by Albert Noyer
* * *
To avoid vendors Getorius led the way around the necropolis's north wall toward the mortuary. A smell of burial spices was strong in the anteroom. The three coffins were gone, but the taller of the two dark-skinned embalmers in the basement level had almost finished sweeping the tile floor.
Getorius confronted him. "Tell me what is going on here. Where's the body of your master?"
The Egyptian's sepia eyes were emotionless as he replied in the soft voice of a eunuch, "Ti-eime an, ti-jo' os monom t-las n-n-rem-'Gyptios."
"I don't understand what you're saying. Is Rufinus here? Rufinus," he repeated more loudly.
Arcadia said, "Getorius, I caught the word 'only' in Greek and 'Gyptios. He probably speaks a Hellenized form of Egyptian."
"I'll ask if he knows koine Greek. Ellinika? Ellinika laleis?"
The man shook his head in a reflexive "No," then bowed before hurrying down the stairs.
"He does understand Greek," Getorius muttered, "but we'll get no information from this eunuch. "Still, it's clear that Britto was silenced because he knew about Epiphania's ruse."
"And you suspect Tranquillus."
Getorius shrugged his reconsideration. "I suppose that is far-fetched. Lydia would be the more logical person."
"Lydia? A woman, Getorius?"
"Through Andros, a strong, if older man, and possibly a bodyguard to Epiphania. We know that she and the Asklepion priests were at odds."
"Getorius, she has a reason for deceiving people about her death, and this Throne of Satan must have something to do with it." After a glance down the stairs to the
embalming rooms, Getorius pulled his wife away. "Let's go back. We should get to the acropolis as soon as possible."
* * *
By the time the couple returned, the morning's October sun had succumbed to dark clouds moving in from the west. A cold rain drizzled from the overcast sky.
When they were ready to leave, Getorius reckoned the time as past the eighth hour. In the shortening autumn days, the sun would set almost four hours earlier than at the summer solstice, and rain clouds already masked the bright orb.
At Zoë's direction, Brisios, on the lead horse, turned the animal along a street that led to an abandoned eastern quadrant of Pergamum. Getorius followed, Arcadia clinging to his body as their mount splashed through water that could not drain into sewer openings that were clogged by street debris. Ironically, she thought of what Flavius might do to correct the problem.
The drizzle had soaked through their woolen capes when a misty Serapion came into view, the waning light softening its immense bulk. Zoë told Brisios to continue a short way past the Egyptian temple, then turn right toward a stone bridge spanning the Selenos River. The waterway, swollen and muddied by upstream rain, surged against the arch piers and lodged forest debris against them. Beyond the bridge, at a fountain in the center of a square, Zoë raised her hand to stop. Getorius reined his horse alongside hers. Two roads led away from the open space.
Zoë sucked rain from her upper lip, then pointed at a massive entrance to the acropolis. "There, on the left, is the gate of Eumenes. In this rain the steep roadway is dangerous for our horses. We leave them at the gate's courtyard and go up on foot."
No sentries guarded the entryway and vendors' booths in the courtyard were
Un-attended. Abandoned merchandise lay sodden in the downpour.
Another gate opened onto the portico of a smaller court. After the horses were tethered to columns, Getorius peered out from the shelter. "Those merchants left in a hurry, and I don't see anyone on the street. Zoë, the road branches again, which way do we go?"
"Deksios, to the right, and the lower agora. There the road divides into three."
"Perhaps we'll find someone there who saw Epiphania and can tell us where she went."
Wide, paved with the same massive blue-gray stones as the acropolis walls, the road had uneven ruts dug by countless passing wagons. As the way rose toward the agora, rin rainwater cascaded down the street, making ascent more difficult and further soaking capes, tunic hems, and shoes. Getorius limped along, favoring his old injury as best he could. At the marketplace, stalls again were abandoned. No vendors were in sight, yet crates and wine amphorae were left in place. Nearest the end, a chapel stood vacant.
"This is eerie," Getorius remarked. "The acropolis looks like a dwelling place for the spirits of the dead. Where are all the citizens?"
