The Cybelene Conspiracy

by Albert Noyer

  “As they speak it in the East, corrupted by local dialects and Greek. If I remember Polybius’s history, the original Celtic tribes settled there some seven hundred years ago.”

  “Yet Jerome wrote recently that he could understand the people,” Arcadia recalled. “He said they sounded like those who live at Treveri in Gaul.”

  “Where my father was born.”

  “Yes.” Arcadia moved away from the stove. The sight of the swiftly moving sea had made her feel nauseous again. “Getorius, I…I think I’ll lie down again.”

  “Cara, you should eat something. At least drink watered wine.”

  “Not quite yet.” Arcadia walked back to the hatch opening. “Perhaps in the morning,” she called back before starting down the ladder.

  “Fine, I’ll come check on you in a bit.” Getorius turned back to the sea, thinking of what Diotar had said. He had called the cult goddess Cybele, the same name as the galley. Sigeric had referred to her as Stygian, an infernal deity. Let’s see what she looks like.

  Getorius held onto the rail as he went to examine the carving of Cybele at the bow, leaning far over the graceful curve of the prow to glimpse her profile. The carving was crude and gaudily decorated with encaustic colors that resembled stage make-up on an actress. Still, the goddess’s features hosted a benign smile. Why had Sigeric described her as a dark entity?

  Pulling back, Getorius gazed at the sea around him. As the helmsman had predicted, the galley was alone on a vast expanse of water that blended eerily into a curtain of hazy horizon. The effect was of being at the world’s unknown edge. No land was in sight, no distant beaches or mountains in Picenum to establish a link with terra firma. Only a few mewing gulls did that, soaring in the galley’s wake as they searched below for scraps of anything edible that might have been thrown overboard. Getorius thought of a trusting, yet undoubtedly worried Noah, with his zoo of animals drifting on such a waterscape, and chuckled. The Cybele’s cargo smelled much better.

  By early morning of the third day at sea, Arcadia felt well enough to eat a small portion of barley bread for breakfast, without oil or honey. When she came up on deck, she saw Maranatha reviving the glow of the stove charcoal. She nodded to him, noticing that the roofed space he worked in, enclosed on three sides, was larger and better equipped with cooking utensils than most of the kitchens she had seen in Ravenna’s crowded apartments.

  A light rain had fallen during the night, making the air misty and speckling the galley’s surfaces with beads of water. She sucked moisture off her lip, aware that her balance of Wet and Dry Humors had suffered during the time when she had felt too sick to drink. Looking east from the port rail, to where a timid sun valiantly tried to push through the remnants of gray rain clouds, Arcadia made out the shapes of several islands. Three were little more than low, pine-studded rocks, but the furthest looked to be several miles wide. Behind them rose the soft bluish tint of mountains on the Dalmatian mainland. The largest island seemed to be only a few miles off.

  “Getorius, come up,” Arcadia called down to her husband. “I can see land.”

  He joined her on deck a moment later, and looked toward where she pointed. “That may be the island of Issa that Sigeric told me about.”

  Arcadia squinted at a white squarish shape that seemed to detach itself from the green-blue silhouette of the island. “Getorius, does that look like a sail?”

  “It does.” He watched the vessel until he could make out a red emblem on the sail. “The upright line with two arms looks like a Patriarchal cross…I think I see a staff and gourd painted on it. Let me ask Sigeric.” He ran back and called up to the helmsman, “Would that be a boatload of pilgrims going to the Holy Land?”

  Sigeric wiped moisture from his eyebrows and peered into the distance. “More likely pirates than pilgrims,” he muttered. “Caco! Almost caught us off guard.” He reached into his cloak for a flute and blew a high-pitched signal, then shouted, “Piratae! Piratae! Aft portside.”

  As the rest of the crew stumbled on deck from below, Virilo opened his cabin door and looked to where Sigeric pointed. “Thieving scum,” he growled. “We’ll try to outrun them. Let out the topsail and bowsprit artemon sail.”

  As the crew worked the brails, the two auxiliary sheets sluggishly caught the wind. The morning breeze was light, and the Cybele made only a slight gain in speed.

