by Albert Noyer
Arcadia stopped him at that point. “That’s incredible, Getorius. The story is not found in any Christian Testament.”
“I agree, but evidently such hidden documents are constantly being discovered here, preserved by the dry Egyptian climate.”
“Did you get a close look at the mummy’s wrappings?”
“Yes, I was the one who cut open the linen and discovered a golden case that held the papyrus.”
“Why you, and not Papnouthios?”
“He refused to desecrate the remains. I said ‘cut out,’ but the material was so fragile from age that it melted away under my blade. It truly is ancient.”
“So the mummy seemed authentic?”
“Unquestionably so, Arcadia. The papyrus text dates it to Christ’s lifetime and the reign of Augustus Caesar, so the document itself would be the critical link in any evaluation.”
“Perhaps not the papyrus alone.”
“What do you mean?”
Arcadia said, “I wasn’t there very long, but did notice the mummy’s feet.”
“Yes, they were carved onto a wooden base so the figure could stand upright. The prince’s mummy had been propped in a corner.”
“I recall. Getorius, you didn’t find anything unusual about the feet?”
“Feet? No, I didn’t give them much thought. Why?”
“They were very small and the sandals were decorated like women’s footwear. I believe that the body of a female is underneath those wrappings.”
Getorius glanced at Agathe, but she continued with her spinning, seemingly unaware of a conversation between the two. Still, he lowered his voice. “So the forgers…if the papyrus is not authentic…were in a hurry. They used whatever ancient mummy they could find and inserted a fictitious prince’s account of Christ’s infancy.”
“I recall that Dorothea warned us not to presume anything in Egypt.”
He thought a moment. “Arcadia, there’s only one way to find out the actual sex of that mummy.”
“Getorius, you can’t.”
“No? If we knew the identity of the forgers, we just could ask them.”
“Your sarcasm, husband, is not very amusing.”
“That Sobek priest, Tanutamun, has to be involved, and yet why? The papyrus doesn’t restore any measure of credibility to his pagan cult.”
“It divides and weakens the Church’s unity, as do other heresies….” Arcadia abruptly turned pale and turned away to vomit broth into a pan set alongside her on the bed.
Agathe sprang up from her seat to help. While sponging Arcadia’s mouth clean, she glared at Getorius, as if he somehow was responsible for her illness.
“Medicus…chirurgus,” he told her in Latin, forgetting the Greek words and pointing to himself. Is it just physicians that she hates or men in general?
Agathe scolded him in a barrage of angry Greek and motioned him away from the bed.
Arcadia pleaded, “I know what you’re thinking, Getorius. Please, don’t go into that temple.”
“Tanutamun said the prince would be buried in the pagan necropolis. Once that occurs, I’ll never be able to examine the mummy.” He recalled Isidoros telling him that the temple was not open on Sunnedaeg, the Lord’s Day. “The temple is closed tomorrow, so no one will be in there tonight preparing for a ritual.” He bent down to kiss Arcadia’s forehead. “Cara, sleep awhile. I’m going back to the garden now, but I’ll be back in time to eat supper with you.”
Nauseous again, Arcadia lay back. The acidic taste of vomit puckered her mouth as she recalled her frightening dream. No matter how much I object, tonight Getorius will do as he wants. I wish I could be with him when he goes into that dreadful temple!
CHAPTER VIII
Sergius Abinnaeus stormed into the pretorium’s atrium, bellowing for Papnouthios. Getorius, seated in the garden beyond, to decide what he needed to take with him to the temple―minimally a lamp or candle and scalpel―went to the governor as he slumped down on the rim of the cistern, grasping his wounded arm with his bloody right hand.
“Prefect, you’re injured!”
“Zeus Kassios, Surgeon, any mule would notice that! Have you seen my physician?”
“Sir, not since we were at the temple.”
“Skata!” Abinnaeus exclaimed in Greek. “Then you’ll have to stitch up this confounded arm.”
“May I examine your wound?” Getorius eased the governor’s fingers away and winced on seeing a slash to the flexor muscle. “This could be quite serious. Galen warns that such an injury could affect using your hand. Sir, what happened?”
