The Cybelene Conspiracy

by Albert Noyer

  Thecla had been brutally killed by an enraged ostrich that had, by design or accident, managed to escape from its cage.

  A eunuch priest of the cult of Cybele had had his throat slashed with a ritual sickle by an epileptic girl whom he had tried to manipulate to further his ambitious schemes.

  Arcadia had narrowly escaped death on the Cybele, before the sixty-foot galley, its crew, and some twenty guards had vanished in the twinkling of an eye, with hardly a trace of their remains left behind. Had he not seen the destructive power of the Dragon’s Cough demonstrated a few days ago in his own garden, he thought he too might have found it reasonable to attribute the cataclysm to some unidentified sorcery.

  Arcadia awoke from her sleep of exhaustion as the afternoon shadow of the gnomon on the garden sundial moved toward the tenth hour.

  Neither she nor Getorius brought an appetite to supper, even though Ursina had prepared spring lamb roasted in a sauce of onion, savory, dates, and pepper, served with blanched asparagus tips and a pan of mustard greens.

  The doors to the garden were open, admitting the cooler air that always arrived when the sun slipped below the villa’s second story on the Via Honorius side. The gentle splash of the fountain was audible, a pleasant sound that mingled with the chirp of emerging night insects. A mixed scent of thyme and rosemary drifted into the dining room.

  Arcadia looked out for a moment before sitting down. She toyed with a piece of lamb a moment, then pushed her plate of food aside. “I simply can’t believe that Claudia had us fooled for almost a month.”

  “All this took planning,” Getorius pointed out. “She and Adonis evidently had a lot of time to themselves, to be able to hatch that kind of plot. The crewmen they recruited could have been bringing back their own contraband from Olcinium. Adonis probably got them to join him by threatening to expose smuggling in which they would be implicated.”

  “And money. Payments from the Cybelene temple treasure that Claudia mentioned helped bring them over to their conspiracy.”

  “Leaving Ravenna was better than facing a Roman court. As I found out, Arcadia, once charged, you’re pretty much presumed guilty.”

  “What was Senator Maximin’s part in all this? He’s been pretty deft at avoiding any responsibility and…” Arcadia stopped and looked toward the door, where Childibert stood. “What is it?”

  “Mistress, the person from magistrate is here.”

  “Leudovald? We were going to see him in the morning. Send him in, Childibert.”

  “Wonder what the man wants,” Getorius mumbled. He stood up when the investigator entered the dining room and decided to be civil. “Leudovald. Will you join us in some supper?”

  “Supper. Yes, agreed,” he replied with a trace of a smile beneath his mustache. “One tires of palace rations.”

  “Good.” Getorius was surprised that Leudovald had accepted. He looked drawn and his blond hair was unkempt and in need of a trim. Like everyone involved, the problems of these past few weeks had undoubtedly taken their toll on the man’s health, in sleeplessness and worry.

  “Childibert, tell Silvia to set another place,” Arcadia ordered.

  “Only small portions,” Leudovald cautioned. “My digestion has not been well lately.”

  “A little wine, then, for your stomach’s sake”—Getorius pushed his untasted cup toward the man—“just as Saint Paul advises.”

  “A little wine.”

  “The first time I met Thecla she told me that her stomach was tormented by a daemon,” Getorius recalled. “I prescribed a cassia purge.”

  Leudovald chuckled softly. “I prefer this remedy, Surgeon.”

  He took a sip of wine as Silvia came in and set a dish of the lamb and vegetables in front of him.

  Getorius pushed over a plate of bread and watched the man eat for a moment. “Leudovald, we were just wondering about Publius Maximin’s role in all this.”

  “Maximin. Unfortunately, any physical evidence of the senator’s involvement is in pieces at the bottom of the harbor.”

  “How convenient,” Arcadia remarked. “Did Virilo tell you anything more?”

  “More? The galleymaster seems affected by his daughter’s death, but has not yet fathomed the depth of her deceit…her obsession with revenge. I’ve postponed more questioning until tomorrow.”

  “We admitted to you that we accidentally discovered the counterfeit bronzes in one of Maximin’s wool bales,” Getorius reminded Leudovald, “but we also found bags of sapphires being smuggled into Ravenna in his pepper amphorae.”