  In the distance, the lighter corsair’s sail billowed out, then eight oars started working in rhythm to try and close the gap with the Cybele.

  Getorius noticed a second galley that had come out from behind the south end of the island. “Virilo!” he yelled. “There are two boats. It’s an ambush!”

  “I see the scurfy sons of Satan. They’re going to work us like two wolves chasing a lone calf.”

  Getorius could see that the second, swifter corsair would cross Cybele’s bow and try and slow her down. That would allow the other galley to sail in until she was near enough for the crew to throw grappling hooks and drag her quarry alongside to be boarded.

  Virilo sputtered another vulgarity when the low sun suddenly burst through the clouds in a flash of dazzling rays that blinded him and Sigeric. The glare gave a new advantage to the pirates, who had the sunrise brightness behind them.

  Shading his eyes as the first vessel drew closer, low in the water from the weight of all the men she bore, Getorius could see grins on the bearded faces of the marauder crew—brigands, probably, or deserters from barbarian and Roman armies. He counted about twenty-five men, who looked as disreputable as the motley collection of looted armor they wore. There was no name on the vessel.

  A glinting shower of arrows arced toward Cybele. Getorius pulled Arcadia down behind the shelter of the strake. The shafts slid harmlessly into the waves, some three hundred paces short of the galley.

  “Surgeon, get below with your woman,” Virilo ordered.

  Getorius shook his head. “I’ll be needed if someone’s wounded. Arcadia, you go back down into the hold.”

  “I’m staying too,” she said without looking at him.

  “Furcing idiots,” Virilo growled. “Then get behind the stern strake, by the cabins. I don’t have time to argue with two stowaways.”

  Getorius pulled Arcadia back along the deck. He had heard that piracy was largely suppressed along the Adriatic coasts by the Roman fleet at Classis, south of Ravenna, but the unsettled situation caused by the recent Vandal capture of Carthage had emboldened the corsairs once again. The Dalmatian coast was a labyrinth of islands that gave them almost-limitless hiding places.

  Virilo called his crew to the shelter of the kitchen. “Cybele hasn’t been attacked before,” he reminded them, “but you know of other merchantmen that never returned to Ravenna. We practiced a defense tactic with wooden blocks, but didn’t consider a second galley…” He ducked down when an arrow glanced off the tile roof of the enclosure and skipped into the sea. “Caco! They’re getting close. Crew stations, double pace!”

  As the men ran to stand by for the defensive maneuver, other random arrows thudded into the port strake. They were supposed to unnerve the crew, Getorius assumed, since there was little chance of hitting anyone on the pitching deck. The bandits were undoubtedly after money, food, wine, and slaves, not the bulky cargo of wool bales the galley carried.

  A series of sharp raps rattled off Cybele’s hull. Lead balls arced through the air, a few of them punching holes in the mainsail.

  “Stay down,” Virilo yelled, “their slingers are finding our range! One of them lead balls can crack open a head like it’s a musk-melon.”

  The red Patriarch’s Cross—an upright bar with two unequal arms extending from it—was now clearly visible; a crudely painted decoy for pilgrims travelling under the sponsorship of a bishop. Now, the raiding galley was close enough for the Cybele’s crew to hear the steady hammer beat of the hortator, the timekeeper who signaled the rowing speed of his eight oarsmen.

  “Trim main to half-sail. Lower ram.” Virilo sho
uted the orders, and then sprinted up the stern platform ladder to help Sigeric with the steering oars.

  Getorius was surprised at the twin commands. Trimming sail would slow them down, yet Virilo had said he wanted to outrun the pirates. And merchant galleys were not equipped with a ram, nor had he seen one extending from Cybele’s prow.

  As three crewmen hoisted on the brails and the mainsail slowly furled upward, Gaius sledged away the ratchet on a winch at the prow. The harsh grating rattle of a chain sliding through a scupper sounded, as a bronze ram was lowered into a horizontal position from its hidden berthing.

  Clever, Getorius thought, a ram was tucked into the prow. Simultaneously, he felt Cybele lose the wind and lurch, protesting with a creak of timbers and shifting of cargo as she yawed and lost headway. The galley with the Patriarch’s Cross, still aft of Virilo’s portside, began to draw abreast, but the second corsair now would overshoot the Cybele’s bow and be forced to haul about and tack into the wind to regain position.

