[Getorius and Arcadia 01] - The Secundus Papyrus

by Albert Noyer

  The new monastery of Lerinum was on an island a short distance beyond Forum Julii. Brenos recalled that he had been tempted to rest in the company of a fellow abbot for a few days and have his wound treated, but he did not know the churchman and was unwilling to face questions about what forced him to travel such a distance before spring brought better weather.

  Once inside the province of Italy, Warinar had said they would be more secure. Yet, at an ambush near Albinganum, only a timely showing of the emperor’s authorization and a bribe of silver coins saved the three men from being murdered and their bodies thrown into the sea.

  Warinar had bought fresh horses at Genua and turned south along the Via Aemilia Scauri to Pisae. The road was more crowded with traffic, yet also safer because of it. The Arnus River segment from Pisae to Florentia went relatively well, but it was at the latter town that Fiachra decided he had done enough penance and would go no further. From Florentia, a dirt road that twisted back upon itself in sharp, rising turns led up to the Apennine pass. There the weather turned miserable again, with morning fog and daily rains that washed out sections of the mountain road and threatened the horses’ footing.

  Now, despite his exhaustion and pain, Brenos felt growing excitement. He was finally here! The Nazarene had guided him safely to Ravenna. Behan would have already announced his prophecy about an imminent event of earthshaking significance, and everyone in the Western capital—from emperor to slave—must be in a state of expectancy, wondering what it was that would be revealed.

  They would soon find out. It remained only to be contacted by Smyrna and whatever other Gallican League associates were in the city, then prepare for the exact method of revealing the Nazarene’s will at the Mass of the Nativity Vigil.

  Chapter nineteen

  Bishop Peter Chrysologos was surprised to learn of the Hibernian abbot’s arrival. In an interview, he told Brenos it was commendable that he, as head of a monastery, had been willing to suffer the discomforts of a winter journey to attend the funeral of one of his monks. The bishop insisted that the abbot stay in the episcopal residence, and also deliver the eulogy at the Mass for Behan on December twenty-fourth.

  Brenos’ lingering anger at Fiachra and Warinar metamorphosed into panic when he realized that he was more than two weeks later than he had planned in arriving at Ravenna. There were only three days left to be contacted by Smyrna, remove the papyrus with the will from wherever it was concealed, and arrange for its revelation at the Nativity service. He had assumed that the prophecy Behan would announce to prepare for the discovery had been made public, and became very uneasy when the bishop did not mention it.

  His anxiety subsided a bit when Chrysologos told him he would be introduced to the congregation at the morning Mass, which commemorated three martyrs who had been victims of persecution by the apostate emperor Julian ii. Even if Smyrna were not at the service, word of an abbot who had just arrived from Gaul would get out quickly. He had not met the League’s contact, but had written to him through Behan. Smyrna, after sending the note that “the cockerel was ready to crow,” must be as anxious that Brenos had not appeared on schedule, as the abbot was about being delayed.

  What would Smyrna be like? Behan had been clever in saying that he would use his access to the library to make contacts within the palace. Clerks gossiped. It would not be too difficult for a simple monk to learn who was disgruntled and ambitious, a person, perhaps, who had lost prestige and who could be persuaded to be part of an effort to replace a corrupt government with a true Christian state that would be administered by an Order of holy monks. And Smyrna must be ruthless enough to condone the civil war that would inevitably result.

  Galla Placidia arranged for a private meeting with the abbot. It was a courtesy to a churchman who held a rank equivalent to that of a bishop, but she also wanted to find out—discreetly—how much he knew about the manuscripts found in Behan’s hut, especially the papyri that Theokritos was testing.

  Brenos was overawed after seeing the number of buildings in Ravenna and their size. Bishop Chrysologos showed him his Ursiana basilica, with its five aisles, and said it rivaled the one that the great Constantine had built in Rome. Except for the glimpse of the white buildings Brenos had caught on the hill at Lugdunum, he had not been able to visualize any structure larger than his Collegium at Culdees.

