The Water Thief

by Ben Pastor

  Aelius could not think of a time when the description of a civilian’s loss had not troubled him; irritated him at times, saddened him at others, made him uncomfortable always. By the time he left the nice villa, he was ready for the anonymous atmosphere of the army post. There, one knew that everyone came and went, and some folks got killed in the meantime, and then one mentioned them in passing, as Tralles had just brought him up to date with the deaths the regiment had suffered for one reason or other during the last few years.

  In the afternoon, having secured a slim book of poems on Antinous’s death at one of those general stores called pantopoleion, he set off for the army post exchange across the river. With a little luck, Serenus’s letter would be easy to ‘find among the packs of outgoing mail.

  Hermopolis Magna, crowded with shrines, baboons, ape- and ibis-headed imagery and whatever else related to the veneration of Thoth-Hermes, lay on the opposite bank from Antinoopolis, and was at this time of year fairly overrun by pilgrims and tourists. The bridge leading to the venerable district capital had been built by Hadrian in the last year of his life, and spanned the Nile on both sides of a leafy island, with piers high and powerful enough to withstand the flood about to reach it. Crossing over on horseback, Aelius observed Hadrian’s inscriptions to Antinous, after whom the bridge was named. The inscriptions were covered with graffiti, pious or obscene, depending on the writer’s opinion of the Boy. Below, unrolling between high banks, the current raced still green, but the depth of its color already had muted from yesterday, and soon would shade into the floodborne mud yellow.

  From the highest point of the bridge, the old Serapis Avenue, now Antinous Boulevard, could be seen parting downtown Hermopolis, with Central Mall Avenue intersecting it. Crowded with government buildings, shopping centers, Greek and Roman temples, the thoroughfares were still reasonably free of traffic at this early time of day, but Harpocratio had warned that by midmorning ceremonies involving veterans would begin at the sanctuary of Serapis-Nile, some sports award had been scheduled on the stairs of Antinous’s temple, and the Main Shrine would be “a regular circus of fortune tellers and baboon embalmers this week, and for the next month or so.”

  Seven years ago, Aelius’s dismounted unit had fought house-to-house in the neighborhood of the Shrine’s massive wall, and the losses incurred to secure the garrison inside it had been disastrous. To this day, approaching its gate, he found the seventy-some feet of the wall looming to the right of the avenue oppressive and sad, as did the monstrous complex of the city shrine to Thoth-Hennes facing him from the threshold. Secondary chapels, priest houses, and a labyrinth of offices flanked it, the whole of Diocletian’s palace would fit into this walled square twice at least, and his men had bloodied the width and length of it to overtake other Roman soldiers. Today live baboons, once more, had the run of the place. They squatted and called out, stole, argued, and urinated among their stone counterparts when Aelius left his horse with an attendant before entering the garrison command.

  Inside, local recruits busied themselves with paperwork and the details of bureaucracy, looking alive for the benefit of the high-ranking visitor no doubt. The letter was found and duly handed to him, and a small office placed at his disposal for undisturbed reading. Written in Serenus’s crab-lettered Greek, the message began in a tone so mundane that Aelius had to wonder why he’d taken the time to come here and read it when he had better things to do. The latter part of the narrative, however, awoke the old curiosity and an edgy, newer unease, in view of what had befallen the writer.

  To Aelius Flavius Spartianus, esteemed scholar, erstwhile commander of the First Cavalry Crack Regiment of the Pannonians, good health and greetings. Having heard through the booksellers’ grapevine that you were entrusted by His Divinity to draft new lives of the Caesars, and might be traveling our way soon in order to gather information on the deified Hadrian, I make so bold as to acquaint you with a find that might intrigue you. Now four weeks ago, Commander, returning by land from Cyrenae, I was approached by Berber merchants trying to make a fast sale out of a saddlebag they’d found in the Western Wilderness, along the caravan road that leads from Lake Moeris to the Oasis of Ammoneum.

