by Albert Noyer
Nepheros exhaled relief. “At least he understands Greek well enough to speak with us.”
“Welcome to camp of Shabaqo,” the Bedouin said, eyeing the two strangers and their fine horses. “I see you travel far this night. As Sheikh, I offer you my humble food and drink.”
Nepheros bowed to thank him: one did not turn down an offer of hospitality from a Bedouin. “Efharisto. We gladly accept.” On noting that the man’s swarthy features resembled those of Harmonios, he recalled his mission. The bishop and patriarch must be halfway to Alexandria by now. As custom dictated, he and Shandi placed their belt daggers on the ground near a side wall.
Shabaqo clapped his hands twice. A slave squatting in the shadows scrambled up to find a bowl that had been scrubbed with sand, yet was of dubious cleanliness. He filled it with a stew of lamb and rice from a kettle over the fire. The other four men around the fire murmured a greeting and moved aside to make room for their two unexpected guests.
The sheikh spoke to Nepheros, “Kyrios, after you finish, your slave may eat from your dish.”
Shandi heard him before Nepheros could correct the error and protested in the Kushite language. Surprised, Shabaqo bowed and responded in kind with an apology. The slave also heard and brought a second bowl for him.
Using the three fingers and thumb of their right hands, Nepheros and Shandi ate for what the sheikh thought an appropriate interval, before he asked, “It is late filoi…friends. You arrive from where?”
Despite ceremonially being called a friend, Nepheros was cautious at telling too much about himself. “I travel with an imperial authorization.”
Shabaqo grinned. “Ah, important business…” He leaned aside while the slave handed his guests pottery cups half-full of wine.
The vintage was strong, yet welcome in the chill weather. Nepheros had not volunteered much information and understood enough of Bedouin customs to know the sheikh would not further question him about his destination. Still, to prevent unwelcome discussion, he asked, “What is this temple?”
“House of Amun, Mut and Khonsu, when this place is Djanet.”
“Egyptian gods, then.”
“Nai, yes. You are Christianoi?”
“Nai, we are Christians,” Nepheros replied.
Shabaqo seemed pleased. “These Egypt gods like Trinity you believe.” He counted on three fingers, “Amun, father. Mut, mother. Khonsu, child.”
Nepheros barely suppressed a laugh; the Bedouin sheikh had confused the Holy Trinity with the Holy Family.
The sheikh and his men watched in silence until their guests had finished sopping their bowls with flat bread. After they handed the pottery to the slave, Shabaqo stood and walked over to examine the two horses. He patted their flanks and stroked the muzzles of both mounts, then fed them a handful of barley from the camels’ store. “Fine animal. You sell?”
“Sell? Not possible,” Nepheros told him. “I must exchange them at the post station for fresh mounts.”
The Sheikh noticed an army brand, LEGIO III CYR, on each horse’s flank. “Filoi, you are Rumi Tribune and Centurion?”
Nepheros felt increasingly uneasy at his questioning. “Romans, yes, but civil, not military. We…we must continue on tonight. Shabaqo, where is the Tanis post station located?”
“No station,” he replied, running a caressing hand over Nepheros’s saddle pouches. “Fine leather work, friends. You give me, I give you mine.”
Nervous at the Bedouin’s bold offer to trade―Nepheros had not taken time to sew his coins into the hem of his cloak as travelers did―they were in the pouches. He stammered a refusal, “I…I can’t do that.”
“Ohi, no?” Shabaqo shrugged, grinned, and felt Nepheros’s cape. “Wet. Take off, Tribune. Dry at fire.”
Anxious to leave and yet not offend a volatile, potential enemy, Nepheros agreed.
“Efharisto. I am sure Shandi’s is also soaked.” He shook water off his cape and hung it on a wooden drying rack just beyond the fire. Shandi did the same, but before sitting down again he whispered to Nepheros that he believed the Bedouin were tomb robbers ―there were no sheep or goats penned in the courtyard, as would be if they were only nomad shepherds. It would be prudent to leave as soon as possible.
Nepheros sat, pondering the sheikh’s claim that there was no post station in Tanis. This was an ancient capital and even today a major road leads south to Heliopolis. Is Shabaqo lying? We can’t go on with these horses. If there is no station, I’ll have to buy fresh mounts at the market, or from someone.
