Dog-Headed Death: A Gaius Hesperian Mystery

by Ray Faraday Nelson

  Daphnis was a librarius, a sort of clerk or scribe to Hesperian, and though he was of a lower rank than Mannus, he had, as usual, not bothered to salute; yet another cause for Mannus’ irritation.

  “When do you think we’ll reach Alexandria?” asked Daphnis absently.

  “Tomorrow morning.” It was a stupid question. Daphnis should have already known the answer.

  After a pause, Daphnis put another question. “You wouldn’t care to give me a teeny tiny little hint about the nature of our mission, would you, Optio Mannus, sir?”

  “You know it’s confidential. That’s all you need to know, Librarius Daphnis, sir.”

  Daphnis shrugged. “With such a third-rate crew and only eight fighting men it can’t be very important.”

  “A man like Hesperian is not sent on unimportant missions!”

  “Well, it’s obvious we’re not going into battle. But it is, you say, important. Will we be transporting some high official? No. There’s not enough comfort on this tub for that. Well, we all know what Hesperian has become… Nero’s trouble-shooter, Nero’s investigator, Nero’s watchdog and bloodhound. There’s going to be an investigation. Right? But no ordinary crime would bring Hesperian all the way from Rome. Is it treason? No, then there’d be more troops on board, to fight possible rebel armies. Murder, then! Ah, I see by your face I’ve guessed right. A murder in Alexandria! And the victim would have to be someone of wealth and influence.”

  “If Hesperian finds you in possession of state secrets…” began Mannus angrily.

  Daphnis finished the sentence “…I’ll say you told me, my dear Mannus.” He smiled archly. “It’s the truth; isn’t it?”

  “I’ve said nothing!”

  “But your face… it’s blabbered everything!” He laughed delightedly and slapped Mannus on the back. “But how did Nero hear of this murder? Thanks to the war and the winter storms, there’s been next to no communication between Alexandria and Rome since last autumn. The murder took place last autumn, didn’t it? Ah ha! Again your simple farmer’s face tells me ‘Yes’. But why didn’t Nero leave the investigation to the local authorities in Egypt, to Praefectus Tiberius Julius Alexander? Well, we all know the character of our beloved Emperor. He sees traitors everywhere, and not without reason! The Jews in Palestine are in revolt, and Tiberius Alexander is a Jew. Does Nero suspect this murder is part of a plot against Rome? Ha! I’m right again! Nero thinks Alexander may have deliberately allowed the murderer to escape detection, so our beloved Emperor sends Hesperian, a high-ranking official from his own private Imperial Guard, to look into the matter. Mannus, with that eloquent face of yours, you should be on the stage! A bet, Mannus! A bet!”

  “A bet?” muttered Mannus suspiciously.

  “Wine! I’ll bet you a jug of wine, a gurgling amphora of the finest vintage Falernian!”

  “What’s the bet?”

  “I say Hesperian will fail!”

  Mannus’ hand went to the pommel of his short sword.

  “By the gods, I’ll…”

  “No swordplay, handsome!” He patted Mannus on the cheek. “If I lose the bet, don’t you think that will be punishment enough? But I won’t lose. How could I? This time your precious centurion will have only two days to solve a mystery that has baffled all the local authorities for months… provided they haven’t solved it already before we get there.”

  “Two days?” Mannus was dumbfounded. “Why two days?”

  “If we drop anchor tomorrow morning, we’ll be in Alexandria two days before the Festival of the Ship of Isis. During the winter all the suspects have been effectively sealed up in the city, unable to escape by land because of the war in Palestine and unable to escape by sea because the port of Alexandria has been closed during the winter storms. The Festival of the Ship of Isis, March fifth, will celebrate the opening of the port, and regular shipping will resume for the spring season. All the suspects will then be able to sail away and…” He made an airy gesture with his hand. “…vanish into the vastness of the Empire.”

  “Two days,” said Mannus softly. He hadn’t realized…

  “Is it a bet?” demanded the librarius.