There was no answer to his question until he and the others circled the agora and reached the three-way intersection. There, a grizzle-bearded oldster, with only one leg, huddled in the shelter of the portico.
"Zoë said, "I'll ask him where everyone is. Me sinhorite. Pos pantes?"
The man responded in an Anatolian dialect, while pointing up the broadest of the three roads.
Getorius said, "Zoë, I didn't understand him, but I caught the word 'Huns'."
"He told me the woman priest went up that road with her Hun women."
"Then Epiphania and her deaconesses are on the acropolis."
"And," Arcadia said, "evidently with everyone else who lives here."
The road the oldster had indicated turned sharply to the right, then made a steep climb past ruined shops and villas. No walkway was raised above the paving stones, and most of the muddy rainwater sluiced off into a gully on the right. To the left of what seemed to be a gymnasium, a row of buttresses reinforced the huge stones of a terrace. At its vaulted entrance, stairs led to an upper level. The four ducked into the shelter of the dim archway.
"Catch our breath here." Getorius squeezed water from his short beard and sat on a stair to massage his ankle. "That slick paving is hard going."
Arcadia shook out her cloak, while asking Zoë, "What do you know about the burning of Epiphania's church?"
"Apollonios is responsible. He sent someone to set the fire that killed our presbytera."
"What makes you so sure?" Getorius prodded.
"Epiphania wanted to close the Asklepion. She said it was a haunt of pagan rituals that seduced the faithful, the good seed that was snatched up by ravens."
"Those ravens being the Asklepion priests." After Zoë nodded agreement, he asked, "Why are you so critical of Herakles?"
"The presbytera said he was a godless atheist, worse even than pagans. They at least believe in something."
His part being to use his guide's position to smuggle narcotics. As Arcadia once said, we're at his mercy, the only person out here we know. Getorius glanced out of the arch at the sky. "A little brighter, so let's move on. The rain might let up."
Paralleling the gully, the road continued its ascent past surviving sections of ancient walls until it made a sharp turn through a ruined gate. Mercifully for the climbers, it leveled off at another group of run-down houses. Soaked through and breathing hard from exertion, none of the four spoke until Arcadia saw a small building on her left that she recognized as a bathhouse.
"A hot bath would go well," she murmured, "but in light of the horrors of the past few days, I'm ashamed at such a thought."
Getorius heard and grasped her hand. "Cara, what happened isn't your fault. You aren't responsible if Lydia was foolish enough to ignore warnings about moving Epiphania." At her nod, he pointed ahead. "That looks like another marketplace. Zoë, how much farther?"
"I remember the road widened beyond that agora. Zeus's temple is nearby."
"Then hurry. If Epiphania went there, she'll need help."
When they reached the agora, rain had stopped. A band of pale orange flushed the western horizon. Again vendor booths were deserted. Zoë had remembered correctly: the retaining stones of a terrace rose on the left. At the top, silhouetted against the sky, the colonnades and flat roof on two sides of a U-shaped temple stood black in the waning light. Torches illuminated human figures standing between the columns.
Getorius whispered, "Is that the temple? The Throne of Satan?"
Fright edged Zoë's response, "It's whe
re everyone has come."
At the center of the south wall, an entrance porch covered a flight of stairs to the upper level. "That's how to reach the temple itself?"
Zoë nodded. "My friend and I crept only to the top stair, too frightened to go beyond."
Arcadia walked toward the terrace entryway and saw a drainpipe emerging from the lower section of retaining wall. An emaciated hound lapped at a reddish flow trickling from the pipe into a sewer in the paving. At her approach, the dog looked up and skittered away. "Getorius," she called to him, "the rain stopped awhile ago, but it looks like rusty water still is running from this drain."
"Rust?" Puzzled, he said, "The Greeks used bronze, not iron, for clamping stones together." He limped to the drain and bent to scoop up a palm-full of water. He brought his cupped hand near his face, but shook out the water and straightened to look up at the temple. "Arcadia," he said in a voice faint with repugnance, "that isn't rust in the water. It's blood and bits of flesh! What in Satan's name is happening up there?"
