Wrath of Rome

XI

It was late afternoon when Athanasius turned off the country road and onto a long private drive lined with stately cypresses. The end of the gravel drive opened like a dream to reveal the majestic Dovilin villa surrounded by its mystical vineyards.

The Dovilin family, from what local gossip Athanasius had procured from tradesmen on his way in, had made their fortune in land holdings and bought and built up their celebrated vineyards after the Judean War. Now the family, through hired management, had turned it into one of the empire’s most well-respected and lucrative wineries, an unspoiled paradise far from the cares of the outside world.

A big, beefy servant named Brutus welcomed him at the door with an instant expression of suspicion and disdain.

Athanasius stammered as if intimidated and in a shaky voice said only, “Do-Dovilin.”

Brutus grunted, and Athanasius looked past the circular sofa and carved wooden benches of the reception atrium while Britus began to sift through his pack without apology. Finding nothing—Athanasius had buried a smaller second pack with his Roman uniform, sword and interrogator’s knife kit, along with his Dei ring and money, under a boulder he had marked between the last town and the villa—the slave returned the sack, and a young woman emerged from under a large arch in an expensive stola and Egyptian sandals.

“Well, hello there,” she said as if he were some unexpected surprise.

Athanasius could smell her perfume even before she stood before him and looked him over with approval. She was attractive enough. Everything about her seemed to mimic Roman fashion but was overdone: the dress, the hair piled on top of her head and dyed honey gold, the bracelets and bejeweled pendant holding her outfit—and bosoms—together. Just who was her audience out here in the sticks? Surely not stragglers such as Samuel Ben-Deker.

“You are Dovilin’s wife?” he stammered, as if awed by her beauty.

She laughed. “His daughter-in-law. My name is Cota. My father-in-law is in the main courtyard. Is he expecting you?” She paused, as if asking for his name.

“Samuel, Mistress Cota. Samuel Ben-Deker.” He thrust his letter of introduction into her hand.

“Wait here, Samuel Ben-Deker,” she said with amusement and vanished with the letter.

The man who entered the atrium moments later was in his seventies with short-cropped, grey hair in the Roman style and a tanned face. He looked prosperous and confident in his light and tailored tunic. The oversized furniture, busts, urns and decorative amphorae among the marble columns and rippling white drapes framing endless vineyards only accentuated the wine merchant’s wealth.

So this was Dovilin, Athanasius thought. But was he also the leader of the Dei in Asia Minor? His ring certainly indicated so. It was almost exactly like Chiron’s, with the Chi-Ro symbol flanked by the Greek letters Alpha and Omega. All it lacked was the tiny amethyst inside the Ro loop at the top.

Dovilin gazed at his unexpected visitor, taking in the cheap tunic and sandals of a runaway slave or poor freedman. But his businesslike demeanor revealed this wasn’t the first time a man in rags had appeared at his doorstep. “Your name is Ben-Something?”

“Ben-Deker,” Athanasius stammered and acted shameful and overwhelmed in this display of wealth. “Samuel Ben-Deker.”

“Yes, another Jew. You are also a follower of Christ?”

Athanasius nodded. “I pray you may be able to spare me room and board.”

“Young man, surely you see the winery across the vineyard. Present yourself to the offices. My son runs the business and does the hiring and firing. But I’m afraid you picked the wrong time of season. We’re two months from harvest, which is when we do the bulk of our hiring for the fields.”

“It’s not work in the fields I seek, sir.”

“You don’t look skilled for anything more…”

“Amphorae,” he said, nodding to the letter of introduction from Croesus in Dovilin’s hand. “It is in the final vessel of its journey that the juice of a grape can ripen to perfection or turn to vinegar by the time it reaches the lips of an important customer.”

Dovilin paused, as if to consider whether or not to accommodate his friend Croesus, because he certainly didn’t seem to think much of Samuel Ben-Deker. “Come with me into the courtyard.”

Athanasius followed Dovilin through one grand atrium and hallway after another until they reached the large courtyard where a middle-aged man with a long beard was seated. Apparently Athanasius had interrupted a meeting Dovilin was engaged in.

“Bishop Paul, this is Samuel Ben-Deker. He comes by way of our friend Croesus in Ephesus.”

