Death at Pergamum Read online

  "Your dream?" Arcadia asked, thinking, The man's Latin is quite good, without too much of a regional accent.

  Herakles bowed to her. "Ah, Domina, I will be honest. You also were in my dream, yet you are even more beautiful."

  "Should we know you?" Getorius asked. "What, again, is your name?"

  "Herakles of Herakleia, your guide on an odyssey to New Rome."

  "I've hired no guide."

  "Husband, listen to him," Arcadia murmured. "We will need help."

  Herakles flashed his smile at her. "Domina, you possess not only beauty, but indeed the wisdom of Athena, who is portrayed on that pendant around your throat."

  "Herakles," she told him amiably, "there was no dream, was there? You found out about us from Aristarchos at the mansio."

  Herakles spread his hands in mock guilelessness. "Domina, how else might I make a decent living? Look over by the gangplank, beyond those senatorial families. Six of your fellow passengers have entrusted themselves to my care. All Latins like you. Is that not a work of Moira, of Fate?"

  Getorius was still unsure of the brash stranger. "What else do you know about us?"

  "You travel under the protection of the Empress Mother at Ravenna, the resolute daughter of the first Theodosius."

  "You're speaking of Galla Placidia."

  "Indeed, Physician Asterios, am I not honest?" Without smiling, Herakles continued, "Yet her father slaughtered four thousand Macedonians in the Thessalonika hippodrome to avenge the murder of a single of his Gothic officers. At this perversion even Hebrews might protest, 'Eight thousand eyes for two eyes is too much 'justice'."

  Getorius flushed. "I recall that Bishop Ambrose forced Theodosius to repent in public."

  "A few days in sackcloth and ashes." Herakles's engaging smile returned. "That is the past, Physician Asterios. Your future in New Rome will evaporate like this morning's fog if I do not get you tokens to board Hermes, swiftest of gods and galleys. Have you the authorization of Placidia?"

  "Yes, why?

  He motioned impatiently with a hand. "Give me the document."

  Getorius resented his abrupt order, but eased the parchment from a leather case that he carried strapped outside his tunic.

  Herakles studied the authorization. "Kalos, good. Now a tremissis." After Getorius fished a small gold coin from his purse, Herakles looked at the inscription. "A Valentinian. Our Basileus is most kind in honoring the coinage of his Latin co-emperor."

  "Gold is gold," Arcadia said, annoyed at the would-be guide's disparaging comment. "His treasurer would honor gold even if it had a portrait of...of that goat standing over there."

  "Indeed, Domina." Herakles chuckled as he took the parchment and coin and pushed his way to the front of the line at the Constantinople agent's booth. He whispered to the man, showed him the document, then slipped the coin underneath. Without altering his bored expression, the agent forwarded two wooden tokens, a ceramic one, and a silver coin. Herakles put the coin in his purse and came back, holding up the three tokens.

  "Physician Asterios."

  "Just calling me 'Asterios' will be fine," Getorius told him, deciding not to make an issue of the missing coin, obviously change from the purchase.

  "Asterios," Herakles repeated, showing two blue rectangles of chipped wood with KVII and KVIII cut into them. "These are tokens for bench spaces Seven and Eight in the shady bosom of Hermes, a fine place under an awning to enjoy the sea breeze. The day will be hot and our journey will last until the tenth hour."

  Arcadia asked, "What is that third unnumbered ceramic token for?"

  As if it were understood, Herakles chided, "Domina, your slave will stand."

  "Not for ten hours. Brisios will sit with us."

  Herakles smirked, "Ah, Christianoi. You are Christians. 'See how they love one another'."

  "Don't mock us with sarcasm," Getorius warned. "What God do you believe in?"

  "God? Asterios, one may pass even a pride of lions safely if they are thrown enough portions of meat."

  "Meaning you honor many gods? Fine, then start with Hermes by exchanging that ceramic token for a wooden one. I'll get our baggage over here." After the guide left, Getorius observed, "He's certainly impudent. I'm not sure we should hire him."

  "Husband, there's no one else," Arcadia reasoned. "Just let him know his limits."

  "I suppose."

