‘Warning: Reading Rufius may induce forbidden thoughts. Also laughter, wonderment, and a discombobulating sensation of time travel. Proceed with caution—but by all means, proceed!’
Steven Saylor, author of the Roma Sub Roma mystery series.
‘Reminds me of Marguerite Yourcenar. Armed with the hypnotic prose of a pedigree writer, Sarah Walton shows how we got here and the wonders, beliefs and wit we have left behind forever.’
José Luis de Juan, literary correspondent for El País and author of This Breathing World
About the Author
Sarah Walton was born in 70s London. In the 80s she partied. In the 90s she partied harder, studied literature in France and Spain, founded a dot.com and went to Silicon Valley. A bump on the head wiped out a few years. Sarah advises governments and businesses on digital. She’s also been a creative writing tutor at the University of Hull, club VJ, designer, dancer, programmer and the worst waitress in the world. She threw away her first novel as she thought it was rubbish. This novel won her a PhD. She lives on the edge of the South Downs with two Italian greyhounds.
www.sarahwalton.org
@sarahlwalton
First published in Great Britain by
Barbican Press in 2016
Copyright © Sarah Walton 2016
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention
No reproduction without permission
All rights reserved
The right of Sarah Walton to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Barbican Press, Hull and London
Registered office: 1 Ashenden Road, London E5 0DP
www.barbicanpress.com
@barbicanpress1
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781909954168
eISBN: 9781909954175
Text design, typesetting and eBook by Tetragon, London
Cover by Jason Anscomb of Rawshock Design
Part I
Prologue
366 ad
The scream of a desert cat startles the hermit and his snake hisses in its basket. Wrapped in a blanket on the altar, a baby gurgles. His father stares into the fire in trance. The man is a seeker; he paid in dates for a prophecy for his newborn son. The hermit did not ask what tragedy sent the city man trudging across the Western desert. His job is to find answers.
The hermit’s deep chant echoes around the cave and across the rocky canyon. Any words will work, but the sacred vowels usher in the silence quicker and are always the first to come to his lips: ‘Aoi-aoi-aoi.’
A vast black night stretches out beyond the entrance. Dera the Hermit imagines the whole world is a peaceful desert, the excesses of Empire a hallucination. The hermit’s huge black hand glimmers as the fire throws shadow and light around the small cave. He mutters faster, ‘Aoi-aoi-aoi,’ and touches The Book of Wisdom on the rock-hewn altar.
The seeker’s limbs tense. He snorts cold desert air in quick breaths. The signs are always the same. Bile burps onto his chest. It’s the sacred plant that makes them puke – the bitter seed the hermit crushes to send the seekers into trance. The seeker’s blue eyes flick open, fretful. He wails like a woman stalking a funeral procession and his eyes roll white in their sockets, head stretched back on a vein-tense neck.
‘Serapis… my son…’. He stares at the fire in his solitary vision, his voice a torrent of urgency, ‘It is time. Return to Alexandria, Dera.’
The hermit’s spine stiffens at his name. In the desert the hermit has no name: don’t drag me into your vision, city man. Dera the Hermit must remain detached to facilitate the seeker’s vision, interpret the hallucinations, remind him of his gibberish when his soul returns to his body.
The seeker’s arms stretch out in delirium, hands clench and unclench. His back bolts upright and he stares into the fire like a man possessed. Flames flare and spark.
‘The Serapeum will fall.’ The seeker’s voice has acquired the depth of an oracle.
That is an ancient prophecy, thinks the hermit. A hot fever prickles his body as the shape of Serapis forms in the flames. Dera the Hermit watches the vision in the fire, his gaze unblinking as the god’s features sharpen, his beard sprouts, the basket of grain on his head glows gold. Never, in all his years of divination, has Dera the Hermit seen such a clear apparition: polished-bronze with sapphires for eyes like the statue of Serapis in the Serapeum at Alexandria. It keeps growing. The hermit’s jaw gapes open as his neck bends backwards to look up at the god’s sombre face – the basket of grain’s nearly touching the rough rock ceiling.
‘Darkness will consume The Temple.’ The seeker’s words echo round the cave. Dera’s snake hisses in its basket.
Serapis blackens and crumbles and smothers the flames. The vision is gone as quickly as it came. Smouldering embers give off an acrid reek of sacrifice and an atmosphere thick with grief fills the cave. To soothe his heart, Dera the Hermit touches the sacred book – a tick to calm his nerves, fetish of the faithful.
The seeker slumps back against the cave wall, eyes wide, rolled back to the whites. ‘Protect my son.’
Dera doesn’t respond – there’s no point: the seeker’s not aware of the hermit’s presence. ‘Aoi-aoi-aoi.’ He chants louder to quell his unease.
‘PROTECT MY SON.’ The seeker shouts the order like a general.
Is that a boy in the flames? The image forms. A child’s blue eyes stare out from the fire: a face so lovely, a gaze so clear and innocent it could thaw the most jaded, depraved soul. The boy is writing. Paper blackens, curls and burns; letters unpeel and lift off the page like tiny insects: the black tails of the alphas, the round bellies of the omegas.
Dera the Hermit gasps at the sight of them: the sacred vowels. ‘Aoi-aoi-aoi,’ he mutters and touches the book again. This is a sign – a sign from Holy Sophia. An omen.
The boy’s face cracks and crumbles to ash.
As if the baby senses its own fate, it gives out a shrill cry.
A sob rises in the hermit’s throat. The soles of his feet find their balance on the cave floor as he shuffles the short distance to the altar. He picks up the swaddled baby and holds him close to his chest, stares at the embers and chants as if the sacred vowels were a lullaby, ‘Aoi-aoi-aoi.’
The seeker is spent, face slack, eyes closed. The plant sucks a man’s knowledge then spits him out. The baby’s father will sleep until morning.
Sweat cools on the hermit’s brow in the night air. The vision has left him with an urgent purpose: he must protect the baby. This boy must never learn the sacred art of writing, or he’ll be doomed like the Temple of Serapis to which this child’s fate is linked.
‘Destinies can be changed,’ mutters Dera.
Red paint from the crucifix on the cave wall has peeled and flaked off. Life’s impermanence is mirrored in the holy places of the Snake People – they do not build for posterity and their sacred decoration will not be discovered by future generations.
Dera stares at the cross and mutters a prayer: ‘Sophia, Holy Spirit of Wisdom, if this is my path guide me.’
This was a time – or rather, on the cusp of the age – when rational men sought the wisdom of oracles and sacred chants written in ancient languages were firmly believed to hold magical powers. Neither man saw Rufius in their desert vision. But who – with the exception of a horny god with a naughty sense of humour – could predict Rufius?
Σ
