Thales proved easy to find as he turned out to be one of the most important and respected bankers in the city. Vespasian’s senatorial toga enabled him to jump the queue but to the relief of the other disgruntled clients his business did not take long. He left within a quarter of an hour with a receipt for his bankers’ draft and a promise from the bald and immensely overweight Thales that upon his return the following morning there would be 237,500 denarii in cash, paid in gold for ease of transport back to Rome. Thales had made 12,500 denarii commission on the deal but Vespasian did not let that sour his mood as they made their way past the extensive Gymnasium complex and found the Alexandrian abode of his late benefactress.
Magnus pulled on the bell chain and almost instantly the door was opened by a dark-skinned, wavy-haired slave who looked very much like Ziri.
‘Senator Titus Flavius Vespasianus here to see Marcus Antonius Felix,’ Magnus announced.
They were immediately granted entry and were escorted through to an atrium with many fountains, not just in the impluvium but at intervals all around the room, cooling the atmosphere and filling the air with the constant but gentle sound of falling water.
‘Senator Vespasian,’ a voice said from the far end of the room, ‘what a pleasure to see you; I had heard that you had arrived but did not expect to be honoured with a visit so soon into your stay.’ Felix appeared from behind a statue of Poseidon – a small replica of the one crowning the Pharos but, nevertheless, twice life-sized; it gushed water from its open mouth.
‘That is because you said to come if you could be of service, Felix,’ Vespasian replied, walking towards his host, ‘and, most certainly now, I do need your help.’
‘I didn’t say that it would be impossible,’ Felix quietly reminded Vespasian and Magnus, ‘I said it would be difficult but not impossible.’
‘Well, it looks impossible to me,’ Magnus muttered.
‘But it has to be done,’ Vespasian said flatly but wondering nonetheless how Felix thought that it could be achieved.
They were standing in the dim interior of the burial chamber in Alexander’s Mausoleum at the heart of the Soma, the sacred enclosure where the bodies of his heirs in Egypt, the Ptolemys, rested. Before them, ten feet away, resting on a granite slab supported by two similar slabs on their sides, lay a sarcophagus of translucent sheets of crystal set in a latticed bronze framework. It shimmered orange and golden in the flickering light of three flaming sconces burning on its far side from low down, giving the impression that it glowed with a light generated internally. Cocooned tightly within it, Vespasian could see the silhouetted outline of the mummified body of the greatest conqueror known to the world: Alexander of Macedon.
Although the sarcophagus could be viewed by means of a shaft cut through the ceiling to the temple, thirty feet above, the chamber itself was not open to the public. However, the priests of Alexander’s cult were happy to allow access to the body for visiting dignitaries, and as the first senator to visit Egypt for over four years Vespasian was admirably qualified and they had been honoured to grant his request. Only Ziri had been refused access because of his slave status and he now waited in the Temple of Alexander above them.
Despite the practical reason for his visit, Vespasian still felt overawed to see physical proof that Alexander had existed and was not just some hero conjured out of myth. He had felt close to the great man in Queen Tryphaena’s palace in Thracia standing by the desk that Alexander had used and gazing at the same view that he had seen every morning when he had come to raise Thracian mercenaries for his conquest of the East; but that was as nothing compared to being in the same chamber as his preserved remains.
Vespasian walked forward to get a better view of the body and also to examine the sarcophagus to see how it might be opened.
‘You may approach it, master, but it is forbidden to touch,’ the priest standing behind them in the chamber’s entrance warned.
Vespasian looked down through the crystal and found himself staring at a face that was at the same time both ancient and youthful. There were no lines on the smooth, brown skin, coloured by age not race, which stretched over the skull and jaw like the finest vellum; but neither was there substance to it, so the outline of the bone beneath was plainly visible giving the impression of great age. However, the mouth was closed with the thin lips pulled slightly up in a faint smile; the eyes, which had seen more wonders and riches than any others before or since, were shut as if sleeping. Long hair, still abundant and blond, covered the ears and lay perfectly dressed on the pillow framing the face with a soft outline of ochre; all this combined to give the effect that here was a young man resting peacefully. Vespasian drew his breath and looked closer; the only blemish was that the nostril on the shadowed side of the face had fallen away.