  Mannus glanced at the smiling Daphnis, so cool, so superior, so young. Who was this sneering effeminate clerk to doubt a man like Gaius Hesperian?

  “It’s a bet!” shouted Mannus. “If Hesperian doesn’t find Memnon’s killer, I’ll buy…”

  “Memnon?” broke in Daphnis, impressed at last. “You mean the murdered man is Odysseus Memnon, the Greek grain merchant and ship owner?” Odysseus Memnon was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the Empire.

  “So now you know it all,” said Mannus dejectedly.

  Daphnis shook his head in wonder, repeating the magic name in a whisper. “Odysseus Memnon!”

  * * * *

  Odysseus Memnon never dreamed; when he first became interested in the obscure Jewish heresy called Christianity, that he was setting in motion a chain of events that would eventually result in his death.

  A week before his murder, he had stood in the dewy grass of the Jewish graveyard, beyond the city walls in the Eastern Necropolis, singing hymns to Jesus Savior (Yeshua Soter, they called him) and waiting for the sun. All around the old man had stood the Christians, mostly poor Jews, with a sprinkling of Greeks, their numbers recently swollen by an influx of ragged refugees from the war in Judea, all raising their arms skyward in unison. Some were singing the words, some simply humming the tune, some only uttering half-hysterical cries, as if they were on the verge of “getting the Holy Spirit.”

  A slowly moving mist obscured all but the nearest Christians, and all but the nearest tombs, statues, gravestones and sepulchers; further away, all that Memnon could see were vague shadowy figures and the occasional flickering glow of a torch or oil lamp.

  The Apostle Mark led the singing. Odysseus could hear him but could not see him because of the mist and dimness. Because of the distance, he could not make out the words, but he could hear and join in on the chorus, which was always the same:

  “Glory to thee for ever and ever!”

  It was cold in the cemetery, though there was almost no wind. Memnon drew his richly embroidered maroon cloak tightly around his bony body and shivered. This meeting in graveyards was one thing he found hard to accept, but the Christians had told him that their “brothers and sisters under the earth” were not dead, “only sleeping.” One day soon they would awake and walk.

  An old woman called out in the midst of the singing, “Come soon, Jesus! Come soon!” Her voice was cracking with anguished longing.

  The morning sun, when it came, came suddenly. The sliver of light on the eastern horizon was so bright that Odysseus could not look at it.

  Odysseus gestured to his slaves, who came with an elaborately carved and gilded sedan chair to carry him away on their shoulders.

  After the singing in the graveyard, the Christians, led by the Apostle Mark and Annianus, the old Jewish shoemaker Mark had appointed first Bishop of Alexandria, filed in solemn procession back into the city, back into the slums of the Valley-by-the-Tombs that bordered on the thriving Jewish quarter. Odysseus Memnon, riding in his chair, went with them, the only one there who was not on foot.

  Odysseus, glancing out, saw a young Jewess kiss an older woman on the lips. The Christians, though they were a chaste lot in most ways, often kissed each other like that. None of them, Odysseus realized, has ever kissed me. But then, how could they kiss a man in a sedan chair?

  He chuckled at the thought. Ahead lay a crowded inn yard.

  It was the custom of the Christians, after these morning ceremonies, to share a meal together, a meal they called the Love Feast, or Agape. Odysseus had watched them eat before, but today, for the first time he climbed from his chair and shuffled over to take a bite—just a b
ite—of the food himself. His teeth were bad and the bread was hard, but he managed. As he took a sip of wine he saw his slaves staring at him in open-mouthed astonishment and chuckled again. The Christians smiled at him. A fat, bearded old Jew embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks saying, “I wondered how long you’d be content to merely watch us.”

  Odysseus’ eyes grew moist and he impatiently wiped them with his tunic sleeve.

  “Come,” said the Jew. “Come and meet Mark and our Bishop.” He pulled Odysseus along by the arm, leading the way through the crowd. Odysseus wrinkled his nose at the stench of unwashed flesh. He tried to avoid brushing against some of the more unsavory of the Christians, but the old Jew, intent on the task of locating his leaders, took no notice, let alone offense. Odysseus clutched at his purse, thinking, What a paradise for cutpurses! Yes, his money was still there.

