Our Man in Alexandria

by Gavin Chappell

  The city night was a soft susurrus of sound. Flaminius peered down the alleyway towards the better lit street that led to the Serapeum. Small groups of people were passing. It was hard to believe that a night or two before parts of the city had been under martial law. Now everything was quiet and peaceful.

  A patrol marched past, spearheads glinting in starlight, and he smiled grimly. That was why it was so quiet.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll find her at the well.’ Ozymandias had joined him in the archway. ‘Not at this time of night.’

  ‘We might find someone who has seen her.’

  Flaminius raised an eyebrow of invitation. Ozymandias led them into the street and then to a small square where a well was located. The area was deserted. No women stood beside it with brimming buckets and clattering tongues. The night hung heavy. Flaminius sat on a kerbing stone and looked up at Ozymandias.

  ‘We could try the Old Judaean Quarter,’ he said. ‘Or we could ask the guards to look for her.’

  ‘I’ll not bring them into it,’ the scribe said with a shudder. ‘My sister is not going to get into their filthy hands.’

  ‘Maybe we should divide our forces,’ said Flaminius. ‘One of us would be better at infiltrating the cult than two. You wait for her at your house. I’ll go to the Old Judaean Quarter and try to get into the ritual.’

  Ozymandias shook his head. ‘You’ll go on your own to the ritual? Julius Strabo took months to infiltrate it and you know what happened to him. Do you think you’ll do better in one night?’

  Maybe it was the fever that lurked within him, making his bones ache and his muscles throb. But as long as Flaminius had been in Alexandria he had been feeling a mounting frustration. Everything was working against him. Nothing seemed to be proceeding according to plan.

  He had suspected Ozymandias at the beginning. Now, that seemed absurd. The man wanted to bring Julius Strabo’s killers to justice as much as he did, even if his methods were dubious. But was his sister-wife really mixed up in all this? Had they been jumping to conclusions? All because of a mysterious message. But who else couldhave delivered it?

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We’ll go back to your house, see if she’s there. If we can talk to her… maybe she could help us infiltrate the ritual.’

  Together they made their way back through the dusty night-time streets and up the alleyway, passing a robed man heading back towards the street. Ozymandias, in the lead, paused.

  ‘Did I leave the lamp burning?’ he muttered. Flaminius saw over his shoulder a light coming from the house. ‘Was I so forgetful in my anxiety? The house could have burnt down!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the tribune said. ‘I left before you. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘I thought I extinguished it,’ said Ozymandias.

  ‘Nitocris must be back, then,’ said Flaminius excitedly. ‘Quick, we can talk to her.’

  He brushed past the scribe and found the gate was bolted. Unbolting it, he hurried through the yard. The goat bleated.

  A slender figure appeared in the doorway, limned with lamplight.

  ‘Nitocris!’ said Flaminius. Her face was flushed and she seemed to be reeling

  ‘Sister,’ said Ozymandias, pushing his way past. ‘What is the matter with you?’

  Nitocris clung to the doorjamb. ‘Nothing,’ she said in a high pitched, tremulous voice. ‘I was worried about you. You’re late home.’

  ‘So are you,’ said Flaminius grimly. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘This is my affair, Roman,’ said Ozymandias curtly. He led Nitocris inside and sat her down on the paillasse. ‘You seem upset,’ he said soothingly. Flaminius watched from the doorway. ‘Has something happened?’

  Nitocris took a moment to gather her thoughts. ‘I had a visit,’ she said. ‘I was with some of my friends. Then I came back here. Someone followed me. They spoke to me.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t speak of it.’

  Ozymandias shook her. ‘Tell me!’ he said. ‘What have you got yourself mixed up in?’

  ‘I can’t say,’ she told him furiously, and struck him across the face.

  Confused, Flaminius took a step into the room. Rubbing at his face with one hand, Ozymandias seized his sister’s wrist with the other. ‘Are you part of this Judaean cult? Are you a Christian?’ he demanded. ‘Answer me, by Sarapis. Answer me! Is that it? You’ve joined the Christians!’

  Nitocris began to sob.

