Wrath of Rome

I

Deep inside the cave a young woman cried out to him, “This way, Athanasius! Hurry!”

He tried to find her but stumbled in the darkness. The further he followed her down the endless tunnel, the further out of reach she seemed. I have to save her! At last he caught up to her in a dim shaft of light, grasping for her long, black hair. When she turned to look at him with her dark and haunting eyes, tears of blood trickled down her tragic face.

He stared back at her, suddenly aware they were not alone in the vast subterranean cavern. All around him were thousands of others like the young woman with bleeding eyes, their hands reaching out to him for help. He opened his mouth to scream, but the mountain above began to quake and the rock ceiling crashed down upon him.

Athanasius of Athens awoke from his nightmare, gasping for breath, aware of the smell of the salty sea and sound of scrolls shuffling. He blinked into the bright daylight inside his cabin aboard the Pegasus. He was lying on a cot, dressed in the uniform of a Roman tribune. Like a heavy stone fell the realization that the events of last night in the city of Rome were no nightmare and that his life as he knew it was over.

He looked over to see the back of the steward, Galen, hunched over the open Chiron box, going through its contents while he nibbled on fish and bread.

Athanasius quietly swallowed, careful not to make a sound, waiting for the proper moment to stir to life and kill the swine.

Was it only yesterday I woke up in my comfortable bed inside my comfortable villa in Rome as Athanasius of Athens, celebrated playwright and hedonist? Was it only yesterday I woke up to the woman of every Roman’s dream, Helena, and the premiere of my greatest production yet, Opus Gloria?

It was, he realized grimly. But then he had been arrested and sent to certain death in the arena. The absurd charge? That he was Chiron, the mastermind behind Dominium Dei, the mysterious and militant Christian conspiracy that had been blamed for the assassination of Emperor Domitian’s chief astrologer and other Roman officials. Now Caesar, Rome’s self-proclaimed Lord and God, had initiated a Reign of Terror, slaying any and all suspected enemies.

And by some cruel twist of fate, Athanasius had become one of them.

It was only by some miracle in the person of a Roman tribune and Christian named Marcus that Athanasius had escaped, alone with the secret that Dominium Dei was in fact an imperial organization created to infiltrate and destroy the fledgling underground Church.

The last thing he remembered was making it to the Pegasus before it set sail in the middle of the night from the port of Ostia. I was poisoned, he recalled. Galen the steward poisoned me. How did I survive? Then he remembered the elixir that Marcus had given him in the prison back in Rome. It must have been an antidote of some sort, something to coat his stomach in anticipation of exactly this kind of betrayal.

Galen sat up suddenly and glanced over his shoulder, sensing something. Athanasius froze, afraid he had made some movement that drew the Dei man’s attention. Through the slit of his eyelid, however, he saw that Galen was looking at the cabin door.

“Tribune?” asked a voice outside. It was the captain. He then seemed to address somebody else. “Isn’t this unusual?”

“No,” said a voice that Athanasius recognized as that of the centurion in charge of transporting the 80 troops on board to Ephesus. “I’ve found that imperial interrogators like to keep to themselves, have food brought in. Don’t like to mingle with the rank-and-file, even the officers like me. They are political officers more than military, and as likely to interrogate us as the enemy. They don’t want to make friends. I get nervous when they do want to join us in the galley. It usually means one of my men is under suspicion.”

“Well, Galen says he is taking his food. I’ll have him inform the tribune that we’ll enter the Gulf of Corinth by nightfall and make our way through the canal in the morning.”

The voices faded with footsteps, and then Athanasius heard the planks creak as Galen approached and stood over him. Athanasius could smell the wine on his breath. The man had poisoned him and was now eating his food, going through his papers.

Enough.

Galen said, “So you wouldn’t eat your fish with the rest of us, would you, dear, departed general of the Dei. Now you are food for fish when I chop you up with your own knife, stick you in your box and dump you overboard. If only I had kept you alive long enough to tell me the key to the coded texts. Now they remain a mystery, and all I have is your gold.”

Athanasius opened his eyes, shot up his hand and grabbed Galen by the throat. “Your prayer is answered, swine.”

Galen’s wide eyes seemed to pop out of his terrified face as he choked in Athanasius’s vise-like grip. Athanasius stood up and quietly pushed Galen against the wall, pinning him at the neck.

