by Albert Noyer
Getorius drew the chair over to him and sat down. “I’ll need more light. Pull that window curtain away.” Diotar flipped the drape aside. “Better. Where do you hurt, young man?”
“Kastor speaks only Galatian,” Diotar said. “I will answer your questions for him.”
“Galatian? What does Kastor complain about?”
“A pain suddenly appeared in his back a few days before we left Ravenna.”
“This pain is located exactly where?”
“Just above his waist,” Diotar replied. “Kastor proclaimed it worse on the left side, then that it spread downwards. He vomited after we sailed, but I thought it was the effect of the sea’s motion.”
When Getorius bent closer to feel the youth’s face, he was surprised. By his slight body, Kastor had seemed no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, yet faint wrinkles around his eyes and mouth indicated he was far older. His brow was hot. “I’ll need a urine sample. Diotar, do you have a small glass vase or bottle?”
After Diotar said something to the person in the upper bunk, in Galatian, he slid down and started rummaging in the storage chest. While the man searched, Getorius rolled down the blanket, gagging at the stale smell of vomit, sweat, and urine. Kastor was nude. Small white slit-like scars dotted his torso, and a few of them had not healed and were festering. His lower abdomen was terribly inflamed.
“Will this do?” Diotar handed Getorius an empty, short-necked perfume flask.
“Fine. Help him sit up.” After Kastor was positioned on the edge of the bunk, Getorius held the bottle to Kastor’s flaccid penis, then sucked in a breath of horror. The man’s scrotum was a shriveled sack of loose flesh, from which the testes had been removed. “This man’s been castrated!” Getorius cried. “What’s going on, Diotar?”
“Kastor bears the voluntary sign of Cybele’s cult.”
“Voluntary or not, castration is a criminal offense. Even on a slave, if that’s what this man is.”
“Not if performed outside Roman jurisdiction,” Diotar replied smugly.
“Roman jurisdiction? I’m going on deck. Bring the urine to me.” Getorius lurched out the door, shaken, and saw Arcadia standing at the nearby railing. “The sick man has been castrated,” he told her, “probably also the other one in there. Some kind of perverse cult practice.”
Arcadia pulled him away from the door. “That’s the second castration we’ve encountered in a week.”
“Atlos? His was suicide, or a revenge murder, not a ritual gelding. I want no part of this. Let his Cybele goddess heal Kastor.”
“Getorius, remember your Oath. What were the man’s symptoms?”
Getorius watched the dolphins for a moment before replying, “Vomiting, fever. There were scars on his body, probably from some kind of self-mutilation. The unhealed ones on his abdomen have—”
The cabin door opened. Adonis, his face again concealed by the hood, handed over the bottle and went back inside.
“Kastor’s urine.” Getorius held the specimen to the sky and saw a pinkish caste to the cloudy yellow liquid. “There’s blood in it. His kidney humors are terribly out of balance.”
Arcadia took the bottle and sniffed the contents. “Foul smelling. Hippocrates held that the kidneys attract urine.”
“Any pig butcher could tell you that.”
“Getorius, I know you’re upset, but listen to me. Hippocrates also believed that veins were responsible for propelling the urine into the kidneys. An imbalance might cause blood to mingle with it.”
“Possibly.”
“What will you prescribe?”
“His abdomen was hot, distended, so Kastor’s bladder must be in the same imbalance. Extended bed rest. I’ll tell Diotar that his eunuch disciple can’t go ashore.”
“A purgative to expel the imbalance?” Arcadia suggested.
“It would help. Hot euphorbia juice poured over figs is a mild laxative. After that, watered white wine for the fever. Boiled barley meal to keep up Kastor’s strength. A little fish, again boiled, when he feels better.”
“Would weak hydromel be helpful?”
“Good, Arcadia. Honey-water should relieve his thirst and help the fever.”
“I’ll write out instructions for Diotar. The medications should be available in Olcinium.”
“Thanks, Cara.” Getorius moved his wife away from the cabins, toward the center of the railing. “Sorry I barked at you like that,” he apologized, watching her empty the urine bottle through a scupper. “What I saw made me sick. Diotar implied he could buy castrated slaves who were outside Ravenna’s control. Could the counterfeit bronzes be his? A frontier slave trader might not notice the difference.”
