Unholy Sepulcher, page 13
part #4 of Getorius and Arcadia Mystery Series
"Aywa. Look. " He indicted the left side, beyond the nearest city wall. "Two obba…dome, big, small on roof is Anastasis."
Arcadia told him, "I want to go there first, after I clean myself here as best I can."
Al-Shira's eager expression clouded over. "Not buy new tunic? My cousin give good bargain at es Suk."
"I'll buy one later. Getorius, come help me wash."
Near the spring, a wrinkled Arab woman and her grandchild sold pomegranates, fresh dates, and scented lotions. Her booth was fashioned of withered eucalyptus branches. One supporting pole displayed small pottery flasks hung by a leather strap through twin handles and stamped with the same a cross symbol.
Swathed in a black cotton tunic and headscarf, the oldster sucked on a eucalyptus leaf and watched impassively while Arcadia sniffed her lotions. She selected a ceramic bottle of jasmine-scented oil, then gestured to borrow a bronze mirror from the vendor.
Getorius helped Arcadia rinse her hair in the cold water and use a wet cloth to scrub her face, arms, and feet. After she had toweled her hair and spread the scented oil on her face and arms, the Arab oldster beckoned her back to the booth. She came around the counter, smoothed Arcadia's hair, and began arranging the damp strands into twin braids—all the while babbling in sonorous Arabic as if she were understood. The grandchild, a curly-haired girl with golden skin, twisted Arcadia's wedding ring while studying her with solemn hazel eyes.
Afterward, Arcadia tried to smooth out her wrinkled tunic, stained with dirt and dried patches of Aphrodisia's vomit. It smelled rancid from perspiration. "Getorius," she chided. "I've worn this for five days now. Despite the jasmine oil, I smell bad, yet can't wash the tunic now."
" 'A time to keep and a time to throw away'."
"Husband, don't mock me," she warned in an echo of her former anger.
"Cara,' he replied quickly, to not upset her. "We'll get new clothing in the morning."
"If I don't rot away in this tunic by then. And yet it would be disrespectful to not venerate Christ's tomb first."
The old Arab woman had watched and evidently understood. She grinned, exposing blackened, uneven teeth, and held up a cedar box to wave Arcadia back to her. With gestures, jabbering in Arabic, she led Arcadia a short way into a screen of bushes and motioned for her to remove the soiled garment.
Arcadia slipped the tunic over her head, saying, "I have managed to wash my underclothes."
"Hamsa!" the crone exclaimed when she saw Zayda-al Lat's hand-shaped, golden talisman gleaming around the Latin woamn's neck. "Hebraya?"
"No, I'm not Hebrew. Christiana"
"Ah, Maseehiya" The oldster took the discarded tunic and laid it on a flat limestone outcropping, slid open the cedar box's lid, and sprinkled a white crystalline powder into the fabric, working it into the stains with gnarled fingers. Afterward, she pried the lid off a round tin of ointment. It released a penetrating odor of sweet-smelling pine gum, much stronger than any Arcadia had found in Italy. Still babbling, half to herself, half to the eucalyptus trees, the Arab woman smoothed dabs of the balm into Arcadia's armpits and neck. When she stepped back to admire her client's lithe body, the oldster hesitated a moment, then, with a mischievous cackle, dabbed scented ointment on Arcadia's pubic area.
Embarrassed, she nevertheless pointed to the tin. "Ti ine afto? What is it? I've never seen anything like this at Ravenna."
"Balsamum. Kalos…kalos," the crone repeated in the Greek words she knew that told customers her fruit and scented oils were "Good…good."
After the old woman used a stiff brush to whisk the powder off the tunic, she shook out the garment and held it up. The stains were almost gone and it no longer smelled rancid.
"My first 'miracle' in the Holy Land," Arcadia half-joked as she slipped the tunic back on. "Thank you…Efharisto"
The crone grinned, but her smile vanished as she held out her hand for money.
Arcadia pointed back toward the coaches. "My husband will pay you."
When Arcadia returned to the wagon, al-Shira grinned. "Jameela…beautiful,"
"The woman vendor used a white powder to clean my tunic. What was it?"
"Buraq. Al-qualiy come from salt sea, far to south," he explained "Domina, she say to me you beautiful."
"I agree." Getorius bent to kiss Arcadia's damp hair. "Your skin glows like a sunset sky again and you do smell very good. What is that pine scent?"