  When Herakles returned, Brisios had brought the leather cases. The senatorial families were boarding over the gangplank, along with the six clients the guide had mentioned. A group of monks wearing coarse hooded robes followed. At the stern, their abbot held up a silk banner with a saint's portrait and his name Hagios Karpos. Another monk swung a censer that billowed fragrant smoke, while his fellows chanted a morning prayer to their Thracian patron, Karpos.

  "They are calling for blue wood tokens now," Herakles said, translating a Greek announcement. "Asterios, a silvered follis will get your slave a bench seat."

  "I thought you exchanged the ceramic one."

  The guide spread his hands in regret. "I will be honest. The crowd is large."

  Getorius handed him the coin. Herakles led the way, pushing through the other passengers while he flashed his smile and muttered apologies. He showed his three tokens to the collection agent, who obviously knew the guide. The man winked as he palmed the bribe and exchanged the token for a numbered wooden one.

  It was light enough now for torches to be extinguished. Dawn brightness revealed a row of warehouses stretching the length of the seafront to breakwaters at either end. Squat merchant galleys rode at anchor or lay moored at wharf-side. In the Propontis Sea a distant island materialized out of the misty southwestern horizon.

  Walking up the gangplank, passengers could look into open ports along the galley's upper hull, where the rowing crew seated themselves on benches at each of the forty oars.

  The sleek hull of Hermes was painted bright blue. A wooden sculpture of the wing-footed god and his Greek name decorated the prow. Numbered outside benches set up against white-painted cabins ran the length of the deck, broken only by narrow door openings, also identified by number. Seats continued around either end. Passengers stored their luggage beyond a low railing that surrounded the cabin roof.

  Herakles turned toward the bow, beckoning Getorius and Arcadia to follow him. Brisios, carrying three travel bags, struggled to keep up.

  "This is obviously not a merchant galley," Getorius commented to his wife, yet loud enough for the guide to hear. "We once crossed the Adriatic on one named Cybele.

  "Kybele...goddess of the eunuch priests," Herakles jeered. "I will be honest, Asterios. Hermes was converted from a swift war dromon. Cabins are for passengers of wealth or those going beyond New Rome to other ports." The guide had reached front benches that were covered by an awning, when a man wearing a silk tunic and elaborate turban climbed up a nearby ladder to the cabin top. He strutted along a central walkway that divided the baggage space.

  Getorius asked, "Is that a ship's officer?"

  Herakles smiled. "You will learn Greek words, Asterios. That pompous peacock is epiplos, galley-master. He walks to a helmsman at the steering oars. In a moment you will hear the rowing timekeeper. The galley officer you call hortatory."

  "Herakles, I will be honest," Arcadia interrupted, mimicking the phrase by which the guide began almost every sentence. "Do we really need to know these Greek terms?"

  "Indeed, no, Domina..." He reddened and gestured toward three of his clients at the steer-rail. "Come meet a trio of your fellow 'Barbaromae'."

  Herakles accented the name, but his foxy grin at Arcadia made her cast doubt on his intention. Who is he mocking, Latins or his own people's prejudice?

  "Ladies. Presbyter Tranquillus," he called out. "I introduce to you these distinguished passengers, also from Ravenna." Two elderly women in hooded capes turned, along with a handsome, blond-haired clergyman about forty years old. "Surgeon Asterios and his wife"

  "My name is Arcadia
," she said, smiling to cover the guide's error in not asking her name earlier.

  The shorter woman with henna-dyed hair returned the smile and indicated the clergyman with a graceful hand gesture. "If you're from Ravenna you must know Presbyter Tranquillus."

  "Yes." Arcadia recalled, "Presbyter, my husband and I saw you in the Ursiana Basilica at the past Nativity Vigil service."

  "The Nativity?" He paused a moment. "I understand from the Empress Mother that you knew that unfortunate Gallic abbot who was to concelebrate the Eucharist with Bishop Chrysologos."

  "We were aware of Brenos, but not as an acquaintance."

  "The matter, fortunately, is past." Tranquillus turned to his companions. "These ladies are Melodia Cloelia Vibulana and Maria Anicia Aemiliana, widows by mishap, yet now holy pillars of the church."

  "Thank you, Presbyter," the taller, gray-haired woman interrupted to compliment Arcadia. "You're beautiful, my dear. I once had hair like yours, but darker, in fact, black as the pit of Tartarus."

  "Caution, Maria," Tranquillus admonished. "By using expressions like that, you might be mistaken for a Hellene, a pagan."

