The tribune nodded and headed north toward the prison at the base of Capitoline Hill.
Julius had no desire to follow in that direction, and instead turned south past the Senate and down the Street of Bankers, whistling here and there. “Sirius! Sirius!” A moment later, when he looked over his shoulder, the tribune had vanished into the night.
* * *
Athanasius walked quickly past the prison. Here the Street of Bankers sloped up into Banker Hill Road, and he followed it around Capitoline Hill toward the home of Senator Maximus.
He knew he was blowing his rendezvous with the Ferryman and ignoring the instructions of his savior Marcus. But there was still a chance to make things right, if only he could expose Domitian’s plot. Then he would not only save himself and get back his life with Helena, but also save Marcus from death in the morning, however unfortunate their business with the tongue.
He saw nobody at this hour on the street and trudged through the dark up a private drive off the road. He reached the gate of the estate, which was surrounded by a high wall.
He knocked on the heavy wooden door. There was no answer at first, and then a lamp went on somewhere inside the villa and the door opened to reveal a servant girl who obviously had been asleep. She didn’t seem to recognize him in his uniform.
Good.
“I am here on state business and must see Maximus immediately.”
He was led through a courtyard and stepped inside the front door of the villa without being invited in. The servant girl scurried away while he waited impatiently.
He looked around the reception hall and remembered his early visits to his patron Maximus when he had first come to Rome. He would arrive every morning to pay his respects to Maximus in the atrium and receive his day’s meal. Maximus would then take money from a trunk guarded by his big Syrian slave Dillian to hand him to pay actors or rent a small theater in the commercial strips of Mars Field. Athanasius had already squandered his own money in several expensive flops, and Maximus urged him to start small and build his audience slowly. Like other wealthy patrons, Maximus said he wanted to make Rome great. Most others did it by erecting temples or building parks. For Maximus it was the arts, and he seemed to believe that in Athanasius he had found someone whose works could speak more loudly than stone.
It was Maximus, Athanasius now recalled, who first arranged his introduction to Helena. He had been pining for her ever since he saw her cheering her then-boyfriend and his chariot at the old Circus Maximus. He remembered telling Maximus, “If I could have a woman like that, I would have everything, including the recognition of my arrival in Rome.” To which Maximus laughed and said, “On the contrary, having Helena at your side would render you invisible. I know you want to be the center of her universe, Athanasius, but don’t fool yourself: Helena is the center of her universe.”
All the same, they met, and Athanasius won her over with his force of personality and relentless charm. To many in Rome, she was undoubtedly his greatest achievement, more than his plays, because he had beat out a formidable field of muscle in the form of gladiators, racers and athletes, and money in the form of countless wealthy suitors.
Now he had lost her. He had lost everything. He desperately wanted to go to her now, but it would do him no good. They could not save themselves. They needed help, and Maximus was just the man.
A moment later Maximus’s chamberlain Dillian appeared. The look in the big Syrian’s eyes told Athanasius that he recognized him.
“This way,” Dillian said and led Athanasius to the bedrooms in the back.
Maximus was sitting on his bed. He was dressed in his night robe, white chest hairs poking out from his barrel chest, and looking years older and far more frail than his stage presence only hours earlier in the throne room at the palace. Athanasius worried he had assumed too much, that his mentor could be of help to him. Perhaps he had made a big mistake in not following the interrogator’s instructions.
“Is it really you, Athanasius?” Maximus marveled as Athanasius removed his helmet. “I can’t believe it. How?”
“Dominium Dei is an imperial organization, Maximus,” Athanasius said without preamble. “Domitian’s spies have infiltrated the underground Christian movement. He is fanning a war between the church and the state, playing both sides against each other in order to destroy his enemies in the Senate and amass ever more power for himself. We must inform the Senate and confront Domitian publicly.”
Maximus looked shocked, and yet slowly began to nod. “It makes a kind of wild sense. But we need proof, Athanasius, and the support of the Praetorian.”
