Dog-Headed Death: A Gaius Hesperian Mystery

by Ray Faraday Nelson

  “Is that right, Mark?” Hesperian inquired.

  “Yes. Yes, I believe so.” There was an odd expression on the tall Jew’s face, as if the man was undecided about something.

  Hesperian leaned forward. “When Odysseus came to your services, was he alone?”

  “His slaves were with him.” Mark was still hesitant.

  Annianus broke in. “If we did not tell this before, it was only that we did not want our sect to appear somehow at fault. The Greeks are always looking for some excuse to riot against the Jews, and the Jews… they too have no great love for us.”

  “We wished to avoid trouble,” Mark explained. “You understand.”

  “Of course,” Hesperian said softly, “but go on. Besides his slaves, was there anyone with him at your services?”

  Reluctantly Mark said, “No, not with him, but there was someone… a stranger in a cape… who came several times and watched old Memnon from a distance.”

  Hesperian studied the Apostle’s face. “You know, don’t you? You know who that stranger was!”

  “No, no, sir. I never knew!” He glanced at the Bishop as if for approval.

  The Bishop sighed and added, “Nor did I… until now.”

  Hesperian followed the Bishop’s gaze.

  Annianus was looking directly at Hathor.

  * * * *

  After the Christians had been dismissed, Hesperian took Hathor by the hand, saying, “Come with me, my dear. It will be cooler out in the garden.” Daphnis and Mannus were about to follow, but he stopped them with a glance.

  The night air was a little cooler now and the moon, almost full, had arisen, illuminating the courtyard garden with a cold, dead white light, bright but utterly without color. The aroma of nightshade was faint, but unmistakable.

  The tall Roman officer and the short, slender Greco-Egyptian girl walked slowly, side by side, saying nothing.

  It was Hathor who broke the silence. “You don’t trust me anymore, do you, Gaius?” She took his arm.

  “No. Why should I?” His voice was without emotion.

  “I didn’t lie to you about anything important.”

  “Your relationship with your brother… that wasn’t important?”

  “I couldn’t tell you about that. Romans don’t have the same morality as we Egyptians. You know all the bad feeling there is in Rome against Berenice bas Agrippa, Princess of the Jews, because she is suspected of doing what I’ve done. You Romans are a young people, young and naive. In spite of all your frantic efforts to be wicked, you’re still shocked by so many things that for centuries we Egyptians have taken for granted. What my brother and I did was nothing that had not been done time and again by our kings and queens, even by our gods. What we did was not wrong by our standards. In an earlier age, before you Romans came to Egypt, we would not have bothered to hide it. Now you Romans have turned morality on its head; it’s all right to torture and kill animals for a public spectacle, something we Egyptians will never get used to, but for brother and sister to love each other—the most natural thing in the world—that is a sin, a crime, a scandal.”

  He was looking at her, but the moon was behind him so she could not see his face. “You think of yourself as an Egyptian?” he said softly.

  “Yes. Oh, yes. My father was like you, more Roman than a Roman in his attitudes and beliefs. I’m not like him. My blood is Greek, but it’s Egypt, not Rome, that has seeped into my soul. My brother and I, we see everything through the eyes of the ancient gods and goddesses… or, better perhaps, we are not ourselves, but are those gods and goddesses looking out through our eyes. My brother is Osiris-Serapis, King of the Dead, and I am his sister and wife, the Great Mother Isis. Many Egyptians feel this way, even poor peasants hardly better than slaves.”

  “It is easier, I suppose, to live the life of a slave if you believe you are a god.”

  “Have you never felt, Gaius, that you were a god?”

  “Never.” His voice was firm. “I am a man, nothing more. Nero thinks like you, and perhaps this man Jesus thought like you. They say he claimed to be a god! Well, I look at such men and am glad, very glad, that I am not whatever it is that they are.”

  “So, when you die, there will be nothing left?”

  “There will be something. There will be Rome.”

  “I see.”

  They stood now in the very center of the garden.

  Hathor spoke, after a pause, with a wistful tone. “Are you married, Gaius?”

  “No.”

  “Soldiers do marry, don’t they?”

  “Troops stationed in one place a long time often have wives… of a sort. So did I, when I was younger, but at long last I’ve learned that it’s better to be alone. Parting is hard, and it always comes sooner than you expect, sooner, for me, than for most. In the last twenty years I’ve rarely spent more than a month or two in one city. I’m sent wherever Nero has enemies, and his enemies are everywhere.”

  “Poor Gaius,” she whispered, touching his cheek with her long fingers. He turned away. “I meant no harm,” she added defensively.

  “You’re a lovely woman, Hathor, a charming woman.” His voice was heavy, regretful. “But your charm could cloud my judgment if it turns out that it’s you who killed old Odysseus.” He turned toward her again. “The truth now. Was it you?”

  She did not answer, only gazed at him with eyes full of pain.

  * * * *

  Centurion Gaius Hesperian and Optio Mannus faced each other across the dining room table. Everyone else had gone, and through all the halls of the great mansion scarcely a sound could be heard. Mannus nodded, almost sleeping. Hesperian brooded, elbows resting on the smooth stone of the tabletop, bushy brows knit in a frown of concentration—or was it depression?

