by Eric Mayer
And why had Felix died here? Because he had attended a Mithran ceremony nearby? But why had he wandered away from the mithraeum afterwards?
To search for those on his list, John reasoned.
The church’s treasures must have been sealed in tombs marked with the listed names.
Clementia must have known that and told Felix. But while pretending to explain the list fully, she had withheld that vital information from John until such time as he agreed to cooperate with her.
John began a systematic search. Some of the names were distinct, chiseled into marble in large letters. Others were mere scratches that had been made into wet plaster, or faded marks in red paint and even charcoal. He had to bring the torch so close that sparks cascaded down the wall and smoke obscured the inscriptions further.
The silence was broken only by the sputtering of the flame and the soft tread of his boots. He wondered if there was any other living thing down here. What about the hooded wanderer he had encountered? Or was the wanderer to be counted among the dead as the superstitious would have it?
The catacombs were a world apart from the living world above. There were no maps. They had grown in secret, for reasons other than a city grows. No emperors had decreed grand building projects. There were no streets designed for commerce, no great highways to distant places. The catacombs contained countless thousands of destinations, but each one was final.
John’s torchlight caught a glint. The blade of a crescent-shaped knife pressed into the plaster, he saw looking more closely. The inscription next to it said: “Vincentus, who owned the finest shoe shop in the Forum.”
Further on a marble slab declared: “Silvanus,who died a soldier, aged nineteen years, three months and twelve days.”
How strange to see time marked with such precision. What were twelve days in the face of eternity?
John continued his search. Name after name appeared briefly in his torchlight and was noted. Perhaps for the first time in a century, perhaps for the last time ever.
None matched the ones on Felix’s list.
After what seemed hours John blew on his hands to warm them. His fingertips and feet were numb with cold. He felt as if he had covered miles of corridors. If Felix had been on the way to the tombs of the people on his scrap of parchment, he would have had a long walk.
And if Felix had not been in the area where the hidden church property was concealed, but only attending the ceremony, what chance was there of John finding the right tombs in the midst of thousands? The dead beneath Rome far outnumbered the living above.
Reluctantly he started home.
Chapter Twenty-seven
John sat alone in his dining room as the setting sun’s orange-gold glare darkened and slanted a red finger tracing a path across the mosaic floor. After those hours spent in the eternal darkness of the catacombs, the sun was a glorious and welcome sight.
The house was eerily quiet. As quiet as the catacombs. If John were superstitious he might easily have believed that as night advanced, Felix’s shade would return to point out the path that led to his murderer. Since he was not superstitious he was left to find his own way through the growing shadows.
He filled his cup with red wine from the glass jug before him. He could almost imagine he was back in his study in Constantinople pondering a problem for Justinian while the windows’ diamond panes darkened.
If Felix had been helping Clementia to find the church’s artifacts was it because he hoped to restore them to the church? John liked to think so. Perhaps it had been part of Felix’s attempt to placate Archdeacon Leon, to convince him to stop pressing for peace with Totila.
It was clear Clementia had ulterior motives. She had admitted she was running out of money to pay her guards. Did it matter to her whether she risked putting a blotch on the honor of her absent family? She didn’t strike John as a person who cared about honor. It wouldn’t buy much. In this world honor is a copper coin and dishonor is gold.
John knew that Felix would do almost anything to please his latest lover. But stealing valuable religious items? He didn’t want to believe it. Clementia may well have lied to Felix about her intentions.
At any rate, if Felix had been searching in the catacombs near the mithraeum, he had apparently been searching in the wrong place. Had Hunulf been searching in the wrong place as well? Or had he been there simply because he had attended a ceremony? Clementia’s guard Gainus had told John that Hunulf was a Mithran.
Gainus had also hinted that Hunulf had been involved with Clementia. Had she lured him into her hunt, as she had Felix?
The wine John was drinking was of better quality than the raw Egyptian sort he’d favored in Constantinople. Rather than sharpening his senses it dulled them. He also missed his study’s wall mosaic, the bucolic scene inhabited by a mosaic girl he had called Zoe. He had carried on innumerable monologues with her. She could have explained the solutions to all the mysteries he had solved, but she was gone now too, like so much of his past, her mosaic a victim of vandals even before John had been forced into exile.
Had he stayed in Constantinople he might have had the mosaic restored, as Basilio was having his church restored. Or so he claimed.
Why had Basilio’s workmen found Hunulf’s body deep in the catacombs? Would Basilio really want to repair an area of the catacombs so distant from his church? Were they too searching, as well as tending to burial niches? The long lost ecclesiastical artifacts would certainly assist Basilio’s efforts to legitimatize his position.
The Church of Saint Minias seemed almost as prominent in the mystery as the catacombs. Hunulf had once worked for Basilio. Then there was Veneria, who had worked at the church before running off with Hunulf, according to Basilio. When found dead she had been wearing expensive jewelry. How had she obtained it? Whatever the explanation, two people involved with the same church were now dead.
