The Mithras Conspiracy

by M. J. Polelle

  “By golly, you’re jumping to a conclusion.” Bemis aimed his flashlight at the cruciform words. “It could also refer to the Roman god Mithras, sometimes called Mitra. The miters worn by Mithraic priests only later evolved into the English word for headpieces worn by important ecclesiastics.”

  “Your interpretation imagines a connection between Mithras and Christ. That’s jumping to an even bigger conclusion than what Professor Fisher suggested.” Garvey put a hand on her hip. “I don’t buy it.”

  “Don’t get so angry, little lady.” Bemis made a happy face. “Professor Fisher and I were just making suggestions.”

  She wanted to deny she was angry. But she knew the game he played. When he felt offended, he’d try to bait her into getting testy so she could be labeled the naughty archaeologist. She wouldn’t take the bait.

  “Time out. It’s been a long day,” Fisher said. “We all agree on one thing. The inscription is the first clear proof that Christianity reached Herculaneum before the eruption in 79 AD. I think we should—”

  Renaldi shouted over from the Latin library into the scriptorium. He needed Fisher to help him pack the scrolls for shipment.

  ***

  As soon as Fisher left for the Latin library, Garvey moved away from Bemis to avoid his stare. His gazes disturbed her. She preferred it when he avoided eye contact.

  “Let’s get to work.” She turned her back on him.

  At the other end of the room, she bent down on hands and knees. Behind her flashed the Mormon’s camera, snapping a picture of the wall inscription. She brushed away the dust and debris in search of whatever archaeological evidence she could find. Maybe something would shed light on their discoveries in the Latin library and scriptorium.

  Garvey came across what looked like blanched animal skin, maybe intended for parchment. She punched a hole in a ziplock bag to avoid condensation inside and labeled it. She spooned the skin into the bag and crawled farther along, brushing the floor detritus into a dustpan and sifting its contents. Scraps of reed pens, inkwells, feathers, and papyrus lay along the wall. Even without the identifying wall mosaics, these scraps indicated a scriptorium. She inserted the specimens into separate ziplock bags.

  An object that looked like a cylinder poked out of a pile of debris in a shadowy corner of the room.

  As she crawled toward the object, something crept down her back like giant spider legs. She twisted around in a panic to confront the spiders.

  The Mormon had his hand on her butt.

  Garvey flung the hand off and scrambled to her feet.

  He had a leer pasted on his face.

  She kneed him in the balls.

  He backed away, bent over and yelping.

  Her indignation melted into satisfaction.

  “Stay away.” Garvey took a breath. “You touch me again, and I’ll report you to the superintendent . . . and the police.”

  Bemis spread his hand over his face. “I’m so sorry,” he said through his fingers. He put his hands down. “Don’t tell anyone . . . please, please. I won’t do it again. I promise.” He crossed his heart. Before she could respond, he ran out of the scriptorium.

  ***

  When Fisher returned to the scriptorium, Garvey was about to examine a strange container surrounded by what looked like a collapsed table.

  “What’s up with Wes?” Fisher said. “He just ran by on his way out of the villa . . . like he’d seen a ghost.”

  “Bemis?” She stalled, her mind in overdrive about what to say.

  Say nothing.

  Bemis had looked more afraid of her than she of him. The boy wonder would probably let the incident drop because of his embarrassment. Anyway, it was her word against his if she complained. Renaldi would believe him, and she didn’t want to find out whom Will would believe. This groundbreaking dig would make her career if she kept her head. He wouldn’t mess with her again. She felt in charge of her life for the first time in a long time.

  “Oh, that . . . He left complaining of pains in his tummy.” She groped for a plausible explanation. “Maybe something he had for breakfast.”

  “He ate what he always eats.” Will stroked his chin. “Oatmeal and prunes.”

  “Forget about Bemis.” She tugged at his sleeve. “C’mon, I found something on the floor.”