The bishop had an oily expression and examined him coolly. “You don’t seem like one of Croesus’ boys.”

Athanasius took a risk and made the sign of the cross with his hand, watching Bishop Paul exchange glances with Dovilin, who looked up from the letter of introduction.

“Croesus says you lived in Malta, Ben-Deker?”

“Yes, sir,” Athanasius said. “Several years, and before that Spain, working under the vine for General Trajan’s family in Hispania Baetica.”

“Then you’ll know his nephew and vineyard manager Marcus Ulpius Antonius?”

Athanasius stammered. “I am sorry, sir. I do not know him.”

“Good,” said Dovilin. “Because Trajan has no nephew by that name, and I don’t know who runs his vineyards. But whoever it is does a piss-poor job compared to ours.” He laughed with Bishop Paul, and Athanasius managed a weak smile. Then Dovilin stood up and said, “Ben-Deker, drop your tunic.”

Athanasius froze. “I’m sorry, sir?”

“You heard me, Jew, drop your tunic and loin cloth now.”

Athanasius heard a giggle in the distance and caught Dovilin’s daughter-in-law, Cota, watching from an arch, and now she had a dark-haired girlfriend with her, who also giggled. Feigning humiliation—it wasn’t difficult—Athanasius removed his tunic, stepped out of his loin cloth and stood naked before Dovilin, Bishop Paul and a duly impressed Cota.

Dovilin and the bishop, however, were not so impressed, even angry.

Dovilin said, “You call yourself a Jew and yet you are not circumcised?”

“My mother was a Spaniard, sir,” he said, quickly putting on his loin cloth and tunic, at which point Cota disappeared out her archway. “Aren’t we all free in Christ?”

Dovilin seemed to admit there was little argument to that, but Bishop Paul said sharply, “Don’t you dare quote Scripture to me, boy. Do you understand? Can you even read?”

“No, sir. But I hear, and faith comes from hearing the Word of God.”

“I told you to stop quoting Scripture, Ben-Deker,” the bishop said, emphasizing Samuel’s Jewish surname. “I have my own test for you.”

Athanasius feigned confusion. “I am being tested? I do not understand.”

“You don’t have to,” Dovilin said calmly. “Just answer the good bishop. He is the leader of the church here in Cappadocia and only wants to keep wolves away from the sheep.”

“Wolves?” Athanasius said in surprise.

“Yes, Ben-Deker,” said Bishop Paul. “Now answer me this: Who killed Jesus? The Jews or the Romans?”

Athanasius paused as the bishop gave a satisfied nod toward Dovilin, who was watching him closely. It was a cruel test, Athanasius realized, to put upon poor Samuel Ben-Deker. Obviously, as a nominal Jew, he had to say the Romans. But his understanding of the church in Cappadocia was that the Christians here blamed the Jews, or rather their religious leaders, and this was a source of division.

He was about to say, “Both,” when the impatient bishop started badgering him. “Come now, Ben-Deker, this isn’t a trick question,” he said. “Not for a real Christian.”

“Neither the Romans nor the Jews killed Jesus,” Athanasius said suddenly, a thought striking him from out of the blue.

“Neither?” the bishop replied and looked at Dovilin in amusement at this unusual response. “Then who did?”

“Jesus chose to lay down his life for us all.”

Dovilin looked genuinely surprised, the bishop outraged. He didn’t like the answer, but apparently couldn’t refute or berate him for it either.

“Who taught you this?” he asked.

Athanasius didn’t really know. He couldn’t remember the particular passage from the Christian scriptures he had poured over back on the Pegasus before meeting John. But he had definitely picked up the subtext, and he now recalled something about their God whispering timely answers to Christians when questioned by Roman officials.

“The Holy Spirit,” he began and was cut off.

“The Holy Spirit?” the bishop said, incensed. “You are an uneducated, unwashed Jew from Malta, a potter who works clay.”

Athanasius could restrain himself no longer. This bishop was an absolute fraud and knew it. No wonder he didn’t want Christians quoting Scripture—he considered it a weapon to be used, not a revelation of truth. Athanasius knew the type well—the Roman augurs and oracles were full of Bishop Paul’s kind. The only way to deal with self-appointed gatekeepers of truth was to stick them with their own Holy Writ in front of other believers.