  Mannus yawned. This was not the first night watch he’d kept with his commanding officer. He knew, by now, just how far he could relax discipline, just how far he could go before Hesperian would give him an abrupt reprimand.

  The light was dim; only a few small oil lamps burned fitfully in the tall petrolabra that stood nearby, and the room was full of a dense, almost motionless veil of smoke. It had a bitter smell, this smoke, and made the eyes water, but Mannus ignored it.

  “Hathor?” asked Hesperian, his far-away gaze coming to rest on the rugged features of his friend.

  “Daphnis has taken her to her room, as you ordered, sir.”

  “As I ordered? Oh, yes, so I did.”

  The centurion leaned back on his couch and stared up at the ceiling. Mannus waited expectantly.

  “We must have the answer tomorrow,” said Hesperian, more to himself than to Mannus.

  “Yes sir. One might even say today if, as I suspect, it’s already past midnight.”

  “Always exact, eh, Mannus?”

  “You’ve taught me that, sir.”

  Hesperian chuckled softly, then inquired: “Tired, Optio?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So am I. It’s all such a jumble in my mind. I need to think, but I can’t. The answer is there, but somehow I can’t quite grasp it.”

  “Perhaps you don’t want to, sir.”

  “Eh? You mean you think it’s Hathor?”

  “It is, sir. We both know it is.”

  “But I’m an old fool, eh Mannus? An old fool blinded by his feelings for a young girl?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Another officer would have you in irons for that, but… but it’s only honesty. I need honesty around me. I need a little truth, or at least the memory of truth, or I’ll forget how to recognize a lie. One must have some standard of comparison.” He closed his eyes, and for an instant Mannus thought he was sleeping, then he went on, “But you’re wrong. I know it.”

  “Can you prove it, s
ir?”

  “No.” It was a sigh, almost inaudible.

  “I questioned Serapion, sir.”

  “And?”

  “He does not support Hathor’s story. According to him, Hathor was not with him at the time of old Memnon’s murder, but Serapion also insisted that Hathor must be innocent.”

  “He would,” said Hesperian gloomily.

  “So Hathor cannot account for her whereabouts, she can throw the pilum, she could easily climb those vines, and she also could have poisoned the slave easily. She has money for a motive, and the Christians, whom I’ve heard never lie, say she was spying on her father at their religious services. And did you mark this, sir? That the Christians saw her in a cape… perhaps it was hooded? The dealer in poison told us he sold some deadly stuff to someone in a hood, someone who could have been a woman. And she lied to you, sir, about her lover. She was all along concealing her incest from you. She looks pure, I grant you that, sir, but would a pure and honest woman do such things?”

  Hesperian sighed. “I know. I know all that.”

  “Then act, sir! Arrest her!”

  “So you can win your bet, Optio? Is a beautiful young lady to pay with her life for your wine?”

  Mannus said in a low voice, “If you think I am such a man as that, you should have me transferred. An officer must have a second-in-command he can trust.”

  The two men looked at each other uncomfortably for a moment, then Hesperian leaned forward and said earnestly, “Back off, Optio. Back off. I do trust you. I trust you with my life. I’m tired, you see. I don’t know what I’m saying. Of course I trust you!” Hesperian grasped Mannus’s wrist in a comradely handshake.

  “If you trust me, sir, then arrest her.” Mannus would not give up.

  “No, no. I can’t.” He looked at Mannus with haunted eyes.

  “She’s guilty!”

  “No…”

  They heard approaching footsteps in the hall and broke off their argument, both men a little ashamed of having given way to their emotions. The footsteps were quick, almost running.

  Librarius Daphnis appeared at the door. He was excited, so excited he forgot to salute, and while his handsome, hawk-like face wore an expression of sardonic triumph, his hands fluttered in the dim lamp light like a girl’s.

  “It’s Hathor, sir,” Daphnis cried. “She told me to tell you she is ready to confess!”

  * * * *

  Hathor’s footsteps, as she came down the hall, were slow and halting. She stopped, framed in the doorway, her white dress making her seem like a female ghost.

  “Come in, my dear,” Hesperian commanded gently. “Come over here where I can see your face.”

  Without meeting his eyes, she advanced into the dim flickering lamp light.

  “Gaius…” she began.

  “Wait a moment. Daphnis is not ready.”

  Daphnis had seated himself at the centurion’s left and was hurriedly unrolling a fresh papyrus scroll, wetting his ink stick, inking his reed pen.

  “Now,” Hesperian said, “as you see, Daphnis will be writing down every word you say, so think well before you speak.” He studied her intently. “Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Hathor.” Never before had there been such gentleness in his voice. “Tell us, in your own words, how it happened.”

  She seemed unable to speak, unable even to look at him.

  He went on. “I know that whatever you did, you must have had good reason.”

  She raised her eyes, but there was little hint of the Memnon pride in her pale features.

