The Kashat Deception

by Albert Noyer

  “Surgeon, where the Delta begins is another province and citizens living around Lake Moeris are fiercely independent of authority. Papnouthios is a native son who would know scribes in the capital at Ptolemais Hormu. Just north of there, the location of the Roman Fortress called Babylon is rich in the Tradition. For example, the basilica of Saints Sergius and Bacchus is on a site blessed by the Family’s presence. Other early churches are dedicated to Saints Barbara and Giorgios.”

  Arcadia complimented him in return, “Nepheros, you are extremely knowledgeable about the Tradition yourself.”

  “Domina”―he indicated the shelves of scrolls and books stored in the room―“these are my advisors. No, as we discussed earlier, we must catch errors in the writing style itself.”

  Arcadia pointed out, “There are other unraveled threads, and who murdered Pennuta is one of them. Leaving the governor’s cape there was quite a clumsy attempt to blame him.”

  “I agree, or plain carelessness on the part of Shandi.”

  “You’re convinced he’s responsible for her murder?”

  As if it were obvious, Nepheros spread his hands, palms up. “Did he not first lie, then admit to seeing her that evening? She was pregnant by Abinn…by his Excellency…so it seems forfeiting her life was a brother’s restitution for disgracing their family.”

  “A barbaric custom,” Getorius remarked. “What gain did that give them?”

  “Surgeon, it is a matter of tribal family honor. Surely Germani in the West have such traditions?”

  “True, Nepheros, yet what do we know of her family?”

  “The concubine claimed to be of royal Kushite blood. Ridiculous, of course. She was of peasant stock. Incidentally, I’ve arranged for her body to be removed from…from that room.”

  And from any quick investigation into her death. Getorius asked, “Nepheros did you know that a mob burned the bishop’s basilica?”

  The secretary’s brows arched in surprise, “No, I’ve been working here. When was this?”

  “Within the hour. You heard nothing outside?”

  “Surgeon, these Ptolomaic stone walls are massive. What happened?”

  “As we returned from the hospital we saw smoke rising in the city. We thought the Sobek temple had been gutted by Christians, but found that pagans had torched the church.”

  Arcadia abruptly sat down. “Husband, I’m feverish again. I…I should take my medication.”

  “Fine, cara. Nepheros, one last thing. Tanutamun released his crocodiles from their pen and the governor was almost attacked by one.”

  “Shameful!” The secretary picked up his book and thumbed through the pages. “When you arrived I was re-reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The Augustus wrote here, ‘Consider how things happening now have happened before, and will occur again, whole plays with the same sets, which you know from experience and by reading history. Keep these examples before your eyes: the entire retinue of Hadrian, of Antoninus Pius, or the courts of Philip, Alexander, and Croesus. All these men read the same scripts as now, only the actors differed’.”

  Getorius said, “The governor also is discouraged at these events. He quoted Saint Jerome about the collapse of the Roman world.”

  “Surely exaggerations, and yet there are times in the past when the wicked have prevailed. Let us trust in a Divine Providence that pagans do not recognize.”

  “Getorius…”

  “Yes, Arcadia, we’ll go. Nepheros, we came to see if you have a volume, De Medicina, by Cornelius Celsus? Papnouthios mentioned him and was quite disdainful toward me because I wasn’t familiar with the physician.”

  “Celsus wrote about medicine, yet was not a physician.” Nepheros looked toward Arcadia again. “Domina, I apologize for not recalling that Celsus wrote extensively about quartan fever.” He went to search bins storing medical texts. After taking down a bound volume, he came back and turned to the index page. “Yes, here, Section Three deals with the fever in Latin translation. You, of course, may borrow the volume.”

  Getorius ran his hand over the musty leather cover. “Nepheros, we…we owe you our gratitude. You’ve been an invaluable help to us here, total strangers.”

  “And you, Surgeon, have been more help than you realize.”

  Getorius glanced at Arcadia; what did the cryptic remark mean?

  * * *

  Back in their room, Getorius scanned the pages that Nepheros had suggested, then looked toward the bed. Arcadia had taken the artemisia and stopped shivering. She lay under a blanket, her eyes closed. He asked softly, Cara, are you asleep?”

