The Cybelene Conspiracy

by Albert Noyer

  “All of you may be seated,” Placidia replied. “You’re drenched, Arcadia. And what happened to your throat?”

  “I’m fine, thank you, Regina,” she replied, taking the chair where Eudoxia had been seated.

  Getorius, Leudovald, and Virilo remained standing.

  “Empress,” Maximin went on, “as I said, I was in Arminum for the Lemuralia, but had a…a feeling that something was wrong. Fortunately, I came back.”

  The man is slick, Getorius thought. One of his guards reported Chen’s absence to him. Now, instead of being reluctant for us to tell Galla Placidia about what happened, as he was on the wharf, he’s taking charge.

  “Senator, stop speaking in riddles,” Placidia ordered in an impatient tone. “What was wrong?”

  Maximin dropped several blackened and bent coins into Placidia’s hand. “Empress, it seems that a plot to foment discord between Valentinian…our Western Augustus…and your nephew Theodosius at Constantinople has been uncovered.”

  Arcadia glanced at her husband, who signaled with a headshake for her not to speak.

  Placidia studied both sides of the coins. “Apparently an aurea of my son’s, but minted of bronze. What are these, Senator?”

  “The false ‘Valentinians’ I was investigating,” Leudovald answered before Maximin could reply.

  “The Empress Mother was speaking to me,” Maximin said coldly. “Perhaps, Leudovald, you should escort Virilo to a prison cell now.”

  “This man?” Placidia asked, looking toward the galleymaster. “Virilo. Is that your name?”

  “Yes, Empress. Master of the merchant galley Cybele, just destroyed by sorcery.”

  “Sorcery? Explain yourself.”

  “Empress, my helmsman and part of the galley’s crew were bewitched. Even m…my daughter was a victim.”

  “Leudovald, you’ll take this man to our hospital, not a cell,” Placidia ordered. “A presbyter can counsel him about this sorcery, then a magistrate about your concerns. Senator, continue. Tell me what happened.”

  “Empress, the surgeon and his wife should go home,” Maximin urged. “Arcadia has been through a terrible ordeal.”

  “Arcadia and my physician shall stay,” Placidia retorted. “Has this also something to do with Zhang Chen’s writing material?”

  “The Oriental is dead. I…” Maximin caught himself. “You told me that, Surgeon.”

  “Yes, Regina. He has been murdered,” Getorius affirmed.

  “Chen murdered? Theotokos, Mother of God!” Placidia exclaimed. “Go, Leudovald, with the galleymaster. You others stay, but I…I want to pray for a moment.”

  Galla Placidia went to the apse of the chapel. In the semicircle behind the altar, a mosaic image of a youthful archangel, dressed in the sumptuous robes of a court official, held a labarum, a standard inscribed with the Chi-Rho x p monogram of Christ. Next to Michael, a blue-robed Madonna seated on a cushioned throne held the Christ Child, his small right hand extended in blessing.

  Placidia knelt on the bottom one of the three stairs of the marble altar platform, head bowed, and covered her eyes with a hand. A henna rinse had not completely covered the gray reappearing at her temples. Arcadia noticed that, in contrast to the expensive silk tunics she usually wore, the Empress had put on a plain homespun robe for the service, and did not wear a tiara. Only the gold medallion around her neck representing Salvs Reipvblicae, “The Health of the Republic,” indicated her imperial rank.

  She stayed in the position for several moments, then returned to face Maximin.

  “We are not feeling well, Senator,” she told him, emphasizing the formal pronoun. “You shall leave Us while We consult with Our physician.”

  “But Empress—”

  “Leave Us!”

  Flushed, Maximin bowed slightly and strode in anger down the length of the nave to the front entrance.

  “I don’t trust the man,” Placidia admitted, after the door closed behind him. “Publius Maximin definitely harbors enough ambition to try to become Augustus some day.”

  Getorius said nothing, but recalled what the senator’s mother once had said about her son’s imperial aspirations.

  “I noticed that he tried to get rid of you as witnesses,” Placidia went on with a grim half-smile. “That way neither you nor Leudovald could contradict what he might tell me. Now, you two, unravel what you know of these mysteries. Is Flavius Aetius involved?”

