by Albert Noyer
Before the last course was served, Getorius signaled for Silvia to serve Chen an undiluted, honey-sweetened wine.
“Let’s drink to the success of your papir project,” he suggested when all three cups were full.
Chen bowed. “Thank you, As-t’us.”
“Would you like to see my clinic now?”
“Cl-in’c?”
“Where I treat people who are ill.”
“Yes, see cl-in’c.”
Getorius thought that Chen walked a bit unsteadily when he was brought in and shown the collection of animal bones and organ specimens preserved in glass jars. He gazed at the curious animal parts, then the array of medical instruments. As Getorius wondered how to explain their use in simple terms, Chen picked up a long, thin needle.
“You use to help balance chi?”
“Chee?” Getorius was unsure of what he meant. “I use needles to remove splinters, probe boils. What is this Chee?”
“Our healers teach that body is balance of two forces call yin and yang. They put needle in certain body points to adjust flow of chi.”
“What if there is a diseased organ like…like the kidney in that man I treated in Diotar’s cabin?”
“Zhang Chen not like Dio-t’r very much.”
“I agree. There is something sinister about him.”
“Sin-st’r? What mean?”
“Ah…ominous, evil.”
“Bad?”
“Yes, bad. Did you know him in Pessinus?” Getorius probed. Perhaps Chen could throw more light on the eunuch priest’s background.
“Not talk of Dio-t’r.”
“No.” Getorius decided it would be too difficult to discuss any more medicine with Chen. “Let’s go see if the sweet course is ready.”
When the two men came back into the dining room, Silvia had set each place with a dish of dates cooked in honey, and refilled the wine cups.
Arcadia noticed that Chen seemed pleased with the simple dessert, and that the wine had made him more relaxed.
Getorius felt a bit lightheaded himself as he finished a last sticky date and thought again about the smaller crates. They might hold another food that was, hopefully, more exotic than Chen’s black leaves. Perhaps he could cajole the nature of the contents from his guest.
“Chen, what else does your country have that we Romans don’t know about?” Getorius asked with a slight slurring of the words.
“But no more papir,” Arcadia objected in a good-natured petulance that was a result of the wine. “I want to hear more about where Chen was born.”
“Cara, he lives in Pessinus now. He may not remember much. Chen, tell us about another product we don’t have here in Ravenna. Would it be in those other crates?”
Chen hesitated. The inside of his head had an unfamiliar spinning sensation that was making him nauseous, and he was no longer in total control of his thoughts. Was this why Lao Tzu had prohibited the drinking of wine? Now As-t’us was asking about what was inside the padded containers. The wealthy sen-t’or had warned him not to talk about it, yet this As-t’us and his wife were new friends, perhaps the only ones he would make in Ravenna.
“My friend at Ol-cin’um—”
“The man who was killed in the earthquake?”
Chen nodded to Arcadia. “Qin Shi own mine of what Greeks call nitron. He have new thing he make himself.”
“Egyptians used nitron to preserve bodies for embalming,” Getorius recalled. “You say he discovered another use for it?”
Chen stood up, swaying a little, and pointed through the door windows. “You have garden?”
“Yes, would you like to see it?” Arcadia asked. “It’s still light outside.”
“We go there. Zhang Chen show ‘Dragon Cough.’”
“The cough of what?” Getorius was puzzled.
“Draco, Husband. A mystical creature something like a grithffin,” Arcadia explained, stumbling over the last word.
“A griffin? All right, lead us to the garden so we can hear this creature’s mighty roar.”
Chen stood up, already regretting that the wine had made him boast of having something that Val-tan, the Western Ti, did not. But not to honor his promise would be a dishonor to his new friends. “Good, As-t’us. You bring hot coal from cook stove.”
Getorius thought it a strange request, but complied. While he went to the kitchen, Arcadia unlatched one of the panels and led Chen outside. The cool evening air was fragrant from blossoms on the fruit trees and the fresh earth that Brisios had turned in the vegetable garden. In a nearby plot the perennial herbs grown for the clinic were sending out new green growths and a spicy fragrance.