  Virilo eyed the red emblem. It was slightly behind and about sixty paces off. “Mainsail down! Hard port rudder!” he yelled, and helped Sigeric force back the long-bladed steering oar into a tight turn to the left. Cybele groaned again, but slowly hauled about toward the pirate vessel.

  Since Patriarch’s Cross had been intent on closing to starboard with her prey, the unexpected maneuver took her helmsman by surprise. He desperately tried to steer to port, away from the onrushing, deadly beak. When the pirate hortator realized what was happening, he hammered a frantic signal for the oars to be stroked in reverse, hoping the oncoming galley would glide harmlessly past his prow.

  Getorius carefully raised his head above the strake and saw that each man’s action had cancelled the other out. The pirate vessel was almost stopped. A few archers tried to hit Sigeric and Virilo at the steering oars, but their shafts thudded harmlessly into the cabin wall beneath the two men. Frantic now at the imminent ramming, the other pirates on deck tried to unbuckle their bulky armor and save themselves by diving overboard.

  None succeeded. In a grinding screech of triumph, Cybele’s ram crunched through the corsair’s bank of oars, aft of the mast, and penetrated the hull in a shower of splintered ribs and planking shards. Virilo and his crew had braced themselves, but Getorius and Arcadia were unprepared, and the impact threw them forward. He grabbed for the railing and held on. She slammed hard against the strake and fell back on deck, bleeding from a forehead gash.

  Although dazed, Getorius was aware of men on the pirate galley being flung overboard into a mass of floating wood scraps from their smashed hull. In moments, thrashing helplessly and wild-eyed with terror, the weight of their armor had sunk them beneath the green foam.

  When the lighter hull of Patriarch’s Cross heeled back from the ram’s impact, two of Virilo’s crewmen worked the mainsail to swing the Cybele back into the wind. Gaius and Victor grappled long, iron-tipped poles from their holders and pushed hard against the pirate vessel to separate themselves from the foundering galley.

  The pirate helmsman had been the only crewman not wearing armor, and his grip on the steering oar had saved him from being flung into the sea. As the Cybele slowly pushed away from his sinking galley, he dove off and swam alongside, looking for a handhold.

  Virilo spotted the man. To batter him away, he ran down the ladder and snatched a pole from Victor. Getorius scrambled to his feet and intercepted the master.

  “You can’t, Virilo,” he shouted. “That’s murder!”

  He glared at Getorius a moment, then looked past him and threw down the pole. “Surgeon, I got other furcing troubles to deal with.”

  Getorius turned. The crew of the second corsair was still tacking into the wind to heave about, when the unexpected action had distracted them. He knew their master had to have been impressed with maneuverability, which he would not have expected in a merchantman. The second vessel took a hard port turn to catch the wind and escape.

  Getorius took up the pole and extended it over the side for the enemy helmsman to grasp, but saw the man now clinging to the bronze beak that had destroyed his vessel. He ran to Arcadia. She was unconscious. Splotches of blood from the gash stained her hair and oozed down her face. Getorius cradled his wife’s head and looked around for help in taking her into the hold.

  Smashed pottery and bits of glowing charcoal from the stove were scattered on deck. Maranatha was trying to douse live embers with water from the drinking bucket. Gaius and Victor leaned over the prow, assessing any damage that might have been caused by the ramming. One of the bronze plaques identifying the Cybele had been torn loose, and the goddess’s gaudy head was broken off, floating back somewhere amid the debris of the sinking raider. Paint had been scraped off the bow, and wood around the ram housing was splintered, but the hull planking was intact.

  “Help me carry my wife below deck,” Getorius called out to the two men. “I need to find my medical case in our travel bag.”

  Gaius and Victor brought her into the hold, and stood by to watch. Getorius rummaged through the leather bag, guessing that his wife had packed the smaller of his surgical cases. Hippocrates had written a treatise that dealt with head injuries. The second mode described contusions where the bone was not fractured. This, fortunately, seemed to be the case with Arcadia.

  “Gaius, bring me a cup of vinegar and a jug of seawater,” he ordered. “Victor, press this cloth over her wound.”