  “Sapphires.” Leudovald shrugged. “From a source and to a destination we shall never know. It’s obvious now that the person, or persons, who operated the coin press in the cellar room entered through the Arian basilica.”

  “And we’ve never discovered who that might be.”

  “Wait, Getorius,” Arcadia recalled, “didn’t you tell me that Fabius offered you one of the false ‘Valentinians’ after Thecla’s funeral?”

  “Fabius? Of course! As an Arian he knew all about the basilica’s secret escape route to the underground room. And he was evasive about the whereabouts of the old porter.”

  “Who is this Fabius?” Leudovald asked. “How do you know him?”

  “His mother is a patient of mine. You may have seen him with her at Thecla’s funeral. His temptation to steal a few of the counterfeits for himself is understandable.”

  “I’ll send my men out to arrest this Fabius and question him.”

  “They’ll probably have to pry his body off the grille where that lateral cloaca empties into the harbor. Adonis would have seen to that if he found out.”

  Leudovald drained his wine, brushed a nervous hand over his mustache, then toyed with the rim of the silver cup. “It seems that the woman presbytera—”

  “Thecla,” Arcadia reminded him.

  “Thecla.” Leudovald flushed slightly. “It seems, Domina, that she provided the clue that unraveled the weave of this conspiracy. Without her simple code we would not have been led to the cellar room.”

  “This is something I’ve wondered about,” Arcadia said. “Why did Claudia want to be found with Atlos in that Arian basilica?”

  “Adonis must have found out, perhaps from Fabius, that Thecla filled oil lamps at that day and hour,” Getorius speculated. “Claudia lured Atlos there, where he was murdered by his twin. Then Adonis went back to Virilo’s by the sewer route.”

  “Of course. Both knew the authorities would be summoned and hoped to confuse them by implicating a heretic who would be seen as guilty, if, somehow, Virilo wasn’t blamed. Leudovald, you thought him guilty.”

  The investigator took a nervous swallow of wine. “The girl’s false confession blamed the presbytera.”

  “And it cost Thecla her life.”

  “I regret that, Domina.”

  “Did you question the zookeeper about the open ostrich cage?” Getorius asked.

  “A magistrate decided that this…‘accident’…saved the court the trouble of a trial for a heretic who had been accused of murder.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Surgeon,” he parried, “without…Thecla’s…help the Cybele would have sailed to Alexandria unsuspected and unhindered. The galleymaster would have died before he could be found. The body of the eunuch priest…” Leudovald frowned and pushed his plate away, evidently recalling the gruesome sight at the statue’s base.

  “The Cybelene conspiracy took on a life of its own,” Arcadia commented, “like…like the organ tumors we find in animals we dissect. What began simply, Claudia’s obsession with taking revenge on her father and Adonis’s wish to avoid emasculation, mushroomed into a treasonous plot to compromise the Eastern Empire and initiate a civil war.

  “If that ‘Dragon’s Cough’…what the rebel crew believed to be charcoal…had fallen into the hands of our Persian enemies,” Getorius pointed out, “their armies could have destroyed the walls of say, Antioch, then taken the city as a threa
t of what would happen to Constantinople itself. Our Eastern Empire might have ceased to exist.”

  Leudovald did not comment on the possibility, but admitted without looking up, “I…I’m grateful for your help in this.”

  The man actually has human emotions, Arcadia thought. She re-filled his cup and put the dish with his half-eaten meal to one side. “Leudovald, why weren’t you involved in my husband’s arrest last December?”

  “I was aware of it, but the mutilation of a corpse is a church matter. The bishop insisted on his own investigators.”

  “Like Dagalaif?”

  He nodded. “Like the deacon. Yet, to allow churchmen as judges, in their own courts, is a dangerous precedent. Easily abused. Some day…” Leudovald took a quick sip of wine.

  “We know very little about you,” Arcadia said, to relieve his discomfort at not wanting to complete the thought. “How long have you been with the magistrate’s office?”

  “My father was a Frank, comes…a count…on a king’s staff. After our Salian tribe was allied by treaty with the Romans, he sent me from Divodurum to be educated here.”

