The Chiron Confession (Dominium Dei) (11 page)

Arrows zoomed past his head as he ran toward the roof of a long apartment block built into the hill.

He was almost there when an arrow struck his helmet, sending him tumbling down and crashing onto the red clay tiles, terrorizing the screaming family in the room below. He rolled off into the rooftop courtyard, found the narrow stone steps and commanded his tired legs to race down six flights. A moment later he burst out of the stairwell and disappeared into the dark alleys of the city’s slums, cursing himself for missing his only escape out of Rome.

A
thanasius ran on through the tangled streets in the dark, racing past the archways of the booths and shops boarded up and bolted shut for the night. The apartment slums above the
tabernae
on either side rose up six stories tall. He could easily lose himself in this jumbled maze of alleys until morning, blowing any hope of making his rendezvous with the Ferryman. Even if he reached the Cloaca Maxima beneath the Basilica Julia, he doubted the Ferryman would still be waiting for him. But if he didn’t try, he was dead already.

He looked up for breaks along the seemingly endless ridge of black rooftops for a clear line of sight to the Temple of Jupiter and the Arx atop Capitoline Hill to orient himself. He couldn’t go back the way he came, so he would have to circle around the northern base of the hill to reach the west side of the Forum—through these infernal alleys with their forgotten denizens, the hundreds of thousands of people who were born, lived and died in this cesspool of human misery.

And now he was one of them.

All of a sudden the blood-chilling blare of the First Spear horn thundered across the skies. It was the official signal from the Urban Cohorts headquarters to the roaming gangs of the district that there was a fugitive on the loose, and a reward for his capture, dead or alive. Even the official
urbani
patrols avoided this graveyard of danger at night.

Almost immediately shouts and torches burst forth from all directions. He heard the crash of pots and cursing and looked over his shoulder to see a gang of four shadowy figures floating toward him like malevolent spirits in their odd, mismatched pieces of old infantry armor. The gruesome sight made him recall one of Juvenal’s few good jokes about life in modern Rome: that only the careless dared venture out after supper without having first made their will.

I am not going to die in this piss pot tonight, Athanasius vowed to himself, breaking into a sprint. Better to go out in a blaze of faux glory in the arena than go face down here in some ditch.

The apartment slums on either side of him closed in like walls, the snaking alley narrowing into a dirt path. Now he was splashing through an open cess trench that reeked with the foul stench of human waste, dumped from the pots of the inhabitants in the
insulae
above him. The goo caked his aching calves, and it was all he could do to keep his heavy legs moving and not turn his face up toward the windows.

The muck had slowed the ill-clad gangs behind him, however, and he could no longer hear their shouts. But at the end of the alley was a veritable bonfire of thugs at an intersection waiting for him. He couldn’t go back, and he couldn’t move forward. He looked around frantically until he found an open laundry pit between two buildings. It was filled with sanitizing urine.

There was no way around it, he realized. This was his only exit.

He waded through the knee-deep pool, stopping only to untangle soaked garments that wrapped themselves around his legs, like the long tentacles of some sea creature sent to pull him under, and for a moment he entertained the vision of being found face down in the very piss pot he feared. But he made it out the far end of the pool and emerged atop a weed-infested ridge.

There below was Jugarius Street, and on the other side the warehouse district that linked the Forum to the Tiber. The boulevard was filled with carts and slaves of the night. No daytime traffic was allowed in Rome except pedestrians, horses, litters and carrying chairs. Nighttime was for transport carts of all sizes, loading and unloading goods from barges at the port on the Tiber. Like magic, all the stores, stands and markets of Rome would be filled with the treasures of the world by morning. And, with luck, he would be gone with all the garbage from the previous day.

Athanasius slid down the hill to the shoulder of Jugarius Street. He waited for a break in the traffic and then ran across the street and made an immediate left toward the Forum, slipping between two convoys of full wagons. He had just permitted himself to take a breath when the wagon in front of him slowed down and skirted to the right to reveal a line of two-dozen heavily armed
urbani
coming out through the Arch of Tiberius. They were marching straight toward him, their swords and spears at the ready.