“Why would he hide them in the bales, when he has a cabin?”
“To avoid customs inspectors?”
“The wool belongs to Maximin,” Arcadia recalled. “If either is involved with the coins, then, along with murder, Leudovald has a case of treason on his hands.”
Getorius put an arm around her. On the distant shore the square gray outline of stone buildings in Olcinium began to separate themselves from their dull-green mountain backdrop. Gaudy fishing boats dotted the sea between the Cybele and port. He watched clumps of stringy seaweed float by a moment, then released Arcadia and turned her to him. “Treason?” he repeated, more as a comment than a question. “Looking back to where we slept the first night…the wool bales…you and I are quite literally in the middle of it.”
“Very funny. Getorius, with all that’s happened, I’d forgotten about Thecla. I’m worried about what Leudovald might do to her.”
“Arcadia, the woman is over seventy years old. He may question her, but that’s all.” Getorius shaded his eyes and scanned the stony hills behind Olcinium. “Gaius told me that Diotar has a Cybelene temple outside the port. I may find out more about his cult there, and whether or not he’s the one smuggling counterfeits into Dalmatia.”
The early evening air was cooling rapidly. Arcadia nestled against her husband’s warmth. “I…I’m a little apprehensive at being here, Getorius. The furthest I’ve ever traveled is Caesena in the Apennine foothills.”
He hugged her shoulder in reassurance. “Cara, you’ll be fine. Virilo will unload Maximin’s cargo and take on his imports. Now, let’s go below and decide on what to take ashore. I’m getting us a real bed to sleep in tonight.”
“Thanks, Husband. I couldn’t stand another hour in that hold. Because of the broken wine jars, it smells like the aftermath of a Bacchanalia.”
As Getorius followed his wife down the ladder, he realized that he actually had no idea of what they might find in Olcinium. Or even when they would leave.
Chapter nine
The rays of a low afternoon sun washed the distant stone walls and houses of Olcinium with a golden hue, giving the Dalmatian port a gilded haze of undeserved magnificence.
Getorius held the leather traveling case and stood with Arcadia, watching Sigeric maneuver the Cybele between a maze of fishing boats that bobbed on the waves as the men returned to sell their day’s catch at the wharf. Virilo climbed the platform and stood beside his helmsman when the galley neared the breakwater pier, a right-angle stone barrier that protected the harbor against seas rolling in from the northwest. Stonework on a five-story lighthouse at the pier’s end was crumbling, and the eastern end of the harbor basin was silting up with sand deposited by both the Ionian Current and a river flowing a short distance beyond. To the left of the port, a loaf-shaped mountain rose abruptly from an expanse of sandy beach, then tapered down toward the river. Getorius estimated its summit to be about a mile high. Beyond the river, a lower hill, about a third as tall, began a gradual ascent to the east. A few miles behind the shoreline, the rugged mountains of southern Dalmatia rose as a guardian barrier for the crowded port town.
After Virilo ordered a tack into the wind to round the shorter angle of the breakwater, the Cybele slowly slipped into the calm waters of Olcinium’s harbor.
“
I was impressed at your handling of the pirates,” Getorius called up to him. “Was it your idea to have a hidden ram?”
Virilo spit leeward of the deck, then looked down. “I had Aurora…Cybele…built at Classis for Maximin. She’s slimmer than a merchant galley, length to beam. His wine and pepper cargos don’t take up much room, and he wants speed.”
“You said this was your first run-in with bandits?”
He nodded. “But if our fleet leaves Classis to blockade the Vandals in Carthage, they’ll get bold as Bacchus’s balls. The authorities here will cut a thumb off that helmsman, maybe squeeze out an eye, then let him go free so he can spread the word to the pirates to stay clear of this end of the coast.”
The breakwater dock area was close enough now to pick out details of warehouse sheds and the buildings around them, melon-colored for another instant before the sun dropped below the horizon and the aura of golden light faded. Getorius could see that most of the homes and apartments were deteriorating and in need of repair.