“Attacked on my way back here,” he muttered without looking at him.
“I recall you were wearing a heavy cape, which should have protected you. That scratch on your face?”
“Get on with the repair!” he ordered.
“I’ll need my medical case from our room.”
“Then get it!”
As Getorius walked toward the guest wing, he harbored doubts about the officer’s story. The governor is lying to me. No sane bandit would try to rob him in full daylight. The wound is not that deep, more as if a woman inflicted both the gash and a scratch on his face. I suspect 0he went to Pennuta’s residence, then got into a hurtful argument with her.
At his room, Getorius rapped softly on the door to not awaken his wife. Agathe opened it a short distance, then tried to close the portal again. Getorius jammed his booted foot into the opening and pointed to his medical case on the table. “I need that.”
The slave-servant relented and let him in. After he opened the case to check his instruments and slip in a candle, he smiled and whispered, “Efharisto, Kyria.” She relaxed her frown on being addressed as a lady; perhaps the Latin physician thought she was a freedwoman.
Before leaving, Getorius glanced over at Arcadia. His wife, still deathly pale and damp with perspiration, was asleep. Fine, I’ll try not to worry about her.
In the atrium Getorius told the governor to sit in one of the chairs at a marble table under the portico. As he examined the clotting blood around the wound to determine the best approach for suturing, he recalled, “Prefect, weren’t you wearing a military neckerchief?”
“I staunched the flow of blood with it, then threw the thing away.”
Another lie? Getorius went to wet a linen bandage pad in the pool. He sponged away dried blood, knowing the procedure stung the governor’s raw wound.
Abinnaeus winced and sucked in his breath before asking, “That…papyrus. What did the…the churchmen discover?”
“Nothing, really, until they compare the text with other writings of the period.”
“Egyptian writings?”
“Sir, I…I’m just not sure.”
“Supposedly this prince and his secretary were from Kush,” the governor said. “Does Eusebios expect the style, the letter forms, to be those of either Alexandria or Athens?”
Getorius shrugged ignorance as he sprinkled achillea powder on a fresh flow of blood, then tightly bandaged the wound. “It’s been awhile since I’ve treated an injury like this, but you can thank Fortuna that your ulnar artery and flexor muscles were not damaged. Sir, move your fingers.”
Abinnaeus flexed and un-flexed the digits of his left hand, then jested, “Flesh wound, then? Like being nicked by a barber?”
“Quite a bit more serious. Sir, you’ll…ah…want to track down and punish that brigand.”
“Indeed…” The governor stood and glanced up at a darkening rectangle of sky above the atrium pool. “Getting late. You and your wife must have supper with us.”
“Arcadia has come down with marsh fever and won’t be able to eat anything just yet.”
“Puretos? Shame, but common in the Delta. Papnouthios has remedies for the illness.”
“Yes, he treated her within the past hour.”
“Good…” Abennaeus reached forward to grasp Getorius’s hand. “I’m grateful you were here, Surgeon. I’ll go pack a few more things for morning, when I l
eave for Myos Hormos with Dorothea.” He paused a moment before confiding, “Don’t tell my wife about the injury. We needn’t…needn’t worry the dear woman.”
“No. Sir, but try to rest that arm if you can. Let the blood clot much further.”
Getorius watched Abennaeus work the fingers of his injured arm as he walked to his wing of the pretorium, and then he glanced at the sky. There may be an hour of twilight left, but there will be moonlight when I reach the temple. I have my medical case and a candle, so I won’t have to go back to Arcadia’s room.
* * *
Standing in the black shadows of a darkened building, Getorius pushed the hood of his cloak back to watch a round moon the pale color of his wife’s face rise above the eastern horizon. He sniffed chill evening air, recalling that the pungent salt-smell of sea marshes had become more intense as the group had approached Sobek’s temple that morning. The abhorrent sanctuary was not far distant.
I’ve not encountered a civic guard, yet there’s an open square to cross in front of the temple’s main entrance. Moonrise will give more light, yet may also increase the chance of my being seen. There’s probably less possibility if I enter the Birth Room from the side opposite the crocodile pool. Clutching his medical case for reassurance, Getorius tugged the hood back over his head and slipped around the building to approach the temple from a branch-water canal side entrance.
