The Fire Waker Read online

  To those who fight and suffer in wars and against those who wage them

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My gratitude goes to many: among them, to the friends of the Archaeological Museum at Biassono (Milan) for their generosity in sharing written and illustrative material on ancient Northern Italy; to Major General Giorgio Battisti, Italian Forces in Afganistan/ISAF, for his welcome advice and conversations on men at war; and, as always, to my agent Piergiorgio Nicolazzini, to Philip Patterson, and to Peter Wolverton and the whole crew at St. Martin's. Need I add that the episode of Aelius's generosity to the beggar was inspired by the life of the Press's namesake, a soldier and saint of ancient Pannonia?

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  Aelius Spartianus—imperial envoy, historian, and regimental commander

  Agnus—known as Pyrikaios, or the fire waker, Christian healer

  Casta—previously known as Annia Cincia, Christian deaconess

  Curius Decimus—aristocrat, officer in the Palace Guard

  Baruch ben Matthias—Jewish former freedom fighter, artist, and entrepreneur

  Marcus Lupus—brickyard owner

  Minucius Marcellus—judge in Mediolanum

  Lucia Catula—his wife

  Isaac—ben Matthias' son-in-law, Lupus's brickyard supervisor

  Fulgentius Pennatus—brickyard owner

  Sido—head of Mediolanum criminal police

  Gallianus—army physician

  Duco —Briton-born officer, Aelius's colleague

  Frugi, Otho, Dexter and Sinister, Vivius Lucianus, Ulpius Domnius —

  Roman officers, members of Decimus's "Cato's Sodality"

  Protasius —Judge Marcellus's secretary, a former Christian

  Aristophanes —eunuch, imperial chamberlain

  Justina —Aelius's mother

  Belatusa —Aelius's sister

  Barga, Gargilius —Aelius's brothers-in-law

  Diocletian, Constantius, Galerius, Maximian —the joint emperors, or tetrarchs

  Constantine —Constantius's son

  Helena —former imperial concubine, Constantine's mother

  Maxentius —Maximian's son

  Anubina —Aelius's Egyptian former lover

  Thermuthis —Egyptian brothel-keeper

  Nihil enim extra totum est, non magis quam ultra finem

  In fact, there's nothing beyond totality, nothing beyond the end

  —Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Happy Life

  ... a mutable surface, where the eye never encounters a resting place, and is led to slide along a faint chiaroscuro, now and then interrupted by deep furrows, and circumscribed in a brusque and nearly brutal way by masses that represent hair and beard...

  —R. Bianchi Bandinelli, "The Pain of Living," from

  Rome: The End of Ancient Art

  TINDER

  Baruch ben Matthias to Commander Aelius Spartianus, greetings. If I didn't know any better, this could be Vindobona or Intercisa rather than Confluentes: Army posts are all the same. By now I can find my way around with my eyes closed. One-third of a mile square, barracks right, command post left, officers' quarters swarming with deadly bored orderlies who'd sell their mother for a transfer. Even commanding officers are beginning to resemble one another; they all look like middle-aged troopers thickening at the waist.

  Speaking of which, Commander, I met your two brothers-in-law at Castra ad Herculem on the Danube: quarts of beef on legs, if you allow me. No wonder you do not go often to family reunions. Were you aware that you are now an uncle to seven nephews and nieces?

  I will not bore you with the details of my travels and endeavors in the past month. Suffice to say that I left Egypt shortly before you, and here I am. Business is good, as I have widened my artistic and commercial scope to include sculpted epitaphs (in prose and in verses, with and without portrait of the defunct). Otherwise, aside from the economy, the situation on the north-eastern border is what you probably already know. There's no keeping aliens out, army or no army. For any three of them who are ferried back across the Danube, ten more sneak through by night. As long as an empire needs cheap labor, or ferry-men make a tidy living at the traffic, the matter of illegal settlement within the borders will stand.