Shabaqo, seeming amused, watched his guests as he sipped wine from a silver cup, yet his set grin rankled Nepheros. “Kenourghio filo,” the chief repeated, and pushed in play at his new friend’s shoulder. In the motion he caught the glint of gold at the neck of Nepheros’s tunic. “You have magic amulet?” The Bedouin pulled an enameled, winged scarab medal from around his own neck and held it up by the chain. “Magic that give long life. You?”
“It…it’s nothing.” Nepheros covered his tunic’s neckline with one hand, but Shabaqo pushed it aside and pulled out a golden lion medallion that gleamed in the firelight.
Shabaqo grinned recognition. “Apedemek, Kushite god.”
Shandi heard him and looked at the amulet in disbelief. “That belong…my …my sister. Neph’ros, you kill Pennuta!”
The secretary’s protests were drowned by Shandi’s angry explanation to the sheikh, in Kushite, about his sister’s murder. Shabaqo’s grin faded as he snarled an order to his men. Nepheros tried to struggle up, but two Bedouin held him down by the shoulders.
The sheikh spotted the round case strapped around Nepheros’s chest. “Tribune, what you have there?”
“Noth….nothing of…of value,” he stuttered, unable to conceal his rising panic.
Shabaqo pulled a curved dagger from his belt and reached across to cut the shoulder strap. After examining the ostrich-skin covering, he thumbed a section aside. When he saw the glittering metal underneath he slit the skin the lengthwise, peeled it off, and looked up. “Gold case, Tribune. You have jewel inside?”
“No…only a…a business document.” Nepheros was sweating now despite a stomach-hollowing fear that also induced violent shivering. “Shandi is…is lying about his sister. I…I’ll give you the two horses, Shabaqo, and I’ll walk…yes, I will walk to the post station for new mounts.”
“No post station.” Shabaqo snapped the chain and wrenched the lion pendant from Nepheros’s neck. His mocking grin returned as he counted on three fingers. “Friend Tribune, horse is mine. Saddle pouch is mine. Gold case is mine.” At a nod of his head, the two Bedouin alongside Nepheros pulled him to his feet. The men forced him outside, onto the downward ramp of a dark tomb a few paces away. Shabaqo looked at the Tribune’s companion. “Centurion Shandi, you know the ways of our people,” he said, tossing him the dagger. “Avenge the honor of your sister, and then you will join us.”
Shabaqo watched the youth walk to the tomb, then felt inside the case with a forefinger, to slide out a papyrus sheet. After he held it up for his men to see, they murmured their disappointment at the worthless find. The slave came to take away the iron kettle from coals that now were glowing ashes. Curious, Shabaqo tore off a piece of the brittle material and floated it down into the remains of the fire. The dry papyrus smoked briefly before blazing up in a bright spurt of flame and sparks. His men laughed at the fleeting display of light. The sheik passed the brittle sheet to a companion next to him, who repeated the gesture. After each man had torn off and burned a fragment of papyrus, the largest scrap was saved for Shabaqo.
Shandi returned with the two Bedouin and handed the sheikh his dagger. The blade was clean. “Shabaqo, I saw a stone coffin inside the tomb with the lid pushed aside.”
The sheikh nodded; his men had stripped the scarab amulet from a mummified corpse lying inside. He said in Kushite, “That was the sarcophagus of a scribe in the reign of Shabaqo, a Kushite pharaoh. A thousand years in the past our people r
uled over the two Egypts.”
“And you have taken the pharaoh’s name.”
The sheikh nodded and his grin returned at a perceived irony. “The body of a dead Rumi Tribune will rest for eternity with the bones of a Kushite scribe.”
Shandi corrected his assumption. “I did not kill Nepheros.”
“Not kill? Not dead?” Shabaqo’s expression remained impassive even though he realized that the Roman had been sealed alive inside the sarcophagus. Yet the sheikh’s hand trembled as he threw the last worthless scrap of the Tribune’s document onto the coals. The written name of Kashat flared up to illuminate Shabaqo’s ruddy face for a moment, then the papyrus curled down into black ash. “We sleep now,” he announced to his men. “Leave before dawn and Shandi is with us.”