“We are all earthen vessels,” he replied. “God is the potter, we are the clay.”

Dovilin started to laugh, delighted to see his red-faced bishop at a loss for words. “I see your proud attitude has gotten you into trouble before, Ben-Deker. You should watch that mouth of yours,” he said good-naturedly. “Let’s see what you can do with your hands. I’ll have Brutus take you out to the winery.”

Athanasius nodded, and Cota appeared again. “I’m going out there now, Father. I can take Samuel.”

“Well, do it now before the winery closes for the evening, and have Gabrielle put him up for the night and then put him to work in the morning.”

“You really want to hand him off to that little whore, Father?” Cota asked. “I thought we could put him up out back with the First Fruits.”

Athanasius’s curiosity was peaked by Cota’s references of this “whore” and these “First Fruits,” but he wasn’t surprised by Dovilin’s firm reply, directly addressed to him.

“You may have a sterling introduction by my good friend Croesus, Ben-Deker,” Dovilin said. “But we operate by biblical principle on my vineyards. Every man starts from the ground up like our grapes. You will reap what you sow with your work, and we’ll see what kind of seed you really are.”

“Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you,” Athanasius said with as much sincerity as he could fake. “I will not let your kindness and generosity down.”

“See that you don’t, Ben-Deker, because nothing goes to waste here. Even the bad grapes are used to fertilize our fields. Bad for the wasted skins, good for our soil.”

The winery itself was on the other side of the vineyard from the Dovilin villa, separated by six hectares of grapes. As he and his escort Cota walked the gravel path between the house and the winery, Athanasius saw the spectacular two-story façade cut right into the rocks of the mountains. The façade, with its arches and inset frames for statues, was positively scenographic, just like the stage buildings behind the orchestra for his productions in the theaters.

“That is the winery ahead?” he asked, dumbfounded and not feigning it.

“Yes,” Cota told him. “Behind it is our stone wine cave where we store our finished product before distribution. Upstairs is the office. Our vineyard manager oversees the harvest, fermentation and field workers. My husband, whom you’ll meet, oversees sales and distribution.”

“How much wine do you produce each year?” he asked, doing his best to get some information out of her during this opportunity.

“Almost ten thousand amphorae per year.”

“Ten thousand!” he exclaimed. This was multiple times anything even the Palace of the Flavians could serve up in a year. “Who drinks it?”

She laughed. “You and me, of course. The bulk of our shipments go to the churches of Asia Minor for communion worship. My husband knows all the numbers, but I doubt he’ll share the particulars with you.”

Cota herself didn’t seem to be in any hurry to introduce him to her husband, and she asked him if there was anything in particular he wanted to see.

“I find it best to simply follow the wine,” he told her.

“Then follow me, Samuel.”

She led him to a great gravel courtyard outside the winery, where men from the fields brought baskets of grapes into one of the two cavernous cave entrances and dumped them into stone treading lagars dug out from the floor of the cavern. Here women were treading the sweet grapes with their feet.

“We call this first or sweet press,” Cota explained.

“The good stuff,” Athanasius quipped.

He watched the juice run off down wide troughs into drains that went into special basins for fermentation deeper into the cave. After the free juice poured off, the women stepped out of the treading lagars, which were now filled with the waste of the grapes called the pomace.

“Mind if I look closer?” he asked Cota.

“Not at all, but do be careful,” she cautioned, although he couldn’t imagine why.

He looked into a lagar that had been filled with red grapes. The pomace was blackish-red grape skins, stems and seeds, which contained most of the tannins and alcohol. The juice from this pomace was the brand bound for Caesar’s palace, he concluded, and then examined a lagar for white wine production. Here the debris was a pale, greenish-brown color, which contained more residual sugars.

“You must save the green stuff for some special dessert wines,” he started to say when the entire tunnel began to shake.

“Step away, Samuel!” Cota shouted, and pulled him back by his tunic as the ceiling seemed to cave in.

