“Agricola sent word that you’re here.”
“I came back a day early. Meditor’s arrested the man I was looking for.”
He nodded. “I know. He’s due to be questioned tomorrow. Agricola’s already writing the story of what to tell Domitian.”
I felt Gwyna’s hand on my arm again. “So they’re pinning it on Rhodri? That’s definite?”
Saturninus shrugged into his beard. “I don’t think they’ll look beyond him, unless it’s to one of his native friends.”
God, I needed sleep. And yet here was Saturninus, and I knew it wasn’t a social call.
I grumbled and groaned. “So what do you want from me?”
He grinned. “Your initiation. The temple.”
“Isn’t it a waste of time, if you’ve got the guilty man?”
He looked at me closely. “You look like shit.” Then he caught himself, and apologized to Gywna. “Sorry.”
She looked at him cooly. “I’ve heard worse. And I’ve said worse.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Well, I can see you have ample reasons for staying at home, Arcturus, and you look none too fresh. Smell a little bad, too. But if you think this Rhodri character didn’t off the Syrian, someone did, and someone in the temple, like as not. You know that. It’s not like you to be so bitter.”
“It’s not like me to ride a hundred and twenty miles in three days straight, either.”
“What’s wrong, old man? Getting a little stiff?”
He chewed the end of his mustache, and shot a glance at Gwyna with the last remark.
I stared at him, and finally broke into laughter. “You win. You always do.”
I leaned over to kiss her lightly on the cheek, and whispered. “I don’t know when I’ll be home. We can talk tomorrow.” She squeezed my arm in reply, and rewarded Saturninus with a smile. Everyone liked him-you couldn’t help it.
I stood up. “Tomorrow I want to hear everything-what Caelius did, said, what you found out, Bilicho, and most importantly I want to hear from Stricta.”
Bilicho looked up at me, and we understood one another.
Brutius held out a cleaner mantle. Everyone was drifting off to bed. Gwyna was smiling at Bilicho. It was my home again.
On the way out the door I said: “Don’t you people ever do anything at a decent hour?”
“This is a decent hour, my dour friend, if you’ve still got blood in your veins. And if you don’t, we’ll replace it with a stronger vintage.”
There were two horses tied up outside, and I nearly fell over backwards when I saw them. “We’re going to ride? Do you know how sore my ass is?”
“Why? You been letting somebody pound it for you? And you with that nice piece of-”
“Saturninus.” That was enough. He shut up.
I gingerly mounted the large chestnut. He was a legionary horse, and a stallion, and proud. He was a good horse, but I missed Nimbus.
It didn’t take us long to ride to the mithraeum. The streets were empty, except for vigiles and an extra ration of soldiers. I felt native eyes glaring at us, but I didn’t see anyone. By the time we got there, two soldiers with torches were waiting for us, or maybe guarding the entrance. They held the reins and took the horses when we dismounted, while I sucked in some night air before climbing down that dank dirt stairway.
At the foot of the stairs were two more soldiers. I noticed, with some surprise, that Arian was one of them.
“Arcturus, this is your partner. He will explain to you how everything works, and what you must do and how you must respond in the actual initiation. That’s supposed to be tomorrow night, God willing. I’m supposed to tell you something about Mithras.”
Arian and the other legionnaire vanished into the inner part of the temple, where Maecenas had been laid out only six nights before. Six nights. If time was going by so slowly, why did I have so little of it?
Saturninus started lecturing to me in a sing-song voice, stuff he’d been taught, stuff he wasn’t sure he believed, but stuff that was necessary for him, and now me, to know.
I absorbed what I could. Some of it was similar to what the Druids teach-particularly the stars. But they had a very hierarchical system, with grades like Lion, and Bride-Groom, and Courier of the Sun, and Persian-all pseudo-Eastern and mysterious. Pater was the highest post-that was Agricola. As usual, I was starting on the bottom, and frankly didn’t have much ambition to move up. I liked the camaraderie in what he told me, but not the climbing. It reminded me too much of the cursus honorum, and if I hadn’t climbed a ladder for Rome I wasn’t about to do it for Mithras.
After I’d spent about an hour with Saturninus-and at the conclusion, we enjoyed a few swigs off a wine skin-I discovered that Mithras, like Bacchus, enjoyed a show. Saturninus nodded off in a corner and told me to go to the inner part of the temple where Arian was waiting. The other soldier left when I walked in. Must be a two man performance.
The signifer smiled at me. “I volunteered for this. I wanted to apologize.”
“Forget it.”
“No, I mean it,” he insisted. “I was out of line. I’m glad you’re going to be part of the temple.”
I looked around the black gloom, the thick soil and stone oppressing me. “Yeah. I am, too. I’m still trying to find out what happened. You know, how the body got here.”
He glanced involuntarily at the slab. I couldn’t see any traces of blood. They must have scrubbed for days.
“Is that why you’re hurt? Your face-”
“I ran into a tree out of town. They make them big in the country.”
Arian gave me a funny look, then decided to laugh.
“I’m dead tired; I’ve been on my feet for too long. So if I say or do something strange, it’s the exhaustion, not me.”
He smiled, the confident, innocent smile of a young man who has seen some, but not all, that the world has to offer. “All right. I’ll remember.”
From behind him, he pulled out a short sword and a scabbard. I looked at it a little doubtfully. He chuckled.
“Don’t worry. Saturninus explained about the death-act, right? Mithras likes us to act out what he does for us in real life. Tomorrow night, you’ll stand in front of that carving-” he pointed with the sword to a relief on the wall of Mithras slaying the bull, a scorpion biting his ankles, and a few other figures thrown in. It was flanked by another relief of two young men holding torches, one up, one down.
“-And I’ll take this sword, and it’ll look as if I’m running it through you. Then I kneel, and say a prayer to Mithras, and everyone joins in, and then you get up.”
“If the prayers work.”
He laughed. “It’s a trick sword. The blade collapses when it’s pushed into something. But sometimes we like to put a little pouch of blood in the novice’s tunic, so that he can pop it when the sword is supposed to hit, and it looks more real.” He chuckled again. “Sometimes we don’t tell the novice.”
“You really like this sort of play-acting, huh? What do the other grades get to go through?”
He frowned. “Well, I’m not really supposed to tell you. But that pit over there-” he pointed again “-is part of another initiation.”
“Gives me something to look forward to. All right, how does this thing work?”
I reached for the sword, but for some reason couldn’t pry it from the scabbard. Arian laughed again. He was in a good mood tonight.
“I’ll demonstrate. See-” Even he had a little trouble taking it out of the scabbard, but he wriggled it free “-you stand over here, there’ll be lights behind the carving. There are little holes in the stone to imitate the stars,” he explained.
“Then I’ll stand up next to you, and take the sword out-I’ll make sure it’s oiled by tomorrow-and hold it against your stomach like this”-he held it against his own-“and then just a hard push-”
I watched as his eyes widened in shock, and looked down to see a red stain starting to spread under his tunic. I was about to congratulate him on the performance when he stumbled against the carving, and I saw the sword quiver as he moved. It wasn’t an act. Arian had stabbed himself, and was dying right in front of me.