[Getorius and Arcadia 01] - The Secundus Papyrus

by Albert Noyer

  “Thank you. But…you seemed so cold at supper.”

  “Keeps the senator off balance.” The deep chuckle again. “Actually, I would have gone to Caprea in October, but the Vandals made that too dangerous.” Prisca sopped up oil with her bread, then asked, “Did the senator seem nervous to you? He kept fussing with that new ring of his.”

  “New?” A chill rippled down Arcadia’s back. Could it have belonged to Behan after all? “Wh…where did he get it?”

  “Publius said he commissioned the ring from a Syrian craftsman on the docks. Perhaps he was nervous about bringing you here. Why did he?”

  “He thought I needed a diversion while my husband is under arrest. He also came to see me about something.”

  “Something?” Prisca’s eyebrows rose quizzically.

  Why did I blurt that out? How much can I tell her? “He asked about two recently discovered papyri,” Arcadia replied, and cursed her quick tongue. She had meant to say documents. “Do you know anything about them?”

  “Perhaps something to add to his boring library.” Prisca looked out the window.

  “The weather’s cleared. I thought we could relax in the tepidarium after breakfast. Do you ride horseback?”

  “Not very well.”

  “I have a gentle mare for you. We could go out this afternoon—beyond the smell of those infernal fowl—and explore the pinewoods. I love it there—the solitude.”

  “I’d like that.” Arcadia had a brief vision of her bones rotting in the forest of a senatorial estate until the General Resurrection, but agreed, “Yes, a ride in the woods would be very nice.”

  Arcadia was surprised that during her remaining days at the villa Maximin never appeared again. She came to like Prisca, determining that the woman was alone much of the time when the senator was away on personal or state business. It was obvious that men would be attracted to her, but rumors of a liaison with Valentinian never came up. Prisca did not ask about the papyrus documents again, nor did Arcadia see the senator’s mysterious Rooster Coop.

  On the day the mute was to take Arcadia back to her house, Prisca gave her a pair of fused glass earrings as a parting gift. She also agreed to come to the clinic after the New Year, for a gynecological examination.

  The smell of chicken droppings still clung to Arcadia’s clothes as the carriage clattered back through the Porta Aurea. When her house came into view, she realized that she knew no more about conspirators with a red cockerel as a symbol than she had when she left, but she was sure it would be a long time before she would have Agrica serve chicken again!

  Chapter seventeen

  When Arcadia went to see her husband on the sixth of December, to tell him about her few days at Publius Maximin’s estate, she found David ben Zadok in the room with him.

  After embracing Getorius, she uncovered a clay pan. “I brought you rabbit rissoles cooked in honey-ginger sauce, the way you like them. Rabbi, may I give you a serving?”

  “My thanks, but our religious statutes forbid the eating of such animals.”

  “I’m relieved you’re back, cara,” Getorius said, as he watched her spoon the meat into his dish. “I was worried about your safety, but evidently without reason, thank God.”

  “You have been away, young woman?” Zadok asked.

  “Senator Maximin invited me to his country villa for a few days.”

  “He owns a chicken farm outside Ravenna,” Getorius explained to Zadok. “I was concerned for my wife because the man sports a signet ring with a rooster symbol. He says it represents his poultry business.”

  “Yes, we know of the senator in Classis. Enormously wealthy and ambitious, but his influence over the emperor is tempered by Galla Placidia.”

  “I thought the senator might be connected to the conspiracy because of the ring,” Arcadia said.

  “But would he boast of it by displaying the sign of the cockerel so boldly?”

  “You have a point, Rabbi,” Getorius agreed, “that would be too obvious. Arcadia, we were discussing the possibility of examining the case in which the papyri were found.”

  “Could it tell us anything about the age of the documents, Rabbi?”

  “Perhaps. Our goldsmiths would examine the decorations and metal, especially the solder joints.” Zadok exhaled and rubbed his eyes. It was obvious that he was tired, and probably not sleeping well over concern about the release of the will. “And yet this might prove nothing,” he admitted, “a new container could have been made every generation or so. The leather lining you found could also be recent.”