  Setting down her lantern nearby, she bent over to examine a wooden cylinder the size of a hatbox. It had to be a Roman scroll box. A scroll peeked through the cracked lid. The location of the scriptorium and its sealed archway had lessened the impact of the volcanic flow. The scroll inside had to be in better shape than the shriveled papyrus lumps found unprotected in the Latin library.

  “I see a writing on this side of the box.” Fisher was on his knees. “A word . . . CALLINICUS . . . in capital letters.”

  “Over here.” Garvey blew away dust. “I see words . . . SACERDOS MITHRAE—priest of Mithras.”

  “I can see through the crack on top.” Will leaned closer over the lid. “The scroll looks in excellent condition.”

  “Do we have to tell Renaldi about this?”

  “Of course.” He looked surprised. “Wes wants Renaldi kept in the loop.”

  “I don’t trust Renaldi.”

  Why doesn’t Will ever stand up to the Mormon?

  “Wes knows what he’s doing.”

  “Does he now?” Garvey got to her feet, hands on hips. “When you were gone, Bemis . . .” She couldn’t let the boy wonder’s juvenile behavior get in the way of this archaeological bonanza. “Praised your archaeological instincts.” She crossed her fingers behind her back. “Time to get back to work while you pack this for shipment to the Naples museum.”

  Creeping her way toward an unexamined corner of the room, she swept up dust and debris clouding the surface of the floor and sifted them through her sieve. Kicking up a fine powder with the methodical strokes of her brush, she uncovered a ring attached to the center of a metal disk, resembling an engraved manhole cover, about a meter in diameter.

  “Will, come here. I found something. It’s a trapdoor.”

  “Shall we?” Eager to pull, she fingered the ring.

  Fisher’s walkie-talkie beeped. He held up his hand for her to wait while he answered the call.

  “Bemis to Fisher, Bemis to Fisher . . . Do you copy?”

  “I copy. What’s up? . . . We need to open a trapdoor.”

  “The Vesuvius Observatory just issued an advisory. Increased seismic activity around the volcano . . . Get out now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Dr. Wesley Bemis, adherent of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, stewed over his predicament of overseeing twenty-first-century technology in the midst of erotic statuary from ancient Greece and Rome. “This is no place for me,” he said, throwing a blanket over the statue of Pan making love to a goat.

  “We can work here undisturbed,” Fisher said. “The director has barred the public with the renovation pretext.” He winked. “In Italy, a closed museum wing is normal. No one will suspect what we’re up to.”

  Bemis reconsidered the situation. Unless Fisher had persuaded Cardinal Furbone to use his influence on the museum director, they wouldn’t have a workplace so close to the Villa of the Papyri. The clincher was the free use of the Gabinetto Segreto. The cardinal had more influence than Bemis thought possible. Even if they could find another location, the excavation budget didn’t allow for additional rental fees.

  “OK. I’ll put up with this.” Bemis crossed his arms. “But this is no place for Missy Garvey.”

  “No problem.” Fisher looked up from the Callinicus scroll, which he’d named after the scribe who wrote it. “Nicole’s taking a break visiting in Sorrento. After the tremors quiet down, we’ll resume work in the villa.”

  “So, it’s Nicole now, not Dr. Garvey.”

  “She and I are
colleagues, aren’t we?”

  “Superintendent Piso and Renaldi set the excavation rules.” Bemis looked up from his technology manual. “Will she accept their authority?”

  “Nicole understands perfectly.”

  “I’m not so sure. She delayed your evacuation from the scriptorium.”

  “She was right. We had to save the Callinicus papyrus from any earthquake.”

  “But at the price of context.” Bemis closed his technological manual. “You snatched the Callinicus scroll from its setting.”

  “C’mon, Wes. Nicole and I are professionals. We photographed the papyrus container where we found it.”

  “Renaldi’s furious you didn’t leave when ordered.”

  “No surprise there. He’s getting more paranoid by the day.”

  “Watch it with her. She’s trouble.”