  "A metaphor my husband used, Presbyter."

  Melodia, the widow whose hennaed curls poked out from her cloak hood, gave a musical laugh. "Tranquillus, you have just spent weeks with us in the Holy Land. Surely, our piety was evident."

  "I only meant, Domina, that Maria must use discretion. These are hostile surroundings, are they not Herakles? Pagans...heretic sects, even fanatical monks like that group over there."

  Herakles affected a serious look. "True, the Christian call for meekness has evaded some in the East. Yet did Christ not warn he would vomit you out of his mouth if you were lukewarm?"

  Getorius told him, "Please don't mention vomiting. My wife suffered bouts of it on our sea voyage here."

  Arcadia laughed. "Hopefully, not this time."

  Maria commented on the pendant around Arcadia's neck, "What beautiful cameo work. Is it Minerva?"

  "Yes, and in my mother's family for about two hundred years."

  "She gave it to you?"

  "No, my father. Mother died giving birth to me."

  Maria touched her arm in sympathy. "My dear, I'm so sorry."

  Herakles boasted, "I told Domina she possesses the wisdom of the goddess."

  His compliment was lost in the shrill notes of a panpipe sounded by a crewman standing next to the galley-master. At the signal, stevedores on shore abruptly pulled the gangplank away from Hermes's deck, stranding a number of passengers still waiting to board. They shouted in angry Greek at the captain, but he pointed at a bright arc of sun emerging from the eastern Propontis: he would leave on time regardless of late comers.

  Once hawsers were thrown off the stern and bow mooring dogs, slaves pushed the galley away from the wharf with long poles. At another panpipe trill, a double bank of oars poked through their ports. On the raised stern deck, the helmsman prepared to steer Hermes out of the harbor.

  Shouting threats, people stranded on the wharf began to pelt the galley with clods of food, trying to hit the master. When some aimed their tokens at the man, agents hurried out of their booths to scuffle with offenders for losing the boarding passes.

  Getorius turned back to the guide. "That epiplos is determined to leave exactly at dawn, is that it, Herakles?"

  "Alitha, the truth. May Hermes and the great Poseidon grant us a safe journey." He signed himself with a cross on the forehead and lips. "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritu Sancti."

  Arcadia whispered to her husband, "Our Christian Trinity is evidently included in his pride of lions."

  "So I notice," he nodded.

  Below deck, the timekeeper's mallet began a steady, monotonous beat. As the powerful strokes of the oarsmen backed Hermes further from shore, the crowd's edible missiles fell into the water, adding to floating harbor trash.

  Getorius braced himself and looked around. The monks had finished chanting and now moved among the passengers, begging for alms. "Where are those senatorial families?" he asked Herakles.

  "Back in their cabins, Asterios, to avoid harassment."

  "Harassment?"

  He explained, "Wealthy senators are notorious for avoiding land taxes, yet the less fortunate must pay them or lose farms and businesses. In this wooden prison, the well-off are easy prey to insults."

  Our guide has little use for the rich, Getorius realize, then heard Maria and Melodia plead fatigue and excuse themselves to rest in their cabin.

  One of the bearded monks with red, blotched skin approached, jingling coins in a wooden cup. "Almsgiving atones for all sins," he chanted in Latin. "Atone for your sins, Westerners."

  Before Herakles could wave him off, the holy man spotted Arcadia's pendant of the Greek goddess. "Hellenissa!" he screamed, signing himself and beginning a spittle-flecked tirade of abuse at the woman.

  The guide stepped between the two. He spoke calmly to the holy man as he reached into his purse and handed the monk a cloth-wrapped bundle. With a final glare at Arcadia, the monk palmed the gift and turned back to his brothers.

  "He thought you were pagan," Getorius said to his wife.

  "Evidently. Herakles, what did you give the monk?"

  "Kannabis leaves, Domina. The monks of Hagios Karpos claim that the plant induces holy visions."

  "Holy visions?" Getorius scoffed. "Kannabis is a sedative that I rarely give patients. Will we be encountering much of this harassment in Constantinople?"

  Herakles leaned on the railing and looked toward a bright disc of sun now clear of the horizon. "I will be honest, Asterios," he admitted. "I fear that New Rome is not yet the perfect City of God that your bishop Augustine envisioned."