“I have proof,” Athanasius said, thinking of Marcus in his cell. “But we have little time.”
“I suppose we don’t, Athanasius.” But Maximus sat there on his bed, tapping his foot against the brass frame and bed’s ivory feet. “But how do I know that Domitian hasn’t put you up to this, to save your own skin?”
“What?”
“Going against him as a group would only prove his contention that there is a massive conspiracy. He could wipe out the rest of his enemies in the Senate and the Praetorian Guard, all in one stroke — because you got us, the true conspirators, to expose ourselves.”
“A conspiracy of truth.”
“Of course, Athanasius, of course. But the end would be the same — you dead, me dead, all of us dead, and Domitian triumphant and living long past September 18.”
“But he is triumphant already. What other choice do we have?”
“Only one,” Maximus said. “Dillian!”
Athanasius heard a footstep behind and spun around. The slave Dillian was lunging at him with a sword. Athanasius grabbed his arms, his fists sliding down to his wrists, bending them back until the Syrian released his grip on the sword and it fell with a clank to the travertine floor.
The slave tried to grab it, and Athanasius countered with a knee to his face. He recoiled in pain, his hands reaching for his face, exposing himself. Athanasius whipped out his own sword, and as the Syrian straightened up, plunged his sword into the slave’s chest, driving him back against the wall. The light of life flickered in his dark eyes, and when Athanasius pulled the sword out, Dillian slid to the floor in a pool of blood, dead.
“Your first kill, Athanasius?” said Maximus from behind.
Athanasius felt something on his back and spun around to see old Maximus holding a tiny stick. His mentor had tried to prick him with it, but it had broken on an armor plate. Athanasius grabbed it from Maximus with one hand and shoved the old man back onto his bed with the other.
“Athanasius, please,” Maximus said, his lips bloodied by the blow.
Athanasius sniffed the tip of the broken stick.
Poison.
“Et tu, Maximus?” Athanasius said, dropping the stick to the floor and moving in with his sword.
Maximus smiled as he looked at the corpse of his servant Dillian. “You surprise us all, Athanasius. You really are a butcher, aren’t you?”
Athanasius put the tip of his sword to Maximus’s saggy neck. “And what are you, Maximus? Who are you, friend?”
Maximus nodded as if to say, “I’ll tell you,” and Athanasius pulled back the tip of his sword slightly. Then Maximus wiped his bloody lips with the back of his hand and coughed.
“The Dei are everywhere, Athanasius. They cannot be defeated. You cannot defeat them. In a few short years they will take over the world.”
“Names, Maximus. I want names.”
Suddenly Maximus gagged and went limp, collapsing to the floor.
Athanasius stared into his face. The old man’s eyes were wide — and dead.
Kneeling over the body of his dead mentor, Athanasius noticed the ring on Maximus’s gnarled forefinger. It reminded him of the one on his own hand, the one Marcus had given him.
The finger was already cold when Athanasius slipped the ring off and noticed the tiny hole. He sniffed.
Poison. Just like the stick.
Athanasius could hardly believe it. Maximus had sucked poison out of his ring rather than reveal anything more about Dominium Dei.
What more could there possibly be?
Athanasius then peeled away Maximus’s robe to examine his mentor’s barrel chest. Something had caught his eye during their struggle.
There it was, under the left armpit: a jagged death cross tattooed in black on the pasty white skin. It was a Chi symbol — the mark of an invisible army with legions around the world.
Dominium Dei.
They were indeed everywhere.
A piercing scream filled the air. Athanasius looked up at the slave girl standing in the doorway, peering in. “You killed the senator!”
He heard movement through the walls. The whole house was stirring. Athanasius picked up his helmet. He had to get out of there.
“Silence!” ordered Athanasius, releasing his grip on the robe and slipping Maximus’s ring on the opposite hand of the one with Marcus’s. “This is state business.”
