by Albert Noyer
“Cara, I…I was worried about your safety.”
“I’m fine, Husband.” Arcadia stood to thank the freedwoman in Greek. “Efharisto, “Karitina. Please tell us when burial services for poor Agathe are arranged.”
“I will, Domina.”
Once in the corridor, Arcadia pulled the hood of her cape up to cover her head. “Getorius, I don’t want to go to our room just yet. Could we walk outside? I need to clear my mind of those terrible events.”
He objected by pointing up to the courtyard opening. “If that sky isn’t threatening snow, then I’ve never spent a winter at Ravenna.”
“The cold feels good on my face and I am dressed warmly…” She noticed her husband’s soiled boots. “Ashes and soot. Were you at the basilica?”
“Yes. Eusebios had notified Abbot Isidoros about the papyrus and the fire. When we saw them, they were examining…‘lamenting,’ I should say…the church’s charred remains.”
“I want to go and see that basilica’s ruins.”
Getorius took on a serious demeanor. “Your surgeon, Domina, will permit that only for a short while.”
When she half-smiled at his mock sternness, he opened his cloak to enfold her. Her husband’s warmth felt comforting. “Surgeon, I do promise to be a good patient.”
Getorius nuzzled her face. “I’m relieved that this has ended so…so well for you, for us.”
“What will the two churchmen do?”
“Worry about what Nestorios might do.”
Getorius released his wife from his hold. During the walk, he repeated the conversations between the two churchmen. Their great concern was that the heretic would stir up his followers with the forged papyrus and foment a bitter theological battle at Alexandria. The Egyptian Church already had been weakened by doctrinal dissents, and the imperial government at Constantinople now half-functioned in an uncertain state. Nestorios’s heresy could flourish and splinter Christianity in the way Arius had done a century earlier.
The stinging weather kept people cloistered inside their homes. Along the street, shops were shuttered with the exception of those selling food and hooded outerwear or fur jackets. Street-corner vendors of charcoal had doubled their prices, sparking brawls with angry customers.
At the basilica’s ruins, charred beams of a wooden floor above the hollowed-out crypt now lay in the open space beneath. Four stubby limestone columns that had supported the planking flanked the entrance to a shallow cave, where worshippers gathered for services. The basilica’s skeletal open roof allowed dim light to illuminate the subterranean area.
Standing above the crypt on the stone floor of the nave, Getorius explained, “When we first spoke with Bishop Eusebios he told us that the Holy Family had sheltered from hostile citizens in Pelusium in that cave there below us.”
Arcadia looked down. “I see a Eucharist table…an altar. The wood is badly charred.”
“That seems like a well nearby.” To one side, Getorius noticed a stone stairway. It was cluttered with burned debris, but descended to the cave. “The crypt itself seems fairly clear of wreckage, so I’d like a closer look. If you follow me, watch where I step.”
“Take my hand.”
A pungent smell of charred wood was strong in the wind as Getorius helped Arcadia walk down the stairway and among the burned floor joists. At the holy cave’s entrance, centuries of pilgrims’ graffiti marred the walls. In the back of the crypt a rounded niche cut in the rough-hewn wall held a scorched icon of the Holy Family. Smaller hollows on either side were vacant; the sacred liturgical vessels were only placed there during a ritual.
The couple picked their way through clumps of blackened rubble to reach the icon. Melted stubs of myriad votive candles had left wax puddles on a shelf in front of the portrayal of an aged, white-bearded Joseph walking behind a black-veiled Mary. She held a tiny Christ Child dressed in a red tunic. Both were seated on a white mule that, traversed a miniature landscape of palm trees in front of city walls labeled PELVSIVM.
Arcadia turned away to break a reverent silence, resulting from the mutilation of a sacred image. “Let’s look at that Eucharist table.”
Getorius rand a hand over the ancient table. “In the early days, these were made of wood. Fire has damaged this top, but I can see an inset, a small compartment in the center.”
“A reliquary?”
“Perhaps.” He unsheathed the blade of a new dagger that Abinnaeus had given him and began to pry up the scorched cover of the recess.
Arcadia watched a moment before worrying, “Husband, should you do that? After all, the Bishop has jurisdiction over his basilica.”
