The Chiron Confession (Dominium Dei) (2 page)

“Did you see this, Virtus?” demanded Caelus, showing him the figurine of the Oracle from the play. Actually, it looked more like an orb than a figurine. “Did you
see
this?!”

Virtus gave the marble orb a closer look and with a start realized it was cut to look like Caelus.

Caelus waved his arms hysterically. “How does that Greek get away with it?”

Virtus had no idea. But he didn’t like standing in the open with Caelus, flesh pressing against them on all sides. A blade could shoot out from the crowd and withdraw, leaving him to stand over the crumpled corpse of portly Caelus. A bad omen for Caesar, for sure, and for his own future.

“Entertainment is our religion, and religion is our entertainment,” Virtus said, handing the figurines back to the disappointed boy. “The rules of mortal men don’t apply to the gods of the cosmic theater.”

Caelus, who clearly considered himself one of the gods, nodded as Virtus moved them along. “Well said, Virtus. You are wiser than you look.”

Having cleared the river of revelers on Crooked Street, they turned north into the quieter, darker streets of Ephesus. It was a better, wealthier part of town, and they were free of the anonymous masses.

“See, Virtus, I told you we’d make it. The stars said so because I say so. Wait until you see the delights in store for us!”

Up ahead was a villa perched on a hill. It overlooked the sparkling lights of the great theater, library and harbor beyond. The entrance was a nondescript bolted door. One could have easily missed it save for the bronze celestial globe on a stone pillar in front, and the two guards posted on either side under torches, so frozen in bearing they could have been statues.

Ex-legionnaires, Virtus guessed, who either weren’t satisfied with their pensions or enjoyed certain side benefits from their new profession in retirement. As for the celestial globe, it was often depicted in art with Urania, the muse of astronomy.

Ergo, they had found Club Urania.

Virtus didn’t like the looks of the thick smoke that hung in the air above the courtyard wall, nor the loud and slurred sounds of men and women high on wine and aphrodisiacs wafting over as well. Rome pretended that the empire was one great banner cut from a single cloth. But establishments like Urania revealed its underside as a patchwork of both silk and sackcloth, its seams stretched to the point of tearing apart. That the only thing holding this world together was so thin a thread as this fat pretender Caelus, who existed solely to prove the prophecies about Domitian wrong, only heightened Virtus’s unease.

Caelus, however, looked delighted. “The priestess back at the temple said you must speak into the globe. There must be a pipe inside that snakes into the villa.”

Ignoring the guards, Caelus walked up to the globe in front of the bolted door. “Muse of heaven,” he commanded, his voice winded from the short but steep climb to the villa. “Open the sky.”

The door seemed to open by itself, inviting them inside.

Poor Virtus didn’t know what he was missing, thought Caelus, resplendent after an arousing ritual of mineral baths in progressive tubs of hot and cold water. The stoic simpleton could have joined him on Caesar’s denarius but had chosen to stand outside in the courtyard with the chariot drivers and bodyguards of other dignitaries. He didn’t understand that the spirit was freed from the body by indulging the senses, not restraining them. Life would pass the fool by and he’d mourn these missed opportunities to taste the nectar of the gods and feel like one himself.

Now Caelus lay naked on a gigantic divan in a circular chamber as two exotic muses imported from beyond the corners of the empire worked special oils into every crevice of his body, under every flab, even into parts unknown to him. Caelus could only stare up at the domed ceiling painted black with white points of light arranged like constellations of the zodiac and thank the gods for his good fortune.

The haze of the opium above the flicking candles was already taking effect. The mosaics of the nine muses on the walls seemed to dance like shadows, and the constellations drifted across the painted heavens above him. The muse working on his face cupped her hands over his nose and mouth so he could inhale some exotic extract, while the muse working his legs began to massage his loins.

And then they came, one by one: seven more naked muses with foreign tongues to take their turns on him, giggling as his blob of a body writhed and wriggled uncontrollably. Together they took him to a higher plane of pleasure beyond the bounds of any he thought this earth could offer.

Truly, I have been born again, he thought when it was all over and he was alone in the chamber, the muses magically gone.

