Wasn’t that the way a murderer would think?
I found the messenger waiting in the dining room of the inn, which was dimly lit and cave-like in the early morning light. As I handed him the letter I asked, “Do you have anything to add to what you said last night? Sometimes a good night’s sleep sharpens the memory.”
“No, my lord.”
“Torture can also sharpen the memory,” I reminded him.
He drew himself up with some dignity, a tall, thin man, about thirty-five, with a broad nose and large eyes in a face made more thoughtful by his receding hairline. “My lord, my testimony would be no different under torture. I told you all I know last night.”
I could have badgered him some more, but I reminded myself that a man’s slaves aren’t all scoundrels just because the man himself is one. This fellow had more nobility in his bearing than the ‘noble’ Marcellus himself could muster on his best day.
“Would you also see that this letter is delivered to the wife of Cornelius Tacitus?” I handed him the sealed document which Tacitus had given me last night and a few sesterces for his trouble. “She’s staying in the house of her father, Julius Agricola, on the Aventine Hill.”
The man bowed slightly. “Certainly, my lord. Will there be anything else?”
“No. You’d better get down to the dock. I’m sure the ship is about ready to sail. I hope your journey is a speedy and a safe one.”
As I watched him leave I silently wished him well. While travel of any sort is difficult, travel by ship involves enormous risk. Rome has eliminated pirates but cannot control the weather. This man’s ship could sink and no word of Cornutus’ death reach Rome until we arrived. And we would have no way of knowing what happened for almost a month.
* * * *
Tacitus, Luke and Timothy were waiting for me near the door of the inn, ready to attend Apelles’ funeral. I was disappointed to see Marcellus standing alongside Tacitus. Surely this scoundrel hadn’t invited himself to a stranger’s funeral.
“Pliny, there you are,” Tacitus said. “Marcellus has volunteered to see to burning Cornutus’ body this morning, so that’s taken care of.”
Along with any possibility of learning any more about how Cornutus died, I thought. But I just said, “That’s very generous of you, Marcellus.” And it was. The wood for the pyre, the hired mourners—the whole business would run into some money. “What provisions have you made for the ashes?”
“I will provide a suitable urn for them. Would you like to take charge of them?” His tone was almost as sarcastic as his expression.
“Yes. In the letter I wrote to his father this morning I promised to return the ashes and all of Cornutus’ belongings to him as soon as possible.”
“Then if that’s all taken care of,” Luke said, “perhaps we should leave for Apelles’ funeral. I believe it will start soon.”
As soon as we were out of the inn, Luke handed me Sempronius’ knife, which I had delivered to him the previous evening. “It couldn’t have made Cornutus’ wounds,” he said. “The blade is too thick and not nearly sharp enough.”
I dropped the knife into the sinus of my toga. The only advantage of the garment is this pocket formed by the way the material is draped over the left arm and around the wearer’s back and over the right shoulder. “I’ll return it to Sempronius. Thank you for checking on that point before the body was burned.”
Apelles’ funeral ceremony was held in the market square in the center of town. It appeared to me that virtually the entire population of the town was in attendance. The committee of boularchs, twenty-three now, stood in the front row. Tacitus and I were treated with great deference, even though the stripes on our togas were of the narrow, equestrian variety. The dignity which our presence bestowed on the proceedings was recognized, and we were invited to stand near the bier on which Apelles’ body was laid out. A man of about fifty, he must have died from some wasting, consumptive disease. With his sunken cheeks and wispy hair, he looked thin and drawn, even older than his years.
The funeral oration, which the Greeks call an epitaphios, was given by Apelles’ son, who was about my age. Watching him take his place beside the bier and collect his thoughts, I was carried back to the time, just four years ago, when I gave the oration at my uncle’s funeral. The custom is demanding, but I wouldn’t change it. Expecting the son to speak at his father’s funeral gives the younger man a chance to reflect on his father’s accomplishments and on his contribution to the growth of the family’s patrimony. That had been an easy task for me, given my adoptive father’s success in so many areas—the military, government service, and scholarship. When the deceased himself hasn’t amounted to much, the eulogies tend to become recitals of family history.
Apelles’ son did a commendable job. I suppose he’d had some time to think about what he was going to say, since his father had obviously been sick for a while. Part of the problem for a son in this situation is that he doesn’t have a lot of time to prepare for this task, unless he’s a little ghoulish and thinks about it a lot in advance. Apelles’ son had had adequate rhetorical training, though in the florid Asiatic style popular in the eastern part of the empire. I found it excessive and could tell that Tacitus, who kept shifting his feet next to me, was longing to introduce the young man to the beauties of the uncluttered Attic style which we had learned in Rome.