  When a deacon escorted Brenos to the Lauretum Palace, the abbot could only gape at the magnificence of this residence of the Western Augustus. The construction and size of the building, the magnificence of its mosaic floors, the colorful clothing on the guards, a glimpse of an indoor garden as large as the docks at Autessiodurum; all made him forget the pain in his side for a time.

  The deacon left the abbot alone in Galla Placidia’s reception room. Even though he had been told that she was the mother of the emperor, Brenos was astonished at the richness of the room’s furnishings. Even the governor’s office at Autessiodurum, a room with expensive furniture compared to a monk’s cell, did not approach the wealth and luxury displayed inside this woman’s reception area.

  As Brenos sat nervously waiting for the arrival of the emperor’s mother he was tormented again by the excruciating pain of his suppurating wound. He blamed a feeling of weakness on fatigue from his journey, and a lingering nausea on the contrast between the bishop’s rich meal and the sparse travel rations he had endured for so long.

  To distract himself from his discomfort, Brenos stood and walked around the room, looking at the silver and gold statuettes set on stands. Behind some of them, along the wall, pagan goddesses, harlots frozen in stone, stood alongside bearded idols and portrayals of smirking men and women wearing outlandish hairstyles. On the area behind what he assumed was Placidia’s throne, an elaborate monogram in gold tiles displayed the letters AGP.

  Brightly colored coverings hung on walls, and lay beneath his mud-stained travel boots. Some partially hid tile designs of long-eared demons with brutish faces and erect penises, who tried to copulate with equally shameless nude Daughters of Eve.

  Half delirious from fever and fatigue, Brenos felt his initial awe at the display of riches—the mosaics, tapestries, carpets and sculptures—turn into a nascent rage and fear. In a sudden revelation, like a bright light pulsing behind his eyes, the abbot recalled John’s apocalyptic vision of a woman seated upon a scarlet beast. The name of Babylon, the great mother of harlots, was written on her forehead. An inner voice surfaced to reveal to him that here in Ravenna, not in Rome, was the lair of the Harlot about whom the Apostle John had written!

  What was it John had been commanded to write to the Angel of the church in Smyrna? “I know how hard pressed and poor you are—and yet you are rich.” Now, by the Grace of the Nazarene, he, Brenos of Slana, Abbot of the Monastery of Culdees, stood inside the temple where the Beast was worshipped amid fiery red, azure blue, and sulfur-yellow colors, in the company of idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood. He was in the den of the Beast, and the golden monogram of Placidia-Babylon on the wall was its mark. Yes, not the City of Rome, but Ravenna, the lair of the Western Emperor, was the haunt of unclean spirits, a place where kings and nations of the earth were made drunk on the wine of fornication, and the merchants that John had mentioned grew rich on bloated wealth.

  Brenos squinted from pain and held his head. The brilliant light inside his skull hurt his eyes like flashes of miniature lightning bolts. With a hoarse laugh, he steadied himself against a marble table. The Gallican League had been formed just in time, for the sickle was ready to gather in the earth’s grape harvest. This very room would soon become the winepress of God’s wrath that John had foreseen. Blood would flow from the press to the height of a horse’s bridle. Let the Harlot come clothed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and jewels…pearls…holding a golden cup….

  The abbot’s eyes lost focus. Objects in the room blurred, as if seen reflected in a pool of water. After a month spent in cold outdoor air, the heat and smell of incense was overpow
ering. An acrid bile rose to Brenos’ throat. He was about to turn toward the door and run out, when he heard a female voice speaking to him.

  “Our greetings to you, Abbot.”

  Brenos squinted, trying to make out the nature of the woman who approached him. She seemed to be dressed in a purple tunic with red trim, and wore a golden tiara and necklace of glittering jewels. Was it a golden cup that the Harlot held out to him in her outstretched hand? He shivered in horror and staggered back, away from the unclean apparition.

  “Are you well, Abbot?” Galla Placidia asked. “You seem ill, but We imagine your journey was incredibly tiring.”

  “No…no…” He continued moving away, confused, frightened, unable to think of a rational response.