"Balsamum, the woman said." Arcadia glanced at the low sun. "Will you pay her for it now, Getorius, then can we leave before it gets too dark to find the basilica?"
"Domina, I know Anastasis," al-Shira promised, then called up to Shapur, "We go Neapolis Gate."
When the driver nodded in answer, Getorius guessed he already knew the entryway.
Moshe ben Asher, overcome with emotion, had been escorted back to his coach by Mordecai. The two men sat in silence, waiting to leave, almost as if afraid to believe that they would soon enter the central pivotal point of their religion.
Getorius had helped Arcadia into her seat, when the little girl ran up with one of the pottery flasks in her hands. "Maiya," she said, a pleading look on her brown face as she held up the jar by its straps.
After al-Shira harshly rebuffed the waif, Arcadia said, "No, the flask contains water from that spring. Give her a coin, Getorius. I want it."
"How do you know it's water, not oil?"
"The girl said, 'maiya'" Arcadia told the guide, "I learned the Arabic word for water in your wife's room."
"Kalos, Kwayissa." He smiled and tussled the child's curly hair.
Getorius searched his purse and extended a bronze quadrans to her. She looked at the coin a moment, then shook her head and pointed to Arcadia. "Khayfa."
Al-Shira's grin broadened. "Domina, she call you 'friend.' The water is her gift."
A tear wet Arcadia's cheek as she leaned out to hug the waif, who squealed in delight and ran off to her grandmother.
Al-Shira again came to sit with Getorius and Arcadia. "You have two Arab friend now," he beamed. "Guide and girl."
* * *
Half an hourglass later, while Getorius was reading the diary of Egeria to familiarize himself with the holy sites in Jerusalem, the coaches passed a large reservoir that collected rainwater. Al-Shira called it Gihon and said water was piped through an underground conduit to a lower pool just outside Jerusalem as part of the city's supply.
Shortly after, the road turned left and paralleled the northern wall of the city for three-quarters of a mile.
When Al-Shira saw another paved road coming in from the north he pointed out the window in excitement. "Neapolis Road! Gate ahead, very nice. Aug-ust Hayd-rin build." He poked Getorius's chest. "Roman, like you."
"That emperor was no friend to Hebrews," he warned him, "so don't talk about Hadrian to the men with us."
"La'a…no." He gestured toward his face. "Mouth locked."
Getorius surmised that it was well past the tenth hour when they arrived at the Neapolis Gate. The sun had dropped below western hills from which they came. A soft twilight suffused the sky.
The Neapolis Gate, the terminal of a road toward a Roman-Samaritan town some forty-five miles to the north, was built with a central archway for wagons. Pedestrian entrances flanked either side. As the coaches passed through the gate, the air was fragrant with wood smoke, roasting meats, and a scent of spices from market stalls. Walkways seemed strangely empty: a few beggars remained, seated or standing by the wagon entrance. The sightless ones were in imminent danger of being dragged along by stray poles or obstacles extending from wagon beds.
The entryway led to a semicircular plaza on the Jerusalem side. A marble column in its center, surmounted by a statue of a scowling Hadrian, was a Miliarion, a mile-marker that gave distances from Jerusalem to the major cities in the twin Empires. Getorius was able to note that Italic Ravenna but not Germanic Mogontiacum was listed. Two broad colonnaded streets branched off from the plaza. One with covered passageways on both sides led straight ahead. The other, shaded only on the eastern side, angled off to the left and was entered through an archway.
Al-Shira pointed ahead. "Via Emporia Maior. Market Big Street.' Arab call 'Shaen suk.' Close to Anastasis."
Arcadia reached for her husband's hand. Getorius brought it to his lips and kissed her fingers. Emotionally and spiritually united by the location, neither felt a need to speak. In a few moments they would be at the center of Christendom, inside a rock tomb, where over four centuries ago, at dawn on a first day of the week, Christ had risen and conquered the realm of Death.
CHAPTER IX
Abd al-Shira went to tell Saturnilos where the imperial lodgings were located, then returned to Getorius. "Saturn ibn-Os find rooms now. I take you after we see Anastasis."
"Where is the Jerusalem mansio?"
"Not far." He pointed to a narrow street to the right of the open plaza. "No Arab word for place. How you call where holy men, women live?"
