Death at Pergamum Read online

  Death at Pergamum/A Getorius and Arcadia Mystery

  Copyright © 2013 Albert Noyer. All rights reserved under International and Pan- American Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without written permission from the author. All rights, including electronic, are reserved by the author and publisher.

  Novels by Albert Noyer

  The Saint's Day Deaths (2000)

  The Secundus Papyrus, A Getorius & Arcadia Mystery (2003)

  The Cybelene Conspiracy, A Getorius & Arcadia Mystery (2005)

  The Ghosts of Glorieta, A Fr. Jake Mystery (2011)

  One for the Money, Two for the Sluice, A Fr. Jake Mystery (2013)

  Death at Pergamum, A Getorius & Arcadia Mystery (2013) KINDLE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales or actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design and maps by Albert Noyer

  Cover graphic production by Kathleen H. Edwards

  Cover Image, Last Judgment, Baptistery, Florence. Erich Lessing Images

  Death at Pergamum/A Getorius and Arcadia Mystery

  The priest-physician at a pagan healing shrine is opposed by a woman presbytera, who stages a bizarre resurrection ritual on the "Throne of Satan" to discredit him.

  October A.D. 440: Surgeon Getorius Asterius and Arcadia arrive at Constantinople with their slave, Brisios, and a guide, Herakles. Caught in a bread riot, they flee aboard a galley of ill patients sailing to the Asklepion, an extensive pagan healing center at Pergamum. There Priest-physician Apollonios, an enemy of Christian minister, Epiphania, has been accused of burning her church. Presumed dead, the woman is hiding in an abandoned Egyptian temple and planning a bizarre resurrection ritual to discredit Apollonios. When abusive patient Basina Bobo drowns in a therapeutic mud pool, her meek husband, Flavius, and slave-lover, Hermias, are missing. Getorius assumes the slave killed his masters, but after his mutilated body is found, Flavius is suspected. He surprises Epiphania in the temple, rants against all women, and stabs her in the abdomen. Mortally wounded, she insists on being carried to the "Throne of Satan" on the ancient acropolis, for the Egypto-Christian ritual. When she dies there, fanatical monks incite spectators into destroying the Asklepion. Herakles disappears, stranding the couple. Brisios, freed in a manumission ceremony, finds his misplaced love is a heart-breaking blunder marring his new-found liberty.

  A harrowing climax, involving Getorius, Brisios, Herakles, Apollonios, his assistant, Aristides, and Aelia Pulcheria, sister of the Eastern Emperor, Theodosius II, occurs in the pillaged temple of the god Asklepios, where a traitorous plot is thwarted.

  With thanks to the writing group:

  Jennifer, Carolyn, Roy, Sonni, Robert

  and

  Leslie S.B. MacCoull Ph.D.

  Society for Coptic Archeology (North America)

  "To the angel of the assembly at Pergamum write: 'These are the things that he says who has the sharp two-edged sword: 'I know where you dwell, that is, where the throne of Satan is; and yet you keep holding fast my name, and you did not deny your faith in me even in the days of my witness, Antipas, the faithful one, who was killed by your side, where Satan dwells.

  'Therefore repent. If you do not, I am coming to you quickly, and will war on them with the long sword of my mouth'."

  Revelation 2: 12-13; 16.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Getorius Asterius, Surgeon from Ravenna

