by Ben Pastor
With this, and warm wishes for a safe journey, Theo was on his way. Harpocratio mentioned he had some names in mind as well, especially among the booksellers and book collectors of the City. He had come to the match accompanied by an athletic young man with a remarkably sleepy face, whom he now sent ahead in order to speak privately to Aelius. “If you have time before you leave, Commander, let us get together at my place,” he said, and when Aelius inquired further, he added, “It’s about Serenus.”
Having made an appointment to meet Serenus’s pal in the morning, Aelius walked the streets where shadows lengthened, still noisy and warm, clogged here and there by youngsters who worked out the excitement of the boxing match by repeating the athletes’ moves and shoving one another. A full moon had risen and hung in the polished sky opposite the sun, trembling in the heat that streets and roofs gave out with the coming of evening.
Anubina’s shop was a heartbeat away from the amphitheater that had been built near the south gate, but now was stranded between the houses built in the days of the deified Hadrian and a newer district outside the old walls, less orderly than the Hellenic grid plan and rather organic. Presently, a pleasant odor of frying meat came from the food stands under the arches of the amphitheater; idle young men with unruly heads of black hair loitered nearby, chewing on skewered bits of fried lamb. Aelius wondered whether Antinous had looked like them, the sort of soft youth one feels like shaking into discipline, starting with a haircut.
The next street, curving sharply and completely in the shade, was where Isidora’s brothel had its main entrance. It featured mostly older women from Alexandria, who’d passed their professional prime and sought a second career in provincial towns. Boys and older men tended to patronize it. Aelius had been there once, to pick up Tralles who’d gotten drunk and knocked a woman down a flight of stairs. They’d given him a free pass, but Aelius had always preferred Thermuthis’s place.
On the wall alongside the-entrance of Anubina’s shop, a blue sign was painted directly on the plaster. In a public scribe’s facile hand, it read Πλουμαρία, embroiderer, and—in Latin—plvmaria. She employed four girls who decorated flax, linen, and linsey-woolsey tunics and dresses, a flourishing industry in the area. She herself drew the patterns and did much of the sewing. This evening, the girls started giggling and craning their necks at the sight of the fine uniform and the fair-skinned man in it, so Anubina pulled the drape that divided the workshop from the sales room, and met him there.
Skilled at sewing as she’d always been, Anubina had always dressed well, and even at the brothel her sheets and towels had been beautifully stitched with openwork and appliques. She wore city clothes today, indigo-colored, and if it weren’t for the exuberance of her black hair, her coiffure would have been as slick and contained as Aelius had seen ladies wear at Nicomedia: wavy at the sides, gathered at the nape of the neck in a flat bundle turned back to be pinned at the top of the head. With Anubina, it was as if rays of night always escaped clips and hairpins.
“You went to ask Thermuthis,” she told him, a little provoked. “Aelius, why can’t you take no answer as an answer?”
“If it’s any consolation, she wouldn’t tell me either.”
On the counter, where samples of embroidered hems were displayed, she saw what he had brought.
Still, “What is this?” she asked.
“It’s a doll.”
“I see that.”
“For Thaësis.” It was an expensive ivory toy, jointed and delicately sculpted, with a miniature glass mirror at her belt.
“And the sweets?”
“For the other one.”
Under the bag of sweets was something else, which Anubina uncovered but would not touch.
“That’s for Thaësis, too?” Aelius hastened to say.
“A gold necklace with carved stones and a locket?”
“For when she grows up. You can wear it until then. If you want.”
She set doll and sweets aside, without looking at him. “These, I will accept. The necklace is no gift you should be giving to either one of us.”
“I am only giving it because she could have been mine. I’m no longer insisting that she is, and am not asking you anymore.”
“And what should I tell her when she’s old enough to wear it?”
Aelius pushed the necklace alongside the other gifts. “You can tell her it was a present from her uncle, Anubina.”
She looked grieved, for the first time since they’d met again. A line drew itself between her eyebrows, and testily she lowered her head to keep him from seeing her frown. Still, he could make out the richness of her throat, the rounding of her shoulders. Her belly hadn’t grown from the day at her house, so she mustn’t be pregnant. Aelius was glad of it, though he hardly had a reason for it. “I’m leaving soon,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”
Anubina stayed half-turned. It took him a moment then to realize that she was laughing to herself, as women sometimes do when they don’t want to give men credit for making them weep. “Do you remember when I boiled rice and you put butter in it?” she said out of the blue, holding the doll in her hands and still avoiding his scrutiny. “Crazy northerner, putting butter where it doesn’t belong.” Such a little episode from their past, and yet it was like the unexpected completion of a circle. Meaning no more than it said, but still a sort of healing—of today’s melancholy at least.
9 Epiphi (4 July, Tuesday)
Fresh from a swim in his pool, and from having his hair dyed and dressed, Harpocratio received Aelius in his living room, where silver and fine plates were displayed behind grids inside stout furniture. The marble floor—worth a fortune no doubt—was so shiny as to seem wet, and tinted by the rose-colored ceiling-to-floor drapes, bearing woven medallions of youthful centaurs and piping shepherds. The wind made the light cloth billow in from the garden with the impression of sails, as though the whole room floated comfortably across an invisible ocean. Lined with appetizingly crowded shelves, the rich library showed through the door of the next room.
