Wrath of Rome dd-2

by Thomas Greanias

  “I told you, the caves are where the Dei gets its flesh to feed the Games,” she explained. “Masked men dressed like the Minotaur of Greek mythology make raids to grab young girls and men and terrify the population. The Christians think they are armed bands of local gypsies. But they are Dei. They drug the men and women with opium, and bring them to the port cities, the biggest of which is Ephesus. The women become whores, the men mostly slaves or gladiators, and are shipped out to the far corners of the empire, never to return.”

  More myths and mysteries, he thought. Each seemed to reveal yet another when it came to Dominium Dei. He had been led to believe that the Dei was an imperial organization. But Cleo was describing something else, something more like a trade organization based on commerce, not politics. “So the Dei sells opium and flesh for money?”

  “No, secrets. They use their sex clubs and ships like this: The Dei employ young boys and girls to have sex with customers and blackmail them. The Christians are the easiest marks and make no trouble. Bishops who come to Ephesus for church conferences, for example, are often lured into compromise and then, once under the control of the Dei, are sent back to their provincial churches.”

  “None resist?” Athanasius asked.

  “No,” she said. “I tell my own girls that God has given them free wills. The only opium they use is for the pleasure of their guests. The ones who are Christians, they are ashamed to go back to their hometowns and families. The few who have are shunned and come back to me. Only one girl, a very young girl who was terribly mistreated, went back to the caves to warn the others and never came back. I heard she was alive, but that was months ago. Today, God knows.”

  “Why don’t you resist?”

  “I do,” she said. “I stay employed by the Dei in order to help the real Church and men like John—and my girls. I cannot choose their life for them. But I can do my best to keep them safe as much as depends on me.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Two reasons,” she said. “The first is that you said something about the Dei being an imperial organization. Perhaps it is. But in Asia Minor it is very much associated with the Church.”

  “Why don’t the bishops denounce it?”

  “They do,” Cleo said. “That is, they denounce murderous acts like the slaying of the astrologer Caelus, despite their belief that astrology is of the devil. But they don’t know about everything else the Dei does. They don’t even know that their prime benefactors are members of the Dei, because their society in the Church goes by a different name than it does in public.”

  “What name is that?”

  “The Lord’s Vineyard. It’s a fellowship of tradesmen and commercial businessmen.”

  “And the Lord’s Vineyard and the Dei are one and the same?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think?”

  “I know that the owner of this ship is a member of the Dei by the code name Poseidon. He is the Dei chief in Ephesus. I also believe he is a member of the church there, and a representative of the Lord’s Vineyard. His daughter goes by the name Urania and runs a honey trap in Ephesus called the Club Urania, using her girls to nab men who go there. Her father then ships them off to Rome along with more girls and opium. If you find him, he might be able to lead you to the head of the Dei itself in Asia Minor.”

  “What’s his real name?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “One of my girls claimed to have seen his face during a church communion. But before she could give us his name, she disappeared.”

  Athanasius nodded. “What is the second reason you are telling me this?”

  “I was not always this way, and neither were my girls,” she answered. “I want you to remember this, to remind the church leaders, if you live long enough to meet them. Now, rest up. You’ll need it.”

  And with that warning, Cleo rose to her feet and left him alone in her cabin. As soon as the door shut behind her, Athanasius fell fast asleep.

  VII

  When Athanasius disembarked from his tether in the harbor of Ephesus, he looked like a new man. His hair had been soaked in brilliantine and carefully cropped like a Roman nobleman’s by Cleo’s girls back on the Sea Nymph, now on its way to Alexandria. The papers he had forged himself stated that his name was Clement. Amazing how different he looked with so little effort and free of the weight of a tribune’s armor. But then, as he discovered so often in the theater, a little was often all it took.

  The first advertisement etched into the pavement that Athanasius saw upon his arrival was for the Club Urania that Cleo had warned him about. He read several more as he walked along, head down, unwilling to look up for fear of being recognized by any of the Roman troops on the docks who may have let off from the Pegasus anchored offshore. Captain Andros had beat the Sea Nymph to Ephesus, and Athanasius wanted no interruptions between the dock and the city’s library where he was to make the drop and connect with John’s man in Ephesus.

  The bustling city of Ephesus was almost half as big as Rome—more than 500,000 citizens—and was traditionally Greek, feeling more like home to Athanasius than the exotic “gateway to the East” it was to Roman visitors. Many came to see the city’s famed Temple of Artemis, the largest building in the world and more than six hundred years old, and its many-breasted statue of the Lady of Ephesus that beckoned every sailor who stepped ashore.

  Built on the slopes of Pion Hill, Ephesus served as the commercial capital of the Asian provinces. The roads were paved with marble and the colonnaded shopping streets with fine mosaics. Sloping up the hill to the grand villas overlooking the city was Curettes Way, named after the priests of the city who led the regular processions and festivals to honor Domitian. For a city dominated by Greek ethnicity, Ephesus took great pride as a steward of Roman religion and thus had a history of clubbing Christians, starting when the apostle Paul spoke in the theater decades ago.