"A monastery? Convent?"
Al-Shira's boyish smile brightened his face. "Aywa. Come, Domina, we walk now."
Getorius wondered, "Perhaps I should let Moshe ben Asher know where we'll be."
"Our guide will take us back to the monastery," Arcadia told him. "We should go now, or it will be too dark to see clearly."
"Fine. Al-Shira?"
"Go under roof-walk."
Hadrian's Via Emporia Maior, wide enough to allow two wagons abreast to pass each other in either direction, was the main north-south street of Jerusalem. It ran down the center of the city, approximately parallel to the Temple Mount and in sight of the massive stones on the western side of walls that once supported a vast platform on which two destroyed Hebrew Temples had been built. A portico of Corinthian columns set along a fifteen-foot-wide walkway lined both sides of the Emporia. Each shaft held up wooden truss-work supporting a slanted tile roof that angled toward the street. Recessed shops were spaced along the walk's inner length, some so narrow that, in places, baskets of fruit, vegetables, and spices, as well as furniture, clothing racks, tables full of metal utensils, jugs, and amphorae spilled out of open fronts to block part of the walkway.
Light was gloomy under the portico. It was not late, yet many shops were closed. Several store fronts had broken shutters where shattered jars, dishes, or furniture had been pushed into makeshift piles.
Getorius took Arcadia's elbow to guide her around the rubble and ask al-Shira, "Is your cousin's clothing shop along here?"
"Ah, no. surgeon. Other es-suk street. Near arch."
Arcadia avoided the rubble. "Those piles of broken goods make walking difficult. Why haven't they been taken away?"
"Hebrews come for festival. Black-tunic monk not like them. Trouble…"al Sira's voice trailed off.
"Of course. That port official at Ascalon warned us that the followers of a monk, Bardanes, had attacked visiting Hebrews."
"Bardanes evil man."
"Is it safe for us to be here?"
Rather than answering Arcadia, al-Shira ran a few steps ahead, then gestured back. "Here is Anastasis."
The guide stood on a stairway that led up to three doors set in a courtyard wall of gleaming polished stone. The cypress portal of the central entrance and a smaller one on the left were closed, but a door at the right side stood open. "I wait here. You go. Safe. Deacon man inside."
Arcadia still felt nervous. "You aren't coming?"
"Safe, Domina, for you and surgeon." He turned to cross the street, toward a food booth in the opposite portico.
Getorius followed his wife into a colonnaded courtyard. Several monks wearing coarse black robes sat on either side. The tallest holy man languished against a column, but straightened up when he noticed the couple enter. Gaunt, bearded, with ashes graying his unkempt hair, the monk strode over, shaking a wooden bowl. His whining pleas were in an unintelligible language. Getorius surmise it was Syriac and the intent was clear. He dropped a follis into the begging bowl. After the monk recognized a bronze coin as western, he began chanting in Latin, "Argentum…argentum…argentum"
"He wants silver. A sestertius." Arcadia said. "Please don't repeat your stubborn defiance, like that time at Classis when you wouldn't pay those men."
"That was raw extortion," Getorius recalled. "I'll give this holy beggar his silver."
The monk acknowledged the second coin with a slight nod, yet his eyes were hard as black granite, as if, paradoxically, they accused his lay benefactor for not having renounced what he possessed.
The couple continued across the entry courtyard to the basilica itself. The two-story façade was constructed of the same lustrous stone as the wall and pierced by ten arched windows. Three portals allowed entrance into the nave, but only the door on the right side was ajar.
Getorius glanced back at the monk. "If I could make myself understood, I could ask that holy man about entering."
Having received a generous coin, the black-clad monk and his brothers had already left the courtyard.
Arcadia said, "Egeria writes that Christ's tomb is at the far end, beyond an apse in a separate building? Al-Shira mentioned a deacon." She tried to push the door open further, but someone resisted from inside.
"C-closed n…now," an immature-sounding voice stuttered in Latin. "Come back in…in the morning."
Arcadia replied, "We've just now arrived from Ravenna and want to venerate Christ's tomb as soon as we can."
At the woman's voice, a youngish face blotched with pimples peered around the door. "Domina? I…you…you're beautiful." Arcadia thought it an inappropriate comment, but the man went on in a stutter. "Domina. I, D…Deacon Delphinus shall show you th…the Holy Cave."