Harpocratio had a gift for him, a codex with a new epitome, a shorter version of Herodotus’s travels through Egypt. Aelius, who harbored a little discomfort for having secured Hadrian’s letter at no cost, hesitated before accepting, but was not willing to offend by refusing. After all, Serenus’s friend was safer ignoring the existence of the saddlebag altogether. If he’d learned the way these people operated, a gift was often preemptive, either of a request for favors or an apology. Accompanying the gift with a bow of his head, Harpocratio was in fact saying, “I am afraid I haven’t been completely candid with you during our previous encounters, Commander.”
Aelius laid the codex aside. “Really? On how many counts? I figured you didn’t tell me one third of what you knew about Serenus’s death, his last trip, or his expeditions to the gold-filled graves.”
“That is true, but I had good reasons for it.”
“Fear I’d turn you in to the fist for not declaring your wealth? Roman tax collectors are dogged, but I’m sure you’d find your way out of it with the help of smart Alexandria lawyers.”
“You do me an injustice, Commander.”
“I doubt it. But enlighten me on the rest. You know I’m off soon.”
“I’ll make it short, I’ll make it short. After Serenus came back from the Western Wilderness, we gave a small reception at our house. What’s small, you ask? No more than fifty people, I’d say. Serenus hardly ever indulged in drink, but he’d been so on edge lately, he put away a few. We were sitting in the arbor where you and I first met, when he told me that he’d been to Ammoneum and received an oracle that thoroughly unnerved him. He’d gone to the desert shrine for an offering—he was particularly devoted to Zeus Ammon—and decided to sleep in the incubation room, as they do here in the temple of the blessed Antinous, but on a grander scale. I was at once concerned, knowing how sensitive he was, and asked him whether the god had come to him in his sleep. He said no, but that t
he blessed Antinous had, and seemed to be dipping a ladle into the Nile to take water from it.” Aelius took notice, but did not comment on the detail. He said, “Thus far it seems to me that Serenus had a bad conscience about stealing water from a neighbor in the spring.”
“How would you know about that?”
“I read it in the dockets.”
“But the dream didn’t end there. The deified Hadrian was in it, too, and seemed cross, either because of the Boy’s action or at Serenus himself.”
The matter became more interesting now. “I see.” Aelius spoke looking at the feminine swell of the rosy drapes. “Did your reception take place before or after Serenus left the letter for me at the Hermopolis post exchange?”
“It was on the evening of that very day. I remember because Serenus came back late and had to change in a hurry from his street clothes.”
“Do you have a list of the guests?”
Harpocratio made a fussy gesture of denial with his hands. “It’d do no good. We always, always used to invite five or six old friends, and told them to bring along anyone they wished. There have been times at our parties when some unknown boor even bad-talked Serenus to me, not knowing who I was!”
“Still, I’d like the list.”
“It’s in the library. I’ll get it for you.”
Following Harpocratio next door, Aelius scanned the shelves, filling his nostrils with the good odor of books and boxed volumes. “Just out of curiosity,” he asked, “did Serenus have an inkling on the meaning of the dream?”
“He wouldn’t go into detail, Commander. He did say the oracle at Ammoneum was not favorable. Ah, here’s the list—take it. He debated whether he should travel on business to his property at Ptolemais or not. I offered to go for him, but he refused.”
“Dreams are interesting, but I don’t see how all this helps me.”
Leading the way back across the living room, Harpocratio cleared his throat. “Serenus also confided to me that he’d been talking a bit too freely during the party, and that getting out of town for a while might be a good solution after all. Now don’t get excited, you must believe me if I tell you that I have no clue, no clue at all, as to what he might have said, about what or to whom. I could make neither head nor tail of his concern about the dream: We pay our respects to the blessed Antinous, send money, pay for a wreath on the festival of the deified Hadrian, but other than that we have little to do with them. The following day, he pretended not to remember our conversation and minimized any indiscretion during the party. But something was definitely amiss.”
“But you won’t say officially that you suspect foul play because of the stipulation in his will.”
“Is it wrong? Serenus wouldn’t want me not to benefit from what I helped him accumulate.” Harpocratio looked contrite, but who knows what layers of less worthy emotions resembled contrition on his florid face? “I know you have been making inquiries into Pammychios’s death, and that you seem to think his end is somehow linked to my Serenus’s. Should you find out what happened, wherever your research leads you, I beg you to let me know. It will help me put my heart at ease.”
“You had better get those Alexandria lawyers cracking, then, because I can guarantee you it is murder. And as long as you are in a mood of sincerity, it’d help if you told me whether you think the ransacking of this house has something to do with Serenus’s loose talk during the party.”
The mask was going back up for good, because it was about money again. Harpocratio’s contrition became levity, as he looked around the well-appointed room as if to make sure all the beautiful things in it were still here. “Yes, I am sure. He probably said more than he intended about his fortunate discoveries of grave goods, and the word spread enough for thieves to think we’d keep the gold under our beds.”