For a moment Athanasius thought the whole mountain was collapsing upon them. The rumble was deafening. With amazement Athanasius watched large flat boulders as wide and long as the two main lagars descend from the cavern ceiling from large wooden capstans, pulleys and ropes. Then he saw how they defied gravity: teams of six men each were stationed at the spokes of two great horizontal turnstyles, pushing them in order to control the descent of the boulders until they pressed flat on the lagars. Suddenly a second burst of vast quantities of blood-red and pukish green pomace sprung forth from the lagars toward even larger fermentation pools beyond the first.

Cota laughed as Athanasius caught his breath. “We almost lost you, Samuel, and you haven’t even started yet!”

He nodded at the boulders. “You’ve got screw presses too. These are very rare.”

“So is that,” she said, and he realized she was looking at the Star of David with the Tear of Joy around his neck. She began to fondle it. It must have fallen out of his tunic when he had bent over the lagar. “Did a girl give you that?”

“It’s been in my family forever,” he replied and slipped it back under his tunic.

She looked relieved, then went on. “The cave provides the structure for the mechanisms. The free juice produces our highest-quality wine in the smallest quantities. But the screw press squeezes more juice and profits for good-quality wine in larger quantities. Now watch this, because this might be your job if my husband doesn’t like you.”

The boulders began to quake in the lagars again, and the men at the turnstyles were back at their positions, straining harder than ever to raise the stones like the mythological Sisyphus pushing his great boulder up the mountain only to see it roll back upon him. As soon as the boulders were back in place above the lagars, teams of scrawny young men, some mere boys, jumped into the lagars.

“Clear!” came the shout.

Supervisors pulled back planks that Athanasius hadn’t noticed before—they were stained by countless pomace grindings—to reveal holes at the bottom of the lagars. Then the scrawny sweepers began to push the remaining pomace down the holes.

Athanasius glanced at Cota and bent over the nearest lagar to look down one of the holes. Through it he saw the pomace dropping into vast pools of water in a cavern below.

“Fermentation pits for lora,” he said. “The bad stuff.”

“We make no bad wine, Samuel,” she sniffed. “We give the gift of wine to those who could otherwise not afford it.”

Athanasius now understood. Lora was an inferior wine that was normally given to slaves and common workers. It was simply a mix of leftover pomace and water. Disgusting stuff, recalling the one time he asked a servant to allow him a sip. It could hardly be called wine at all but some pretender that had no flavor.

“Let me guess,” Athanasius told Cota. “I’m looking at the Dovilin brand of communion wine down there. Water soaked in grape skins. That’s how you fill 10,000 amphorae.”

“I like it,” said a voice, and Athanasius turned to see big Brutus looking down at him with a frown.

Athanasius nodded. “My favorite,” he said, and winked at Cota. “I don’t know how the other half takes it so strong.”

“Mistress Cota,” Brutus said, “your father-in-law would like to see you later when you are finished with this one.”

“Well, I’m not,” she told him. “Not yet. But soon. I have to take him to Vibius. Go on.”

Athanasius watched the scowling slave leave and said, “I see Dovilin’s eyes are on everybody here.”

“This way,” she told him as another shift of men from the fields came in with fresh baskets for the presses and the entire process started over again. “One last stop at the Angel’s Vault.”

The Angel’s Vault turned out to be in the second of the two wine caves behind the winery’s façade in the cliffs, and Athanasius realized the two caves formed a V and connected at a guard station with three great vault doors and two armed guards. One door led back to the pits and presses from which they had come. The second door, according to Cota, would lead them to the Angel’s Vault and the commercial storefront of the winery.

“What about this one?” Athanasius asked her, pointing to the third door that opened into a particularly black, narrow and harrowing tunnel.

“That’s the hole to hell, Samuel. I do hope Vibius doesn’t send you down there.”

Athanasius followed Cota through the second tunnel that would lead them back outside through the main winery entrance. Here the walls were lined with amphorae, and Athanasius sensed immediately that this was what he was looking for in this entire mission to Cappadocia.

“They haven’t been sealed yet,” he observed.

“This is the final fermentation before we seal the wine,” she told him. “The freestanding amphorae you see are the reds, which we keep at higher temperatures in the cave. The amphorae that are half-buried are the whites, to keep them cooler.”

