The Water Thief

by Ben Pastor

  In the evening, having returned past the sunset closing time of the great thermal buildings, Aelius took His Divinity’s advice—When in doubt . . . —and spent close to three leisurely hours in his lodgings’ baths. Looking at the scars on his body under the veil of water, he let his mind wander to unrelated thoughts, private and often unattended to. Could it be that because he missed Anubina it meant more than nostalgia of those nights? How often had he dismissed the thought of her in the last two months, saying to himself, “She’s married, happy,” when he wanted to say, “I am sorry I lost her”? Soldiers get so used to buying their nights, that they forget how a woman makes your day, too, if you love her. But love was a big word: Aelius chased it off by swimming and thinking of other things. He then caught up with correspondence, jotting down to Aviola Paratus confirmation that his services would be welcome.

  10 August, Thursday morning (17 Mesore)

  Less than two hours after his courier left for Paratus’s tavern, first thing in the morning, Aelius received a note from him. The courier must be reaching the XII mile about now, so it was hardly possible, even for a self-aware veteran, to anticipate matters enough to reply before being officially contacted. The note—a single line in the jumbled handwriting of the blind man—had nothing to do with thankful acceptance. It gave Aelius the sick feeling that whatever it was that he found himself pursuing, elusive and large, had struck again, and missed only by chance.

  There was no need of comments before the devastated vineyard. The work of years had been destroyed by slashing the vines close to the ground, so that it’d take just as long before hoping to produce wine from this lot of land again.

  Paratus’s female servants cried on the tavern’s doorstep. His male slaves were at the far end of the vineyard, checking with the laborers whether any of the farthest vines had been spared or could be salvaged.

  Paratus himself bore no external signs of anger or anxiety. Supreme pain might have long ago inured this face not to show reactions to lesser stimuli. His voice, however, signified a change in him that wasn’t fear or resentment, but rather the expectation that certain things be made clear.

  “Commander, I have served no differently from you. For longer time than yourself I daresay, and can tell a threat carried out when I’m struck with it.” Without giving Aelius a chance to ask what had happened (it’d be a rhetorical question, both men knew), he added, “It’s no coincidence if I meet you on Thursday, and by Saturday not only do they do this to me, but go through my papers and correspondence. I am the first to admit the importance of history, but do not believe for a moment that it is to keep me from helping you gather information on an imperial biography that they wrecked my house and wine-making. There has to be something else, when I myself catch somebody rifling through my office and am slammed aside and harassed about Hadrian’s letter: as if I kept state papers. I’m alive only because I can still fight and fly at him and he goes off minus a finger (I’m sure of that, my head grower found it afterward on the floor); so I need to know what is going on. Since there was gossip before I left Egypt that not one, but two deaths seemed to be of special interest to you, I believe I do have a right to prepare myself to protect what’s mine.”

  Aelius wondered if imagining the damage, feeling it by touch, was as heart-rending as seeing it. Odor of mashed grapes, too unripe to harvest, came from the ravaged vineyard like a green wave.

  “Well.” He took time. “What do you think?”

  “With all respect, it’s not my task to come up with hypotheses.”

  “It’s—a complicated matter.”

  “Is it? I can tell you there are some odd clues lying around: mention of old imperial correspondence somehow desirable, although I ignore the reason for it; your task related to the deified Hadrian, which seems innocent except for those deaths in Egypt, pursued by you at the same time. How do I know? Policemen talk, in Egypt as everywhere else, if not more.” Turning his back to the vineyard, without help Paratus groped toward the shady back lot of the tavern. “What am I supposed to think? The first victim was an antiquarian bookseller; the second, his servant. If they say the first died in a boating incident, the freedman was definitely done in. Maybe there was more mischief I don’t know about, since I left Egypt before you did.”

  Aelius followed, with a grumpy need to curse. “Go on.”

  “Lead me inside, please, where we may talk.” Inside was a small corner office, easily reachable through the main room, and stuffed with volumes. “I have to have them read to me,” Paratus explained, “because reading is one habit I wouldn’t give up. As for the door, it’s never closed—I like to hear what happens in the tavern.”

  “Well, I’ll close it now.

  Paratus stood at his desk, which alone occupied one third of the space, and waited for Aelius to pull up his own chair to it before sitting down. “Apparently,” he said, “you connected the two deaths in Egypt. So it could be that Serenus Dio was supposed to supply you with a document, just as he sold you history books during the Rebellion. Was it the letter they speak of? Maybe, and maybe his servant was the go-between, but who would kill for a piece of paper? Was it to keep you from receiving it, and if so, where did it go? Perhaps you are here to find it, for all I know.”

  In his teeth, “I’m not,” Aelius said, which was true enough.