  Arcadia Valeriana Asteria, Wife of Getorius

  Brisios, The Asterius' slave

  Herakles, Thracian guide to Constantinople

  Gaius Tranquillus, Presbyter from Ravenna

  Maria Anicia Aemiliana, Widow from Ravenna

  Melodia Cloelia Vibulana, Widow from Ravenna

  Flavius and Basina Bobo, Husband and wife from Arminum

  Hermias, The Bobos' slave

  Spurius Fuscus, Retired builder from Rome

  *Aelia Pulcheria Augusta, Sister of Eastern

  Emperor Theodosius II

  Ignatia of Antioch, Episkopa (Bishop) of Trapezus

  Apollonios of Pergamum, Physician at the Asklepion

  Aristides, Priest assistant to Apollonios

  Epiphania, Woman presbytera at Pergamum

  Lydia, A Deaconess

  Zoë, A Freedwoman

  * Historical person

  GLOSSARY OF PLACES MENTIONED

  ITALY

  Ravenna―Ravenna

  Arminum―Rimini

  ALBANIA

  Dyrrhachium―Dürres

  GREECE

  Thessalonika―Salonika

  Naupaktos―healing site

  Apollonia―ruins east of Salonika

  Epidauros―healing site

  Amphipolis―port ruins east of Apollonia

  Athens―Athens

  Thasos, Lemnos, Lesbos, Mytilene―Aegean islands

  TURKEY

  Herakleia―Marmaraereglisi

  Novum Ilium―ruins of Troy

  Constantinople―Istanbul

  Alexandria Troas―port near Ilium

  Propontis―Sea of Marmara

  Euxine Sea―Black Sea

  Prokonnesos―Marmara Island

  Hellespont―Dardanelles Strait

  Pergamum―Bergama

  Smyrna―Izmir

  Abydos―Canakkale

  Trapezus―Trabzon

  CONTENTS

  MAPS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER I

  In a greenish pre-dawn murk, myriad points of orange light dotted a dark warren of stone buildings in the Thracian port of Hera kleia. Roman Surgeon Getorius Asterius, thought the speckled mass resembled a flow of lava spilling down the steep promontory and into the harbor itself. I recall the same effect in that mosaic of Mount Aetna on a palace wall at Ravenna.

  Getorius slipped an arm around his sleeping wife, Arcadia. Huddled in capes against an October morning chill, both travelers were in a cart, perched uncomfortably on their baggage. Their slave, Brisios, dozed against one side of the two-wheel conveyance. As the surgeon was jostled down the road to the harbor docks, overtired after spending another restless night in a state-sponsored inn, he nevertheless felt an abrupt surge of anticipation: soon they would board a galley on the last leg of an exhausting sea and land journey from Ravenna to Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.

  Thinking back on some three weeks of travel, Getorius realized that the voyage had gone relatively well. As palace physician to Empress Mother Galla Placidia, he had her authorization to stay at imperial post stations and inns. The naval commander at Classis had arranged passage across the Adriatic Sea by war trireme to the port of Dyrrhachium on the Macedonian coast. Sailing south with the Adriatic current, an
d scheduling rowing exercises in which the crew briefly accelerated to a ramming speed of fourteen knots, the crossing had taken less than three days.

  There was a minor delay at Dyrrhachium, which lay in the Eastern Empire of Theodosius II. Customs officials had balked at letting a war galley from the Western Empire dock without permission from the Fleet Prefect, who was away at Constantinople. A sensible harbormaster resolved the issue by sending out a skiff to bring the Latin travelers ashore.

  From Dyrrhachium the couple had taken a mule-drawn coach along the ancient Via Egnatia leading eastward. After ten days of jarring travel on worn paving stones, in mountainous country that skirted three lakes, aching in every muscle, they had reached Thessalonika. Arcadia groaned when mile markers placed the city less than half way to Constantinople from the coast.

  One day east of Thessalonika, a personal crisis occurred at the port of Amphipolis: Arcadia complained that she was tired of sweating for hours in a dusty coach, having every bone in her body continually rattled by uneven wheel ruts, and sleeping in whatever flea-infested mansio happened to be nearby at the end of the day. Getorius tartly reminded her that she had wanted to get away from Ravenna and didn't she realize that they were seven hundred miles from home, in an area where he couldn't understand what most of the inhabitants were saying? She countered that he had wanted to see Constantinople and knew they spoke Greek dialects in this part of the empire. He had taken Brisios along to carry the baggage, whereas she hadn't brought her slave, Silvia, to help with grooming. Where was the joy in being forced to depend on whatever public bathing facilities were available along the route?