Had both of them been searching for the trove? For themselves? For each other? For Basilio?
The personal interconnections were as complex as those of the catacombs. And, John reminded himself, the catacombs were so large and complicated he had already reached the mithraeum by two different routes. Who could say how many routes there were to a possible solution, only one of which could be correct?
Why had Hunulf’s trail of blood led John almost to the spot where Felix’s body had been found? Had Hunulf murdered Felix after having been mortally wounded by his victim? Why would he have used a ceremonial knife?
Perhaps neither of them had killed the other, but if not, who was responsible?
It certainly opened up another avenue of investigation. As if any others were needed.
Dusk had passed into night and a hanging lamp provided only dim illumination. Who else might have a particular need for the wealth represented by ecclesiastical artifacts?
Vitiges had told him General Diogenes had been hoping Felix would bring funds from the emperor to help pay the garrison, thus stemming the number of desertions. This being so, Diogenes would surely be interested in obtaining money from any source. On the other hand, it would be nigh impossible for Diogenes to find a buyer in secret, even assuming he had somehow located the lost items in the first place. In John’s view this alone would have made him the most unlikely suspect, yet the most unlikely people had been found to be culprits in other matters John had investigated, so Diogenes could not be struck entirely from further consideration.
He went to pour another cup of wine and found the jug empty. His mind also felt empty. John was not apt to drink much except, sometimes, when he was thinking too hard.
He reached down and opened the pouch at his belt, sorted through the coins there, and pulled out an irregular bit of glass with a bit of dried plaster stuck to its back. It was a tessera, a piece from a mosaic picked up from what was left on the floor of his study in Constantinople after the unknown intruder or intruders had
done their damage. In the mosaic scene it might have served as part of a rock beside a stream, or the spoke of a cart, the shadow under a pine or a cow’s hoof. John liked to think it came from one of the mosaic girl’s dark and knowing eyes.
“Well, Zoe,” John said, “I appear to be lost in the catacombs. Perhaps I should begin Felix’s journey from a new starting point.”
He would attempt to find out more about Felix’s time in this house and then work out from there in ever-widening circles.
“Master, your meal.” Maxima, the cook, carried a serving tray into the room. “I regret it is fish again. The price of meat has gone up to the sky since the Goths surrounded the city. Eutuchyus ordered me to spend frugally.”
John noticed her gaze had moved to the piece of glass in his open palm. He closed his fist around it. “Quite right. It looks delicious. Which market do you visit?”
“Master, meat is scarce everywhere in the city.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that, Maxima. I just wondered which you patronized.”
Maxima looked confused. Probably because in her experience the master of a house did not concern himself with such trivial details. “I go to the market on the Esquiline Hill.”
“Is it a long walk?”
“No. I go up Sandalarius to Subara, which takes you to the gate in the old city wall. The market’s right there.”
“Has the market been there long?”
“Forever.” She hesitated before continuing. “I am certain a man like yourself would get a better price.”
“Don’t worry, Maxima. I am content with fish.”
He dismissed her. He could tell she didn’t believe he could be a man of simple tastes, although it was the truth.
John could not put the catacombs out of his mind. Though he knew it was his imagination, his clothing felt as if it had soaked up the chill of death. The air in the house was hot and stuffy but John shivered. No matter how many times he brushed at his tunic, dust came off it.
The dust of bones ground to powder by eternity.
He went to the bath, a plain, marble walled chamber with a rectangular basin and a changing room. Since Belisarius had repaired the aqueducts there was ample water. For some reason Totila had not bothered to interfere with the water supply again. Not yet at least. Possibly he thought it unnecessary given his army’s overwhelming advantages.
John gratefully stripped off his clothing and left it heaped on a bench. He had descended the steps of the bath until the water came to his knees when he was aware of movement behind him. He turned and saw Clementia coming in his direction, naked as a marble statue of Venus.
Quickly he stepped down into the water, looking away as he did so. His face burned with anger rather than embarrassment.
He heard her coming down the steps and riling the water. Reflections from the lamps on the ledge above the pool swirled around the walls. She put her hand on his shoulder.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me,” she whispered.
He brushed her hand away and glared at her. “I have no interest in taking my friend’s place. Now you have seen me you know I could not take his place even if I wanted to.”
“Don’t be ashamed, because…” she faltered.
“You should not have come in here!”
“Do you think it matters to me?” Clementia persisted.
“I am married, Clementia.” John bent down and splashed water onto his chest and face. “It’s all you need to know.”
It was easy for him to ignore her advances. Too easy. Painfully easy. What credit did it do him?
“Please, John. Working together we can finish what Felix started. He knew that if we found the church treasure he would be able to pay the garrison and take over from Diogenes.”