  —24—

  ‘Our father,’ said Nitocris when she had composed herself, ‘was with Osiris. Our mother soon joined him, and we were alone in the world, our other siblings having died in infancy. For a while you sustained us, Ozymandias, though I did not know how. I thought you had found yourself work as a scribe…’

  ‘Employment was hard to find,’ Ozymandias said defensively, ‘if you had no friends and no influence.’

  ‘But you were robbing tombs,’ Nitocris murmured, ‘stealing from the dead. And then you were found out, and you were made a slave as a punishment.’

  ‘I’ve apologised for this,’ Ozymandias said testily, ‘many times.’

  ‘I know,’ said Nitocris. ‘I only mention it because it is part of why I went to the bad.’

  ‘You’re laying the blame at my door?’ Ozymandias said bitterly. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised. It was always your way…’

  ‘Enough,’ said Flaminius. The last thing he wanted to see this night was a domestic quarrel. ‘Let Nitocris tell her story.’

  ‘Thank you, Gaius,’ she said, turning her grave dark eyes upon him for a moment and rubbing at her earlobe. Flaminius noticed a small scar or burn mark on it. ‘I’m not proud of what I have done.

  ‘I was alone,’ she went on, ‘no family, no real friends. Our family home was taken away. I had not an obol to pay the rent. There was a way, but I suppose I was too proud for that. I was cast out, into the street.’

  ‘You weren’t living in the street when I was manumitted,’ Ozymandias said. ‘You were living with those women. I had no idea about this. You never said anything…’

  Her quiet, serious tones cut him off. ‘This is how I came to live with “those women”, brother.

  ‘At first, I managed to find a place to sleep at the Serapeum, in the temple forecourts at night. But there was a man there, among the other sleepers… I ran away from him. I slept in other temples, where the priests sometimes fed me, spent the day in the gardens or down by the canal. I was at a loss, out in the cold, without a friend. The man in the Serapeum said he wanted to be my friend, but I could see what he truly desired.

  ‘At last, I had to turn to begging in the Greek Quarter. I was so hungry, I can still remember it.’ Her face was pale and distant. ‘Even now, when we have enough to eat lentils every day, and a goat to provide milk I can still remember the hunger. The slop the priests doled out was not enough for a whole day.

  ‘Then I met the women. They were Greeks, most of them, some of them Judaean. None Egyptian, but they helped me when they found me in the gardens, unwashed and half starved, took me home. I was given food and new clothes, and they wanted nothing in return. Not at first. I was happy to serve them, but they would not let me. There were men there too, but they were not like the man in the Serapeum. It was a long time before I learnt the truth about them. It was long before I learnt that they had renounced the gods, renounced Pharaoh—his imperial majesty, I should say—and taken to worshipping the one they called the Christus. Naturally I was horrified.’

  ‘You fell in with Christians,’ Ozymandias muttered. He was furious, but his anger was with himself more than with her. ‘If only I had been there to help you. I wouldn’t have become a tomb robber if I could have found myself an Egyptian master to take me on….’

  Flaminius lifted a hand for silence. He wanted to hear the whole of Nitocris’ story. This might just be the solution to all their problems. What she had told them so far was of a piece with everything he had heard about Christians as a whole, that they took advantage of the dispos
sessed and the disenfranchised, luring them away from the mainstream of society.

  He had been born into a well-off family, and although he had had little say when it came to joining the legions he had never lacked for money or friends. He had no idea what it would be like to be homeless, family-less, on the street, without any of the advantages of his social connections. Being in that situation would make one ideal fodder for a subversive cult like the Christians. Even if they were not criminally inclined like Carpocrates, they were certainly anti-social and irreligious.

  ‘You say you were horrified,’ he prompted her. ‘Why was that? What did they make you do?’

  She shrugged. ‘They weren’t like the man in the Serapeum,’ she repeated, ‘if that is what you mean. But they wanted me to join them in renouncing the gods, renouncing sacrifices. We all know that the world depends on the gods, that the empire depends on the emperor. If people were to stop sacrificing to the gods, what would happen? If this cult was ever to take hold, it would be the downfall of the empire, the end of the world.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t join them?’ Ozymandias looked relieved at the idea.

