Rule of God (Book Three of the Dominium Dei Trilogy) (7 page)

“Athanasius!” Supremus exclaimed, suddenly lowering his voice when Athanasius put the blade of his dagger to his throat. “You’re alive!”

“I’ve come to claim my royalties for my merchandise, Supremus. I’ve come to claim my money. Where is it? Perhaps in the pockets of Senator Celsus and the Dei?” Athanasius dug the blade deeper into the idolmaker’s flabby throat.

“Please, Athanasius. You know I am nothing. I do as I am told.”

Athanasius was worried the man in his panic might raise his voice, so he pushed him against the heavy drapes in the back. If he had to, he would muffle the idolmaker’s cries, wrap him in the drape and drive his dagger through to kill him.

“Then tell me what you have been told, Supremus, and who has been doing the telling, and I may yet have mercy on your miserable soul and let you live.”

Supremus nodded. “I will show you. I must reach for my pouch.”

“Slowly,” said Athanasius, pushing the dagger further into the fat as Supremus’s chubby arm reached into the folds of his tunic and produced two figurines, one thin and one round.

“See?”

Athanasius glanced at them but held the blade firmly. “I see them. Oedipus and the Oracle. What I don’t see is your connection to the Dei.”

“No, no, Athanasius. You do not see. Look closer.”

Athanasius kept his dagger to the throat and with his other hand picked up the round figurine and looked at the carving on the orb. The oracle was supposed to be cut to look like Caelus, before he was slain. But this oracle looked different. “Who is this?”

“That is Peter the apostle,” Supremus said. “The tall, thin one is Jesus.”

“Jesus?” Athanasius said, and looked at what should have been Oedipus and saw the head cut to show the long hair of a Nazarene. “If there’s a new comedy to skewer the Christians, I want to know who wrote it.”

“No comedy, Athanasius. These are not for the theaters. These are for the churches.”

“The churches?” Athanasius repeated, and Athanasius immediately thought of old John the last apostle, young Polycarp and Gabrielle. “The Dei is more stupid than I thought. The churches will never accept idols.”

Supremus shrugged. “You know I only make what is ordered from Rome.”

“And who is doing the ordering, Supremus? Tell me now. Is it Senator Celsus?”

Supremus shook his head. “No, Celsus takes his orders from Senator Sura.”

Athanasius stopped. “Lucius Licinius Sura?”

Supremus nodded, beads of sweat rolling down his jowls.

“Sura, the father of Lucius Licinius Ludlumus, the master of the Games?” he pressed, staring at Supremus’s frozen face, watching the light go out from his eyes and blood dribble from his mouth.

Supremus began to lean into him, and Athanasius caught him right below the dagger protruding from his back.

No!

Athanasius lowered the heavy corpse to the floor and burst between the drapes in time to see a figure flee through an archway and disappear.

How much had he heard? Athanasius decided it didn’t matter. He had no choice but to go for Dovilin right now before it was too late.

Dovilin was seeing off a diplomat from Spain when a servant handed him a note that bore the seal of Caesar himself. “Who gave you this?” he demanded.

The servant shook his head. “One of the guests gave it to me and said the man wants to meet you in the bathhouse out back.”

Dovilin didn’t like it. But there was no mistaking the authority of the letter. “Get Brutus,” he told the servant, and by the time he reached the back of the villa near the outdoor kitchen, Brutus was waiting, all battered and bruised from the events of the week. Dovilin had to keep him out of sight, or he’d scare the guests.

“Go look into the bathhouse and see who is there,” Dovilin ordered.

Brutus nodded and disappeared. A moment later he reappeared to report the bathhouse was empty.

Dovilin frowned. “Then I will go inside and wait, in case anybody is watching us. But you will keep watch out here and intercept anybody who attempts to enter the bathhouse. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” said Brutus.

Dovilin glanced about and could see nothing beyond the bathhouse but the dark rows of his vineyard rolling beneath the stars to the brightly lit winery on the other side, where crews were loading amphorae onto the supply wagons of his guests. The lights and shouts gave him some comfort as he entered the bathhouse.

It was empty, just as Brutus reported, with a couple of stands holding a dozen candles whose light bounced off the bathwater and threw wicked shadows. Dovilin would wait here only a few minutes, enough for whomever hoped to trap him to come to him, then go outside once Brutus had him.

