of the ladders. Have them unbar the gate from inside.”
After the retaining beam was pushed off its supports and the portals opened, Getorius ran in with the guards. He saw the doors to the residences on each side, under the porticoes, hanging open. The rooms were empty. He went into the nearest one. A few items of women’s clothing, perfume flasks and empty ointment jars were scattered around the room.
“Virilo and anyone who lived in his annex have fled during the night,” he yelled to Leudovald.
“Fled. Tribune, take five men and go into the main house,” the investigator ordered. “The others can search inside the side room areas.”
Getorius looked at a temple-like facade of pinkish marble on a building to the left, the only one whose portal was still closed. “Leudovald, that might be a shrine to Cybele. I know that Diotar and Virilo are somehow connected…Of course! Those eunuchs Pharnaces complained about…the women’s clothing. Diotar’s cult priests lived in those rooms. He’s gone, too.”
Getorius sprinted to the temple entrance and found the door unlocked. He heard Leudovald following him inside the two-story room, where a ray of morning light from a high window struck the statue of a seated woman at the opposite end. From the sculpture of the Phrygian goddess he had seen in the Olcinium temple garden, Getorius recognized an image of Cybele. “I was right. Diotar’s temple is located on Virilo’s property. But where have they gone, and why?” He walked closer to Cybele’s statue, and then paused in sudden shock after noticing a hideous sight lying at her feet.
Diotar lay dead on the stone footstool, his sightless eyes staring up at the goddess, whose smile had been turned into a mocking smirk by a chance play of sunlight and shadow. Flies buzzed and settled around the gore staining the yellow silk of his ArchGallus robe, where his throat had been slashed by a curved, golden blade that lay on his chest.
“Th…there’s your…sickle,” Getorius managed to blurt out through his horror. Leudovald, as pale as the statue’s marble, did not reply. “We’ve got to find Arcadia,” Getorius shouted, in panic now.
He searched the perimeter of the shrine’s walls without discovering doors to another room, then went behind the statue. A short flight of wooden stairs led onto a platform. “Leudovald! There might be something down here.”
At the bottom of the steps, jars of oil and boxes of charcoal dust and colored powders were arranged on a platform. On a nearby bench, a pair of terrified doves cowered in their wicker cage.
Leudovald came down and glanced around at the paraphernalia. “I’ve read that pagan priests knew how to animate statues of gods,” he said in an uncharacteristically weak voice. “They made them move, speak. Produce colored fire.”
“That’s what these are for.” Getorius looked below the platform. “More stairs. I’m going dow
n.” Leudovald followed him along steps that led to a short corridor. It ended at an oak door. “This looks like the portal we couldn’t open in that underground room. It’s barred, and also locked. Virilo could have imprisoned Arcadia inside again. He wouldn’t dare…” Getorius stopped, recalling the body of Diotar lying at Cybele’s feet. If Virilo murdered the priest, as well as Chen, what might he have done to a witness?
After throwing the securing beam off its brackets, Getorius broke his knife prying the lock’s retaining bolt free. When he pushed at the heavy oaken door, it creaked open.
It was the same room where the counterfeiting press had been, but with more light coming through the windows. Sewage water had seeped in under the outside door and pooled on the floor. Zhang Chen’s dead body still lay where it had tumbled off the bench shelf, but a movement betrayed the presence of a living person, huddled against the far corner.
“Ar…Arcadia?” Getorius stammered weakly, in the hope that it might be his wife. Muffled attempts to respond indicated the person was gagged. After Getorius came closer, he was stunned to see that it was not Arcadia, but the stocky form of Gaius Virilo. A gag was tied over his mouth. Ropes bound both his feet and hands tight. Blood clotted a gash at the side of his head. “Virilo? You’re the last person I expected to find here! I thought you had killed Chen and Diotar, then gotten away.” Getorius loosened the gag and hand ropes. “What happened down here? Where’s my wife?”
Virilo caught his breath and rubbed at his chafed wrists. “It…it’s Claudia.”