  At the warning, an uneasy ache settled in Getorius's stomach. He slipped an arm around his wife, realizing that he had brought her to a foreign land in which there could be any number of unforeseen dangers.

  I wonder if Arcadia was wise in urging that I hire Herakles as a guide. What do we know about the man? We've placed our trust in a brash pagan who already has bribed officials, criticized senators, and kept money that he should have returned to me. What more might he do in Constantinople?

  CHAPTER II

  The guide's warning had chilled Arcadia more than the wind, colder now that the galley was backing into the harbor's open water. She crept a hand under her husband's cape and held his arm as they watched the wharf recede. The angry shouts of stranded travelers, swarming around agents' booths to demand the cost of returned tokens, faded into the distance.

  Tinted by the first rays of the sun, Herakleia's buildings above the dock area took on a golden glow. On the acropolis, the city's highest point, a wisp of gray smoke rose in front of a temple whose white marble now shone a pinkish hue.

  "Look up there." Arcadia took her hand from the cape to point. "It seems that I'm not the only 'Hellene' here. Isn't that what that monk called me?"

  Getorius squinted at the temple. 'I doubt it's a public sacrifice, probably only burning trash."

  Tranquillus, nearby, heard the conversation. "Perhaps true, Surgeon, yet even at Ravenna pagan cults survive."

  "That Cybelene cult and the Isis priests."

  "My point exactly. How many of them is a question, but some members surely are in imperial service. Competent men, actually."

  "Coming from a presbyter, that's a generous compliment."

  "Surgeon, I don't condone the atrocities against pagans that some bishops permit, nor in persecuting Hebrews."

  Tranquillus's words almost were lost in a shrill panpipe sound. At the signal, steer-board oars were drawn back, dripping sea water, while the port bank was stroked enough to bring the galley's prow around to face the harbor entrance. At a second piping, all oars dipped into the sea. A previous slow beat by the timekeeper doubled its tempo. Hermes lived up to its namesake god: the galley steadily increased speed and glided smoothly toward a misty horizon beyond the harbor breakwaters.

  Getorius
looked around for the guide. Herakles was among the passengers,

  peddling his kannabis packets. In the stern, the banner of Holy Karpos fluttered above his monks. They had filled their censer with the herb and now huddled around the smoke, fanning it toward themselves, all in the hope of inducing holy visions.

  A vendor came by selling almonds, dates, and figs from a tray, but Arcadia shook her head. Getorius noticed that Brisios had not taken his seat, but stood near the luggage. Recalling Tranquillus's interrupted remarks, he turned back to him. "Presbyter, what were you saying about the Empress?"

  "That Eudokia has given permission for Hebrews to return to Jerusalem next month to celebrate their Sukkot harvest festival. They were banned from the city for over two centuries."

  Arcadia frowned. "How terrible. We knew Rabbi Zadok during that forged papyrus episode." She studied the presbyter's face. Handsome, with a boyish shock of blond hair and a stubble of traveler's beard. Tranquillus seems a quiet man, living up to his name. "Presbyter, were you born at Ravenna?"

  "No, at Bononia. My ancestors were Celtic, the Boii tribe."

  "Didn't Alaric raid the town?"

  "Thirty years ago. I was ten years old and saw the Visigoth king outside the gates. His warriors couldn't breach the walls and moved on."

  Curious, Arcadia asked, "What made you decide to become a presbyter?"

  "My father was city prefect, so we were quite well off. I had finished my classical studies at Mediolanum. The bishop back then was Venerius, who had heard sermons by the eloquent Ambrose."

  "And Venerius persuaded you."

  He managed an innocent grin. "True, Domina, just as Ambrose once persuaded Emperor Theodosius to do penance. May both bishops rest in Christ's peace."

  The trio fell silent as the galley approached the open sea. Below deck the mallet beat was a dull, steady throb as Hermes slipped through the harbor opening. A lighthouse at the breakwater smoldered from the previous night's signal fire. Getorius thought back to the mysterious destruction of the Cybele several months earlier. The galley seemingly had evaporated in a column of fire and deafening roar. No plausible explanation had yet come forth, but he, Arcadia, and Senator Maximin were the only ones who could connect the cataclysm to Zhang Chen's black "Dragon's Cough" powder.