  Getorius had relented. The couple spent the night at Amphipolis, finally laughing about it all and making love in the bedroom of an historic country villa converted to an inn. The Italian proprietor spoke Latin and boasted that the Apostle Paul had stayed in the villa on his second missionary journey to Thessalonika. A cook prepared a memorable seafood meal, served with an excellent Macedonian wine.

  At Amphipolis's harbor, the surgeon's imperial travel authorization secured them a berth aboard the Dionysios, a merchant galley sailing east. He thought it an appropriate name, considering the sensuality of the evening before. The vessel was fairly comfortable, with its relative spaciousness and cool sea breezes, yet sailing had been almost equally tedious. The master, a shipper of wine, stopped off at the islands of Thasos, Samothrace, and Lemnos to unload his amphorae. At first the galley benefited by the last of the northwest Etesian winds, but a strong current flowed against Dionysios through the Hellespont. Beyond that narrow strait, which separated Thrace from Asia, Herakleia had been a final stop.

  Getorius shook Arcadia awake when he noticed the cart approaching Herakleia's lower walls, where an open gate led to the harbor docks. A crowd of travelers clustered in an area lighted by bonfires and torches. Men shouted at each other in angry tones.

  Alarmed, he asked the cart driver, "What is happening ahead? Is there trouble?"

  "Ohi, no." The man chuckled and rasped in poor Latin, "Everyone like you want to get on same galley to New Rome. Aristarchos at mansio not tell you of this?"

  Arcadia turned her head toward him. "The manager said nothing to us."

  The driver grinned at the woman's response. "Because you 'Barbaromae' ."

  "Barbarian Romans," Getorius repeated. "What do you mean?"

  "You from West, vai?"

  "Yes, Ravenna."

  "Aristarchos, not have much use for Latins."

  Arcadia bristled at the implication. "Then he shouldn't be running an imperial inn, should he? Doesn't your Augustus have inspectors?"

  "Cara," Getorius warned, "don't make a scene like you once did at Classis about our night lodgings."

  "We could miss the galley because of that manager," she countered.

  The cartman saw any coins he might receive diminishing. "I take you to edge of crowd. Slave watch baggage and you get boarding tokens."

  "Fine." Getorius took a silvered follis from his belt purse and handed the coin to the driver. "Where do we get those tokens you mentioned?"

  "You see signs," he replied, reining the mule to a halt. "Surgeon, good you keep belt knife in sight, but not full purses of you and wife."

  Getorius ignored his advice and helped Arcadia out of the cart, muttering, "How did he know I'm a surgeon?"

  "You showed the innkeeper Empress Placidia's authorization. That's mentioned on the document."

  "Right." Awake now, Brisios tugged the leather travel cases out onto paving stones wet from a night's rain, yet still filthy with uneaten food, fruit pits, and dog droppings. Scavenging seagulls squawked protests at the intrusion, then flapped off a short distance away to preen and wait. "Stay with Brisios," he ordered Arcadia. "I'll find out about getting those boarding tokens."

  "No, I'm going with you."

  "Fine, Arcadia." After six years of marriage, Getorius knew better than to argue. It had been an unsettling year. His thirty-second birthday was in April and during the Adriatic crossing, she commented that more white strands streaked his dark hair. The furrows in his brow were more prominent. He had shrugged acceptance.

  "Look over there." Arcadia pointed to the east. "It's getting light now."

  Across the Propontis Sea a broad sliver of brightness banded the flat, watery horizon. The radiance absorbed the morning star, Phosphor, into its milky haze and silhouetted the only boat moored at wharf-side.

  "That must be our galley," Getorius surmised, "but how do we get on board? Let's look around and see how other passengers buy their tokens."

  A chill sea breeze was laced with the smell of food that wafted in from the near side of a roped-off area.

  "We won't starve," Arcadia noted. "Those vendors are grilling lamb and a kind of purple vegetable that looks as large as ostrich eggs."

