Wrath of Rome (Book Two of the Dominium Dei Trilogy) (5 page)

This was precisely what Athanasius feared might happen. “My hatred is reserved for Rome, old man, and for Dominium Dei. Not Jesus or The Way.”

“You must love others, Athanasius, and forgive your enemies.”

Athanasius resisted the insanity of John’s easy words. “You don’t know Caesar Domitian like I do, nor his vile master of the Games. They killed the consul, Flavius Clemens, your top Christian in Rome, I hear, along with many others. They will keep on killing. They want to destroy your Church.”

“It’s not my Church, Athanasius. Jesus is the head.”

“Then come with me to Ephesus and say as much publicly. Expose the Dei and Domitian. Leave the rest to us in Rome.”

“You will accomplish nothing by killing Caesar.”

Athanasius threw out the bait that Clemens’ servant Stephanus threw him: “Even if Young Vespasian becomes emperor and bows before Christ?”

“That’s his business,” John said, unimpressed with the vision of a Christian world. “But you are gravely mistaken if you believe that turning Christianity into the official religion of Rome will save anybody. Jesus said his kingdom is in heaven, not on earth. I see great evil in this thinking of yours.”

“And I see greater evil in an old man who would prefer to see his doomsday vision scorch the earth than lift a finger to help an innocent man.”

“From what you told me, Athanasius, you don’t seem so innocent. Senator Maximus’s slave, the steward on your ship, the driver in Corinth. You’ve been busy, and there’s blood on your hands. Why should I believe that you are not from the Dei? You could be a plant from Caesar to spy out the Church and destroy it.”

“I am not!” Athanasius shouted and stood up. “The senator, like you, betrayed me. His slave tried to kill me. The ship’s steward thought he had, and the driver in Corinth was about to, before his friends the Roman legions slaughtered my entire family and razed the house I grew up in! My actions are justified! You don’t tell me about calling down the fire! Because your good Jesus has already incinerated everything I held dear!”

His rant prompted the guards outside to open the iron gate at the mouth of the cave and walk in to see if everything was all right.

“Father John!” called Cornelius until Athanasius cut him short.

“Out!” Athanasius cried, brandishing his sword. “Or I interrogate you too, Brother Cornelius. Are you one of those secret acolytes among the guards here that I’ve heard about?”

“No, Tribune,” Cornelius said, backing off with his torch. “My apologies, sir. Hail, Caesar.”

Athanasius watched him retreat and turned to John, who was calm as ever.

John said, “Tell me about this girl in your dreams again, before your nightmare began. The only one I see in my nightmares is the Whore of Babylon.”

“I told you, old man. I, too, have had visions of the future, and the ancient past as well. Comes with being an imaginative playwright, I suppose. But while the dreams change, the girl is the same. Barely a young woman, with long black hair and big dark eyes that bleed tears of blood. I have always fallen into a bottomless cave, but she calls me out into the light with a voice that sounds like running water.” Athanasius sighed. “I don’t know what I’m saying. My life is all a bad dream now. Your God is an illusion.”

“No, Athanasius,” John told him. “God is reality. Everything else is illusion.”

He held his candle up to the crack in the roof of the cave, presumably produced in the rock by the exceptional physical and supernatural phenomena that accompanied the vision. This fissure extended across the upper part of the cave from east to west, dividing the rock into three parts and thus, Athanasius supposed, serving old John as a continual reminder of the trinitarian nature of God.

“Your coming to this holy place is not chance in your life, Athanasius. God, who wishes all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of truth, who directs all things for man’s spiritual benefit, has guided you here for you to listen, deep within yourself, to the secret echo of the words that Jesus spoke to the seven churches of Asia.”

“Words that have been ignored.”

“Yes, the light has been extinguished because their faith in God grows cold. But I know that you have seen in your mind’s eye the heavenly vision revealed to me. I can see God’s sovereign work in your life even if you do not. And if what you say about the Dei is true, it must be exposed to the churches of Asia Minor.”

“So you will come with me?”

“No,” John said, shuffling to his desk of stone. “But I will write a letter for you to take to the church leaders in Ephesus. They can decide for themselves if they want to help you.”

