Unholy Sepulcher, page 25
part #4 of Getorius and Arcadia Mystery Series
"There's a stairway to a second level." He recalled Pulcheria's description of Carpocratian rites, which included a common sharing of members' wives. The obvious purpose of those small rooms. Arcadia might be in one upstairs, held against her will.
The upper chambers were similar in size and furnishings to those on the first floor and also unoccupied. However, at the far end of the hallway a semi-circular wall suggested a room with a different shape. "That must be a round area that has the dome covering it as a ceiling." Getorius hurryied to a paneled door facing the hall. Both men heard women's sobs coming from behind the closed portal. "Arcadia?" he called hoarsely, looking toward al-Shira in alarm.
The guide tried the portal. It was locked.
Frantic, Getorius glanced around for something to force an entry, then remembered the wood benches. He found one in a nearby room. Smashing the thin door panels was not difficult. A fetid-smelling rush of warm, humid air came through the opening.
Getorius gagged in reaching through the broken wood to push a retaining beam off its brackets. When he opened the door, a girl's hysterical scream sounded amid the sobs from other women in the dim interior. "Amici…Philoi. Friends," he called out in Latin and Greek, to reassure whomever was inside.
Dim light shone from a single cobweb-strung oculus in the ceiling. A thin circle of alabaster covered its opening. Adjusting his eyes to the meager light, Getorius made out several young women huddled against the far wall, shivering in fright. Most were nude; a few wore short tunics. Before he could search out Arcadia in the group, al-Shira called to them in Arabic.
After one responded in a hesitant, sobbing voice, he said, "Bedouin girl."
"Bedouin? What are they doing here?" Getorius pushed the door farther open to allow more light. Arcadia was not among the women. After stepping inside, he winced at the stench, stronger inside the smaller space. The smell and a soft, bizarre scraping sound came from a shallow pit sunk in the room's center. "A truly satanic den. Al-shira, take the women out of here and find blankets to cover them."
As the guide led the shivering girls out of the dank chamber, he comforted them in soft Arabic inflexions. Getorius walked to the edge of the pit and peered in. Feces-littered sand and a few rocks filled one side, but the main stench came from desiccated bodies of dead lizards and rodents scattered around a stone floor. At the shadow of his approach, a cluster of small dark shapes scuttled toward shelter among the rocks or burrowed into the sand. "Scorpions, the source of that scraping sound! A…a truly horrifying place, where those girls were left to die." He covered his mouth with a sleeve to turn away, but noticed a larger, irregular shape at a rim of the pit nearest him. It resembled a pile of soiled tunics. "Clothes? No, it's a…a body lying on its back." Kneeling for a closer look, Getorius gave an involuntary gasp of horror.
Visible in light from the oculus, the staring eyes and swollen face were unmistakably those of a man he had come to know in the past two weeks.
Saturnilos, Master of Aelia Pulcheria's personal fleet of imperial galleys, lay dead in the soiled sand from the venom of multiple scorpion stings.
CHAPTER XVIII
At the fortress of Amir al-Shams, Apelles had tried to ease Arcadia's dismay at being told that she would never see her husband again. He begged the sheikh to be allowed to show her his workshop, saying that the distraction would calm the Latin woman. Al-Shams had given the old Greek an hour; at sundown he would celebrate his new wife-to-be with a sacrifice of the camel on which she had arrived.
The offering would be to Shams, his namesake sun goddess. Ever since the sheikh dedicated himself to the deity, she had shaped his destiny. A night of feasting and drinking would follow before the western woman, Val as-Terra, would be taken to quarters in his harim for the night. There she would be bathed, oiled, and perfumed by concubines. They would decorate the pale woman with traditional henna designs. A magnificent Bedouin wedding would take place after Apelles cast his horoscope for the next moon period and assured the sheikh that marriage was favorable. If the planets were capricious, he would consult El Kahin, a soothsayer of Dhual-Khalash, and pick from a sheaf of ritual arrows labeled with various predictions. Until then, feasting and camel races would pass the time. Caravans did not come during the cold season, so men who had remained at the fort instead of returning to winter camps could enjoy themselves.