CHAPTER XVIII
Wincing, Getorius hobbled up the entrance stairs and onto the terrace. A soggy, weed-grown field surrounded a temple whose flat roof was supported by Ionic columns. The colonnades were set on a high marble base, five stairs above ground, and sculpted with a frieze of nude warriors and clothed female figure locked in violent combat. An odor of incense wafted from the direction of the sacred enclosure.
"The front entrance faces west, on the opposite side," he told the others.
Arcadia stopped to listen. Do you hear an eerie wailing, like a funeral lament, coming from the front side? Could Epiphania have died and been brought here?"
"Unlikely that she would be taken to a pagan enclave," Getorius answered. "Let's go to the entrance."
Tramping rain-soaked weeds around the south end of the base, the four passed continual scenes of struggle between two opposing forces; Greek gods and goddesses were pitted against bearded giants with serpent's tail appendages. Color had worn off parts of the figures and a number faces were mutilated as a result of the Gothic raids Herakles had mentioned. A waning sunset light washed over the sculptures and cast long shadows that magnified their size.
Getorius paused to sniff the air. "Do you smell that? Incense can't mask an odor of burning flesh."
"Animal sacrifice," Zoë told him. "Such a ritual may be taking place."
Around the base of the temple's south wing, a wide flight of steep stairs led to a central colonnade. A scene of horrifying carnage spread across the bottom of the stairway: a white heifer lay slaughtered, its throat slit and one flank cut open. Viscera spilled out onto wet paving stones. Four ritually slaughtered sheep were near the sacrificed animal, their entrails gutted and shoulder bones cut out. Blood from the slain animals trickled into a channel cut in the paving stones. Mingling with rainwater, the gore ran into sewers at either end of the stairs.
"That's where the blood in that drain came from." Getorius bent over one of the dead sheep. "Incredible! It took more than a butcher's skill to remove those scapula bones so cleanly." He looked at Zoë. "I think you know more about this than you've told me." When she did not reply, he grasped her arm. "What in God's name is this ritual?"
She shook loose to reply, "Scapulomancy. Huns predict the future by reading natural striations on the scorched shoulder blades of animals."
"That explains the burnt smell. The altar where the actual burning takes place must be inside the temple."
Arcadia noted, "That wailing has stopped."
"Let's go inside."
At the top of the staircase, beyond the porch columns, a doorway led to an open court. About a hundred people crowded the three-sided portico. Among them were bearded monks wearing black hooded robes. The "Sleepless Ones" about whom Lydia had complained. Spectators' torches cast a wavering light on the paving and illuminated a ceremony taking place in the courtyard. Pulling Arcadia by the hand, Getorius pushed through the nearest onlookers. Brisios and Zoë followed.
On an altar in the courtyard's center, the heifer's sacrificed organs and shoulder blades from the sheep gave off greasy smoke that swirled into the twilight sky. A figure dressed in a golden chasuble, alb, and blue tunic lay on a catafalque in front of the altar. To one side, a priestess in a golden garment wore a head-dress fashioned of cattle horns enclosing a solar disc. One of her hands held a looped ankh cross.
Despite the unfamiliar costume, Arcadia recognized the woman. "It's Lydia," she whispered, "dressed like the Isis statue in the procession at Ravenna."
"The sister-wife of Osiris. I'm sure that shaven-headed man with her is one of Britto's Egyptian embalmers." Getorius looked beyond the two and gasped, "Christ, the faces of those women behind the altar are all bloody!"
"Epiphania's deaconesses." Zoë interpreted the bizarre ritual, "At a funeral, Huns shear their hair and slash their faces."
"Funeral?" In the eerie half-light, Arcadia's bewilderment cleared. "That is Epiphania on the bier, wearing the bishop's robes she had on when Flavius wounded her. She...she must have died."
Lydia-Isis began speaking to the spectators in a mournful tone of voice.
Getorius listened a moment, then turned to Zoë. "I can't keep up with her Greek. Could you translate?"
"She said that Epiphania died in the church fire, but that Christ and Osiris would bring her back to life."
"Christ and Osiris in a resurrection? What sort of sacrilege is this?"
