ragged tunic hung drying over the shoulders of the fountain’s verdigrised statue of Neptune. Rivulets of water flowed in endless streams from the conch shells held by the god’s attendants.
Here and there children played outside small tents pitched beside decorative ponds. It was a peaceful scene.
The third pilgrim they consulted nodded enthusiastically and gestured toward a small building amid a stand of oak trees.
“He’ll be at the baths,” he said. “You can’t mistake him.”
When he entered the building’s caldarium Peter saw what the pilgrim had meant. Sitting in lonely majesty in the pool, Sarcerdus Rufus was the leanest man Peter had ever seen. His appearance was not improved by a head that had been shaved in the style favored by the pilgrims. His body was as hairless as a cod fish. He looked, Peter thought, like a skeleton, an animated saint’s relic.
Peter greeted the man and then trotted out the story he and John had concocted. He could sense his master standing silently behind him. It was discomfiting to be taking his place, playing his role in life. The whole venture was madness, he told himself.
“Of course, I’m always glad to tell my tale to a fellow pilgrim. Please feel free to join me. And perhaps your servant could bring refreshments?” Peter was startled by the booming voice that echoed like thunder around the marble chamber. How could an emaciated husk produce such an enormous noise?
Peter turned toward John, unsure whether he would be able to feign ordering him to carry out such a task, but his master was already slinking off in a most embarrassingly cringing manner. John was a much better actor than he could ever be, Peter thought.
In short time, Peter had stripped and lowered himself gingerly into the small pool. He was happy enough to bathe. Hesitantly he asked concerning the stories he had heard about the man sitting opposite him.
“Yes, yes, they are all true.” Sarcerdus nodded vigorously and leaned forward, causing hot water to slop in waves against Peter’s chest. “I journeyed here from very far off, from beyond the eastern end of the Euxine Sea. Months it took, and it’ll take months to soak off the dust of the journey.” He rubbed a finger along the bridge of his nose, which was as prominent as that of a shriveled Egyptian mummy. “But such is the lot of the pilgrim. Now, what business did you say you were in, Peter?”
“I provisioned the emperor’s armies.” And so he had, he thought, reminding himself of the years he had spent as a camp cook.
“Ah, of course, of course. Then you will be quite a wealthy man?”
“I fear I cannot match Sarcerdus Rufus in that regard, by all I have heard,” Peter replied truthfully enough.
The other man laughed much too loudly. “Nor do you need to, my friend, unless you are among those who feel any price is justified if it guarantees deliverance from the evil place!”
“But surely a devout person like yourself need not fear such a destination?” Peter did not have to mimic surprise.
“I wasn’t thinking of going there, but rather of deliverance from it. It may shock you to hear that, in fact, I have spent most of my life amidst the very fires of Hell.”
Peter expressed astonishment.
Sarcerdus smiled with delight at the prospect of telling his story once again. “Have you ever journeyed beyond Lazica, into the border regions?” he began. “A rhetorical question, I suppose, for few do. It’s an area always in upheaval and it’s such a long trip from anywhere civilized that the traveler can’t be certain whether he’ll arrive at his destination to find it an outpost of the empire or a recently annexed part of Persia.”
He splashed some of the seething water onto his face and rubbed vigorously at his nose.
“Now, I’m a Roman myself,” he went on. “My ancestors were captured by Shapur along with Emperor Valerian. I’m quite certain I am related to the latter, by the way, but that’s another story. Anyhow, my family settled out there. Our neighbors were happy enough to let us practice our own religion and we were even happier to make a few nomismata off them.”
Peter nodded wordlessly, trying to give the impression of being a man of the world and thus fully conversant with such situations.
“At any rate, since you haven’t been to those parts,” Sarcerdus Rufus went on, “I shall describe the area. I wish you could see it! There are places there where fire has burned endlessly throughout all of human memory. Mountains that smolder and give off a sulfurous stench like the pits of Hell. You would not dare set foot on them for the blistering heat, Peter, even if you had been brave enough to venture past the lakes of burning pitch boiling and bubbling at their feet.”
It was certainly easy to imagine such a place, sitting half submerged in the bath’s steaming cauldron. Peter wondered if someone had stoked the hypocaust too high.
“You can see the fires towering at night from many parasangs away,” his companion was saying. “You could read scripture by their infernal glow, provided you could keep it from bursting into flames first. I tell you, Peter, this place is so renowned that men go there to study its terrible qualities. Why, there are not only several sorts of pitch that burn but the very stones themselves are ablaze.”
“And Michael first began his ministry there, I hear?” put in Peter, who guessed the storyteller could spin out his tour of the nether regions for a long time if he was allowed to do so.
“Yes, indeed. It was on my land that he first gained prominence, and it was there also that I nearly forfeited my soul.”
Peter observed that he could scarcely believe such a thing.
“Why do you think I am here? To make amends, of course! To earn forgiveness!” Sarcerdus’ voice grew louder. Grape-like drops of sweat trembled, broke and rolled down the thin inclines of his face. “For when he first appeared, I ordered my servants to drive him away!” He slapped at the water as if it had offended him, sending more waves crashing around Peter.
“No! Impossible!” the latter exclaimed.
“But it was so, for I was blind, my friend. To be fair now, what did you think yourself, when you first heard rumors of his teachings, at the senate house perhaps or during one of the emperor’s banquets?”
“Well…”
“Exactly my point, Peter. But then you listened to his words and finally understood what he was saying.”
“That is true enough. I understood.”
“I was one who did not listen at first.” Sarcerdus ran a thin hand over the bald dome of his head as he stared up into the swirling steam gathering in the rafters above them.
“I own a great deal of land, Peter,” he went on. “There’s nothing I don’t grow or raise. Wheat, fruit, goats, cattle, but most of all I favor vineyards. One morning some time ago, one of my servants came riding up to the house to sound the alarm. ‘Master,’ he told me, ‘You must come at once, for we are being invaded.’”
“How terrible!”
“Oh, it isn’t unusual to be invaded where I lived. Sometimes it’s Persians, the next time it will be Romans and, if I recall aright, this particular time it was due to be Persians since there had been a Roman tax collector around the previous year, that being the usual way we know who is pretending to be in charge of the area. Aside from seeing who has the most soldiers out on the roads, of course. So I said to my man, ‘Get the wagon and I will take a tribute.’ As a man of the world, you’ll understand that’s what we call a bribe. They stop these minor skirmishes from escalating into invasions causing real damage. But he said, ‘No. It’s not that kind of invasion.’ I was intrigued, as anyone would be.”
He paused for a moment and Peter, genuinely entranced by the man’s story despite its length, urged him to complete the telling of it.
“As it happened, I had guests at the time,” Sarcerdus Rufus obligingly continued. “After my wife died, I enjoyed offering travelers hospitality for it made my house seem less lonely. I reveled in tales of far off places and was eager to have my ears filled with exotic stories. These particular guests had journeyed out to see the fires. Nothing unusual in that, for as I told you, the area is famous for it. They repaid my hospitality with some fine codices for my library, by the way. Codices are priceless, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”
Peter confirmed that he did. “And were your guests as curious as I about these invaders who were not invading?” he asked, trying valiantly to keep Sarcerdus to the point of his story.
“Indeed they were. So we all rode out to my finest vineyard. Did I mention that I breed the finest horses in