  “Well, maybe someone thinks you do. Or—given what happened last night—that you had it and gave it to me, God knows why.” From outside the window, came the voices of customers asking the servants about the ruckus—“Really?” and “When?” and “No one is safe nowadays”—and the grumble of the answers. “Now, Commander, there are only two likely reasons for men to commit murder over a document: its value in money, or in terms of power. Why would anyone ruin my vineyard over ‘Hadrian’s letter,’ after so many years, when he must have written thousands? I say it’s either a treasure map (we all recall the story of the capitalist Herodes Atticus finding Xerxes’s gold trove), or some kind of still-standing power game. If I were still working in intelligence and it didn’t sound fantastic, I’d venture to say it involves political threat. By whom?” Elbows on the desk, Paratus rested his chin on his fists. “Take your pick. Weren’t our armies betrayed by a so-called Germanic ally three hundred years ago already? Do you think the slaughter in the Teutoburg forest was an isolated incident? And eastward, from Armenia to Egypt, across the Tigris and Euphrates corridor, the Persians took over Parthia and pressure us all along the border. Saracen clans, whole tribes are courted by them and by us at the same time, and meanwhile our garrisons fall to small units trained in guerrilla tactics. Look outside the empire’s window, Aelius Spartianus, and you will see the many shapes of our enemy.”

  Aelius felt weary, for the first time since he’d started out from Aspalatum. These months of worry-free research he had received as such a gift from the court were turning into a race against time, except that he did not know the deadline. Clues at first wholly unrelated to his task revealed themselves as necessary pieces of a larger, more sinister puzzle, with higher stakes and faceless adversaries.

  He laid out the matter in a few sentences, adding nothing of his speculations. Paratus listened without interrupting, and even at the end of the account he stayed dour, as policemen often do to allow a host of other sentiments to run undetected.

  “So they know you’re in Rome,” he said after an interval, during which his sightless eyes—sunken back into the head beneath the lids—had seemed to Aelius two distant wells, never to give water or serve the passerby again. “Soter’s killing and the fire aimed at destroying his library prove how well they knew of your coming. It satisfies me that there is power behind this rather than money. It also alerts me to the fact that you will be as much at risk as you were in Egypt, and worse. It does change my position by you considerably.”

  Aelius took a couple of deep breaths. “You may pull back if you wish.”

  “After receiving confirmation that you accept my services? No, you mist
ake my intentions here. What I meant is that before I was merely to assist your research. Now it is imperative that I also look out for you—as a figure of speech, of course.”

  “I need no looking after,” Aelius began, but the pretension of his own words brought him to modify the sense of the phrase. “What I need is someone to use as a sounding board.”

  “But let us not forget that danger is real. I will not ask you if and where you have the letter. If you don’t, you might paradoxically be better off. If you do, do not tell me or anyone else where or by whom it is kept. If its contents is unknown to your adversaries, it is the only thing that keeps you alive in this ugly business. If even just one other man knows the contents, even partially, he might be simply waiting to do you in, so that the Boy’s grave may never be discovered.”

  “What about the man you surprised right in this room?”

  A description was of course impossible to have. Paratus judged him a southerner, Greek-speaking, perhaps but not necessarily an Egyptian. “It could have been a soldier who served a long time in Egypt, like those in the river patrol. That’s all I can say, and perhaps have gone too far with the hypotheses. The confusion of the vineyard had just been discovered; and my people were all paying mind to that. He escaped minus his ring finger, as I said, which—I regret to say—was not kept for further study. My grower, who was the first to join me, described it as tanned, with a worn and dirty nail, but couldn’t give me enough details to try to understand the man’s trade. Traces of blood indicate he went off across the road, where he probably was picked up by a companion: His soles left bits of mashed grape leaves on the floor where we scuffled, so it stands to reason he was one of those who cut the vines.” Paratus reached for the few objects on his desk, inkwell, waxed tablet, blank paper, as if making sure they were in place. “We keep dogs and do have a guardian, and they all slept through the act. Put to sleep, literally. Finding out who might have doctored the water will be the next piece of investigation.”

  “Are you hopeful?”

  “No.”

  Merchants came and went, not only at Paratus’s tavern, but at every establishment along this trafficked tract of the road. Muleteers, soldiers, and idle voyagers made up the number. No special security beyond dogs and guardians was generally needed anywhere. In Paratus’s estimation, given the extent of the damage, at least four men had been involved, and it would have taken them, with the right equipment, the better part of three hours to carry out the task.

  “I am less angry about the loss than I am for having been caught unawares.” Paratus spoke in a clear effort to control his temper, flaring now that he had to come to terms with his role as victim. “I am not one to let his guard down. This shames me most of all. Warnings have a way of making me intolerant. Did you speak to anyone about coming to see me the first time?”

  “No. And I traveled alone to your place, then as now.”

  “That, too, may have to change, depending on what we find out. I doubt that I am the quarry, if not a possible collaborator of yours. You remain the target by definition. Tell me, have they already tried to attack you?”

  “Not that I know of, exactly, but there have been a couple of episodes—”

  “They tried to attack you, be sure. Give me details.”

  Restively Aelius did. As he spoke of the ambush on the Nile, of the bandits laying siege to his group on the way to Alexandria, Paratus’s hands closed into fists, tighter and tighter. More questions followed, and the tension was unrelenting.