  I should premise the rest by acknowledging that I was always interested, as my father before me, in pursuing the fabulous remains of Cambyses’s army, given the utter disaster encountered by that Persian king’s blasphemous expedition to plunder the temple of Zeus Ammon and its wealthy oasis. The merchants insisted the saddlebag was Persian, but I could see at once that—though of a type unlike the present one—it was definitely a Roman army saddlebag, with papers in it. Sight unseen, I bought it for a small amount, and of all that was in it, one sealed packet attracted my interest. It was, as it turns out, a private autographed letter by the deified Hadrian, hence of remarkable antiquarian value in and of itself.

  The text, addressed to a not otherwise identified Caesernius, is undated, but mentions grave matters concerning the safety of the Empire, salus imperii, adding that a record of them has been deposited, and I quote: “in memoria Antinoi nostri” or “in the funeral monument of one Antinous.” Should I hazard a date, I would suggest it was sent sometime during the months that followed the Boy’s death in the early part of the fifteenth year of the deified Hadrian’s reign, while he was still traveling through Egypt. As there is also an injunction to the recipient to consign this information to silence, it is possible that loss of the letter before delivery might not have been noticed by the emperor.

  There is no certain answer for this, but recalling your interest in things antique during the Rebellion, I thought you might wish to see this unique piece, and perhaps decide to acquire it. If the document as described holds some curiosity for you, please let me know at once. Ever since it has been in my possession, one month to the day, such unusual things have befallen me, that I am fearful for my safety. No more than this will I commit to paper, but know that on my way back from Libya I stopped by the oasis temple of the blessed and ever-powerful Ammon, and the oracle confirmed my anxiety. None of this have I told anyone until now, not even my dear friend Harpocratio. But I have entrusted the original of the letter to my freedman Pammychios, also known as Loretus, who lives outside the Moon Gate at Hermopolis, on the way to Cusae, at the second mile of the country lane that goes by the name of Dovecotes Alley. I beg you, Commander, to let me know promptly whether you are interested in this artifact, as I do not wish to keep it in my possession longer than necessary. Written at his estate in Antinoe by Serenus Dio, also known as Sarapion, the eighteenth day of Pachon, in the ninth and eighth year respectively of Our Lords Diocletian’s and Maximian’s consulship.

  Aelius would have followed through on the matter at once, out of curiosity if nothing else, but there was no escaping the Hermopolis military compound without having lunch with staff-officers desperate for news from outside Egypt. All were bored beyond their ability to conceal it. One of them, afterward, led him into his paper-stuffed cubicle and handed him a petition to Diocletian. “It would help if you added a couple of words in my favor, Commander. If I don’t get out of this assignment I will lose my mind—I can’t take another year of these people and this town and this climate.”

  Aelius glanced at the letter. “Where are you from, originally?”

  “Lambaesis.”

  “That’s not what it says here.”

  “I thought that indicating a more northern birthplace I’d stand a better chance for reassignment.”

  “Here.” Aelius gave the petition back. “You had better tell the truth, or come up with something less ludicrous than saying ‘the Rhine’ when you mean Africa.”

  The officer looked crestfallen. “As you say. I’ll send the new draft to your residence for your perusal, along with some good local Chios.”

  It might have been only courtesy, offering to accompany the request for a favor with wine, but it smacked of provincial intrigue all the same. Specifically instructed to accept no petitions, Aelius fou
nd a polite way to refuse gift and request, knowing full well that the bribery wine would be delivered at his doorstep in any case.

  By the end of the fifth hour, with the sun reaching nearly the zenith, he was finally on his way out of Moon Gate.

  When he arrived—Serenus’s freedman’s house was a small one, recessed from the road, and this a narrow lane off the main track, which neither the noise nor the smell of the town reached—all he could hear was the clucking of chickens in the backyard. Lizards squatted on a low mud wall, brownish against the sun-baked brownish surface. From the dirt path leading to it, the house, built on a knoll that might become an island in a few days, resembled every other local dwelling: whitewashed, plain, with faded awnings shielding, the windows from the pitiless light of day. For a moment, but enough to startle him, the impression was of having seen this place before, and Aelius wondered whether he’d dreamed it or seen it during the Rebellion, but the impression was gone already.

