by Ben Pastor
“You know,” Paratus cheered him up when they were alone again, “I do believe you wasted your abilities choosing to lead a crack regiment, Aelius Spartianus. Analysis, theory-building, deduction—there are better uses in the world for soldiers who can think.”
Had Paratus smiled while he said the words, Aelius would have felt less embarrassed by praise. Despite his protestations, his energy was waning after the long exchange, and even embarrassment fatigued him. “I’m not even sure these considerations matter to my original task. They seem to offer me a key, even though I still don’t know how and why the Boy died, not to speak of his grave’s location. The layout of the villa appears to reflect the most significant sight one would observe in late October in a southern climate, at the time of Antinous’s drowning. The imperial architect left no clues, no hints, but that instant in time, whatever it really meant for the deified Hadrian, was perpetuated in stone: Is it a murderer’s confession, built for the ages? I rather think he was not responsible for the Boy’s death, that he lived in the villa and walked through it like on a processional route.”
“Future historians will break their heads before figuring it out, but I am not sure your theory of the villa’s plan exonerates Hadrian. You’re jumping to conclusions. The pattern might constitute a route for atonement and forgiveness, who knows.”
“Maybe.”
Paratus’s fingers left the map. “In any case, it is odd that no one understood the villa before. You are clever and astute.”
“Yes, and no doubt meant for better things than the army.” Flattered by the words Aelius smirked.
“Damn, is it my impression, or is it too bright in this room? My eyes ache. I am not that clever. Probably, no one before me had reason to search for sense in an imperial whim. The deified Hadrian did not intend for a private interpretation of his house of grief to be obvious to all. The astronomical pattern suggests that the villa should rather be understood as a house of life, as the Egyptians intend it, connected to spiritual learning and mummification rites.”
“It brings us back to the Canopus as a grave site.”
“It may very well have been, but not for long, as Helagabalus found out, having made a mess of the place.”
Pulling of a drape across the window dimmed the light, but did not relieve Aelius’s discomfort. The truth was that fever and pain were rising again. If Paratus understood his effort to keep up from the tone of his voice, he spared him by making a good show of not noticing. However, with the excuse of returning to his quarters and “checking on Onofrius’s whereabouts with his informants,” he took leave shortly thereafter.
It was a courtesy Aelius appreciated. Drinking did little to relieve his thirst, and if he moved his head from side to side, the medicine-smelling room seemed to oscillate like a ship’s cabin. He lay covering his eyes with his forearm. Still, as he’d done at night in the great, solitary villa, under a sky so perfectly black and star-studded that his admiration had turned to disquiet, and then to fear. The darkness he’d felt around him then—once brightly lit to be sure, even in the late hours—and the obscurity of Tibur’s mountain, had conjured to make him feel small and lost. Not insignificant, no, but minute in comparison to great lives and to the greatness, the tragedy of Life itself.
He slept through the rest of the day. That evening, when mail and a lamp were placed at his bedside, Aelius had to admit he was still too unwell to pore over the usual booksellers’ lists and copyists’ bills. Only a small note on papyrus among the rest caught his attention, and after looking at it without making-up-his -mind, he reached for it in the end. Pain ran across his shoulder with the simple motion, and even unsealing it hurt.
Addressed to him care of the city prefect’s office, it was miraculous that the note had reached him at all. There was no elegant heading and the handwriting was a beginner’s: small, uncertain; but every word had been spelled with great care.
Anubina to Spartianus, very many greetings. To begin with, I pray that you are in good health, every morning and evening. My daughter Thaësis and my son Sabourion send you thanks for the gifts you gave them, and beg you to know that they also pray that you fare well. The most sacred Nile has reached 16 cubits in its flood, and vintage will begin soon, which is the same time of year of your first coming to this Nome. Wishing you to remain in the benevolence of all the gods, written by her own hand in the Philadelphia district, metropolis of Antinoopolis, 15 Epiphi (10 July).