Shabaqo wrapped himself in the tribune’s still-damp cloak and lay down on the sandy ground. This last day of plundering tombs had ended in a profitable evening. The two horses would be turned in for ransom at the post station in Tanis. Both saddle pouches had to be full of Rumi coins, pure gold with the image of the Great Sheikh at Constantinople on the front. The reverse would show a supernatural being holding the cross of a Hebrew magician who Christians believed had come back from the dead.
On the way south, going back to Meroe, the Kushite centurion serving the Rumi would be sold at the slave market in Heliopolis. With luck he might be bought for a sheikh’s harem to be castrated, but that avoided a shortened life working the copper mines.
Shabaqo fingered the gold lion he had attached to his own chain: in the spring this magic amulet of Apemedek might help him discover a cache of tomb treasures that would make him wealthy far beyond his dreams. Even the bright flames of the worthless papyrus sheet had given his men a few moments of simple pleasure and unaccustomed laughter.
CHAPTER XVIII
The evening rain had preceded a wave of frigid air that howled down from the hyberborean regions north of the Caspivm Mare, crossed the towering ranges of Anatolia, and slammed into Egypt’s northeast Delta region.
Driven by the gale, massive waves sent sea water coursing a half mile into the Nilus Pelusiac branch, scouring away sand bars and further damaging Pelusium’s crumbling breakwaters. Beached fishing boats were flung onto shore in colorful heaps that resembled the jumbled tesserae of a broken mosaic. Salt water inundated the last autumnal harvest of alfalfa and barley, up to the level of a man’s knees. If pagan citizens prayed for Poseidon to mollify his anger, their supplications were drowned out by a sound of crashing surf, the mewing of frightened sea birds, and the lowing of terrorized cattle wallowing in muddy flood waters.
By dawn the winds had abated, but the accompanying icy weather hovered just above a point where water in shallow canals would freeze over.
Most windows in the pretorium had been covered with alabaster panes or shuttered in preparation for a move to Myos Hormos that now had been delayed by well over a week. In the confusion surrounding the murders of the courier and the Kushite woman, several pretorium slaves had disappeared like frozen morning fogs that formed delicate white coatings on trees, then melted away. Earlier, Sergius Abinnaeus had ordered room furnaces not to be stoked; now the triclinium crew was gone and the dining room felt as clammy as an ice storage cave.
Barely warmed by a single charcoal brazier, Getorius and Abinnaeus shivered as they ate a spartan breakfast of thick porridge, and mulled wine. The governor, lost in thought about the state of his confused life, roused himself enough to complain about gusts of wind that rattled the dining room’s alabaster panes.
“Unseasonable boreal weather! I can’t recall when it’s been this bitter.” He glanced up at Getorius, as if he had not been aware of his presence. “Surgeon, I should have asked how your wife is feeling this morning? And you look exhausted yourself.”
“I didn’t sleep much.” Getorius put down his cup. “It’s the fourth day, so fever has gripped Arcadia again. She slept poorly although artemisia does lessen her fever’s intensity.”
“Yes, Papnouthios is a good physician. The bishop and I will put a stop to those experiments at that hospital of his and insist that he conduct a normal medical practice.” He held up the bread basket. “I don’t suppose your wife has an appetite?”
“Agathe brought her porridge and will stay with Arcadia while I’m here.” Getorius took a sip of now-lukewarm wine. “The old woman is a strange bird…seems to hate men, especially physicians. Do you know why that is?”
Abinnaeus’s reply was terse, “A personal matter having to do with two children of ours who died. Has Papnouthios seen your wife since we left his hospital?”
“No, where is the physician now?”
The governor shrugged ignorance of the Egyptian’s whereabouts and took a helping of soft cheese. The men continued eating in silence―Getorius anxious to return to Arcadia, the prefect brooding anew at the marital infidelity of his wife and Nepheros.
Abinnaeus glanced up when Karitina came to the table. “What is it? We have everything we need.”
Familiar with his brusque manner, the freedwoman replied in broken Latin, “Excellence, Deacon of Bishop Eusebio, here to ask about courier who come last night.”
“Courier? What courier?” Baffled―the bishop had never disturbed him this early―Abinnaeus looked toward the doorway, then back at Karitina. “Well, send him in, woman, send him in!”
