The sailors talked among themselves while erecting a leather canopy in the patrol galley’s center as protection against the weather. Brenos understood enough of their regional Celtic dialect—Gallo-Roman descendants of the Aedui—to gather that renegade warriors from the Germanic Burgondi made regular raids on river communities. He had already seen burned and abandoned villas on the riverbanks standing as mute testimony to the barbarians’ incursions.
Feeling a gust of wind, the abbot glanced out at the muddy, swift-flowing river, whose surface was rapidly being coated with a slush of icy sleet. The crew had mentioned that the normally sluggish Arar was swollen by fall rains, and was now flowing more rapidly to its conjunction with the Rhodanus River at Lugdunum. Brenos had smugly attributed that fact to an act of Divine Providence for his own benefit, yet inexplicably the snow squall was metamorphosing into a full-scale winter storm, blustering down out of Gothiscandza.
The abbot slipped a hand under his coat and felt at the bulge beneath his tunic. The case strapped next to his body containing the Gallican League Charter was reassuring. Even though the waxed leather cylinder had started to rub a raw wound in his side, that was a small enough discomfort for bringing the work of the Nazarene to completion. Even the snowstorm was merely another test of his resolve.
At Cabillonum, after the galley had pushed out into the current and the men started rowing, they had begun to chant verses in harmony with their oar strokes. Without understanding all of their dialect, Brenos was nevertheless convinced, from the raucous answering refrain of the barge crew, that the words boasted of carnal intercourse with women.
The singing eventually ceased, its words carried off in the howl of the wind.
Brenos was dozing when he was startled by Warinar’s voice saying, “Abbot, you’ll find ‘The Queen of Gaul’ looking a bit ragged.”
He sat and turned around to squint at the red-faced guide. “Queen? Who?”
“Lugdunum.” Warinar pointed to the fuzzy outline of buildings materializing on a high ridge in the distance. “After that Dalmatian emperor made Treveri the new prefectural capital, the Queen lost out. They insulted her again a few years ago by moving the mint south to Arelate.”
“Where do we go from Lugdunum?” Brenos asked, taking advantage of Warinar’s willingness to speak, which he attributed to the guide’s anticipation of spending the night in the city’s taverns, or even worse, establishments of the flesh.
“The way I came, Cularo to the Genevris pass, then down to Taurinorum in the Padus Valley. We’ll pick up the Via Fulvia and—”
“And they’ll dig out three stiff corpses in the spring,” Liscus interposed with a hoarse chuckle.
“Corpses?” Brenos repeated, alarmed. “What do you mean, Tribune?”
“Word came yesterday, Abbot. Snowstorms have closed both the pass and the mountain roads that lead into Italy.”
“But I came through there only a week ago,” Warinar recalled.
“Then some god smiled on you,” Liscus said. “This time Taranis would bury you in his frozen spit.”
“Warinar, what does this mean?” Brenos demanded. “Isn’t there another route?”
“A longer one. We could take a barge down the Rhodanus to Massilia. Easy enough—it’s with the current. Then pick up a merchant galley to Pisae…if we can find a master foolish enough to risk his boat and cargo in winter.”
“A sea voyage?” Brenos recalled his short but nauseating sail across the narrow channel from Britannia to Gaul. “Isn’t there another land route?”
“The Via Julia Augusta from Arelate, and across to the Mediterranean coastal road.”
“Either way you’d be pissing into the wind,” Liscus warned. “That Visigoth king, Theodoric, is making trouble down there, wanting to own the whole Narbonensis coast. The prefect at Arelate is working out a treaty with him, but the city is sealed off. There probably isn’t a bargemaster in the region who would risk going downstream now.”
Brenos frowned at the prospect of a delay. “Do you have any suggestions, Tribune?”
Liscus blew on fingers numb from the cold, then advised, “Stay in Lugdunum until spring, Abbot, or go back to your monastery while the road is still open.”
“No, that’s unacceptable. I must reach Ravenna.”
Liscus shrugged and eyed the snow-covered wharves and a bridge at the lower city, which his galley was rapidly approaching. “Retract oars,” he yelled to the crew. “Prepare for docking.”
Brenos watched wharf slaves shamble out from the shelter of a warehouse portico and catch ropes tossed to them from the two boats. After passing the coils through holes in stone mooring dogs, they pulled the vessels tight against the dock. When crewmen maneuvered a gangplank into place, Brenos wondered about a place to spend the night.
“Tribune, is there a presbyter’s residence nearby?”
“The Basilica of Paul the Apostle is on the Via Bartolomei. The closest residence would be near the church.”
“Where?”
“By the Bridge of the Three Gauls. The Bartolomei leads up to the old forum and theaters, but there are inns, Abbot, here along the wharves.”
Brenos looked at the warren of streets beyond the warehouses. A few people still bought food at vendors’ stalls, but the storm had forced most citizens home. Or to taverns, he surmised from the sounds of loud laughter coming from the curtained doorways of those facing the river.
A young woman in a fur cape, open in front to show a clinging red-silk tunic, gestured to him from another entrance alongside the tavern. Brenos turned away quickly. Rented rooms would be above one of the taverns, or worse, situated among the cubicles of the woman’s brothel.
“Have one of your men escort us to the presbyter’s house,” he ordered Liscus. “I’ll not spend the night among prostitutes and drunken louts. Warinar, what about the horses?”
“I…got a friend at the…uh…‘House of Eros,’” the guide stammered. “I’ll shelter our mounts there, and see about getting a barge to Massilia in the morning.”
Brenos scowled—the name of the ‘house’ was description enough—but did not protest the arrangement. “Then meet me here at the galley by the third hour. Tribune, I’m ready.