After he pulled the door open further, Arcadia smiled at him. "My husband, Getorius, is a surgeon at Ravenna. We are grateful."
He ignored Getorius to stare at her. "Domina, inside the basilica y…you must"—he licked cherubic lips—"you must remove your tunic and…and put on a white pilgrim's alb. Your sandals, too, and w…walk barefoot to the Aedicule."
Annoyed at the churchman's attentions to his wife, and the possible sexual innuendo in his stuttering instructions to her, Getorius's question was sarcastic. "May I also come?"
Delphinus picked at a pustule as he glanced at him. "Indeed, S…Surgeon. Domina, the albs are kept in a diaconicon, a vesting room next to the apse. M…may I take your arm? As we w…walk I shall explain about Constantine's basilica and the H…Holy Cave."
Arcadia glanced back at Getorius, her eyes signaling that she would let this foolish-acting youth hold her arm if that would get her to the site of Christ's burial.
Deacon Delphinus, Custodian of the Most Holy Tomb of our Savior, Jesus the Nazarene, was a baby-faced twenty-four-year-old who owed the position and its over-impressive title solely to the fact that he was a nephew of Juvenal, the Bishop of Jerusalem. When Delphinus was fifteen years old, his mother died, whereupon Juvenal took him into his strict, church-centered household. Nine years later, Delphinus had grown into a sickly man with a scraggly beard and nervous stutter. A fragile emotional state was expressed through nervous picking at pimples that spotted his doughy face.
The previous elderly custodian, Athanasios, had died on the Feast of the Nativity. In mid-January—with the hope that responsibility would mature his nephew—Juvenal had ordained Delphinus a deacon and appointed him custodian of the Aedicule, a small building that protected the rock-cut tomb in which Christ's body had lain after the Crucifixion.
For the edification of pilgrims, and without stuttering, Dephinus had memorized legends connected with a sacred location that had been venerated for centuries by pious or curious visitors. He began with details of the Emperor Hadrian's attempts to obliterate the sites that tradition held were those of Christ's crucifixion, burial, and resurrection, then located outside Jerusalem's north wall.
Delphinus paused to let Arcadia marvel at the glittering beauty of the five-aisled basilica, then began his stilted dialogue as if he were speaking only to her. "Domina, one of the wicked, godless emperors who worshipped dead idols, took it on himself to consign to darkness and oblivion the divine monument of the Savior's resurrection. Inspired by demons, he ordered earth brought in to cover the place, then leveled and paved it to hide the Divine Cave underneath soil. Eusebius of Caesarea tells that the godless emperor also built a gloomy temple to the impure goddess, Aphrodite, where he offered foul sacrifices on her defiled and polluted altar."
Delphinus had reached the center of the nave when Arcadia asked, "Deacon, may we stop a moment? We have a fine cathedral at Ravenna, but nothing to compare with the splendor of Constantine's basilica."
"Of…of course." He resumed worrying his largest pimple.
Arcadia looked around. Gold gleamed everywhere. Drapes of the shimmering material hung from the nave columns. Even in the fading light the recessed ceiling coffers, finished in gold leaf, sparkled with a heavenly luminescence. Side walls beyond the double row of aisle columns were of the finest marble. Clearly, the emperor, who somewhat over a hundred years earlier had allowed Christians to worship freely and restored property to them, had spared no expense in constructing his Basilica of the Anastasis.
Delphinus had released Arcadia's arm. After a few moments, in which he stared at her, he grasped it again to walk towards the apse and continue. "The God-beloved emperor Constantine, possessed by the Divine Spirit, ordered the foul rubbish of Aphrodite's temple to be cleared. Rubble and timbers from the demolished site were taken far from the place, lest soil polluted by pagan rites sully the Divine Cave-Tomb. Against all expectations the revered and all-hallowed Testimony of the Savior's resurrection was revealed, the Holy Cave-Tomb you will visit.
"Ahead is a silver plaque with Constantine's declaration to Macarius, the Bishop of Jerusalem at the time. If it is not light enough to see well, Domina, you must return in the morning." Delphinus glanced back at Getorius. "Your husband would not be…be interested."
Wouldn't I? For a churchman, you're far too interested in my wife. More like a lovesick schoolboy. What do you expect to gain by fawning attention on a married woman?