  “Regina, there’s been no evidence of that,” Getorius told her.

  “What is this sorcery the galleymaster alluded to?”

  “The other product that Zhang Chen brought to Ravenna from Sina. In the four small crates.”

  “The ones Senator Maximin tried to conceal from me?”

  “Yes. They held a sorcerer’s ‘magic’ only in the sense that its potential for destruction is beyond anything known in the West. Whatever it was, it consumed the Cybele as if the galley and everything on it had been smashed by a…a fiery thunderbolt. I can’t explain it otherwise.”

  “What of these counterfeit ‘Valentinians’?”

  “My wife had a theory about those. Arcadia, why don’t you explain?”

  “I think that they were being smuggled into Dalmatia and given a silver wash somewhere. Any merchant would have spotted them as false, but legionaries in the Danube garrisons might have been fooled. For a time, at least.”

  “We thought that Scodra, the capital of Prevalitana, might have a mint.”

  “Surgeon, the Eastern Empire is my nephew’s territory,” Placidia remarked. “Imagine the opposite…if counterfeit coins of Theodosius had flooded the West.”

  “Economic collapse. A civil war could result. Legion mutinies after the men discovered they had been cheated.”

  Placidia nodded. “Scodra? There’s a good road running from there to Viminacium, then north along the Danube. All the fort garrisons would be infested…Aquincum, Vindobona. Even Sirmium, Siscia, other towns in the interior.”

  “Regina, you’re well informed about the area,” Arcadia remarked.

  “And my emperor son isn’t.” Placidia sighed and looked away a moment, then continued “Theodosius, at least, has been compiling a new code of laws. My son will co-sign them, but he’s not really that interested. How would the ‘Valentinians’ get to Scodra?”

  “Through Olcinium,” Getorius replied, “but there’s a…a more horrible dimension to the plot.”

  “Tell me, Surgeon.”

  “We discovered a temple and cult of Cybele in Ravenna. She’s a Phrygian goddess—”

  “Who once saved Rome during the Punic wars,” Placidia interposed. “Her priests practice self-castration. I’m aware of the cult, but not that it is contaminating Ravenna.”

  “There was a Cybelene temple at Olcinium destroyed in an earthquake while we were there,” Getorius went on. “Diotar, the ArchGallus…their high priest…was involved in the conspiracy to smuggle the coins into Dalmatia. He was counting on that story of Cybele protecting Rome from the Carthaginians to draw a parallel with the present Vandal threat. Diotar used Virilo’s daughter in a pathetic hoax to recruit followers, but I believe he truly thought she had the Sacred Disease.”

  Placidia instinctively clutched her medallion. “These pagan cults subvert the state. None should be tolerated, as my father, Theodosius, well understood.”

  “They’re hidden, Regina. Hard to ferret out—”

  “And even the palace is vulnerable to corruption,” Placidia continued, as if she had not heard Getorius, then pulled a slim volume from her sleeve and held it up. “I’m reading the ‘Hippolytus’ of Lucius Seneca. I’d just reached these verses.” She opened the book and pointed to a section. “Read this, Surgeon, and tell me, as my physician, if it does not describe the deadly disease in my palace.”

  Getorius took the book from her and read, “‘Fate without order rules the affairs of men, throws about her gifts with a blind hand, cherishing the worst. Violent desire defeats the virtuous, and deceit reig
ns sublime in the palace halls.’”

  “Well, Surgeon?” Placidia demanded, “have you a cure for this abominable plague?”

  “With respect, Regina, I…I haven’t been there long enough to know. But the Cybelene conspiracy was smashed along with her namesake galley. Diotar was a victim of his own greed. Chen also, I’m afraid, although I think he was trying to escape from what Seneca describes.”

  “The Oriental’s special writing material…what did we decide to call it…papir? Where is that?”

  “Destroyed with the Cybele.”

  “Just as well. Maximin counseled that I hold it back for now, but he was undoubtedly planning to solicit bribes from papyrus and parchment makers’ associations. They would pay handsomely to see the material destroyed and their industries protected.”