No affectionate whisper heard in the last eight years, no sign of physical love given or received since, had struck him like the words “the same time of year of your first coming,” sealed between guileless formulas of greeting and farewell. How simple could things be, and why did he always look for complication? Why had he feared homecoming so much, while longing for it? Aelius thought himself hard, not easily moved. Surely it was the fever’s doing, but he found himself on the point of weeping over Anubina’s letter, and what it really meant for both of them. No point in answering it, either. Night came and went, and so the pain, and so the fever. What stayed—and there was no remedy, there never had been—was the once more unbearable sadness for leaving her behind.
30 August, Wednesday (1 Thoth, Egyptian New Year’s)
The first day Aelius left the house after the accident, on a morning when sparrows clamored heralding rain, Baruch ben Matthias ran into him in front of the State Cadastre.
“Fancy the coincidence, Commander! I no sooner set foot in Rome, and here you are. The world is smaller than a chicken yard.” He’d cut his hair and trimmed his beard, looking every bit the seasoned traveler at ease with his surroundings. “Is that your northern complexion, or are you looking a little green around the gills?”
It was the old, crude banter. Much as Aelius sought a disquieting edge in ben Matthias’s voice, he recognized only that ambiguous pretense of friendliness, so difficult to trust. The usual complement of young toughs was not missing, busy mingling with the locals at both ends of the Sacred Climb. “I thought you were planning to travel here in the fall.”
“Plans change.”
“So, let me guess what brings you to Rome: is it business, or business?”
“You are absolutely correct. Business, at least two ways: a deal with the Iseum Campense’s house of life that will make me rich, and a wedding. My daughter’s, you know. You remember her, the one who makes sweet cakes like your mother used to.”
“Congratulations.” Because Aelius was walking toward the back of the Cadastre building, ben Matthias followed him there. “And how did you leave Egypt?”
“As I always left Egypt. Like a trollop who’s short on clients and long on bills. Prices keep rising, the trials of the Christians are proceeding apace, but we’re both alive, so why don’t we go for a cool drink?”
“No, thanks.”
Under the great marble plan of the City, affixed for public viewing to the rear wall, the Jew cynically watched while Aelius took notes. “I thought you’d be interested in knowing that no one else got killed in the circle you were investigating, the queer merchants and their acolytes.”
“Really? That’s a relief.”
“But there are two pieces of sad news: your war buddy Gavius Tralles was killed in a riding accident alongside the Nile—we had nothing to do with it, if you’re even remotely thinking that—and there’s talk of an epidemic due to the flood. People upriver were starting to drop off by the time I sailed, so I’m not in a particular hurry to go back.”
Aelius looked over. “I have known Gavius a long time: I’m sorry to hear it.”
“I thought so.”
“As for the epidemic, you don’t live anywhere near upriver.”
“No. But already in Hermopolis there were a few deaths among the river crews. I sent my family to the hills of the Arsinoites, where the desert wind takes care of vermin.”
“What about Antinoopolis, any contagion in the Philadelphia district?”
Disturbed by the men’s coming, sparrows had at fir
st taken wing, but now came back to argue over crumbs from the surrounding market stalls. “No,” ben Matthias answered. “But I never took chances beyond my ability to rise above them, so I’m here with my girl. She’s marrying a local Jew.”
“I see you’re extending your horizons, Baruch.”
The Jew looked smug. “You could say that, in more ways than one. But there isn’t just me traveling. At Alexandria I heard the Pietas Augustorum Nostrorum would sail a few days after my ship, and Theo the spice merchant planned to be on it. No, no, I don’t know him personally, but I understand you do.”
“None of your business, is it.”
“None whatsoever. It’s just that you seem to have bad luck with acquaintances—or, rather, they run into bad luck as soon as they meet you.” Pointing his thumb at the intricate map of Rome, “What about yourself?” he asked. “Have you taken up city-planning, or are they still after you?”