  Athanasius had been here several times before, mostly to launch various performances and sign off on the merchandise from the sleazy local idolmaker Supremus. He had also consulted on the design of the grand new library that had been proposed for the city by Julius Celsus Polemaenus, a local Greek who had become quite rich in Rome. The current library to which he was headed was small and only a single story. By financing a three-story edifice, Celsus was angling to win the governorship of Asia from Domitian in the near future. Athanasius had always considered the Celsus family sellouts for so easily embracing Rome and its religion and yet using their Greek heritage to win commercial and political advantage in their home province.

  As he walked from the harbor up past the city’s great bathhouses, Athanasius realized he couldn’t fight the temptation to stop by the city’s other great attraction—its 44,000-seat amphitheater, the largest in the world—if only to see if his Oedipus Sex comedy was still playing. So he marched up Marble Street to find out, passing the library on the way—and spotting a wine shop and tavern across from the entrance that he would be sure to return to after dropping off the letter.

  Up at the theater, there was a crowd milling about, as the stage served the public as a forum by day if there were no performances or rehearsals underway.

  A bad omen for him, he thought.

  He stopped a stranger who was walking away from a conversation to ask, “Anything playing tonight? I saw no signs at the entrance.”

  “Nothing right now. Rome canceled Oedipus Sex along with its playwright Athanasius of Athens. It’s too bad. I really liked the Greek rascal.”

  “So did I,” Athanasius replied, and turned away.

  So word of my demise has reached Ephesus, he thought. Perhaps that was a good thing. The general population wouldn’t be apt to recognize him if they didn’t expect to see him, even if the Romans were looking for him. The mind was funny that way with the eyes. He would need that luck now at the library.

  • • •

  Retracing his steps down Marble Way, Athanasius approached the city library with cau
tion. It was a small but deep single-story building squashed between two larger ones. It had seen better days, and Athanasius assumed few denarii were going toward its upkeep what with the grand new library being planned, complete with a two-tiered façade and three levels of niches. He walked up three short steps and passed between the pair of Ionic columns flanking the entrance.

  Inside was a large rectangular hall that faced east toward the morning sun. There were windows just below the vaulted ceiling to allow natural light, along with the central square oculus in the flat ceiling. The central apse was framed by a large arch at the far wall, and inside the apse stood a statue of Athena, the goddess of truth. Along the other three sides were rectangular recesses that held shelves for the nearly 4,000 scrolls.

  He was greeted by one of two unarmed guards who watched for theft from patrons on the way out and was directed toward the main marble counter by the statue of Athena.

  Like other libraries around the empire, Athanasius knew that this one existed for the benefit of students and traveling Romans. As such they tended to house collections of local documents of interest. So his request to see the memoir of Mucianus and his travels throughout Asia shouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

  He glanced around at various patrons as he walked toward the counter, curious to know if one of them was the man who would pick up his letter the moment he had returned the volume he was about to check out. Whoever it was would say a lot about Timothy and his selection of associates. If what Cleo said was true, then the spy would have to be somebody high enough in the church. John or Timothy would know his identity, no doubt. Athanasius had no clue, and yet he was about to reveal himself to this agent, and this made him most uncomfortable. For in so doing, he might be revealing himself to spies from Rome or the Dei or both, if they were watching John’s men.

  At the counter was a civilized, older librarian whom Athanasius vaguely recognized. He prayed to Jupiter and Jesus both that the patrician didn’t recognize him, and thanked the gods that he hardly ever spent time in libraries while supervising his performances abroad.

  “And how can I help you, sir?” the senior librarian asked in a professional but almost too loud voice that spoke volumes about the gravitas that the library sought to project about itself.

  “I’m traveling through Anatolia and was told I should check out a memoir by a former governor if I want to do some sightseeing. It’s a travelogue by Gaius Mucius Mucianus.”

  “Ah, yes. Miracles in Asia Minor. If you believe in that sort of thing.”

  Athanasius said nothing about the editorial comment. “You have it then?”

  “But, of course,” the librarian said, taking a small leather strip from his counter. “It’s in a private shelf in back only because we need to reserve as much space as possible on the public stacks for more popular works. Someday, when the new library goes up, we’ll have room to hold 12,000 scrolls. Even then we’d fit into the smallest corner of the Temple of Artemis. Excuse me.”

  He disappeared for a moment, and Athanasius looked around, catching in just the twinkling of an eye the stare of a man at a table, who quickly buried himself back again in his scroll. Athanasius pretended not to notice.

  Friend or foe? he wondered, and the librarian returned without the leather strip nor any volumes.

  “Is there a problem?” Athanasius asked.

  “Not at all,” the librarian said. “One of our staff is setting them out for you at that table over there. There are a good 12 volumes, you know.”

  Athanasius looked over at the corner of the room nearest the statue of Athena, where a scrawny young man dropped each volume like a heavy brick, only drawing even more attention than Athanasius had already.

  “Twelve volumes, you say?” Athanasius asked. John had said there were only eleven, Athanasius recalled. He supposed it didn’t matter, as he was only to concern himself with volume eight. “I might have to come back tomorrow and possibly the day after just to get through half of them.”