‘The great Augustus did that by accident when he had the sarcophagus’ lid removed so that he could touch Alexander,’ the priest said, realising what Vespasian was examining.
‘Was that the last time the lid was taken off?’
‘No, Germanicus brought his sons here and also we take it off every year to replace the spices that surround and preserve Alexander.’
Vespasian walked around the sarcophagus looking at the seal between the top and bottom halves of the sarcophagus and saw that they were held together by nothing more than the weight of the lid. ‘Do you think two men could lift that?’ he whispered to Felix and Magnus who had joined him as he completed his circuit.
Magnus shrugged. ‘If they can’t they could certainly lift one end enough to get to the breastplate.’
Vespasian’s eyes moved down to the object that Caligula had sent him to Egypt to steal; it was not what he had expected: gilded, inlaid and adorned with jewels. It was evidently the actual breastplate that he had worn in battle and not one made especially for his eternal rest. Just like Marcus Antonius’ sword it was the choice of a fighting man: made of hardened leather moulded in the shape of the muscles it concealed. Its only decoration were two rearing horses of inlaid gold facing each other on the chest and bronze edgings around the neck, shoulders and waist to give it added strength.
‘Can you memorise the inlays?’ Vespasian murmured to Felix.
‘There’s no need to; almost every statue of Alexander in the city depicts him wearing this.’
‘In which case our work here is done.’ Vespasian straightened up and turned to the waiting priest. ‘Thank you for allowing me the honour of gazing at the greatest man who ever lived,’ he said with genuine feeling.
‘I must stay for few moments to perform the short cleansing ritual that is prescribed every time we visit,’ the priest said, acknowledging their thanks with an inclination of his head. He stepped aside to allow them to mount the two flights of stone steps leading back up to the temple.
Coming out of the dark staircase, past the armed guard in Macedonian uniform at its top, Vespasian’s eyes took a short while to get used to the bright light; once they had done so he looked around the cavernous, circular chamber that he had only briefly glimpsed earlier as they had been ushered through its main doors and straight down to the tomb. It was dominated by a huge equestrian statue of Alexander, helmetless with his hair flowing behind him, mounted on Bucephalus and with a lance couched under his arm as if in mid-thrust. Next to it, rather incongruously, stood the now obligatory statue of Caligula.
In the absolute centre of the floor was a circular balustrade, waist high, surrounding the opening of the narrow shaft down which the public could gaze at Alexander’s preserved corpse. Directly above this was a similar sized hole cut in the ceiling, fifty feet above.
‘At noon on the tenth of June, the anniversary of Alexander’s death according to the Roman calendar,’ the priest informed Vespasian as he appeared at the top of the steps, his ritual complete, ‘the sun is directly aligned to shine down onto his face. I’m afraid that you’ve missed that by a month.’
‘That is a pity,’ Vespasian said gazing up at the hole. ‘What hap
pens when it rains?’
‘It rarely does here, but there is a hatch up there that we can close.’
Vespasian nodded thoughtfully. ‘Thank you, you’ve been most accommodating.’ As he turned to leave, his foot slipped and he would have stumbled had Magnus not caught his arm; he looked down at a smear of greenish slime on the floor.
‘Please accept my apologies, senator,’ the priest said hastily, ‘I will have the slaves who clean the floor punished for their slackness.’
‘What is it?’
‘We keep geese in the temple at night as a security; should anyone overpower the guards outside and gain access their noise would raise the alarm. I’m afraid that is their residue.’