  But you are probably asking yourself the reason for my letter, so I come to the point. You may remember my daughter (the one whose cakes we ate at Antinoopolis when we met last year, and whose marriage was celebrated in Rome shortly thereafter). Her husband, Isaac, who is a German-born Jew, works as a supervisor in a brick factory south of here. Last week the owner of the brickworks, a man called Lupus, died of a malignant fever and, after all due ceremonies, was buried in the family plot. You may imagine my son-in-law's astonishment, Commander, upon returning to work this morning and finding Lupus at his desk, looking none the worse for his illness, death, and apparent resurrection. A fairy tale, you will say, or else Jewish exaggeration. None of it! My relative does not drink, unlike me he is an observant Jew unlikely to tell a lie, and besides, awe and fear struck all employees at the Figlinae Marci Lupi, to the extent that a couple of them took sick and several ran away swearing not to resume their work ever.

  Now, of you — other than having fought against you nearly ten years ago —i" know these things: that despite your barbarian origins you are educated, courageous, respectful of your gods but no more than it befits a high-ranking officer, and exceedingly curious. As a historian, you might be interested in recording that at the close of Our Lord Diocletian's reign (may he be preserved, etc., as the formula goes), a dead man was brought back to life in the province ofBelgica Prima. As an investigator with imperial leeway to inquire, you might wish to discover just what took place at Noviomagus. All I can add to my report is — but you presume this surely — that Lupus is a Christian, prosecution against his kind not having progressed in this neck of the woods, according to our Caesar Constantius's (may the gods, etc.) tolerant view of the sect.

  Keep in mind that I shall divide my time along the Rhine between Confluentes and a charming spot called Bingum, south of here. Will I ever get used to such silly city names? In Confluentes you 11 find me one door down from the keg-maker Erminius. Best regards and farewell. P.S. I heard that Constantius's repudiated "wife" is not thrilled that her favorite son, Constantine, has made her a grandmother through Minervina. At half a century of age, Dame Helena keeps up more than appearances, being still as attractive to junior officers today as she was to Aelius Spar-tianus (so goes the gossip in the army camp) a few years ago. Do not worry, this letter is being hand-delivered by a trusted friend.

  Written at Confluentes, north of Augusta Treverorum, Province of Belgica Prima, on 4 Kislev, Sunday, 19 November, day XIII before the Kalends of December.

  South of Mogontiacum, 20 November 304 c.e., Monday

  Aelius read ben Matthias's letter last, after the concise, badly written one from his father, complaining of "my only son's three years worth of absense from home," and reporting his mother's "anziety that you havent yet taken a wife as you should." Despite having retired as a colonel of the Seniores Gentiliorum, the old man had felt no desire to educate himself beyond what was needed these days to build a career—although others had become emperor with less. As for Aelius's mother, she made sure to propose every six months a marriage prospect: soldiers' daughters, landowners' widows, or little girls who'd have years of growing up before they could share a bed.

  Dropping his parents' letter in a box where others (each one practically identical to the rest) lay, Aelius was receiving a strange composite image of what his old enemy, the Jewish freedom fighter, had communicated. On one side was Helena, who'd seduced him when she was exactly twice his age and left him lovesick like a calf, and on the other, this absurd tale of a dead man reborn. True to
the Christians' fame as hard workers, Lupus was apparently unable to think of anything better than returning to the office after resurrection. It made him simper, certain that ben Matthias was pulling his leg for whatever reason, sarcastic atheist that he was. But the composite image had a third side, hazy and lopsided, a sting to the heart: because Anubina had borne him a daughter in Egypt seven years before and but for her unwillingness to marry him after her husband's death, he could be writing to his mother to quit looking for a wife.

  To be sure, the efficiency of the postal service never ceased to amaze him, yet couriers had been able to find him everywhere, even during the eastern campaigns. Therefore it was only logical that mail would reach him between Noviomagus and Mogontiacum (a few miles south of the latter, in fact), it being known that he'd left Diocletian's summer capital of Aspalatum nearly two weeks earlier, headed for Tergeste, and from there, across four provinces, already come less than two days from Constantius's capital city. He'd spent the night, ben Matthias was right, in a place like every other, a stop on the side of the military road, with its stable and tavern, salesmen of shoddy wares, and whatever small industry typified the region. Here it was glassworks; farther ahead it might be pottery, or leather.