“Who are you people?” Athanasius demanded.

Galen struggled, gasping for breath, saying nothing.

Athanasius said, “Who do you take orders from?”

“You,” Galen said.

“Then why did you try to kill me?”

“That’s how we advance.”

“That doesn’t sound very Roman to me.”

“We are not Roman.”

Not Roman? Athanasius thought. The Dei was imperial. That was the big secret. “If you are not of Rome, and not of the Church, then of what?”

“Ourselves.”

“For what purpose?”

“Our own.”

Athanasius looked into the weasel’s eyes, saw the fear and felt he was telling the truth. “Why me?”

“I don’t know.”

“My family in Greece.”

“They will be slaughtered, if not already. As will you!”

Athanasius felt a prick at his shoulder and saw a thin stick in Galen’s hand. It had hit his leather strap and not his skin. Athanasius grabbed it with his free hand and waved it in front of Galen’s face.

“That’s twice you’ve missed, Galen,” he said and stuck it into Galen’s neck.

“No!” Galen moaned before blood began to trickle out of his nose and the corners of his mouth. His eyes rolled back, and Athanasius let go. The body crumpled to the floor with a thud.

Athanasius looked at Galen’s twisted face, worried that the crew on the deck below heard the fall. He knelt over the body of the dead steward. With his right hand, he ripped the tunic away, exposing white skin and a twisted cross of black. The mark of Rome’s mystical legion.

Dominium Dei.

Almost immediately there was a knock at the door, followed by a voice. “Tribune, are you alright?”

It was the centurion who had been with the captain.

Athanasius dragged Galen under his hammock. He looked in the brass mirror and ran his fingers through his unruly black hair. His face was pale, the blood drained, his eyes hollow and haunted. He was a mess.

He opened the door a crack to afford the centurion a peek at his desk but nothing more.

“Tribune, are you alright?”

“Never better, centurion. I just rolled out of the wrong side of the bed today. You know how it is.”

“Yes, Tribune.”

“But I’m still hungry. See if you can find my steward Galen for me. Oh, and tell the captain I’ll be joining you and the officers for dinner tonight in the officer’s galley.”

The centurion gulped and nodded. “Yes, Tribune.”

Athanasius removed the key ring from Galen’s stiff finger and slipped it on. It looked different than before. Now that its key had broken off, what remained was a form of the Chiron insignia—the Chi-Ro symbol. Only it was flanked by the Greek letters Alpha on the left and Omega on the right. It also had a tiny jewel inside the loop of the Ro. Possibly an amethyst, he thought, taking a closer look. He couldn’t be sure, and right now it didn’t matter.

He walked over to the open trunk and looked inside. There was money. Lots of it. Gold, silver and gems. There were also scrolls. The scriptures of the so-called New Testament between God and man, comprised of four accounts of the life of Jesus by the disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the letters of Paul to the churches he established, and several from John, including the Revelation. Athanasius saw little use for them, so he set them aside and focused on three letters quite different from the others.

The first was on a heavy parchment, clearly official and with an imperial stamp. Athanasius read:

With a start Athanasius recognized the seal of Caesar, the same seal he recalled seeing at the palace only the night before. It felt like a lifetime ago.

Surely this was the key to open doors that Marcus had told him about.

But there was another letter, one written with symbols, the letter Galen had been trying to crack. The first line alone was unintelligible.

This must be Chiron’s letter with his “further instructions,” Athanasius thought. Perhaps the real key unlocked this code.

But where?

He looked at his pouch with his knife kit and the elixir. He emptied it. There was nothing else there. Then he saw the tiny holes in the bottom of the pouch that he had first noted curiously back in the prison.

He removed the drawstring and flattened out the pouch on the back of a wax tablet. They created an odd pattern, as indistinguishable as the symbols on the letter from Chiron.

He picked up one of those poisoned little sticks and began to poke it though the holes of the flattened leather into the wax tablet. Then he removed the leather skin and stared. The dots were definitely set apart in groups.

Staring at the pattern for a while, a pattern of space between the dots slowly began to appear. He drew a diagonal line between two groups, and then another intersecting line. The Chi symbol. But what of the grouping above? He drew the Ro and stared at the symbol of Chiron. The key.

Within an hour he was able to assign symbols to their counterparts in the Roman alphabet and translate the text. But upon reading it, he wished he hadn’t.