“The port’s seen better times,” Virilo commented, as if reading his mind. “Epidamnus to the south gets most of the trade that’s going to Macedonia.” He eyed a signal pennant fluttering over the harbormaster’s building on the pier. “We’re cleared. Why doesn’t that furcing Greek send out a boat to tow us to a berth?”
One other galley, a grain carrier with the Hellene name Demeter, was being unloaded at the nearest wharf. Two well-dressed customs officials supervised the slaves, one giving each man a token as he carried his sack of wheat into the warehouse, while the other recorded the tally in a ledger. Getorius saw a mosaic design on the harbormaster’s building; twin eagles standing on a fascis, a bundle of rods enclosing an axe, with the name prevalitana underneath. One of the Imperial birds looked toward its left and the other to its right.
“Virilo. What’s that emblem?”
“Jupiter’s eagles watching east and west. We’re in the province of Prevalitana, in the eastern lands of Theodosius at Constantinople. We crossed the boundary meridian half a watch period ago.”
“The Eastern Empire?” Arcadia glanced at her husband. He understood—the counterfeit coins of a Western emperor were being smuggled into the East. If they were Maximin’s, or Virilo’s—even Diotar’s—whom were the men planning to cheat? “How long will we be here?” she asked Virilo.
He gave a non-committal shrug. “We’ll unload our wool and wine in the morning. I’m picking up pepper for Maximin, Macedonian wine, and some other cargo.”
“What other cargo?”
Instead of answering, Virilo turned away to eye his position with respect to the wharf. “Furl mainsail,” he shouted to the crew. “That furcing harbormaster must be off eating dinner. We’ll anchor Cybele here in mid-harbor for the night.”
“Virilo, my wife would like to sleep in a bed tonight,” Getorius called up. “Is there an inn at Olcinium you could recommend?”
“The Emilianus, across from the church that has the saint’s name. I’m staying on board, but the crew wants to scout the bazaar and Lupanar…and a few other places.”
“Does Diotar stay at Emilianus?”
“His cult has a temple north of town, on the Via Scodrae.” Virilo hesitated a moment, then asked, “Surgeon, why did you really stow away aboard my galley?”
“I told you. Leudovald suspects me in Atlos’s death and I didn’t want to submit to his questions. What did he ask you about?”
“The fishing knife he said he found, but he didn’t show it to me.”
“No, he’d first produce it at your trial. And I found a ritual sickle with the body, not a knife.”
“Did you already know your daughter was pregnant?” Arcadia asked.
Virilo looked away. “Claudia lives in Diotar’s half of my villa.”
“I see. Getorius, before we go ashore you should look in on that sick man again.”
“Right. I’ll give Diotar the treatment you wrote out.”
Getorius knocked on the cabin door, then held up the parchment note when Diotar opened it a crack. “This is what you must do for Kastor. How is he?”
The priest snatched the slip. “Much better, Surgeon.”
“On no account must he go ashore.”
Diotar glared at him and slammed the door shut.
The Cybele had towed a skiff in her wake during the voyage to Olcinium. When the crew pulled the small boat alongside, Virilo ordered that his two stowaways be rowed ashore with them.
On the wharf, Getorius guided Arcadia past warehouses and shipping offices with mosaic pavement designs that advertised the ports to which they sent cargo. At the marketplace beyond, stalls whose awnings covered crates of spring greens and last winter’s vegetables were scattered among other booth vendors hawking fish, mussels, and squid. In open butcher shops along the main street that led north, flies and wasps buzzed around hanging links of sausage or sheep and pig carcasses skewered on hooks.
Arcadia noticed that the bakeshops sold the round loaves familiar to her, but also a thin flatter bread that she had not seen in Ravenna. Taverns and corner booths selling hot food were beginning to fill with supper customers. A few women in bright tunics and heavy make-up already lounged outside Lupanarae, the brothels that Virilo had presumably thought better not to mention. Many of the shop signs were in Greek, and the language was heard as often as Latin in the babble of conversation. Both tongues were harsh with the accents of local dialects.
