by Albert Noyer
Getorius closed his eyes, but sleep evaded him. When the sky deepened to cobalt, he awakened his wife so she could prepare for the dining room.
After rummaging through the wardrobe, Arcadia complained, "I'll have to put on the same tunic I wore at the Augusta's palace. And there's no time to ask Zoë for someone to fix my hair."
"Cara, stop worrying. You look beautiful." Getorius took out the red hose, black knee-length tunic with decorated sleeves and neck, and a suede vest bound with a belt. "This is what I brought to wear if we saw Theodosius. There's a hat somewhere in my travel bag."
Arcadia held up a mirror to comb tangles from her hair. "I should have had my tunic pressed, but didn't expect Pulcheria's arrival." She abruptly laid down the comb to sob.
"Cara." Getorius came to put his arms around her. "What is it?"
"Here we are acting as if things were normal, but we're stranded so far from Ravenna. And that letter. Pulcheria could suspect us of being informers for Galla Placidia."
"I thought of that, so we'll just have to stay alert." He bent to kiss her neck. "Now finish your hair and get dressed. I'll wager this will be the finest meal we've had on this voyage."
"Hopefully not our last." At her husband's quizzical look, Arcadia laughed softly. "Getorius, I'm jesting. Pulcheria said she wanted to speak with us after dinner. Perhaps she'll clear up more of this mystery.
* * *
In the Poseidon's dining room, a few guests ate their evening meal, speaking of the riot in low tones, unaware that a member of the imperial household was present. Nysus had kept Pulcheria's arrival secret and partitioned off the far end of the room with wicker screens. Brisios stood next to them with Zoë, waiting for the couple to arrive. When he saw Getorius and Arcadia, he beckoned to them.
"Surgeon, Mistress, when the Augusta returns she will eat with you behind the screens."
"Returns?" Getorius asked. "What do you mean, Brisios, it's nearing sunset. Where did she go?"
Zoë answered, "The Augusta ordered a bath, and then about an hour ago a messenger came to summon her to the round temple at the Asklepion."
Perplexed, Getorius asked, "The temple of Asklepios? Strange, how would Apollonios even know that Pulcheria was here?"
"His brother is city prefect," Arcadia reminded him. "Niketas would have been alerted that the Augusta arrived. He obviously told the physician."
Zoë corrected her. "Domina, it was not Apollonios who asked. His priest assistant summoned her."
"Aristides?" Getorius glanced at Arcadia. "The man has been missing, but what business would he have with the Augusta?" He paused, momentarily stunned at a thought that struck him with the force of a catapult bolt. "We've been wrong! Galla Placidia's informant isn't Apollonios. That 'A' in her note meant Aristides!"
A chill shivered Arcadia's body. "Then the priest betrayed the physician! It was Aristides who arranged for Epiphania's death and sold Basina's clothes to vendors."
Getorius exclaimed, "The traitor who killed King Rhesus! Zoë, did Pulcheria's bodyguard go with her? I don't recall his name."
"Vidimir. No, because of the riot he ordered the city quarantined. Beginning at sunset citizens must remain inside their homes. Vidimir is out posting guard contingents around the city gates."
"Then Pulcheria went alone to that temple?"
"Surgeon, she took the young woman, Sophia. Both dressed themselves as pilgrims to not attract attention."
"What could Aristides want with the Augusta? In any case, he's lured Pulcheria to where he may harm her. Brisios, we must get to that temple."
Arcadia objected, "You could ask Nysus to summon the city prefect."
Getorius shook his head. "Whatever that demented priest has in mind would be provoked by a show of force. Brisios, let's hurry over there."
The Via Asklepii leading to the temple was deserted, eerily abandoned by its usual throng of patients who walked to the shrine with candles for an evening vigil. Vendor booths across the field from Apollonios's burned villa were vacant. The rioters had overturned tables and strewn what they had not looted across the ground. Soot-hued ravens, almost invisible the dusky twilight, squabbled with each other over scraps of food.
"The birds of death," Getorius remarked, recalling a Celtic legend. "They appear on a battlefield as a red-eyed hag, gloating over the dead. Apollonios predicted that Christians would destroy his shrine as efficiently as barbarians."