  The girl shook her head. ‘I was weak. I had nowhere else to go. And they had been kind to me. They weren’t monsters, whatever they believed.’ She looked downwards. ‘I joined them.’

  ‘You renounced the gods?’ Ozymandias said.

  She nodded, looking about to cry again. ‘And the emperor. I said I would not offer sacrifices to either. And there were other strictures, but most of them made sense. Not to lie, not to bear false witness… But I did lie. I lied when I said I believed. I went along with everything they wanted to make them happy.’ She shrugged. ‘It seemed that they were good people, if misguided, and likely to anger the gods.’

  ‘Basilides told lies,’ said Flaminius. ‘Out of pragmatism, of course. That’s understandable. But he seemed unwilling to become a martyr. No one was ever executed for being a Christian if they agreed to make sacrifices to the emperor. No one cares what people believe as long as they don’t threaten the social or cosmic order.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nitocris, ‘I told lies too. I told lies because I wanted to live. I said I would renounce the gods. If only it had gone no further than that.’

  Ozymandias’ voice was bleak. ‘What did they make you do?’

  Nitocris said nothing for a while. ‘There were men who came to talk to us,’ she said. ‘Sophists and the like. One was the man you mentioned, Basilides. I couldn’t understand what he said most of the time, but everyone thought he was a very wise and holy man. For some time, it was all as Basilides said it was. Basilides was the one they all listened to.

  ‘I didn’t mind, he seemed a nice enough old man. He was like a priest of the gods. And yes, he said it was fine to make sacrifices if the Romans insisted. He said that people who wanted to die for their beliefs were fools. I remember that because it was the only thing he ever said that made any sense. But then he no longer visited us. Another man took his place.’ She shivered. ‘I didn’t like him.’

  Flaminius was filled with foreboding.

  ‘This man. Was his name Carpocrates?’

  —25—

  Nitocris nodded quickly. ‘I don’t want to think about what we did after Carpocrates came.’ She gagged. ‘It was not long after that that I met my brother and learnt that he had been freed. And because he was freed, so was I.’

  ‘I went looking for you all over the city,’ Ozymandias told her. ‘Whenever I could, I searched for you. No one in Rachotis had heard anything of you since I was enslaved. Luckily, I was working for the commander of the civic guard, and had access to all sorts of information. They had had their eye on your friends for some time, it seems, even if they did not know the half of it.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘If you’d told me, it would have made a very satisfactory report.’

  ‘They had been good to me,’ Nitocris said. ‘The people I lived with and the ones who visited. There was one lady named Clara who became my close friend. I did not wish to betray them. Then I was so happy because my brother had found me, and he was a rich man now. And so we married and came to live here together. It seemed that the nightmare was over.’

  ‘Clara?’ Flaminius said thoughtfully. ‘Paulus Alexander’s wife is called Clara.’

  Nitocris nodded. ‘The same lady. She was good to me. And she was happy that I was happy, but she did not want me to stop attending the rituals of the cult, even though I had married someone who was not one of them. So I kept going. For her sake.’

  Her brother gaped at her. ‘For the sake of the commander’s wife?’ Ozymandias shook his head. ‘So that is where you were going. But Carpocrates…’

  Flaminius had been horrified to learn that she had entered into that evil man’s ambit. ‘What of Julius Strabo, though?’ he asked her. ‘You had dealings with him?’

  She nodded. ‘Last summer, when my brother was assigned to him as his partner, he came here,’ she said. ‘I knew what they were investigating. I did not want my brother to learn what had happened to me. I thought he might cast me out into the street. But when the chance came, I spoke to the centurion, swore him to silence. I brought him with me to the rituals. He posed as a poor man who wanted to gain salvation. No mystery cult would accept a man so poor, he said, so he wanted to join the Christians. That was how he went undercover.’

  ‘He gave you that message?’ Ozymandias shook his head when she admitted this. ‘All this time and my own sister has been working behind my back. I wouldn’t have cast you out, girl! I love you! But…’

  Flaminius shifted uncomfortably. ‘You helped Julius Strabo get into a ritual,’ he said, interrupting. ‘There’s one tonight. Could you get me into it?’

