Athanasius grasped the knife and felt its fine, balanced weight. “I don’t understand. I could kill you with this right now.”
“And go where?” Marcus asked him. “There are guards upstairs. Your only chance for escape is to walk out of here as me.”
“You?”
“Now strip. Hurry. We don’t have much time.”
Utterly astonished, Athanasius didn’t argue as he and Marcus quickly exchanged uniforms. Soon Athanasius was dressed as a tribune, and Marcus his interrogator stood clad in the mock Christian armor of a prisoner condemned to death.
“You’ll need this.” Marcus removed a key ring from his finger and handed it to Athanasius.
As Athanasius took it, it clicked open to reveal the seal of Chiron hidden beneath. “You? You’re Chiron?”
“I tried to be. But the Dei smashed everything. Clemens, you, and soon enough me. I cannot hide for long as a Christian in Caesar’s court. I know too much for them to let me live.”
“The Dei is imperial,” Athanasius stated, testing to see if Marcus possessed as much information in his position within the Praetorian.
Marcus nodded. “You know the Omega, but not the Alpha. But I have no time to explain if you are to escape. I’m already dead. You stay in here, you’re dead too.”
“Then tell me how I get out.”
“By drinking this.”
Marcus produced a small vial and handed it to a reluctant Athanasius.
“What is this?”
“Strength for your journey ahead. Go on. It will keep you awake.”
It would be a strange trap indeed for Marcus to free him only to poison him, Athanasius concluded, and drank the potion in one gulp. “Foul stuff,” he said, gagging. “Now what?”
“The Cloaca Maxima.”
Athanasius started. The Great Drain was Rome’s primary sewer and cesspool of all waste that flowed from the slums and latrines. Athanasius stared at the cistern in the floor, which was a very small hole. “I’m not crawling through that.”
“No,” Marcus said. “There’s only a small tributary under there, and you would drown.”
“Then how exactly am I supposed to escape?”
“You will leave this prison dressed as me and pray the guards don’t look beyond your uniform and rank,” Marcus told him. “You will cross the Forum to the Basilica Julia courthouse. Take cover under the building’s long portico along Sacred Way, and follow it all the way to the end of the block, then turn right. Under the courthouse steps, on the south side of the building, is a loose grating over a service entrance tunnel to the Cloaca Maxima. An agent called the Ferryman will be waiting for you in a small boat. He’ll take you down the tunnels and out to the Tiber. From there you’ll follow the river to the port at Ostia where a ship will be waiting for you. On board is a trunk with further instructions and everything you need. You will open it with the key ring on your finger. If you don’t run into trouble, you should make it in an hour.”
This was not at all what Athanasius had been praying for. At least in the arena he would die in public and perhaps find some way to make a final statement for his life. This plan risked him dying in a gutter. An ignoble end, if ever there was one. And yet it was still his only real chance of escaping death for the moment.
Athanasius said, “So come morning, I’ll be long gone by the time they come back down here. They’ll find you in the cell, and you explain how I overtook and chained you? Is that it?”
Marcus shook his head. “No. You will lock my chains now and cut out my tongue.”
“I will not!”
“Then we will both die for nothing,” Marcus said, his patience finally wearing thin. “Athanasius of Athens, Chiron, must die tomorrow. If they know you have escaped, if this secret gets out, then they will use the Dei to hunt you down, slaughter Clemens’ surviving children, and round up even more innocent Christians in reprisal. Is that what you want?”
Not really, thought Athanasius. But there was no guarantee that all Marcus described would come to pass anyway. “They will know that you are not me.”
“Only if they look hard enough. But they have no reason to suspect anything other than I am you — unless you fail to escape Rome without being caught or recognized. Even then, they’ll be too concerned with saving their own heads to report their suspicions.”
Suddenly, Athanasius knew why he’d felt strange with this tribune’s manner when he first saw him, and it had little to do with the man’s devotion to his craft or his superstition. Marcus looked more than a bit like him in build. Not quite exactly, but almost.
Athanasius stood flat-footed, unable to move. “Why, Marcus?”
“Because my Lord did the same for me. Now hurry or we both die, and my sacrifice is in vain. Now cut out my tongue. Before a guard comes down to find out what is taking so long.”
As much as he wanted to live, and as innocent as he knew he was, Athanasius hesitated with the knife. “This is insane,” he muttered. “There must be another way.”
“There is no other way.” Marcus was now barking orders to him. “You will cut out my tongue, per your orders from the Master of the Games and the Emperor Domitian. You will then use the hilt of your sword to beat my face black and blue to knock me out and dull the pain. Call it resistance. My face will swell under the helmet, and the disfigurement will complete my transformation. You will leave with my tongue and hand it to one of the kitchen staff from the palace waiting outside in the street. The emperor wants to feast on your tongue tomorrow evening to celebrate your demise.”
Athanasius felt his stomach swirl at the thought but nodded his agreement to the tribune.
“Fine,” Marcus said. “Now, cut my tongue off. I sharpened my knife well to make a clean, quick cut. I pray you really are a butcher.”
Athanasius drew out the knife and, trembling, put it up to Marcus’s mouth. Marcus stuck out his tongue. Athanasius pulled it out further with one hand, while his other hand held the knife just above the tongue midway. Athanasius stared into the serene eyes of Marcus, who blinked once, as if on cue to proceed.
Athanasius made the cut. It was a quick slice and went clean through the tongue until it hit a snag at the very end. Marcus’s eyes went wild, and he threw his head back against the wall in a cry of agony.
Athanasius quickly raised the butt of his sword and smashed it against Marcus’s helmet and face four times until he slid down the wall in his chains to the floor. Blood was everywhere. Athanasius leaned down to where the tongue dangled over the soldier’s chin strap, hanging by a thread, and cut it off.
He looked at it in his bloody hand and almost let it slip away. He grabbed a small cloth strip from the leather pouch and wrapped the tongue. Then he used the inside of his cape to wipe the blood off his hands and breastplate.
Athanasius stepped out of the lower dungeon and locked the door behind him, sealing off Marcus to his fate. He felt the weight of Marcus’s tongue, wrapped in the blood-soaked cloth in his hand, and walked up the narrow steps to the upper level. He kept his face down and held up the bloody wrap to draw the eyes of the guards. As he solemnly made for the exit to the street, it was all he could do to avoid glancing at the warden, whose bandaged face he was curious to see. He had almost reached the gate to the outside when the warden called out after him. “Tribune!”
Athanasius froze in the dim light and cocked his ear. He did not want to face the man.
The warden said, “You missed a spot.”
Athanasius looked down to see a drop of blood on his breastplate. Without turning around, he bobbed his helmet up and down and used his free hand to grasp his cape and wipe off the blood. Then he waved off the warden and walked outside into the night.
Only when Athanasius had gone a good ten paces down the street did he dare look back. There was nobody outside the prison entrance. The warden had gone back inside.