by Albert Noyer
After a silence, in which both watched the lamp flames flicker a wavering brightness, Arcadia suggested, “Nepheros might have gone there for a reason of his own.”
“Too much of a coincidence…” Getorius downed the foul-smelling sedative in one gulp. “My head throbs too much right now for me to think straight. Perhaps in the morning.”
“One other thing, Husband. You came for your medical case while I was asleep. What was that about?”
“Abinnaeus returned with a nasty knife gash on his left forearm. He said he had been attacked by a bandit while coming back from the temple.”
Arcadia felt skeptical. “Do you believe him?”
“No, I think he went to where Pennuta lives. After they argued about embarrassing the governor in the temple, she slashed back at him in anger.”
“A plausible explanation and you need to sleep now.” Arcadia extinguished the oil lamps and lay back on her bed to thank Saint Cosmas for safeguarding her husband.
* * *
Around the middle of the third night hour, Sergius Abinnaeus searched his office for his missing ledger. Both mystified and frantic at having misplaced an import account record book, he looked up when a series of unfamiliar quick raps sounded on the door. He knew the palace staff was off duty or asleep; no slave or steward would have let in a visitor, yet entrance guards must have admitted someone. Or―Wary of an intruder, a hand on his knife handle, the governor eased the portal wide enough to recognize a man with light mahogany skin, wearing loose-fitting trousers bound at the ankles. An antelope-skin jacket covered his linen shirt. “Shandi! What in the name of Zeus Kassios are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at Myos Hormos.”
“As are you, Abinn’us,” the Kushite brother of Pennuta replied in his broken Latin.
“Come in, explain.”
“For you to tell why you not come?”
“Yes, well…”Abinnaeus peered into the darkened hallway before closing the door: no one eavesdropped that he could see. “Sit down, Shandi. I swear by Kassios that I planned to leave tomorrow at the latest. It’s just that―”
“All cargo is arrive,” he interrupted.
“Good…good. Everything got to Hormos safely? The agaru oil?”
“I bring full case, Abinn’us. How your Lady Dora?”
“Dorothea? She’s in one of her foul moods again. It seems her confounded cat has disappeared. But, good, the cargo is safe. Have…have you seen your sister, Pennuta?”
Shandi scratched coarse spiky hair and shook his head. “She not like me much.”
“You did sell her off as a slave.”
“For good life at Hormos, not like at Meroe.”
The governor reminded him, “Yes, well, Nepheros ransomed her from a Syrian owner and brought her here as a gift to me.”
Shandi tugged at a pearl in his left earlobe. “Abinn’us…you will marry Pennuta?”
“Marry her? Of course not, and if she told you that, the poor girl deluded herself.”
“What that mean?”
“A mistake…she didn’t understand what I said. I…I’ve given her a nice apartment, all the expensive furnishings she wanted. Pennuta has a good life here, better than at Hormos.” Abinnaeus absently rolled up his left tunic sleeve to scratch a bandage that itched.
Shandi noticed. “You hurt arm?”
“Nothing serious, happened on the street. When a bandit tried to cut my purse strap, I resisted and his knife slipped.”
The Kushite grunted and took a small leather pouch from a case that hung from a shoulder strap. He loosened the drawstring and shook out a handful of pearls. “Abinn’us, you like?”
The governor took the iridescent spheres to examine them by a lamp at his desk. “Magnificent. Where are these from, India intra Gangem? Taprobane?”
“Kushite people say, ‘One must talk little and listen much’.”
Abinnaeus chuckled at his response. “Meaning your source won’t tell you. Fine. How are the costs of spices this season?”
“Always more. Abinn’us, when you come to Hormos? When pay me?”
“There’s been a complication.”
“Comp?”
“Delay. A papyrus was discovered that Bishop Eusebios thinks is…. Shandi, that wouldn’t interest you, but I should wait until he’s had a chance to determine if it’s authentic.”
The Kushite’s dusky expression hardened. “When you pay me, Abinn’us?”
“You know I can’t do that until merchants both at Hormos and here have bought the imports from me.”
“From us,” Shandi corrected his partner.
“Yes, yes, from us.” Abinnaeus tried not to sound nervous about the missing ledger. “We…we are partners, but don’t forget that I am the one who ties and loosens the purse lacings.”