Skirting the ruined villa, Getorius yet had doubts about the physician. Apollonios still may be involved in luring Pulcheria to the temple by sending Aristides to summon her.
After arriving at the domed building, the two men stopped at stairs leading up to the porch. Torches in iron holders on the columns cast a wavering light on the twin bronze doors to the interior. Both portals were closed and locked.
Getorius whispered to Brisios, "The inside was pillaged, but the doors weren't forced. That mob would have no way of battering down anything that solid, and they're barred from inside. How do we find out what's happening now? And how in Hades's name did the rioters enter?"
Brisio stepped back to look at the triangular pediment above the porch. He pointed at a carved figure. "There are knotted ropes hanging from that corner sculpture."
"Used to climb up to the dome?" Getorius smacked a fist into his palm. "Of course, that's how the rioters got in! There's an oculus, an open circle, at the dome's center. They climbed down that rope I saw dangling from the opening yesterday and unbarred the doors from inside."
"Surgeon, it isn't too high to the nearest edge of the roof."
"I would estimate about twenty feet."
"I could pull you up." Before Getorius could reflect on the danger, Brisios stepped onto the first rope knot and began climbing. He reached the architrave and scrambled over the pediment cornice. Looking down, he extended a hand. "Surgeon?"
Getorius muttered, "Cosmas, isn't Arcadia always praying to you for help?" He pulled on the rope to test it, then set his good foot on the bottom knot and grasped the one above it. The climb up six knots was not too difficult, but Getorius's arms ached from the unaccustomed strain. His weaker ankle throbbed from the weight put in it. Skin scraped off his arm when his tunic sleeve tore as Brisios pulled him over the cornice edge.
Resting on the tiles of the pitched roof, Getorius's breathing came in equal parts exertion and anxiety. He glanced up at the dome. The architect had repeated his triangular pediment as a shallow projection in a wall above the porch. Its apex reached almost to a flat ledge at the base of the dome. If he and Brisios could walk along the sloping angle of the cornice without falling, they could pull themselves up the final short distance and onto the base of the curved roof. Having come to the same conclusion, Brisios ran a hand over the sloping cornice and looked back.
Getorius stood up with a weak grin of reassurance. "I know what you're thinking. It's the only way up. All right, let's try."
Brisios faced the wall with Getorius following. The men found tenuous handholds at gaps in the masonry as they edged their way up the incline. At the top, Brisios hoisted himself over the cornice then turned to help his master up.
Getorius slumped down on the narrow ledge, gasping from the ordeal. A cold wind penetrated the short tunic and suede vest he wore for Pulcheria's meal. Raw skin stung where his right sleeve had torn when he scrambled over the cornice. Looking up at the black curve of the dome, he wondered if he had the stamina and nerve to crawl up the lead plates that covered the slope.
Brisios pointed upward. "A rope leading to the top is anchored to pegs on the bottom plates of those stepped rings."
"It's he only way to reach the oculus." Getorius stood again, determined not to embarrass himself in front of his slave.
The patina on the lead was dull, pitted with white spots. Seven concentric steps buttressing the dome sloped toward the oculus. Getorius grasped the rope, straining up after Brisios on the cold metal, trembling from the exertion. A short distance from the top step, a half disc of
brilliant sun abruptly glared out from behind clouds dispersing to the west. Both men were temporarily blinded, but crawled to the left, around the circum-ference, until the brightness was behind them. Brisios sat down on the curved roofing to let his master climb the final distance to the oculus.
Conscious of the low sun's feeble warmth on his back, and the dull lead plates under him now rose-colored, Getorius crept up, clutching the hawser until his knuckles were white. He felt his stomach spasm when he realized the rope fell away into empty space: lying flat on the frigid metal, he was at the edge of a void that stretched some twenty feet in width.
The mildly comforting sunlight warmth vanished as abruptly as it appeared.
A ring of green-patina bronze framed the oculus. Bracing himself, Getorius peered over its edge and looked down to a temple floor that he estimated to be some seventy dizzying feet below.