  He found the case, a stiff leather box with a shoulder strap, holding a minimum of instruments and medical supplies. After Gaius returned, Getorius washed away the blood with a seawater and vinegar solution. When the sting of the vinegar brought Arcadia squirming back to consciousness, the two crewmen said they were going on deck to haul the pirate helmsman aboard.

  “I know, Arcadia, it’s painful,” Getorius commiserated, “but I’ll need to stop the bleeding with a styptic.”

  “Is it very bad?”

  “Nothing worse than some nasty swelling and I expect an enormous headache.”

  “What happened, Husband?” Arcadia murmured, closing her eyes again.

  “After we rammed the pirate galley, the helmsman was the only survivor. His mates went down in their looted armor.” Arcadia nodded slowly and reached up to touch her wound, but Getorius pulled her hand away. “I can make a plantago poultice for the bruise and a decoction of spirea leaves to minimize your headache.”

  “I love you, Getorius,” she whispered.

  “Yes, but this wouldn’t have happ…” Getorius caught himself as he was about to criticize his wife for refusing to go below deck at the start of the action. No point. Arcadia won’t listen next time either. “I love you, too, Cara,” he murmured instead, and kissed her forehead next to the gash.

  The hold reeked of the sharp smell of new wine. In the ramming, two amphorae had been dislodged from their rack and broken. Arcadia spent an uncomfortable night; her wound throbbed, and a spirea extract did little to relieve the headache. Getorius lay sleepless for a long time, pondering what might have happened if the pirates had been successful in capturing Cybele. At best, Arcadia’s father would have received a ransom demand and succeeded in getting his daughter back. At worse, she might have been made the concubine of one or more quarreling pirate chiefs. As a valued physician, Getorius knew he might have been smuggled north, to an area beyond the Danube River that was not under Roman control, and sold to some barbarian king. Except for Virilo’s seamanship, it might have been so.

  At midmorning of the next day Arcadia felt well enough to go on deck and join her husband in watching the playful antics of a school of dolphins. Their sleek, dark shapes leaped alongside, parallel to the galley’s sides, mimicking Cybele’s prow as it pitched in and out of the waves. In the distance, a hazy outline of mountains marked the Dalmatian mainland, a bluish background for a few colorful fishing boats gently bobbing on a calm sea.

  “How far are we from shore?” Arcadia asked.

  “I’d estimate less than
twenty miles. Sigeric said the Cybele would be slowed by a current flowing from the south, but we should arrive at Olcinium by late afternoon.”

  The door to Diotar’s cabin abruptly opened and he stepped out. Getorius thought Diotar looked worried as he hurried toward him. “Wonder what the priest wants? With the ramming and your injury, I’d forgotten he was on board.”

  “Surgeon,” Diotar called out in his womanish voice. “One of my priests is ill.”

  “Oh? What are his symptoms?”

  “Fever. Nausea. You must look at Kastor.”

  “I don’t have many medicaments.”

  “You treated Victor.”

  Word gets around. “Yes, mostly with what I found on board. All right, I’ll get my medical case.”

  When Getorius returned, Arcadia accompanied him to the end cabin. Diotar, who stood just inside the door, held up a restraining hand. “The woman may not enter,” he stated coldly.

  “My wife trains with me. I want her to observe as many illnesses as possible.”

  “Nevertheless, she must remain outside.”

  “Look here—”

  Arcadia touched her husband’s arm. “Getorius, it’s all right. You can describe his symptoms to me later on.”

  He shrugged and followed the priest into a small cabin about five feet wide and seven feet long. It was furnished with two narrow bunk beds, one above the other, a hinged wall table, a folding chair, and a low clothing chest that doubled as additional seating. The single window was closed and covered with a heavy fabric. The lack of fresh air together with flames from a broad-based oil lamp made the room uncomfortably stuffy. Getorius found the heavy scent of incense in the close space oppressive, and it did not completely mask a smell of vomit and urine.

  Another man, the one he had seen on the first day, Getorius guessed, lounged in the shadows of the upper bunk. He looked vaguely familiar. A youth lay moaning on the lower bed, covered with a blanket despite the heat.