When Brenos took his place next to the coffin, he looked flushed and exhausted.
Arcadia noted that he seemed startled, and that he glanced around nervously, after he saw the funeral pallium covering the oak box. The linen cloth was embroidered with a Christogram, X P, set in the center of a palm wreath and flanked by the Greek letters A Ω—alpha and omega. Why did the common funerary symbols upset him? Perhaps Hibernians did not know the Greek language.
Brenos scrutinized the people in front of him for a moment, as if expecting to recognize someone, then he held up his pilgrim’s staff.
“Brothers,” he announced in a hoarse voice, ignoring any women in the gathering, “I show you thirty-two notches, one for each of the days I spent traveling here from Gaul to bury a holy one. My brother, Behan, was sent among you in Ravenna to preach a prophecy, but was called by the Nazarene before he could do so.”
A prophecy? Arcadia thought, excited now. And he uses the archaic term, “Nazarene.”
“A prophecy,” the abbot continued, “that will be fulfilled before the cock crows again.”
By morning! Rabbi Zadok was right. Is there a duplicate will, or does the abbot expect his accomplices to find the original by then? Arcadia half-expected Brenos to produce another golden case from under his robe and pull out a papyrus for all to see, but he went on.
“What is this prophecy? I tell you, brothers, that the vineyard of the Nazarene has gone unpruned for too long. Unruly shoots choke out the fruits. Weeds grow among the good seed that must be harvested and burned. Agents of Satan destroy the good seed. A harvest is at hand for the winepress of God, which John saw in his vision, and yet the faithful mill about like sheep unsure of their shepherd.”
The man isn’t making much sense, Arcadia thought. His metaphors are from the Testaments, but garbled…grapes and weeds with sheep. The abbot supposedly came here to eulogize Behan, yet has barely mentioned his monk.
Arcadia noticed Bishop Chrysologos shift on his throne and whisper to Tranquillus, his presbyter at the Basilica of the Holy Cross. She thought the bishop was probably as mystified as she was at the abbot’s erratic diatribe.
Even though the basilica was cold, Brenos wiped perspiration from his face with a sleeve before continuing. “Rav…Ravenna, is the dwelling p…place of the Harlot revealed to John in his vis…vision.” He was stuttering now, in a spray of spit droplets that were backlit by the apse windows. “I…I saw this in a vision of my own. Riches, scarlet and purple cloth. Gold, pearls…a golden cup…idols drunk on the wine of fornication.
“Only the holy ones, those who have renounced these things…we disciples of Ciallanus…will be saved after the Nazarene comes to judge the world. The Slaughtered will become the Slaughterer. We monks, ‘holy fools’ to some, will rule like kings over the earth. Who then will be the fool?”
Arcadia was stunned at the implication of the abbot’s words. The man is advocating a theocratic government run by his order, yet Christ insisted that his Kingdom was not of this world. And even Theodosius hadn’t dared to advance such a concept. This Behan was threatening to do no less than the Egyptian Christian fanatics, but this time his wrath would be directed against entire Judean communities.
Arcadia saw Chrysologos tug at Tranquillus’ sleeve and nod toward the abbot. The presbyter came down the apse stairs to stop him, but Brenos shrugged off his hold. “The Nativity vigil!” he shouted. “That is when the Gallican League mandate will be revealed! The fulfillment of my prophecy.”
Tranquillus whispered to Brenos and gestured toward the people. Arcadia turned to see some of them hurrying back to the entrance, either confused or frightened at the man’s incoherent words. What was this Gallican League he had mentioned?
When Arcadia looked around again she was surprised to see Publius Maximin peering out of a door that led to the Diaconicon, a storage and vesting room to the left of the altar.
Maximin? Why would the senator bother coming to Behan’s funeral? And what is he doing in an area reserved for the clergy?
After Maximin slipped out of the room and made his way along the side aisle to the front entrance, Arcadia looked back at the apse. Tranquillus was guiding the abbot around the coffin; Brenos evidently had agreed to end his eulogy and proceed with the interment.
At the burial ground alongside the basilica, Arcadia watched in relief as the first clods of earth were thrown onto the oak lid of Behan’s coffin. The Greek word koimeterioi came to mind. Her tutor in that language had said Christian Greeks called their burial places “dormitories,” where the elect would sleep until the vision of John was fulfilled, and Death and Hades gave up the dead who had been in their keeping. Death would be no more. The Risen Saints would enter the New Jerusalem in a Glorified Body, where God would live with them, and wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Behan, Arcadia mused, would awaken and stagger in with a golden, but frigid, surprise in his belly.
Brenos was taking off the funerary stole he had borrowed when he found the folded note under his volume of penitentials. It said that Smyrna would have him picked up at Galla Placidia’s mausoleum, and he would be taken to the villa again.
The time, during the second night hour, was later than he would have liked. It would be totally dark then, and the Nativity vigil readings would take place only five hours later. Yet, on reflection, Brenos thought the lateness might be reassuring. Smyrna had undoubtedly located the papyri and wanted to turn them over to him. As a co-celebrant of the Mass, he could easily find an opportunity beforehand to conceal the documents in the proper section of the codex. Then the last testament of Christ would be revealed by an abbot of