  “Was it the money?” Hesperian prompted.

  “No. No, not that.”

  “What then?”

  “We Memnons would have survived somehow, even without my father’s money. We have rich and powerful friends, and we know how to manage things. It would have been hard for a while, but we would have managed.”

  “Then why…”

  “The House of Memnon does not stop with members of our family. There are the household servants. There are the merchants, the sailors, the workers… all the hundreds of innocent people who depend on the Memnon enterprises for their living. It was for their sake… for their sake…”

  “For their sake you killed him.”

  “Yes, Gaius.”

  “But you said you loved your father.”

  “I did love him, but he was no longer himself. The Christians changed him, made him forget who he was, made him forget his responsibilities, made him believe he could save himself at the expense of the multitudes who depended on him. That’s the way it is in this house. The loads my father and mother and brother slough off, I must shoulder. Don’t you see? It was my duty, my duty to everyone, to defend what he had built, even against his own hand.”

  “Even at the expense of his life?”

  “You don’t think like an Egyptian, Gaius. I did not kill his soul, only his body. I will meet him again, I’m sure, in some future incarnation, and at that time he’ll have the opportunity either to forgive me or to take his revenge.”

  She was calm now, and very sure of herself. It was Hesperian whose voice shook as he said, “And Rophos? Will you meet him too in some future life?”

  “That was an accident. He won’t blame me for it.”

  “Are you getting all this, Daphnis?”

  “Yes, sir,” the scribe answered.

  “Let him write this,” Hathor said, once again completely a Memnon, proud, ruthless, cunning. “That I said goodnight to my father at the foot of the great staircase, then, as soon as he was out of sight, I ran out of the house with a pilum from Serapion’s weapon collection. That I climbed the vines outside my father’s window. That I held the pilum exactly as my father had taught me, and threw it, and killed him. Let him write it, I say!” Her voice, toward the end, had become shrill.

  Hesperian gazed at her, but did not speak.

  The reed pen scratched a moment longer, then stopped. Daphnis looked up expectantly. Mannus, who had been staring at the girl, turned a puzzled eye on Hesperian. Wasn’t this the thing they’d all been waiting for? A full confession… with witnesses?

  But the centurion went on staring at her, almost as if he did not see her, as if he was looking through her at something only he could see. The great house was so silent they could hear the sound of their own breathing.

  “I don’t believe you,” Hesperian said softly.

  * * * *

  In the flickering lamp light, through the haze of oily smoke, Hathor gazed into the centurion’s shadowed eyes, gazed down at the muscular Roman who reclined on the couch on the other side of the marble-topped table. She knew there were some who could read minds, but she was not one of them. Yet she felt Hesperian’s certainty as if it were a cold, heavy object she could hold in her hands. For the space of a few heartbeats she did not answer him, and those few beats were as much an admission of lying as anything she might have said. Then she cried out, “It’s true, by Isis!” but the conviction that, a moment before, had filled her voice with power, was gone. It was a small, weak voice now, a liar’s voice.

  But what she felt, more than anything else, was relief.

  No more lies! I was never meant to tell lie, never could do it well.

  Hesperian sighed, then said, “It was, in its way, a beautiful tale you’ve been telling me, a tale that would not have been out of place in some ancient Greek drama. And with all the evidence pointing to you, how could I doubt you? Yet almost from the beginning there was something nagging at my mind, and now this attempt at confession finally brought it to the surface.” He smiled ruefully and slowly shook his head. “In fact, if you had not tried to confess, the weight of the evidence might finally have overcome my doubts, but this confession… it was too much.
I could see you might have motivation for the murder of your father, but what motivation did you have to confess it? And when I began to think about motivation it was all suddenly clear. Yes, it seems I made a mistake, and kept on making it… a small but crucial mistake. Well, as the philosophers tell us, that’s the only way we poor mortals learn. We blunder, correct ourselves, then blunder again, until finally we stumble on the truth.”

  “I didn’t want to lie,” she told him. “Particularly to you. I wanted to tell you from the very beginning. I wanted to tell you everything. You seemed so strong and kind… but you were the Law, and the Law is never kind.”

  He leaned forward, a little awkwardly, leaning his left elbow on the table, reaching with his right hand for her hand. “I know, Hathor.”

  “Do you hate me, Gaius?”

  “Hate you? On the contrary, even if you’d murdered your father I wouldn’t have hated you. I’d have admired you… for your motives though I could not, of course, have let you go. Now that I see the truth, I admire you even more. You’re a remarkable woman, Hathor. I can’t recall I’ve ever met another like you.”

  He held her hand.

  He’s the most powerful man in this city, in his way, but he likes me. I know be does.

  Mannus interrupted impatiently, “By the gods, sir, if you know who the murderer is, tell us!”

  Daphnis joined in. “Yes, damn you! Tell us! It’s beastly to keep us in suspense like this!”

  Hesperian faced the two men and said mildly, “Certainly by now you both must know too. I have hidden nothing from you. Every fact revealed to me has also been revealed to you. Come then! Let’s have your solution!”

  BOOK THREE