“You are defiling him!” she screamed. Her piercing cry reverberated off the walls like an alarm, and suddenly the siren of a horn blasted outside, alerting the entire hillside.
Athanasius rushed past her as she flattened herself against the wall and ran down the hallway to the front door. Maximus’s carriage was at the gate, but it was too late to reach it now. Already a squad of Urban Cohorts, swords and spears out for attack, were running toward the villa, attracted by the sound of the horn.
Athanasius turned back and ran through the rooms of the house, waving his sword and knocking slaves over. When he reached the back balcony overlooking the old Republic Wall, he leaped off it, landing on the hillside behind the villa and sliding down the slope toward the grim apartment blocks in the vast slums below.
Arrows zoomed past his head as he ran toward the roof of a long apartment block built into the hill.
He was almost there when an arrow struck his helmet, sending him tumbling down and crashing onto the red clay tiles, terrorizing the screaming family in the room below. He rolled off into the rooftop courtyard, found the narrow stone steps and commanded his tired legs to race down six flights. A moment later he burst out of the stairwell and disappeared into the dark alleys of the city’s slums, cursing himself for missing his only escape out of Rome.
X
Athanasius ran on through the tangled streets in the dark, racing past the archways of the booths and shops boarded up and bolted shut for the night. The apartment slums above the tabernae on either side rose up six stories tall. He could easily lose himself in this jumbled maze of alleys until morning, blowing any hope of making his rendezvous with the Ferryman. Even if he reached the Cloaca Maxima beneath the Basilica Julia, he doubted the Ferryman would still be waiting for him. But if he didn’t try, he was dead already.
He looked up for breaks along the seemingly endless ridge of black rooftops for a clear line of sight to the Temple of Jupiter and the Arx atop Capitoline Hill to orient himself. He couldn’t go back the way he came, so he would have to circle around the northern base of the hill to reach the west side of the Forum — through these infernal alleys with their forgotten denizens, the hundreds of thousands of people who were born, lived and died in this cesspool of human misery.
And now he was one of them.
All of a sudden the blood-chilling blare of the First Spear horn thundered across the skies. It was the official signal from the Urban Cohorts headquarters to the roaming gangs of the district that there was a fugitive on the loose, and a reward for his capture, dead or alive. Even the official urbani patrols avoided this graveyard of danger at night.
Almost immediately shouts and torches burst forth from all directions. He heard the crash of pots and cursing and looked over his shoulder to see a gang of four shadowy figures floating toward him like malevolent spirits in their odd, mismatched pieces of old infantry armor. The gruesome sight made him recall one of Juvenal’s few good jokes about life in modern Rome: that only the careless dared venture out after supper without having first made their will.
I am not going to die in this piss pot tonight, Athanasius vowed to himself, breaking into a sprint. Better to go out in a blaze of faux glory in the arena than go face down here in some ditch.
The apartment slums on either side of him closed in like walls, the snaking alley narrowing into a dirt path. Now he was splashing through an open cess trench that reeked with the foul stench of human waste, dumped from the pots of the inhabitants in the insulae above him. The goo caked his aching calves, and it was all he could do to keep his heavy legs moving and not turn his face up toward the windows.
The muck had slowed the ill-clad gangs behind him, however, and he could no longer hear their shouts. But at the end of the alley was a veritable bonfire of thugs at an intersection waiting for him. He couldn’t go back, and he couldn’t move forward. He looked around frantically until he found an open laundry pit between two buildings. It was filled with sanitizing urine.
There was no way around it, he realized. This was his only exit.
He waded through the knee-deep pool, stopping only to untangle soaked garments that wrapped themselves around his legs, like the long tentacles of some sea creature sent to pull him under, and for a moment he entertained the vision of being found face down in the very piss pot he feared. But he made it out the far end of the pool and emerged atop a weed-infested ridge.
