The Water Thief

by Ben Pastor

  “Yes, I imagined you would.”

  Without as much as moving from his position, legs crossed and back to the wall, Paratus let the smile dance on his mouth. “We’re even, then.”

  “Not exactly. I won.”

  “Ah, that’s where you’re mistaken. Not quite. If you hope to find out anything from me, you have committed your biggest error to date.”

  What little light filtered down from the slit windows of the brig gave no sign of the brilliant afternoon outside. There’s so much more to this, too, Aelius thought. Having read what Hadrian had entrusted to the Boy’s burial, he found it hard to brag. “You won’t talk, but yours will.”

  “Mine? They know nothing.” In his composure, Paratus did not give away whether he felt the other’s insecurity. “How can you think such an organization functions? No cell, no individual knows more than he needs to act when commanded, and only when commanded. You’ll find out nothing, and that is more than consolation enough for me.”

  The state flounders in dimness, it always did. Clumsy and arrogant, it mistakes the slits in the wall for the fiery reality outside. It does not even know its collective name, thinks all enemies and all incidents single and unrelated. Aelius himself saw little more than the fissure, and was dazed by it. Paratus read his mind. “The dark grows on you after a while.” He smirked. “Have you ever thought that ignorance is preferable to terror? Be content with your little victory, Aelius Spartianus, and don’t presume to ask me anything.”

  “I won’t. But at least your personal reasons you gave me yourself.”

  “Did I?”

  “ ‘There are better uses in the world for soldiers who can think,’ you said. And, ‘Power rather than money.’ For a pensioned-off veteran too brilliant for his lot, the opportunity to serve in a big way, no matter whom he serves. Smile all you want, Paratus. Maneuvering, working for your private goals, seeking personal power—history is full of men like you, too cynical for idealism, but on the market. It’s true, I have no idea of who owns you, outside or inside Rome: We have a choice of enemies. Always had. That you betrayed yourself in the end makes me hope for the future.”

  Paratus’s quiescence had not appreciably changed, although there were small signs of muscular tension that even in this half-light alerted Aelius of the effort it cost him. “Don’t forget I nearly killed you, so my hand must have shown less than you say, but you’re bursting to tell, I’m sure.”

  A prison guard peeped in from the top of the stairs. “As soon as you’re done, Commander—”

  “I’m not done.”

  Paratus’s detachment seemed more and more painted on his face, by long exercise in hiding his true self. “Well, then—let’s hear it. Let’s hear if your clues stand up to critique.”

  How reductive it seemed to speak of clues. Aelius took his time, thinking of the oracle he’d scoffed at, while it told the truth—that Antinous had died even as Serenus Dio had; of the Sicilian tales and the old tract, revealing that the Boy had met his end like Patroclus, never taken seriously by him. Paratus spoke of clues, but everything in this story was as firmly set beforehand as Ma’at’s own inscrutable judgment, light and terrible like a feather.

  “Clues?” he said in the end, “here they are. My first doubt arose when you and I first passed the V Cohort’s gate on the way to this barracks. Along the road, you’d asked to stop by this and that landmark, but did not inquire about your beloved old headquarters. It made me think that perhaps—contrary to what you said—you’d recently been in the neighborhood, and I wondered why you lied.”

  “Weak. Not a clue. Nostalgia is not so omnivorous.”

  “Especially when it’s not justified.” In his uneasiness, Aelius had difficulty standing in one place, and began pacing slowly the floor facing the unoccupied cells. “True, it seemed a small, worthless doubt at the time. Then there was the curious ‘slippage’ of the seal on the letter from court that recommended you to me—surely you had it intercepted, read, approved in its contents, and resealed. Also, when you gave me the list of aristocrats who possessed important archives, they were all coincidentally out of town. It’s summer, I thought, but Lady Repentina’s name, which should have been first on the list, was absent. For good reason, too, because—and she’d have a stroke if she knew—the late consul’s ancestor Marcius Turbo was in on the conspiracy. Suetonius might have known, or not. Turbo’s name is on a list we found in one of your hiding places. A friend of the emperor, and a conspirator! He was fortunate the deified Hadrian discovered it too late to issue orders against him.”