Deacon Paulos strode to the table, short of breath; the bishop obviously had told him to hurry.
Abinnaeus lost no time in pleasantries. “What is this about a messenger? If anyone came here, Nepheros should have informed me.”
Unnerved by the governor’s curt manner, still out of breath, Paulos stammered, “Excellency, your…your secretary…came to His Holiness last…evening. He…he brought a message that had just arrived from Alexandria.”
“Alexandria? Impossible, how could Cyril have sent back an answer this soon?” He looked at Getorius for validation. “Surgeon?”
“Governor, let the deacon finish speaking.”
Abinnaeus scowled and pushed his plate back.
Paulos continued, “His Holiness wishes…the courier to come to his residence immediately and explain how the Patriarch gave him the message.”
Furious at being shunted aside by a secretary he now detested, Abinnaeus slammed his hand hard onto the table. “Nepheros should have informed me! Surgeon, do you know where he is?”
“Sir, he’s been late the last few mornings. He said he was working on something important.”
“Important…”Abinnaeus stood up, muttering, “I was about to dismiss him and this certainly will expedite the matter. Surgeon, come with me to his room. I intend to find out about this…this courier. Deacon, you will accompany us.”
Nepheros’s residence was adjacent to the library. A later Ptolemaic governor had expanded the original military pretorium northward to include an imperial residence, library, and staff residences separated by a courtyard. A slave dormitory, with separate rooms for freed persons, faced a street at the building’s far end. High barred windows gave light and air to these quarters. There was no street entry; however, several previous governors suspected that their slaves had dug a secret underground entrance, even a safe house for harboring fugitives. None had bothered to uncover them.
An angry Abinnaeus strode past the guest rooms toward the secretary’s residence. Getorius noticed that Arcadia’s door was closed. Agathe also had brought in a brazier for warmth; his wife might have eaten something by now and fallen asleep again.
Heavy dark clouds that reflected the governor’s angry mood raced above the open courtyard. At his secretary’s room, Abinnaeus pounded on the hallway portal with the palm of his hand. When no one answered, he rattled the door handle.
“Locked from inside. Nepheros is not in the room, but there’s a separate entrance inside the library. I’ll see if he’s in there before I order this door broken down.”
Rays of dim light angling down from high windows set in the bui
lding’s eastern face reflected off dust particles that were sent whirling in space by their entry. The library’s stale air harbored a perpetual mustiness, a legacy of the silent room’s collection of ancient papyri and leather-bound volumes. Getorius noticed the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius still lying on the table. The afternoon before Nepheros had quoted a passage from the book about the folly of human deeds, both evil and good, repeating themselves in recurrent eras.
He heard Abinnaeus call out that this door to the secretary’s residence was unlocked.
Nepheros was not in the library or in his quarters. The bed had not been slept in. A table, two chairs, and a tall wardrobe were in place, along with a wooden chest on the floor for storing linens and blankets. Except for the unused bed, the orderly arrangement of the furnishings suggested nothing out of the ordinary―no ominous event had occurred in the room to explain the secretary’s absence.
Abinnaeus glanced around. “I’ve never been in here, but judging by that unrumpled bed, he didn’t spend the night.” He tilted his head toward a curtain drawn to conceal an additional space. “That could be a bath alcove. Perhaps the man took the honorable way out of his predicament.”
“Sir?”
“Private matter, surgeon.” Apprehensive at what he might find, Abinnaeus hesitated a moment, then pushed aside the curtain. The room behind it had no tub and was larger than a bath alcove. A scribe’s desk, writing materials, and a number of scrolls and books filled the space. “Looks like a scriptorium, wouldn’t you say, Surgeon?”
Getorius agreed: a window above eye level gave light to a square desk with two storage shelves beneath. Inkwells, pens, and erasing knives were neatly arranged to one side of the slanted writing surface. Papyrus scrolls and books lay on a table in front of the far wall. He went to read off the names of their authors. “Livy, Ovid…the two Senecas, father and son. Phaedrus. Those are writers during the period of Christ’s lifetime on earth.” Getorius held up volume with a worm-scarred leather cover. “This Greek, Xenophon, I don’t know.”