There below was Jugarius Street, and on the other side the warehouse district that linked the Forum to the Tiber. The boulevard was filled with carts and slaves of the night. No daytime traffic was allowed in Rome except pedestrians, horses, litters and carrying chairs. Nighttime was for transport carts of all sizes, loading and unloading goods from barges at the port on the Tiber. Like magic, all the stores, stands and markets of Rome would be filled with the treasures of the world by morning. And, with luck, he would be gone with all the garbage from the previous day.
Athanasius slid down the hill to the shoulder of Jugarius Street. He waited for a break in the traffic and then ran across the street and made an immediate left toward the Forum, slipping between two convoys of full wagons. He had just permitted himself to take a breath when the wagon in front of him slowed down and skirted to the right to reveal a line of two-dozen heavily armed urbani coming out through the Arch of Tiberius. They were marching straight toward him, their swords and spears at the ready.
Athanasius slowed down as the unit’s commanding officer, a centurion, saluted as he passed by. Athanasius nodded and looked back as the troops marched on toward the Tiber, no doubt to take up positions on the Sublicius Bridge and close off that exit.
Athanasius passed under the Arch of Tiberius into the Forum, turned right on Sacred Way and hurried along the portico of the Basilica Julia to the end. There, at the intersection at Titus Street, he heard the sound of running water and found the sewer grating at the base of the courthouse’s marble steps.
Quickly glancing both ways to make sure he hadn’t been seen, he pulled at the heavy grating. It lifted to reveal an iron ladder that led down to a lead door. The air was foul, ranker than the alleys of the slums. He lowered himself down a few steps, slid the grating back into place over his head, and then pushed the door open.
It was dark inside, the damp air wrapping around him like a wet blanket. He heard the lapping of water and took another step forward. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his chest as a voice said, “Hands up.”
Athanasius squinted in the dark, and a moment later his eyes had adjusted enough for him to barely make out a short but muscular young man in a tunic pointing a crossbow at him. Beyond him a small boat bobbed in the water against the stone ledge inside the great tunnel. “Ferryman, is that you?”
“Chiron?” The Ferryman lowered his crossbow.
Athanasius then saw the bodies of two auxiliary urbani on the stone ledge, both with arrows in their chests. “You know where we’re going?”
“Out the drain to the Tiber, then
down to Ostia and your ship, the Pegasus. Pier 34.”
Athanasius nodded. This was more than Marcus had told him. “They’re locking down the city topside. Units are moving into position at the Sublicius, where the sewer lets out into the river.”
“Then we’ll have to beat them,” the Ferryman said as he launched them off down the tunnel.
The underground river of filth was a good fifteen feet across under the semicircular arch of the vaulted stone roof. And the current was faster than he expected, powered as it was by the confluence of the city’s eleven great aqueducts flowing into this section at once. It all came together here, this churning cesspool of waste being pushed out to the river.
“Hold on,” the Ferryman said as they picked up speed and shot through the dark.
The tunnel began dropping the closer they got to the outlet, the current churning with such force that they were careening into all kinds of debris and against the stone walls and had to use paddles as bumpers. Several stadia ahead Athanasius could see the half-dome light of the end of the tunnel, the moonlit Tiber beyond. They crashed through the open grating gates and were suddenly into the river, paddling frantically to avoid the wakes of the big barges passing under the towering arches of the Sublicius Bridge.
Athanasius looked back in time to see the Urban Cohort units come to a halt atop the bridge. Archers jumped out and began to take their positions, but by then they were long gone down the river and into the night fog.
“The Lord is with you, Athanasius,” said the Ferryman as he maneuvered into the downriver traffic of empty barges to Ostia, doing his best to keep their little boat from getting crushed between them in the dark.
Athanasius reached behind his back and felt for his knife. “So you know who I am?”
“My name is Stephanus. I’m the servant of Flavius Clemens, whose life was cut short by the antichrist Domitian who wants you dead too.”
Athanasius eyed him. “Then you must know I cannot be Chiron, and that Clemens could not possibly have named me in his confession.”
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