  “Awake.”

  “Good. I’ve read Celsus about quartan fever. He suggests diet, anointing with oil, exercise, procedures like that, but gives no remedies. A reader noted a page in Folio Five, but that only referred to fever accompanying an ulcerated wound.”

  She opened her eyes and half-sat up aganst a pillow. “So, husband, we’re left with only the artemisia.”

  He pulled a chair next to her bed. “Celsus writes that the fever you have kills no one. Arcadia, you said you were resigned to not getting well again, yet we both know that illnesses have different intensities. Yours could be mild.” His eyes teared as he reached for her hand. “Don’t forget you have that women’s clinic to staff at Ravenna.”

  Arcadia sat up straight. “You…you’re just trying to make me feel good.”

  “True, cara, yet I also believe you will do it.” Getorius squeezed her hand. “I realize I may have been less than sympathetic about your illness, but I was worried about our situation here in light of Pulcheria’s arrest. I think you were, too. Do you remember that frightening dream you told me about?”

  “Where I was lost and couldn’t find you?”

  “That one. The next phenomenon that Celsus writes about is insanity. He likens the delirium and nonsensical babbling that feverish victims experience as a form of the disease.”

  She let out an uncertain laugh. “You’re saying that insanity is a precursor to what I have contracted?”

  “Of course not, and I…I didn’t read further.” Getorius came to arrange the pillows behind her. “Papnouthios is such a skillful physician, yet he insists on conducting those vivisection experiments.”

  Arcadia said, “Nepheros has valid arguments about his ability to forge the papyrus. If the Kashat text is accepted as a genuine account and Nestorios prevails, Bishop Eusebios will be dismissed. Papnouthios would have a free hand with his experiments.”

  “Not only that, but Tanutamun and his temple would be left alone while Church councils debated the papyrus. Egypt could become a breakaway province, just as our African lands were lost to the Vandals.”

  “Enough of those thoughts…”Arcadia smiled and reached over to touch his face. “Husband, your beard has been growing since we left Cyprus. It needs trimming.”

  “Abinnaeus’s beard now looks as if there isn’t a barber in the pretorium.”

  “He was preparing to leave for Myos Hormos. Nepheros could probably suggest a barber in Pelusium. My father tells the jest about a barber asking his client how he wants his hair cut―”

  “And he answers, ‘In silence.’ Cara, your father tells that I every time we visit.”

  Arcadia’s eyes misted at the recollection. “I wonder how my father is. I didn’t write to him from the Holy Land and should do so from here.” She held back a sniffle and kissed his hand. “Getorius, it…it’s been so long. Make love to me. There will be time in the morning to speak with Nepheros about what he might be able to do to thwart Papnouthios.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  At the beginning of the second night hour, Bishop Eusebios’s aged porter at the villa, Andreas, awakened from a doze on hearing a loud jingling of the front entrance tintinabulum. Fearful of a mob returning to damage the building, he opened the door a short distance and peered out. Nepheros stood outside, holding up a vellum envelope.

  “Andreas, I have urgent news for the Bishop. Summon him.”

&n
bsp; Annoyed at the late intrusion, Andreas refused. “His Holiness has retired for the night. Return tomorrow.”

  When Andreas tried to push the door shut, Nepheros shouldered it open. “Old man, this cannot wait. Send for the bishop immediately!”

  More irritated at being disturbed than intimidated by the prefect’s secretary, the porter shuffled off toward Eusebios’s bedroom. The bishop appeared a few moments later in a night tunic covered by a light woolen cloak. His hair was tousled, his eyes still red from tears shed over his destroyed church earlier in the day.

  Nepheros bent to kiss his episcopal ring. “My apologies, Holiness, for disturbing your sleep.”

  “My sleep? With closed eyes, all my mind sees are images of those hellish flames devouring my holy basilica. The satanic howls of the mob―”

  “Indeed a tragedy,” Nepheros interrupted and held up the envelope. “Holiness, this message just arrived for you by courier from Alexandria. I thought you should immediately open it.”

