The Cybelene Conspiracy

by Albert Noyer

  “You mean in case the coins were accidentally discovered?”

  “Exactly, Surgeon, and your wife did just that. I used my influence to have Leudovald postpone questioning her about where they were. Now I know.”

  “We’re grateful, sir. How do you think they got inside your bales?”

  “I’ll be frank. It’s no secret how I feel about Flavius Aetius…the fact that I believe he has designs on becoming Augustus one day.”

  “With respect, Senator—”

  “Wait”—Maximin’s ring flashed as he held up a hand to block the objection—“you’re going to defend Aetius because he helped you when you were falsely accused. Oh, the man seems likeable enough…a trick for disarming an opponent.”

  “Senator, I’m not much for palace intrigues. What are you getting at?”

  “An influx of counterfeit Western coins into the East would destabilize the economy. Sow confusion, suspicion.”

  “These are only bronzes. Perhaps if they were silver?” Getorius probed to see how much Maximin really knew about the coins.

  “The mints at Siscia and Sirmium were closed decades ago,” Maximin replied. “Equipment from them might have been stolen and sent to Scodra. Coins could receive a silver wash there. Attribute them to Valentinian and you have the basis for another civil war between East and West. You can see the reason I don’t want to be implicated, and why Aetius needs a decoy to throw suspicion off of himself. At some point he’d have the coins discovered in my wool.”

  That’s close enough to Arcadia’s theory, Getorius thought, and he’s already decided Aetius is the guilty one.

  Arcadia entered the study. Maximin gave Getorius a furtive shake of the head for silence, and rose to greet her. “My dear, you look lovely. Your husband and I were talking about the Oriental who is staying at my villa.”

  “Chen? I’m afraid we made him sick at dinner, giving him too much wine.”

  “He did complain of feeling ill in the morning.”

  “How is his work with the writing material coming along?”

  “He’s finished his translation of the manufacturing process. I’ve ordered a moulding screen made to demonstrate the making of a sample sheet.”

  “Getorius, you haven’t offered the Senator anything,” Arcadia noted. “Let me call Silvia.”

  “No, no,” Maximin refused. “I should get to my warehouses.”

  “Then let me walk you to the front entrance,” Getorius said, just as Childibert appeared at the door again.

  “Master, there is an accident at palace,” he called out. “Go quickly. A person is hurt.”

  “Who, Childibert?”

  “Guard only say a person. Asks that you come.”

  “What could have happened?” Arcadia wondered.

  “I don’t know, but bring my medical case.”

  “God forbid that anything has happened to the Augustus,” Maximin lamented. “I’ll come with you and be sure he’s safe.”

  While Arcadia went for the case, Getorius hurried out of the door that opened onto the Vicus Caesar. Maximin followed alongside. When they reached Lauretum, no sentries were on duty at the entrance.

  Strange, Getorius thought, has there been a palace takeover? Valentinian, or Placidia, murdered? Is Maximin correct in suspecting Aetius after all? He looked toward the end of the corridor and saw a line of men blocking access to the atrium. “The Scholarians are all up there, Senator.” The palace guards had locked shields and were facing the garden. After Getorius came up behind them, he saw that the men were struggling to keep the two ostriches inside the enclosure. The neck and head of one of the desert birds appeared above the guards, bobbing frantically as it sought a way through the human barrier. When its head ducked down, he could hear the ostrich pecking at the guards’ shields, or kicking at them with sickening thumps on leather-covered wood shields. Any guard could have severed the bird’s neck with a sword stroke, but Getorius understood that any man who decapitated the emperor’s new pet knew he was risking a punitive beheading himself.

  Marcus Lucullus, the tribune who had arrested Arcadia, stood to one side, directing the men.

  “What happened?” Getorius asked him. “How did the ostriches get out?”

  “A keeper must have left the cage door open,” he replied without looking away.

  Arcadia passed Maximin, who was pressed against the door of the closest reception room, watching from that distance. “Here’s your medical case, Getorius,” she said, then grasped his sleeve. “What’s going on?”

  “Valentinian’s ostriches have gotten loose.”