Arcadia watched Chen unlace his purse and take out two thick red cylinders the length of her index finger. They looked as if they were wrapped in a dyed piece of the tan material she had seen earlier. A candlewick extended from one end.
“What are they for, Chen?” she asked. “They’re too small to give off much light.”
“Not candle. Qin Shi and I use to celebrate New Year. Much noise.”
Getorius returned, holding a red coal in a pair of tongs. “What do I do with this?”
“Give me.” Chen touched the end of the coal to one of the wicks. After it began to sparkle, he threw the tube to the ground.
“How pretty…” Arcadia bent down to pick up the fizzling object, but Chen pulled her back, crying, “No touch! No touch!”
A moment later the cylinder burst apart in a loud sound amid a shower of sparks, smoke, and bits of wrapping. Getorius was reminded of the snap of a released catapult cord against the frame. Arcadia likened it to the pop of pinewood on a fire, only much more sharp and intense.
A sulfurous smell came from a smoking, shallow hole in the ground. The force of whatever happened had thrown bits of grass and dirt into a circle around it.
Brisios’s dog Nivello howled at the sudden noise. The guard who had brought Chen, lounging outside the carriage gate, rattled the portal for entrance. Brisios came running into the garden to see what had happened.
“It’s nothing, Brisios. Go tell that guard,” Getorius ordered. “Our friend showed us a…a toy from his country.” Bending to inspect the hole, he hoped the garden trees had helped muffle the sound. Getorius smelled the soil and fingered a few tufts of grass that had been thrown a distance of three paces away. “Amazing,” he muttered, straightening up. “Chen, can we use the other one? I’d like to try something.”
Zhang Chen’s mind was clearing a bit, but he had now experienced firsthand why Lao Tzu had ordered abstention from wine. Friend or not, he regretted showing As-t’us the Dragon Cough.
Getorius brought a chipped pitcher that Brisios used to fill the birdbath dish. “Let me put the other one under here so it won’t sound so loud,” he said, taking the cylinder from Chen, before he could object.
He propped it up at an angle on a small branch, then laid the pitcher top-down so the lip rested on the twig. Getorius blew on the coal and touched it to the wick, then moved Arcadia back to the other side of the herbs. Chen also stood well away.
An instant later the cylinder exploded, shattering the pitcher and flinging ceramic shards in a wide circle around the spot where it had stood. One struck the bottom of Arcadia’s tunic. Getorius picked up the shard and found it was slightly blackened and smelled of the same sulfurous odor as the hole.
“Christ! Enough of these bigger Dragon things could destroy a house. Is that what you brought in the four crates?”
“Zhang Chen…” Instead of finishing the sentence, Chen ran to a corner of the garden and vomited. He returned moments later, wiping his mouth. He bowed. “Zhang Chen must go back. Good meal. Thank you.”
Arcadia grasped his sleeve. “Chen, I’m so sorry. Come in and rinse your mouth, wash up—”
“Zhang Chen must go,” he insisted, shrugging out of her hold. Getorius walked him toward the gate. Brisios was trying to quiet the dog again, and the guard was straining to peer through the board cracks. Geto
rius unlatched and swung open the portals.
“Everything is all right,” he assured the man, pressing a silvered follis into his hand. “Chen showed us a harmless plaything. Take him back to Maximin’s, but don’t tell the senator we saw the toy. He…he wants to surprise us.” Getorius felt that might be half true, yet he knew it was not a surgeon whom the senator wanted to impress with the dragon’s powerful cough.
Later, in the bedroom with Arcadia, Getorius thought about the astonishing things they had both seen that day. One, the writing material, had been shown at the order of Galla Placidia, but the Dragon Cough was clearly an inadvertent display by a man who was not used to the effects of drinking.
“I feel sorry for Chen,” Arcadia remarked, slipping on a night tunic over her head. “We really shouldn’t have insisted that he take the wine.”