  He caught a glimpse of a man in the toga of Roman citizenship. That was the thing that fascinated him most about these people, the way men born lowly Jews, Greeks and even Egyptians could mingle here on a seemingly equal basis with high-born Roman citizens. That, somehow, was more impressive than all the claims of miraculous cures, eternal life for the faithful, and a raising of the dead by a Savior who, they had told him, was expected to himself return from the dead at any moment.

  “Bishop Annianus!” called the old Jew, waving.

  A hawk-nosed little old man with a bald, sunburned head and hunched shoulders turned and, with a toothless smile, returned the greeting. From the rough gray wool tunic Annianus wore, it would have been impossible to tell that he was any sort of high official; many in the crowd were better dressed than he.

  “Bishop Annianus, I want you to meet…” Here the Jew faltered.

  “My name is Odysseus.”

  “Brother Odysseus,” said the bishop, and Odysseus received a second Christian kiss.

  “This is the Apostle Mark,” said the old Jew.

  “Brother Odysseus!” Mark had a deep, reverberant voice. A third time Odysseus was kissed.

  Mark, smiling down at him, seemed tall, athletic, and dark, but no longer young. Even this man, of whom all the Christians spoke with awe, dressed more simply than a peasant, though at least his grayish linen tunic and brown wool cloak were clean. His only overt sign of rank was a wooden cross, a cross with a loop on top which represented the Egyptian hieroglyph for Eternal Life, worn on a leather thong around the Apostle’s neck.

  “Brother Odysseus has a question,” said the old Jew.

  “A question?” said Mark.

  Odysseus was flustered, embarrassed. He had no question. He hadn’t said he had one! But after a moment he began haltingly, “Tell me, sir…”

  “Yes?” Mark was patient, attentive.

  “Could you tell me… How can I become a Christian?”

  Mark’s eyes traveled over Odysseus in a quick, calculating glance, taking in the rings, the jewels, the fine robes. “Go,” said the Apostle. “Go, sell whatever you have and give the proceeds to the poor.” He gestured toward a group of ragged, half-starved war refugees that stood nearby, a little apart from the others.

  Bishop Annianus added, “We who believe are together in having all things in common.”

  “But…” began Odysseus, raising a skeletal hand in protest, but someone had come up, insisting on speaking with Mark, and Odysseus found himself shoved aside into the crowd. The old Jew, who was still with him, said triumphantly, “You see? Isn’t he wonderful?”

  Wonderful? Insane! Subversive!

  Odysseus broke away from the Jew and half-ran, half-shoved his way back to the sedan chair. Safely seated, he commanded his slaves, “Get me out of here! Trot!”

  They lifted him and, exchanging knowing glances among themselves, set off.

  Their pace did not slacken until they reached a place more comfortably familiar to their master; the Agora Diplostoon marketplace, where jostling crowds of buyers and sellers made rapid progress impossible. Odysseus, chin in palm, contemplated the bustling multitudes, the crude stalls and tables where street merchants displayed a bewildering selection of food, clothing and luxuries against a backdrop of stately marble buildings with colonnaded facades in the Hellenistic Greek style. Here men like Odysseus bought and sold whole shiploads of grain and whole fleets of grain ships as casually as the street merchants bargained an apple for a skein of yam.

  Give everything to the poor?

  Hold all things in common?

  Odysseus shook his head in incredulous wonder.

  Suddenly he remembered one of the popular sayings of Epictetus, the joyous slave of Nero’s court: “What else can I that am old and lame do but sing to God?”

  What indeed!

  And he remembered the prophecy, in the poet Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, of a boy born to be a world-savior.

  And he found himself perversely drawn to this outlandish Jewish heresy, in spite of the high price it seemed he must pay to become a Christian.