  “Alexandria? If this is about the papyrus, Cyril has realized the urgency of the situation and ordered his courier not to waste time.” Nervous about the contents, Eusebios half-whispered, “Come…come into the library.”

  Nepheros followed the clergyman and stood back as he flicked the Alexandrian Patriarch’s wax seal open and read the message. Eusebios gave an involuntary cry and dropped down onto a chair, his face pale as the vellum itself.

  “What is it Holiness, poor news?”

  Eusebios handed Nepheros the missive. “Cyril…the Patriarch…orders me to destroy the Kashat papyrus.”

  After he read the message, Nepheros tried to reassure him. “Surely, Holiness, this is done in haste. I am convinced the papyrus is a forgery and that eventually we shall discover the person…or group…responsible. How much more damning and rewarding would it be on your part to expose the forger.”

  “First my basilica, now this…” He looked up at the secretary with a frown of uncertainty. “Before deciding, I shall pray to the Father for guidance, and yet…and yet I ultimately must obey the Patriarch.”

  “Of course, Holiness, yet premature destruction of the document would only reflect on Cyril’s poor judgment. Once it is exposed as false, preserving it a short while longer would be to your eternal credit”

  Bewildered about a course of action, Eusebios covered his eyes with a trembling hand. “What can I do other than pray for divine guidance?”

  Nepheros ventured “If I might suggest, let me take the papyrus to the pretorium library. I shall lock it in a strongbox that safeguards the most precious papyri in our collection. No one need know it is stored there, not even the prefect. Surely, a few days for you to pen a response would not be harmful.”

  Half-convinced, Eusebios looked up. “I…I first should inform Isidoros.”

  “The abbot is at Lychnos? Of course, inform him of Cyril’s note. Isidoros could come tomorrow and inspect the papyrus.” Nepheros pulled a cylindrical ostrich-skin bag, stitched to a leather strap, from under his cloak. “Put the gold case in this to not attract attention.”

  As Eusebios took back the vellum, he noted, “Secretary, you wear cavalry trousers?”

  “Yes. I…I had returned by horseback from an errand when the courier arrived.”

  “Where is the man? I should like to speak with him.”

  “Asleep in the pretorium, Holiness, exhausted, as you may understand, by his strenuous journey from Alexandria.” Nepheros held out a hand. “Please, give me the papyrus.”

  Eusebios sighed and stood up. “Very well, but send word in the morning to Isidoros about the Patriarch’s decision.”

  “Without fail, Holiness.”

  The bishop unlocked his strongbox and brought out the gold case. Nepheros slipped it into the soft bag, then kissed the bishop’s ring. “This also will give me another opportunity to look for flaws in the text.” The secretary seemed offended in adding, “Holiness, you never have given me an adequate chance to evaluate the document.”

  “I…I asked Cyril for an expert on such important matters.”

  “I see. An…an expert.”

  Eusebios detected the man’s bruised feelings. “Nepheros, I meant no slight to you.”

  “Of course not, Holiness, and I trust I have helped you rest more peacefully now. Good night.”

  Outside, Nepheros slipped the ostrich bag’s strap over his head and concealed it under his cape. Shandi, his face hidden by the hood of his cloak, waited near the villa’s gate, holding the reins of two restless stallions from the pretorium stables.

  “Mount,” the secretary ordered, “I have the Kashat papyrus.” After he sat his horse’s saddle, Nepheros pulled his cape’s hood over his head. “Follow me to the west gate.”

  At the portal, Nepheros tossed the guards a leather pouch of coins and cantered his mount through, onto an ancient paved road leading past the hospital and towards Alexandria, some two hundred miles to the west. Shandi caught up with him.

  “We change horses at Heracleopolis,”Nepheros told the Kushite, then urged his mount forward at a gallop. He glanced up at the last quarter of a November moon that rendered the flat Delta landscape a mosaic of dark shapes: palm trees and buildings speckled gray-white in a background of level fields, like the mosaic of a skull in the triclinium of an Epicurean philosopher with whom he had once dined. Strangely, the written epitaph came to his mind: Man’s life, we know, is but a span. So all live richly, while we can. We soon are thus, both good and bad.