The silent moon cast a sickly gray light over the nearby ground and temple building, yet deepened shadows of palm trees that lined the canal and formed a concealing bosque of greenery. Crouching low, Getorius sprinted from tree to tree until he reached the wall enclosing the crocodile pool. Cold night air barely tempered the stench of excrement and carrion fouling the reptiles’ lair. There were no sounds―the crocodiles were asleep or lounging in the warmer shallows of their stagnant pool. He stood up to peer over the wall: black water glimmered innocently in reflected moonlight, but the grassy bank was a colorless gray expanse. On it he noticed several angular white forms, shapes that seemed familiar. Can’t quite make out what those are…Then he abruptly recognized the horror. My God, those are human limbs! This is where Papnouthios disposes of the bodies of victims that die in his experiments. That cart this morning. Skoros was bringing them to the pool!
Shivering now from both shock and cold, Getorius slumped down to lean against the wall until his disgust had numbed. I…I must get to that mummia.
The dark temple beyond was silhouetted by a now-yellowish moon that had risen perceptibly higher. A glimmer of rectangular light marked the doorway to Sobek’s sanctuary. Inside, a single votive lamp gleamed in front of the crocodile god’s grotesque image. Getorius walked past the sculpture, ignoring flickering shadows that animated petrified reptile bodies stacked on shelves. Prince Keshet’s mummy was in the Divine Birth House beyond, a more benign shrine to Isis.
The goddess’s annex also glimmered with uneven light from an oil lamp on the altar in front of the mural showing Isis suckling Horus. Fortunately, I can light my candle from that lamp…like a fool I hadn’t thought about how I might do that. Getorius glanced at Kashat’s mummy, still propped in the corner. It is smaller and shorter than a man would be. The foot sandals are feminine, just as Arcadia noticed.
Getorius set his medical case on the offering table and selected a medium-sized scalpel; his slit from which the papyrus case was removed could be enlarged to expose embalmed flesh beneath. He brought the candle closer and marveled again at the skill with which the body had been wrapped, and transverse bands wound diagonally to hold the linen in place. In the flickering light he noticed that the tarnished binding nails were not gold, only plated bronze, and held the candle higher to look at the face board. The wood had split on one side. When he examined the back edge with a finger, he felt tiny worm holes. Clearly ancient wood and the prince’s portrait is painted in tinted wax. If I softened a lower section and scraped away the coating…Yes, another faint image is visible beneath staining the wood, yet that doesn’t necessarily prove anything. The board might have been re-used. I need to cut away more of the interior wrapping and try to expose a breast, if this is a woman.
Getorius set the candle back on the table and began to widen his original cut. In moments he tried to suppress coughing from fine dust he released. The smell was unlike any he had known―mold certainly, a faint clove smell, perhaps imagined, and dried asphaltum. After a few more scalpel cuts, the disintegrating fabric abruptly gave way to a hard, wrinkled surface. The body. Now to pull away an additional section of linen wrapping, on one side. When the procedure released more dust, Getorius buried his mouth in the shoulder of his cape to muffle renewed coughing. After a moment, he continued gently to ease aside the fabric until a section of desiccated, brownish pectoral muscle was exposed. Getorius sucked in a gasp: an unmistakable, shriveled right breast bulged from the embalmed flesh.
It seems that Arcadia was correct, but I need more light to confirm this. Before Getorius could step over and bring the candle closer, to validate his discovery, a vicious blow caught him on the back of his head. In a flash of white light and searing pain, he crumpled, senseless, onto the marble floor of the Divine Birth House of Isis.
H E B E T / T H E G R E A T O A S I S
CHAPTER IX
Nestorios, the deposed Patriarch of Constantinople, brooded as he stared out his cell window at a white rising moon that washed a ghostly gray pallor over a vast expanse of nearly featureless sand. The inhospitable landscape, broken only by an occasional stunted acacia tree, reached to the four flat horizons of Egypt’s Great Western Oasis. In the distance a pack of jackals barked and squealed as they squabbled over a careless lizard absorbing the last of the cooling sand’s daytime warmth.