  The abbot’s appearance startled Placidia. She had caught glimpses of Behan when he came to the palace library, an unkempt man in a soiled gray robe, yet that might be expected in a holy one unconcerned with the world. This abbot, however, resembled a wild Hyperborean rather than a churchman living in civilized Gaul. His cheeks bristled with several weeks’ growth of dark beard, and his strange tonsure was half-grown in. The homespun robe he wore was flecked with mud and smelled rancid as a result of his journey, she realized, yet she had expected the abbot to groom himself more carefully for the interview.

  “I am Galla Placidia, mother of the Augustus,” she continued, dropping the formal pronoun, “and in my own right, Queen of the Goths.”

  After Brenos realized who the woman was, he recovered from his momentary hallucination, and yet was still unsure of how to address her. Hibernia had kings and queens. “Queen” might be proper, and she had called herself by that title.

  “Queen, I…I am Brenos, Abbot of Culdees,” he told her, regaining a measure of firmness in his voice.

  “Yes, the bishop told me.” Placidia smiled and handed him the golden cup. “My steward prepared this hot wine to warm you after the alpine snows. I find it commendable that you came from Gaul just to bury one of your brothers.”

  “Queen, the Nazarene commanded us to bury the dead. I am his servant.”

  “Nazarene?” Placidia repeated in surprise. “Christ has not been referred to by that name in decades. Indeed, you do come from the furthest limits of the world.” She indicated a cushioned chair, “Please, Abbot, sit there. I noticed that your right side seems painful.”

  “A bruise from the journey.” Brenos sat and brushed a hand over the silk material. It felt smooth and sensuous compared to his rough woolen robe, but he would not let it, or the room, or especially this Harlot-Queen, distract him.

  “A pity about your monk Behan’s death,” Placidia sympathized when Brenos said nothing further. “Tell me of your Order. I know something of Egyptian holy men, yet little of those who come from Hibernia.”

  “We follow the rule of Ciallanus,” Brenos replied, more at ease now that the queen’s questions had turned to a familiar subject. “I see my task as one charged with the pruning of the Nazarene’s vineyard, casting unfruitful and dead wood into eternal fires.”

  “Indeed, abbot,” Placidia retorted, “but would you not agree that in pruning a vine an inept vintner may destroy it?”

  “Queen, the Nazarene has commanded that I do this.”

  “Commanded you, abbot?”

  “A humble instrument of Ciallanus.”

  “Why do your Hibernian liturgies differ from those of our Roman Church, which are founded on the Rock of Peter?”

  The Harlot is clever. Brenos flushed and shifted in his chair to ease the pain in his side. She seeks to trap me with silken questions, like a spider’s web ensnares an unwary fly.

  “Abbot?”

  “Queen, your liturgies have been corrupted,” Brenos lashed out in rising anger. “We, ‘The Friends of God,’ call for self-denial, penances. Discipline—”

  “All are virtues that even our pagan ancestors practiced,” Placidia replied. “Yet already the asceticism of some Egyptian monks has become fanaticism. Cruel penances replace rational judgment about the offenses and discipline becomes tyranny. Our Roman civilization is based on laws passed to moderate those extremes.”

  “The Nazarene said he would vomit out those who were lukewarm.”

  “Abbot, do you not confuse conscientiousness with blind certitude?”

  “Behan died in the arms of the Nazarene,” Brenos said, returning to the subject of the dead monk. He had to find out how well his prophecy had been received in Ravenna, and the sense of expectation it had aroused in the citizenry. Why hadn’t the bishop mentioned it? Brenos gulped a swallow of the Wine of Fornication, but the unfamiliar spicy taste made him gag. He wiped his mouth on a soiled sleeve. “Fortunately, Queen, before his death Behan had completed his mission of preaching the prophecy about the Nazarene’s revelation.”

  “Prophecy? Revelation? What are you speaking about, Abbot? I’ve not heard of a prophecy. Nor has Bishop Chrysologos told me of one.”

  “Not…heard?”

  Brenos spilled wine from his cup when he set it down too quickly. Could the monk have died before he was able to announce the imminent disclosure of the Nazarene’s last testament?

  “You are ill, Abbot,” Placidia observed. “I’ll summon my physician.”

  “No, no. Wh…what exactly happened to Behan?”

