by Albert Noyer
“What do you mean, Getorius?”
“I mean I hear that the Dalmatian coast is quite beautiful in springtime.”
It was dark, into the third night hour, when Getorius escorted Arcadia along the Via Porti to the warehouse shed near where she had told him Cybele was docked. One of the boarding planks was still in place. No light showed through the portside cabin windows. At sea the crew would be berthed below deck, but Getorius assumed that the men were now spending their last evening ashore in port taverns and brothels. None would return at the earliest until the midnight watch.
A single sentry was on duty, huddled inside the shed portico, away from a chill sea breeze. He warmed himself at a fire, idly throwing dice on the ground to pass the time until his relief came. Getorius guessed that by the dawn watch, when the galley departed, another guard would have taken this man’s place. He fished a small silver coin out of his belt purse, held up the traveling bag Arcadia had packed, and strolled over to the guard.
“We’re passengers on the Cybele.” Getorius let a half siliqua reflect the firelight, then pressed it into the man’s hand and leaned close to him. “My wife doesn’t think I’d get here on time in the morning,” he whispered in a confidential tone. “She’d like us to sleep on board.”
The guard eyed Arcadia a moment, winked, palmed the coin, and motioned the couple toward the gangplank with his spear.
A waxing first-quarter moon had risen, giving just enough light on the deck area to show it had been cleared of cargo for sailing. Six rowing oars were secured against the inner strakes. Behind the prow, a tile roof protected a brick stove where meals were cooked.
Silhouetted against the undulating sparkles of moonlight on the sea behind, the aft cabin house loomed beyond the mast as a black, angular shape.
“We can’t go into a cabin,” Arcadia whispered.
“No, it might be occupied, or will be by morning.”
“Where can we hide?”
Getorius glanced around and spotted a dark rectangle in front of the mast. “The hatch to the cargo space is open. We’ll have to make ourselves comfortable in the hold, at least until we’re well out to sea. We can deal with Virilo then. Be careful as you follow me down.”
At the bottom of the ladder the air smelled partly of bitumen, but even more strongly of wine. A single lamp toward the prow gave enough light to make out the source—clay amphorae stored in racks that were set against the curve of the hull. The center of the hold was stacked with the bales Arcadia had seen being loaded on board. She pinched a tuft of white, fingered it, then smelled a sample.
“Wool. At least we’ll be warm down here.”
“Good. I’ll loosen the ropes on two bales far in the back. We can crawl inside for the night.”
“Where does the crew sleep?” she asked.
“Probably in the bow, beyond that curtain. I image there’s a crude latrine up there, too.”
“Good, I—Shh, listen.” Arcadia held three fingers to his lips. “I heard something scurrying over there. Getorius, would there be rats down here?”
He hedged, “I…ah…have never been on a galley before.”
“Getorius”—she tugged at his sleeve—“Are there?”
“Probably, Cara, but…” He paused as a soft but insistent mewing sound came closer. A small gray form appeared, slinking toward them from between the bales. Getorius grinned. “Catkin there can probably answer your question about rodents.”
“Thank Blessed Cosmas!” Arcadia slumped against a bale and fumbled in the dim light to undo the straps of her traveling bag. “If I can find the cheese I brought, I’ll give it some.”
“I wouldn’t,” Getorius cautioned. “Feed our little friend and catkin might give us away by coming back for more, once the crew is on board.”
“I suppose you’re right. Poor thing.”
“Let’s get settled in the stern. I suspect catkin will get bored and go away.”
Getorius selected two of the lower bales. He picked at the knots until they loosened, puzzled that they were tied differently from each other, then pulled apart an opening in the packed wool.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “It’s not exactly the kind of sea journey I had planned for us some day, to go, say, to Constantinople.”
“But this is exciting,” Arcadia commented, wriggling into the soft material. “Certainly better for you than a cold prison cell somewhere under the palace.”