He continued prying the cover without looking away, “I’m helping Eusebios do what his deacon would eventually be told to open.”
As Getorius worked at opening the wooden edges, heavy flakes of snow began whirling into the crypt. Driven by a northwest wind, the accumulation soon blanketed the Eucharist table in a thin white layer.
“Brush that snow away from the top,” Getorius asked his wife. “I feel this cover loosening.” Working with Arcadia in the storm’s waning light, his back to the wind, he freed the top from a rapidly accumulating layer of wet whiteness. His hand shook from cold as he reached into an opening set deep into the table. Numb fingers brought out a fragile woven shawl, wrapped around what seemed to be a papyrus scroll. “Eusebios spoke of a relic being the shawl of the Virgin. Could this be it with an explanation?”
Arcadia renewed shivering from apprehension and cold, not her illness. “I’m frightened, husband. Just leave everything where it is. Replace the top and bring Bishop Eusebios down here in the morning.”
Getorius murmured assent, yet, curious about the scroll, opened the shawl far enough to unroll a section of brittle papyrus. Snowflakes had melted to stain part the document with dark brown spots, yet he had been able to read its Latin title: “An Account of Blessed Josep of Bet-Lehem, Concerning the Holy Family’s Escape from Herod, the King of Judea.” Shaken, he quickly re-rolled the papyrus and replaced the shawl material around it. He pushed the bundle back into the altar niche, then pounded the cover into place with the flat of his hand.
When Getorius turned to look at Arcadia, his face was white as the snow rapidly covering the altar table and breached reliquary. “This is why Pulcheria’s courier was murdered. Someone thought the Augusta knew of this secret hiding place and had sent us a message about it. I…I think we’ve discovered the…the diary of Saint Joseph!”
Arcadia felt chilled through from both the wind and momentous discovery. “We’ll tell the…the bishop and c…come back in the morning.”
“I wonder if Eusebios even knows what is in that compartment?”
“I don’t know, Getorius, but unless you want a completely frozen wife―”
He put an arm around Arcadia. “We’ll go back. Be careful on the stairs.”
* * *
That evening and into the night, snow to a depth of a man’s knees fell across the Delta. By morning the storm had passed. At Pelusium, a rising sun shone on the ruins of the basilica, now soft lumps lying under a pristine mantle of white crystals that glistened under a warming, azure sky.
White gulls, all but invisible, foundered among beach snowdrifts, searching for food. Cattle struggled to move, then licked through the unaccustomed cold whiteness to reach fodder. Small field creatures were black forms scampering over albino fields. Falcons searching for prey―high, dark specks in the sky―could look down on a white leprous scar that stretched across Egypt’s northern Delta from Pelusium to Alexandria.
Children ate the cold fluff and quickly learned to make balls from the fallen snow and pummel each other. The Christian citizens of Pelusium stared in wonderment at a world that had been transformed into what many imagined to be an earthly glimpse into the pristine afterlife of Heaven, the “New Jerusalem” that their presbyters promised. Some pagans believed that the clouds of Olympus had settled on their land, that their gods soon would arise out o
f the fleece to walk the earth, and that Zeus Kassios himself would come out of his abandoned temple and attempt to seduce their wives and boys.
* * *
By midday the snow―and citizens’ eternal hopes or fears―had vanished in an aftermath of icy sewer puddles and muddy fields. On the crypt altar table, snow melt water seeped into cracks left by Getorius’s prying dagger blade, soaking the holy cloth and disintegrating the papyrus scroll so thoroughly that no legible writing remained.
When Getorius took Bishop Eusebios to see the miraculous find, the eager prelate found only a wet silk mantle and soggy lumps of papyrus fiber.
EPILOGUE
Feast of the Nativity. Dies XXV Decembris.
Arcadia Valeriana Asteria to Petronius Valerianus, Greetings.
I am ashamed, dear Father, that I did not write to you from the Holy Land and now ask your forgiveness. Getorius and I are in Pelusium, a sadly decaying port on the easternmost Pelusiac branch of Nilus Fl. I explain. As we were about to leave Jerusalem, we received an opportunity to visit Egypt from Aelia Pulcheria, who, as you are aware, is sister to Eastern Emperor Theodosius II. The Augusta wished us to verify the route that the Holy Family followed on their escape into Egypt, just as the Egyptian Church believes it to have been followed. That was her overt reason, yet Getorius suspected something more, such as assessing the church’s political loyalty to Constantinople. He also is concerned about our medical clinic at Ravenna, despite the fact that Pulcheria said she would send a physician to replace him while we are away. However, the chance to visit that ancient land and perhaps delve into Egyptian medical lore proved irresistible, so he agreed.
