visited me on a moonlit night, wakening me from a deep sleep. I had to scream to make him go away. Sitting up in bed, I tried to understand what I could have done to defile him. All I knew was that his eyes bound me in chains from which I’m still struggling to break free.
FOUR
It was about this time that God led me to the catacombs. I was wandering along the Via Labicana late one day, not far from Saint John’s Gate, when a downpour sent me scurrying to some ancient ruins for cover. Pushing my way through the high, tangled grasses, I came to a large, roofless basilica overgrown with nettles. As I stepped among the cypress and gray-leaved ilex, I noticed a flight of slick, moss-covered steps, disappearing into the ground. I hesitated, but the rain was sharp and cold, so I asked God to protect me, and descended.
Dim lights flickered in the crypt below. The air smelled sickly sweet, like an overripe melon. The dampness cut through me like iron. Suddenly I was standing in a low-arched chamber, before a marble altar. The walls were covered with religious scenes, barely distinguishable in the gloom. The mensa was strewn with wilted flowers, blood-red and white.
Suddenly I froze. There in the corner was the twisted body of a demon, gaping up at me through lidless eyes. I turned and fled up the stairs, through the wet grasses, back to the Via Labicana. I pulled off my tunic as I ran. The rain lashed me like a whip.
The altar, I learned from a priest, covered the earthly remains of two holy Roman martyrs, Peter and Marcellinus, who had been persecuted in the time of Diocletian. The steps offered a shortcut to their tomb.
When the skies cleared I paid the martyrs a second visit, this time with my classmate Luniso. He had never deigned to spend time with me before, but my hair-raising adventure intrigued him.
He lit a torch at the entrance and, without a prayer or a moment’s hesitation, plunged down into the ground. I touched the small box of relics that hung from my neck, and followed close behind. Our warm breath bloomed in the chilly air like poisonous white flowers. Tuber-like roots grew down through cracks in the plaster ceiling. Drops of moisture hung from them like jewels. Flames leaped from two or three oil lamps left by the faithful, blackening the walls. The sacred bones sweetened the air with the clean, spicy scent of frankincense and myrrh.
Luniso pointed gleefully at the partly decomposed body of a sheep, which must have wandered down into the crypt and lost its way.
“So much for your demon,” he laughed.
Nothing fazed Luniso. He hummed as he paced off the marble floor: fifteen feet by twenty-five. Pieces of fluted marble lay about an opening in the far left wall. “That should be the original entrance, through the catacombs,” he announced. “Let’s go see.”
He lifted his torch and headed down the narrow corridor. I rushed after him. The dead slept in niches dug into the rough walls, one above the other, five or six bodies high. A few tombs remained sealed behind tiles or marble slabs, but most of them had been plundered over the centuries by grave robbers. I reached into a gaping black hole and touched a bone. It crumbled in my hand like ash.
Whenever Luniso turned a corner, he left me in total darkness. An owl hooted. A bat rushed by my head. Luniso laughed. What did he know that made him so unafraid of death?
On we went. The air tasted old. Our shadows leaped across the walls like sprites. I was terrified that we would lose our way like the hapless sheep and be found hundreds of years from now, bones and dust.
It would be an honor, I mused, dying beside Luniso, our names forever linked on peoples’ lips.
Stooping through a low, lonely corridor, we found ourselves in a family crypt decorated with scenes of hope and redemption, life beyond this vale of tears. One of the paintings, severely damaged by water, portrayed a Roman family gathered around a table, sharing a joyful evening meal.
The scene still haunts me. Agape and Irene—Love and Peace—stand behind a table, waiting to serve the fish and wine—the flesh and blood of Christ. Misce me! says the father. Mix the wine for me. Da calda. Make it warm. The parents and children slouch forward in easy conversation, their arms and elbows on the table. It is a banquet of the blessed, a celebration of the Eucharist as it was meant to be observed: as an ordinary family meal.
Luniso stepped back into the dreary passageway, waving his lantern. The darkness enveloped me. I lunged after him. How far he would have led me I’ll never know, for God in His mercy blocked our way with debris fallen through a skylight, and forced us to retrace our steps. We passed back through the chapel of Peter and Marcellinus, up into the blinding light of day.
FIVE
I mastered my scribal skills with an ease my father would have hugged me for, and went to work in the scriniarium as one of hundreds of glorified young notaries overseeing the daily business of the Church. Having a way with words, I was assigned to the library, where I handled requests for books and kept records of those on loan.
“We search for Cicero’s De Oratore and the Commentaries of Donatus on Terence,” wrote an elderly monk from Lorsch. “Please also send us the Commentaries of Saint Jerome on Jeremiah, from the seventh book to the end. We’ll return it as soon as it’s copied. We can’t find anything beyond the sixth book north of the Alps.”
Four months passed before I could find a messenger going to Lorsch whom I could entrust these treasures to. Did he drown on the way? Was he waylaid by robbers or eaten by wild beasts? I’ll never know. Neither he nor the books he was charged to deliver were ever seen again.
On dark nights, when I’m fast sleep, I still sometimes pay a visit to the monk from Lorsch. I find him sitting on the floor of his cold dark cell, waiting for the scraps of ancient wisdom I tried to send him. I call out to him but he doesn’t answer. Animals without names howl outside his door. The only light is the lamp he reads by and the stars.
I envied the Pope’s messengers their freedom, their availability for whatever life threw their way. When I wasn’t working in the library, I wandered over to Saint Peter’s stables and helped the boys load the carts and harness the horses as they set off around the kingdom. I was still waving long after they rumbled out of sight.
A horse named Romulus, a strong Low Country horse with Oriental blood, would follow me around the stables, nuzzling me and licking honey from my fingers with his rough tongue. His power was astonishing. When his hooves began to split and soften, I pleaded with the count of the stable to give him wooden shoes. He wouldn’t hear of it. “You bookish types are all alike,” he growled. “If horses were meant to have shoes, God would have given them shoes.” Romulus whinnied and pawed the ground. He could hardly stand. A few weeks later the count had him slaughtered.
SIX
Several weeks later a voice came to me in my sleep, urging me to return to the tombs. I went alone.
As I felt my way along the dim, dank corridors, I was surprised by the absence of images of pain and torture. A gentle Jesus played his lute in a garden, taming the hearts of man and beast, drowning the world in sweetness. Lambs gamboled. Doves floated on the still air. What I saw—what God had led me to—was a world of quiet joy and peace, beyond suffering, where compassion triumphed over death. Persecution had no victims here.
I learned what I could about Peter and Mar-cellinus, but there was little anyone could tell me. Marcellinus had been a priest, leading men to God. Peter was