You are to direct the ship to make a stop on the island of Patmos. There you will present yourself with Caesar’s introduction to interrogate John the Apostle and then in private tell him what you know. He will then provide you with instructions and introduction to find sanctuary in the church of Asia Minor.

Athanasius was aghast. Go to Patmos? This was his mission? Escaping one prison in Rome only to march into the Roman garrison on the prison island of Patmos was not his idea of freedom.

Athanasius hoped Chiron’s last letter offered a better alternative. It was made of a flimsy papyrus and appeared to list several recipes and formulas. But they were not for food, Athanasius realized as he deciphered it, but for poisons and explosives.

Below are instructions on the poison and antidote favored by the Dei, assuming you have survived their first attempt on your life. Familiarize yourself with the smell, texture and even taste of these ingredients and compounds, if not for your own use then for your protection.

Athanasius felt light-headed. Surely this would not be his life.

One formula was for the Dei poison Galen had used on him, with various grades to delay the onset upon the victim by minutes or even hours. It appeared to be the standard formula found in Dei rings for suicide and on wooden sticks to quickly prick a target and kill him without a trace. The antidote, too, which Marcus had given him in advance, could be used as a prescription or remedy.

Most curious were the formulas for a flammable mud called maltha, which promised to stick to anything it touched, clinging to anyone who tried to flee, even to water, which merely made it burn more fiercely. Another compound, which combined quicklime, sulphur, naptha and saltpeter, promised to create a material capable of spontaneous combustion that could be thrown at enemies and explode on impact.

Athanasius put the last letter down and looked at the corpse of Galen on the floor and could picture his own face, his own end. He felt like falling to his knees and sobbing, but he was no longer prone to displays of emotion because he hardly had any left. The reality was that he had nothing more in life but these so-called presents from a dead tribune, given to advance him into a future of death. Yet they were all he had to work with, he knew. Somehow he had to put them to good use. Starting now, here on this ship bound for Ephesus.

Obviously, as Maximus and Galen had proven, he could trust no one in Rome or the Dei. If Ludlumus or Domitian figured out that he had in fact escaped and another man was executed in his place in the Coliseum, the Romans would surely go after his family in Corinth, if that order hadn’t been given already. He had to get to them first and warn them to flee.

Several hours later, just after midnight, Athanasius was pacing the deck under the stars and found Captain Andros talking to the helmsman in the tiller house, his face dark and brooding like the Ionian Sea upon which they were crossing.

“That was quite a show you put on for the officers at dinner, Tribune,” the captain said. “I didn’t know a knife could do so many things to a fish.”

Athanasius noticed the helmsman look away from him in fear and get back to his tiller. The Pegasus had a double-oar rudder system, with cables attached to the main tiller to allow the helmsman to turn both oars at the stern simultaneously. The system of levers and cables enabled him to control the Pegasus in strong currents and rough weather, although tonight it was smooth sailing.

Athanasius said, “I didn’t want the troops to think the emissary of Caesar stayed mostly to himself and took his meals in his cabin. And I wanted to get a good look at them all. Has Galen turned up yet?”

“No,” the captain said. “He must have grasped your suspicions and slipped overboard when we passed an island and swam for it.”

Athanasius shrugged. “Small fish,” he said. “I have bigger in Corinth. How much longer until we arrive?”

“Tomorrow morning we reach the Gulf of Corinth. But it will take another day to make our way through to the harbor,” the captain said. “Then it is a full day to cross the isthmus to the Saronic Gulf and begin the second leg of our journey to Ephesus. You will have only ten hours in Corinth if you plan on doing an interrogation.”

“A full day is more than enough time.”

“You know Corinth then?”

“No, not really,” said Athanasius quickly. He didn’t want to give the captain the impression he was overly familiar with his hometown. “Stopped over once before, like now. But the local garrison will have someone waiting to drive me where I need to go.”

“But, of course, Tribune,” the Greek said grimly before leaving him alone to his thoughts beneath the stars.

Athanasius waited until he was gone before heading back inside his cabin to drag out Galen’s corpse. He had wrapped him in a blanket and tied him to a two-handled amphora full of grain. He dropped him over the side, watching the Dei man quickly sink beneath the wake of the Pegasus to the bottom of the sea.