  The soldier’s habit was not to make noise, not to call. Although he should make himself known to the man inside, he caught himself walking so as not to be heard, wondering perhaps why there were no human sounds, no serfs around, curious that no sign of life came from inside.

  He had to come as close as the swing-beam well, with its motionless bucket at one end, and a harnessed stone as counterweight at the other end, before perceiving what he thought at first to be a dog’s yelping. Behind the dark blue drape hung by the door frame, the door was open, and Aelius stepped into a peasant’s square room. A woman, or more than one woman, could be heard sobbing in a back room, and Aelius smelled blood in advance of walking into that second space. Less than eight years ago, on patrol not far from here, he’d taken the same careful steps, smelled the same stench. Crouching in a corner, a black-dressed, greasy-haired old woman cradled the head of a recumbent man in her lap, weeping over it. Blood and brain fragments filled the fly-ridden room with stench, and having stepped into the mess that trickled from her lap to the threshold, Aelius looked at his feet, and recognized that through this death, Egypt was violently taking him back.

  It took him some time to get any information out of the women. The old one is the freedman’s decrepit nursemaid, the other two, slave girls who don’t have enough sense to get out of the rain. None of them speaks Greek, much less Latin. I finally managed to dispatch one of them to fetch the owner of the farm down the road, whom I sent to call the river patrol. But aside from the fact that there was nothing to do for Pammychios, it’s clear to me he surprised thieves in his house, and was done in by them.”

  “Well,” Tralles spoke as he helped himself to roast duck, “timing is everything, even in misfortune.” They were having dinner at the officers’ club, where vessels and odors and people were so much like everywhere else cavalry officers congregated, Aelius felt both at home and removed from reality, as though there were a dimension of common, communal life for men like himself, and no matter where destiny led them individually, they were all bound to meet in this One Place sooner or later. Tralles tore meat from the duck’s breast and put it in his mouth. “What were you doing there, anyway?”

  The diplomatic untruth came out of him before Aelius thought about a motive for lying. “Serenus had left a box of books for me at Pammychios’s place.”

  Tralles did not insist. “Well, a freedman more or less makes no difference. What’s it to us?”

  “It’s nothing to us, but it does come less than a week after his former master’s death.”

  “I don’t see the connection. One drowned by fair means or foul on a business trip, the other was killed by robbers.”

  Aelius had been eating without an appetite, and now pushed the plate aside. “I know.” The coincidence bothered him, that was all. No, not quite all, since the ancient letter Aelius had come to claim was nowhere to be found in the freedman’s house, and no witnesses for a murder that seemed senseless enough. From what he could judge, Pammychios had no money to speak of. His three slaves—the two girls, spending every morning in the fields, and a boy he’d apprenticed out—were not in the house at the time of the killing. As for the toothless nursemaid, she came daily to cook his meals, and had stumbled into the blood even as he had. The farm down the road was far enough so that its owner wouldn’t hear a scuffle, or cries for help. “Do assaults in private homes happen often, around here?” he chose to ask.

  “No more now than they ever did. What was stolen, do you know?”

  “They tell me a small silver cup the master had given him, loose change, a box where he kept deeds and documents. The usual small household items easy to remove and resell.”

  “I see.” Tralles cleaned the meat off the duck’s rib cage, looking beyond Aelius to greet someone with a nod. “There you have it. What’s there to add?”

  “It’s not as simple as that, Gavius. The matter was planned. Pammychios had been called off urgently on the false pretense that his pregnant daughter was dying. His son-in-law, who arrived shortly after my coming, showed me the note, scratched in Greek on a piece of pottery. He said that, contrary to the news, his wife and new-born child are perfectly fine. But Pammychios had rushed off from home in a panic, and was one third of the way to Cusae before he met with the girl’s husband, who happened to be coming in the opposite direction. Being at once reassured that all was well, without waiting for the young man to accompany him, Pammychios hurried back.”