Ravenna had its share of mixed Roman, Germanic, and Asiatic peoples, but Arcadia marveled at the polyglot makeup of the crowded street. Tall, blond barbarians from Gothic or Germanic tribes mingled with swarthy Macedonian Greeks and traders from Syria, Judea, Parthia—God only knew where. Even a few flattish oriental faces stood out, similar to those of the Army Commander’s elite guard at Ravenna; Hunnic deserters to the Eastern Empire who had no stomach for the wars of their kings, Bleda and Attila.
The shops and houses were made of the grayish local stone, most without a stucco finish, and only crumbling patches of the coating remained on those that once had been plastered. The grayness extended to the roofs, which were covered with flat slabs of slate, rather than the reddish terracotta tiles of Italic structures. The effect was drab, and one that would probably be echoed in the surrounding mountains once the green grass that sprouted from the winter rains had withered in the summer heat.
Just past the center of town the busy main street opened up into a small square. A temple stood at the north end. The green-stained letters on its bronze entablature still bore the original dedication to Mercurius, god of commerce, but a Christian cross had been mounted on top of the pediment.
“Would that be the church of Holy Emilianus?” Getorius wondered aloud.
“Reconsecrated from a pagan temple,” Arcadia surmised.
A moment later he saw the name confirmed on the wall of a two-story building to his right. Flaking letters spelled out AD SCTI EMILIANI, above the crude painting of a beheaded legionary. An incongruous halo framed the gory head that was lying on the ground next to the body.
“I’ve never heard of that saint, but we know how he was martyred,” Getorius remarked. “The inn that Virilo recommended doesn’t look too hospitable, but I’d rather not wander around a strange town looking for another one. Cara, that’s our home for tonight.”
“Fine, as long as it doesn’t pitch and yaw.” Arcadia laughed. “I even feel like eating a full meal again.”
The sound of applause from a crowd gathered at the temple stairs drew her attention back to the building. A troupe of actors was performing a scene from a drama. After listening for a moment, Arcadia said, “That’s The Pot of Gold by Plautus. Let’s watch—it’s almost over.”
The performers were dressed in shabby fur costumes evidently intended to represent barbarians. A scarred wooden board on the side lettered MOGONTIACVM GERMANIAE set the scene.
“Mogontiacum? That’s where you were born,” Arcadia said. “I don’t understand.”
An old man in exaggerated white make-up, playing the part of the miser, Euclio, was speaking. “…or my feet. I can’t even give orders in my own house now.”
His neighbor, Megadorus, answered, “Cheer up, Euclio. We’ll soon have good news for you. My nephew Lyconides is here.”
A younger man came out from behind one of the portico columns, followed by his slave, a wrinkled, white-haired dwarf, who waddled onstage. A smattering of applause, and titters at the dwarf’s exaggerated comic walk, greeted the two. Lyconides winked and showed the audience a clay jar that was half-concealed in his cloak.
Euclio frowned. “Your nephew is insolent and shameless. The last person in Mogontiacum I want to see.”
“I can understand that, you old miser,” Lyconides retorted. “But even if you don’t want to look at me, you will want to see what I’ve brought.”
Euclio turned his back. “I don’t want to see, touch, hear, smell, and certainly not taste you.”
After the bystanders finished hooting at the vulgar insinuation, Lyconides handed the jar to Megadorus. “Then my uncle must convince you to at least take a look.”
“Yes,” Megadorus agreed. “We have something that belongs to you.”
“What is it?” Euclio asked, turning. “What do you have? Great Thunor! It’s my jar of gold come back to me. Where did you find it?”
Megadorus beamed. “My nephew can tell you.”
Euclio slipped an arm around Lyconides. “So, it’s you I must thank for finding my treasure? Let me give you an as, no, half an as as a reward.”
The spectators groaned at the miserly sum. One of them threw a cabbage that rolled toward the dwarf. “Ah, we eat tonight,” the dwarf quipped, looking at the audience. “Perhaps a sausage, too. Anyone? Even a small sausage?”
“Y’ already got a small sausage,” someone in the audience shouted.
Lyconides waited for the laughter to end, then pointed to the dwarf. “The credit is also due to this old slave of mine. I rewarded him with his freedom.”