  “Maybe for you, not for me.” Fisher turned back to his translation of the Callinicus letter. “I’ve work to do, and you need to do your technological magic on the carbonized scrolls from the Latin library.”

  “Later. I’m dying to read your translation.” Unlike the carbonized scrolls, he didn’t need to use the magic of multispectral imaging and CT scan equipment on the Callinicus scroll.

  “First things first.” Fisher removed a special camera from its crate. “I must photograph the Callinicus letter, just in case—”

  “Anything happens to the original. Got it.”

  Thanks to its entombment in the scriptorium, the Callinicus scroll had escaped the pyroclastic flow from Mount Vesuvius better than expected. The ability of the Piso clan to afford the best papyrus and ink in the ancient world hadn’t hurt either. His colleague wouldn’t need his technological skills to translate this scroll.

  “My photos aren’t just an insurance policy against loss.” Fisher adjusted the camera. “Major universities will clamor for copies of the text.”

  “Will the photos harm the papyrus?”

  “Nope. The special lighting has a low thermal temperature.”

  Fisher blew away dust from the papyrus as brittle as dried leaves. He mounted the sheets between glass panes before photographing the text. According to Fisher, this Callinicus wrote in a chicken-scratching style of cursive Latin difficult to read. Except for the occasional dot, the ancient writer further complicated things by following the custom of running all the letters together with no spacing between words, sentences, or paragraphs.

  Bemis’s face clouded over with worry. “Shouldn’t we carbon-date the letter?”

  “What’s the point?” Fisher asked in return. “Someone bricked up the scriptorium in the first century AD, and the eruption sealed it until we discovered it. The chain of custody is unbroken. It has to be authentic.”

  “Let’s do it anyway, just to dot our i’s and cross our t’s.”

  “But the writing style and papyrus are typical of the first century.” Fisher polished his magnifying glass with a cloth. He tightened his lips and relaxed them. “You’re right. This letter is too important. I’ll take minimal samples from the papyrus for carbon-dating.”

  ***

  Returning from what he called a pornography break, Bemis opened the door to the Gabinetto Segreto to find his colleague rubbing a fist into one eye and yawning. He had removed swatches of blank papyrus from the Callinicus letter and prepared them for delivery to the Center for Data and Diagnostics, better known as CEDAD, for carbon-dating.

  “I’m making steady progress.” Fisher looked ecstatic. “My advice is to sit down before reading what I’ve translated so far.” He handed off the partial translation to Bemis before hurrying back to his workstation.

  TO PAUL OF TARSUS FROM MARCUS LOLLIANUS CALLINICUS

  Greetings to Paul, a preacher of Christ, from Marcus, a priest of Mithras.

  I pray this letter transmitted to you by your servant, Timothy, finds you safe from Nero’s wrath. I, now recovering from a broken left leg, write this in the villa of Gaius Calpurnius Piso on the second day before the calends of October in the year after the Great Fire of Rome from whose destruction only a third of the municipal districts escaped. The object of an imperial manhunt, I quiver like a cornered boar secreted away here with my trusted slave. Only fond memories of our friendship console me. Vivid is the day of your arrival in Rome four years ago, the talk of the town, an exotic and charismatic visionary from Judea, the land of fanatics, prophets, and rebels. You wrote and preached as a Roman citizen awaiting the outcome of your appeal to Nero’s court from the accusations of your Jerusalem enemies. So unlike my occasionally long-winded Asiatic rhetoric, the simple elegance of your message touched not only the heart of Burrus in charge of your house arrest, but even Seneca, the chairperson of the secret imperial commission on religious unity for which I am the scribe. How could this Nero once have been so dispassionate as to acquit you after two years of loosely supervised house arrest, he himself saying that Rome, the home of a hundred gods, had room for one more, and then possessed by the Furies disband the imperial commission and turn on the Christians and their friends after the Great Fire? I hesitate—

  Who was pounding on the door of the Gabinetto Segreto?