This Egyptian church is fiercely proud of its foundation by the Apostle Mark, whereas, along with prelates at Antiochia and Rome, the Patriarch at Alexandria considers Constantinople’s patriarchate to be a late, artificial creation of Emperor Constantine. I fear that the two churches one day will separate over doctrinal differences and political control.
Pelusium is a provincial capital whose governor, Sergius Abinnaeus, comes from a distinguished family in the Provincial Military Establishment. We arrived in the midst of a theological crisis concerning the discovery of a document that became known as the Kashat Papyrus. Its release would strengthen the basis of a heresy promulgated by one Nestorios, deposed some years ago as Patriarch of Constantinople. Nestorios was exiled to a monastery in a southern desert of Egypt. His teachings, which have a parallel with those of the Arians, are adamantly opposed by our benefactress, Aelia Pulcheria, and the present patriarchs at the Eastern capital and Alexandria. On our arrival we thought that the governor’s secretary, Nepheros, had befriended us, or so he made everyone think, yet he proved to be part of a plot to bring Nestorios back to power. Read on, Father, to an incredible account of his fate.
Nepheros appeared to be the forger of the Kashat papyrus. In the last week of November, he secretly left Pelusium with the document, ostensibly to meet Nestorios. A series of mishaps of which we were ignorant befell him, and also Nestorios, as it turned out. We thought Nepheros dead, but he returned here a week after disappearing, almost literally risen from the dead. My clever Getorius had surmised that he was taking the Kashat document to Nestorios at Alexandria, since its release would strongly bolster his heretical claims about Christ’s nature. The story Nepheros told of his survival is as fantastic as the excuse he gave for making off with the papyrus to begin with. He readily admitted to forging both the document and a purported message from Patriarch Cyril, which had ordered Bishop Eusebios to destroy the papyrus. Nepheros claimed he had done this in order to meet Nestorios with the fabricated evidence, gain the heretic’s confidence, and then declare the account false in the presence of a church conclave at Alexandria. However, it seems that on the way to Alexandria he fell into the hands of Bedouin tomb-robbers at Tanis.
Arcadia paused. She had heard a sound and glanced back from a desk pushed near a window to catch winter light. Getorius opened the door of the small room, blowing on his fingers as he trailed in cold air and left muddy boot prints on the tile floor.
“Husband, where have you been all morning?” she asked, wiping ink from the tip of her quill pen. “You look as frozen solid as those snow persons children make at Ravenna.”
“I was at the docks, still trying to find out when we realistically might be able to leave this port.” He kissed his wife and glanced down at the vellum sheets in front of her. “You’re writing to your father?”
“Yes, I told you I finally would do so. I’m telling him about what happened here and had just reached the part where Nepheros told us he was robbed of the papyrus, his gold, and horse, then buried alive inside a ransacked sarcophagus.”
“Horrifying, if true. Have you already told your father about how the secretary came back with an implausible story of his going to Alexandria and declare the Kashat papyrus his own forgery, to discredit Nestorios?”
“Yes, also that if that Bedouin sheikh hadn’t been greedy and tried to sell the horses to the imperial post at Tanis, Nepheros most certainly would be dead.”
Getorius took off his heavy cloak to squat near the brazier coals and warm his hands. “You’re telling your father that the sheikh had smeared mud over the legion brand, but the stable master discovered it and questioned him about where he had obtained two legion mounts. The Bedouin tried to bribe the man with gold Theodosian coins, but accused him of murdering the owners.”
Arcadia continued, “After the accusation, the sheikh struck a bargain to reveal Nepheros’s location in exchange for his freedom. Whether the post official intended to keep his part of the agreement will never be known, since the sheikh’s accomplices helped him escape while the post slaves were trying to pry the sarcophagus lid off and rescue Nepheros…” She paused to ask, “What did you find out at the docks about our leaving Pelusium?”
