Well, good. Nothing to tie me to Augustine either, and thus no more of his trash. No angry Monica, his mother, forever nipping at my heels with nasty chat. No disapproving stares from the congregation or the various mentors and clerks. No stinking northern cities, no sea voyages to make me puke, no ridiculous northern perceptions about decent clothing, and no bloody snow. None of that, and good riddance.
And to my eternal sorrow, no child, for whose death Augustine will – if there is truly a God and that God has any concern for justice – spend at least a little time in the hell he so drearily contemplates for having fathered the boy on me in the first place. Adeodatus died in a wayside inn, and not all the noble metals nor fast horses could have brought me there in time to hold his hand. Nor save him – because if one might will one impossible thing, why not two, or a multitude? Show me but once how to bend the laws of fate, and I will tie them in such knots as shall make your head spin, and out of this single wretched piece of twine I will weave a paradise, bend the world back upon itself until it is truly glorious, and that word means once again what it pretends.
It was impossible that I come to my son in his time of need, and no fault of mine – so why does the word ‘mother’ feel like a coal in my chest?
We’ve reached wherever we’re going.
*
I suppose the overwhelming likelihood is that if I was going to be murdered, I’d be dead. Instead, I’m just sitting here, and I’ve a growing sense that this is something else – something that perhaps belongs not to Augustine at all, but to me. They’d have me believe otherwise, these brave men who manhandle sleepy women from their beds in the small hours, but note well: it’s a clean sack. In fact, it’s positively the luxe model, no splinters of wood or bits of hay or beetles. It isn’t a silk hood, either, so the erotic sort of foolishness is at least somewhat off the table. This sack, then, is just a sack, but one with the barest trace of … respect? Or in the alternative, they don’t do this all the time and have therefore gone out to the market and bought a shiny new sack, just for me. In some way I’ve become important in my own right, and that means that I have bargaining power.
How very, very interesting.
Of course, I want no part of it, whatever it is. I am retired not only from coital vagabonding but also from high political and religious intrigues – not that I ever really got involved in that, it was just on the fringes of Augustine’s life. It certainly never appealed to me at all.
Down, girl.
They keep me waiting for a while – on quite a comfortable day bed with a fine cover and decent cushions. And there’s something wrong about this place, for all its likely finery, something nervous and astray. You can taste it in the tense, clipped exhalations and the muted discussion. No one wants to be noticed. No one wants to draw the eye of what has come. I wonder if it’s a plague.
I dealt with a plague last year: a small demon, inhabiting a well, or perhaps it was just bad water and rats. It hardly matters. I used fire and salt and the prayer of John the Baptist, also called Johannes Fontus, who watches over springs and freshets. When I was a child, I learned the song of his severed head upon the water, and it is known to drive out the lesser beasts of Angra Mainyu. If one has such a thing, why not use it? At least, I never knew a plague made worse by holy songs. For the sake of argument, I also had them drive out the vermin, drain the whole cistern and burn it dry, then rake out the ash and reline it. Vastly expensive, and there was a lot of grumbling, but do you know: one or the other did the trick. That’s why my prices are high these days. I actually get results.
Then abruptly I’m afraid again, like lighting a taper. It starts as something a little like rationality: perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps I’ve made myself logistically problematic in someone’s great game, a deal of provinces and property and trade. It wouldn’t be unknown for a merchant to poison a well to drive out the people and pick up land on the cheap. But it’s not that. This isn’t anything real, it’s a bad ghost on my back. There’s a draught coming from somewhere. My skin is tingling. My mind helpfully conjures images of ants crawling over me, up under the lip of the sack, into my clothes. Ants. Spiders. Snakes. And: what’s that noise?
Fanciful nonsense brought on by rude awakening. Get it together, Athenais, because there are feet coming, and feet mean the beginning of whatever this is.
But still I tell you: something is wrong here. There is something out of alignment, something coming from the wrong direction.
And then, whoosh. Sack: gone. Novacula: to hand. Bright. Big room, torches, guards and more guards.