CHAPTER XXIII
Looking into the temple's interior from the oculus, Getorius could see across the floor to the niche displaying the statue of Asklepios. The wooden figure, shattered by Christian rioters, had been crudely reassembled. A current of warmish air smelling of beeswax and burnt olive oil wafted up to him. Below, the wavering illumination from votive lamps and candles threw enough light to reveal several persons in front of the healer-god. He recognized who they were.
Pulcheria is sitting in a chair, with Sophia next to her. Aristides...and that's the embalmer, Rufinus, with the two Egyptian eunuchs from Britto's.
Brisios interrupted Getorius's observation by crawling alongside him. Motioning for quiet, he whispered to the slave, "There are several people down there with Pulcheria. I recognize Aristides. Herakles and Tranquillus are to one side of him. Christ! They're all involved in this!"
"Can you hear what anyone is saying?"
"I'll try." Getorius clutched the cold bronze ring with numbing fingers and eased himself a little farther up to cock an ear at the opening.
Aristides's voice rolled around the temple's walls and reached the oculus in an echoing, hollow tone. "And so, Augusta, my demand is simple." He held up a rolled papyrus sheet. "Place your signet on this transit document for me, Rufinus, and the Egyptians, Senouthes and Phoibammon, to board a galley that awaits us at Elaea."
Elaea. Getorius recalled the bireme with the Egyptian name, then heard Pulcheria's firm refusal. "Priest, We do not negotiate with traitors. Rather, in this treasonous gamble, We shall see that your heads decorate the galley of which you speak."
"Gamble?" Aristides's arrogant laugh was rife with contempt. "Augusta, your unexpected arrival was a gift of Asklepios, for it is I who hold a winning throw of dice." After he spoke to the Egyptians, they pulled Sophia a short distance away. Each gripped one of her arms with a hand, the other rested on their daggers. "Rufinus, prepare to 'throw the die'."
The embalmer held a bow at his side. Getorius watched him string an arrow and aim his weapon at the girl. He's going to kill Sophia unless Pulcheria complies! Herakles and Tranquillus both have sided with Aristides in this treason.
"You Christians value martyrdom," Aristides sneered. "Yet, Augusta, have you seen such a death? Like your holy Sebastian, riddled with arrows, the death of Sophia will be lingering and painful." He waved the papyrus at Pulcheria. "Surely, the girl's life is worth a blob of wax?"
"Priest, you dare threaten me? Dare bargain with me?" Pulcheria said, but her voice was less confident. Inadvertently or not, she had dropped the formal pronoun. "I outwaited
Nestorios for three years, and saw the heretic forced from his patriarchy into exile."
Aristides taunted, "You will not have three hours to decide this girl's fate."
"Wait..." Pulcheria hesitated. "Why are you doing this?"
"Galla Placidia, your aunt at Ravenna, trusted me. I sent reports of what she wished to hear about your doddering old bishop and the Hunnic presbytera. When I thought Epiphania had died in the fire and Rufinus told me she was alive, I suspected a ruse to destroy our shine. Senouthes, a priest of Osiris, discovered that the Serapion was the presbytera's hideout. Then Herakles arrived with his pilgrims and the verbally castrated Flavius Bobo." Aristides stopped. "Why waste time with explaining? Senouthes, bring a candle so the Augusta may apply her ring to the document's seal."
When Pulcheria asked Aristides if he had killed Britto, Getorius realized she was stalling for time.
"That was my doing," Rufinus boasted, lowering his bow. "I could have taken over the drunken fool's mortuary, but that meddling surgeon complicated everything."
"Arcadia's husband?" Pulcheria asked. "How did the surgeon do that?"
Getorius slid back from the oculus edge and blew on cold-stiffened fingers. "The Augusta is trying to buy time, but I'm not sure that will help. Zoë knows we're here, yet even if she can find Vidimir and a few guards, the temple is locked and Aristides has the upper hand."
Brisios whispered, "What can we do from up here?"
"I'm not sure, but the mystery is clearing. I recall that Aristides told me he counseled Flavius in the men's dormitory. He may have recognized him from the time he came to the shrine with his mother. Aristides certainly noted the abuse he took from Basina and probably struck a bargain to have the woman downed in exchange for the death of Epiphania." Getorius eased himself up to the opening again.