Dovilin looked up in time to see a shadow fall from the ceiling, sending him to the floor and banging his skull against the mosaic tiles. Dovilin tried to shout, but a hand covered his mouth and he felt the sharp point of a cold blade to his throat.

The shadow above him put a finger to his lips.

Dovilin made out the uniform of a Roman tribune and a shiny face in the flickering light that he recognized as Samuel Ben-Deker, or rather Athanasius of Athens. “You!” he said and stopped as the dagger dug deeper into his throat.

“Tell me!” Dovilin felt the ring on Athanasius’s fist dig into his face. “Who is the son or successor to Mucianus in Rome? What connection does the Licinius family have to Mucianus and to you?”

“Brutus!” Dovilin screamed before his head was slammed into the floor again.

Hurt and dizzy, Dovilin heard a shout outside and saw Athanasius jump to his feet as Brutus burst in with a crossbow. Athanasius backed off, hands up.

“Now, Brutus, before it’s too late!” he screamed, and gave the code word. “Melt!”

Brutus nodded, lowered his crossbow and shot him in the chest.

Dovilin felt the arrow pierce his flesh and opened his mouth to smile at the confused Athanasius. “You showed us Cerberus,” he hissed, and began choking on his own blood. “You showed us Angel’s Pass. Romans… will kill them all… because of you.”

Then, like a scarf, he felt his spirit escape into a dark tunnel that ended in a black abyss.

Athanasius looked down in shock at the corpse of old Dovilin and then up at Brutus, who had just used up his one shot and knew it. Athanasius hurled his knife at the slave, but Brutus was out the door, shouting warnings. By the time Athanasius rushed outside the bathhouse, he heard screams from the girls at the outdoor kitchen and more coming from inside the villa. He took a step forward when the ground shook from a tremendous explosion, and he fell into the gravel as a burst of light filled the sky.

The winery had exploded in flames.

Athanasius got to his feet and looked across the vineyard at the billows of flames and smoke shooting out of the façade from the cave in the cliffs.

They’ve blown the winery! On purpose!

Suddenly a streak of flames shot across the vineyard over his head to the red-clay tiles on the roof of the villa.

Melt!
That was what Dovilin screamed. It must have been some kind of pre-determined order to self-destruct.
The guests and slaves!

He ran into the villa and found chaos everywhere, as smoke and flames from exploding amphorae formed curtains of heated confusion. He heard coughing and saw Cota crawling on her knees beneath the smoke, trying to find a way out, then seeing him with fear and confusion on her face as he took her hand.

“Out the back!” he told her, and began to drag her to her feet.

Athanasius pushed Cota out toward the kitchen and stables and looked back to see the entire villa in flames on a scale that dwarfed the tragedy of his own family’s villa back in Corinth. And this time it wasn’t the Romans who ordered the destruction; it was Dovilin himself.

Dovilin would rather kill himself and everybody with him than name the third member of the Dei trinity
, Athanasius realized with a shock.
This is going to be much harder than I imagined, maybe impossible.

A distressed and incensed Gabrielle was waiting for him back in the vineyard as he brought out Cota and a stallion that he had grabbed from the barn before it went up in flames. Gabrielle immediately attended to Cota, taking moments to glare at him and the scene of destruction behind him. “Congratulations, Athanasius. Now that we have no one to lead the church of Asia, it’s yours for the taking.”

“This was Dovilin’s doing. How is she?”

“She’ll live. That’s more than I can say for the innocents in that inferno!”

“You know that wasn’t my intention. Look, Brutus is gone, the word is out. Someone must have seen us escape through the Angel’s Pass, Gabrielle. Rome’s legions now have the key to enter the caves that they’ve been looking for, and I’ve given it to them.”

He looked at her helplessly, and knew there was nothing he could say or do at this point to comfort her. She was completely beyond the reach of his power of words, and right now he was at a loss for them.

“I’m sorry, Gabrielle,” he told her.

She said nothing, only looked at him with horror, like he was one of those masked Minotaurs that they had escaped in the caves.

“You know what to do, Gabrielle,” he told her as he mounted the stallion. “You know the caverns and all the traps. You know how to collapse the tunnels. You have to block the Romans if they try to invade the underground cities.”

“You can’t leave us now!” she screamed.