  The starkness symbolized a bold plan that Nepheros had nurtured for five years, ever since hearing Nestorios preach at the Great Church in Constantinople. Divine Reason, the Logos that rules and directs the universe, has smiled on my efforts to restore Nestorios to the Patriarchate and a correction of Nicene Creed errors. Bishop Harmonios has done his part in convincing Nestorios that he should escape. I am as sure as the face of the moon is crystal that he will choose to confront Cyril and go to Alexandria, not Myos Hormos. He may tell the Patriarch that an angel liberated him from his cell at Hebet, as the apostle Petrus once was freed, but my Kashat papyrus will confer ancient legitimacy on his teachings about the dual natures of the incarnate Logos. Reason dictates that the Divine Fire would eventually take on only an apparent human form in order to teach earthly men.

  Clouds gradually obscured the moon as the two horsemen passed milestone X on the way to Heracleopolis, a half-way marker to the town’s post station. Raindrops sprinkled random wetness onto paving stones worn smooth by travelers, until the roadway became too slippery for the two horses to maintain their rapid pace. Poor fortune, yet I won’t be missed until reaching Thmuis, almost half the distance to Alexandria. I should arrive at approximately the same time as Nestorios. Since the port city will be in upheaval over his reappearance, I shall easily find the Patriarch and give him the papyrus.

  The goddess Fortuna again abandoned the two men at Heracleopolis: the imperial post station was closed and deserted. A station-master and stable slaves were absent and no reserve horses waited in pens. Nepheros called a halt in a palm grove outside the town, pulled back his rain-drenched hood, and consulted a map in the sparse shelter.

  “Tanis is the next post station, fifteen miles on. We can obtain fresh horses there.”

  Shandi asked, “It is not too much of night?”

  “Too late? No, I have the prefect’s authorization. If I must, I’ll awaken the station-master or take two horses.”

  “What happen to Pap’nutho?”

  “His skills were of use in obtaining the mummy and concealing the golden case in its bindings. The physician was well paid and he soon will not have to worry about Bishop Eusebios opposing his work at the hospital.”

  “Nest’rus?”

  “Yes, Nestorios’s supporters will see to that.” Nepheros shook water from his cape and wiped a hand across the beard he had begun to grow. “We must move on,” he said, urging his mount ahead. Shandi is correct to ask about Papnouthios. When I’m provincial pr
efect, I’ll allow Tanutamun to open the temple, yet Nestorios’s creed will appeal to pagan Egyptians. Christian converts still can worship their gods in secret.

  The rain continued hard enough to make the two riders uncomfortable. Despite heavy capes, cold water seeped into tunic necks and soaked their tight riding trousers.

  Around the fifth night hour, the rain let up just as two men reached Tanis on exhausted mounts. The roadway led into a large village of mud homes clustered around a few Ptolemaic buildings of stone construction. Nepheros slowed his mount to a walk and followed the mud-brick enclosure of an immense temple structure on his left. Massive columns with papyrus-blossom capitals towered above a wall that had been breached in several places. He stopped at a wide gateway to the complex: the orange flicker of torches and a cooking-fire inside a low, rectangular structure shown through the wet mist.

  Shandi rode up beside him. “People there.”

  “Yes, and shelter that looks dry. We’ll ask directions to the post station.”

  “You not travel Alex’andra before?”

  The question annoyed Nepheros. “Only by galley, Kushite. Just follow me.”

  A cook-fire glowed inside the open front of a small stone building with slanted walls, which was set among several other structures of similar shape. From their resemblance to tombs, Nepheros surmised the area to be an ancient necropolis attached to the temple. By flickering orange light, he made out figures squatting around a palm-wood fire, and signaled for Shandi to dismount. It was dark, so they would walk their horses toward the men to not alarm them.

  Impassively chewing cuds by the light of the torches, three camels lay near several leather-wrapped bundles that would be loaded on the beasts for a morning departure.

  As Shandi came closer, he whispered that the men looked like Bedouin. Nepheros nodded; he also had recognized the distinctive flowing robes and headdress of the desert nomads.

  “Irini…I come in peace,” he called out in Greek. One of the men looked back, stood up from the fire, and responded in the same language. “Kalos orissate!”