Below, Pulcheria evidently had asked Herakles about his part in the conspiracy. The guide looked away, but Aristides chortled, "He supplies the papaver I'll sell in Egypt."
Pulcheria waved a hand at Tranquillus. "You are the presbyter who accompanied the widows to the Holy Land and here to Pergamum. You disgrace your holy office. What were you offered?"
"Enough!" Aristides screamed, increasingly nervous at a delay he had not expected from a woman. "Senouthes, drip wax on the document. Augusta, press your ring into it." When Pulcheria, trembling slightly, covered her signet with a hand and turned her face away, Aristides told her with chilling calm, "Very well. If you do not seal this, Phoibammon will first remove your finger, then the ring. Afterward, you will experience what an embalmer can do to a living body." He laughed at his next thought. "Or do you think your One God will rescue you? Rufinus! The first arrow at the girl!"
The embalmer raised his bow and aimed at Sophia. In desperation, Getorius shook the rope leading to the floor, to distract him. "Rufinus," he shouted down, "that would be murder!"
Startled at the echoing voice, Rufinus looked up. He turned his bow toward the opening and loosed the arrow. Getorius slid back just as the feathered shaft struck the inner side of the bronze ring and shattered. Splinters of ash wood spiraled back to the floor.
"Surgeon? That is your voice, is it not?"Aristides called up, stuttering now. He walked to the swaying rope and taunted, "Will you climb down like Odysseus to rescue Penelope? You would not reach the first knot before Rufinus ended your folly."
"Surgeon, you robbed me of inheriting Britto's mortuary by finding his body," Rufinus growled, notching a second arrow. "Buried, he would never been discovered." He loosed an arrow that arced cleanly through the opening. Getorius heard it swish past and shatter on the pavement below.
Aristides's pasty complexion flushed in the lamplight. "Rufinus. Enough talk. Kill the girl."
Getorius realized that the priest's fury expressed in his stutter had made him irrational enough to threaten Pulcheria's life. He'll murderl both the girl and the Augusta. Helpless, he watched Rufinus fit the notch of a third arrow into its string, raise the bow, and aim at a trembling, tearful Sophia.
The next moments blurred: a metallic flash came from the far right. Rufinus staggered back, clutching the prongs of a gladiator's trident impaled in his neck. His arrow flew over Sophia and lodged in the face of Asklepios. The god's loose head teetered a moment, then fell at the same moment that Rufinus slumped to the floor. A bloody pool formed around the embalmer's head.
Herakles leaped forward and caught Aristides in a wrestling hold, twisting an arm behind his back until the priest fell, still clutch
ing his papyrus sheet with a free hand.
Tranquillus unsheathed a belt knife and pulled Sophia away from the stunned Egyptian holding her by one arm. Crouching low, he threatened both men in angry Celtic words they did not know, yet nevertheless understood. Phoibammon dropped his knife. Senouthes, in his nervousness, blew out the candle.
Shocked at what had happened, Getorius leaned farther over the opening and saw enough of the serpent's den to realize that the hidden door was open. Naxos leapt over the pit's railing, now brandishing a sword. When Apollonios and Arcadia followed him out, she ran to help Rufinus.
Getorius sucked in his breath at the distance to the temple floor, yet overcame his fear. "Brisios!" he shouted, "I have to get down there. Help me over the edge."
With his stomach feeling as hollow as the dizzying space beneath him, Getorius forced his stiffened fingers to grasp the topmost knot. He held on, white-knuckled, and slipped backward into the void. His legs flailed the air, desperately searching for a length of rope beneath him and the second knot on which to rest his foot. His arm muscles ached when he finally touched one. Seeing that Brisios was just above him, he slid down too rapidly, jarring his hands at each knot. By the time his feet reached marble flooring, the skin of his palms had burned raw from the rope's friction.
Hands stinging, Getorius limped to kneel beside his wife and examine Rufinus. One prong of the trident had severed the man's carotid artery. Another entered his neck at the base of the skull. "He's dead, Arcadia." He pulled her away from spreading gore. She clung to him, sobbing tears into his suede vest.