“Chafed from carrying a case with…that held my valuables for the journey.”
“An incredible accomplishment. You came all that distance from Gaul just to bury your monk.”
“As the Nazarene commanded us.”
Nazarene. Both the letter of Peter and the will papyrus used that archaic title in referring to Christ. That’s a definite connection with this man. “Abbot, you’ll have to lift your robe so I can examine the wound.” After Brenos complied, Getorius removed a dirty linen rag that was tied around the raw area. An inflamed area the size of his palm suppurated pus. “A very nasty wound, Abbot, the main source of your fever, but both your hot-cold and wet-dry humors are also seriously out of balance. I’m ordering an immediate warm bath, then the hospital sisters can apply a boiled symphytum root poultice to this wound—”
“Impossible,” Brenos objected, standing and tugging down his robe. “I’m to be at Behan’s funeral in two hours.”
“I advise against it, Abbot, you need medical treatment immediately. Can’t you write down something for the bishop to say?”
“No.”
“Perhaps the abbot could return immediately after the funeral,” Heraclius suggested.
“If it’s that important.”
“I assure you it is, Surgeon,” Brenos insisted. “Behan, unfortunately, died before he could preach a p—”
“Preach penitence,” Heraclius quickly interposed. “Come, Abbot, we must make you more presentable for the funeral.”
Strange birds, to flock together, Getorius thought, as he watched the two turn the corner into the atrium corridor. How had this Brenos connected with the emperor’s eunuch so quickly? The abbot had arrived in time for the Nativity, and Heraclius would be a powerful ally in a conspiracy. Arcadia had suspected as much, but Getorius couldn’t talk to her about it yet. She would be away all morning attending the last rites for Behan.
Because the Basilica Ursiana was being prepared for Nativity services, Behan’s funeral had been scheduled to take place in the church of Saint John the Evangelist. Galla Placidia had commissioned the smaller basilica as a votive offering to fulfill a vow she had made to the Apostle sixteen years earlier, after returning to Ravenna from Constantinople for the funeral of her half-brother Honorius. During a storm on the Adriatic, between Aquileia and the capital, she had prayed to John for her survival and that of her small son and daughter. “…Galla Placidia cum filio suo Placido Valentiniano et filia sua Iusta Grata Honoria Augusta liberationis periculorum maris votum solverunt,” read her dedicatory inscription. It definitively told everyone that her offering of the basilica to the Apostle had dissolved her debt to him for being rescued from the dangers of the sea. To make the votive more graphic, Placidia had ordered the miraculous rescue to be depicted among the mosaics in the apse.
Bishop Chrysologos, who had dedicated the basilica, was disturbed that it had since become the only island of Nicene orthodoxy in Ravenna’s port quarter, an area that was known as a refuge for Arian heretics. Three blocks north was the sect’s Church of the Resurrection, administered by a woman presbytera named Thecla.
Arcadia stood in the nave of the Basilica of John the Evangelist, behind the first scattered row of citizens who had come for Behan’s funeral. None had known the reclusive monk, so most came out of curiosity to hear a eulogy by the Hibernian abbot from far-off Gaul.
Beyond Behan’s oak coffin, sunlight filtered through alabaster windowpanes, illuminating the nave and apse mosaics with a soft glow. On the central arch, two scenes of Placidia’s rescue at sea flanked a picture of Christ giving the Book of Revelation to John the Evangelist. Below her apse votive inscription, members of the imperial family—Arcadius, Eudocia with Theodosius ii and their daughter Licinia Eudoxia, now the wife of Valentinian III—were shown in mosaics, on each side of Bishop Chrysologos, as he celebrated the dedicatory Mass in the company of an angel.
Arcadia felt good despite her ordeal in the icehouse. A deacon had arrived earlier that morning with the message that Getorius would be released after the midday watch, in a Nativity amnesty granted by the bishop.
She looked up again at the mosaics. Despite the troubled times, the elegant, formalized portraits were reassuring symbols of Roma Aeterna, Eternal Rome, a state and government, but also an attitude of mind that had endured for twelve hundred years. Neither disastrous defeats in war, civil anarchy, bloody dictatorships, mutinous legions, nor recurring barbarian invasions had destroyed the concept of Romanitas, a semi-mystical “Roman-ness” that survived and rose again, phoenix-like, after each calamity.
Constantine had hoped that the growing influence of Christians would act as a unifying force to institute a Pax Christiana, which would rival the Golden Age of Augustus as both a temporal and spiritual empire. It was ironic, Arcadia thought, that Christian fanatics like those who destroyed pagan temples and libraries and had murdered the Alexandrian woman philosopher Hypatia, went against Constantine’s vision of peace. And now this Hibernian abbot was attempting to bring about the horrifying apocalyptic vision in John’s book.
Arcadia stroked her bruised fingers, where fragile scabs were forming, and glanced at Bishop Chrysologos sitting on a cedar wood throne behind the altar table. The golden light coming in through seven apse windows silhouetted the bishop, his presbyters, and deacons in a heavenly radiance.
Arcadia turned with the others when the echo of the front doors opening sounded through the three aisles of the nave. Brenos limped in, the thump of his pilgrim’s staff accompanying the slap of his worn sandals on the mosaic floor. She noticed that he had cleaned himself, and had his beard and tonsure trimmed. The abbot’s stained robe had been