This was not what he wanted, but it was clear he would get no better at this point. He had told John about the Dei, and the old man was writing in his own hand a letter acknowledging such for him to give to the leaders of The Way in Ephesus.

“And how can your disciples help me?”

“They can hide you in one of the churches in Asia, away from Rome’s legions.”

“You mean one of those seven problematic churches you address in your Book of Revelation? Some help.”

“I did not address them, my son. Jesus did. And there is an eighth church I have in mind.”

“An eighth church?” Athanasius repeated.

“Yes,” John said, finishing up and signing his papyrus, folding it and sealing it with wax and a symbol. He handed it over. “If you open it, you can see I used the Caesar’s own cipher. You know it?”

Athanasius knew it. The key was a square containing the 24 letters of the Roman alphabet across the top and 24 numbers down the side. Each numbered row or “shift” was its own alphabet, beginning with the next letter of the alphabet from the shift above. So alphabet 1 began with the B, which translated “A.” Alphabet 2 began with a C, which also translated to an “A.” And so on down the line for 24 alphabets.

“I know it,” he told John.

“Then you know that neither you nor the Romans nor the Dei can break it without knowing the secret keyword.” John handed him the letter.

Athanasius placed it in the pocket beneath his breastplate. “So what is the keyword?”

John smiled. The old man wasn’t going to tell him.

Athanasius sighed. “Then who is my contact in Ephesus, and where do I meet him?”

Again, John was indirect in his reply. “You’ll take the letter and go to the town library. There you will request the eleven-volume memoir titled
Miracles in Asia Minor: My Life and Times.
It is by Gaius Mucius Mucianus, who was once governor of Syria and traveled throughout Asia and wrote about it.”

Athanasius vaguely recalled the name Mucianus from his lawyer Pliny’s uncle, who apparently drew from this memoir in his own geographic text
Natural History
. “And then?”

“You will place the letter inside the eighth volume and return the collection. The following day you will return to the library and again check out the collection. Inside the same eighth volume you will find further instructions.”

Athanasius didn’t like it. John was proposing one of those drop-offs the spies used, and not direct contact. The old man really doesn’t trust me, Athanasius thought. “So I’m to fend for myself for a night in Ephesus? What if the Romans get me?”

John shrugged. “They haven’t yet. This is all in God’s hands.”

“And you’ve just washed your own hands clean like Pontius Pilate did with Jesus, is that it?”

John nodded. “You’ve been reading your Scriptures.”

Actually, he remembered that one from the imperial Roman accounts of the trial of Jesus that he had read long before this nightmare. “How do I know you aren’t instructing them to kill me or turn me in?”

“How do they know you aren’t an assassin of Rome or the Dei to kill them all? They may not even recognize my handwriting. My secretary Prochorus comes by day to write my letters.” John sighed. “I can’t make them do anything, and Jesus won’t make them do anything. This isn’t the Roman army or empire. Each can do as he likes, and as you’ve read with the seven churches, most do. I can remind them of the true gospel of Jesus, warn them of false gospels, tell them to love each other. But I cannot offer them worldly wealth or comfort. We’re all volunteers.”

“I was conscripted.”

“Yes, you were, weren’t you? I told you, I see hatred in your eyes, if not for the Lord then for Rome. That in itself is a danger to The Way.”

“Yes, quite,” said a voice, and out of the shadows emerged the commander Barbatio, sword at Athanasius’s throat. Somehow he had slipped in silently. He stared at Athanasius. “To think I can now have both the head of the church of Asia and the head of the church in Rome. I can only imagine Caesar’s gratitude for your capture. How is this for a proposal, Tribune: You stay here, and I get off this rock and return to Rome?”

Athanasius nodded. “There is only one problem with your proposal, Commander,” he said. “This little stick.”

Athanasius held up a wooden stick to Barbatio’s sword, and the commander laughed. “What do you think you are going to do with that?”

“This,” said Athanasius and thrust his hand forward, driving the poisoned tip of the stick into the soft flesh beneath Barbatio’s chin.

“Ah!” the commander gasped, clutching his throat.

Athanasius quickly grabbed him by the hair and threw him face down on the floor at John’s feet, where he writhed in agony.

The last apostle threw his hands to his head. “This is not the way of Jesus!”