  “I thought you knew that he drowned. When my surgeon examined your monk’s body, he found manuscripts on his desk. When you speak of prophecies, are you referring to those manuscripts?”

  “Manuscripts?” What does the Harlot mean? Perhaps one of them is the prophecy, and I can confirm it to the bishop. “Y…you have them here?”

  “No, in the palace library. On another matter, Abbot, a…document…that had been hidden was uncovered by accident. Could it be connected to this prophecy you mention?”

  “Document?” Brenos’s stomach spasmed at her question, and he fought to keep from retching. Was it possible that the Nazarene’s will had been prematurely discovered? He choked back bile and forced himself to keep from trembling. “What kind of document?”

  “A forgery, undoubtedly, but—”

  “Where is this document?” he demanded, under control again. “I must see it.”

  “I was about to say that my librarian, Theokritos, has been trying to determine its authenticity. He has been ill, but told me I could have his results this afternoon.”

  Brenos fought for the discipline he had learned in performing his harsh penances. “This librarian, where is he?” he asked, more calmly. “May I see him?”

  “Theokritos is in his room, but I’ve told you that he is not at all well.”

  “Our Hibernian rite of private confession often promotes healing in those who are…ah…perhaps reluctant to reveal their sins in public.”

  “Sins, Abbot?” Placidia suppressed a smirk by taking a sip of her wine. Theokritos might be a Gnostic, or even crypto-pagan, but he would never undergo the humiliation of confessing to a monk. On the other hand, my librarian might be able to draw information from the abbot that I could not. What harm could there be in allowing Brenos to see him? “Very well, I’ll have my steward escort you to Theokritos’ room, but the results of his experiments are to be given to me alone.”

  “Of course, Queen.”

  Placidia rang her golden bell to summon Magnaric. When the steward came in, she told him to take the abbot to Theokritos’ room near the library.

  As Brenos followed the man, he felt drained of energy, yet, despite that, the unsettling news had given him the strength to find out what had happened, and the Harlot Queen an opportunity for him to do so.

  After Magnaric left, Brenos rapped on the door. There was no answer, but he found the portal unlocked. He pushed it open slowly and peered in. The stale air in the sickroom smelled of camphor. Theokritos lay on his bed, propped up by pillows, his eyes closed.

  “Librarian, I am Brenos of Slana,” he called out. “Abbot of the Monastery of Culdees.”

  Theokritos slowly opened his e
yes and turned to see who was speaking. “Slana? Culdees?” he croaked. “The names mean nothing to me.”

  “I am Behan of Clonard’s abbot,” Brenos elaborated, coming closer to the bed. “I came as soon as I heard news of his blessed death.”

  “Why blessed?” Theokritos scoffed.

  “I understand our brother died in a penance while praising the Nazarene. I consider that blessed.”

  “Nazarene? That term is used only among a few fanatical Christian sects. Abbot, why did you travel this far in winter just to bury an obscure monk?” Theokritos asked suspiciously. “If there was uncertainty over burial jurisdiction a courier could have brought an answer. Why are you here?”

  “Did you know our brother?” Brenos asked in an attempt to counter the old man’s obvious mistrust.

  “He came to my library to read.”

  “Behan would.” Brenos forced a chuckle. “It is said that Hibernians are wedded to their books and, indeed, I would like to see your palace collection. Our own Bishop Germanus has a number of rare volumes in his library. Culdees has a modest selection, but most are written in Celtic.”

  “Your monk had some manuscripts in that language.”

  “Yes, our brother was…was always writing.” Brenos felt his heart beat faster and sat down on a wicker chair near the bed. “I…I understand you’re trying to determine the authenticity of those manuscripts.”

  “Not the ones the surgeon brought me,” Theokritos replied hoarsely. “They were mostly gibberish, at least the part written in your barbarian tongue.”

  What is he referring to? The prophecy is written in Latin. “Tell me what Behan wrote, Librarian. One person’s gibberish may be another’s vision.”

  “Vision, Abbot? Even worshippers of Dionysus see visions, only to awaken in the morning with a swollen head.”

  Brenos forced a laugh to cover his impatience. “And the Latin manuscript. Did you also think that one to be nonsense?”