  A guard in the line staggered back from the force of a kick, stumbled, and fell. Before the other men could pull him away and close ranks, one of the frightened birds lunged through the opening and trampled over his body as it escaped along the corridor.

  Maximin hugged the doorjamb. Getorius shoved Arcadia back hard against the wall, protecting her with his body. The ostrich paused to look at them, its eyes wide in an uncomprehending stare, and its mouth open in a gasp. It hissed, then Getorius felt the massive feathered body knock him aside with the force of a bolting horse. The huge bird brushed past and strode toward daylight at the palace entrance, where its dark silhouette disappeared into the street.

  Maximin and Arcadia were safe. Getorius was winded by the blow. He slowly rose to his knees, gasping for breath and grasping a gray plume, then went to watch two slaves who had come into the garden with a heavy rope net. The head of the second ostrich appeared briefly above the row of guards, before the huge bird was encased in the rope’s mesh and its thrashing legs trapped.

  After the guards relaxed their blocking formation, Getorius pushed through their ranks. The bird had been wrestled to the ground, still hissing defiance, and was struggling to break free.

  Getorius saw a frightened boy slave, who had climbed a tree to be safe, and called up, “Can you see who was hurt?”

  In answer the child pointed toward the ostrich cage. A crumpled human form, wearing a black tunic and head shawl, lay on the ground in front of the open door. Blood splotched the tunic material.

  Getorius felt a reflexive shiver of dread. “Jesus, no. Don’t let it be…” He ran to the body, bent down and pulled aside the dark head covering.

  Still open in her battered face, Thecla’s watery blue eyes stared past Getorius with the gaze of a dead person, straining for a glimpse of eternity.

  “It is Thecla. Arcadia!” he yelled. “Where’s that medical case?”

  She hurried over and knelt beside him to open the cover. “Thecla? What happened?”

  “She was evidently attacked by the ostriches.” Getorius shook his head and gently pulled the veil back over Thecla’s face. “Never mind. Nothing can help her now.”

  A shadow fell across the body of the dead woman. “The presbytera was feisty,” a voice said. “I’ll grant her that much.”

  Getorius looked up. Leudovald was stroking his mustache, almost smirking, as he glanced down at the battered body of his prisoner.

  Chapter sixteen

  What happened?” Getorius demanded, barely suppressing his anger at Leudovald’s callous attitude. “How did Thecla get out here?”

  “I spoke to her guard, Surgeon. He let her empty the slop-pot and walk around a bit.”

  “Without noticing that the ostriches’ cage was open? Thecla was attacked in full daylight.”

  “I’ll question the keeper.” Leudovald pulled Getorius aside as six guards approached, struggling to carry the recaptured ostrich back to its enclosure. The enmeshed bird gasped from exhaustion, its eyes half-closed under curling lashes. “Mind the presbytera’s body,” he called to them.

  “Mind her body, Leudovald? No, order Thecla taken to a hospital ward, where the sisters can prepare her for burial.” Getorius saw that Arcadia had gone to stand by the garden retaining wall. “I’ll talk to you later about what might have happened. I need to see if my wife is all right.”

  Leudovald followed him
. When Getorius came up to Arcadia, she handed him his medical case and wiped her eyes with a hand. “How terrible that Thecla should die like this. So…so needlessly.”

  “Bishop Chrysologos can decide on a burial site for the priest…the presbytera,” Leudovald said in a more gentle tone.

  “Why not in the Arian cemetery, next to her church?”

  “Surgeon, didn’t I see Senator Maximin with you?” Leudovald hedged.

  “He was at my clinic when I heard about what had happened here.”

  “Ill?”

  Getorius ignored the question and repeated his concern, “We can’t let Thecla just lie there, Leudovald.”

  “I’ll order Lucullus to have her body taken up to the hospital.”

  “Fine…” Getorius watched Leudovald turn away toward the tribune, then muttered, “Insensitive son of Hades.”

  “At least he caught himself after he called Thecla a priestess,” Arcadia said. “Getorius, let’s look inside her room. It’s the second door on the left.”