Without reacting to what could be a threat, Shandi stood up; only a frown betrayed that he was displeased at his delayed payment.
Abinnaeus came back to him from the desk. “You’re leaving? Will…will you stay at Pennuta’s apartment?”
“No, at PELVSIOS. You own, I partner, I not pay.” Shandi grinned asnd extended an open hand that the governor went to grasp, but he said, “Give pearls back.”
“Fine, but I…I’ll keep two of these, show them to the goldsmith I deal with.” At the door, he tried to reassure the Kushite, “Go back to Hormos and get a caravan organized. That agaru incense and its oil alone will pay for the entire voyage. All else is profit.” Abinnaeus recalled the garment he had forgotten at Pennuta’s. “Shandi. I…I left my cape at your sister’s apartment. When you go see her, could you bring it back to my office?”
“Nai, yes, Abinn’us.”
“Efharisto. I’m grateful.”
After his partner left, the governor felt uneasy while slipping the pearls into his purse. Shandi has hardly come here before. He’s always waited for me to arrive at the port and this isn’t the first time I would have been delayed. That late monsoon two seasons ago made travel impossible until debris and sand flows were cleared from the road. What in Kassios’ name prompted him to come to Pelusium at this time? Abinnaeus sighed in fatigue and winced at renewed pain throbbing in his arm. He decided to search for the ledger in the morning and prepared to sleep on the leather couch that night. Dorothea was a most unpleasant bed companion whenever she fell into one of her choleric moods.
* * *
After leaving the governor, Shandi did not go to his sister’s apartment as he had said. Instead, he went to a rear area of the pretorium where Papnuthios lived. The physician was as surprised to see the man as Abinnaeus had been.
“Shandi, I thought you were at Hormos, waiting for the governor.”
“Pap’nutho, he not come.”
“No, he has business here.” He noticed a case at his side. “Have you brought me new medicinal plants I’ve not heard of?”
“More better.” Shandi opened the cover and held up a small two-handled jug sealed with resin and wax. “I have very good thing to sell you.”
“Oh? Why should I buy? What does this ‘good thing’ do?”
Shandi smiled for the first time. “Make animal…person…like dead, but still alive.”
“Dead, yet alive?” Papnuthios suppressed excitement. Has the Kushite discovered some potion that I could use in reanimation or necromancy? “What…what do you mean? What is this elixir?”
“I show…” Shandi glanced around. “You have live simia, animal look like human?”
“A monkey? Yes, I keep several for experiments, as did Galen.”
“Show one maybe you not like.”
“Aegis is getting old and has developed quite a temper. The brute tried to bite me this morning. Come into the next room.”
Papnuthios led the way to a small adjacent chamber that smelled of animal excrement and camphor-based medications. Jars and medical instruments on a stained marble table that was pushed up against a wall took up a fourth of its surface. Shelves on which different caged animals were kept stood a
gainst two other walls. Three of the specimens were Rhesus monkeys. When the two men approached Aegis’s cage, the aged simian bared its teeth, gripped the bars, and hissed at them.
“You watch, Pap’nutho…” Shandi unsheathed his thin-bladed belt knife to pry out a wax lump that sealed the jug.
The physician looked inside and sniffed an iridescent black paste. “What is it?” He touched a finger in the substance and brought to his tongue.
“No!” Shandi stopped his hand, “Not to taste!”
He waited until Papnouthios gave Aegis a fig to calm the simian, then dipped his knife tip into the dark paste. With a quick thrust Shandi jabbed the blade into the monkey’s right arm. The beast screamed and scampered toward a back corner of its cage to lick blood from the wound. In a few moments, Aegis began to twitch. Convulsions followed, until the animal lay on the cage’s bottom, its eyes glazed, staring upward. Shandi wiped his blade on a rag, then reached around to jab the Rhesus in the thigh. The disabled animal did not respond.
“Amazing, the beast is alive but paralyzed!” Papnouthios exclaimed. “I’ve seen the condition partially affect humans.”
Shandi explained, “If I not poison too much, simia live half a watch period.”
“An hour and a half? Will…will this disable a human for that long?”
“Nai…yes.”
