by Eric Mayer
It had become as dark as night. In a flash of lightning he saw a monstrous bull charging at him, eyes blazing, flanks heaving. No, it was only the forum’s bronze statue animated by intermittent lightning.
He must get out of the storm.
There was the Church of Saint Minias. He knew it well. Basilio’s guards wouldn’t let a beggar inside but there were outbuildings close behind it.
He came to a long shed, half brick, half timber, whose door hung off its hinges. It might have been a stable decades ago. Paulus went in and slumped down against a wall, thoroughly soaked and miserable.
From where he sat he could see the back of the church. Saint Minias, Basilio’s church.
Basilio, who fancied himself the Holy Father.
Paulus gave a bitter laugh as the rumbling in his empty stomach momentarily distracted him from the thunder outside. To think not so long ago he had battled Basilio for the best place on the church steps.
Basilio had always been a cunning bastard. An Olympian amongst beggars. No matter how piteously Paulus moaned, no matter how pathetically and feebly he shook his cup, no matter that he invented odysseys of woe that would’ve made Homer proud—still, most people brushed past without a glance, only an occasional passerby flinging a coin distractedly in his direction.
It was the common lot of beggars.
But for Basilio aristocrats halted in their tracks, heeded his message, filled his cup with silver, or so it seemed to Paulus in his envious memory. Why, Basilio even managed to bring tears to the eyes of ladies in fine silks.
And that was before his humors became deranged and he started spouting theology. Surely he was deranged, rambling on about everyone being the Lord. Paulus certainly didn’t feel like the Lord. If he were, he’d be dining on roast duck with the emperor instead of crouching in a gutter gnawing off the edible parts of a half-rotted turnip.
And that was on a good day.
Then again, perhaps Basilio hadn’t been mad because look at him now, ensconced in his own warm, dry church while Paulus sat in a shed with water running down the walls.
The awareness of running water made him jump up. He realized his shelter had begun to leak.
He paced around until he found a trapdoor in the floor. Steps led to a basement, much larger than the shed above. Faint light and quantities of water came in through cracks in the ceiling. He made his way through an archway and then along a corridor which suddenly plunged downwards.
He was freezing now. Though he was out of the wind, the air itself felt icy. He had passed through the last dim shaft of light some way back and had to feel his way along.
Eventually he came to a gap in a crumbling brick wall.
Paulus was curious. It was strange how curiosity could temporarily override the desire for food and shelter. He leaned his head into the gap and saw, at a distance, a bobbing light. A torch?
He stepped carefully through the gap and crept towards the light.
As his eyes adjusted he could tell he was in a narrow corridor. The hand he kept on the wall as he advanced felt rough stone. Drawing nearer to the light he could make out plaques bearing engraved names set into the wall.
So he was in the catacombs.
Paulus’ heart leapt. He wasn’t ready to shelter with the dead.
He pivoted to go back the way he’d come but his entryway was swallowed up in darkness.
Still, he could simply go straight back.
He hadn’t turned a corner.
Had he?
The light ahead winked out.
A giant fist of darkness closed around him.
“Help me! Where are you? Don’t leave me!” Paulus was shocked when he realized he was shouting aloud and not just in his own mind.
The light reappeared, most likely from around a corner, and floated closer.
Paulus backed away. He should never have drawn attention to himself. He should have just gone back the way he’d come. Who or what would be down here walking in the catacombs anyway? Even if it were just another beggar, Paulus was an elderly man with little chance of defending himself were it to become necessary.
He could discern a shapeless figure carrying a torch.
He couldn’t decide whether to remain still and hope it went away or turn and flee.
The figure was hooded, and bent over. It moved forward unnaturally, like a shade. Paulus remembered voices in the street crying that the gates of Hell had opened.
And down here was closer to Hell.
Paulus tried to see the apparition’s face but there was nothing within the hood but shadow.
The figure raised a hand and pointed at him.
Its voice was a faint, far off sigh. “Doom,” it said. “Doom.”
Rain sluiced down the multi-paned windows of the sacristy of the Church of Saint Minias. Thick walls muffled the booming thunder and the aged churchman felt safe and warm. How often had he fled the church steps in search of shelter at the onslaught of storms like this? In memory he could almost feel the cold rain soaking through his clothes straight into his bones and he could almost feel sorry for the wretched beggars who were now suffering the same misery.
Almost, because they had possessed the same chance to elevate themselves as he had, but they had failed by continuing to worship mammon, living for those bits of metal bearing the emperor’s face. Out on the streets did they beseech passersby to give up sin and debauchery, to give their lives to the Lord? No, all they asked for was money. It was the work of the Devil.
The work of the Lord, as Basilio had learned, was more pleasurable and it paid better. It was true what Scripture said, that if you gave to Him, He would open Heaven and pour out blessings for you. And Basilio was sure that a dry church to live in and plenty of food and guards to keep him secure were only the beginning.
He was beginning to weave a comfortable sermon out of these rosy musings when there was a terrible pounding and his door burst open.