Athanasius slowed down as the unit’s commanding officer, a centurion, saluted as he passed by. Athanasius nodded and looked back as the troops marched on toward the Tiber, no doubt to take up positions on the Sublicius Bridge and close off that exit.

Athanasius passed under the Arch of Tiberius into the Forum, turned right on Sacred Way and hurried along the portico of the Basilica Julia to the end. There, at the intersection at Titus Street, he heard the sound of running water and found the sewer grating at the base of the courthouse’s marble steps.

Quickly glancing both ways to make sure he hadn’t been seen, he pulled at the heavy grating. It lifted to reveal an iron ladder that led down to a lead door. The air was foul, ranker than the alleys of the slums. He lowered himself down a few steps, slid the grating back into place over his head, and then pushed the door open.

It was dark inside, the damp air wrapping around him like a wet blanket. He heard the lapping of water and took another step forward. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his chest as a voice said, “Hands up.”

Athanasius squinted in the dark, and a moment later his eyes had adjusted enough for him to barely make out a short but muscular young man in a tunic pointing a crossbow at him. Beyond him a small boat bobbed in the water against the stone ledge inside the great tunnel. “Ferryman, is that you?”

“Chiron?” The Ferryman lowered his crossbow.

Athanasius then saw the bodies of two auxiliary
urbani
on the stone ledge, both with arrows in their chests. “You know where we’re going?”

“Out the drain to the Tiber, then down to Ostia and your ship, the Pegasus. Pier 34.”

Athanasius nodded. This was more than Marcus had told him. “They’re locking down the city topside. Units are moving into position at the Sublicius, where the sewer lets out into the river.”

“Then we’ll have to beat them,” the Ferryman said as he launched them off down the tunnel.

The underground river of filth was a good fifteen feet across under the semicircular arch of the vaulted stone roof. And the current was faster than he expected, powered as it was by the confluence of the city’s eleven great aqueducts flowing into this section at once. It all came together here, this churning cesspool of waste being pushed out to the river.

“Hold on,” the Ferryman said as they picked up speed and shot through the dark.

The tunnel began dropping the closer they got to the outlet, the current churning with such force that they were careening into all kinds of debris and against the stone walls and had to use paddles as bumpers. Several
stadia
ahead Athanasius could see the half-dome light of the end of the tunnel, the moonlit Tiber beyond. They crashed through the open grating gates and were suddenly into the river, paddling frantically to avoid the wakes of the big barges passing under the towering arches of the Sublicius Bridge.

Athanasius looked back in time to see the Urban Cohort units come to a halt atop the bridge. Archers jumped out and began to take their positions, but by then they were long gone down the river and into the night fog.

“The Lord is with you, Athanasius,” said the Ferryman as he maneuvered into the downriver traffic of empty barges to Ostia, doing his best to keep their little boat from getting crushed between them in the dark.

Athanasius reached behind his back and felt for his knife. “So you know who I am?”

“My name is Stephanus. I’m the servant of Flavius Clemens, whose life was cut short by the antichrist Domitian who wants you dead too.”

Athanasius eyed him. “Then you must know I cannot be Chiron, and that Clemens could not possibly have named me in his confession.”

“I know that the Lord has plans for you, Athanasius. Plans for good and not for evil, to give you and all of us a future and a hope.”

Athanasius loosened his hold on his dagger and brought his empty hands forward. “I have no future, Stephanus. I have no hope.”

“You have stood up to the gods of Rome tonight, Athanasius. You are the one who will lead us to topple the empire and create a new Christian world.”

“I thought Jesus is supposed to do that,” Athanasius said.

“We must prepare the way.”

“Isn’t Jesus The Way?”

Stephanus nodded. “You are very clever, like Paul was. Jesus is indeed The Way, and He is not willing that any perish but all come to repentance.”

Athanasius felt a bump and looked into the waters to see the corpse of some slave who had likely fallen off a barge. “Too late for him, I suppose.”

“But not for the millions of souls under the boot of Rome.”

Athanasius could barely see straight in the fog, let alone think with all this madness. Didn’t Stephanus understand that he was leaving Rome, never to return because there was nothing for him left to return to? Domitian had stolen his future. “A million died in the Judean War, Stephanus, and a Christian war would cost tens of millions of lives.”

