The Water Thief

by Ben Pastor

  “At least Pannonians thrive at Court, while Jews are scattered to the winds.”

  “Sadly, I can’t argue with that.” Raking his grizzled beard, ben Matthias found bits of paint, and pulled them out gently. “If I were you, and if you’re as interested in finding out what happened to Serenus as I think you are, I’d take a look at the Christians anyway. You know, it’s their holy men or anchorites—that’s what they call themselves, just like those who run off to escape creditors—who take over abandoned tombs to do their solitary living. And what is there— or can be—in abandoned tombs?”

  “Christians are not motivated by gold, as far as I can tell.”

  “Maybe not, but they wouldn’t relish someone barging in to disrupt their prayers in order to get the gold. And don’t tell me they wouldn’t kill because they would, and you know it.”

  “They wouldn’t go to kill him in his boat.”

  “And why not?” Cocking his balding head to one side, the old rebel seemed to evaluate him, and Aelius assumed it was out of their old enmity, or perhaps to gauge his resolve. “But then, everybody gains from Serenus’s death. His blubbering lover, his debtors, his competitors, the Roman fist, real estate agents from Oxyrhynchus to Philae, a couple of art dealers I know. Even the priests of Antinous, who stand to get a good chunk of his inheritance as soon as the legal tangles are undone, as they will.”

  “None of these people was on the boat with him.”

  “Anyone could have gotten on the boat and off again, unless hired sailors have changed from my days.”

  From the floor by his chair, ben Matthias had picked up a piece of slate, and took to sketching with it, in an off-hand way, looking up now and then. “The river is long, much can happen alongside it. There are definitely two or three places along the way where even folks with less wealth than our Serenus would risk their lives, sailing by in their pretty boats.”

  “River thieves?”

  “Water thieves, we call them—yes. The previous administration had managed to stamp them out, but they cropped up again in the past five years or so. Sending them into internal exile was no solution, I knew all along, but they must have greased the right palms in the right quarters. The army and the river patrol swear up and down that they’ve rid us of them, but it isn’t so. They’re stronger than ever, and mean business.”

  “But they are not the same they who allow me to go about my official business.”

  “Not that I would tell you.”

  Aelius munched thoughtfully on a second almond cake. “My mother makes them somewhat like this.”

  “Good?”

  “Very good. So, are you sketching the course of the Nile, to give me a hint?”

  “No. I’m sketching you, just in case I need to fit you with a mummy tablet.”

  Notes taken by Aelius Spartianus on the first week (V Kalends) of July, to be then transcribed in letter form for the benefit of His Divinity:

  Things in the Heptanomia don’t seem well. Local authorities are in turn lax or abuse their powers (cite interview with Baruch ben Matthias, erstwhile supporter of Achilleus during the Rebellion), the roads are not safe, crime does not elicit the attention of investigators or prosecution. The prices of basic foodstuff (attach list separately) are at great variance with the maximum allowed by the edict. Court proceedings against the Christian sect continue, and in the three weeks since my arrival in the metropolis alone fifteen men (four of them military) and two women (plus one killed by the street mob) have received capital punishment. Sentiment against them is strong among the populace, as a rift among the Christians is perceivable between those who recanted as a result of past prosecution and those who persevered in their folly. Recusants and informants are personae non gratae amidst their own, have to move from their neighborhoods and often change their names.

  In other matters, I am now convinced that the army supplier Serenus Dio and his freedman Pammychios were assassinated in order to obtain, and probably dispose of, a letter from the deified Hadrian pointing to a threat against the empire; with the same goal in mind, persons unknown have also set fire to the spice merchant Theo’s storeroom. While there is not enough evidence at present to assume that attempts to intimidate me and to have me removed from Egypt are also ascribable to the same person or persons, it is evident that the mention in the letter of documentation about a conspiracy or plan has aroused in some quarters fears of Roman retribution, should the documentation be discovered. If Serenus Dio, as he alleged, mentioned his discovery to no one, how did anyone know he had the letter? I believe he spoke to someone, perhaps in confidence, and the indiscretion cost him his life.