Several workers stampeded in, dirty and not very fragrant.
“What is this intrusion?” Basilio demanded.
One of them, a man with straggly long hair even dirtier than the rest, pushed to the front of the mob and raised his fist.
Basilio cowered away but the fellow brought his fist down into the palm of his other hand with a sound like a thunderclap. “We’re done here, Your Holiness. We come for our pay. None of us is going into them catacombs again. The dead walk there.”
“Let’s not be hasty! Have you seen that hooded figure again?”
“That we have.”
His companions muttered assent, shaking picks.
“I’m sure an extra coin in your next payments will allay your fears.” Basilio had no hesitation offering more since he had no idea where their next allotment was coming from anyway.
“Not this time, Your Holiness.”
“But you’ve seen this figure before, or at least thought you saw something,” Basilio pointed out.
“What I saw was a shade, floating about. Silent. Escaped out of its tomb,” said one man.
“A faceless demon,” added another.
“It don’t want us prying around down there,” said the spokesman. “Just give us what we earned. We’re not coming back!”
Lightning flickered, casting a lurid light into the room.
“Heaven hears your blasphemy,” Basilio declared. “As if there could be demons anywhere near a church, let alone in a sacred burial place. And why would you fear this spirit in any case? Has it ever harmed you?”
“It hasn’t hurt any of us before, your Holiness. But this time it tried to kill a man!”
“A beggar, Holiness. We found him shaking with terror. He said the demon came after him, shouting ‘doom’. What else could it mean except it was trying to kill him?”
The downpour continued, turning streets into st
reams, and forums into lakes. Rain hissed against the pavement and gurgled in the gutters. John had a long wet walk home, warmed on the inside by wine, chilled on the outside. He ordered Viteric to return to the barracks.
On arriving home he expected Eutuchyus to be waiting with dry clothes but the steward was nowhere to be seen. Instead Clementia greeted him, red-cheeked and clothed in a thin tunica. “I’ve just had a hot bath. You should too. Get the cold of your bones.”
“All I need are dry clothes. Where is Eutuchyus?”
“He went to the market before the storm. He’s probably taken refuge from the rain somewhere so he doesn’t melt.” She giggled.
John went to his room and changed.
When he emerged he found Clementia had put cheese, bread, and wine on the dining room table. “I’ve brought something for us to eat since Maxima won’t be able to cook until Eutuchyus gets back.”
John sat and eyed the wine dubiously. The relative warmth of the house was making him sleepy. Should he drink more than he already had?
Clementia slid nearer, picked up a piece of cheese and moved it toward his mouth. He intercepted her hand, removed the fragment, and took a bite.
It occurred to him to mention the people on Felix’s parchment. He’d been reciting the list all day, from memory. “Are any of them familiar?”
“The general in charge of the garrison here is Diogenes, of course. Aside from that, I have no idea.”
“Possibly aristocrats who might have left the city?”
“None of them are familiar names.”
He expected her to wonder why he was questioning her but she didn’t seem curious. Instead, she squeezed next to him, her hip touching his. “I’m beginning to get chilly,” she murmured, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Was General Felix able to discover news of your family?”
“No, although he kept his promise and listened out for it. You could be my ears now, if you would only be so kind as he was.”
John had no desire to replace Felix as her ears or in any other capacity. “Your father was a senator, a well-known man. I would not lose heart. Someone somewhere will know what has become of him.”
Clementia made her lips into an exaggerated pout which John pretended not to notice. “If only Justinian had left Italy alone my father would still be serving in the senate. My family would be safe and comfortable. We weren’t the only ones Justinian’s war destroyed. It destroyed most of the Romans in Italy.”
“I would argue the Goths had something to do with it,” John said gently.
“When Theodoric was king of the Goths we all prospered. He respected the emperor and admired traditional Roman ways.”
“Did he? Surely you weren’t even alive when he ruled?”
“I remember his daughter, Queen Amalasuntha. She loved Roman traditions as much as her father did.”
“And it was only after she was assassinated that Justinian invaded Rome to save the population,” John pointed out, without bothering to outline the vastly complex political situation involved.
Clementia smiled wearily. “I’m certain there was more to it than that. Anyway, do you suppose the Goths are all barbarians? Surely they would not have chosen to dismantle civilization. But when the war started…well, what is war but savagery and destruction? And now look what fourteen years of war have left us.”
From his vantage point in the dining room there wasn’t much for John to see, aside from a drenched, overgrown garden or the ambitious young lady at his side turning a wistful gaze on him.
He decided to look at the garden.
Chapter Twenty-two
Four sturdy guards carried a litter bearing a corpse down the steps of the Church of Saint Minias behind Basilio’s larger, canopied litter. Martyrus and several laborers costumed in clerical garments followed, chanting discordantly. The few who had attended the service just concluded—many of them the same few who attended the services Basilio held every morning—trailed behind.
The procession stopped a short distance from the church, in full view of those leaving Circus Maximus and anyone passing through the Forum of the Bull. The spectacle, if it could be called that, was designed to draw a crowd but the heavens were not cooperating. Chilly winds drove dark clouds across an angry sky and a cold drizzle saturated the air.