His body still vibrating with a new energy and lightness of being, Caelus slid off the divan and walked under an archway to the adjoining bathroom, which was even larger than the chamber he had just left. It was arranged like a public toilet with a fountain in the center and around it a long marble bench in the shape of a horseshoe with neatly spaced holes. A small water trough like a stream ran along the base of the bench to wash patrons’ feet as they sat down.

He noticed a small fish symbol scratched into the mosaic floor. It was the sign of those blood-drinking, flesh-eating Christians. They had usurped the new Age of Pisces in the stars as their self-fulfilling sign of ascendancy. He resented anyone who dared muscle in on his heavens, most of all these superstitious amateurs.

“I piss on Christ!” he proclaimed and painted the fish graffiti with his urine. “Swim in this!”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move in the water below the toilet bench. He leaned over the dark hole to have a closer look.

Was it a shadow? No.

A face!

All of a sudden the floor gave way beneath him. His head banged on the trapdoor paver, and he felt himself begin to slide. Then two sets of hairy arms reached up out of the darkness and dragged him down to Hades.

•    •    •

Caelus awoke in a dank, underground cell. Dazed, he squinted his eyes in the dim light. Next to him lay the bruised and bloody corpse of Virtus. Rats had begun to nip on his bodyguard’s flesh.

What foul fate is this?
Caelus wondered as panic seized him. He was on his knees now.

Virtus had lectured Caelus for his own safety about the so-called Ephesian Underworld—the network of mysterious tunnels that lay beneath the streets of the old city. The tunnels connected the cellars of certain downtown inns and taverns to the great harbor. Originally built to move goods from storage to the ships and avoid the cart and foot traffic on the streets, they were also used to abduct unwary visitors and sell them as galley slaves. Caelus had assumed this type of passage was reserved for prostitutes and female slaves, and that Virtus had only been trying to scare him.

Two looming figures emerged from the darkness, dressed in the armor and black robes of the
Vigiles Urbani
—local police known as Watchmen.

“This is a grave mistake!” Caelus screamed, the echoes of his cry bouncing off the rock walls and fading into the black void. “Do you know who I am?”

“The great Caelus, chief astrologer to Caesar.”

Jupiter! They know who I am. This was not a mistake!

“Yes, I am. I am counselor to Caesar. And he will have your heads for this!”

Unfazed, the big Watchman pressed down on him and pinned his arm to his side while the smaller one, who was not small at all, produced a large sword. It hovered over his forearm for a moment like a snake.

“He’s the one you want!” Caelus cried out, nodding to Virtus. “He’s young, strong, perfect for hard labor. Let me go! My hands are of no use to you!”

“God has a purpose for everyone.”

Caelus looked up in horror as the hulking figure above him raised his blade to reveal a black
Chi
tattoo under his arm.

“If your right hand causes you to sin….”

The blade came down, and Caelus wailed in unbearable pain.

The Watchman held up a finger in the dim light.

Caelus could see it clearly enough through the blur of his tears. It was his finger! His own finger and signet ring! The rest of his hand lay on the floor like a piece of red, bloody meat.

They’ve cut off my hand!

“Don’t kill me!” he moaned, suddenly aware that he could see only one Watchman.

He heard a
whoosh
from behind and felt something strike him in the back of the head. He fell flat on his face into the earthen floor, then rolled over to see a headless corpse, blood spurting up from the neck.

They had beheaded Virtus!

He tried to scream but heard only a whistle passing through his slack jaw. Then he recognized the medallion on the chest of the collapsing corpse and realized it was he himself who had been beheaded.

They’ve cut off my head! My head!

He felt the breath of life escaping him as this last, grotesque visage before his eyes began to fade.

Thus Spurius Balbinus, the spindly son of gypsies who had risen to become Caelus of Rome, Chief Astrologer to Caesar, passed from this world to the next.

And he never saw it coming.