  “Then there’s no way to really prove that the papyri are not authentic?” Arcadia asked.

  “The librarian is taking the correct path, young woman. The fibers will tell us what we wish to know.”

  Getorius voiced a doubt, “Isn’t papyrus subject to quick deterioration? Some of the library manuscripts are in terrible condition.”

  “The case was sealed?”

  “Yes. After Placidia ordered me to open it, I had to use a tile-cutter’s chisel to cut through the solder.”

  “This would have protected the contents.”

  “Would you be willing to look at the case, sir?” Arcadia asked Zadok.

  “Of course, I would like to see it very much,” he agreed. “And it is important for us to be doing something, even while the librarian works. How is Theokritos feeling?”

  “Still quite ill,” Getorius replied, “but he forces himself to continue. I spend my days reading near his office, yet he doesn’t let me help.”

  “He has the case?”

  “No, Placidia does.”

  Zadok shook his head in a gesture of frustration. “I asked the Empress to let our scholars examine the two papyri, but she refused. Will she allow our craftsmen to test their container?”

  “I’ll ask for an appointment,” Arcadia volunteered. “Tell her she might learn more about the documents from an examination of the case that held them.”

  “I’m grateful, young woman.” Zadok stood up to leave. “You’ll wish to be alone with your husband now. Our goldsmiths will return the case before the festival of Hanukkah, on the twentieth of this month.”

  “I’ll send you word when I have the case,” Arcadia told him. “Nathaniel can pick it up.”

  Zadok nodded agreement and put a hand on Getorius’ shoulder. “Have faith, son. In the past the Almighty has seemed to abandon Israelites too, yet a Psalm promises, ‘All my enemies shall be confounded and dismayed. They shall turn away in sudden confusion.’”

  “I…I’m sure that will happen, sir,” Getorius said, more as a comfort to the old man than to himself.

  Galla Placidia was receptive to having the golden cylinder examined, but told Arcadia that Rabbi ben Zadok must report whatever his craftsmen found out only to her. She also mentioned that since Bishop Chrysologos had not heard from the dead monk’s monastery, he presumed no one had been able to come. Behan would be buried in the cathedral cemetery on December twenty-fourth, the day before the feast of the Nativity.

  Nathaniel returned the Celtic case to Arcadia at her villa before sundown on December twentieth, along with a sheet of vellum that explained what little his artisans had been able to discover. The report was discouraging, yet, despite Placidia’s warning, Arcadia asked the Judean to come with her and show it to her husband.

  “It is difficult to evaluate work that is so unique,” Nathaniel admitted to Getorius as he handed him the report. “Our gold workers found no Greek or Roman influence in the design.”

  “Nothing to date it?”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “The material is electrum, a silver and gold alloy that was known even to Egyptian craftsmen in the time of Moses.”

  “The soldered joints?”

  “Nothing to report except that the workmanship is superb. As Rabbi Zadok observed, our forger was clever in his writing, yet even more so in placing the papyri in a container of such authentic design.”

  “But it could be recent, th
e style does survive in Gaul,” Arcadia said, unwilling to concede failure. “Behan’s clothes chest had similar decorations. I have tunics…gowns with Celtic embroidery work…at least one jewelry piece.”

  “All traditional ancient designs,” Nathaniel countered, “which makes dating the case difficult.”

  Disheartened at what could have been a promising approach, Arcadia rolled up the vellum and slipped it into the container. “Thank your men, Nathaniel. I’ll take your report and the case home, and then take them to Galla Placidia in the morning.”

  After leaving Getorius, Arcadia decided she needed to think out this latest disappointment. Three weeks had passed, her husband was still under arrest, and no lawyer had come to counsel him. Senator Maximin’s offer of legal advice seemed to have evaporated like the morning mist on the surface of the Bedesis River.

  Instead of going directly home, Arcadia walked along the Via Honorius toward the old forum. It was early evening, when people were indoors eating supper, so she found the area deserted. Looking at the surviving cluster of derelict buildings, which for four centuries had been at the core of civic life in Ravenna, added to her sense of dejection.