Getorius leaned over to kiss her. “That’s why I love you, Cara, even though you can be exasperating at times.” His face dropped down to nuzzle her breasts. “I suppose a little lovemaking…quietly of course…is out of the question?”
“With catkin watching? Out of the question,” Arcadia murmured, and turned to nestle more deeply into the wool. The cat nosed in after her to explore the dark, warm new space.
Getorius crept into his bale. She’s right, this isn’t a pleasure cruise. All we need is for a crew member to come back early and find us. He settled into the pleasant softness and thought back to Leudovald’s questions. Someone had a reason for substituting the knife he said he found for the sickle. And he knows that it would be my word and a heretic woman’s against that of a palace official. Arcadia’s right…a small, makeshift cocoon and the prospect of being found and interrogated by the magistrate on a murder charge are not ideal elements for fervent lovemaking.
On the deck above the hold, Diotar sat at a small table in a cramped cabin on the starboard side and scowled at the sleeping form of Adonis in the upper bunk. The youth had refused to stay in the cabin he was to share with Kastor because his ill companion had begun vomiting. Now, Adonis said, Kastor’s urine was tinted a light red. If he was coming down with plague, he wanted to be as far from the sick man as possible.
That was one problem. Diotar recalled his morning conversation with Virilo. He seemed to be having second thoughts about allowing his daughter to remain in the cult. Claudia was crucial in recruiting members. The most useful person Cybele had. Witnessing an attack of the Sacred Disease for the first time frightened people, but the susceptible ones came back again to view this direct experience of the goddess’s power.
That fool Atlos stirred up a wasp’s nest with his fornication, but he at least used the Arian church for his suicide. Leudovald has not had to come to the temple compound to investigate. The woman priest will have to prove that she was not involved. By the time the Cybele returns from Dalmatia, the magistrate will have satisfied himself with a verdict of self-inflicted death.
Diotar drained the dregs of watered wine in his ashwood cup. There was still the problem of the pregnancy of a Vestal Virgin, yet there might even be an alternative to abortion. Claudia was three months along, the surgeon’s wife had said, so the child should be due in September. There might be a way of relating the birth to the pageant he was planning for then.
Adonis moaned in the bunk and kicked off part of his blanket. When Diotar noticed the youth’s erect penis, presumably the result of an erotic dream, he stood and roughly pulled the covering back over him, then lay down on the bottom bunk. The sight brought back to Diotar thoughts of his uncle Sebastos.
Sebastos had been the ArchGallus at Pessinus when he ordered his nephew’s castration, after he caught him in a storage shed showing curiosity about a neighbor girl’s genitals. Diotar guessed it would have happened in any event. Sebastos was already teaching him that priests of Cybele freed themselves from the body’s sexual prison by imitating the sacrifice of the goddess’s consort, Attis. At a spring ritual they voluntarily castrated themselves, then affected women’s clothing and mannerisms.
Galli, these eunuch priests called themselves, after the Gallus River, whose sacred water induced their frenzied visions and dancing. But the name in Latin translated as “cocks,” an ironic jest, Diotar realized, since the sex organ of the same vulgar nickname had been rendered useless to the men.
Let the fools snicker, he thought. In the New Age Cybele is about to inaugurate the goddess wi
ll assure that her pet cocks prosper from their mutilation. Let Augustine, the African bishop, ridicule us in his City of God. He wrote about how we perfume our hair, cover our faces with make-up and affect a woman’s walk as we swish through Carthage, begging.
Begging! Diotar choked with resentment and anger whenever he thought of the indignity the old state-supported Roman cult priests had never had to undergo. After I bring back my cargo from Olcinium, I’ll be wealthier than Publius Maximin…
Diotar heard Adonis moan in his sleep again, then gagged at the smell of semen coming from the youth’s bunk.
Let him have his disgusting dreams now. After the Day of Blood, as Adonis-Attis, a priest of Cybele, he will no longer be affected by the fleshly temptations that were the downfall of his twin.