  Well aware of the political risk, I intend to request permission from the local priests to open the Boy’s grave in his temple, ostensibly to carry out His Divinity’s command to pursue my historical research. In reality, to avoid being beaten to it by parties unknown. Were I refused, I must be ready to act upon the authority vested in me, and order the opening of the coffin. In this second instance, either I endeavor to act expeditiously—indeed tomorrow, owing to the fact that 3 and 4 Epiphi are listed on the Egyptian calendar as days most adverse to all enterprises—or I must wait a full week before the next propitious day. At all costs I will avoid even the perception of sacrilege, though in case of forced entry, military escort will be necessary.

  Gavius Tralles had the face of fear. The bureaucrat’s face of fear, half-grinning, with an apologetic cast that was ready to harden as soon as one doubted the intensity of his refusal to help. Aelius had learned to recognize it long ago, before battle mostly, but even on the battlefield, when least one could afford a colleague to fail.

  “It’s impossibly complicated,” Tralles was saying, because, of course, it was never a matter of not being able or willing, but always a question of sheer, fatal impossibility. “You don’t remember Egypt well, things have changed in these last years, it’s not like it used to be.”

  “I saw Egypt at its worst. I doubt it’s worse now.” In order not to lose his patience, Aelius had to look elsewhere in the room, past the disorderly desk and into the semidarkness of the office he was beginning to know, with a window small and narrow and so bright that it seemed to burn with the white fire of midday. “All I need for you to do, should the need arise, is to head the local militia to guard the temple while I go about my duties inside. The matter has to be dealt with, I don’t care how complicated it is.”

  Tralles was his friend, and for all his vacillation, had been a fine officer. Here he stood at his desk, much as the first day they had renewed their acquaintance in the metropolis, big and burly and every bit as much a Romanized product of the army as himself, so similar to him in so many ways that Aelius felt his refusal acutely, like a personal failure. As if he were the one not wanting to tangle with the priests or the temple of the blessed Antinous. The meeting was like the sharp point of a pin, deflating their friendship, creating a void around them. In the void, Aelius became keenly aware of the nestled nature of this exchange and its larger implications. Here they stood in this small room, and outside of it in ever-larger dizzying circles the walls of the command post, the army compound with its Roman and Romanized garrison, the streets of Antinoopolis, the ledge behind the city, Hadrian’s Way departing for the mountains and the Arabian coast like a great snake swallowed by the desert, the vastness of Heptanomia stretching from the Delta to the Thebais, cleft by the Nile like a green running wound and hemmed in on all sides by sand and sky, endless but for the deep oasis of Ammoneum, emerald of God.

  “Well, Gavius, if you don’t do this, who will?”

  “You will. You are Caesar’s envoy. No relations here, no attachments. You can.”

  So, that’s how things stood with Tralles and the rest. Whatever had happened here in the last eight years, as ben Matthias said, there was no fighting it directly just now. Rabirius Saxa, who’d nominally said yes, had already declined to become personally involved, and there was no time to enlist the support of Prefect
Culcianus from Alexandria. Aelius’s escort, twenty cavalrymen from his Armenian campaign unit, had hastily been sent for by courier, but would not get here from Cynopolis, fifty miles away, before noon the following day. He had a rude desire to berate Tralles but it’d do no good, so he remained where he was instead, and decided to salvage out of the relationship with him what was possible out of their mutual disappointment. He said, sitting across from his colleague on the other side of the desk, “At least tell me why you have lost your nerve, Gavius.”

  Having crossed over into the no man’s land of justification, Tralles was defensive by now.

  “It has nothing to do with nerve,” he said grumpily. “One needs to do what one needs to do in order to function here. What’s the problem? You need to adapt. It’s by degrees anyway, like ratcheting down a couple of cogs now and then. It’s not like they ask you to turn yourself upside down. I had to make some adjustments from the old days.”