T
he small, ornate box took three weeks to arrive in Rome. It was delivered to Caesar in his private box at the great coliseum known as the Flavian Amphitheater during the afternoon gladiator contests. As Titus Flavius Domitianus, the 11
^th
emperor of the Roman empire, read the attached note, his fingers trembled:
Due to unforeseen circumstances, Caelus has retired forever. Soon you will join him. The next government of Rome will be ruled by reason, not by dark arts.
It was stamped with the
Chi-Ro
symbol of Chiron, the pseudonym of the mastermind behind the militant Christian group Dominium Dei.

Domitian opened the box and saw the severed finger and signet ring of his chief astrologer. Shaking with rage, the 44-year-old emperor rose to his feet on buckling knees and wordlessly exited the stadium through the
Passaggio di Commodo
, a newly constructed private tunnel that led back to the palace on Palatine Hill. Close behind him were three key
amici
from his inner circle: Titus Petronius Secundus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard; Titus Flavius Clemens, consul and his cousin; and Lucius Licinius Ludlumus, a scion of Rome’s wealthiest family and the Master of the Games.

Only when they were a good distance into the tunnel, where he was sure they could not be overheard, did Domitian unleash his fury and scream, “Will it take the death of Caesar for anyone to believe the conspiracy is real?”

Dressed in royal purple and embroidered gold, the balding, pot-bellied Domitian was in the 15
^th
year of his reign, longer than any Caesar before him since Tiberius. He was also the first to demand to be officially addressed as
dominus et deus,
or “Lord and God.” But this humiliating assassination of his chief astrologer by Dominium Dei or “Rule of God”—itself a mockery of his own divinity—only made him more paranoid than usual. He was terrified that he would not live to see a day beyond September 18, the day the stars said he would die. Worst of all, the only credible source in his eyes to give him hope otherwise—Caelus—was gone, having failed to foresee even his own death.

“And you, my chief protector!” Domitian glared at Secundus. “Your Praetorian in plain toga couldn’t even protect Caelus. How am I to believe you can protect me?”

Secundus, realizing his own fate was on the line, spoke in a brave voice. “My man in Ephesus was but one in a city of villainy. Here in Rome, however, Your Highness has thousands of Praetorian surrounding you.”

“Surrounding me! Who will protect me from your men? You all want me dead!”

They continued to walk on in silence, only their steps echoing ominously like the inevitable march of doom. The tunnel was brilliantly lit by rows of torches on either side to ensure that no shadow could hide a would-be assassin. So great was Domitian’s fear.

As usual, it was left to Ludlumus, a former actor and failed playwright, to break the silence with his gravelly yet soothing deep voice. “No doubt this lapse of security is unacceptable. Nor any doubt now that Caelus was a fraud. But neither tragedy should cast doubt upon your own destiny. If anything, your continued survival is proof yet again that the gods protect you, that you indeed are one of them. You cannot kill a god, despite what second-rate playwrights might like to believe.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” Domitian murmured, annoyed that Ludlumus would use this moment to take yet another swipe at his former rival in the arts, Athanasius of Athens. “But Rome must make retribution for this public act against Caesar. We must therefore produce Chiron and execute him in public.”

Domitian often spoke of himself in the third person when he felt threatened. This usually foreshadowed an order of execution of some kind, the object of which was any unfortunate fellow in his sight. In the last few years alone Domitian had executed a dozen prominent senators and countless noblemen in his Reign of Terror, if only to confiscate their fortunes to feed Rome’s swelling public debt. This was on top of the usual allotment of Jews and Christians. But the rise of this Dei insurgency was a new phenomenon altogether, and the shocking, public nature of Chiron’s recent assassinations had unhinged the emperor.

“To be sure, it is time for Chiron to die,” Ludlumus said, halting for a moment, and then stated the obvious for Domitian’s own understanding. “But to kill Chiron, we must first produce him.”

Domitian addressed his cousin the consul. “Clemens, what do we know about these butchers who call themselves Dominium Dei?”

“Not much, Your Humanitas.”

Clemens often addressed Domitian as the Merciful One, mostly in hopes of eliciting mercy on the Christians, of which his wife Domitilla was one and himself an inquirer at the least and sympathizer at worst in Domitian’s eyes.

“No? Do they not receive secret instructions from the apostle John from his prison on Patmos?”