At the Via Bartolomei, Brenos squinted to the right, along a straight paved road. The crewman guide said it sloped up to Old Lugdunum, and the remains of its ancient Roman origins, but the driving snow obscured the height in a veil of opaque white.
Brenos and Fiachra were led to a two-story dwelling across from the brick basilican church. The building’s doorway was under a porch overhang, still free of snow. The abbot announced himself to the servant who answered the tinkle of the hanging bell. The man took them to a dining room, where a clergyman and his deacon were finishing supper.
“Presbyter Diviciac, you have visitors,” the porter announced.
Diviciac glanced up and stood to greet his unexpected guests, but Brenos introduced himself before the man could speak.
“I am Brenos, abbot of the Monastery of Culdees at Autessiodurum. My secretary, Fiachra.”
“An abbot? I’m honored”—Diviciac extended a hand—“and you’re…Hibernian.”
“My accent betrays me, Presbyter?”
“But not unpleasantly, Abbot. I’m Diviciac…this is my deacon, Epagnatos.” Brenos studied the thin-faced presbyter, who had intelligent brown eyes and a head that seemed larger than it was, due to a receding hairline, then heard him chuckle. “You look like snow creatures. Servilius, take their coats away to dry, move the brazier closer, and bring two more bowls and fresh bread. Refill the wine jug.”
The servant left and Epagnatos took the opportunity to excuse himself as well. Brenos glanced around the room, which was cold despite the glowing charcoal on a portable grate. A faded mural of a pagan river god decorated one wall. A warehouse scene on another was cracked down the center. He guessed that the house might have once belonged to a merchant, and was very old, perhaps even dating from the time of the Nazarene.
Servilius returned with the bread and wine, and an old woman who ladled thick soup from a tureen into the bowls.
“Abbot, Secretary, sit down, please,” Diviciac urged. “I hope barley pottage is to your liking. Take bread.” He watched Servilius pour wine into the goblets. “Well-watered, I’m afraid. Times are hard for my parishioners.”
Brenos murmured his thanks, then reached down with his spoon, scooped up ashes from the brazier and sprinkled them into his bowl, explaining, “Bishop Germanus observes this penance. I can do no less.”
“Indeed, Abbot. What…ah…brings you to Lugdunum at the cusp of winter?”
“A churchman’s business.” Brenos bent low to slurp a spoonful of gritty barley.
“Yes,” Diviciac observed, “you Hibernians are beginning to proselytize on the Continent. Do you plan to start an abbey…a monastery, here at Lugdunum?”
“No, but from what I saw in your streets, you could use a monk’s discipline.”
Diviciac snickered. “What should I do at Rome?” he quoted. “I have not learned the art of falsehoods. A falling tile can brain you—not to mention the contents of all those chamber pots, which people throw out their windows—”
“Make sense, man,” Fiachra interrupted.
“Have you not read Juvenal’s satire on the evils of Rome? It could just as well apply to our city, and yet Christ, of course, came to save sinners. Isn’t that how you understand the Testaments, Secretary?”
“Perhaps.”
“Fiachra,” Brenos admonished, “remember what we call The Three False Sisters. ‘Perhaps,’ ‘Maybe,’ and ‘I dare say.’”
“One of your triads I hadn’t heard about,” Diviciac admitted, “even though I’ve read some of your literature in translation.”
“Indeed? Yet, unlike us you continue to humiliate sinners with public confessions,” Brenos taunted. “Still, I would agree in the case of that whorish daughter of Eve who tried to entice me into sin as I came here.”
“Christ admonished against throwing the first stone, Abbot.”
Brenos reddened; who was this presbyter to counsel him? “The Nazarene consigned fornicators to eternal fire! Females—Eve’s descendants—are agents of Satan.”
“Come now, Abbot,” Diviciac cajoled, “Irenaeus, a bishop martyred here at Lugdunum, maintained that the Virgin Mary’s obedience untied the knot of Eve’s disobedience. Mary completed the cycle from Sin to Salvation.”
Brenos snorted and fell silent. Fiachra’s spoon made scraping noises as he scooped barley grains from the sides of his bowl.
“More pottage?” Diviciac asked amiably.
Fiachra pushed his bowl forward, but Brenos shoved it back and stood up. “Enough. Presbyter, have your servant show us our rooms.”
Diviciac nodded to Servilius. At the door the abbot turned back. “This bishop Irenaeus. He was martyred along with Saint Blandina?”
“Blandina? You know about her?”
“A young virgin who died witnessing for the Nazarene. Is there a shrine to her?”
“Yes, next to the arena where she was martyred. It’s across the river in Condate, an old Gallic community.”
“I…I would like to visit the site.”
“It’s in a hostile neighborhood,” Diviciac warned. “The presbyter over there makes little headway in countering holdover pagan superstitions.”
“Nevertheless,” Brenos insisted, “I shall go.”
“I’ll send Deacon Epagnatos with you in the morning.”
November twenty-second dawned with a brilliant sun that rose into a clear sky the color of a winter lake. The air was colder than the day before, but promised to warm up by afternoon. Diviciac was not there when Brenos and Fiachra came into the triclinium, but Epagnatos had arranged for a breakfast of bread, hard local cheese, and olives.
“You wish to see the shrine of Blandina?” the deacon asked, after the two monks were seated and had begun eating.
Brenos nodded.
“Bishop Eusebius gives an inspiring account of her death—”
“I’ve read it,” Brenos answered curtly. “We Hibernians pride ourselves on our learning.”
“Yet, Abbot, the saying is that pride often wears the cloak of humility.”
Brenos glanced up sharply. Was this deacon mocking him? “We should go to the galley first. I’m to meet my guide there by the third hour.”
Epagnatos stood up. “Finish breakfast and I’ll take you to the wharf.”
The fronts of Lugdunum’s north-facing buildings were glazed with sleet. A handspan of snow coated their rooflines, giving a kind of homogenous white beauty to the decaying stone and stucco structures. Icicles dangled from roof eaves, dripping water as they grew ever-slimmer in the glare of a bright morning sun.
At the Via Bartolomei, the paved road could be seen curving up beyond the city wall toward two semi-circular buildings that were