  Aelius had been staring at him, chin on his knuckles, and now lowered his eyes; but not to release his colleague from observation. To protect himself somehow from what the other was saying. The argument was the same everywhere one served, everywhere one had dealings. Tralles had discovered nothing other than his own inability to differ.

  “And so?” he mildly prodded him. “Let’s leave the matter at hand aside. You did—what?”

  “Nothing illegal, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It’s not what I meant.”

  “Went native a bit. I mentioned it to you.”

  “Native as in—Greek? Egyptian?”

  Tralles had hinted at these enterprises before, but now made them look new and more relevant, as if because of them he could not lead a body of soldiers in the morning. “Native, however you define that—like the folks who live here. Got myself a couple of slaves left as newborn on the dung-hill, raised them to their teens, sold them at a great profit. That’s just good business, and not especially local, you’ll say. But I did raise them to be castanets dancers, which fetches good money around here, for wedding feasts and such. Bought three farms at a discount after low flood and a bad crop, put peasants on them, turned them around by planting tree-wool. I took a sister-wife—”

  This, Aelius had not heard before. “A sister-wife?” he burst out. “What are you saying? You never had a sister.”

  “Well, not exactly, but I have a first cousin, and passed her off as my sister. To fit in, you know. That is, before it was made illegal for Roman citizens six years back. We have children together, and as she was married before, she has children of her own; now her eldest girl is expecting, and the boy she married has moved in with his parents and uncle. I got a bigger place, and everybody’s happy.” Tralles took a deep breath and let it out again. “Which is why I don’t want anything happening to me or mine.” Outside, the wind was up again, and some fine sand came twirling in through the window, sparkling in the light. “It’s not like I don’t do my job, Aelius—I do. Ask anyone, my record as a keeper of order is the best they’ve had in years, around here.”

  “As long as you can expect no retribution.”

  “You know what? Curiosity killed the cat. That’s my motto. You always made it a habit of being curious, being a dabbler in history or whatever it is you dabble in during your spare time; you also never settled in a place long enough to be a part of it, never participate fully, never became one of the group. It’s easy for you to talk. Now you’re Caesar’s friend, so take advantage of your rank.” Tralles put his open hand flat on his chest, to show his sincerity in the matter. “I can be of help to you, I really can. Just do not ask me to do what I can’t do.”

  “Or won’t do.”

  “Whatever. Short of that, I’ll help.”

  Because Aelius had stood from the chair and was leaving the office, Tralles spoke up without rising from his desk. “Why do you travel on your own, Aelius? Where’s your retinue right now?”

  Aelius did not look back. “I travel on my own, by choice. Serfs and books and escort precede or follow, depending; I use the escort only when I have to, and for the rest I rely on bank drafts, letters of presentation, signet ring, and basic conversation dictionaries. I never traveled so comfortably before in my life.”

  “But you’re alone, with all that’s going on.”

  Now Aelius did turn back. “I’m not aware that anything is going on. According to you, even when you have no answer for violence or theft, it’s not our business or there’s nothing we can do about it. I’ll watch myself, don’t you worry.”

  3 Epiphi (28 June, Wednesday)

  By a miracle of logistics, having rushed overnight, Aelius’s armed escort was in the metropolis at sunup. By this time, he’d already sent a message to Antinous’s temple, and was invited to an interview with the two priests who had shown him around. They met in the priests’ house, and to his amazement they posed no significant obstacle to his request. They spoke of extreme concern for the irregularity of it, of the absolute need for secrecy “in order to avoid a scandal among the faithful” and demanded a number of privileges for the religious collegium (mainly exemption from dike taxes and corvees for their relatives). Other than that, they seemed amenable.

  “Of course we do not have the manpower to do the work today,” the short, fat priest added, “and we’ll have to send for trustworthy engineers and masons at Panopolis. So it will be the eighth of Epiphi before we can oblige you.”

  “I prefer not to wait that long.”

  “That is unfortunate, legatos. But you understand that exposing the remains of a god, regardless of your scientific interest, must be done on a propitious day.”