"Lydia is reciting a prayer," the freedwoman whispered. "She's saying, 'Glory be to thee Christos-Osiris, king of eternity and lord of everlasting life. Thou art the only Son from the womb of Maria Theotokos. Through thee the world waxes green in triumph before the might of Death. Homage to thee, O King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Prince of Princes. Thy body is bright and Transfigured, thy head is azure blue and the brilliance of turquoise surrounds thee."
"Incredible!" Getorius exclaimed. "Lydia's funerary rite is invoking Christ as the equivalent of Osiris, a pagan god of the dead."
Zoë explained, "At Pergamum Osiris is worshiped as Serapis. Even some Christians here honor as many gods as they can, to assure their salvation."
At the altar, a tall figure came from the shadows, wearing the mask of a long-snouted canine with upright ears. The half-human creature held a crooked wand as it approached Epiphania.
"Anubis, the Egyptian jackal-god of the dead." Zoë strained to hear Lydia as she translated, "'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though she should die, will live'." Lydia-Isis unrolled a papyrus scroll and read in an unfamiliar language. Zoë listened. "She's speaking an Egyptian-Greek dialect, so I understand little of what she's saying."
"Nor does this crowd," Arcadia noted. "Most must be pagans."
Getorius realized why the presbytra wanted people to believe she had died. "Epiphania planned to exploit the crowd's superstitions by staging a 'resurrection' that would discredit Apollonios and his priests."
Zoë heard. "Those monks will take over the Asklepion to make it a Christian shrine. Listen. Lydia is speaking Greek again, 'Hail to thee my father Christos-Osiris. Come and give me breath, O Lord of life, who was resurrected and art greater than Death'."
The Anubis figure touched Epiphania's legs with his wand. "Hail, Epiphania, thy two legs are unlocked by Anubis through the power of Jesus Christ that you may walk."
Anubis touched the woman's chest. "Hail, Epiphania," Lydia intoned, "thy heart is restored, through the power of Jesus Christ, that you may live again."
Arcadia said, "Lydia isn't mentioning Osiris any longer and Christ has supplanted the pagan god. Our presbytera is very clever. Cunning as a serpent," she recalled.
Lydia read the Egyptian ritual of the Opening of the Mouth. Anubis moved to her side, then, in a loud voice that echoed though the crowd, she proclaimed the final
exhortation. "Hail Epiphania, thy eyes are opened! Through the power of Christ Jesus, as did Lazarus of old, come forth from the dead as a shining one."
/> A hush of manifest expectation fell over the spectators, each person intent on watching the gold-clad figure lying on the catafalque.
"She's dead." Tears glistened in Arcadia's eyes. "She won't." The words stuck in her throat.
Epiphania, her face smudged with ashes, slowly moved her arms from across her chest and struggled to sit upright.
Women in the crowd screamed. Getorius clasped an arm around Arcadia. Brisios and Zoë stood as still as the motionless podium figures.
"This can't be happening," Getorius stated. "Se hadn't actually died."
Epiphania reached a position where she could support herself on one trembling arm. She swayed for a moment, then collapsed back onto the bier. Getorius broke through the bystanders and ran to help her. Arcadia followed him.
Epiphania's eyes were open, dull with fever and staring upward as if she were looking at the Otherworld of Christ and Osiris. Getorius thought the woman dead, but she slowly turned her head to look at him, then at Arcadia.
Epiphania asked in a hoarse voice "Medica, This is your spouse?"
"Yes. He came to the temple last night to see if I had correctly repaired the knife's damage."
"You foolish woman," Getorius admonished Epiphania. "Why did you come up here after I told Lydia not to move you?"
"You criticize me, too, Surgeon?" she chided. "Have not all men considered women foolish since Eve ate the fruit of the tree of Good and Evil?"
"A Hebrew Myth. Allegory."
"The serpent promised that we would be like gods." Epiphania shuddered and her breathing became labored.
Arcadia wiped away tears. "Bishop, may I reach down to feel your injury?"
At Epiphania's listless nod, Arcadia slipped a hand beneath the chasuble and felt a warm wetness on the under-tunic. Her palm came away bloody. Getorius nodded barely perceptible agreement about what had happened: the sutures were separated. Epiphania had been hemorrhaging for hours.