  They watched cooks fill slabs of thin flattened bread with hot food, folding the bread in half and wrapping it in acanthus leaves for customers to take with them. Nearby booths sold sausages, honeyed cakes, almonds, and leather bottles of wine. Greek was the predominant language, but a few vendors also touted their wares in poor Latin: Coemere! To buy! Vinum bonum! Panis bonum!"

  Some women among the mass of passengers waiting to board the galley carried their own baskets of food. Near their owners, uneasy chickens clucked inside wicker cages set on the wharf. A few men held onto the tethers of goats that bleated at scrawny dogs snuffling the stones for bits of meat and bread. Several mothers cradled infants in their arms or nursed babies, while trying to herd in older children that ran screaming through the crowd playing games of tag. Men jostled each other to reach the front rank of passengers waiting to buy tokens. Adding to the confusion, beggars moved among the bystanders, wheedling them for coins.

  Eyeing the dark human shapes that were illuminated by flickering torches and the brightening dawn, Getorius murmured to his wife, "Does this remind you of that part in the Odyessy where Ulysses descends to Hades? How did that go?

  "'The souls gathered of the corpses of those who had died,

  Brides and bachelors and old men, who had suffered much.

  Tender maidens whose hearts were fresh with sorrow'."

  Arcadia laughed and took up following verses.

  "'Many of whom hovered around the pit on every side

  With a tremendous shout. And sallow fear seized me'."

  Getorius laughed with her. "Perhaps that's too strong a reaction, we aren't crossing the Styx." He pointed toward the galley. "That group of passengers near the front of the crowd is dressed better than most others. They seem quite wealthy."

  As Arcadia squinted where her husband indicated, a haggard-looking woman materialized in front of her. She nursed a child at least two years old. A thin, barefoot girl in a ragged tunic, stood alongside. Her brown eyes pleaded from a dirt-crusted face as she stretched out a grimy hand, whimpering in Greek and Latin, "Pinao. Esuriens,"

  "You're hungry?" Arcadia translated from Greek. "That's pitiful. Geto
rius, give the poor child a coin."

  "Cara, she'll just keep pestering you. So will those other waifs watching what we do."

  "Give her a sestertius, please," she insisted.

  He sighed, searched his purse, and dropped a bronze coin into the girl's hand. The woman murmured a blessing and kissed Arcadia's cloak before hurrying off to a waiting man. Smiling now, the girl skipped along beside her mother.

  "Getorius, thank you. What were you saying?"

  "Over there. Those well-dressed Patricians are sure to board first. Some of the men are wearing the purple tunic band and red boots of senators."

  "Even their slaves have finer clothing than most in the crowd." Arcadia glanced back at their slave guarding the luggage. "Brisios has been so quiet. Perhaps we'll get to know him better on this part of the journey."

  "You really believe that, Arcadia?" Getorius asked, his tone skeptical. "Let's find out what the boarding protocol is."

  The impatient crowd funneled past money-changers' tables lined up near four booths. From there the men pushed their way to agents who sold boarding tokens. Each booth was labeled with a city name in both Greek and Latin.

  CONSTANTINOPOLIS MYTILENE EPHESVS PERGAMVM

  Watching for a moment, Getorius determined that the clerks sold either glazed ceramic tiles or colored wooden tokens. Numbers on them denoted cabin berths, outside benches, or deck space. Poorer passengers would undoubtedly stand during the day-long voyage. He had started to walk over and ask a moneychanger about buying the tokens when, incredibly, he heard his name called out.

  "Asterios! The physician, Asterios!"

  Arcadia, equally surprised, turned to look. "Getorius, someone in that crowd is calling you."

  "How could they be? We don't know anyone here."

  "Hold up your hand and wave," she said.

  A young, swarthy man, with a pock-marked face and curly black hair, noticed the signal. He beamed a smile at Getorius, then pushed his way through the crowd, muttering either an apology or curse in Greek.

  When he reached the couple, the man confided, "Physician Asterios, I will be honest. I, Herakles, knew that, as foretold in my dream, I would find you a man of great importance, a lawyer or physician, perhaps."