  “So, they wanted him out of the house to rob him. Pretty smart, I’d say.”

  Pammychios’s small property had been easy to search from one end to the other. Aelius had done it while waiting for the river police, and concluded that Hadrian’s letter had been in the locked box of documents, stolen in hopes it might contain worthwhile objects. This, too, he did not tell his friend. With the flood coming, any items the thieves might discard were as good as lost forever.

  Tralles saw him troubled, or else wanted to give him a lesson on the realities of Egypt. “Look, Aelius, it probably was someone the victim knew, who killed him not to be turned in. If not, there’s thieves up and down the river. Water thieves, they call them. For three hundred years we’ve taxed these people until they squeak, and what may seem slim pickings to us—a silver cup worth less than a pair of boots—is very inviting for the average local yokel. His Divinity may have capped the price of everything, but folks’ savings aren’t buying shit these days.” One fingertip at a time, Tralles licked the last of the duck sauce from his right hand. “How is it that you’re traveling alone, anyway? I’ll give you a couple of recruits, if you want them.”

  From the flat bread on the plate between them, Aelius tore a wedge-shaped piece, and bit into it.

  “Why? Do I need an escort?”

  “When you start dealing with the Christians, you will.”

  The first letter from Aelius Spartianus to Diocletian Caesar:

  To Emperor Caesar Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletian Pius Felix Invictus Augustus, his Aelius Spartianus, greetings. In obedience to Your Divinity’s commands, I have delivered letters and sealed orders to Epidius Censorinus, commander of the garrison of Antinoopolis, and to Rabirius Saxa, epistrategos of the Heptanomia and representative of Clodius Culcianus, praefectus Aegypti. As it is Your Divinity’s wish that I report regularly in writing, what follows is the first of my communications.

  We landed at Pelusium after an astonishingly brief and successful trip of barely ten days aboard the Fortuna Isiaca, sister ship to the Tyche that took us to Egypt during the Rebellion and was then wrecked off the shore of Antiphrae with its million pounds of grain. Traveling by river to Cynopolis, I then continued by land to my destination. Here, as you directed, I secured quarters outside the military compound, in the Hellenium quarter of Antinoopolis. My escort, I elected to leave at Cynopolis for the moment, as I believe my work to be best accomplished without the obvious trappings of an envoy.

  Indeed, I am mindful of the dual nature of the duties with which Your Divinity entrusted me in the Heptanomia. Tom
orrow I will begin a review of the measures taken to purge the army ranks of Christian officers and noncommissioned, originally scheduled to be accomplished as of the last day of last month, but still ongoing. I heard troubling reports of high-profile incidents in the Delta, where Phileas, bishop of Thmuis, just appeared for the fourth time before Culcianus. Of the latter, general opinion is that his rigor is tempered by common sense, though his patience with recalcitrant clerics may be wearing thin. Be Thmuis is what they call a titular see, its events hold in, for the Christians of Pelusium and Alexandria, so everyone will be watching how it goes with Phileas.

  Ever since arriving, I have also been zealously adding to my draft of the biography of the deified Hadrian, especially with an eye to your recommendation that the truth about the death of the blessed Antinous (as they refer to him here) be ascertained, along with the circumstances that led to the rise of such discordant accounts. The priests at his temple have promised to show me artifacts connected with the incident, recovered from the riverbanks near what used to be a village or rural shrine sacred to Bes, now grown into the city of Antinoopolis.

  Coincidentally, only yesterday I came close to acquiring a letter to Caesernius (perhaps Caesernius Quinctianus, governor in the East, the deified Hadrian’s comes per orientem), purported to be authored by the emperor himself but for reasons I will detail below in the postscript to this brief I was prevented from doing so. Your Divinity’s advice as to the matter will be eagerly awaited. I am entrusting this letter to Julius Agrabanis, skipper of the Felicitas Augustorum Nostrorum, and veteran of the victorious British campaign, during which he served under my father’s command. He is to deliver it personally.