The second letter from Aelius Spartianus to Diocletian Caesar:
To Emperor Caesar Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletian Pius Felix Invictus Augustus, in obedience to His commands to be addressed heretofore as Lord, his Aelius Spartianus, with gratitude and greetings.
Upon arriving in Egypt a month ago, Lord, it was my intention to remain until the flood should recede and continue my local travels in search of details pertaining to the deified Hadrian’s permanence in this province. As it is, I feel I must depart even before the flood reaches peak stage, in order to pursue more immediate leads in Italy. All I have seen and heard to date makes me believe that the document the deified Hadrian alluded to might have been once—if ever—inside the sarcophagus in the Boy’s temple at Antinoopolis, but that the memoria Antinoi of which that prince spoke is not, nor was ever, in said temple. Another funerary shrine or monument is intended, which—for want of details—I am at this point only assuming exists or existed on the grounds of the Tiburtine villa, in Rome, or at Baiae.
Mindful of your encouragement to pursue this investigation where it will lead, I am preparing to leave the Heptanomia and sail for Italy. Thanks to your letters of presentation, Lord, I am spared the delays and contretemps that are the bane of most travelers and count on boarding the good ship Felicitas Annonae when she sails from Alexandria-near-Egypt on the sixteenth day of July. If the document still exists, my hope is to secure it in advance of others, and to deliver it into your hands. In the process, being now convinced that Serenus Dio’s as well as his freedman’s death are connected to it somehow, I hope to solve the crimes as well.
As by your request, Lord, below is a summary of selected prices, as found in the metropolis and surroundings (on average, in denarii and Roman, measures, as equated by myself from drachmas and Egyptian artabae and other measures, unless noted otherwise):
wheat (1 army camp modius)147 denarii
rice (cleaned, 1 a.c. modius)230 " "
rice (uncleaned, 1 a.c. modius)200 " "
pork (first quality, 1 Italian pound)20 " "
pork (second quality, 1 It. pound)10 " "
pork mincemeat (1 ounce)3 " "
army boots (w/out hobnails)125 " "
notary public (per 100 lines of text)12 " "
The smallest variance in excess of the prices set by the edict amounts to 20 percent (notary public fee), and the highest to 47 percent (wheat). Of all the items I priced, only Egyptian beer and second quality river fish were at or below edict prices. Soldiers and civilians alike suffer from the high cost of living; money is plentiful but its value much abased.
Separately I am sending a detailed report on the proceedings against Christians, and of the response by local authorities to requests of support in my duties.
Written in Antinoopolis, on the fourth day of July (III Nones), in the twenty-first year of Our Lord Caesar Diocletian’s imperial acclamation, the seventh year of the consulship of Maximianus Augustus, and the eighth year of the consulship of M. Aurelius Valerius Maximianus Augustus, also the year 1057 since the foundation of the City.
10 Epiphi (5 July, Wednesday)
Having heard that Aelius was leaving, Tralles seemed all of a sudden anxious to be of help. He came to see him early in the morning, joined him in the private baths where he was soaking in lukewarm water, and spoke his well-rehearsed little piece.
“Just to show you that I care, Aelius, for old times’ sake, and for the money you lent me once—I know you don’t recall, but you did, and I’m afraid you’re not going to see it again any time soon, now that I have a large family to take care of—I wrote to someone who might be useful to you in Rome. Useful? What am I saying? He will be useful. Why, he’s brilliant.”
Aelius sank completely under water before emerging with his head again. “Is he army?”
“Ex-army.”
“Qualifications?”
“You name it.”
“Available?”
“Even now.”
“Cost?”
“Pensioner. No cost.”
“What’s the catch?”
“He’s blind.”
Hauling himself out of the water,
Aelius laughed out loud. “You cannot be serious.”
“Oh, but I am. And not to worry, he has a boy who takes him around where he needs to. Won’t give you a bit of trouble. You need this man, Aelius. He can help you reconstruct what happened on the imperial barge with Antinous and the deified Hadrian and the rest—has professionally solved murders before and after losing his eyesight.”
“And what makes you think he’ll be disposed to up and support me in my research, and for no compensation?”
Promptly Tralles handed a towel to his friend. “The man is a wanderer, inside and out. The idea of traveling and doing things is all he lives for. You have to give him a try, Aelius. You’ll be glad you did. Besides, I wrote him already, and he’ll be waiting for you when you get to Italy. Here is his address. Just send word ahead of where and when you’ll be landing, and he’ll do the rest.”
The last person Aelius went to meet before leaving Antinoopolis was ben Matthias, who gave him an earful about the nastiness of the capital.
“You won’t like Rome, you know. Noise everywhere, idlers by the cartload, they’ll steal the soles of your boots from under your feet if you don’t watch out.”
“Well, I’ve been to Alexandria and Nicomedia, I’m not entirely rustic.”
“Ha! Listen to him. Alexandria and Nicomedia—provincial cynosures for the army traveler! I’ve been there enough times myself to know that I don’t—and you won’t—like it.”
“Thanks for spoiling my expectations, Baruch. Now I want to ask you something I’d only ask a former enemy: advice about the wisdom of a possible alliance.”