“I have to get to Rome and make this right.”

“Make this right?” She was crying tears of rage now. “We need you here now, more than ever!”

“There is nothing more that I can do for you here, Gabrielle,” he said, steadying his stallion as it whinnied to escape the heat. He knew, however, he couldn’t leave her without any hope. “But if you and those in the caves can hold out for 40 days, we all might see a Christian world.”

Her wet eyes looked doubtful, and he could swear that she was crying tears of blood.

“Fast and pray for a new world order,” he told her with little conviction, and then kicked his horse to life and rode off into the night toward Kingdom Come.

With little hope for the underground church in Cappadocia that he had just left behind, Athanasius let pure, righteous rage fuel his race back to Rome. Rage at the Dovilins and the Christians here like Gabrielle who did nothing to oppose them, let alone Rome.

Athanasius now realized he had it all backwards. He thought the Lord’s Vineyard was all about the flow of Church influence into the world. In fact, it was the other way around. The Dovilins, with Dei help, had turned the churches of Asia into a market for their goods, primarily wine, foundational to the Communion ritual. That’s how they made money. The token shipments to Caesar were just that. Everything else came from the flesh and opium trade.

Quite ingenious and outrageous.

They were literally selling the Christians back their own sweat. The tithes and offerings that went to churches to pay for the wine were going into the pockets of the very family exploiting them all. A family cited for their Christian faith and blessings. They were profiting off the church.

No wonder old John’s Book of Revelation had Jesus standing outside the Church, knocking on its door. The Church was probably the last place on earth anybody would find Him.

S
tephanus was shaking as the Praetorians marched him through the private residences of the Palace of the Flavians to Caesar’s bedchamber. Caesar had finished his midday bath and was freshly dressed in royal robes and enjoying his sweets when Stephanus was escorted inside.

“Ah, Stephanus, I haven’t seen you since you worked for my cousin the consul,” Domitian said, referring to Flavius Clemens whom he had executed. “You’ll have to see the boys while you are here.”

“If Caesar allows it,” Stephanus said humbly.

“So what’s this I hear that about my niece Domitilla persecuting the loyal servant of my late cousin for defrauding her?”

“I stole nothing, Your Excellency.”

“Of course you didn’t, Stephanus. Why would you? The Flavians have been kind to you, even the traitors like my cousin. Did she do that to you? You seem to be in some pain.”

Domitian was referring to the bandage wrapped around Stephanus’s left arm.

“An accident, sir. She meant no harm.”

“But, of course she did, Stephanus. On the other hand, I will offer you generosity and grace. You will continue to do the work of correspondence between Caesar and his niece Domitilla and her sons. Only now, like the boys, you will live here and not that island to which I exiled my niece.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency. Thank you,” Stephanus repeated when the prefect of the Praetorian, Secundus, marched inside the bedchambers without warning.

“Your Excellency, I am sorry to be so bold, but there is news out of Asia Minor.”

Stephanus drew back so as not to be in the way, nor give Caesar easy reason to dismiss him. Perhaps this was news that he too had to hear. News from Athanasius or about him.

“Your assassin Orion is dead.”

“Dead?” Domitian repeated. “He can’t die. He’s the one who does the killing.”

“It gets worse, sir,” Secundus went on. “The Dovilins are dead too.”

“The Dovilins!”

“Everybody’s dead.”

Stephanus wasn’t sure if that meant Athanasius too, but it looked like Domitian had trouble standing as he began to pace the room.

“So Athanasius is dead too.”

“We think so, Your Excellency. We don’t know.”

“Don’t know?” roared Domitian, and Stephanus drew back in genuine terror. “Don’t know!”

Secundus kept his ground. “It’s impossible to identify the remains of so many, Your Excellency,” he said. “But spies have disclosed to your legions the location of the so-called Angel’s Pass into the mountains of Cappadocia.”

Stephanus saw fire suddenly flare up in the emperor’s otherwise dull eyes. “Angel’s Pass! At last!” Then he paused to summon up royal authority. “Orders are given to XII Fulminate and XVI Flavia legions in Cappadocia to use the passage of the Angel’s Pass to commence full-scale invasion of the cave systems surrounding the former Dovilin Vineyards. They are to exterminate the Christians inside, every last man, woman and child, in reprisal for their attacks upon Rome and its representatives.”