“Or so the wine you drank made it appear.” Arcadia took his arm. “Let’s go, husband. The Gothic Queen is beckoning us.”
Chapter eight
The new moon had risen during the first night watch; now its slim crescent was visible through a scattering of clouds and accompanied by a retinue of dim stars. Although the rain had stopped several hours earlier, few citizens were in the streets. Corner bonfires threw sparks and smoke into the chilly air, and washed an orange light over civic guards who huddled around the blazes to warm themselves.
Galla Placidia had chosen the northwest quadrant of Ravenna, the Adriana, for her Basilica of the Holy Cross and new mausoleum.
The buildings were on high ground that had been enclosed by her son’s rebuilt walls. Here, older buildings were being razed to make room for the villas of senators and court officials who had followed Emperor Honorius to Ravenna almost four decades ago, after he made the port city his Western capital.
Merchants newly rich from government contracts and goods imported through Constantinople were also commissioning elegant homes in the quarter.
By now the rainwater had run down toward the Oppidum area, so the cobbled streets leading to the mausoleum were fairly well drained. A smell of burning pitch was strong on the damp air as the torchbearers moved ahead of the small procession. Placidia had removed her crown, and covered her hair with the hood of a white woolen cloak.
Renatus, following a pace behind her, expressed concern. “Empress, you should be carried in a litter. This mud will ruin your slippers and the hem of your magnificent tunic.”
“Archdeacon,” she quipped, “I’ve survived both the barbarian occupation of Rome and a Visigoth husband, so I can surely walk the short distance to my tomb. I’ll be carried there soon enough.”
“You don’t wish to be buried at Constantinople near your father?” Renatus asked, “or the Theodosian family tombs at Rome?”
“In these dangerous times, even dead I might not complete such a journey.”
“Empress—”
“No, Archdeacon. This way I can rest in the sight of Blessed Lawrence, and as a part of my Basilica of the Holy Cross.”
Sigisvult walked next to Renatus, ahead of his unwanted visitors, but said nothing.
Getorius and Arcadia, in the middle, could hear Theokritos behind them, complaining to Feletheus that the bottom of his toga was being soaked by puddles which the assistant had failed to point out.
A short distance along the Via Honorius the group passed under the Porta Asiana, all that remained of a gate in the old Augustan wall of the town’s northern limit. The wooden bridge over the Little Padenna River remained, but the stream bed had been paved over and was now used as a sewer. A new avenue named after Placidia’s second husband, Constantius III, also now deceased, had been laid parallel to the wall foundations. Half way along this street, the mausoleum was reached by a smaller intersecting way, already called Vicus Galla Placidia.
Sigisvult had moved ahead of Placidia, when the dark bulk of the basilica and its attached mausoleum loomed in the near distance. Several men whom he had hired to guard building materials were huddled around a bonfire. One of them looked up, then stepped forward to challenge the intruders, his spear held level.
“Pax, peace,” Sigisvult said quickly. “Guard, I’m the architect. My friends want a look at the mausoleum.”
The man grunted and lowered his weapon, but evidently recognized Placidia and managed an awkward salute. “Ave. Hail, Empr’ss.”
Sigisvult pressed a silver half-siliqua into his hand as he whispered, “Don’t let your companions know the Empress Mother is here. We won’t be long.”
“And tell him to stopper that wineskin,” Getorius muttered, watching the exchange. “He already smells like a harbor tavern at dawn.”
“There’s the mausoleum!” Arcadia exclaimed, “Sigisvult, I can’t wait to see the mosaics you described.”
The small cruciform building was at the south end of the narthex, a covered porch leading into the Holy Cross Basilica. Even by the sparse torchlight the austerity Sigisvult had described was evident. Blind arcades were the only relief in the raw brick walls, but the recesses gave a unifying motive to the twelve intersecting surfaces. Above, a squat tower concealed the domed ceiling of the interior.
At the unlocked door inside the narthex, Sigisvult hurried Galla Placidia into her building. Getorius knew he had bribed the guard, yet it would only be a matter of time until the man boasted of having protected the emperor’s mother from imaginary assassins, and other guards came to gawk at her.
The interior, which Getorius estimated to be about five paces wide and three times that long, smelled of damp mortar and fresh wood shavings, yet instead of the dank space he had expected, the building was warm from the heat of braziers left glowing to dry the mosaic grout. A slave was lying asleep on the floor, next to one of the iron grates. Sigisvult nudged the man awake with a foot and ordered him out. After the palace slaves had propped their torches in the scaffolding, he told them to wait outside.
As the group’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, the glow of the colored mosaic decorations materialized from the gloom. Getorius grasped Arcadia’s hand, gazing at the splendor of the entranceway mosaic, which depicted Christ as a benevolent shepherd.
“Exquisite,” Placidia murmured in a voice hardly louder than her breathing. “Most exquisite, Sigisvult.”
The depiction of Jesus as a beardless youth had more in common with the pagan god Apollo, than with ragged sheep herders in Judea. Christ wore a golden tunic decorated with two aquamarine stripes on the front, and the purple pallium of an Augustus lay across his lap. The Imperial Shepherd held a golden cross as a crook in his left hand, while he reached over to fondle the muzzle of the nearest sheep with the other. Five