  Paratus sneered, a mean expression that distorted his fine face. “Circumstantial evidence, Spartianus. Seals slip, and the wealthy go on vacation.”

  From every slit window, a short ribbon of sunlight parted the dark floor ahead of him. Aelius took his time between bright spots. “I also wager it was you who contrived the system of semaphores to be informed of my coming even before I reached Rome.”

  “But you can’t prove it. Ha! You can prove none of it.”

  “I have not finished. There’s also the coincidence of your departure from Egypt after Dio’s and his freedman’s deaths, and the fact that in your absence no murders or fires took place in that circle. However, they began in Italy shortly after your arrival. You must have raced quickly from Antium to Rome, to direct Soter’s assassination as only one who’d served in the night patrol and knew about arson could. Then back to the XII mile of the Via Labicana, where you made me find you under the grapevine by your tavern.” Halting in the strip of light cast by the window above him, Aelius let brightness beguile him. “I admit, the self-inflicted damage to the vineyard was genial, down to the cutting of an accomplice’s finger. The attack against me, instead, I’m not sure whether it meant to kill—you don’t seem to fail when you set your mind to it. Since you’d probably understood I would never share the imperial letter, you had to follow me until I discovered the other document, and even help me do it! Of course, there’s Onofrius’s opportune death, on the eve of translating the obelisk.”

  From his place in the glare, the bars dividing Aelius from the prisoner seemed reddish and hazy when Paratus’s contemptuous voice came from the shade. “Average detective work.”

  “Except that I’m an amateur.” Tempted to remain in the light, Aelius left it instead, and returned to face Paratus’s cell. “By this time, it was my turn to guide the events. So I purposely gave you Isis’s Knot as Theo’s address, although I’d sent him elsewhere. Thinking me asleep at home, you stayed to supervise the removal of the obelisk while I actually brought the Egyptian text to him. It was there that one of my guardsmen watching the Knot reported how ruffians had come looking for the spice merchant at the tavern. Only you knew that information, so only your men could have gone there.”

  “Marginally clever.”

  “I’ll take it as a compliment. Now, you did one of two things: Either you assumed Theo didn’t listen to me and boarded at another place, or you realized I was on to you. In both cases you had to keep playing the game, because it was highly probable I’d get to the grave now. Which I did. Had I not been in such a beastly hurry to do it, I’d have instructed my bodyguard not to let you through, should you show up. As it was, they had no reason to suspect you, as we’d worked together until then. That was my mistake. When I didn’t answer the guardsmen’s calls from above, you had the perfect excuse to be lowered into the shaft. After all, night and darkness made no difference to you, and so on. Had you succeeded in smothering me, you could say I’d taken ill with the stifling air of the tomb, or broken my neck, or God knows what.”

  “But I disappointed you, and bitterly, too.”

  “That, you did.” Aelius nodded to the prison guard, who had never moved from his place at the top of the stairs. “I’m only wondering if it was you who had Tralles killed.”

  Paratus laughed, and there could not be a more cruel sound than laughter without any joy, or amusement. “Why should I? The idiot was useful to us
. You see, Aelius Spartianus—Caesar’s friend—the advantage is in bringing the enemy to the point of fearing, everyone, always, never knowing whom to trust. It was I who first spoke to you of Rome’s enemies outside the frontiers. I simply did not add one detail: They are inside already. After a while, one needn’t do much else, before the tower comes toppling down.”

  From the letter by the deified Hadrian, contained in Antinous’s burial, continued:

  . . . Beheading the empire, bringing down the magnificence of its structure, has been their aim ever since the Caesars’s rule began. Wars were fought by princes before me without an understanding of how peoples and cities opposed to us were nothing but pawns of another power, and that not kings or lords, but fanatics maneuvered by mercantile ruthlessness hid behind raids and murderous actions so widespread and diverse as to conceal their common matrix.