With a flourish the young man finished his speech. The bier was picked up by eight prominent men of the city, and the procession headed out of town on the Via Sebaste toward the south, accompanied by women mourners and flute players. We wound our way through the necropolis to the tomb which we had noticed being prepared when we arrived two days ago. The body was placed in a waiting sarcophagus and deposited in the tomb, one of the largest in the necropolis. In art, as in rhetoric, the Asiatic style tends toward heavy ornamentation and overstatement. The sarcophagus was intricately carved with vines, shepherds, and cupids on every side. A central figure on one side depicted a man carrying a sheep over his shoulders, an image familiar to me from temple art, especially that devoted to Apollo.
What struck me as odd, however, were the inscriptions carved on all sides of the stone casket. Inscriptions are common in such a context, but the wording of these was unlike anything I had ever seen before: ‘I am the vine.’‘I know my sheep.’ ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ They must have caught Tacitus’ eye, too. He nudged me.
“What do you make of those?”
I shrugged. “Could Apelles have been an initiate of some local mystery cult we’ve never encountered before?”
People’s religious practices intrigue me as phenomena to be observed, but I find no personal meaning in any of them. That the gods exist, I don’t deny or affirm. But, if they do exist, why should they concern themselves with our petty affairs? And why should we presume to think that we exist in some other form after this life is over? To use Seneca’s analogy, our life is like a flame. Before it is lit and after it’s extinguished, is all the same. Our memory of the dead may endure for a while, just as the smoke and the scent from a candle linger briefly in the room, but the dead have no more awareness of us than the smoking candle does. There’s no reason to fear what comes after the extinguishing of death, any more than what came before the kindling of birth. We have no memory of the one and will have no consciousness of the other. As Epicurus says, ‘Death is nothing to us, for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.’
“That woman is carrying on like a hired mourner,” Tacitus whispered in my ear. I nodded. Apelles’ wife was crying a good deal more than is considered fitting for a free person of any rank in society. That sort of wailing is best left to those who are paid to do it.
Still, it’s fitting to commemorate a person’s death with some sort of ceremony. If he were leaving on a long voyage, his family and friends would gather to see him off. There would be tears—such as my mother shed so copiously when I left for Syria—words of e
ncouragement, promises to care for his family. They would be for the benefit of those staying behind as much as for the one departing. And it makes no difference by what means of conveyance a person leaves. A wagon will carry him away as well as a ship. Entombment in a sarcophagus gets rid of the body as well as cremation. I prefer the fire myself. There’s something undignified about the thought of a person’s remains putrifying in a dark tomb. Fire purifies, reduces, finishes the job completely and quickly.
Glancing back toward the west, I could see a column of smoke coming from the other side of Smyrna. Undoubtedly Cornutus’ funeral pyre. Rising in that smoke was whatever else his body might have told us about the manner of his death.
What difference does it make? The end of both men—of all men—is the same. The day will come when Apelles’ wife and children will no longer remember just what he looked like, what his voice sounded like. He will ‘live’ only in the name which his son bears. Poor Cornutus didn’t leave even that much to keep his memory alive. I find each day that my uncle’s visage is dimmer in my mind. He was fortunate to have written so much. He is ‘alive’ even for people, like Luke, who never met him. That kind of legacy is the closest we can come, I think, to immortality. It’s what I hope to achieve with my life.
The movement of the crowd jarred me out of my reverie. On the walk back into town the caterwauling of the hired mourners began to grate on my nerves. I would have liked to drop back in the crowd, to get as far away from it as I could. But, as a distinguished guest and representative of Rome, I had a duty to lend dignity to the proceedings. The crowd accompanied Apelles’ family back to their house. As a conclusion to the rituals, the son took a new broom and swept the room where the body had lain, symbolically cleansing it from the contamination of death. The family was now ready to begin this new phase of their lives. The front few ranks of the crowd seemed to know that they were invited into the house for food and drink. The rest drifted away. Luke steered Tacitus and me through the crowd in the front room.
“Chryseis is in the back of the house,” he said.
* * * *
We found her sitting in a peristyle garden of the Roman sort, carding wool, as virtuous women of every class always seem to be doing something with their hands. Ionic columns supported a roof running around the garden, providing welcome shade. A flagstone path, bordered by boxwoods, meandered across the garden. Several early spring flowers were blooming. My uncle would have chided me for not recognizing them and knowing their medicinal properties. In the middle of the open space a fountain gushed. How sad to think that Apelles would never enjoy another day here with his family.
“Good morning, Chryseis,” I said hesitantly. Why did I feel like some lowly peasant approaching my mistress, or like Odysseus, covered in seaweed and brine, washed up on the shore at the feet of the princess Nausicaa?
She looked at me with her head cocked to one side, like a dog trying to figure out whether a stranger is friend or enemy.
“Good morning,” she replied. When she did not add the requisite ‘my lord’, I realized she had no notion of my status or hers. “Do I know you?”
“Yes, though not well. My name is Gaius Pliny. We met recently and talked for a while.”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember a lot of things,” Chryseis said sadly. “These nice people are trying to help me. I do know that my mother was very beautiful. My nurse used to tell me so.”