“A God-cursed land west of Eden fit only for scorpions and jackals,” he muttered. “‘Eloi, Eloi, why have You abandoned me? Why are You so far from my call for help, from my cries of anguish’?”
Andronicos, a monk-deacon in Nestorius’s old monastery, had accompanied the former Patriarch to exile at Hebet. He heard the psalm of despair and tried to sweeten his mentor’s mood. “Holiness may I fetch you a cup of honeyed wine before you see Bishop Harmonios?”
“Harmonios?” Nestorios turned to his blond, thin-faced deacon. “Again, who is he?”
“The presiding bishop of your Assembly at Myos Hormos.”
“Deacon it is not my Assembly. It is that of The Crucified One.”
“Of course, of the Christ,” Andronicos quickly assented, “and yet, Holiness, at Edessa your followers call themselves ‘Nestorians’.”
Nestorios publicly ignored the honorific title. “Has this Harmonios an appointment? What does he want?”
“Want?” Although the bishop had confided his mission to Andronicos, hoping to expedite an audience with the Patriarch, the deacon hedged. “Holiness, I am not privy to such ecclesiastical matters.”
Nestorios glared at him. “Nonsense, Deacon, why play this game? You know the exact reason why he came here to see me at Hebet.”
Stung by the rebuke, Andronicos’s pale complexion flushed to a bright rose. “He brings ru…rumors of…of an ancient papyrus,” he stuttered. “Dis…discovered in the Moeris and brought to Pelusium.”
“Pelusium?”
“A port on the easternmost branch of the Nile’s delta.”
“Is it Christian?” Nestorios’s tone belittled his deacon when he asked, “Is this papyrus yet another spurious Gnostic document about the imminent return of The Crucified One at the next Feast of the Resurrection?”
Andronicos gestured with his left hand in ignorance. “Holiness, I don’t know.”
“Fine.” Nestorios continued in a softer tone, “Deacon, I’m appreciative that you followed me into exile and act as my secretary, yet I demand your absolute truthfulness.”
“Of…of course, Holiness.” Andronicos’s left hand shook as he held out an empty goblet. “May I bring sweetened wine?”
Nestorios shook his head. “I fast today
and will take neither food nor drink.” He walked to the window again to watch the crystal face of the risen moon, while pondering his visitor. What will the prelate want? He should realize there is little I can do for him at Myos Hormos from here. Without turning he ordered, “Go bring me this ‘Nestorian’ bishop.”
Walking toward the monastery’s guest quarters, Andronicos reflected on the past months he had spent with the exiled Patriarch. A man with a quick temper, haughty, outspoken, and yet unwavering in his unorthodox beliefs. True, Nestorius should not have insulted women in the Emperor’s court by denying them the Eucharist at the Holy Table of the Great Church, especially Aelia Pulcheria. Yet his inexcusable offense was opposing the orthodox teachings of Patriarch Cyril at Alexandria about the person of Christ and his Mother’s role in the Incarnation.
Slight of figure, beardless, with blond, childhood curls that persisted into adult-hood, Andronicos was the illegitimate offspring of a Gothic Scholarian guard and a young palace chambermaid. Kitchen staff gossiped that he had been conceived in the imperial bed of Eudokia herself while the Empress was away! If true, the recklessness of his parents had not manifested itself in the shy young man. Some believed that the sin of his parents had caused the boy to be born with paralysis in his right hand. Andronicos learned to write Greek and Latin in a left-handed slant that was readable, even elegant, yet he developed a reflexive habit of cradling the useless appendage against his chest.
Nestorios had encountered him studying in the palace library, pitied the maimed youth, and made him one of his junior secretaries. After his condemnation for heresy, the more career-minded clergymen shunned Nestorius like a malodorous oyster. Only the loyal Andronicos followed his disgraced Patriarch into exile at Hebet in Egypt’s Oasis Maior.
The deacon found Bishop Harmonios shivering inside an unheated cell of the monastery’s visitors’ wing. The hood of his travel cloak was drawn over his head. When the prelate saw Andronicos, he complained of his discomfort.
“By the Holy Saints in Heaven, Deacon, how does one warm oneself at night in this accursed desert?”