The Chiron Confession (Dominium Dei) Read Online Free PDF

collapsed to the ground, dead.
    Ludlumus held back a smile as he watched the arena attendants pick up what was left of Clemens. Their assistants carried the corpse off while they hastily turned over the blood-stained sand for the next act.
    It was all over too soon, Ludlumus lamented.
    Athanasius of Athens would not die so easily.

IV
    T he dreams were different, but the girl was always the same. Young, maybe 17, long black hair, dark eyes, and tears of blood trickling down her tragic face. Sometimes she was the harlot Rahab in ancient Jericho, and he was the enemy spy sent to bring down the walls. Other times she was a beauty named Aphrodite in a future Greece under the rule of Germania. This night she had no name, but he knew it was present day. She was in a cave somewhere, calling out to him in the darkness. She possessed the secret of the ages, a mystery he had to unravel, or his mission would fail and the world would be doomed. In the haze of dream, he stumbled down an endless cave, his hands feeling the walls as they narrowed, his feet tripping over jagged rocks. “I’ll find you! I’ll find you!” he cried out, and then slipped, tumbling over and over into space.
    Athanasius of Athens awoke from his nightmare, gasping for breath, the sound of trumpets outside piercing the air. He sat up and let his eyes adjust. Shafts of sunlight streamed through the drapes and marble columns onto a vast mosaic floor. He looked over at Helena’s empty side of the bed and put his hand on it. It was cool to the touch.
    What time was it?
    He put on a robe and walked onto the balcony of his hillside villa, taking in the spectacular view of the city below. To the west were dazzling white terraces and marble columns cascading down the cypress-covered hills to the Circus Maximus and the winding Tiber beyond. To the east was the intersection of Rome’s two great boulevards, the Via Appia and the Via Sacra, and, in the middle, Rome’s great coliseum known as the Flavian Amphitheater. The roar of a crowd wafted up on the wings of the breeze. The lunchtime executions must have begun.
    He frowned. It must be noon already.
    On his better days the playwright Athanasius religiously followed a strict regimen. He would wake before dawn, leave Helena in their warm bed and put in a good hour or two writing his next play. Then he would leave their villa on Caelian Hill and head over to the Circus Maximus to run laps and maybe shoot some arrows—he was a marksman archer—before the heat of the day set in. He found his best ideas flowed while he ran, and it kept alive his fantasy that at age 25 he could still run the marathons he once did as a boy outside Corinth back in Greece. After lunch he would enjoy the baths, a relaxing massage, and perhaps take in an afternoon rest with Helena before answering letters, supervising rehearsals at the Theater of Pompey, or attending to the problems of everyday life, which he limited each day to the single turn of an hour-glass. Then he and Helena would enjoy dinner with friends in the city or stroll along the Tiber and watch the imperial barges delivering the world’s luxuries to Rome. They would cap off the evening by attending various parties and then retiring to bed with each other.
    It was, in short, the perfect Epicurean life he had always imagined as a boy, filled with friends, food, freedom and sex. Lots of sex.
    Those were the good days.
    On his bad days, he slept until noon, hung over from a late party or a nightmare induced by his creativity-enhancing leaves. Having missed his peak writing time, and not feeling up to laps at the Circus Maximus, he’d still have lunch with friends, go to the baths, enjoy a massage and a nap, albeit alone because the ever-practical Helena would be upset with him for his lethargy. All the same, they’d go out to dinner and perhaps see one of his own productions, just so he could validate that he existed. Then on to the can’t-miss parties where the wine would loosen