Mary Reed: Two for Joy

It was certainly easy to imagine such a place, sitting half submerged in the bath’s steaming cauldron. Peter wondered if someone had stoked the hypocaust too high.

“You can see the fires towering at night from many parasangs away,” his companion was saying. “You could read scripture by their infernal glow, provided you could keep it from bursting into flames first. I tell you, Peter, this place is so renowned that men go there to study its terrible qualities. Why, there are not only several sorts of pitch that burn but the very stones themselves are ablaze.”

“And Michael first began his ministry there, I hear?” put in Peter, who guessed the storyteller could spin out his tour of the nether regions for a long time if he was allowed to do so.

“Yes, indeed. It was on my land that he first gained prominence, and it was there also that I nearly forfeited my soul.”

Peter observed that he could scarcely believe such a thing.

“Why do you think I am here? To make amends, of course! To earn forgiveness!” Sarcerdus’ voice grew louder. Grape-like drops of sweat trembled, broke and rolled down the thin inclines of his face. “For when he first appeared, I ordered my servants to drive him away!” He slapped at the water as if it had offended him, sending more waves crashing around Peter.

“No! Impossible!” the latter exclaimed.

“But it was so, for I was blind, my friend. To be fair now, what did you think yourself, when you first heard rumors of his teachings, at the senate house perhaps or during one of the emperor’s banquets?”

“Well…”

“Exactly my point, Peter. But then you listened to his words and finally understood what he was saying.”

“That is true enough. I understood.”

“I was one who did not listen at first.” Sarcerdus ran a thin hand over the bald dome of his head as he stared up into the swirling steam gathering in the rafters above them.

“I own a great deal of land, Peter,” he went on. “There’s nothing I don’t grow or raise. Wheat, fruit, goats, cattle, but most of all I favor vineyards. One morning some time ago, one of my servants came riding up to the house to sound the alarm. ‘Master,’ he told me, ‘You must come at once, for we are being invaded.’”

“How terrible!”

“Oh, it isn’t unusual to be invaded where I lived. Sometimes it’s Persians, the next time it will be Romans and, if I recall aright, this particular time it was due to be Persians since there had been a Roman tax collector around the previous year, that being the usual way we know who is pretending to be in charge of the area. Aside from seeing who has the most soldiers out on the roads, of course. So I said to my man, ‘Get the wagon and I will take a tribute.’ As a man of the world, you’ll understand that’s what we call a bribe. They stop these minor skirmishes from escalating into invasions causing real damage. But he said, ‘No. It’s not that kind of invasion.’ I was intrigued, as anyone would be.”

He paused for a moment and Peter, genuinely entranced by the man’s story despite its length, urged him to complete the telling of it.

“As it happened, I had guests at the time,” Sarcerdus Rufus obligingly continued. “After my wife died, I enjoyed offering travelers hospitality for it made my house seem less lonely. I reveled in tales of far off places and was eager to have my ears filled with exotic stories. These particular guests had journeyed out to see the fires. Nothing unusual in that, for as I told you, the area is famous for it. They repaid my hospitality with some fine codices for my library, by the way. Codices are priceless, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Peter confirmed that he did. “And were your guests as curious as I about these invaders who were not invading?” he asked, trying valiantly to keep Sarcerdus to the point of his story.

“Indeed they were. So we all rode out to my finest vineyard. Did I mention that I breed the finest horses in the region?”

Peter had no chance to reply as Sarcerdus charged ahead. “Anyway, this vineyard sits on a hillside and for as long as anyone can recall there’s been a ruined temple there. It was built next to a fissure where a flame always burns, which is why I myself am of the opinion the building originally honored Zoroaster or some such fire deity. It looks picturesque enough and the only problem it causes is its attraction to amorous couples. That’s understandable enough, though, what with the spectacular view and the shelter it affords, especially on cold nights.”

“We were all young once,” Peter said with a wry smile.

“Indeed we were, indeed we were. But to get back to what I was saying, I could tell you much about Zorastrianism and many other such things besides. You might be surprised at my knowledge of pagan sects, but I was steeped in evil, Peter. I warmed my hands at those infernal fires. I immersed myself in the words of demons and alchemists and pagan writers. I shudder to think of it now.”

“This would be about the time when Michael arrived?” Peter interrupted, wiping sweat from his face. His sparse gray hair clung to his head like honey to a spoon and he had a sinking suspicion that Sarcerdus was about to embark on another rambling digression.

“What? Oh, yes, you have guessed it! There he was, standing beside the temple and addressing a small band of followers and, although he was offering the truth as I later came to realize, all I could see at the time were my trampled grapevines.”

Sarcerdus shook his head as if he couldn’t believe his own folly.

“But I did notice the flame that had issued ceaselessly from the rock for all those years flickered out while he spoke,” Sarcerdus said, “just as he was telling his followers that it was by fire that he would be known. And a wonder it was, too, because as he preached, the fire resumed burning of its own accord. I saw that with my own eyes!”

“So what did you do?” Peter prompted, hoping to hear the end of this remarkable account before he was cooked to the bone.

“I didn’t want to wait for the authorities to act since it would take too long and so, and I am ashamed to tell you this, I armed my workers and they drove Michael and his followers away. They were easily dispersed. He didn’t have as many as he has now, you see.”

“Yet today here you are, a follower yourself.”

“A wonder, is it not? And how it came about was this way. The following year stories began to drift back to me about a remarkable holy man who was moving west, driving the godless back like sand before the desert winds. I have business contacts in every corner of the empire, did I mention that? Well, I suddenly realized that the stories I was hearing spoke of the very man I had driven from my land.”

Peter murmured some commonplace words of comfort.

“Ah,” Sarcerdus said cheerfully, “but when you stop to think of it, Michael would not be about to enter Constantinople in triumph had I not forced him to flee my vineyard and take his message west. I was very humbled when I realized that I had served to set his feet on the journey.”

“There has never been one so humble as Sarcerdus Rufus, as so many have said,” Peter pointed out.

Sarcerdus laughed heartily, raising another tempest in the pool. It was the stormiest bath Peter had ever sat in, except for one occasion when he had arranged a tryst in a similar private bath behind his then owner’s house. But that had been a long time ago. Just the day before he had been sold into what became his military career, in fact.

“I thank you for relating your story so graciously,” he said, beginning to get to his feet. He lurched sideways. Both legs had fallen asleep. Sarcerdus reached over and grabbed Peter’s arm, steadying and detaining him at the same time.