“A headache in the morning, then he’ll be fine. And without it he might not have shown us that coughing dragon.”
“It was loud enough to be heard inside Lauretum.”
“What interests me is its potential for destruction. That small amount of nitron, and whatever was mixed with it, smashed that jug as if it had fallen from the roof.”
“Frightening. What did you think of his writing material?”
Getorius watched Arcadia run an ivory comb through her hair, a ritual he always found sensual, before replying, “If this papir is as simple to make as Maximin implied, he’ll surely become the richest senator in Roman history.”
Arcadia put down the comb and took up a mirror to check her hair. “He could also become wealthy without manufacturing it.”
“I’m not sure what you mean. Why do you think he wouldn’t put it on the market?”
“You heard what Maximin said about opposition, even rioting, from parchment and papyrus makers and their suppliers.”
“Cara, the poet Horace once quipped that the prizes of life are never acquired without trouble.”
“And, Husband”—she tilted the mirror to look at his reflection—“wasn’t he the one who also said that bribes enter without knocking?”
“Bribes? You’re suggesting papyrus and parchment makers would pay Maximin to keep the process a secret? Really, Arcadia, how much wine did you drink?”
“I’m probably wrong, yet he’d make money either way.”
“Actually, when I think about it, you’re not necessarily off target. How much would it be worth to the industry to avoid ruined businesses?” Getorius got up and came behind his wife to kiss her neck. “You need to sleep well tonight, and be fresh for Leudovald’s questioning in the morning. I’ll go with you, of course.”
“No, you have to keep the clinic open. And I don’t want you telling him that you knew about the ‘Valentinians.’”
“Leudovald’s not stupid. He realizes that I know.”
“I’ll simply tell him the truth. That I found the coins in a bale of wool.”
“And implicate Maximin? Do we want someone as influential as the senator for an enemy?”
Arcadia turned to him. “Then what should I do? Flutter my eyelashes and tell him they must have gotten into my purse through sorcery? You just said he wasn’t stupid.”
Getorius’s jaw clenched. I keep forgetting how stubborn Arcadia can be. “Would you like a valerian drink to help you sleep?”
“No! Getorius, I just don’t want you imprisoned again.”
“I’ll be fine. Let me pull the covers up for you. I’m going to sit awhile in the study.”
With Arcadia settled in bed, Getorius went to his favorite room to think. Presumably, only five people knew about the writing material—Chen, Galla Placidia, Senator Maximin, Arcadia, and he. It could have been only three persons. Why had the Oriental insisted on having two other witnesses present? Had Chen been concerned that after the manufacturing process was written down he might no longer be needed?
Certainly, Maximin must have paid him an enormous sum to bring in the crates. Perhaps Chen would try to withhold the formula for making this Dragon’s Cough as a guarantee of his safety. Maximin must surely have seen it demonstrated, and fully realized its destructive power.
Getorius yawned and got up to join his wife. Time enough after Arcadia was questioned to speculate about the new products. He was also anxious to see Thecla again, find out if she was well, and ask her if she knew of any hidden entrances in her church. If Leudovald objected to a visit, he would, as Galla Placidia’s physician, insist on checking the old woman’s health.
Chapter fifteen
Just before the third hour, Getorius walked with Arcadia across the palace garden toward Leudovald’s wing of the building. His office and the adjacent rooms for interrogating suspects were located at the far northeast corner of Lauretum Palace—probably to muffle any cries that might be heard if, as rumored, suspects were tortured to obtain information.
One of the Gothic guards at the entrance escorted the couple through the garden and past the menagerie of exotic animals that Valentinian kept in his zoo. Arcadia paused to look at the emperor’s newest prize, a pair of ostriches she heard had been brought from Egypt on the grain ship Horus. In the light of her own predicament, she empathized with the frantic look and nervous pacing of the birds in their bamboo pole cage.
As Getorius brought his wife into Leudovald’s office, the investigator glanced at the sandglass on his desk.
“Good, Domina,” he observed amiably. “You are here exactly on the hour.”