‘You’re right, the windows are out of the question; the best way in and out is through the roof, if the hatch is strong enough to attach a rope to,’ Magnus agreed as they sat in some shade in the long and wide central courtyard of the Soma surrounded by the individual mausoleums of the Ptolemaic dynasty and with Alexander’s temple at its northern end. At its centre stood an altar at which a priest waited to accept the offerings brought by the people of the city in the hope that their semi-divine dead rulers would intercede for them with the gods on matters close to their heart, be they financial, legal or personal.
‘But first we’ve got to get into the Soma,’ Vespasian pointed out, looking at the only gate through the high walls of the complex through which a group of Greeks walked leading a lamb.
‘That should be fairly straightforward,’ Felix assured them. ‘The main gate is guarded but never closed so that the people have access to the altar day and night.’
‘So we just pretend to be supplicants?’
‘Exactly.’
‘All right,’ Magnus said sceptically, ‘say that we do get in and manage to sneak off unnoticed to the temple, get up onto the roof and then down through that hole, how the fuck do we deal with the geese?’ He indicated across to a small enclosure to the left of the temple in which were housed two dozen of the nocturnal guards.
Vespasian shrugged and looked at Felix.
‘The problem of the geese I can solve,’ Felix assured them, ‘we just need to get a man on the inside the evening before we go in – Ziri could do that. The big dilemma is the replica breastplate.’
‘What’s so hard about that?’ Vespasian asked. ‘You said the pattern is easy to replicate.’
‘It’s not the pattern that worries me. You said that the switch must never be noticed, which would be fine if the priests were just looking at it through the crystal. The trouble is that once a year they take the lid off and would then see that the leather isn’t old. No matter how much we try to age it it’ll never match the original if they inspect it closely.’
‘So we need to find a leather breastplate that’s three hundred years old or so?’ Vespasian questioned, raising his eyebrows.
‘Exactly,’ Felix replied, looking beaten.
‘That won’t be a problem; I saw more than a dozen of them last night.’
CHAPTER XVIIII
‘THAT’S VERY GOOD, Felix, very good indeed,’ Vespasian said, admiring the leather cuirass on the table in Felix’s study.
‘It looks old to me,’ Magnus affirmed, nodding his head appreciatively.
‘It’s good enough,’ Felix agreed, ‘but it won’t stand up to close scrutiny.’
‘I can’t imagine that anyone stops and takes a very close look at Ptolemy Soter’s statue, and even if someone did it would be to examine it for the first time, in which case they wouldn’t have seen the original and will accept this one as real.’ Vespasian picked up the breastplate and examined the bronze edgings around the neck, shoulders and waist; they were not identical to Alexander’s but looked exactly like the workmanship on the original that they would replace: that of the first Ptolemy. Vespasian had chosen Ptolemy Soter’s breastplate because it was the plainest as compared to his descendants, whose armour became more and more ornate as their martial prowess diminished. As one of Alexander’s generals he had emulated his leader’s habit of wearing plain but functional Macedonian armour, so that there was no gaudy protuberance for a spear point to catch and gain purchase on to pierce the hardened leather. All that needed to be done to this breastplate was to replace the edgings and then inlay the rearing horses.
‘What about Flaccus?’ Magnus asked.
‘He walks down that corridor every day and probably never even looks at the statues,’ Vespasian replied, feeling the hardened leather of the cuirass and admiring how the craftsman had made it feel slightly supple, as if it were very old. ‘And anyway, if he did notice that the breastplate had been swapped and then realise that I had done it and why, do you think that he would announce to the Greek population of this city that the Emperor of Rome, the man he represents, has had one of their most venerated artefacts stolen? Bollocks he would. He’d have an uprising on his hands before you could say “Caligula’s mad”.’
‘He seems to have one on his hands already,’ Magnus commented, ‘which appears to be getting worse, judging by the smoke coming from various parts of the city this morning.’
‘Yes, the civil unrest is escalating,’ Felix agreed. ‘Now that the Greeks see the Jewish demands for equal status as a threat to their dominant position, they’re taking matters into their own hands; but that may work in our favour by acting as a diversion.’