  He toyed with the idea, savored it, examined it from all sides. He wondered finally how his brother Demetrius, who was his partner in business, would react to the idea of giving everything to the poor. And how about his son and daughter, who hoped to inherit his fortune? And what about his lovely young wife Adrastia, who could have had no other reason for marrying him but his money?

  He thought, They’ll all be insane with fury!

  “So much the better!” chuckled Odysseus Memnon.

  * * * *

  The universe was red.

  She opened her eyes, blinking in the shaft of afternoon sunlight that had awakened her.

  She closed her eyes again, and again the universe, now limited to the light that filtered through her eyelids, was red.

  She turned her back to the light, tried to go back to sleep. It was no use. Eyes open, she sat up, yawned, stretched, her slim bare young body half in light and half in shadow. The moist heat in the room was overpowering, and she was glistening with sweat. The dirty linen bed sheet stuck to her back. The nauseating stench of sweat, rancid olive oil and hot, fermenting camel dung filled her nostrils, making her faintly ill.

  She turned, rested her weight on her elbow.

  There was a man sleeping beside her, his face to the wall.

  She smiled, and tenderly touched his hair with her fingertips.

  She listened to the sound of a heavy oxcart passing in the street below her shuttered window—the rumble and grind of its wheels, the clip-clop of the oxen’s hooves—and heard also the shouts of children playing and, somewhere, a cat fight. There were so many cats in this neighborhood!

  She sighed, then she shrugged.

  She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, rested the soles of her feet on the rough unpainted wood floor, and stood up. A swarm of flies took wing, angry at having been disturbed.

  She swatted ineffectually at them.

  She slipped her tunic over her head, tried to shake some of the tangles out of her shoulder-length light brown hair. The tunic was torn and dirty, little more than a rag.

  She let her eyes travel around the room. It was a shabby filthy little hole—an upstairs room over an inn, fit only for camel drivers and prostitutes.

  She smiled with satisfaction.

  On the chair was the armor and short sword of a Roman soldier. Against the wall was a Roman soldier’s javelin. She looked at these things, still smiling enigmatically, as if thinking of some private joke.

  She crossed the room on tiptoe, picked up a wood-backed wax tablet and stylus, and began to write out a shopping list in quick graceful, elegant Greek characters, softy humming a bawdy Roman drinking song.

  This done, she glanced once again at the sleeping man, then put on her threadbare cape and, with sandals in one hand and wax tablet and moneybag awkwardly clutched in the othe
r, made her exit, carefully pushing the door closed with her slender buttocks. In the hall she put on her sandals, balancing first on one foot, then on the other, then climbed down a ladder and passed through a short passageway into the street.

  The street was narrow and, here and there, quite crowded, but she walked quickly in the direction of the nearest marketplace, threading her way effortlessly through the masses of fat Egyptian and Arab housewives, gaunt beggars and naked, dirty brown children, leaping with experienced ease over the occasional piles of camel and ox dung that lay in her path.

  She reached the corner at the end of the blocks, turned…

  And stopped dead, eyes widening.

  Coming toward her, so close that they might have collided, was the young black slave girl, Sabella. Sabella glanced up, gasped, almost dropped her bundles. For an instant the two girls stood motionless, staring at each other; then Sabella called out in astonishment, “Hathor!”

  But Hathor, face quickly hidden by her cloak, pushed past the skinny black girl and hurried on and, when Sabella followed her, Hathor broke into a run.

  “Hathor!” called Sabella again.

  Hathor sprinted, face still hidden, sandals almost flying off, cape swirling behind her and, an instant later, vanished into the crowd.

  Dumbfounded, Sabella stood in the center of the street, heedless of the passing eyes that gazed at her with curiosity.

  “Was that really Hathor?” she murmured to herself.

  She shook her head slowly. “No, no. That ain’t possible.”

  It couldn’t have been Hathor. What would the daughter of Odysseus Memnon, one of the richest men in the Empire, be doing here in the Egyptian quarter, Rhakotis, the most ancient and decaying slum in Alexandria?