“We want this cleared up,” Getorius told him. “Neither Arcadia nor I know anything about the origin of those coins.”
“Coins. Of course not, Surgeon, but we have a more pressing matter. You and your wife are here as witnesses.”
“Witnesses to what? I came to help defend Arcadia against your accusation.”
“Accusation. Yes, we’ll come to that, but the murder of the castrated youth is of more importance.” Leudovald stood up from his desk and indicated the door to an adjacent room. “We have the Arian priestess and the others in there.”
“Others?” Getorius asked
“The galleymaster and his daughter.”
“Why them?”
“Them? You shall see, Surgeon.”
The interrogation area was divided into four cramped sections by curtain partitions. A high window was the only source of light. Hanging from wall pegs were leather whips, hand and leg irons, and devices that were used to extract information from suspects, or frighten them into talking.
Getorius saw Thecla sitting on a bench below the window. Although she looked tired, he saw no signs of mistreatment. “Presbytera, we’ve been concerned about you”—he grasped bony hands that felt cold—“are you well? Is your stomach pain gone?”
“The daemon still—”
“Surgeon, stay away from the prisoner,” Leudovald ordered before Thecla could finish her answer. “I’ll not have poison slipped to this heretic.”
“Poison?” Getorius took a deep breath to control his anger. “Leudovald, I’ve taken an oath not to administer anything harmful to people.”
“People. And how many rebellious legion commanders have broken their oath to the Augustus?” he scoffed, then nodded toward two people in the room. “You already know Virilo and his daughter.”
“Yes. How are you feeling, Claudia?”
The girl did not look up at Getorius from playing with the folds of her tunic.
“She’s fine,” Virilo answered gruffly.
“The man with them at the table is Deacon Dagalaif,” Leudovald continued. “Since the priestess belongs to an heretic sect, he’s here representing the archbishop.”
Dagalaif, a pale, nervous-looking man, opened a wax tablet and asked Getorius, “You’re the surgeon who discovered the dead youth?”
“I was called to the Arian church.”
“Then tell me—”
“Deacon, this isn’t an ecclesiastical court,” Leudovald reminded the man sharply. “I will ask the questions.”
Dagalaif flushed t
o the unhealthy color of a drunkard, and incised a notation on his tablet.
Leudovald motioned Getorius and Arcadia to a bench opposite Claudia and her father, then slid a short whip off its peg. Standing a few paces from Thecla, he caressed the leather strands and fingered the lead barbs on their tips, as if lost in thought, then looked down at her.
“Priestess, you told me that you discovered the youth Atlos and the girl in your basilica when you went to fill oil lamps. What did you do then?”
Thecla replied in a voice that was barely audible, “I saw a boy outside and sent him to bring a surgeon.”
“A surgeon. Getorius Asterius, here?”
“Yes.”
“And why him in particular?”
“A parishioner I met on the Armini had mentioned that Getor…the Surgeon…was treating his mother. I thought to send for him.”
Dagalaif tapped the flat erasing end of his stylus on the tabletop and spoke up. “Was the youth dead?”
When Leudovald did not protest the question, Getorius guessed that he had seen the deacon taking notes, comments that would undoubtedly be passed on to Archbishop Chrysologos.
“I’m not a physician,” Thecla answered.
“Woman, don’t be impertinent,” Dagalaif snapped. “Surely, you’ve buried enough of your heretics to know a dead person when you see one.”
“Deacon, that will do…” Leudovald turned to Getorius. “Surgeon, what did you find?”
“The young man bled to death. His testicles had been severed.”
“Severed. With what?” Leudovald cracked the questions as he might the whip.
“There was a sickle in Atlos’s hand.”
“A sickle? You still insist on that, Surgeon, despite the fact that I found a fish knife next to the body.”
“I’m sure of it.”
Leudovald dawdled with a lead barb for a moment. “Tell me about Claudia, the girl who was there.”
“I…my wife and I…thought she said her name was Sybil, the name of the ancient oracle. She was actually saying ‘Cybele.’ C-y-be—”