The impudence of the man. Aelius felt blood go to his head, neck and shoulder aching sharply. It was so obvious that he struggled not to answer angrily, ben Matthias burst out laughing. “I take it they’re still after you—not that I should care. And the Butcher: Are you still pursuing his latrine-wall life? Let me tell you about our revolt during his reign—”
That afternoon, with a westerly wind picking up and sending clouds scudding from the mountains, Onofrius’s body was fished out of the river near the marble wharf under the Aventine. He’d been dead a while, six or seven days at least, but there was no telling when exactly he had been thrown in the water. It was a matter of murder, since he’d been stabbed several times in the back. Paratus heard it through former colleagues of the V Cohort, who’d been called on the scene.
“He’s only been identified because there are Egyptians working at the wharf, and they recognized him by his beard and clothes. Amazing any of them were on the job, too, as it’s their New Year’s holiday.”
“I don’t know what to think.” Back from a useless day at the Cadastre, but having found archival proof of Helagabalus’s order to leave Canopus in disrepair, Aelius was too surprised to elaborate. “This is really unexpected.”
“Is it?” By contrast, Paratus had the coldness of a policeman on his martyred face. “I told you he’d betray himself by starting to spend money. However much he charged to sell your skin, he didn’t get to enjoy it.”
They stood at the gate of the Special Agent Barracks, in the wind that brought drops of distant rain. A setting sun knifed the clouds only enough to slap a blinding gold dash on the roofs of temples and shrines, but it would soon go under. Aelius felt revulsion at the thought of the miserable waterlogged corpse polluting stone meant for temples. So, death had violently met at last one who’d tried to avoid it in every way. It was nearly cold on the windy hillside, a first strange omen of fall.
“It reminds me,” he said without explaining how he’d come to the subject, “Baruch ben Matthias just arrived in Rome.”
Paratus shook his head. Framed by the gate, in the shade of sunset, he resembled a soldier’s headstone more than a living man. “He did not, Aelius Spartianus. Ben Matthias has been in Rome for the past week.”
E L E V E N T H C H A P T E R
31 August, vigil of the Kalends of September, Tuesday (2 Thoth)
Notes by Aelius Spartianus:
I have come to a dead end. All I did until now led me merely to a place in which I could have just as easily stood at the beginning. Antinous either killed himself (by will or accident), or was killed. As it is said that Isis built a shrine in every place where she found a limb of Osiris, so the deified Hadrian built memorials to the Boy everywhere he went. I counted four thus far: two in Egypt (along the Nile and in the shrine at Antinoopolis), and two at Tibur (the Canopus and round memorial). Other locations are pure legend, like the supposed one in Cicero’s monument at Puteoli. Antinous’s final resting place still eludes me, although I am reasonably convinced it is somewhere among the thousands of monuments outside Rome’s walls. It seems hopeless. My research in the State Archives and Cadastre revealed nothing about the building or registering of such burial. The sources, from Suetonius to Marius Maximus, Cassius Dio, and the deified Hadrian himself, are silent about it.
Caesernius Quinctianus, consul in Hadrian’s last year, he who never received the letter that started my investigation, has seemingly vanished from history, His deeds are scarcely known. No autographed letter of his is extant, and his family died out long ago. It intrigues me that Marcius Turbo advised Suetonius to ask him about a possible conspiracy, but I have nothing to go on.
Even the discovery that celestial patterns were repeated on the imperial barge and in the villa’s plan tells me little, other than the time of Antinous’s death was either anticipated by his master—who cast his own accurate horoscope each January—or memorialized after the fact. Aviola Paratus urges me to concentrate on the Boy’s grave, and he’s right. But, including my guardsman, there are now at least six corpses in the way. By simple chance I am not one of them.
Today I plan to return to the deified Hadrian’s monument, and look once more among the burials scattered throughout Agrippina’s and Domitia’s Gardens, and Nero’s ones nearby (the Egyptian burial ground in this area complicates things, as sphinxes and small obelisks abound), Tomorrow I will scout the suburban tract of the Via Tiburtina, leading to the emperor’s great villa, and the day after, the Via Labicana again, near which I found Antinous’s obelisk.
With Onofrius gone, and ben Matthias unexpectedly in the City, things are not looking good. His Divinity may soon tire of granting me time to do one research, and hear me report about other matters, Also, I worry about Anubina and her children in plague-ridden Egypt.