Getorius shook his shoulders. “Claudia? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what’s happened to her.”
“A more serious epilepsia attack?”
“No, it’s…she…she and that Adonis. They looted my villa and went to the Cybele.”
“Nonsense,” Leudovald interposed, stooping to cut Virilo’s foot bonds with his dagger. “Who imprisoned you here, galleymaster? Surely not your daughter.”
“Those two brute guards Adonis recruited. I can tell you, they’re no eunuchs.”
“Did you see what happened to Diotar?” Getorius asked.
“Diotar? No, what?”
“He’s up in the temple. Murdered.”
“Claudia probably turned against him, too. After all I’ve done for that ungrateful—”
“Where’s my wife? Where’s Arcadia?”
“They took her to the galley, along with what they stole from me. I don’t know where that Adonis is planning to sail.”
“We need to get to the wharf.” Getorius pulled on Virilo’s arm to help him stand. “Show me the shortest way. Leudovald, tell the tribune to send his men over there. Quickly!”
Virilo hobbled through alleyways and emerged at the north end of the wharf. Getorius ran on ahead of him, until he saw the Cybele in the distance, a flash of morning sunlight glinting off her retracted bronze ram. The sleek brown and green hull was riding high, almost empty, standing off about ten paces from her dockside berth, and secured to a mooring dog by a single hawser. The rest of the wharf and warehouses were deserted; it was Sunendag and no stevedores worked on that day.
Once Getorius got closer, he recognized Victor and Gaius on board. Both were loading one of Chen’s large crates of writing material into the hold, together with another crewman he had seen on the Cybele during the crossing to Olcinium. He did not recognize a fourth man. Zhang Chen’s other crate and the four smaller padded boxes were set at the edge of the cargo hatch, along with the dismantled screw press from the underground room.
Virilo’s cook, Maranatha, was at the bow, preparing to light its charcoal and cook breakfast. Near him, Claudia Quinta, dressed in a short, belted tunic, stood on deck next to Adonis. He was supervising the stowing of cargo below deck.
Christ, they’re getting the galley ready to sail! Why is Claudia dressed like that? Getorius looked toward the helmsman’s platform behind the cabins. He recognized Sigeric leaning on the steering oars, a shadowy figure under an awning that fluttered in the mild breeze.
Behind him, Arcadia stood in front of another man Getorius did not recognize.
“Thank God, my wife is alive,” he murmured. “But I’ve never seen Claudia like that. She…she’s a completely different person.”
Claudia, evidently alerted by the sound of Getorius’s footsteps, looked toward him. “Threaten the surgeon’s wife, Malarich!” she shouted to the man holding Arcadia. The Goth grasped Arcadia around the chest with one hand, and held a dagger to her throat with the other. “Surgeon,” Claudia called over with a sarcastic laugh, “how nice of you to see your wife off.”
Stunned, Getorius could think of no adequate reply. What in the name of Asclepius has happened to Claudia? Why is she threatening Arcadia? It’s as if a daemon has entered and taken over her body—
“Father!” Claudia’s voice intruded on Getorius’s confused thoughts as Virilo came alongside him. “Did you see how I paid back Diotar, Father? You’re fortunate that Adonis talked me out of rewarding you in the same way.”
“Now, Claudia,” Adonis soothed, putting an arm around her shoulders. “We need to stow the rest of our supplies and row out of the harbor while the tide is with us. And we have only four oarsmen, not six.”
Claudia ignored him. “This is my lover, the father of my baby,” she called out to Virilo, smiling stiffly. “A grandchild you’ll never see.”
“Claudia…” Adonis began.
She pushed his arm off, and then looked along the wharf at a new sound. The rhythmic tramping of booted feet heralded the arrival of Lucullus and his men, with Leudovald. At the tribune’s command the guards formed a semicircle around the galley, holding their spears up in throwing position.
“Malarich,” Claudia called out without looking away from the men. “A little blood to get those guards to move into the warehouse portico.”
