Wrath of Rome (Book Two of the Dominium Dei Trilogy) (11 page)

“We make no bad wine, Samuel,” she sniffed. “We give the gift of wine to those who could otherwise not afford it.”

Athanasius now understood. Lora was an inferior wine that was normally given to slaves and common workers. It was simply a mix of leftover pomace and water. Disgusting stuff, recalling the one time he asked a servant to allow him a sip. It could hardly be called wine at all but some pretender that had no flavor.

“Let me guess,” Athanasius told Cota. “I’m looking at the Dovilin brand of communion wine down there. Water soaked in grape skins. That’s how you fill 10,000 amphorae.”

“I like it,” said a voice, and Athanasius turned to see big Brutus looking down at him with a frown.

Athanasius nodded. “My favorite,” he said, and winked at Cota. “I don’t know how the other half takes it so strong.”

“Mistress Cota,” Brutus said, “your father-in-law would like to see you later when you are finished with this one.”

“Well, I’m not,” she told him. “Not yet. But soon. I have to take him to Vibius. Go on.”

Athanasius watched the scowling slave leave and said, “I see Dovilin’s eyes are on everybody here.”

“This way,” she told him as another shift of men from the fields came in with fresh baskets for the presses and the entire process started over again. “One last stop at the Angel’s Vault.”

•    •    •

The Angel’s Vault turned out to be in the second of the two wine caves behind the winery’s façade in the cliffs, and Athanasius realized the two caves formed a V and connected at a guard station with three great vault doors and two armed guards. One door led back to the pits and presses from which they had come. The second door, according to Cota, would lead them to the Angel’s Vault and the commercial storefront of the winery.

“What about this one?” Athanasius asked her, pointing to the third door that opened into a particularly black, narrow and harrowing tunnel.

“That’s the hole to hell, Samuel. I do hope Vibius doesn’t send you down there.”

Athanasius followed Cota through the second tunnel that would lead them back outside through the main winery entrance. Here the walls were lined with amphorae, and Athanasius sensed immediately that this was what he was looking for in this entire mission to Cappadocia.

“They haven’t been sealed yet,” he observed.

“This is the final fermentation before we seal the wine,” she told him. “The freestanding amphorae you see are the reds, which we keep at higher temperatures in the cave. The amphorae that are half-buried are the whites, to keep them cooler.”

Athanasius immediately focused on the freestanding reds, scanning to see any markings or imperial insignias that would indicate they were bound for Caesar’s palace. “So decorative, with all kinds of marks and labels.”

“Master painters from the caves,” Cota told him, as if reciting a rehearsed line all the Dovilins were forced to repeat to buyers. “God speaks to many artisans down here.”

Athanasius nodded at the artwork that could be considered Christian to some, especially those involving fish and grain, shepherds and sheep. Then he caught a row of black vases in the Spartan style with red gladiators.

“These look imperial,” he said.

“They are,” she said, and looked this way and that quickly, her voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. “They say the wine in these amphorae pass through the lips of Caesar himself.”

“Impressive,” Athanasius said. “But risky. What happens if he doesn’t like it, or even falls ill?”

“We make sure that can never happen. That’s why the angels take their sip first.”

Athanasius started. “Angels?”

Cota nodded, as if sharing the secret of the ages behind the great Dovilin wines. “Something about the air in the amphora,” she said. “Too much of it and the wine turns to vinegar. Not enough and the wine is too bitter. So for the final fermentation we leave the amphora open just enough for the proper amount of air to escape. We like to say it is for the angels to take their sip of the spirits, their ‘angel’s cut.’ Then we seal the amphora shut with a special piece of cork and ceramic capping.”

“Like this one?” Athanasius asked, picking up the cork capper from an amphora to Cota’s dismay and sniffing it. “I see you use resin as a sealant. Smart. The resin preserves the wine once sealed and flavors it with the proper fermenation, provided you know what you’re doing. What is this indent on top of the cork with the Dovilin emblem?”

Cota took the cork from Athanasius and quickly placed it lopsided atop its amphora. “There is something in the resin,” she said. “Once the cork is sealed, it cannot be tampered with in any way, or the cork discolors. If it is not discolored, the palace staff then use a thin iron hook to pierce it and pull it out, and the wine is ready for serving.”

“So who applies the proper mix of resin?” he asked.

“The whore of hell,” she sniffed. “I think I hear her now.”

They moved on, but Athanasius made sure to remember the pattern and décor of the amphorae bound for Rome. It was here in this chamber, before the amphorae were sealed, where he would poison Domitian’s wine.

He tried to keep up with Cota, who breezed through the main wine cave just behind the face of the winery without explanation. Their tour, it seemed, was over. Along the way he noted similar patterns on the amphorae here as in the Angel’s Vault, and they seemed to have more markings for weight, price, destination and such.

He realized he might have to use these sealed amphorae as his key to identify those bound for Domitian, then go back and poison an identical and open amphora in the Angel’s Vault, then switch them. Simple but not easy, he suspected.

They had arrived outside in the courtyard below the towering façade as the Dovilin winery was closing up for the day. He noted the servants moving in and out of the cave, as well as security: almost a dozen ex-legionnaire types doing nothing much but standing around and looking tough.

“This way,” she said, tugging his hand. “The office is upstairs.”

They climbed a short flight of stone steps to the second story of the façade, where an open arch led into an impressive office with a table and fine furniture, but no husband.