  Bemis pulled back the deadbolt from the steel door installed to keep out determined looters. Kicking and shoving, a stream of Italian schoolchildren flooded into the forbidden room. “Non entrare,” Bemis yelled in his most authoritarian Italian with no effect.

  Their ringleader ran around, knocking off the towels Bemis had draped over offending penises and breasts and drawing the tittering attention of his classmates to the “wee-wee” dangling from the goat man. Their teacher shooed them out of the room with a litany of colorful threats; Bemis slammed the door shut and reset the crossbar.

  He returned to the translation.

  Credible men of the fire brigades claim that a fringe group of Judean fanatics committed the arson to hasten the return of the Christ you preach. According to an Egyptian oracle, the ascent of Sirius, the Dog Star, on that humid night in July portended the fall of Rome. They say the arsonists desired to force the fulfillment of this Egyptian prophecy to make way for the kingdom of the Christ. Some Christ followers, or at least those claiming to be, asserted that the divine Christ had miraculously ignited the fire, which would not be difficult even for a lesser god in a city built of so much wood, and that they merely assisted the hand of Christ with their own torches. In any case, numerous witnesses attested that mysterious figures either prevented attempts to fight the fire or actually abetted it. In support of this version of events, I have heard that Gaius Calpurnius Piso, the star-crossed owner of this villa where I hide, agitated behind the scenes to incite the mob in aid of his attempt to overthrow Nero, our unhinged mother slayer. Another version of the Great Fire exists. Those senators who bemoan the loss of power, and some out-of-touch intellectuals seeking to bring back the republic, assert that Nero made the Christ followers into scapegoats for a fire he secretly started for his own twisted purposes of either building a new Rome or more likely, obtaining the projected property for his outlandish Domus Aurea palace at fire-bargain prices. I find this unlikely because the fire started quite distant from the proposed construction site and even destroyed his existing palace on the Palatine Hill. Even though now out of his mind in other respects, Nero has always remained avariciously sane in protecting his own possessions. Which version of events is true, only the gods know for certain. But, alas, either version has triggered our death warrants if we are captured, you as the preacher of the Christ and me as your friend. Jewish elders—

  The “Hallelujah” chorus ringtone sounded. Bemis answered his cell.

  “Renaldi here. Is it translated?”

  “Yes. I’m reading it now.” He kept his voice low.

  “I want it for Piso.”

  “But we need to—”

  “I’m coming over now. Have it ready . . . or else.”


  The line went dead.

  ***

  Better to say nothing for the moment. Bemis didn’t want a run-in with Fisher over Renaldi until he finished reading the Callinicus letter.

  Jewish elders in Rome, fearing Nero’s vengeance would fall on them as well, have publicly denounced your Christ followers as blasphemous heretics deluded by a false messiah and have prohibited further dialogue with Christ followers, especially since Nero turned devil no longer presses for a common basis of religious beliefs. Be wise and stay away from those you now have no hope of persuading to your views of the Jewish prophecies and who risk their lives by associating with you. After the Great Fire, Nero ordered the arrest of all Jews belonging to the Christ sect, now called Christians by some, and anyone associated with them, including me and many others in my congregation of Mithras. Some Jews repulsed by his behavior even refer in code to Nero as the ruler of Babylon. Nero has torched so many Christ followers fastened onto crosses that their burning flesh lights up the night sky. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad, and our emperor is now as mad as they come.

  “When do I get the remaining translation?” Bemis asked. “I can’t wait.”

  Fisher rubbed his eyes. “Just about done.”

  While his colleague completed the translation, Bemis passed the time reflecting on the personal importance of the Callinicus letter. He took the Book of Mormon from his duffel bag and, leafing through it, pondered the Great Apostasy in which the early Church lost its way by diluting the message of the Lord with paganism. And didn’t the Callinicus letter show the early seeds of the apostasy? And wouldn’t that corrupting friendship between pagan and Christian of course lead to—

  ***

  “Here’s the rest of the translation.” Fisher rubbed his hand across his brow. “Shouldn’t you be decoding the carbonized scrolls with your gadgets?”