* * *
As Ahmed brought the lame Jameel toward the stables, Apelles limped his way with Arcadia across the fort's dirt courtyard to his workshop. When she asked about burnt wood in a circular pit, the old Greek said it was a cooking area where sheep were roasted, rice and vegetables boiled in an iron vat, and soups of unleavened bread and boiled lamb prepared. In front of his door Apelles sidestepped several paving stones and motioned Arcadia round them without explaining.
The philosopher-engineer's work space was cluttered with a variety of large and small mechanical devices. At a niche close to the entrance, Apelles paused at three marble busts labeled KESIBIOS, PLATON, and VITRVVIVS. "My personal Trinity, I suppose. One philosopher and two engineers."
Arcadia was impressed. "I've never seen anything like what you build here."
"Domina, their legacy to me is a healthy cynicism and this limp, the result of a failed scaffold." He held up a maimed left hand. "These stumps of three missing fingers frighten children, but come see this." Apelles, shaking slightly, went to a low wooden cabinet, opened the door, and stepped on a bronze plate. A soft hiss sounded, then a bronze amphora slowly rose from a well inside. "Keeps my wine cool," he explained, taking a tarnished silver goblet off the cabinet top and searching for a clean glass. He dipped his goblet into the amphora mouth, poured wine into the glass, and handed it to Arcadia. A moment after he refilled his cup, the amphora sank into the depths again. After a long sip, the old man's trembling ceased. "What was I saying? Ah. Permit me to show a few of my playthings."
Shaken at what had happened earlier, Arcadia was thankful to talk with Apelles. He even might help her. "Sir, how did that amphora rise like that?"
"A Klesibian steam pump, of course," he said, as if everyone was familiar with the device. "Now come over here."
Arcadia welcomed the wine, yet after being shown several machines, she half-listened to Apelles describe his newest clepsydra—a water clock. By the time she reached the door of a furnace room for the bathhouse and he explained about the boiler, she was frantic to find out about her abduction. I can't really care how the working of a copper tank supplies hot water to the men's bathing pool!
Apelles was saying, ". The youth I trained to stoke the fire knows exactly how much fuel to add in order to prevent—"
"Sir," Arcadia interrupted, "you seem to believe that this renegade latro…this bandit…will be able to keep me from being freed. After my husband realizes I'm gone, he'll contact the authorities."
"Authorities…" A bout of coughing prevented Apelles from immediately replying. He spit into a cloth, then said, "Domina, it is not certain whether territory near Saltus is in the Syrian or Arabian provinces. We occupy lawless zone between the two provinces that neither archon wants."
"But if the provincial governors, the archons, were told about my abduction, surely they would do something."
Apelles's cynical laugh again. "Both archons are away from Damascus and Philadelphia, hibernating like overstuffed hedgehogs in winter villas near Alexandria or in Clysma at the head of the Arabian Gulf."
He had slurred many of his words. Arcadia realized the man probably was in a continual state of semi-inebriation, yet had mastered an ability to conceal its effects. That cough and jaundiced complexion indicates that his phlegm and yellow bile humors are in serious imbalance. "Apelles," she said, firmly, "please tell me where I am. How you happen to be here."
The Greek seemed both pleased and disturbed at the question. He drained his wine dregs in one gulp, then motioned Arcadia back into the workshop and led her to a table displaying the dusty wooden model of the compound.
"Sheikh al-Shams named this place El Ginayna, 'The Garden,' yet it is a well-protected fortress. Should some new and ambitious sheikh, or even provincial archon, attempt to capture it for his own glory…Look here"—Apelles's hand swept around the model's perimeter—"a ditch sown with half-buried triangular iron spikes surrounds the walls. Impenetrable cacti deny access to that." He pointed at the main gate. "Men in these twin towers can warn of an approach of uninvited guests. Guards on the walls…" Apelles faltered a moment and shaded his eyes. "Il Ginayna would…would become a garden of death for anyone attacking."
The engineer's description was not exactly reassuring to Arcadia, who had hopes of being rescued by legionaries sent out from Jerusalem. "And you built all this, sir?"