  “I suspected something like that when I first met you,” Getorius said. “Do you still see your father?”

  “Surgeon, he was murdered by a rival.”

  “I…I’m sorry.”

  “Our people are from a violent tribe. To die by the sword is no disgrace.”

  “In battle, perhaps, but to be murdered?” Getorius asked.

  “Murdered.” Leudovald glanced out at the garden. “Indeed, Surgeon.”

  “Please, after all we’ve gone through, call me Getorius.”

  Leudovald looked back at him in surprise, but nodded. “Getorius. We were speculating on the senator’s role in this conspiracy. It’s clear the counterfeit ‘Valentinians’ were intended to provoke instability in the Eastern Empire…a chaos the senator could exploit by blaming the Augustus, then recruiting Flavius Aetius to depose Valentinian and back himself as emperor.”

  “But Maximin tried to blame Aetius,” Arcadia pointed out.

  “Only, Domina, after you discovered the actual coins. I was working from rumors of their existence.”

  “Fabius may have boasted to Thecla about making the coins,” Getorius said, “but she probably had no full idea of the counterfeiters’ purpose.”

  “I agree that the eunuch priest was Maximin’s conduit for smuggling the coins to the east,” Leudovald went on. “The senator undoubtedly promised to legitimize Diotar’s Cybelene cult, once the Senate declared Maximin emperor.”

  “Maximin would go that far?” Arcadia asked.

  “I believe he would stop at nothing to gain power.”

  Getorius recalled, “It’s only been about seventy-five years since Julian the Apostate tried to re-establish paganism in the Empire. It’s clear now that Diotar had been using Claudia’s illness to recruit followers, but the Vandal capture of Carthage gave him an unexpected opportunity…and believability…among desperate citizens. What will you do, Leudovald?”

  “Do, Surgeon? The ‘supernatural’ destruction of the Cybele has already entered the realm of myth.”

  “So Publius Maximin won’t be indicted?”

  “Indicted? With only a few bent coins as evidence against him? His coconspirators all are dead, providentially, for him. No, when it comes to justice, our senator is slippery as a market basket of eels.”

  Getorius looked at his wife, shaking his head. Maximin had escaped blame from a similar plot in December, by using his senatorial position and wealth to have an abbot murdered and deny any knowledge of the Gallican League’s theocratic plans.

  “Leudovald, if not the senator, Virilo then?’ Arcadia asked. “He must know something of the conspiracy.”

  “The galleymaster seemed genuinely distressed at his daughter’s…his crew’s…defection. However”—he ran a slender finger around the silver rim of his cup—“my assistants could undoubtedly…persuade the man to tell us what we wish to hear.”

  “‘Deceit reigns sublime in the palace halls.’”

  “What, Arcadia?”

  “Getorius, I was just recalling part of what Galla Placidia had you read from Seneca. Twice now Maximin has escaped responsibility and punishment.”

  “Domina, the senator will continue to scheme until he succeeds in becoming Augustus,” Leudovald predicted, “and yet the best mountain climber may have an unexpected fall. I shall wait patiently to catch our adventurer’s plunge.” He drained his wine and stood up. “The magistrate is expecting my report. Perhaps…perhaps I could repay your dinner at one of Ravenna’s better taverns?”

  “There’s no need—”

  “Leudovald, that would be nice,” Arcadia interposed with a smile. “Wouldn’t it, Getorius?”

  “Ah…yes, very nice.”

  “I’ll see you out, Leudovald,” she offered.

  Getorius realized that the investigator had not pursued the subject of Zhang Chen’s deadly invention. Yet, he must have an opinion about what destroyed the Cybele, other than his hint about supernatural intervention. The man was too much of a realist to believe in that.

  Arcadia returned and sat down. “Leudovald seems lonely. I wonder if he could become a friend? It wouldn’t hurt to have one in the magistrate’s office.”

  “Cara, I don’t think Leudovald would let friendship interfere with his duty as he sees it.”

  “Hopefully not, I suppose, for the good of Rome. You once quipped about what he’d do to his grandmother if she were found guilty of a crime.” Arcadia abruptly came around the table to sit on her husband’s lap. “You owe me a vacation,” she said, brushing at new gray strands in his black hair. “I don’t consider that impromptu odyssey to Dalmatia as being a real one.”