Papnouthios reached for the jug. “Let me have it. What do you call the potion?”
“Name salok.”
“Where did your source find this…this salok, at Taprobane?”
“Big island more to sunrise.”
“Further east, then. No matter, I want to buy the jug. What is your cost?”
His face impassive, Shandi held out a hand, “Five solidi, Pap’nutho.”
“Five gold pieces! That’s an outrageous price, a half year’s salary for craftsmen.”
“Your bishop like what you do to people at hospit? Abinn’us wife not like.”
The physician’s anger flashed out. “Kushite, are you threatening me with extortion?”
“Shandi only merchant.” He smiled innocently as he pushed the wax plug into the jug’s mouth. “Go see sister now.”
“Wait…” Papnouthios ran a nervous hand over his shaved head. “Shandi, I can get the gold coins.”
“I stay at PELVSIOS. Bring there.”
* * *
At the inn Shandi was known as the prefect’s Kushite business partner, who roomed there when in Pelusium. This time he asked for one of the less desirable accommodations on the first floor. Number IX was at the rear of the building near the kitchen. Shandi left his case in the room, but took the pearl sack and bolted the door’s locking wards from the outside. He threaded his way past supplies in the deserted kitchen and left by a back entrance.
Keeping to dimly lighted side streets, the Kushite youth arrived unchallenged at the apartment building where his sister lived. The door to Pennuta’s rooms was unbolted. He entered unseen and saw a single lamp burning on its stand, but she was not there. Shandi looked at her African furnishings―articles of Kushite manufacture, but also items made by darker-skinned peoples living south of the Nile’s sixth cataract in Aethiopia Interior ―“The Land of Burnt Faces.” The prefect’s blue cape was easy to find, lying over the back of a couch. Shandi went into his sister’s sleeping-room. More exotic furniture and artifacts of Kushite and African manufacture decorated the area. Pennuta has done well here. These furnishings would outfit a palace at Meroe.
Shandi had dozed off on Pennuta’s leopard skin bed covering, when he abruptly awoke: the scraping of a sliding door had sounded from behind the curtain of a bathing alcove on one side of the room. He silently cursed mattress cords that creaked as he arose and stood beside the drape, dagger in hand.
Pennuta pushed aside the curtain. Startled to see her brother, she gasped in Kushite, “Shandi you…you frightened me.”
“You were not in the alcove,” he told her in the same language, then glanced into the confined space. “I heard a door slide open. That awoke me.”
She tapped a second panel in the lower third of the wall. “That opens up and leads into a tunnel.”
“A tunnel to where, sister?”
“Sergis told me an ancient king who built the pretorium as his summer palace, also dug an escape tunnel from the docks to this building.”
“Here?” he scoffed, then thought again. “Yes, over the years land has filled in and this building was nearer the port then. Your words are true.”
“Brother, have I ever lied to you?”
“That I found out?” he asked without smiling.
“Why are you here, Shandi? I know it is not to see me.”
“Abinn’us did not come to Hormos, so I came to him.”
Pennuta put down a lamp she carried and took off a light cloak that covered a tribal dress underneath. “Come into the other room, brother, and sit on the couch. I have wine that will help slake my anger against you.” While pouring two glass goblets full, Pennuta asked, “Did you see Sergis?”
“Yes, and he told me you believe he will marry you.” As she handed him his wine he noticed purplish welts on her arms. “Those bruises. Abinn’us?”
“Nothing, just a…a lover’s quarrel.”
“Sister, he is married to Dora. Does she not call you Serqet, ‘The Scorpion Goddess’?”
“I hate Dora! I want her dead!” Pennuta took a nervous gulp of wine and stared down at the rug, before admitting, “Brother, I…I am with child.”
“What! Doesn’t your Roman lover know about preventing conception? Don’t you?”
“I love Sergis.”
“And you thought becoming pregnant would convince him to marry you? Pennuta, you are port garbage of the kind that stinks up the harbor at Hormos and Pelusium each day.”
Tears welled in her eyes at his rebuke. “My…mother was…a…queen.”