  “Regina, I’m more concerned about what Chen called ‘Dragon’s Cough.’ If four small boxes of it destroyed an entire galley with hardly a trace left of it, killed guards at more than a bow-shot distant, and damaged a lighthouse hundreds of paces away, imagine what a larger amount could do to city walls.”

  “Indeed. Do you know how it’s made?”

  Getorius remembered that Chen had mentioned nitron as an ingredient, and charcoal, perhaps sulfur, were others, but decided not to pursue the subject. “Regina, he wrote down nothing about its elements of which I’m aware.”

  Placidia sighed, rubbed her eyes and abruptly stood up. “This has been too much for me. The threat of another civil war. Bloody rites to a statue. Alleged sorcery resulting in unbelievable destruction. I only hope that all of this plot has been uncovered.”

  “As do we, Regina.” Getorius avoided any mention of Maximin. Placidia already knew that he was probably involved in some way that could not be proven, just as had been the case with the Gallic abbot’s death months earlier.

  “You cooperated with Leudovald in uncovering all of this?”

  “In…in a way, Regina.”

  “A strange man, Leudovald, yet I believe he’s not one of those deceitful evildoers that Seneca abhorred.” Placidia gave the couple a tired smile. “I’ll stay here in the Archangel Michael’s chapel awhile. Go home, Surgeon. Take care of your wife’s injury.”

  “I will, but Regina, as your physician, I advise rest after all this, a change of scene. Your humors are close to a serious imbalance. Get out of Ravenna. Isn’t there an imperial villa at Caesena?”

  Placidia nodded. “A gift to me from my late brother, Honorius.” She pulled forward the gold medallion from around her neck and held up the inscription. “This is an allegory of how I am thought of as guardian of the health and well-being of the Republic. I may take your advice, Surgeon, although I’m not used to taking that from many people. Go now.”

  Outside, the couple saw Valentinian’s zoo across from the chapel, its smell of animal offal now diluted by a lingering trace of sulfur on the morning air.

  Arcadia saw that both ostriches were back in their cages, lying down, and calmer now, five days after Thecla’s death. The birds stood as she approached with Getorius, blinking their stupid stares.

  “We’ll never know if the cage door was left open on purpose or not,” she said. “Or if the keeper was bribed to let the creatures loose.”

  “There are a lot of unresolved questions, Arcadia. In the morning I’m going to Leudovald’s office to try to find some answers, but I want to get you home now.” As Getorius brushed at his wife’s damp hair he noticed her single earring. “I suppose it was clever of you to leave a clue that you had been in that underground cellar, but I’m still angry because you went to Virilo’s without telling anyone.”

  “I agree, Husband, it was foolish, but it’s too late to call back yesterday. Let’s just forget the matter.”

  “I was worried about you, Cara.”

  “Let’s go home.”

  Outside the palace, at the corner of the Vicus Caesar and Honorius, a number of people were hurrying in the direction of the port, children running ahead of their parents.

  Rumor, the swiftest traveler of all the evils on earth, Getorius thought, recalling a quotation that his tutor had made him memorize. When he and Arcadia reached the door to their villa, a woman in a shabby black tunic stopped them as they were about to enter.

  “I heard people were hurt,” she said. “Do you know what happened at the harbor?”

  “You shouldn’t go there, grandmother,” Getorius warned. “Besides, the area is probably closed off by now.”

  “There could be dead, someone who belonged to my burial association.”

  “There’s nothing you can do—”

  “I’ll decide that, young man!” the crone snapped and stalked around Getorius in a rustle of ill-smelling linen.

  “Spunky old lady,” he commented to Arcadia. “She…she reminds me of Thecla.”

  At the clinic Getorius treated his wife’s neck wound with an application of boiled conferva root, then ordered Silvia to prepare a tub bath for her mistress.

  He sat on a stool and watched Arcadia lie back in the warm water that had been perfumed with their last flask of Gallic lavender oil. The dark bronze color of the tub contrasted with the ivory-white skin of his wife’s breasts and what he could see of the softly curved valley at her navel. Even Diana in her forest pool couldn’t have looked as beautiful. No wonder Actaeon was tempted—

  “This is so unreal!” Arcadia abruptly exclaimed and sat up in a splash of scented water, shattering her husband’s momentary musing. “Here I am in a bath, as if nothing happened. Claudia is dead, Getorius, and I did nothing to help her.”