Nothing but state property lay beyond the bridge that carried the defied Hadrian’s first name—and Aelius’s own. There, the sloping ground once the suburban estate owned by Nero’s mother met the contiguous gardens inherited by Domitian’s wife. The old pleasure parks had through the years given way to a variety of uses: the horse track built by Gaius Caligula, long out of function, stables, sheep pens, and private cemeteries. Nero’s bridge downstream, cutting across the river’s curve where the Via Triumphalis led north, had lost part of its parapet, and was blocked to traffic by a trellis of beams. In the middle of the horse track, the tall Egyptian obelisk stood gray-pink in the green of copses and overgrown rows of trees, set against the Vatican hills thick with pines and summer-yellow bushes. At the foot of Aelius Hadrian’s bridge, a large piazza of Tibur stone kept the gardens at bay around the sky-high mausoleum. Square at the bottom, like a fortress, it supported a wide marble tower rich in statues, topped by a gilded triumphal chariot.
Aelius had often walked these grounds, pacing the Cornelian Way to its crossroads with the Via Triumphalis, along the serpentine paths dissecting the cemetery grown on the side of the horse track, using its very wall. Christians (including the patriarch Peter) and followers of Isis were buried here. A small human-headed sphinx marked a girl’s tomb, a leaning dwarf obelisk, devoid of inscription, celebrated the memory of God knows whom. Names scratched on bricks and badly incised on stone revealed the dead’s origin: Soknopaios, Nilus, Ammon. In fact, the entire area was called “Egypt,” and the theme was repeated in the nameless pyramid at the crossroads, on the palm-and-ewer frieze of a travertine burial tower nearby, and especially in that powerful pink and gray shaft Onofrius said had come from Alexandria.
Aelius sat in the shade of an acacia tree, thinking for the first time that perhaps he had wrongly pursued the Egyptian theme. Antinous was Greek, Hadrian had been in love with Greek culture. Why shouldn’t the Boy have been buried in Bithynia, where his mother—whoever she’d been, whoever had been his father—was certainly still living at that time? One becomes taken with clues, conditioned by them. What if the truth lies elsewhere altogether, and I have built upon mistaken assumptions from the start?
East of Hadrian’s mausoleum, sounds and voices rose from the raised causeway of th
e “new” marble wharf, sticking out like a massive cement and beams tongue into the stream. Aelius could imagine the scene downriver at the other wharf, where Onofrius had come bobbing up in front of the stonecutters. At the foot of the bridge, two of his guardsmen stood watch, as—at Paratus’s insistent request—they never again would let him out of their sight, but that safety, too, was an illusion, as the accident at the bookstore went to prove.
Aelius left the Vatican district by the straight road on the right side of the river, leading down to Caesar’s Gardens, where he’d cross over into the City over the bridge faithful Agrippa had built in Augustus’s day.
The following morning, he rode out of the Tibur Gate past Veranus’s Field and across the Anio river, nearly to the place called Septem Fratres that had so unnerved Onofrius. It was an itinerary of gravel pits and occasional estates, with Christian burials and oratories (barred and sealed by the state) built into the hillsides. Insects blackened the air along this or that marshy spot, even at the verges of the road. Two rich sepulchers called Aelius’s attention because of their past beauty and ruined state. One of them, marked by a dogheaded sphinx, remembered a freedman of Hadrian’s household, born in Hermopolis Magna. Its roof had caved in, while its companion to the side had lost part of the pediment. On this, if one lifted the ivy draping over it, the mutilated name of one ANT . . . was readable, and nothing else. There was a pedestal, too, but if it had once held a portrait statue, only the imprints of its bronze feet remained.
As every evening, at his return he stopped by the barracks to meet Paratus and discuss the day. The news awaiting him was that Onofrius had been seen alive for the last time by a neighbor on Saturday afternoon, as he headed for the Iseum Campense. “That would likely be the place where merchants from Alexandria would congregate,” the veteran added, “so we cannot draw necessary conclusions from it.”
“Never mind that.” Aelius was ready to catch at straws, and Paratus’s prudence irked him. “Did you have anyone ask about him at the Iseum?”