  The early morning filled with haze the spaces between hills beyond; the straight road led into that haziness, and one could imagine any landscape beneath it: surely Mogontiacum, where the road forked, and then cultivated fields, fallow land bristling with the yellow weeds of late autumn, interminable woods. The Other World, even, if what the poets wrote was true, and constant mist is where the shades are obliged to spend eternity.

  The reason given by his parents for the letter was his upcoming birthday, the thirtieth; but his father was wrong in saying he had not been home in three years. It was four and a half, and as far as he was concerned, Aelius felt no great need to go back.

  When he mounted on horseback and rode out, heading to the northwest, the haze had not yet lifted. It might be midday before the sun burned it enough to leave the river land, the mountains across the bank, and all details bare and exposed to view. For now, as he proceeded, the mist seemed to recede, yet if he glanced back he could see that it closed behind him, too. How many times had he ridden through the fog to battle, or back to camp, or away from camp. Fog seemed always the same, but he'd cut through it in anticipation, or mum fear, or exhaustion. The Other World had better not be like this, or else it was desirable to return from it, as Lupus the brick-maker had apparently done.

  Carrying His Divinity's messages for Constantius meant that everywhere doors opened to him, and he had precedence over others waiting to go past checkpoints or manned bridges. He had, in fact, made such comparatively good time from Aspalatum that he was a full day early. Given that the complex ceremonial did not allow for an early call any more than it tolerated lateness, there would be time to stop and see ben Matthias at the army town of Bingum, three or four hours north of Mogontiacum on the river road. It was where he headed now, expecting to reach it by noon.

  Constantius he had met during a summer tour of duty at court in Diocletian's eastern capital, Nicomedia, but not seen in the few intervening years. One of the two vice-emperors groomed to take power next May at Diocletian's and Maximian's expected resignation, he had impressed Aelius as a solid general who had asked that staff officers be presented to him after an army review. One by one he'd greeted them, a massive, pale, bulge-eyed man with crooked thumbs who had married his colleague Maximian's daughter and put away not—as ben Matthias wrote—his first wife but his long-term concubine Helena.

  It was a time, that summer, when Helena was as filled with hateful resentment as any ambitious woman snubbed after climbing from obscurity to privilege. That she had never been able to get Constantius to marry her was her principal regret, but there it was. Aelius recalled courtiers and priests taking turns at her side, at any one time seemingly convincing her to embrace one lifestyle or another. The first time she had let him into her bedroom she'd told him it might be the last, since she was considering a religious life (she had not decided whether Jewish or Christian). The second, she'd informed him of his numerical rank among her lovers. The third, she'd mentioned dreaming that she would be a saint and altars would be raised to her. With the doltish flattery of youth, Aelius had said that her bed was an altar already, as far as he was concerned, and she'd given him special liberties that day. Constantius knew, of course, as everything was known at his colleague's court. "Tickle her under her navel," he'd unexpectedly advised him one morning at the baths, in good humor. "She loves that."

  From the haze, as Aelius proceeded, on both sides of the road the long walls of fortified farms appeared now and then, whitewashed or brick red in the distance, with their avenues of pruned trees or hedges. In that murkiness, serfs laboring to prepare the fields for winter, and gray crows pricking the mist over them, all had the ghostly appearance of beings from the Other World; or, if not of Hades, they reminded him of battlefields once things were over and a commander paced across them to recognize his dead and collect their cheap rings in a satchel, for the families. Lupus the Christian, dead and buried—as Christians did not believe in cremation—sealed presumably under a monument appropriate to his state, had come back to life. Nonsense, of course. But Aelius could not help thinking of friends and companions lost during the wars. Were they likely to walk back, to come toward him from the haze of death, and feel the flesh once more?

  By and by—he had already crossed Mogontiacum's streets, where one barely saw the point of one's nose—the sun burned away fog and river mist. To the east, the great Rhine was revealed then, whenever the road climbed enough to show its lucid waters braiding in the wake of heavy vessels. They silently followed the current northward, to dock no doubt at any of the ten and more cities between here and the ocean. Not seafaring boats, but flat-bottomed barges carrying beer and wine, salted pork, and whatever else the army marches on. A sharp odor of stubble fires came from the fields, over whose expanse smoke idled in the windless day; night patrols returned to camp in the distance, advancing in order along the tracks, invisible from here, that crisscrossed the land. When civilian monuments and a number of military burials became more frequent along the river road, in a closer and closer crowd, Aelius knew he was approaching the next settlement. According to the milestone, Bingum, the town whose name made ben Matthias smile, lay only four miles away.