And more guards. Mmph. Alas, then, we shall shelve the possible stabbing for a more opportune moment. Big fellow, legionary, apologetic face. I think I recognise his shoulders: I think he carried me across them in the first mad rush from my house. I sniff in his direction, but all legionaries smell of rust and armpit, there’s nothing to choose between them by the nose. He has the grace to look – if not abashed – at least professionally neutral.
‘Books,’ he murmurs. ‘Scrolls. Water and tea for your convenience. You will not wait long.’
I give my coldest shrewish-aunt face. It bounces off. He must have aunts of his own. Then, too, he’s a little bit charming, and even aunts are not immune to that sort of thing. A pursed lip does not indicate a woman who has never wanted to chew a man’s chest and smear herself all over him. No indeed. He’s about my age, and handsome with it. Under other circumstances, I would not have objected to close contact with his shoulders.
‘Learnèd,’ he murmurs. ‘This was necessary. We could not take the chance you would not come immediately. Wait, and take this day as you find it.’ I recognise that tone. It’s the one professional soldiers use to one another when the bullshit’s over and the barbarians are all but in the fort. I recognise it because I was actually in a fort, not so many years ago, that came under siege. We won, of course.
(It was a slaughter. Howling cattle rustlers versus an iron claw bristling with affront and sharp edges. The outcome was never in doubt, but it was never in doubt because the men treated it as if it was. To the idiot brigands they extended the same lethal courtesy they would an army of Persian Immortals. They drew up an order of battle, baited and enticed the enemy, then smashed them between two armoured fists. Civis romanus sum, and I thank God for it. Rome is still mighty.
So that mode, that straightforward tone? I recognise it for the sound of a coming rain of shit.
He sees me take notice and grunts approvingly, then leaves me with, yes: books. Scrolls. Texts. Alchemical ones, expensive ones. Possibly illegal ones. I wonder if I could get a few of these out in the discarded sack.
Campaign table, campaign chairs. No cushions, no day bed, no quartet: that at least is something. But there’s a bad flavour to the reading matter, a direction of study is implied that I would rather was not. You could almost read it as an indictment.
More shivers. I’d swear this was a cellar. How is there possibly a breeze? The legionaries feel it, too, scowl at it.
A moment later, the author of my misfortune arrives.
My first thought is that I’ve been kidnapped by a committee and this is the secretary. He’s a dour-faced man in a priest’s cloak and cowl, but he’s etiolated: almost absurdly tall and thin with matching fingers, so that he looks like a langoustine. That resemblance is reinforced by his odour: he smells of the harbourside, of fish guts and seagull shit. Father Fish. Or, better, Father Fishy, since this is a disreputable sort of business for a good vicar. He’s from the church of Peter the Fisherman, what was the old Temple of Portunes, or I’m a goose. A good Christian, no doubt, if you’re prepared to stretch a point about the incomplete assimilation of small pagan gods into the canonical architecture. Since the Emperor Theodosius made the worship of pagan deities a crime a couple of years ago, that ‘if’ is rather a large one and depends on the mood of your local spiritual authority. In this case, that authority is Augustine, and for all that I am angry with the man and
will be until I die, I will not tell you he is a bad priest. He loathes the intolerance of Donatism – he is, after all, a former heretic himself – even as he feels an obligatory compassion for its suffering root. He is prepared to take the long view and gentle his enemies into agreement on both sides. In consequence, Carthage and its surroundings do have a more Christian air than other places beyond his writ, at least as I understand the term, but at the same time there are all kinds of not-quite-heresies running about, each adding its own little apocrypha to the story of the godly carpenter. Or maybe the Orphic wanderers have it right, and the different gods are but aspects of one vast and incomprehensible thing that exists so far beyond us that we have not the means to describe it, save by this accretion of divine surfaces. Perhaps God is an object with an infinite number of faces only a limited few of which can be viewed from a single point, but each of which may view us from all sides at once. That would sit well with the discipline of alchemy, in which almost everything is representative of something else: a cavalcade of masks behind masks, gods revealed in elements and geometry in gods. Less well with the Holy Father in Rome, no doubt, but contrary to what he may believe, God does not have to heed his opinion. Although I suppose it would be polite at least to listen to it.