  I learned to beware of those who came back from fighting abroad, whether it be the countries of Egypt, Parthia, Persia, or Armenia, especially if held prisoners for a time. This is because often, conquered by torture or blandishments, they became minions of the great enemy. Not trusting our own veterans! It seems like a heresy, but, as the attached document details, their armed hand occasionally penetrated Caesar’s chamber itself felling whenever it could those princes who would expand or safeguard Rome. It is fitting that as of this writing, thanks to political purges and secret military measures I was compelled to undertake during my reign, the peril seems abated. Historians will wonder at the cruelty of my late years, but I know all too well what actions are required of me in order to safeguard the state. Thus even these accounts are committed to the grave, as I prefer nothing to be made public, that may possibly incite others against Rome.

  It was on the ill-fated Egyptian voyage that conspiracy came as close as the imperial barge on which we traveled. It sickens me unto death to write the names of Septicius Clarus, of Gentianus—who served in the Parthian war and was consul under me—of Mettius Modestus and even Marcius Turbo, all men I would discover too late to have directly or indirectly fed the beast. Another prince was voted to destruction, and the conspirators would have succeeded had not our Antinous placed himself between his friend and death. Now he abides with the gods, and forever grieving, I pray that his sacrifice may not have been in vain.

  Newly arrived with the body of the beloved from my Tiburtine villa—where the month of October remains fixed in every building as in the very stars—I write this in Rome as I ready to leave for Baiae, from which I despair to return. The ninth day of May, the feast of Lemuria, dedicated to those who died before their time, in the twenty-second sad year of my reign.

  T W E L F T H C H A P T E R

  18 September, Monday (20 Thoth)

  Ben Matthias sailed on the same ship Aelius took to leave Italy. The Felicitas Annonae, under its skipper and Expositus as master of the ship, was heading back to Alexandria with a load of German glassware destined to Sicily, and a ballast of Campanian lentils.

  “Whatever is going on,” he said joining Aelius on deck, “there’s a rash of arrests throughout Italy, have you heard?”

  They were already in sight of the island’s east coast, where the Felicitas would stop three full days. Aelius glanced over at the Jew without replying. He’d in fact striven to avoid him, but ben Matthias was not one to be discouraged. “I’m only telling you, Commander, so that you don’t think I’m following you. I’d have stopped longer in Rome, but wholesale arrests always made Jews uncomfortable. Excellent arrests: aristocrats, merchants, high-ranking officers. It surprises me how many of them are confessing, but I know Roman methods of interrogation well enough. Even Aviola Paratus’s sons are talking. The gossip is that authorities are holding Paratus himself for more than trying to kill you—and anyway I can’t understand his motive, unless he was behind the murders in Egypt, too.”

  Aelius lowered his eyes to the green froth lacing the side of the ship, where twigs and leaves from the shore were churned by a braid of deep water. Carrying imperial orders for the Province’s magistrates to initiate trials and arrests, he knew all too well what work expected him in Egypt. “Do not forget you recommended him to me when I asked you. ‘Quiet man, pays his bills’—”

  “Is it my fault if everyone spoke well of him? And to think that I gave you a hand when bandits surprised you south of Herakleopolis, even though you’d turned down my company.” Aelius’s expression must have spoken for him, because ben Matthias frowned in mock outrage. “You thought it was my men who assaulted you! Didn’t I tell you that if I wanted to brain you, I’d do it looking you in the eye?”

  Then it was Paratus’s men who attacked us on the way to Alexandria, and nearly did me in along the Nile. What else, who else is involved in this? Snapping sounds came from above, where the windfilled mainsail rode the Etesian gale. Toward the open sea, fish jumped in gleeful blue schools, like blades merging and descending on shimmering cloth. Aelius kept his eyes on the merry fish, breathing in the pungent, brackish air. “Baruch, do you remember when we met by the Cadastre, and out of nowhere—just as I was leaving—you mentioned the Jewish revolt?”

  “I often mention Jewish revolts.”

  “You said that time after time, your leaders were approached by this or that conspirator asking to join forces, but always refused.”

  “Not out of virtue, be sure. Only because our fight must be our own. Had you asked, I could have told you some time back. Parthians, Armenian generals, even the occasional Roman grabby politician came knocking through the centuries. Why, does it make a difference? I don’t see what it has to do with Paratus.” Ben Matthias turned his back to the bulwarks, and looked up at the great horn of plenty on the red-trimmed canvas. “You know how I feel about Rome and Romans, but I bet money you’re thinking that execution is too good for him.”