  Arcadia paused across from a small temple to Fortuna. Because the building had been dedicated to a personification of good luck—especially for married women who wished fertility and a safe delivery of their child—it had been the last one closed by the bishop. Its barred bronze door was visible in the gloom beyond the six porch columns, a mute indication that the goddess, who was once worshipped for bringing good fortune, had been powerless to protect her own shrine.

  Arcadia recalled seeing the cult statue as a child. The goddess had been graceful and beautiful, as she imagined her own mother to have been. Fortuna, her father had explained, held a brimming cornucopia in one hand. The other rested on the rudder with which pagans believed the goddess steered the course of their lives. Was Fortuna still inside the temple, neglected, or had her statue been smashed off its pedestal to feed the limekilns? Perhaps thrown into the sea after the bishop’s order to close the shrine?

  Drawn to the temple, Arcadia crossed the street, then stopped short at the curb.

  Mother of God, am I desperate enough to imagine that some connection with the spirit of a pagan goddess who once was honored here might inspire me?

  She came closer to the temple steps and saw that someone had placed a pitiful offering of bread and a wooden cup half-full of wine on the lowest stair. The crusts were recent enough not to have attracted pigeons. Perhaps the supplicant was a slave desperate for luck in some way, Arcadia mused, then impulsively pulled the Celtic case out of her cloak and touched it to the temple stair.

  Getorius is under arrest on a charge that could have both of us banished from Ravenna. But at least he’s still alive. Maximin could be using his chicken farm as a center for a conspiracy that’s connected with a forged will. Aetius might be briefing officers loyal to him for a palace take-over this month, when Nativity celebrations will put everyone off guard. Theokritos has been testing the two papyri for almost a month. Is he stalling, involved in the plot? Will he declare the documents genuine, then demand that the will be released?

  Arcadia shivered and pulled her cape tighter around her shoulders, fighting a desire to cry. The possibility that Theokritos might be involved had not occurred to her before. The conspirators don’t have the will, yet a duplicate copy might have been made, and be ready to be announced by whoever forged it. Yet I don’t know any more about how that might be done than I did on that night of the November ides.

  She wiped her eyes and glanced up at the weathered inscription on the temple architrave, above the columns. “Divine Fortune Smile on Us,” she read aloud, then suddenly recalled a comment Getorius had made about someone coming from Gaul. “Fortuna, is there one other hope? My husband said that a person from Behan’s abbey should have been here last week. No one came but…but, goddess, give them safe passage. Let them arrive quickly.”

  A gust of wind blew the crusts of bread off the step. Arcadia tucked the case back under her cape, wondering if anyone had watched her impromptu ritual. She looked down both sides of the street. Except for a man relieving himself against a wall of the baths, no one was nearby.

  In the deepening twilight Arcadia grasped the cylinder tightly against her body, then turned and hurried back across the street, to the security of her walled home.

  Chapter eighteen

  An exhausted Brenos of Slana reined his horse to a halt under a soggy pine tree atop a knoll that was about a mile west of Ravenna. He pushed back his broad-brimmed leather hat, sucked rain off the scraggly moustache on his upper lip, and dismounted to peer at the mist-blurred walls of the capital city.

  When a reflexive shiver shuddered through his body, from fever as well as the cold weather, he hunched down, to hoard whatever warmth his wet, mud-spotted robe might still retain. The effort was painful. The raw wound on his side from the leather case chafing against his skin, was now an angry red sore suppurating with yellow pus. Fiachra had tried to heal the inflammation with a solution brewed from dried symphytum leaves, but the medication had not stopped the hot redness from spreading.

  The abbot stood again, wiped a damp sleeve across his face, and slipped his pilgrim’s staff from its retaining strap, fingering the final notch he had cut into the wood that morning. There were thirty-two marks in all, one for each day of his journey, through what he had come to consider the realm of Satan, toward the Final Judgment. He had lost track of the date, but counting the markings a second time showed that it should be the twenty-first of December; the voyage from Gaul had taken much longer than he had estimated. Brenos imagined that he looked as wet as the otters he had seen in hunters’ traps on the Icauna River. It was an apt comparison. He felt just as furious at both his weak secretary and the treacherous guide as the caged animals had at their sudden captivity.