  They are fully aware there’s been nothing in the grave since Commodus’s days, Aelius thought, but I must make sure for myself. They’re trying to buy time. “I have an engineer on my staff,” he said, “and men enough to handle the rigging.”

  “Well, it may be, but it cannot be done today. We have ceremonies already planned. It’s out of the question.”

  Aelius wanted to put his foot down, but thought better of it. “My men are outside. Research calls me elsewhere, and a week is too long an interval. I promise to obtain from His Divinity, and in his name, a hereditary life annuity for the personnel of this temple as a token of gratitude, if I am allowed to open the grave now.”

  The tall, lean priest shook his head. “There will be riots in the metropolis if there’s a perception of army violence in the temple.”

  It came down to more promises, but within half an hour the temple servants were dispatched to the city with excuses, the gates of the sacred precinct closed to the public, and the baboons fed fruit in the grove. Aelius’s squad, handpicked veterans from his own country, stood ready to carry out orders. Followers of Mithras, all of them, they had neither awe for, nor concern about, exhuming a Greek god.

  Inside the temple, the priests removed an armful of flowers from the sarcophagus of the Boy, awakening a billow of scent and small insects. Incense was used to purify the men, their tools, and indeed the entire cell, until one’s lungs felt as embalmed as any Egyptian dead.

  The seals of the sarcophagus, the engineer commented, had been tampered with and soldered back together, an old repair job.

  “More than a hundred years old?” Aelius asked, thinking of Commodus’s visit.

  “Not that old.”

  The answer altogether made him wonder, but it made little difference to an empty coffin.

  Given the weight of the lid and the difficulty to set up machinery to hoist it, the engineer concluded it should be merely shifted at a forty-five degree angle, in hopes that the thickness of the sarcophagus itself were not so massive as to impede looking within. Under the impending shade of Antinous’s massive statue, in an ever-renewed cloud of incense, the soldiers labored to introduce wedges and raise the lid from its groove enough to make it rest on the outer rim of the coffin. It took them ten hours to succeed in doing this, by which time Aelius wondered how could the priests remain as collected
as they did, and whether they would sham surprise at the sight of an empty grave.

  But the grave was not empty. When finally the upper stone was hinged off-center and he could look in, with the help of a lamp, he met the haunting painted face of a young man with large brown eyes, dark curly hair, a pinched, cleft chin, staring upward as if the light had awakened him. Around the portrait tablet, gilded cartonnage wrappings were tightly bound in a crisscross pattern, so adherent to the body as to make it quite impossible to conceal a large document. Unless, of course, the “proof” Hadrian had spoke of had been used, with the rest of the glued papyrus material, to shape the mummy cover. Aelius’s mind was swimming in ideas so opposite and quick as to stun him into silence. Theo was wrong, Commodus had found the body of Antinous, there were no other burial places but this one. How thinner and less impressive than his official portraits, how shorter than he imagined him—a common youth, cut down before becoming plain. Such love, such remembrance, for a common youth. The haste of the burial explained the fairly inexpensive material used to send him off into eternity. No grave goods were visible, and even peering closely, Aelius could make out nothing whatsoever around the mummy. Had anyone the gotten here before him, and removed the document? He leaned over to look into the corners of the coffin, ran his hands under the stiff mummy wraps, for a few moments he forgot who he was and where he was, such was his need to know. Nothing, there lay nothing else but the corpse of an average youngster. Temples, statues, poems, an entire imperial villa to keep him in, like a precious and exotic bird: Hadrian had created a legend around this thin-faced, insignificant-looking boy. Aelius thought disappointment would choke him, but evidence stared back at him from the cheap death mask.

  His soldiers, curious or not, stood back, including the engineer. As for the priests, they had never moved from the folding chairs in which they sat, like judges at a sports event or politicians at a lengthy meeting. Aelius turned to look at them, and the fat priest did finally draw close, though not enough to look inside the sarcophagus. “My colleague and I were shown the blessed Antinous on occasion of repairs and embellishments to the temple, during the pro-Egyptian reign of Probus Caesar.”