  “I may have to treat that injured guard.”

  “They took him into the Scholarian barracks. Let their medical orderly clean him up first.”

  Getorius looked at the other guards. They were cheering their comrades who were trying to push the ostrich back into its cage and loosen the net without being flailed by its powerful legs. “We’ll go in while the men are distracted.”

  Thecla’s room was sparsely furnished. The Gothic Testament and writing materials she had requested were arranged on a table. A reed pen marked off one section of the codex, and a small, rolled-up papyrus was centered on the top cover.

  “Arcadia, she wrote something here,” Getorius said on opening the sheet.

  CREDIMVS VNVM DEVM

  ATOREM OMNVM

  EATM PATREM FIII

  QVI EMITTIT SPIRIT.

  “‘We believe in one God, originator of all things’,” he read, “‘blessed Father of the Son, who sends forth the Spirit’.”

  “‘The Lord of the Holy Spirit’,” Arcadia continued, “‘Whom the Father created through the Son before all things. The Holy Spirit is obedient and subject to the Son, like the Son to the Father.’ Sounds like a statement of what Thecla believed. ‘The Holy Spirit…is subject to the Son like the Son to the Father.’ It’s probably the Arian Creed. And look, she sketched the old IXYC ‘Sign of the Fish’ at the bottom of the text.”

  “I wonder why?” Getorius studied the ink drawing. “It once identified secret Christians, but hasn’t been necessary in decades. Thecla’s is more elaborate, with an eye and cross on the side.” He opened the book at the pen. “She’s marked a section in her Testament.”

  “But neither of us reads Gothic.”

  “Let’s see…good…the text is translated on the left side. Thecla underlined a passage in Luke.”

  “What does it say?”

  “‘People will lay their hands on you,’” he read. “‘You will be brought before…magistrates and put in prison. Some of you will be put to death, and all will hate you for your allegiance to me.’”

  “I told you that Thecla was depressed. She picked a passage that seemed relevant to her Arian faith.”

  “There’s a margin notation about another section.” Getorius turned to a previous chapter. “Here, verse fifteen is underlined.”

  “Let me read it.” Arcadia took up the book. “‘Guard against greed in all its forms. A man may be wealthy, but his wealth does not give him life.’”

  “What’s the connection? Her Arian followers are anything but rich.”

  “She noted something else.” Arcadia thumbed back to the section Getorius had read first. “‘Nation will make war against nation, kingdom against kingdom.’”

  “Rather gloomy selections. I can understand the one about persecution, but you’d think she would choose a more comforting psalm.”

  “Why, particularly, would she select Luke? There are similar passages in the other Testament writers.”

  “You think that’s important, Arcadia?”

  “Wasn’t Luke a physician?”

  “That’s the tradition.”

  “Getorius, I think she’s addressing these to you.”

  “Me? Why? And Thecla’s not really telling me anything.”

  “Look at the creed again. I noticed abbreviation dashes over some of the letters, yet the complete word had been written out.”

  “Let me see.” Getorius read off the designated letters, “—infundibulum. A tunnel?”

  “That’s what Thecla was telling you.”

  “But why? She certainly didn’t expect to die.”

  “No, but she would have tried to get this to you with as many clues as she could give.”

  “Clues to what, Domina?” Leudovald’s questioning voice came from the doorway behind Arcadia. “You two seem to be meddling in my work.”

  Getorius thought Leudovald sounded more curious than angry, but felt he had little choice other than to be honest with him. “Thecla noted passages in her Testament and wrote out an Arian creed. We found the word for ‘tunnel’ in the text as a kind of code. Look for yourself.”

  “Tunnel?” Leudovald spotted it immediately. “A child’s cipher,” he scoffed, “and not very well concealed.”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be,” Arcadia suggested. “Her guards couldn’t read.”

  “Couldn’t read. So where is this tunnel?” Leudovald looked around the small room in mock bewilderment. “Were her fellow heretics plotting to dig in here and free her?”

  “Leudovald…” Getorius sucked in a long breath and exhaled, deciding to throw his dice with the investigator and trust to Fortune. “Leudovald, I don’t think you much like me, but I believe you want to find out the truth as much as I do.”