For a moment John was stunned. Could he believe the woman? Was this yet another lie? “Mutiny? Like those who murdered Conon?”
“Felix thought Justinian would thank him for it. The emperor doesn’t want to finance the garrison himself. There is a great deal of wealth to be had if we find what we seek, not to mention power.”
“I have had my fill of both.”
“Not even to protect yourself and your family?”
“Protect?”
“From whatever the world threatens you with. You don’t think your god Mithra will protect you, do you? Or the Christians’ god? Or other people? Money and power are the only things you can trust.”
John couldn’t prevent himself cursing Felix silently. How much had he told Clementia if he had even apparently revealed to her that John shared Felix’s religion?
Clementia was scowling at John as if he were a codex written in a language she couldn’t read. He supposed she was beautiful in a fleshy sort of way. He preferred Cornelia with her boyish figure and bony, unpainted face.
When John returned to his room he was startled to find Julius there. The boy’s purpose didn’t appear to be nefarious. He was staring wide-eyed at the fresco of Persephone. According to the artist responsible, the queen of the underworld had worn very little, which John thought unlikely, recalling Theodora’s sumptuous wardrobe.
The boy turned from the fresco and looked guiltily at John. “I…I…”
“Never mind, Julius. I suspect General Felix also enjoyed depictions of mythology.”
“This was his room?” Julius’ gaze went to the codex lying on top of the chest at the foot of the bed.
“Yes. That is what he was reading.”
“Reading’s no use to a fighting man.”
“You think not? General Felix would not agree.” John gestured the boy to sit on the bed, picked up the codex, and gave it to him. “This was written by Julius Caesar. You cannot deny he was a fighting man. You told me your parents wanted you to study. I take it you learned to read before you ran off?”
Julius bridled and opened the volume. “I can read, sir! It starts by saying Gaul is a whole divided into three parts.”
“I will lend it to you. You’ll find it fascinating.”
“It can’t be very interesting, considering how he begins.”
“On the contrary. Scholars say this account is based on dispatches he sent to the senate here in Rome. It describes every detail of his military campaign. You don’t think there’s anything you can learn from your namesake’s writings, Julius?”
“Does he teach you how to use weapons?”
“Generals concern themselves with campaign strategies, not weapon techniques.”
“I don’t want to be a general. I’d be happy just to swing my sword at whoever the general wants killed.” He paused and then blurted out, “Why do you care about it, sir?”
A good question, John thought. He had only known the boy for a few days and one way or another he would need to leave Rome in a few days more. “As I told you, Julius, I ran away to become a mercenary, so I can appreciate your situation.”
“Where did you fight?”
“One place was Bretania.”
“There were many enemies there?”
“If I and my colleagues were not fighting invaders, we were helping ambitious warlords trying to carve out kingdoms as soon as they’d located enough men to fight for them. Mine was a hired sword and I fought for more than one employer.”
Julius was staring at John with evident awe and John uncomfortably realized that the boy’s admiration pleased him. He was tempted to describe the terrible exhilaration he had experienced during battle, venting the aimless fury of youth on an enemy. But then he would also have to describe washing the blood of dead comrades from his face, the boredom of freezing, muddy campsites, and a friend who drowned in a swollen creek.
“At one point,” John continued, “I sold the service of my sword to Cadwallon. He ruled the kingdom of Gwynedd and his men called him Long Hand.”
“And why was that?”
“It was said he had a long reach over his land, ensuring justice and so peace.” John was reminded of another ruler with a long reach, one doubtless about to soon stretch out a hand from Constantinople and send him to oblivion. Suddenly he shivered. Though the light was no different it felt as if a shadow had passed through the room.
Julius laughed. “Except when he was fighting. Did you ever meet him?”
“No. His army was large and I only saw his commanders.”
“And was the fighting fierce?”
“It was, Julius. There are many stories I could tell you but now we both need to rest. Read this. I read it when I attended Plato’s Academy. General Diogenes read it and so did General Felix.”
“If I have time, sir. Did you ever fight alongside General Felix?”
“Yes, more than once. I will tell you about that some other day.”
After John had gone to bed, his thoughts shifted from his past with Felix to his past with Cornelia. He couldn’t help thinking of how it had been when he and Cornelia were lovers in Egypt so long ago. All that was gone. The past had swept it away, as it eventually sweeps away everything and everyone a man has known and finally the man himself and all his memories.
Could that young mercenary who loved Cornelia truly have been John or had the young stranger’s memories somehow found a home in John’s mind?
His musings were interrupted, mercifully, by the eerie call of an owl.
An owl, in the middle of Rome. What had the city come to? There were plenty of deserted buildings these days for wild creatures.
He passed into sleep wondering if Cornelia was asleep, or lying awake. Whether owls were calling on his estate in Greece and whether she was listening to them.