Athanasius immediately focused on the freestanding reds, scanning to see any markings or imperial insignias that would indicate they were bound for Caesar’s palace. “So decorative, with all kinds of marks and labels.”

“Master painters from the caves,” Cota told him, as if reciting a rehearsed line all the Dovilins were forced to repeat to buyers. “God speaks to many artisans down here.”

Athanasius nodded at the artwork that could be considered Christian to some, especially those involving fish and grain, shepherds and sheep. Then he caught a row of black vases in the Spartan style with red gladiators.

“These look imperial,” he said.

“They are,” she said, and looked this way and that quickly, her voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. “They say the wine in these amphorae pass through the lips of Caesar himself.”

“Impressive,” Athanasius said. “But risky. What happens if he doesn’t like it, or even falls ill?”

“We make sure that can never happen. That’s why the angels take their sip first.”

Athanasius started. “Angels?”

Cota nodded, as if sharing the secret of the ages behind the great Dovilin wines. “Something about the air in the amphora,” she said. “Too much of it and the wine turns to vinegar. Not enough and the wine is too bitter. So for the final fermentation we leave the amphora open just enough for the proper amount of air to escape. We like to say it is for the angels to take their sip of the spirits, their ‘angel’s cut.’ Then we seal the amphora shut with a special piece of cork and ceramic capping.”

“Like this one?” Athanasius asked, picking up the cork capper from an amphora to Cota’s dismay and sniffing it. “I see you use resin as a sealant. Smart. The resin preserves the wine once sealed and flavors it with the proper fermenation, provided you know what you’re doing. What is this indent on top of the cork with the Dovilin emblem?”

Cota took the cork from Athanasius and quickly placed it lopsided atop its amphora. “There is something in the resin,” she said. “Once the cork is sealed, it cannot be tampered with in any way, or the cork discolors. If it is not discolored, the palace staff then use a thin iron hook to pierce it and pull it out, and the wine is ready for serving.”

“So who applies the proper mix of resin?” he asked.

“The whore of hell,” she sniffed. “I think I hear her now.”

They moved on, but Athanasius made sure to remember the pattern and décor of the amphorae bound for Rome. It was here in this chamber, before the amphorae were sealed, where he would poison Domitian’s wine.

He tried to keep up with Cota, who breezed through the main wine cave just behind the face of the winery without explanation. Their tour, it seemed, was over. Along the way he noted similar patterns on the amphorae here as in the Angel’s Vault, and they seemed to have more markings for weight, price, destination and such.

He realized he might have to use these sealed amphorae as his key to identify those bound for Domitian, then go back and poison an identical and open amphora in the Angel’s Vault, then switch them. Simple but not easy, he suspected.

They had arrived outside in the courtyard below the towering façade as the Dovilin winery was closing up for the day. He noted the servants moving in and out of the cave, as well as security: almost a dozen ex-legionnaire types doing nothing much but standing around and looking tough.

“This way,” she said, tugging his hand. “The office is upstairs.”

They climbed a short flight of stone steps to the second story of the façade, where an open arch led into an impressive office with a table and fine furniture, but no husband.

“Vibius?” she called out.

Athanasius heard muffled voices. They seemed to be coming from behind the wall of shelves with scrolls, which Athanasius assumed to be commercial contracts and delivery schedules, sales receipts and records.

Cota cocked her ear, and her eyes narrowed. Her lips formed a thin, grim line, and she marched to the wall and pushed something that opened it to reveal another room behind it.

Now the voices were loud and clear—a young woman’s and a man’s, presumably Cota’s husband. There was a definite slap, then the girl’s voice cried out: “Stop it, Vibius. You know I am only trying to help the vineyard.”

Vibius said, “I will help the vineyard, and you will do what I want.”

“I know what you want, Vibius, and you’ll never get it with me.”

“You little whore,” he said. “You’ve given yourself to every rat in the streets. Now you want to get holy with me? I think not.”

“Vibius!” Cota screamed, and Athanasius followed her inside to see her husband threatening this girl with long dark hair, her hand at her face where it had been struck.

Vibius turned and looked at his wife and the stranger with rage. “What do you want?”

“This is Samuel Ben-Deker. Your father wants you to put him to work.”