  “The truth. Go on, Surgeon. These clues?”

  “The tunnel could be in her church. Arcadia once wondered whether Arians would have a secret escape route, in case they were attacked.”

  Leudovald allowed a thin smile of admiration beneath his mustache. “Surgeon, I had dismissed rumors about your part in solving the origin of a mysterious papyrus last year, but perhaps I misjudged. You and your wife may search the heretic’s church with me.”

  The Basilica of the Resurrection presented a different atmosphere when entered by daylight. The dim gloom in evidence on the evening that the body of Atlos had been discovered had been replaced by warm light diffusing from alabaster window panes in the clerestory and side aisles. The clarity revealed brick sidewalls that were relieved by recessed arcades, most fronted by a limestone sarcophagus. Several burial niches in the wall were sealed with inscribed marble slabs.

  A sparrow fluttered overhead on the smokestained truss beams. An irregular triangle of light, where the wood rested on the wall, betrayed the missing bricks through which the bird had entered. Droppings spotted the floor under a nest set on the beam.

  “The porter that Thecla mentioned obviously hasn’t kept to his task during her absence,” Getorius commented.

  “We’ll start at the nearest memorial slab in the right aisle,” Leudovald decided, striding to the wall with a mallet in his hand.

  The area had the unmistakable odor of mildew and dried urine. He fingered the edges of the stone slabs to feel for any cracks that might indicate a hidden recess, then tapped the wall with the mallet for telltale hollow sounds.

  “Nothing?” Getorius asked. Leudovald shook his head. “There’s a stone coffin in the next arcade. The lead seal at the edge of its lid is stripped away.”

  Leudovald went to feel the rim. “Vandalized for the metal, but the top seems intact. I doubt there’s an access from the inside that would lead to stairs beneath the floor.”

  Arcadia checked the next sarcophagus, a small coffin whose simple front inscription commemorated a child. “Lucinia Julia Optata,” she read aloud. “Died at the age of six years, one month and six days. No cause given.” It saddened her, knowing that if an infant lived past its first or second
year, chances of survival were good. Little Julia might have succumbed to one of the plague epidemics brought in on galleys coming from Asian ports. The thought of the dead six-year-old was a fresh reminder of Thecla’s unnecessary death.

  Arcadia left the aisle to the men and went into the nave. Near the altar a dark splotch of Atlos’s blood still stained the floor. That porter has been careless. Skirting the spot, she climbed up three stairs to the semicircular apse, wanting to explore the space behind the altar.

  Two side windows gave light to the mural of the Risen Savior, which had been only dimly visible when she had first seen the painting from a distance. The figure was crudely done, without realistic modeling, but the flat style gave Christ the aura of possessing a transcendent body. He hovered over the black rectangle of a tomb opening beneath, with arms extended to show the bloody spike wounds on his wrists. Behind him, an apricot-colored dawn sky silhouetted the scene at Golgotha, a mound that was topped by three T-shaped Tau crosses.

  Under the mural, a lower part of the wall that had seemed to be five slabs of marble from afar turned out to be wooden panels painted to resemble the veined stone. Arcadia’s first reaction surprised her—that this deception was as subtly false as Thecla’s Arian creed. She walked past, noticing that adjacent panels on each side were decorated with drawings of a man, an eagle, a lion and an ox, symbols she knew represented the four Testament writers.

  Arcadia stopped by the sketch of Luke, which also had the same IXYC symbol as was drawn on Thecla’s parchment. Could she have meant it as another clue? Arcadia was about to call the men over, when Leudovald’s excited voice echoed from the aisle.

  “I’ve found it! In this last niche.”

  Arcadia ran down to a blind arch fronted by a pine storage cabinet, which Leudovald had pushed aside.

  “I noticed an irregular outline of bricks that might indicate a sealed opening,” he gloated. “As I tapped the area, I heard a hollow sound.”

  “We think there’s an empty space behind the bricks,” Getorius explained. “Should be a door to Thecla’s tunnel.”