  Warinar had disappeared that morning. When Brenos had awakened in the woodcutters’ hut on the slopes above Faventia where the two had sheltered, he had found Warinar missing, along with the packhorse. The abbot assumed that when Warinar realized he had forfeited the bonus of a gold piece by arriving at Ravenna later than he had promised, the sullen guide had stolen the animal as payment and slipped away.

  Fiachra had disappeared eight days earlier, at Florentia, just before the final climb to the Apennine summits. Brenos imagined that his brother monk had convinced himself that he had undergone enough penances to rectify all the transgressions he might incur in his lifetime. Whatever the reason, Fiachra was not there in the morning when the horses were readied. Satan had put Fiachra to the test, just as the angel had warned the Church of Smyrna, and the man had failed. Had not the Nazarene predicted that some seed would fall by the wayside? Fiachra had already protested at Lugdunum that he was ready to return to Culdees. At that point, in deference to his oath of obedience, he had gone on with his abbot, yet he had not stayed the course.

  Brenos leaned against the tree to rest, and recalled his incredible journey. Everything had gone well until Lugdunum, where Warinar had been told that crossing the Genevris Pass into Italy would be impossible. Heavy snow and continuing poor weather had closed the alpine road, so he was advised to remain in Lugdunum until spring, or return home immediately.

  Brenos had insisted on going on. By the grace of the Nazarene, Warinar found a bargemaster making a journey south to Arelate on the Rhodanus River, with a cargo of wine casks. From there the man said the three travelers could take the Via Julia Augusta to where it ended on the Mediterranean coast. At Forum Julii, the abbot could board a boat to Pisae—if he could find a galleymaster foolish enough to risk a winter sea voyage. Otherwise, the bargeman suggested following the coastal road to Genua, where it would connect with the Via Aemilia Scauri to Pisae. From that city they would take the Arnus and Sieve River roads until the rise to the Apennine crests began. Once over the pass at the summit, the descent to the Adriatic coast would be relatively easy.
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  The trio had found conditions in the Viennensis Province unstable, particularly at Arelate. Despite having signed a treaty with Ravenna, Theodoric the Visigoth king had never abandoned his ambition to control the entire Mediterranean coast. Theodoric’s most recent attack on Narbo had failed, and he had been taken prisoner. A new treaty was being worked out, but Arelate was closed off and patrol galleys blocked downstream barge traffic to the mouth of the Rhodanus River.

  While his horse nibbled at dead grass under the pine, Brenos unslung a wineskin and swigged the dregs of a cheap vintage bought from the civic guard at Faventia. It did little to slake his feverish thirst, and every movement pained his raw wound. Beeswax waterproofing on his leather food case had long weathered off; the last chunks of bread were damp and moldy; and yet the poor fare was a small inconvenience, he thought, as he eyed what was left of the route he would take. “The Road of the Golden Gate,” Warinar had called it, an apt name for the highway on which the head of the Gallican League would arrive to carry out the Nazarene’s mandate.

  In searing pain from the raw wound on his side, Brenos remounted and clucked his horse forward, glad now of his decision at Lugdunum to go on despite the hardships. At Arelate he had been able to enter the city by appealing to the bishop and citing his rank as abbot. From there the Via Julia Augusta had crossed rich vineyards, olive groves, and grain fields that were relatively unplundered despite the recent barbarian wars. Contingents of mercenaries hired by each community made sure that the countryside remained free of bandits. As head of a monastery, Brenos used the prestige of his church office, and Warinar had shown the signet of Valentinian III on his travel authorization to pass them through without much harassment.

  At Forum Julii, on the coast, Warinar had advised taking the road, rather than a galley, as much to avoid certain seasickness as a potential sinking in a winter storm. The former reason was the most likely, so Brenos agreed.