  Nitocris regarded him doubtfully. ‘I think so,’ she whispered.

  ‘Get him into it?’ Ozymandias said. ‘What about me?’

  ‘There would be less chance of us being caught if only one of us went,’ Flaminius told him.

  ‘I’m supposed to trust a Roman with my own wife, my own sister?’ Ozymandias said. ‘In a place like that?’ He added, ‘But what do you expect to accomplish? Surely you’re not going to attend this ritual out of simple prurience?’

  Flaminius shook his head. ‘Not at all. We can arrest Carpocrates on charges of riotous behaviour and assault, but it doesn’t look like Carpocrates was the murderer. Yet it must have been someone in the group who murdered Julius Strabo. How he was exposed, I don’t know. But who else had any reason to murder him? Why else would he have been murdered?

  Ozymandias was quiet.

  ‘Besides,’ Flaminius added, ‘I want you to go to Paulus Alexander, or whoever is present in the palace at this late hour. He’ll know what to do. But I must have had enough time to gather evidence. If no wrongdoing has been done, no one can be arrested other than Carpocrates and anyone else we recognise from the riot or the fight. It’s possible the murderer will slip through. If we net them all, then we will be able to question them.’

  ‘What if Paulus Alexander’s wife Clara is present?’ asked Ozymandias. ‘He won’t like it if we lock his own wife in a cell.’

  Flaminius shrugged. ‘He can like it. If she’s a lawbreaker, the emperor will want her to face justice.’

  ‘Clara?’ Nitocris shook her head, hearing the name. ‘I don’t think Clara will be there. She went back to Basilides in the end. She didn’t like Carpocrates. Nor did I.’

  ‘Then why did you keep going to his rituals?’ Ozymandias wanted to know. ‘A man like that!’

  Again Nitocris shook her head. ‘At first because all the others did. Then after Clara left, it was because Julius Strabo wanted me to spy on them.’

  ‘My own sister, a spy,’ Ozymandias said bitterly.

  ‘Well done,’ said Flaminius approvingly to Nitocris. ‘I never suspected you were on the payroll! It’s a credit to your skills.’

  ‘Payroll?’ Nitocris rubbed pensively at her ear. ‘The centurion didn’t pay me a drachma!’
r />   ‘You weren’t even paid,’ said Ozymandias incredulously. ‘Why do it, then?’

  ‘I wanted them exposed,’ she said, and bit her lip. ‘Carpocrates and his friends. I feel no loyalty towards them. The things they expected us to do.’ She shuddered.

  ‘Nitocris,’ said Flaminius quietly, ‘When I get back to Rome I will ensure that you are suitably rewarded for your work.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything. But I’m willing to help you just as I helped the other Roman.’

  ‘Please, call me Gaius,’ said Flaminius.

  Ozymandias looked uneasily from one to the other. ‘I want Julius Strabo’s killer arrested,’ he said. ‘But I don’t see how this will help.’

  Flaminius was impatient. ‘I’ve already explained. If we can legally round them all up, we stand a better chance of learning who the killer was. You want him found, don’t you?’

  ‘How do you know it was a man?’ Ozymandias asked.

  Flaminius was dumbfounded. ‘Are you accusing your sister? Or Paulus Alexander’s wife?’

  Ozymandias shrugged. ‘I suppose we’ll never know until we get enough evidence,’ he said grudgingly.

  ‘Good man,’ said Flaminius. ‘Now, will you go to the palace? Meanwhile, your sister and I shall go to the Old Judaean Quarter.’

  Ozymandias nodded unwillingly.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, and rose to his feet.

  —26—

  Ozymandias reached the palace of Hadrian just in time to find Paulus Alexander outside the main doors, getting into his litter.

  ‘Sir! Sir!’ He ran up to the commander, his bare feet slapping on the cold cobbles.

  Wearily, Paulus Alexander motioned to the slaves to remain where they were.

  ‘You have news of Carpocrates, scribe?’ he asked, one hand on the side of the vehicle. ‘It’s been a long day and arranging all the new patrols is taxing.’