“Nevertheless, you said I’m God’s servant,” he said. “And right now this is the only way I know how to get out of here. So say your prayers. Silently.”

He ran out of the cave at the same moment Cornelius and the two guards ran in with torches to see their commander face down on the cave floor with a halo of blood around his head.

Cornelius drew his sword and took a swing at Athanasius as he shouted to the others outside. But Athanasius blocked it with his own sword and smashed the hilt on the aide’s helmet, sending him to the ground. Then Athanasius ran out.

Already a unit of archers was rushing toward the cave, brought on by the shouts.

Athanasius dashed around the hill, racing through rocks at the back, jumping into a trench and down toward the quarries below.

Arrows began raining down as he wound this way and that, not knowing where he was going. Once again he had blown his way of escape, just like he had in Rome, only this time it was worse: Unlike the dark slums of Rome, he was out in the open with no cover and no ship to go back to, because surely more legions were now waiting at the Pegasus. He had met the last apostle and had gotten a letter of introduction of sorts to open doors in the church, much like the letter from Caesar opened doors in the empire. But he had failed to take John with him, had killed the garrison commander of the island prison, and thus sealed off any way of escape for himself.

I’m going to die here before the last apostle, he realized as he ran.

An arrow glanced his calf and he went down, tumbling over and over until he hit a fig tree. He jumped up and darted into a grove of trees. Suddenly he came upon a break in the grove, where a narrow road cut across. He slid down through the brush and started to cross to the other side when a golden litter carried by four dark slaves stopped in front of him.

The veil opened to reveal the spitting image of Cleopatra. It was the madame from the Sea Nymph, the queen of the whores. “Need a lift, Tribune? Or do you want to stay here and die? Get in!”

A
s the litter moved off into the dusk, Athanasius and the woman dressed like Cleopatra sat cross-legged facing one another. “You’re dirtier than all the prisoners here, Tribune.”

The way she said “Tribune” told him she knew exactly who he was, or rather who he was not. “Why are you helping me, Cleopatra?” he asked her, using the same tone on her name that she had used with him.

“Call me Cleo, mistress of the Sea Nymph,” she told him. “And who says I am helping you? I am helping John. My pleasure barge pays regular visits to Patmos. My girls service the guards, well, most of them. Some of the guards come aboard and slip my girls secret letters that we take to other ports of call.”

“Like this one?” Athanasius showed her the letter that John had given him.

She looked it over and then nodded. “Exactly. I was waiting to receive something like this from Cornelius before you assassinated Barbatio.”

“It wasn’t an assassination,” he insisted. “It was more of an accident.”

“Too bad. He terribly mistreats my girls. I was going to have to do the honors of serving him tonight until you spared me.”

Athanasius studied her as he pondered this unusual arrangement she had with the last apostle and his key leaders in Ephesus. “If you’ll pardon my asking, Cleo, why would a man like the last apostle trust you?”

“A whore?” she said, raising an eyebrow. “For the same reason he probably trusts you. I tell him what his bishops and acolytes won’t: the truth. Now you’ll have to trust me too. Quick, crawl under my ass.”

Athanasius cocked his ear to make sure he had heard correctly, then pulled back the veil of the litter slightly to see that they were entering the harbor. Night had fallen, and the torches were lit. Cornelius, awake and alert now, barked orders for the ranks to form lines. The last of the garrison’s pleasure seekers were quickly disembarking the Sea Nymph and putting on their helmets.

He dropped the curtain and looked at Cleo. Her knees were drawn up to her heaving bosoms, and she had pulled back the cushion underneath to reveal a secret compartment. It was only a Roman foot or so deep but ran the length of the litter and was wide enough for him to crawl in and lie flat. She then rolled the cushion back and sat on him.

“Easy does it, my slaves,” he heard her call out.

The litter stopped. Then came the sound of approaching boots and a voice.

“Madame, you are safe,” said a loud voice, which he recognized as belonging to Cornelius. Perhaps he was playing to the troops. “There has been a tragedy. Commander Barbatio has been assassinated.”

“Have you found the assassin?”

“We are turning the island over now. We have a centurion from the assassin’s ship who can identify him. The captain refuses to help.”