"Ohi, no, Domina. For al-Shams I fortified a monastery abandoned by its monks.
Their mentor, Nestorios, was condemned of heresy nine years ago."
"Another heresy? Our eastern Empire seems to be a breeding ground for controversial doctrines."
Apelles took on a bemused expression. "Domina, is this land not the cradle of your Faith and thus of controversy? For example your Apostle Paul's letter to his converts at Corinth?"
"What do you mean?"
He motioned for her to sit in an ornate chair, then slumped onto a nearby bed, clutching his empty goblet.
"What were we discussing? Oh, yes…heresy. Even then Paul appealed to his fellow Christians to agree among themselves and avoid divisions. 'I have been told, my brothers'," Apelles recited from memory, "'by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this. Each of you is saying, 'I am Paul's man,' or 'I am for Apollos.' 'I follow Cephas,' or 'I am Christ's man.' Surely, Christ has not been divided among you'!"
Arcadia recalled, "Bishop Chrysologos at Ravenna preached on that Epistle."
"Nestorios, who fomented this latest heresy and once was exalted as Metropolitan of Constantinople, now is exiled to an obscure Egyptian oasis."
Arcadia continued questioning him. "Were you captured by al-Shams and forced to work for him?"
Apelles upended his empty cup and glanced around, searching for more wine. "Captured?" He shrugged and looked back at her. "Ohi, no. I studied Greek and Christian philosophy at the Gerasa Akademia, but abandoned both to train with an engineer in charge of the city's water supply and sewers. The outcome was less theoretical and much more…more useful."
"Then how did you come to be here?"
"I…I was hired by the abbot to install the monastery's water conduits"—Apelles sucked his lips in growing desperation to replenish his cup. "Latrines…two baths. I just explained about the copper boiler that heats water."
"Yes." And I wasn't really interested.
"After the monks fled, I still was here when the sheikh took over the compound."
"And al-Shams kept you on."
"As an unwilling designer of Vitruvian fortifications." The old engineer twisted the edge of a sheepskin covering his bed. "Now, I'm kept as his trained Greek monkey, dissipating away time on trifling inventions. Bacchus is my sole companion."
"Who is this sheikh?"
"Al-Shams is no fool." Apelles clipped his sentences short. "Came from a Bedouin camp northeast of here. Boasted of living in Gerasa. He saw wealth flowing along the Imperial Road from Egypt through Moab, Medaba, Philadelphia and on to Damascus. A temptation to 'share' in those riches grew stronger than the prospect of returning to trade sheep, donkeys, and camels." He abruptly stood, went to the cabinet, and refilled his goblet. He drank from the dripping vessel and returned with new wine stains spotting his tunic. "North wall. More cool." He forgot that he had shown Arcadia the device. "Domina, how did you come to be brought here?"
How much should I tell him? The old ebriosus would be too drunk to help me if I did have a chance to escape. "I was lured to a Carpocratian den. That's another heresy."
Apelles nodded slightly, "Al-Shams supplies the cult-master with girls."
"I should have suspected that. Most women I saw looked Bedouin."
Apelles sipped from his cup without reacting to Arcadia's comment. Other than muffled braying of animals outside, the only sound in the workshop was the soft click of a cogwheel as the water clock's pointer moved toward XI inscribed on a vertical shaft. Fading light in the room indicated the approaching eleventh hour.
Not satisfied, Arcadia probed further. "Sir, you said that you studied ethics. Don't you think supplying the girls is immoral? They're held as virtual prostitutes."
He flushed at the reprimand and examined his maimed fingers. "Bedu are poor. They make children to sell them."
"Like their sheep and donkeys? That's barbarous."
His mouth pursed in a cynical smirk. "Even your Christ said that the poor would always be with us."
"And Jesus ordered that those who wanted to follow him must feed and clothe them.
Apelles bolted up, spilling wine from his cup. "Men soon will come to bathe. I must ensure that my…my boy has not over-stoked the furnace."
"What will happen to me?"
"Domina, you will join the wives and concubines in the sheikh's harim."
"Hareem?"