“I believe she was,” I said without thinking.
Her face brightened and she leaned toward me. “Did you know my mother?”
“No. But you are very beautiful.”
She looked me right in the eye. “Thank you. You’re very handsome.”
It was like talking to an empty shell. She would echo anything I said to her, but Chryseis herself wasn’t there at the moment. Somewhere in there, though, I felt sure she was hiding, like the sun waiting to peek out from behind a cloud or a child playing a game. How could I find her?
Luke took me by the arm and led me across the garden. Chryseis resumed her wool-working.
“As you can see,” Luke said, “she doesn’t remember anything. She doesn’t know who she is or why she’s here.”
“How long do you think she’ll stay like this?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. It might last a few days, a month. Or, she might never recover. I’ve seen such cases.”
“Is there anything we can do to help her?” I asked urgently.
Luke put his thumb under his chin and his index finger beside his nose. After a moment’s reflection he said, “Once, when I was a young doctor, I assisted in the case of a man who lost his memory after a fall from a horse but was otherwise in fine health. His doctor suggested we try to recreate a dramatic scene from his life, to awaken that memory and see if it would awaken others as well, just as a dash of cold water or a slap on the face awakens someone from sleep. His wife described one scene which she thought was important for him. We rehearsed it like actors, performed it with him present, and by the end of it, his memory was returning.”
“Well, let’s try that with Chryseis,” I urged.
“She’s so young. What incident in her life would stand out enough to make an impact on her shattered memory?”
I knew instantly. “The night she was branded. I know from the way she talked about it that it was seared into her soul as much as into her flesh.”
“That would certainly be dramatic enough,” Luke agreed. “But how do we know what happened? Chryseis can’t tell us. Cornutus is dead.”
“Melissa, Cornutus’ concubine, was present at the branding. She described the whole thing to me.”
“Could you bring her over here? With her help we’ll try to make the re-enactment as accurate as possible.”
“Yes, let’s do it tonight. It happened in the middle of the night, according to Melissa.” I went on to give him a list of ‘props’ we would need to stage our little melodrama.
* * * *
When we returned from the funeral Androcles met us on the sidewalk in front of his inn. His customary insolence had been replaced by hand-wringing terror.
“My lords,” he said, “those women from Ephesus want to see you. They’re waiting in the small dining room.”
Tacitus and I exchanged glances. “We still have time to run,” he said.
I shook my head. “Perhaps they’ll kill us more humanely if we just go in and face them. Either way we’re dead.”
Glancing in the door of the small dining room before we entered, I was relieved to see that they didn’t have the Molossian hounds with them. I wondered if Damon’s sling had proved more deadly than he thought. Anyte stood in the center of the room, with her acolytes arrayed in a semi-circle behind her. Was the red around her mouth make-up clumsily applied or traces of the blood she had consumed at the ritual last night?
“What can I do for you, lady?” I asked, trying to take the initiative. For once I doubted my uncle’s advice about acting as though I was in charge. It wasn’t convincing me.
Anyte folded her arms across her chest. I could swear I saw a flame smoldering in her eyes. “Someone profaned our rites last night.”
She hadn’t directly accused me. She wasn’t sure. If she had known for certain, I think she would have killed us last night in our sleep.
“What exactly happened?” I asked with a little more self-assurance. I was afraid Tacitus’ blanched complexion had already given us away, but I was determined to keep up my pretense of innocence.
“Three men spied on our sacred rituals,” she said, her voice growing deeper as the sentence progressed.
“Do you know who they were?”
“No, we weren’t able to get close enough to identify them.” She leaned closer to me, as though some lingering scent—perhaps the stench of fear—might give me away. “They rode away on horseback.”
“Then why are you coming to me?”
“You claim to be running things since we arrived here.”
“Lady
, I must remind you that I have no official jurisdiction in Smyrna. I am merely trying to maintain order so that Cornutus’ murder can be investigated according to Roman standards. As far as this matter is concerned, you can levy a complaint with Nicomedes, the boularch, if you wish, or wait until the governor arrives.”
“Nicomedes, hah! He would shit all over himself if I showed up at his door.”
I had to admit that her assessment of the surviving boularch’s character matched my own, though she found an earthier way to phrase it.
“Perhaps I’ll talk to the governor when he arrives,” she continued.
“You may find him reluctant to do anything,” I cautioned her. “Roman governors seldom interfere in the internal affairs of religious cults unless they threaten the public welfare.”
“Then perhaps I will settle it myself. And woe to those three wretches if they fall into my hands.” Her hands trembled as she clenched them in front of my face. Her desire to throttle somebody was palpable.
“Why don’t you let the goddess defend her own honor?” I said before I thought.
“The tri-form goddess is not lightly mocked, young sir!” Anyte flung her robe around her. “The men who violated her rites must pay. They will lose something that they value above all else.” She stormed out of the room.
All Roads Lead to Murder Page 12