“It’s as impossible as Nepheros being able to get out of that sarcophagus alone. You can tell your father that we’re here like newly pressed wine sealed in an amphora that won’t be opened until spring. Finish your letter and we can perhaps get it to Ravenna before that, by traveling overland to Constantinople and then the Dalmatian coast.”
As Arcadia paraphrased the conversation with her husband about Nepheros’s near brush with death, she added in her letter a Cypriot tale relative to the incident.
Father, the Greeks on Cyprus tell a story about Lazarus, who, according to their tradition, became Bishop of Citium on the island. So horrendous were the things he witnessed, while four days in the Underworld, that the resuscitated friend of Christ never jested nor smiled again, except on one occasion. When he saw a man pick up a broken pottery shard, Lazarus quipped, “One piece of clay picks up another piece of clay.” Nepheros likewise has not smiled since his return.
Word reached us in early December that, just as Getorius thought, Nestorios indeed was headed to Alexandria, but a band of brigands captured him before he even reached the Nilus at Lycopolis. The deposed patriarch was ransomed and returned to his desert exile.
Nothing further has been learned about the fate of Shandi, a Kushite brother of Pennuta, the Prefect’s concubine. He was accused of her murder and presumably fled.
Two days after Nepheros left, an authentic message arrived from Patriarch Cyril at Alexandria, saying that he would publicly make known the Kashat Papyrus in the interests of Truth, and as an example of how far evildoers will go to further their heresy.
Another perhaps spurious document was a purported account by Blessed Joseph of the Holy Family’s sojourn in Egypt. Getorius and I discovered such a papyrus on the evening of a highly unusual, perhaps miraculous snowstorm, which destroyed the document before it could be released and cause further alienation in an already defiled religious atmosphere. The epistle of Blessed James defines undefiled religion as the care of afflicted orphans and widows, and keeping oneself unstained from the world. To this end, Dorothea, the governor’s wife―whom I observed to be a terribly selfish, yet lonely woma
n―seems to have undergone a change of heart. A physician, Papnouthios, used a former monastery as a hospital, ostensibly to treat vagrants, but in which he practiced horrible vivisection experiments. I told Dorothea about the charitable work of Melania the Younger, Empress Eudocia, and Ruth Hyrcana in setting up such mendicant hospitals in Jerusalem. Dorothea agreed to fund and supervise the opening of such a facility in the monastery building here.
Sergius Abinnaeus’s hands are not clean. The governor discarded his concubine after she became a marital liability and has been smuggling expensive contraband from India for resale to agents here and in the south. Dorothea once described her husband as a troubled man rowing against the tide of what Jerome of Bet-Lehem described as the collapse of the Roman world. Yet, sadly, men like Abinnaeus, Nepheross, and Nestorios contribute to the decline of even this Egyptian province. What will the governor do to halt a perceived Empire-wide collapse?
I must be honest with you, Father, and tell you that I have contracted quartan marsh fever, which here is called Puretos. That Egyptian physician, Papnouthios, prescribed artemisia, an herbal remedy which does much to alleviate my fever. He was a brilliant physician, who lost his way in occult practices, such as corpse reanimation and enemy curse-spells, yet I cannot help thinking that what he attempted to do in trying to understand the functioning of a human body, however crudely done, will one day be pursued by others with less pain and more success.
Last night Getorius and I attended Bishop Eusebios’s Nativity Eve service. The liturgy is conducted partly in an ancient Egyptian language for which Greek characters have been devised. The rite differs from our Latin Eucharist celebrations primarily in the variety and order of prayers, a different conception of the Consecration of the holy bread and wine, and the length of the service―in this case well over three hours.
Dearest Father, I fear that Getorius and I may be fated to remain in Egypt at least until March, the beginning of a new navigation season. Because of the uncertain political climate at Constantinople, reports of which may have reached Ravenna, Aelia Pulcheria is confined to one of her palaces outside the capital. We have had no further word from the Augusta. For our own safety, Bishop Eusebios advises us not to continue our tour of Holy Family sites under the Augusta’s sponsorship. As I mention above, His Holiness and other clergy members are quite indignant at what they consider Constantinople’s interference in their Egyptian church’s ancient rites and traditions.