In the ten days that they had been waiting for the breastplate to be made, interracial violence in the city had been on the increase. The Jews had retaliated for the man murdered on the Canopic Way, but when Flaccus had merely had his murderers flogged, not crucified, the Greeks had felt emboldened to escalate their violence and began burning Jewish houses that were not in the Jewish Quarter and attacking any Jew who ventured into another part of the city. For their part the Jews had started sending out sorties and attacking, sometimes killing, anyone not of their race. Flaccus had brought in more troops in an effort to keep the Jews confined to their quarter, but it had not been successful; the legionaries had become targets for both factions.
‘So all we’ve got to do now is swap them over,’ Magnus said. ‘Who’s going to do that?’
‘I will, I’ll do it late tonight,’ Vespasian replied, fitting the breastplate to his chest. ‘It should be simple enough; I’ll wear this under a cloak, then swap it with the original from the statue and wear that as I go back to my suite. No one would dare stop and ask me, on the way there and back, what I’m doing and the corridor is in an area of the palace not used at night.’
Felix approved. ‘Good. My craftsman reckons that it will take him five days to do the inlays and change the edgings so, assuming that I can get it to him tomorrow, we should aim for the night of six days hence.’
‘How much will he charge this time?’
‘Double; plus the value of the gold for the inlays, which he calculates to be about ten aurii.’
Vespasian did some quick mental arithmetic and blanched. ‘Six hundred and fifty denarii! That’s robbery.’
‘He’s not stupid; he knows exactly what he’s making and wants to be paid for his discretion in the matter.’
Vespasian could not argue; the craftsman was entitled to a premium for not asking questions, and besides, since withdrawing the money from Thales, he had plenty stored in a large chest on the ship waiting to take them home. He was just not very good at parting with it, he reflected. ‘Very well, I’ll pick up the cash on the way back to the palace.’
‘Thank you. So, gentlemen, I have enough rope and a boat and I’ve worked out how to get onto the roof of the temple without the guards outside seeing; that just leaves us with one outstanding problem: the geese.’
‘I thought that you knew how to solve that.’
‘I do; the only way to stop them from raising the alarm is to keep them occupied and the only way to do that is to feed them; so, as I said, we need Ziri already inside the temple to scatter grain for them before we come down the rope. The question is where can
he hide? I went back there yesterday and there’s nowhere within the temple itself; so that just leaves the burial chamber. Now, there is a small gap between the two uprights supporting the slab that the sarcophagus rests upon that a small man like Ziri could fit into but…’
‘How do we get him past the guard who’s at the top of the steps during the day,’ Vespasian said, seeing the problem.
‘We need a diversion,’ Magnus suggested.
Felix nodded. ‘Yes, but what? The priests know us so they’ll be suspicious if we go in there and start fighting or arguing or whatever.’
‘I could fall down pretending to be ill.’
‘You could, but what kind of guard would leave his post for long enough for Ziri to slip behind him for the likes of you?’
‘He’s right, Magnus,’ Vespasian said with a grin, ‘a battered ex-boxer like you isn’t going to elicit a great deal of concern no matter how much you writhe and wail; a beautiful woman on the other hand?’
‘A diversion? You think of me as a mere diversion?’
‘No, Flavia, I want you to be a diversion.’
‘For you?’
‘No, for somebody else.’
‘You want me to whore myself to somebody else?’
Vespasian closed his eyes and took a deep breath; the conversation had not got off to the best of starts. ‘Listen to me, will you? We…I need you to distract a guard for long enough to get Ziri past him.’
‘What guard?’
‘A guard in the Temple of Alexander.’
‘Why?’
‘So that he can get down to the burial chamber.’
Flavia looked at him suspiciously and sat up in the bed; sunlight filtering through the half-closed shutters dappled her fair skin and glistened on her ruffled, loose hair. ‘What are you planning?’
Vespasian realised that he would have to be totally honest with her to stand any chance of getting her co-operation.
False God of Rome Page 32