  “He’s a veteran, and he’ll get it. A clean one, too.”

  At Catania some of the passengers disembarked for good. Ben Matthias, who had business at the local synagogue, was among those who would later return on board. Seeing Aelius leave the pier on horseback, he called after him, “Going a distance, are you? If you miss the boat when we set sail again, may I have your berth?”

  Catania, Sicily, 22 September, Friday (24 Thoth)

  Whether ben Matthias had been prophetic, on the third day, under Expositus’s controlling eye, all travelers and merchandise meant for Egypt were accounted for, except for Aelius Spartianus. True to his motto of waiting for no man, the master of the ship punctually ordered the gangplank withdrawn, and already the Felicitas’s anchor was aweigh when the harbor police stepped in, halting the maneuver, on account of “Caesar’s envoy being about to arrive from the military road.” Expositus grew purple with the need to curse, but it’d never do on board and about to set sail again. So he limited himself to pacing the deck with hands twined behind his back, scowling landward.

  Aelius’s arrival necessitated the lowering of the gangplank again, an operation that the master of the ship—the taciturn Expositus—directed in reproachful silence.

  Ben Matthias watched horse, soldier, and hound come on board. “Well, for crying out loud,” he commented. “You don’t mean to tell me you went all the way inland to find that horror!”

  Aelius shrugged. “No. I bought it on my way up from Egypt.”

  “It has to be the ugliest creature that ever trod the earth.”

  “The name is Sirius. And it bit me before I bought it, too.”

  “I should have recognized your hand in the rescript forbidding possession and sale of dogs for the arena!” Ben Matthias shooed the hound from his bare legs, stomping on deck. “You annoyed several breeders in the Heptanomia, Commander.”

  “Not nearly as much as one breeder on the Via Labicana. Anyhow, laws are made at court—they can take it up with the imperial counsels.”

  Final Report to the emperor by Aelius Spartianus, in Five Parts:

  1. The time has finally come, Domine, to sum up what I was privileged to disc
over regarding the vast conspiracy that ever since the days of Julius Caesar has lain in wait to threaten the Roman state. My information derives from the deified Hadrian’s account, found in the blessed Antinous’s tomb, and from interrogations and searches in Rome and elsewhere.

  It begins in Egypt over three centuries ago, as a form of resistance against Rome’s intervention, when Queen Cleopatra decides to ally herself with the deified Julius; indeed, her own demise, as that of the dictator himself is in part made possible by the conspiracy. It is not political at first, or not strictly so. Vital commercial interests dominate at the start, especially as regards the spice trade, but also that of copper, gold, tin, and what other resources make the wealth of a nation. The conspiracy’s goal, naturally, is to snatch control over those lucrative traffics from the legitimate authority of Rome. It is a high stake that will represent a risky game one generation after the other, causing a superficially invisible conflict where no quarter is given, between the magnates of commerce—foreign and Roman—and legal power. The means used are typical of all conspiracies: the organization in secret cells, infiltration, corruption of officials, and homicide. A mortal game that has not come to an end yet, because its final prize is never really achieved: control over commerce above all laws, all rules, all limits fixed in the common interest of the people. But the process aspires to even more—absolute power, global hegemony over men, wealth, and destinies.

  Now, Domine, allow me to return to my account, there where I left it: spices and precious metals. As I believe, merchants from nations long involved in the exchange of those necessary goods fear Rome’s growing power in the Mediterranean and Asia. Soon they see that—owing to Julius’s rise to domination—more and more the City is likely to be governed by one man. Those who conjure against the dictator from within Rome are not without friends among these merchants: Crassus’s wealth, and his own death in Parthia derive from his early success and later failure in dealing with them. Caesar’s closeness to Egypt threatens the supremacy of the group. Stirring up those aristocrats who wish to keep power in their hands with the excuse of saving the republic is a means to an end: Caesar’s elimination. After the Ides of March, the enemies of Rome draw a sigh of relief, seeing in the ensuing confusion the possible signs of political (hence economic) disintegration. But Marc Anthony soon strikes a new and more dangerous alliance with Cleopatra, and he, too, poses a risk, until the glorious victory of Augustus Caesar over him restores the state.