  “That’s usually the case, sir,” the librarian said with a knowing look. “Please sit down and make yourself comfortable. Take all the time you need.”

  “Certainly,” said Athanasius, and made his way over to the table in back by Athena, aware of curious glances. He sat down and cracked open the first volume.

  The scrawny librarian worked silently nearby, rearranging stacks of scrolls and books. Every now and then he glanced over as Athanasius picked up one volume and then another, making notes on his own tablet like a traveler would to mark highlights for his journey. The volumes were arranged geographically, with sections inside further broken down to cities within the provinces that Mucianus detailed, each with a story of some miraculous spring, fish, fruit or even rock that was unnaturally large or boasted healing properties or some such.

  When he came to the seventh volume, he actually picked up the eighth volume, looking through it like he did the others. This one had a section in back on Cappadocia and its underground cities. Interesting, he thought, and surreptitiously slipped his letter into the section and closed the volume.

  He made quick work of two more volumes before leaving them all on the table and returning to the librarian at the counter.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” the librarian asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “I don’t know,” Athanasius said. “There are so many volumes. As you suggested, I’ll probably have to come back tomorrow to finish the rest.”

  “But, of course,” the librarian said. “I’ll have them put in back now, and when you return we’ll bring them out for you again.”

  “Thank you,” said Athanasius.

  On his way out he passed the man who had glanced at him and was still buried in the single scroll that had occupied him during Athanasius’s entire visit.

  The Artemis Wine Bar was just across the street from the library. It was an open-fronted building with outdoor dining under its wide canopy. Athanasius sat down on a straw chair at one of the small, round tables, ordered a cup of the Cappadocian special, and watched the entrance of the library.

  It was almost an hour of observing patrons enter and exit the library before Athanasius saw him: the man who had been glancing at him when he first went inside. Now he was walking quickly away with his hands stuffed in the folds of his tunic, his head looking this way and that. Then a hand came out of a fold for a moment, red with the dye that Cleo had given him to pen the bogus letter he left behind. Now he knew whom the local church leaders in Ephesus had sent for the pickup, and he could follow him to John’s man and avoid wasting time and risking detection at some inn overnight.

  He left a tip on the table and quickly walked out of the bar onto the street and started to follow the man with the red hands. He looked like Jesus with the nail marks in his hands, Athanasius thought as he blinked in the harsh glare of the noonday sun. The light was bouncing off the whitewashed walls and surfaces of the streets. For a moment he feared he had lost the man but then saw him glancing back his way, spotting him, then starting to run.

  Athanasius ran after him, trying not to cause any more of a scene, until he almost fell upon him at a corner, where the man suddenly stopped and turned.

  “Relax,” Athanasius told him, grabbing him at the shoulders. “Let’s just walk along to whomever you are walking along to and everything will—”

  Before Athanasius could finish his sentence, he heard a whoosh from overhead, and an arrow suddenly struck the man in the chest and he cried out. Athanasius let go, and the man fell to the street, dead.

  Athanasius looked over his shoulder in time to see a Roman with a shield strapped to his back tackle him to the ground. A rain of arrows began to fall, bouncing off the shield—or the Roman.

  “You follow me if you want to live, Chiron,” the Roman said gruffly, pulling him up to his feet.

  Athanasius got up and over the Roman’s head saw the archers on the rooftops. He stared. There on the roof was none other than the monster who had murdered
his mother and niece back in Corinth! The scar down his face was unmistakable, and so was the recognition in his eyes as he reloaded.

  “Quick!” shouted the Roman who tackled him, and now Athanasius saw armored chariots barreling down the street from both directions. “We cut through to the alley!”

  Athanasius felt the Roman shove him into a rug shop, pushing him past the various rolls and stacks of carpets. The rumble of boots and chariots stopped outside.

  “This way,” he said, pushing Athanasius out back into the alley.

  There was a grating in the pavement, garbage strewn everywhere. The Roman pulled up the grating and barked, “Jump!”

  Athanasius peered into the dark. “How far down?”

  “Far enough.”

  Athanasius could hear the shouts, “The alley!”

  They threw themselves into the open sewer and held onto the stone rim with their fingers. The Roman had just enough time to reach out with a free hand to pull the grating back over them before a legion of troops crashed out the back door of the rug shop into the alley and fanned out.

  Hanging onto the grating by his fingertips, Athanasius looked over at the Roman and suddenly saw something between his breastplate and shoulder straps—the tattoo of the Dei stamped under his right arm.

  “Who are you?” he said as the rumble of chariots came barreling down the alley above.

  “My name is Virtus,” the Dei man said as his legs swung up and kicked Athanasius in the stomach, causing him to lose his grip and plunge into the darkness below until he hit the bottom and blacked out.

  VIII

  When Athanasius opened his eyes, he found himself lying in a dank cell. Hunched over him was the man who had knocked him out. He remembered the attack on the streets above: the confrontation with the man with the stained hands, the rain of arrows from Roman snipers on the rooftops, the escape with the help of this man into these tunnels, and the Dei tattoo under his arm.

  “Where am I?” Athanasius asked, sitting up.