Olcinium
Chapter seven
Getorius awoke to the sound of oars splashing in water, the steady rhythmic creak of wooden timbers, and a gentle rocking of the dim cargo space. He saw that the crew’s lamp had been put out. Only a pale bluish light showed at the hatch opening through which he and Arcadia had entered. “Cara,” he whispered, “are you awake?”
“For quite a while.” Arcadia sat up, brushing wool tufts from her tunic. “Catkin scampered off about a watch period ago, at the time I heard people walking on deck. Now it feels like we’re moving.”
“The crew must be rowing Cybele through the harbor basin into the Adriatic. Did you sleep at all?”
“Not that well. Something hard kept prodding my back.”
“Sorry, I was over here,” he quipped with exaggerated innocence. “It couldn’t have been me.”
“No, this was much harder—” Arcadia realized what he was joking about and laughed. “I didn’t mean it that way.” She groped inside the wool and pulled out a leather sack. “Here’s what it was.”
“Let’s see my rival.” Getorius hefted the small bag. “It feels like it’s full of coins and it’s certainly heavy enough to be.” He untied a thong securing the neck and pulled out several bronze disks. “I was right, it is money.” He held one of the coins up to catch the feeble light and made out the inscription D.N. PLA. VALENTINIANVS P.F. AVG., surrounding a portrait of the current emperor. “Something’s not right. The Augustus issues very little bronze coinage. Arcadia, get me one of the gold solidi we brought along.”
She searched a purse in the clothing bag, then handed Getorius the coin. He compared it to the one in his hand. “The designs are identical, except this is bronze and the emperor’s features are more crudely tooled. The reverse shows Valentinian holding a cross staff, with a Victory figure in his right hand, and the initials RV at the bottom to identify Ravenna as the location of the mint. Christ! It looks like Virilo is counterfeiting Valentinian’s gold coins in bronze and smuggling them to Dalmatia.”
“But Maximin leases the galley,” Arcadia reminded him, “and they’re hidden inside the senator’s wool…look, I found a silver one.”
Getorius took the coin and scratched it with a thumbnail. “It’s only a silver wash.” He stood up and looked around the hold at the rest of the cargo of wine amphorae. “I wonder what other contraband the Cybele might be hauling? Arcadia, let’s keep three of these bronzes out. Put them in your purse and stash that coin sack back inside the wool. I’ll tie up the bales again.”
After the bag was replaced and the wool secured, Arcadia leaned against a bale and closed her eyes to minimize an incipient feeling of nausea caused by the swaying motion of the galley. Getorius wondered about the smuggled coins. Why would Maximin—or Virilo, for that matter—be bringing forged money into Dalmatia? Yet it might be neither man. A government official at the mint could be involved. Western coins were legitimate in the Eastern Empire, yet counterfeit bronze money bearing the image of Emperor Theodosius, not Valentinian, would have attracted less attention.
Arcadia had begun to feel worse after the odor of roasting meat wafted through the hatch from on deck. At the same time, the hold began a violent pitching motion. She sat up, sure she must look pale because her skin felt clammy. A queasy feeling settled in her stomach, then rose to her throat. The smell of food, sour wine, and bitumen in the close space became overwhelming.
“Getorius, I feel sick,” she murmured weakly. “I’ve got to get out of here…find some fresh air before I throw up.”
“I was worried about seasickness. We’ll have to go on deck earlier than I’d hoped.”
After Getorius helped his wife stand up, she frantically clambered over the bales to the hatch ladder. He followed her up the rungs to the outer deck, thinking that in any event Virilo would have soon found out they were on board.
The galleymaster was talking to his helmsman when Arcadia stumbled out of the hatch opening and ran toward the rail. While she retched over the side in dry heaves, Virilo went over to the hold and peered inside.
Getorius looked back up at him.
“What the furc—” Virilo blurted, sounding more surprised than angry. “Surgeon, how did you and your woman get aboard?”
“We’ll pay for our food,” Getorius said amiably, climbing off the ladder onto deck. “I’ve brought money.”
