Shadow of Ararat

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 ship wright.

“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 Nar-bonensis, to see the great undertaking of the Emperor Jaen-ius 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 Goth 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.

After almost an hour, the governor roused himself from his introspection and turned to his son. His bushy white eyebrows bunched together and he rubbed his nose with a broad hand. For a long time he looked at his youngest son, and then, with a masklike expression, gestured for the boy to get up and follow him. They walked to the horses, now held ready by the servants. The Goths filtered out of the trees after them, weapons now loosened in scabbard, quiver, and belt. Together, the small party rode up the road and down into the narrow valley on the other side.

Maxian shook his head, clearing the memory away. Cautiously he set the lantern on the mantel of the brick fireplace. With quick hands he lit a small fire in the grate and found another lantern to join the first. Dromio remained on the floor, his breath coming in quick, harsh, gasps. With the room lit, Maxian sorted through the plates, cups, and bowls on the table. He examined them all, quickly but thoroughly. His eye found no sheen of metallic poisons, his nose no odd, acrid stench. He separated those items containing liquids from those containing solids and made a neat pile of each on the broad sideboard. These things done, he knelt by the side of his friend. Dromio’s hand weakly rose up and Maxian took it in both of his.

“Fear not, my friend, I will drive this sickness from you,” the Prince whispered.

Dawn came creeping over the tile roofs, pale squares of light trickling in through the deep casement windows set high in the wall above the kitchen table. In time the warm light puddled on the ashen face of the young man who lay slumped over the thick-planked table. Flies woke and slowly droned around the room, lighting at the borders of pools of blood. Drinking deeply, they struggled to resume flight, clumsily flitting toward the meat rotting on the sideboards.

In midnight one large blue-green bottlefly stuttered in the air and then fell with a solid thump to the tabletop. Then another fell. Maxian twitched awake, one hand brushing unconsciously the litter of dead flies from his face. Shaking his head, he half rose from the table. One hand brushed against a pewter goblet, half-melted as from some incred ible heat. The goblet struck the floor and collapsed in a spray of sand.

The healer turned around, trying to puzzle out where he might be. His head throbbed with an unceasing din, a great sea of sound like the Circus in full throat. Again he brushed his long hair, now unbound, back from his temples. He started with surprise, then ran a hand through long dark hair that fell over his shoulders in an unkempt sprawl. He came fully awake and looked quickly around him.

A grim scene came hazily into view.

Gods, what I must have drunk last night! What happened to my hair?

The kitchen was a ruin of smashed crockery, crumpled bronze cookpans, cracked floor tiles, and drifts of odd white dust. Dark-red pools, almost black in the early-morning light, covered most of the floor. The walls, once a light-yellow whitewash, were speckled with thousands of tiny red spots. Maxian flinched at the sight, then gagged as he realized that the tabletop behind him was littered with hundreds of bones, some large, most a forest of small finger bones, ribs, and scapulae. Without thinking, he summarized the debris-three adults, one larger than normal, four children…

The Prince froze, for now the reality of the place forced itself to his conscious mind. The shipyard. The house of Dromio, his wife, brother, and children. The rest of the long and harrowing night came sliding back up out of depths of memory and Maxian doubled over in horror, his hands clawing at the tabletop to hold himself up. The bones rattled and slid as the table tipped over, sighing to dust as they clattered against one another.