Athanasius could feel Vibius’s stare. “Are you sure you haven’t already, Cota?”

“Vibius!” she screamed again, so that all inside and outside the winery could hear.

But Vibius was unmoved. “Take this one to suitable quarters tonight and see if you have any use for him tomorrow,” he ordered the girl, who half-turned her face to reveal a ghastly split cheek that made Cota gasp.

“Yes, sir,” she said and in defiance gave Vibius a mock Roman salute.

He brought up his hand to strike her again but thought better of it when Cota sternly repeated to him, “Vibius, your father.”

“We’ll go out the back way,” said the badly beaten girl, and walked through an archway into the Angel’s Vault toward the secondary vault doors that led to the caves deep inside the mountain.

Athanasius turned to Cota. “I’m to follow her into that?”

“Where else for you, Ben-Deker?” Vibius said. “Now leave us.”

Feeling very strange, as if he had been to this place before, Athanasius followed the girl and her long, black hair into a stone cave that led only to darkness. The long shafts of light from the sunset that had streamed across the floors of the winery office began to disappear as the vault door closed behind him.

“The Dovilins order the wine vaults sealed off every night from the inside as well as the outside,” the girl explained and turned to face him. “Don’t worry about the dark. I know the way. By the way, Samuel Ben-Deker, my name is Gabrielle.”

Suddenly he stopped, watching the last shaft of light touch her bleeding face and illuminate it like a halo of light, before the vault door plunged them into darkness.

It was the girl from his dreams back in Rome.

That evening Dovilin thought he had better see how things went with the new Jew and sent Brutus to find Vibius. It was Cota who showed up in the courtyard.

“Where’s my son?” Dovilin asked her.

“You know you should be asking one of the Sweet Grapes girls if you want to know what my husband does at night, Father,” she replied flatly.

Dovilin had neither the energy nor time to reply. His son’s marriage was what it was. For himself, he would have gladly taken care of Cota’s needs were it not for his firm belief, more stoic than Christian, that feelings of eros were better channeled into business and accumulating wealth. It was a lesson he had somehow failed to pass on to his son, as Cota was quick to remind him all too often. “Just tell me about Ben-Deker. How did things go?”

“Fine,” she said, although Dovilin knew there was more that she was holding back. “Vibius didn’t like him, of course, but he didn’t stop your little whore from taking him to the caves for the night to sleep with all your other slaves.”

Dovilin thought he understood now. “I don’t like Gabrielle either, Cota. None of us do. But the vineyard needs her. The family can master the science of wine production, but the creation of great grapes is an art. She understands the soil, the sun, the wind and water like nobody else.”

“She has help with that, Father, you know it,” Cota said darkly. “Deep down in the caves.”

He nodded. “Perhaps. But it is her tongue that saves us in the Angel’s Vault, during the final fermentation. Hers is the last tongue to taste our wine before it is sealed and shipped and then opened before even Caesar. It’s never let us down.”

“Or never let you or Vibius down, Father?” Cota replied, insinuating rumors that Cota knew were utterly false but which Dovilin did not refute, if only to make Gabrielle an outcast not only among the employees of the Dovilin Winery but the Christians of the underground church in the caves.

Dovilin was ready to send her away. “Is there anything else you wish to tell me about Ben-Deker?”

“What makes you say that?”

“His Star of David is something a man like him would never wear for himself. It has one of those Tears of Joy inside.”

Dovilin stiffened. “Tear of Joy, you say?”

“It’s a crystal of some kind.”

“What color?” Dovilin pressed.

“I think it’s a sapphire. For a man like Samuel, it must be his most priceless possession. He’ll have to watch himself in the caves.”

“Yes, yes,” Dovilin said and waved her off. “You can go.”

He cursed, pulled a cord and waited impatiently for Brutus to appear. He felt a dribble on his forehead and wiped off a rare drop of perspiration. His slave appeared in the courtyard and said, “Master.”

“Brutus,” said Dovilin, scribbling a coded text on a small strip of papyrus, rolling it up and slipping it into the stylus with which it was penned. “I need a Mercury courier and horse immediately to deliver this message to Rome: We have Athanasius.”