Thomas Harlan: The shadow of Ararat

"Sophos, Andrades; go and fetch the physician."

The Greek boys slipped away like shadows. Ahmet studied the remaining three closely. Kyllun looked positively ill, Patroclus and Dwyrin were eyeing each other warily out of the corners of their eyes. Ahmet sighed. It was like this every year.

"The punishment," he said slowly, gaining their complete attention, "for disturbing the studies of your fellow students and for destroying the property of the school"-he tapped the dented scroll case against the edge of the table-"is rather severe." He smiled. "All three of you will suffer it to the fullest extent." He smiled again. All three boys began to look a little faint.

"Ah," Ahmet said, looking to the door, "the physician." He waited with fine patience until the various bites and stings had been salved and anointed, then he took the three boys out of the scriptorium and down the hall.

– |It was four days before Dwyrin could sit down without wincing, and the laughter and snide remarks of the other boys was worse. Ahmet had taken them into the main dining hall during the evening meal and had them stripped, then he had given each of them a fierce switching until they were bawling like babies. This before the monks, their teachers, and the junior and senior boys. Patroclus, in particular, had taken it badly, Dwyrin thought, and now refused to so much as look at Dwyrin. Kyllun was more subdued, but his desire to beat Dwyrin into a bloody pulp was evident.

The three were denied evening free time, and Dwyrin continued to labor in the kitchens washing the dishes. Days dragged slowly along, and Patroclus and Kyllun began to spend their time together at meals and during studies. Dwyrin paid them no mind, for Master Ahmet was watching him like a hawk, and he felt himself repaid in full by the sight on Kyllun's face when the black bees had boiled out of the scroll tube in a dark angry cloud. Dwyrin studied and even improved at his lessons and pleased his teachers. Dwyrin noted that Kyllun, despite hours hunched over the moldy scrolls and ancient tomes that were the focus of their studies, did perhaps worse than before. Patroclus improved, bending his efforts to besting Dwyrin. Master Ahmet remained watchful, giving none of them time to explore further mischief.

The Port of Ostia Maxima, Italia

The heavy oak door of the brick building thudded solidly under the young man's fist. Around him, twilight settled upon the town, the sun sliding into the western sea through a haze of cookfire smoke and the rigging of a thousand ships. From over the high wall of the shipwright's compound, he could hear the waves of the harbor slapping on the stone border of the long slip. Beyond that there was a murmur of thousands of dockworkers, mules, and wagons busy loading and unloading the ships that carried the life-blood of the Empire.

"Ho!" shouted the young man, his embroidered woolen cloak falling back, a dark green against his broad sun-bronzed shoulders. He had a patrician face, strong nose, and short-cropped black hair in the latest Imperial style. Gloom filled the street around him as the sun drifted down into Poseidon's deeps. There was still no answer.

Puzzled, the noble youth tried the door latch, but it was firmly barred on the far side. He rubbed his clean-shaven face for a moment, then shrugged. He knocked once more, more forcefully, but still there was no footfall within or inquisitive shout over the wall. Idly he glanced in each direction and saw that the street was empty of curious onlookers. He dug in the heavy leather satchel that hung to his waist from a shoulder strap, his quick lean fingers at last finding a small dented copper bell. Blowing lint from the surface of the token, he squinted slightly and shook the bell at chest height by the door.

Within, there was a scraping sound and then the door swung inward. Smiling a little, the young man stepped inside, his calfskin boots making little sound on the tiled floor.

"Dromio? It's Maxian. Hello? Is anyone home?" he whispered into the darkness. There was still no answer.

Now greatly concerned, Maxian fumbled inside the door for a lantern. His fingers found one suspended from an iron hook, and he unhooded it in the dim light of the doorway. Fingertips pinched the tip of the oil wick and it sputtered alight, burning his forefinger. The young man cursed under his breath and raised the lantern high. Its dim yellow light spilled over the tables in the long workshop. Tools, parchments, rulers, adzes lay in their normal confusion. At the far end of the hall, it widened out into the nave of the boat shed, and a sleek hull stood there, raised up on a great cedarwood frame.

Maxian padded the length of the workshop, his eyes drawn to the smooth sweep of the ship, its high back, the odd tiller that seemingly grew from the rear hull brace like a fin. Standing below it, he wondered at its steering-there were no pilot oars hung from the sides of the ship, nor any sign that they were intended.

"Such a steed as Odysseus could have ridden from the ruin of Troy,"-he signed to himself-"cleaving a wine-dark sea before its prow."

A door opened behind him, ruddy red light spilling out. Maxian turned, his face lit with delight. A stocky figure stood in the doorway, leaning heavily on the frame.

"My lord Prince?" came a harsh whisper.

Maxian strode forward, switching the lantern to his right hand as his left caught the slumping figure of the shipwright.

"Dromio?" Maxian was horrified to see in the firelight that his friend was wasted and shrunken, his wrinkled skin pulled tight against the bones, his eyes milky white. The shipwright clutched at him, his huge scarred hands weak. The prince gently lowered him to the tiles of the doorway.

"Dromio, what has happened to you? Are you ill, do you have the cough?"

The ancient-seeming man wearily shook his head, his breath coming in short sharp gasps.

"My blood is corrupt," he whispered. "I am cursed. All of my workers are sick as well, even my children." Dromio gestured weakly behind him, into the living quarters at the back of the dry dock. "You will see…"

Maxian, his heart filled with unexpected dread, took a few quick steps to the far end of the room, where small doors led into the quarters of the shipwright and his family. In the dim light of the lamp, he saw only a tangle of bare white feet protruding from the darkness like loaves of bread, but his nose-well accustomed to the stench of the Imperial field hospitals and the Subura clinics-told him the rest. The left side of his face twitched as he suppressed his emotions. Quietly he closed the door to the unexpected mortuary. The sight of the dead filled him with revulsion and a sick greasy feeling. Though he had followed the teachings of Asclepius for nine years, he still could not stand the sight and smell of death. It was worse that the victims were a family that he had known for years.

– |Long ago, when he had been only a child, he had ridden with his father, then the governor of the province of Narbonensis, to see the great undertaking of the Emperor Jaenius Aquila. They had ridden up from the city of Tolosa, where they had lived for three years, through the pine woods and open meadows of the hills above the flowering river valley. Under the green shelter of the pines, they had sat and eaten lunch on a broad granite boulder, their feet in the sun, their heads in the dim greenness. Servants had ridden with them and brought them watered wine, figs, and cooked pies made of lamb, peas and yam. The governor, in his accustomed raiment of rough wool shirt, cotton trousers, and a heavy leather belt, had sat next to his son in companionable quiet. After eating, they sat for a bit, the elder Maxian whittling at a small figurine of Bast with a curved eastern blade.

Behind them, their Gothic bodyguards sat silently in the shadow of the trees, their fair hair bound in mountain flowers that they had gathered from the margin of the road. The long buttery-yellow slats of sunlight cutting through the trees gleamed from their fish-scale armor. The servants retired to the pack mules and lay down in the sun, broad straw hats shading their faces as they took a quick nap. The young Maxian felt safe and at peace. It was not often that his father took him out of the city or even paid attention to him. This was an unexpected treat.