  “Arcadia,” he said softly, “the Claudia we saw at the basilica never existed. I doubt that Virilo could tell us any more than we found out from her on the Cybele. It’s clear now that she ordered Adonis to go back and leave her father’s knife at the church, hoping he would be arrested. That would make escaping with his galley much easier.”

  “I should have been able to talk to her.”

  “You went to find Claudia and almost got killed, woman! We know now that Diotar was involved in smuggling the counterfeits, and Maximin was paying Virilo for Chen’s writing material, but little else. The sapphires, for example, or how many of the ‘Valentinians’ are already in Dalmatia…” Getorius stopped his rebuke, noticing his wife beginning to sob. “I’m sorry. Silvia!” he called, “bring a towel for your mistress. Arcadia, it’s still morning, but you need to sleep. Would you like valerian to help?” She shook her head. “Hopefully, we’ll get some answers from Virilo…he’s the only witness we know of to all of this.”

  When Silvia came in with the towel, Getorius told her to help Arcadia into bed, then went into his study. Ursina brought in a plate of dried figs. Getorius munched them while looking back on the morning’s events.

  It’s true that Virilo is the main witness to the conspiracy, but I believed…wrongly…that he murdered Chen and Diotar and was running away. That leaves Publius Maximin’s involvement unanswered. He was the one who leased the galley for the Olcinium runs. Will Maximin invoke his senatorial privileges to avoid being questioned?

  After sleepless nights, Getorius was so exhausted that he fell into a doze in his chair. It was an uneasy sleep; his mind troubled, remembering that during the events of the previous November and December, two witnesses just like Virilo had been found dead inside the palace itself. Galla Placidia’s fear about the latent violence in the Lauretum was not misplaced.

  Chapter twenty-two

  By early afternoon Ravenna’s citizens were to hear almost as many versions of what had happened to the Cybele as there were real, or imagined, eyewitnesses to the unexplained devastation.

  Tribune Lucullus, who had travelled to Sicilia, likened the noise, flames, and billowing black cloud to the volcanic eruptions he had witnessed on the flanks of Mount Etna, yet he could not explain the source that destroyed the fleeing galley. One of his terrorized Germanic guards reported that he saw two gigantic serpents on either side of the galley spewin
g the fire and smoke that destroyed it. A more rational companion scoffed that the dark lines were the two sides of the snapped harbor chain, recoiling through the air like a gigantic broken catapult cord.

  One devout witness swore that he had seen the hand of God descend inside a shaft of flame—the same fiery pillar that had guided Moses and his Israelites across the desert—to strike down the pagans aboard the galley.

  Another Christian reported that an aerolith had blazed down from the sky and struck the galley. He also considered the heavenly sign an act of divine justice and retribution.

  A woman slave gibbered that she had seen a bolt of lightning flash down from a clear sky, but admitted that she was unsure of whether it came from Jupiter, or the Christian God, or perhaps even the fiery sulfurous realm of Satan himself.

  Hipparchus, a palace philosophy master, had not witnessed nor even heard the blast, but theorized that a spherical universe, surrounded by the central and outer fires that produce the light of day and sustain the stars, had released a flash of its all-consuming heat to destroy the Cybele. He confidently predicted that this chance encounter would not occur again for exactly one thousand aeons.

  The most bizarre explanation, by Presbyter Gaius Tranquillus, was connected to a passage in the Hebrew Testament, but was also based on Aristotle’s teaching that the sub-lunar Antichthon, or counter-earth, turns around Hipparchus’s theoretical fires. Both are invisible from our earth, he said, yet the revolution of the nine planetary spheres produces a perfect musical harmony. This harmony can only be altered by Perfection itself, in the Person of the Creator of the Universe. Thus, Tranquillus maintained, God had momentarily suspended his own natural law and permitted a tongue of the central fire to destroy the depraved pagan followers of Cybele. God had done the same thing once before, Tranquillus concluded, in scorching the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

  After Getorius awoke from his fitful napping, he tried to reread Hippocrates’ treatise, On the Sacred Disease, to understand Claudia’s illness better, but found his concentration still affected by the horrific images he had seen that week.