"Women's quarters," he translated. "The word means 'secluded' in Arabic. There you will learn to so amuse him that he will not tire of you."
At his obscene prediction, Arcadia felt her stomach spasm. She turned away as tears welled in her eyes. This can't be happening to me in a Christian Holy Land. So much for thinking this drunken Greek might help me escape. Apelles is as much a prisoner of his wine here as I am of the sheikh. Her despairing thought was interrupted by the rasping call of a raven. When she looked in the bird's direction, it perched on a rafter, and was metal. The flapping wings, turning head, even the harsh voice, were caused by a mechanism operating within its body shell.
Apelles roused himself to boast, "Acheron, black as his namesake river, warns me that someone is near my door. When an intruder steps on a certain paving stone beyond my entrance, the corvine alerts me."
"So that's why we stepped around the paving stones."
"Indeed, you are perceptive."
The "intruder" was a richly dressed, impassive eunuch slave from the harim. Apelles told Arcadia that the sheikh had sent him to bring her to his building on the opposite side of the compound. He went to refill his cup without commenting further.
As she walked in front of the eunuch, who reminded her of the shaved Isis priests at Ravenna, Arcadia noticed rain clouds on the southern horizon, toward where she surmised that Jerusalem—and a frantic Getorius—must be. Nearby, two men piled brushwood into a pit at an altar stone. A framework of wooden poles was decorated with palm fronds. The cult shrine housed an upright stone similar to the one in Abd-al-Shira's courtyard, but she was too far to make out images cut into the surface.
Stables with three camels, sheep, donkeys, even a few horses, were to the far left. Arcadia caught a glimpse of Jameel. The lame she-camel was being groomed and decorated with greenery by women dressed in loose-fitting robes. Two young girls painted designs on the beast's padded hooves. Curious, all paused to look her way.
When Arcadia reached an intricately carved olivewood door leading into al-Shams' home, the sun-like symbol on the sheikh's forehead was carved on the stone lintel. A sun-deity al-Shams worships, she surmised as the silent eunuch pushed open the door and gestured for her to enter.
Apelles had converted an austere stone building that once housed the cells of Nestorian monks into a luxurious main house for the sheikh, a barracks area for his men, and separate quarters for women—both wives and concubines. The harim enclosure had a heated pool, garden, and ornate bedroom, where the sheikh met the woman he had chosen for the night: at supper his chief eunuch placed a seasonal fruit next to her plate.
The far end of an entrance atrium was curtained off with heavy silk drapes as protection from the cold, and to enclose a reception room furnished with a table and several chairs. Arcadia was ushered beyond the drapery into a small area where a corridor led to the left. She guessed that a closed door directly ahead opened into the sheikh's quarters. There was no sign that he was there.
The eunuch gestured that she should turn into the corridor. It smelled pleasantly of spices and incense rather than the burnt wood and manure odor that fouled outdoor cooking pits and animal pens. Lyre music sounded in the distance, accompanied by a soft tinkle of cymbals. Arcadia walked past a kitchen and common dining room similar to the one at the Serapion monastery. A short distance beyond, the entrance to a garden and the secluded women's quarters was blocked by a cedar-wood door. While the eunuch used a key to unbolt the portal, Arcadia felt it far past the time to again let Cosmas know where she was. Tears welling, she barely had time to whisper, "Be with me, Cosmas," before the door swung open and she was in a corridor that led to the harim of the red-haired Bedouin warlord, Amir al-Shams.
CHAPTER XIX
With Arcadia's brief supplication to her physician-saint on her lips and apprehension at what to expect, she walked ahead of the eunuch. How will I be able to talk to anyone? The sheikh's women only speak Arabic.
A reddish glow of evening light spilled into the garden from high, latticed windows on the right. The soft sound of string and tambourine music, and laughing female voices, came from the far end of palm trees and shrubs. Some plants still were in flower. A stone path led through the greenery toward a pool. . I need to find out more about this harim, as Apelles called it. Perhaps my guide understands Greek. She turned and asked, "Kyrios. Milate elenika?" The eunuch gave no sign of understanding. I forgot that he's mute. How could he?