“Our mother was a concubine, a whore like you to a self-proclaimed Kushite district king. As long he didn’t do anything foolish or think he had actual power, the Romans let him believe he actually was a king.” As Pennuta continued sobbing, Shandi wondered where she had come from in the tunnel. “Sister,” he asked in a softer tone, “it is almost the middle of the night. Where did you go?”
She wiped her eyes with her tunic hem. “I…I went to pray to Apedemek that our god will make Sergis love me.”
“Where in Egypt is there a shrine to that Kushite lion-headed deity that Christians have not destroyed?”
“I keep one to Apedemek in the secret room where I meet Sergis.”
“At the tunnel’s end? How does he get in?”
“From where he works.”
“There is a hidden door in his office? Interesting…” Shandi finished his wine, then picked up the governor’s cape. “I must return this to ‘Sergis,’ but first take me through this tunnel to your secret room.”
CHAPTER XI
Dorothea’s scream of anguish could be heard throughout the pretorium hallways, and then her bitter slandering of Pennuta. “Canicula…whore…that…that daughter of Serqet! I…I’ll scratch out the Kushite’s eyes!”
Abinnaeus had dozed off after spending an uncomfortable night on his narrow office couch, and being kept awake by a persistent ache in his arm wound. His wife’s tirade of abuse came from the direction of their bedroom. Bleary-eyed, barefoot, still wearing his rumpled daytime tunic, the governor hurried through the corridor.
Dorothea stood near an open door to their room. Her blue silk night tunic contrasted with an alabaster complexion that seemed more pale than usual. The woman’s eyes were narrowed in anger, glistening with tears.
“Calm yourself, Carita. What happened?” Abinnaeus went to embrace his wife, but she pushed him away.
“See for yourself what your whore has done.” She pushed the bedroom’s door shut.
On the outside, hanging from the bronze door handle by a cinnamon-colored silk scarf looped around its neck, Miu’s body thumped grotesquely aga
inst the wooden panel from the impact.
Too repelled to comment, the governor ran a nervous hand through unkempt hair.
At the noise, Nepheros came in the hallway and stared at her garroted pet in shock, unable to speak.
Getorius also hurried into the hall with Arcadia following him. “Domina,” he said to Dorothea, “we heard your screams―” He stopped when he saw the small lifeless form. “Your…your kitten!”
She unloosened the scarf, then rocked a limp Miu in her arms as if the motion might restore life to her dead pet.
Abinnaeus recovered enough to object. “You’re blaming Pennuta? She…she wouldn’t do this.”
“Of course you’d defend your whore,” his wife retorted without looking away from Miu’s dead body.
“She couldn’t. How would Pennuta even get into the pretorium?”
“Perhaps by coming through your office in the same way you slink off to meet her inside your private den of Eros?”
“Love den? I…I stayed in my office all night. She never came.”
Nepheros quietly warned, “Domina, such accusations are inappropriate.”
“Secretary, you would side with him,” Dorothea hissed, then confronted her husband. “Sergius, you say the Serquet never came? I want to go to your office. Show me…show us…where this secret entry is located.”
“There…there is no…no hidden entrance.”
“You’re lying, Sergius, and the four of us should be able to find it. Nepheros, you certainly know what I am talking about.”
“Ohi, no, Domina. Tipota.”
“Tipota? You know ‘nothing’? I notice, secretary that you revert to Greek when you’re nervous.”
“Ohi, I―”
“Enough, Nepheros! Prefect…” Dorothea spoke her husband’s title as if she could no longer bear to utter his name. “Prefect, I’m sure you won’t mind if we search for the ‘nothing’ you insist is there.”
Dorothea went back into the bedroom to put on a shawl and sandals. Still cradling Miu’s limp body, she pushed past her husband and strode toward his office.
Abinnaeus’s work space, originally a reception chamber for the Ptolemaic king, was a fairly large room with upper and lower cedar-wood panels forming the walls. Besides his desk, a tall cupboard for storing manuscripts and books stood against one wall. The top was a shrine for household gods, yet a niche for holding deities was empty. Next to it, a wooden strongbox bound in bronze plates sat on a low marble stand. The couch where Abinnaeus had spent a restless night, two chairs, and a three-legged marble table furnished his office. Where no furniture blocked access, a door might be concealed as a wall panel; one could leave or enter and the room would look undisturbed.