  “This Onofrius, Commander, how much do you know about him?”

  “Not much. I do know—he said so himself—that he’s three times an apostate, by sacrifice, incense, and certificate. He wanted to make damn sure he’d escape punishment, at any rate.”

  “I had better check him out. Informers have been the lifeline of my first and second career, and several of them still owe me.”

  “Speaking of that, I will make sure there is an indemnity issued for the damage to your vineyard.”

  Paratus’s fists opened a little. “Thank you, I appreciate it. It’s a reminder for a soldier to see what violence does to a place and to someone’s livelihood. I trampled through a few cultivated fields in my day, without giving it a thought.”

  N I N T H C H A P T E R

  10 August, Thursday (17 Mesore)

  Despite his present difficulty, Aviola Paratus remembered to give Aelius a list containing a handful of names—aristocratic descendants from court-connected families in Hadrian’s days. All were out of Rome for the summer, he added, which was to be expected. On his own, however, Aelius had already tracked down another promising prospect: a widow of senatorial rank, vacationing just beyond Praeneste. In the morning, by courier, he had dispatched to her address a note of introduction, requesting an interview.

  By the ninth hour he was back from Paratus’s devastated property.

  Onofrius awaited at his doorstep. “Your bodyguard wouldn’t let me in,” he complained. “There isn’t a shred of coolness or an awning here, and I’m half-baked.”

  “You could have gone to sit under the shady trees there, or there.”

  The guide glanced at the two directions indicated by Aelius, left and right of his lodgings.

  “Not a chance, Commander. Barracks aren’t any place I want to get close to, and down there—army brothels!”

  “Well, what do you want?”

  “I was told to show up every morning, and I’m wondering whether I’ll get paid for the times you’re not in, or choose not to use my services.”

  “You’ll get paid.”

  Onofrius tapped his left chest to show gratitude. “Then, there’s the matter of the obelisk. I’m not sure that I can translate what’s written on it, even if we manage to clear it of dirt.”

  “And why not?”

  “If it was carved by the deified Hadrian’s order—I’m only supposing, mind you—it might have been done in Rome. That usually means shabby work. There are plenty of fake inscriptions around, only looking like Egyptian language. Ignorant stone-cutters copy a figure here, one there, but it’s like throwing letters together pretending they are words.”

  “We don’t know enough about the obelisk yet to tell who wrote it, and when. What is the matter with you, are you afraid of something?”

  “Only of you, Commander. In case you shouldn’t get what you want, whatever it is. The authorities have already gotten involved—I don’t want trouble.”

  It could be the truth, coming from a worm who recanted his religious creed in every way he could. Or it could be another case of sudden weakness in the bowels, as he’d seen in Tralles. “What about Lucinus Soter’s monument,” Aelius asked, biding Onofrius to follow him in, and upstairs to his studio. “Is it written in old Egyptian script?”

  “I haven’t seen his monument.”

  “No matter, I have other work for you. I’m told there are several Egyptian statues and objects in the imperial villa at Tibur. You’re going there with me.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Never mind when, I’ll let you know.” From the window, with the voices from the baths below, and the afternoon bustle from the road, here came a shrill, rustic note of cicadas in the trees. Aelius poured himself water and vinegar—the army drink—from his canteen, and filled a cup for Onofrius as well. “You said Soter was the authority on things Egyptian. Did you ever meet him?”

  Onofrius drained the cup. “I had the honor. When everyone else in the community gave me a hard time for flip-flopping on religion, he made sure I got a package on Egyptian New Year’s. He even let me handle some of his correspondence while his secretary Philo traveled home to Alexandria for a death in the family.” Unaware of Aelius’s heightened interest, or ignoring it, he shuffled as if tired of standing, but was not offered a seat. “Not that there is much call for that kind of information, but when it came to old script, he was the one to go to. It’s a small community, ours, and now they’ll have to come to me, even those who would
n’t give me the time of day.”

  “Soter and I had common acquaintances in Antinoopolis.”

  “Most of his friends were from the Heptanomia. I’m from the Arsinoites, myself.”

  Aelius drank directly from the canteen, a long gulp. “So he must have known the army supplier, Serenus Dio.”

  “Truth. He got packs of letters from him. In the month and half I sat in for his secretary, I must have filed away a dozen. May I have some more water? Thank you. After Dio drowned, Soter quit attending community events. Even his boyfriend, the one they call Cleopatra Minor, had to go visit him at home. We’ll see how the community fares now without his support.”

  “Hm. Would anyone in the community set him on fire?”

  For a moment Onofrius quit shuffling, but he looked neither surprised at the question, so far from the reason for his hiring, nor troubled by it. “If he’d made a will that would benefit the Egyptian community, you bet. Temples want their cut from rich believers, and priests are not above curtailing payback times, whether they follow Isis or Christ.”

  It seemed all a little too neat, too cleanly falling together: A tall tale, that Soter had been so openly killed and burned to get his money. Aelius wondered whether he was being fed gossip or an artful tale, impatient for the report Paratus’s informants were gathering on this rancorous little man.