Speaking of holiness: how many Peterine priests are there in Carthage? More than enough. It’s a prime living for a certain class of office-holding cleric, a respectable distance from the episcopal seat in Hippo Regius, and ideal for those either not entirely converted or not perfectly adherent to minor niggles like the true Church’s doctrines on sexual self-discipline. I like our priests, in general, but I don’t know this one, which means he’s serious and even pious. So how many true believers are rich enough to afford the trim on that robe I see peeping out beneath his cloak? Not so many, but still a few.
And of those, which one works the seafront and reputedly looks like a prawn?
A pause for reflection, and then certainty. This is called kairos: the hanging instant in which all may be gained. Watch while I practise the black arts.
‘Julius Marcus Cassius’ – you kidnapped me, dickface – ‘I have been expecting you.’ And for deep, prophetic reasons I always await abduction by local religious leaders in my smallclothes, and prepare for the inevitably jouncy chariot ride by dining on turbot with white sauce. I find the nausea helps one deal with difficult conversations enormously.
But it seems he believes me. Oooooh, spooky! I have penetrated his disguise with my special uterus magic. Father Fishy looks as if he knew all along this was a bad idea – meddling with alchemists always is, and girl alchemists are worse than all the others because they have internal pee parts. I’m treated to diverse gestures of warding against evil. I have personally conducted experiments into these gestures and determined that they are worth the same weight in gullspit. I remain unsmote by the lightning.
‘I’m waiting, flamen. I do have other places to be.’
I probably shouldn’t call him ‘flamen’. It’s not a Christian term, and it sort of implies he’s a heretic. It’s one thing to be working in the name of the Lord to lead your wayward flock into the true Church, sloughing the ignorance of idolatry and revealing by increments the face of the Christ. It’s another to maintain a working temple to a forbidden demon. Even Augustine would draw the line there, and stoning is no one’s idea of a pleasant day. The good father hasn’t got over the trick with his name, either, he’s looking … ehh, hm. I’m a bit worried he may swallow his own teeth. Well done, Athenais, it’s always good for lone women travelling by sack to terrify powerful men. They love that. And it’s not as if you can go crying to the Bishop of Hippo for support and sanctuary. He made that ever so clear.
But, bless the old gods or the new one, it seems that Father Fishy is not the type to expire of apoplexy, so on to the main event: How did you know it was me? I carry no device, blah blah.
I’m about to tell him the truth, but I catch sight of yet more wiggling fingers and it annoys me. He might just as well stand on a chair and shout ‘Witch!’
‘Father, please stop that. St Peter Portunes has more important things to do this night. The fishing fleet is out and there’s a gale coming in from the west.’ Hogwash – or rather, there may be, and if there is I’m in good shape and if there isn’t I can always say that of course there wasn’t, because I said Peter was working on it, and he’s the Rock of the Church. ‘I’m an alchemist, Julius Marcus. No doubt this is why you sought me out. The Angel Aeolus carries my shopping and his brother Gabriel of the Caduceus flows in my blood. I am the birdsong and the breeze, the Mother’s mercy and the Father’s love. Set out your needs that I may judge them and give solace, or bring me home, lest I decide I am offended by your presumption.’
That’s not how I talk when I’m buying groceries, by the way, that’s exclusively for when there’s a pissing contest going on, most usually with a man. I’m working the angle, setting out my stall – or, if you prefer, defining the exquisite contours of my bullshit – and Father Fishy gets more and more unhappy and alarmed, but at the same time he is, I trust, more and more convinced that he’s abducted the right witch. I think I’m being relatively charming. By rights, he should be covered in boils by now, or viewing the world from the perspective of a frog. I’m curious, though. He’s got a problem so bad that kidnapping a Roman citizen in the middle of the night rather than just coming to my door and asking for help seemed like the obvious solution. He thinks I have the answer and I don’t think he means to coerce it from me, I think he actually hadn’t got to this part of the plan and now he’s winging it. He’s in all kinds of trouble, if so, and of course if I’m equal to the problem he can’t solve, then by definition I’m scarier than he is, and he’s hoping he can get by without my noticing which of us holds the power in that situation.