“It need only cost one,” Stephanus said with shining eyes. “September 18 is not so far away. Imagine Domitian gone and Young Vespasian succeeding him. We’d have a Christian emperor. A Christian Rome. A Christian world. No slave or free. Male or female. Jew or Gentile. All would be equal. There would be peace on earth. No more fears. No more tears.”

No more tears? What naïve nonsense, Athanasius thought. Surely Domitian would have something to say about that, and about September 18. And if not Domitian, he realized, then Dominium Dei. Athanasius had seen the reach of the organization tonight with Maximus. What good would it do the Christians to cut the head off a Hydra when another would simply take its place and make short order of any so-called Christian emperor, which itself was an oxymoron clearly beyond this simpleton’s grasp.

Domitian, and Rome with him, was simply too powerful to fight.

Athanasius saw no future hope in this river fog down the Tiber to Ostia, only a glimpse of the harbor’s great lighthouse at the end. The bonfire at the top of its towering edifice seemed to watch them like a great eye as they floated silently past the travertine piers toward the hulking Pegasus docked at Pier 34. Athanasius said goodbye to Stephanus, who prayed for his return to Rome and said that he and others would be awaiting his orders.

Athanasius wondered if he’d survive the night, let alone ever return to Rome. But at this point Stephanus was his only friend in Rome. So to amuse him he played the role of Chiron and said, “Tell your friends that Chiron lives and Domitian shall die.”

“Amen,” Stephanus said with gusto as Athanasius shoved him off.

•    •    •

As Athanasius crossed the rows of warehouses and winches to Pier 34, he took in the slaves and dockworkers loading and unloading the great ships. They were the true cogs of the Roman machine that worked around the clock to keep the empire going. Straight ahead of him a centurion stood at the gangway to the Pegasus. Athanasius realized he had no identification papers and tensed up as he approached. He had to instantly establish his identity before there could be any doubt.

“Centurion, is my trunk on board?” he said with a token salute that flashed his ring.

The centurion didn’t have to look, transfixed as he was on the ranking shoulder straps. “Tribune, we were beginning to wonder.”

“I’m here, let’s go,” Athanasius said gruffly.

Athanasius marched up the gangway to find a deck full of Roman soldiers waiting for him. He started, and then saw they were at attention, along with the ship’s captain, a Greek who introduced himself as Captain Andros.

“Tribune, we have 80 troops, and a crew of 180 oarsmen, sailors and marines at your command.”

Athanasius decided that in his present company the less he said the better. “Anchors away, Captain. I will retire to my quarters and will not be disturbed until morning.”

“At your orders, Tribune. Your belongings have already been stored on board. Galen here will show you to your quarters.”

Athanasius followed the wiry steward across the long deck, taking in the sea air, aware of the captain barking orders, of shouts returned, anchors pulled and the sudden quake of the wooden planks beneath his feet as two hundred oars hit the water. The Pegasus lurched forward.

His quarters were at the sterncastle, reached by two wooden steps and an outside door. There was a bed inside along with a built-in desk beneath a small window. On the desk was a tray with bread, cheese and a pitcher of wine. Beside it were shelves and a personal locker. The locker was open, and he could see a locked trunk. Athanasius looked up to see Galen staring at the ring on his finger.

“That will be all, Galen.”

Galen nodded and left, shutting the door behind him.

At last alone, Athanasius exhaled and immediately poured himself a cup of wine and gulped it down. Then he took two big bites of the bread, almost choking on the mouthful as he did, and looked out his little window. He could see several chariots and units converging on the shrinking docks. But they were too late. The anchors were up and the loaded ship was pulling away from the pier, already out by three lengths of the Circus Maximus, clearing the stone breakers and entering the Tyrrhenian Sea into the gathering fog of darkness.

Jupiter, he had made it, he thought, as he watched the nightmare of this tragic day fade like the lighthouse of Ostia in the fog. He felt his lips tremble. He wiped his mouth and saw blood, not wine. Then he stared into the wine cup and watched it fall as if in slow motion from his loosening hand and crash to the floor. And then he plunged into darkness.