“Vibius?” she called out.

Athanasius heard muffled voices. They seemed to be coming from behind the wall of shelves with scrolls, which Athanasius assumed to be commercial contracts and delivery schedules, sales receipts and records.

Cota cocked her ear, and her eyes narrowed. Her lips formed a thin, grim line, and she marched to the wall and pushed something that opened it to reveal another room behind it.

Now the voices were loud and clear—a young woman’s and a man’s, presumably Cota’s husband. There was a definite slap, then the girl’s voice cried out: “Stop it, Vibius. You know I am only trying to help the vineyard.”

Vibius said, “I will help the vineyard, and you will do what I want.”

“I know what you want, Vibius, and you’ll never get it with me.”

“You little whore,” he said. “You’ve given yourself to every rat in the streets. Now you want to get holy with me? I think not.”

“Vibius!” Cota screamed, and Athanasius followed her inside to see her husband threatening this girl with long dark hair, her hand at her face where it had been struck.

Vibius turned and looked at his wife and the stranger with rage. “What do you want?”

“This is Samuel Ben-Deker. Your father wants you to put him to work.”

Athanasius could feel Vibius’s stare. “Are you sure you haven’t already, Cota?”

“Vibius!” she screamed again, so that all inside and outside the winery could hear.

But Vibius was unmoved. “Take this one to suitable quarters tonight and see if you have any use for him tomorrow,” he ordered the girl, who half-turned her face to reveal a ghastly split cheek that made Cota gasp.

“Yes, sir,” she said and in defiance gave Vibius a mock Roman salute.

He brought up his hand to strike her again but thought better of it when Cota sternly repeated to him, “Vibius, your father.”

“We’ll go out the back way,” said the badly beaten girl, and walked through an archway into the Angel’s Vault toward the secondary vault doors that led to the caves deep inside the mountain.

Athanasius turned to Cota. “I’m to follow her into that?”

“Where else for you, Ben-Deker?” Vibius said. “Now leave us.”

Feeling very strange, as if he had been to this place before, Athanasius followed the girl and her long, black hair into a stone cave that led only to darkness. The long shafts of light from the sunset that had streamed across the floors of the winery office began to disappear as the vault door closed behind him.

“The Dovilins order the wine vaults sealed off every night from the inside as well as the outside,” the girl explained and turned to face him. “Don’t worry about the dark. I know the way. By the way, Samuel Ben-Deker, my name is Gabrielle.”

Suddenly he stopped, watching the last shaft of light touch her bleeding face and illuminate it like a halo of light, before the vault door plunged them into darkness.

It was the girl from his dreams back in Rome.

That evening Dovilin thought he had better see how things went with the new Jew and sent Brutus to find Vibius. It was Cota who showed up in the courtyard.

“Where’s my son?” Dovilin asked her.

“You know you should be asking one of the Sweet Grapes girls if you want to know what my husband does at night, Father,” she replied flatly.

Dovilin had neither the energy nor time to reply. His son’s marriage was what it was. For himself, he would have gladly taken care of Cota’s needs were it not for his firm belief, more stoic than Christian, that feelings of eros were better channeled into business and accumulating wealth. It was a lesson he had somehow failed to pass on to his son, as Cota was quick to remind him all too often. “Just tell me about Ben-Deker. How did things go?”

“Fine,” she said, although Dovilin knew there was more that she was holding back. “Vibius didn’t like him, of course, but he didn’t stop your little whore from taking him to the caves for the night to sleep with all your other slaves.”

Dovilin thought he understood now. “I don’t like Gabrielle either, Cota. None of us do. But the vineyard needs her. The family can master the science of wine production, but the creation of great grapes is an art. She understands the soil, the sun, the wind and water like nobody else.”

“She has help with that, Father, you know it,” Cota said darkly. “Deep down in the caves.”

He nodded. “Perhaps. But it is her tongue that saves us in the Angel’s Vault, during the final fermentation. Hers is the last tongue to taste our wine before it is sealed and shipped and then opened before even Caesar. It’s never let us down.”

“Or never let you or Vibius down, Father?” Cota replied, insinuating rumors that Cota knew were utterly false but which Dovilin did not refute, if only to make Gabrielle an outcast not only among the employees of the Dovilin Winery but the Christians of the underground church in the caves.

Dovilin was ready to send her away. “Is there anything else you wish to tell me about Ben-Deker?”

“What makes you say that?”

“His Star of David is something a man like him would never wear for himself. It has one of those Tears of Joy inside.”

Dovilin stiffened. “Tear of Joy, you say?”

“It’s a crystal of some kind.”

“What color?” Dovilin pressed.

“I think it’s a sapphire. For a man like Samuel, it must be his most priceless possession. He’ll have to watch himself in the caves.”

“Yes, yes,” Dovilin said and waved her off. “You can go.”

He cursed, pulled a cord and waited impatiently for Brutus to appear. He felt a dribble on his forehead and wiped off a rare drop of perspiration. His slave appeared in the courtyard and said, “Master.”

“Brutus,” said Dovilin, scribbling a coded text on a small strip of papyrus, rolling it up and slipping it into the stylus with which it was penned. “I need a Mercury courier and horse immediately to deliver this message to Rome: We have Athanasius.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

From
New York Times
bestselling author

THOMAS GREANIAS

Book III

RULE OF GOD

Read the entire Dominium Dei Trilogy now!