“Passengers take along their own rations. I asked why you were here.”
“Virilo, weren’t you were just questioned by Leudovald?”
“He let me go free.”
“Yes, on Senator Maximin’s order. I was arrested last year when someone tried to blame me for something I didn’t do. I want to let this affair about Atlos cool down.”
“Leudovald’s a prick. He—”
“A moment, my wife.” Getorius noticed that Arcadia had straightened up. When he went to the rail, her complexion was the pale color of bread dough. “Are you feeling any better, Cara?” Arcadia slowly wiped spittle from her mouth and shook her head.
“Can I get you something? A little water?”
In answer she leaned over the rail and retched again, just as Diotar came out of the forward starboard cabin, followed by someone wearing a hooded cloak. The priest looked at the couple, clearly surprised, then beckoned his companion back inside. Getorius held onto Arcadia’s shoulder and glanced at Virilo, but decided not to question him about what business Diotar had at the Cybele’s destination. Instead, he called out, “Is your daughter, Claudia, on board?”
Virilo’s scowl softened. Without answering, he pointed to the sun-washed outline of Ravenna and its dark-green line of pine forest receding in the distance. “Cybele’s running with the tide, I’ll not turn her back. You’ll stay aboard.”
“Fine. Then, do you have cabin bunks that are more comfortable than the wool bales we slept in last night?” Getorius watched Virilo’s expression for some sign that he knew about the coin bag concealed inside the wool, but saw no change.
“The crew can set up cots for you near their quarters,” he replied gruffly, starting to turn back to the helmsman.
“Getorius, I need to use a latrine,” Arcadia muttered loud enough for Virilo to hear.
“Do you have one?” Getorius asked him.
“Star side, aft of the helm deck.”
“Privacy?”
“None.” Virilo chuckled. “Crew’ll probably watch.”
“How about an olla cubiculi?”
“A pisspot? Maranatha,” Virilo called out to the cook, who was lighting charcoal in a stove near the prow, “give the surgeon one of your cracked pitchers.”
Getorius again asked about a better place for his wife to spend the voyage. “You don’t have a spare cabin? I said I had money.”
“The hold,” Virilo insisted. “And take your woman below to piss after she’s through vomiting on my railing.”
Arcadia nursed her seasickness by lying in Cybele’s rolling belly with a wet cloth on her forehead and not moving. It was an imbalance similar to one she had experienced as a young girl, when she had whirled around and around, arms outstretched, until she felt dizzy and nauseous. Getorius was less affected, but at noon ate only bread and drank
a little watered wine. In mid-afternoon, he told Arcadia he was going to talk to the helmsman and try to find out where their destination was in Dalmatia.
Getorius stumbled and had to brace himself against the mast when he stepped onto the deck, caught off-balance by the slanting pitch of the Cybele as she nosed through the blue-green waves. Overhead, a stiff northwest wind flapped the square linen mainsail with a sharp snapping sound. The oars had been secured against the strakes. Now four crewmembers struggled with brail ropes to raise a triangular topsail into place above the main sheet.
Getorius found the helmsman at the sternpost, on a platform that was high enough for him to look over the cabins and see the bow. An awning fluttered above as protection against the sun and rain-squalls. He was dressed in a hooded, sleeveless leather jerkin and wool trousers. The greasy hood framed a beefy face and strands of scruffy blond hair. The man’s brawny arms controlled two massive steering oars, which angled back on either side into the galley’s wake.
“Salus, Helmsman,” Getorius called up pleasantly in greeting. “Health to you. I’m Getorius Asterius, surgeon to the Empress Mother.”
“Sigeric,” the man replied, glancing briefly away from the bow to look down and see who was speaking.
“Your name’s Sigeric?” Getorius asked. “From which tribe? My father was Treveri.”
“Burgond.”
“Ah.” The Burgondi were the tribesmen who raided Mogontiacum and killed my parents. It’s past time I met one of them. “Mind if I keep you company?”