  “No. Actually, I’d like to see Constantinople.”

  “The Eastern capital? I was thinking more in terms of a rented villa on Lake Comum, up north, with a view of the Alps.”

  “Arcadia, physicians in the capital must have surgical techniques I’ve never even heard about. They have access to all the medical knowledge of our Asian provinces, manuscripts they may have kept secret. It would be part of my training. Yours, too.”

  “Many books would be in Greek and ours isn’t that good.”

  “We’re far along enough in the language to find a place to stay. We could hire a translator-scribe for the medical texts.”

  “Exciting.” Arcadia wriggled off her husband’s lap and sat next to him. “Can we afford such a faraway trip?”

  “A while ago I met with Childibert about the account ledger. Last year we made about a hundred solidi from the clinic—”

  “Including all those fish?”

  “Very amusing, Arcadia. And almost half again as much from renting out the five shops and two upper rooms on the Honorius side of the house. After expenses, we had a balance of about a hundred twenty-five solidi.”

  “What about your fee as palace surgeon?”

  “My fee?” Getorius gave a sardonic laugh. “Not a lonely bronze follis yet, Arcadia. The palace financial mill grinds very slowly.”

  “Constantinople. Will it be safe to go?”

  “A galley to Dyrrhachium, then through Macedonia along the Via Egnatia by travel wagon. Perhaps another boat from Thessalonika to the Propontis. We’ll take Brisios along to deal with our luggage. He’d have nothing to do here.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been planning this for quite awhile.”

  Getorius grinned at her. “Perhaps we can get Galla Placidia’s authorization to stay at imperial inns on the overland stretch. She might even recommend medical contacts in Constantinople to me. After all, Emperor Theodosius is the Gothic Queen’s nephew.”

  “Could we sail on a galley larger than the Cybele, one where I might not get as seasick?”

  “Of course, Cara. Perhaps a big grain carrier, like the Horus.”

  “Exciting…” Arcadia leaned over to kiss her husband. “Getorius, let’s walk out into the garden w
hile it’s still light outside. It’s so peaceful there.”

  “And we do need some peace after all this.”

  They sat on a stone bench, holding hands and watching swallows swoop in graceful arcs to catch insects flitting in the twilight. Arcadia had often marveled at the birds’ swift, darting antics, but now their timeless movements were reassuring that, on Nature’s level at least, life still went on.

  In the waning light, the oval petals of pond lilies in the fountain pool reminded Getorius of the tannish scraps that Claudia had thrown overboard. All of the writing material had been destroyed, but it could only be a matter of time before more of it was smuggled to the west. That could be beneficial, but likewise, more of the Dragon’s Cough is sure to follow. A candle-sized cylinder of it shattered a pitcher into shards. Four boxes the size of large loaves of bread destroyed an entire galley and its crew in an instant. What terrible damage would it do to the human body that I would never be able to repair?

  The thought was upsetting. “Let’s go inside, Cara,” he said, releasing Arcadia’s hand. “I’ve thought of a place in my office for Childibert to hang your plaque of the Oath. And there’ll be sick people coming to the clinic in the morning, some probably with diseases we’ve not yet seen…” Getorius suddenly reached down for a pebble, got up, and flung it into the pool’s water. “I feel so helpless at times! I couldn’t do anything for Claudia…and Felicitas will be dead by mid-summer.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You saved Tigris’s life, and without him I’d be dead.” Arcadia stood and looked him in the eyes. “Getorius, we’ve all been made caretakers of this earth, and you’ve chosen medicine as your particular garden.”

  “And yet—”

  “No ‘and yets’!” Arcadia leaned over to shush his lips with hers, then started toward the door, her arm in his. “Cicero said that every man should practice the art in which he’s skilled. Yours is a surgeon’s. Now show me where you wanted to put the plaque, although I’ll probably find a much better place for it.” She released him and went on ahead. “Oh, and if you’re serious about our going to Constantinople, I’ll need a few of the gold coins…that I just might have earned working with you…to have my seamstress make appropriate clothing for me to bring along.”