Undaunted, Basilio disembarked from his litter and commenced preaching. “We come here today to send a part of God back to Himself.”
On cue, guards and laborers sang hymns with all their might, as if their wages depended on it, which they did.
“It saddens me—it saddens the Lord—to see how small our congregation has become,” Basilio went on, his voice swallowed up in the windy emptiness of the forum. “And even the faithful have not given according to their means. Woe unto them, I say. Woe unto you who fear the Goths outside the gates but fail to take precautions against the Devil who lurks inside. For, as is said in the Bible, what good are watchmen in the towers when evil stalks the city streets?”
As Basilio continued, workers poured oil on the pile of kindling assembled earlier and when that was done emptied their jugs over the shrouded corpse they then set atop the pile.
Basilio knew that nothing got the attention of Romans more than a good fire.
Except perhaps a mob.
In fact, a small crowd had begun to gather, drawn by the oration, the odd procession, and the intriguing woodpile. And the more who gathered, the more were drawn to the gathering.
Encouraged, Basilio preached on, despite the steadily increasing rain. “Yes, verily I say, evil! Evil right here in Rome! See here a man struck down by demons, practically beneath the church itself. A church fallen into disrepair for lack of what, after all, is only Caesar’s, a worldly thing, not to be valued nor hoarded. Woe to you who value gold more than good. Woe to you who spend more time in taverns than in church. If Saint Minias had been full of the faithful this poor wretch would still be alive. The foul fiend that did the deed would have heard the songs and prayers and fled in terror. And had the church been in a good state of repair what hole, what crack, what chink could Satan’s minion have crawled in through?”
Basilio thought it would not be politic to mention demons prowling through a Christian burial place, so he left the catacombs out of it, a slight untruth in the service of God’s greater good. As the crowd swelled he gave a lengthy, impassioned homily on Christian charity, particularly as it regarded charity towards the church. His unpaid workers supplied hearty amens.
Then a man near the back of the throng shouted, “You’re a fraud! Why should we give money to you?”
“The real Holy Father is in Constantinople,” someone else cried out.
“Blasphemer!”
“Anti-Christ!”
A ragged woman burst out from the front of the crowd and screamed in Basilio’s face. “Where is the bread? My children are hungry!”
“Quick, quick,” Basilio admonished his guards. “Get the pyre going!”
It was the smoke that brought John to the Forum of the Bull. Despite the drizzle, he had gone out to walk without any destination, merely to think. Viteric had not arrived at the house as early as usual, leaving him with the solitude he craved when he pondered difficult problems.
He walked up and down the puddled streets, passing by magnificent monuments, baths, and statues, seeing none of them. Why would Felix be carrying a list of people who were all unknown to any of his friends or anyone he dealt with? If they were that important to Felix, surely someone he knew should have recognized at least one.
Unless they were associates he dared not reveal to others, Goth sympathizers perhaps, or opponents of General Diogenes. But that was supposing everyone who had denied any knowledge to John had been truthful, which was almost certainly not the case.
The piercing cries of gulls made him look to the sky and he spotted a column
of rising smoke.
He went in that direction. Before he reached the forum he could hear a roar like a storm-driven sea in which there could be discerned angry shouts and yells of pain.
The sound of a riot.
Arriving on the scene, John saw a mob surging this way and that between the Church of Saint Minias and the Circus Maximus. Flanked by guards, Basilio stood in front of a burning pyre, waving his arms, apparently imploring the crowd, his words lost in the rising level of noise. Men cursed and shook their fists, women clutching children to their breasts screamed and wept, babies wailed. On the edges of the tumult one or two bloodied bodies lay unheeded.
There was the sound of breaking glass as stones shattered church windows. Basilio’s guards shuffled around uncertainly, as if they wanted to run, trying to prevent the crowd from pushing both them and Basilio into the flames.
The mob grew angrier. A boy attempted to climb through a broken window but was thrown back into the milling mass of enraged faces, disappearing from sight under their feet. A crimson-faced man danced around as if in a fit, finally fell down, and was ignored.
John stooped to help one of the injured who had fought her way from the swirling mass and fallen at his feet. He asked her what had caused the escalating unrest to break out.
Wiping her gaunt, bloody face she leaned on him, gasping, and managed to choke out “We heard rumors there was a funeral and bread would be given out afterwards. But there wasn’t any.”
“Ignore her,” cawed an elderly woman at John’s shoulder. “We were all enraged by the blasphemy. We’re going to see that fraud burn in his own unholy fire!”
She was gone before John could respond. The younger woman burst into tears and clutched John’s tunic. “Oh, sir, what shall I do? I’m hungry and I’m afraid of being killed.”
“Order will be restored,” John assured her, raising his voice to be heard above the hubbub.
A peal of thunder echoed overhead and raindrops spattered the rioters.
John drew the sword he had taken to keeping with him at all times and forced his way toward the pyre where Basilio and his guards cowered.