Getorius saw Arcadia flinch as Malarich drew his blade lightly against her chin and blood reddened her throat. “Get them back!” he yelled to Leudovald. “He’ll kill Arcadia!”
Leudovald nodded to the tribune, who ordered his men away, toward the warehouses.
“That’s much better,” Claudia gloated. “Father, you thought Atlos was my lover. That’s what I wanted everyone to believe. Atlos found out about the ‘Valentinians’ and threatened Diotar. Said he’d report the ArchGallus’s involvement in the smuggling, if Diotar insisted on his being castrated at the Megalensia.” She gave a demented giggle. “My lover killed his twin, for Diotar, and made it look like Atlos had castrated himself. But when Adonis left the sickle in the church, I told him to go back and put your knife there instead, Father. I wanted you to be blamed.”
“Leudovald, that’s what confused you,” Getorius muttered. “I knew I hadn’t seen a fish knife. They used the tunnel to go back into Thecla’s basilica.”
“Surgeon,” Claudia called over again, “my ‘seizures’ even fooled you. Oh, I had the Sacred Disease when I was younger. That neutered old fool Diotar pretended that the gods had touched me, that I was his precious Vestal Virgin. I was very good at letting him believe it until…” Claudia turned to caress Adonis’s face. “My lover and I have different plans.”
“Claudia, we…we need to finish loading—”
“Shut up, Adonis!” she screamed. “Gaius, come up here and open that crate. Give me a piece of what’s inside.” After the crewman had pried off the cover and brought Claudia a sheet of the writing material, she held it up. “Watch, Father.” She tore a strip off the side, ripped it into small pieces, then threw them over the rail. The tannish bits spiraled down to float in the calm water of the harbor. “Pretty, don’t you think?” she taunted. “Like flower petals.”
“Claudia, you can’t destroy the senator’s property,” Virilo yelled. “That material is worth a fortune, and a fourth of the money is mine.”
“You’re through ordering me around now, Father,” she shot back, her face stiffened into a mask of hatred. “You never wanted anything to
do with me after I got sick. Just paid that Greek bitch to feed me. Then, you let that Phrygian half-man use me in his bloody rituals. Well”—Claudia reached over and put Adonis’s hand on her stomach—“not all of Diotar’s priests were castrated, were they, lover?”
“Claudia….”
She ignored Adonis and ripped another strip off the sheet, then threw the rest down.
After tearing serrations into the band, Claudia fashioned it into a circle, and placed it on her head as a diadem. “I’m going to where I’ll be a queen,” she boasted with a hoarse laugh.
“The woman is mad,” Leudovald commented. “Isn’t that so, Surgeon?”
“Hippocrates has a complicated explanation for the disease,” Getorius whispered to him, “but her epilepsia has affected Claudia’s mind. She could do anything irrational now. I’ve got to get my wife off that galley.”
“The senator’s property, Father?” Claudia taunted, going back to an earlier thought. “It’s mine now, and I’m taking it to Alexandria. Adonis says they make the best papyrus there, so they’ll pay a ransom in gold to find out how to produce those writing sheets.” She giggled again. “With all of Diotar’s sapphires and his temple treasure, I’ll be queen of Egypt.”
“Alexandria,” Getorius repeated tersely. “They’re taking the Cybele to Egypt. Can’t the galley be intercepted outside the breakwater mole, Leudovald?”
“Our Adriatic war fleet has been sent toward Misenum, to help against the Vandal threat.”
“A patrol galley then? Like the Apollonaris we encountered on the way back to Ravenna?”
“How can I alert one at Classis in time?” Leudovald asked. “And without much cargo Cybele could outrun it. Her crew has a sailing advantage in time, and the Etesian winds at their back.”
Desperate, Getorius looked toward the harbor mouth and open sea beyond. There had to be a way to stop the galley from entering the Adriatic.
In an abrupt motion Claudia took the paper crown off her head, tore it into pieces, and flung the scraps overboard. “Adonis, I want to leave now. Get the men on the oars.”