‘Speak, man! Get on with it!’
I fix him with my aunt-stare, and this time it finds purchase. Fishy gulps. The pressure within overcomes the desire for priestly cool, and he fairly shouts:
‘Cornelius Severus Scipio is dead! He was murdered in the Chamber of Isis.’
I hear the words, and then I sort of hear them again, as you do when something is so awful it makes no sense, and then I hear them again and again, and Father Fishy stares at me with his fishy eyes and his entreaty, his warding fingers wrapping around themselves until he’s clasping them in what ought to be prayer but is directed to my address.
I manage not to say ‘Fucking tits of Zeus’.
*
Cornelius Severus Scipio is dead! He was murdered in the Chamber of Isis.
There is, I swear, absolutely no part of what I have just been told that is good news, but almost the worst bit is that Fishy, who is if not a prince of the Church at least a respectable minor lord, thinks he’s found the Chamber of Isis.
And worse than that, it seems he has. I know, because I’m looking at it.
We’re standing in the room with it now: a big, airy room full of all the expected trimmings – rich silks and fine tapestries, expensive art. That marble nymph over there might be by Phidias – if I just grabbed it and ran off, I’d be financially secure for the rest of my life. You’d think they’d make an impression – but they don’t. No more do the people, the legion hardcases and their new recruits, all of them just accidentally resting with hands by their weapons. The whole crowd and all the wealth is so much mist. It doesn’t matter that it’s full of life and matter, this room is all but empty. There’s me, and there’s the Chamber, and we’re alone together.
From without, the Chamber – more commonly known as the Chamber of Solomon, and Father Fishy can have a point in his favour for knowing better than to call it that – is like a great wooden egg lying half-sunk into the floor. It is segmented, so that it can be taken apart for transport, but the joins are very fine indeed. You have to get within a hand’s span before you can see them without a lens. The wood is dark and old and dense. It must have been monstrous to work it to this smooth
ness. I can smell beeswax and resin, but no damp. When I touch it, the surface is cool, almost as if it were metal instead; when I take my hand away, there’s a faint outline of condensation. I want to taste it with my lips. I think it would be salty, dry and wet at the same time, like Pecorino with oil.
It’s probably best that I don’t lick the sacred relic in front of Father Fishy. In any case, I’d much prefer to turn around and run away, leaving it as far behind me as I can. That’s how much it frightens me, or frightens the part of me that thinks and worries. The thing itself, though, is transgressively seductive: so physically appealing, so sensuous, like a bad suitor who knows exactly how to smile to weaken your resolve. For all that it’s been the scene of a murder, Father Fishy is awfully proud of it, the way my son was with some contraption of sticks and mud. He’s looking over his shoulder at me to see if I approve, and the closer I get the more I hate it, the more I feel cold and sick. I give him an impressed little smile, and he fairly curtseys at the small vindication.
There’s no question what it is. It absolutely reeks of divinity: implausibly well made, elegant, felicitous. You can recognise the products of miracle because they make the merely human feel awkward and crude.
This thing is clearly miraculous – it’s too brutally perfect and too gorgeous to be anything else. The room feels darker than it ought to with all these lamps, quieter than it should with all these people in it. The murals on the walls are washed out.
‘Does it look like a breast to anyone else?’ My voice, harsh and stupid. ‘Because it looks like a breast to me. I imagine that’s the idea, of course, fertility and fecundity and so on. But you’ve got it guarded by legionaries, Julius Marcus, and sooner or later one of them is going to hump it. That’s the trouble with our soldiers being fearless: they’ve got no sense of proportion!’ Everyone’s staring at me, which is what I wanted. This is an exorcism – my first of the day, so we’ll call it a warm-up. ‘You, soldier: where are you from?’ Picking a face at random, young and star-struck.