  Confluentes, province of Belgica Prima

  The mark on Lupus's bricks was, predictably, his namesake wolf's silhouette, with the letters ex fig ma lupi ren arranged around it in the hollow of a crescent. The triangular piece of fired clay, clean and unused, sat on the table of Baruch ben Matthias's well-lit, well-appointed workshop near the southern gate of town. Aelius studied it, his ear to the hollow sound of mallets pounding wood at the keg-maker's next door. "Exfiglinis Marci Lupi'. from Marcus Lupus's brickworks. Don't tell me the ren stands for what I think, Baruch."

  "It does: renatus, for 'reborn.'" Pouring wine into two paunchy green goblets, the painter observed, "I thought you were in Nicomedia and my letter would take weeks to reach you. But you must come from Aspalatum instead, and in a hurry." Aelius kept mum. "You understand that I am just setting up my franchises here, Commander," ben Matthias added, even though he hadn't been asked to justify his presence so far from home. "It isn't like I am permanently moving from Egypt to catch cold along this frontier."

  "Well, I noticed that your toughs are traveling with you." Aelius smiled, refusing with a small wave of the hand the offer of wine from his former enemy.

  "Toughs? They're not toughs, they're my sons and relatives. Besides, with all respect for imperial military organization, these long stretches of solitary road between posts and cities call for some precautions. Cutthroats are strewn all over the woodland. I see that—on the contrary— you still travel without an escort."

  "Ah, that's where you're wrong. My horsemen are around."

  Ben Matthias took a sip from one o
f the two goblets. "This year's vintage," he said, smacking his lips. "Not bad for a white wine." To his experienced eye, in the weeks since they had last met in Theo's spice shop at Antinoopolis, Aelius had been indoors or traveling in northern climates, as he'd entirely lost his tan. He was otherwise the same tall and agile cavalry officer ben Matthias had fought during the Rebellion, coming close to killing him. Armenia (or the worries of a career at court) had made him precociously gray-haired, and only because he was fair did the obvious contrast between young age and hoariness appear less strident. Signaling the semiofficial nature of his visit by not removing the northern frontier army cap known as a "Pannonian felt," a low, dark red cylinder worn by all ranks, he kept observing curiously the brick on the table.

  "It's the first marked piece to come out of the brick factory after the resurrection, and you understand I couldn't pass it up," ben Matthias commented with merriment. "It's a matter of time before some Christian deacon or pious lady comes looking for it, and there'll be a bidding war to own a souvenir of the miracle. Just in case, I have ten more in the back room. If you need one to bring proof to Our Lord et cetera, we can agree on a fair price. I already told my son-in-law that you want to meet Marcus Lupus, so if you have time tonight, it can be arranged."

  "Tonight I dine with the staff officers at court. What about tomorrow morning?"

  "I'll see what I can do." Ben Matthias smirked in his beard. "Court, eh? Well, they do say the scent of power whets one's appetite. By the way, if I were you I'd also try to see the miracle worker. Otherwise it's like sitting in the audience of a magician without knowing the trick."

  "Right. Who's he?"

  "His Christian name is Agnus, better known among his own as Pyrikaios, the'fire waker.' "Again ben Matthias had that look of spiteful amusement, although Aelius assumed that—for all his protestations of atheism—his Jewish sensitivity was offended by the claim that a human being could bring back to life another. "His followers swear that he has made the lame walk and the blind see in towns of Germania Superior and Inferior, but this time he beat all records of miracle working. They say he himself was amazed by his powers! Like all good stage magicians, our man has a female assistant, Casta by name, and I hear that in order to see him you have to make an appointment through her. Yes, yes, I know, I thought that, too: Only in a brothel do you set up an appointment through a woman. Well, what can I say? That's what I hear."