The Water Thief

by Ben Pastor

  Was this how a large man burned? The amount of grease marring the floor where the chair had been, marked presumably the spot of the body’s consumption. A few steps from it, threshold stone gave away the door’s position. The stairs to the second floor, surely made of wood, had also gone: Marks of each step on the still standing inner wall pointed to their location.

  Given the window grill, entering the studio meant passing through the only door. Philo’s brother described the house as having two exits, one facing south on Copper Alley, the other, a back passageway, looking due north. Crammed between the blind walls of the two bathing establishments, the house could not be easily entered from the second floor either, much less the third. There had been a watchdog, apparently lost three days before the fire. On the wall by the door, to which it had been chained, a broken iron ring showed that it had escaped or had been set free. The ring had resisted the flames, as had the piece of masonry to which it was cemented. Aelius was reasonably sure the iron had been weakened with a metal file, so that it would give way under the strain of pulling. In Soter’s house only a low fence separated the atrium from the street, a negligible obstacle for a large dog intent on getting over it. A significative detail, given what had followed. In a city like Rome, a dog might not easily find its way back home; unless, of course, it’d been captured and wilfully segregated in order to set the fire undisturbed. Why go through all this trouble to commit a theft, why stop to kill an old man who can hardly move, why run off without the silver? It did not make sense, unless Soter had to be eliminated because he knew—what? Did this murder have to do with Hadrian’s letter, with the deaths in Egypt, with a much vaster plot? Aelius’s head swam with hypotheses. Philo’s brother told him that Soter had posted ads on wooden tablets at the neighborhood crossroads for the dog’s retrieval, offering a reward. Aelius found out more from the Titian Baths’ doorman, who’d agreed to nail one of them on the advertisement board space on his wall.

  “Was the dog ever found?” Aelius asked.

  “Not as of the date of the fire. Afterward, who was paying mind to it?”

  The dog had been found, after all. Aelius only had to inquire a bit down from Soter’s place, in a shop at the end of Copper Alley, near the Dacian Training School. Yes, it had been found and brought back, but—since the house had gone along with its master—the disappointed finder had taken it along, hoping to sell it. He was one of the Ludus Magnus attendants, known in the district. He’d probably disposed of the large dog as bait in one of the amphitheater’s hunting shows.

  Too bad, the shop owner added. “It was a good-looking, black monster of a dog, and I bet worth more money than they would give to see it get chewed up by a bear in the arena.”

  There had been a time when gladiatorial games had attracted him, before the teachers Aelius’s father had chosen for him had put into his head—not without effort—a cultivated disgust for the mercenary waste of human and animal life. Not that he really minded watching men killing one another (given his army training, he hadn’t philosophically progressed quite as far as that), but now it revolted him to see animals slaughtered, so that His Divinity’s restriction of circus-related expenses found him wholly in agreement and grateful for it. With all this, Aelius found himself walking across the Via Labcana to the crowded gladiatorial schools quarter, knowing before he got there how he’d find the smell of men and aggression that, all things being equal, he knew from his army life as well. It had started raining again from clouds ragged and blue. On the way, only his sense of duty could pull him away from every fugue of buildings, famous street corner, or renowned spot around the amphitheater, enthused as he was with all that towered over and enchanted him.

  The Ludus attendant was eating at one of the hot lunch counters kitty corner from his place of employment. Garlic figured so heavily in the dish that Aelius had to step back when he first carelessly turned with his mouth full. “Well, no, I haven’t sold the dog yet. Who wants to know?”

  Aelius’s expensive uniform spoke for itself. At once the man showed deference, although swallowing did nothing to relieve the reek of his breath. “I’m kind of keeping it, Commander, until I find someone who’ll pay what it’s worth, or at least the reward. Actually,” he added, making up his mind about the visitor’s ability to pay, “the dog’s full value is the only way I could part with it, as it’s cost me more than the reward in food alone.”

  “It’s hard to believe, since you must get your share of carcasses from the arena. So, how did you manage to capture and keep a watchdog trained to attack?”

  “I raise dogs for the circus on the side. That’s also how I could tell this one was too good to get mauled.”

  There was no seeing the animal at this time, since the man kept his kennel outside the walls, where he lived. “It’s past Two Laurels, out of the way,” he said. “But unless you’re interested in buying it, Commander, what’s the point in—”

  “Did it have a collar and chain when you found it?”

  “It had a collar, of course, else I couldn’t know whose it was.” The attendant scooped with two fingers what remained of his lunch from the bowl. “It read the usual things, name of the dog, of the owner, the home address. The chain—well, it had a piece of it dangling, so I figured it had gotten loose because of a broken link.” There followed wiping of hands on a much-used cloth that lay on the counter. “I kept the thing, in case they’d accuse me of having cut it myself. Now I bet you can’t even see where the chain was hooked to the wall, with the fire and everything.”

  Aelius did not say he had already checked. “I’m not interested in buying the dog, but there’s money in it for you if you show it to me.”

  “Are you a breeder?”

  Already Aelius was heading out. Bound for the climb that past the Dacian Training School led him back to Copper Alley. “There’s money in it for you,” he called back, “that’s all.”

  Minutes later, the same real estate agent he met in Soter’s burned-out house was the one Aelius approached to find lodgings in Rome. Money was not a factor, since he had ample credit for his living expenses through His Divinity; still, he was unwilling to pay an exorbitant price. His requirements were that the place be furnished, on a hillside or at least with a panoramic view of the City, not ostentatious, and away from overly loud streets.

  “Anything else?” asked the real estate man a bit acidly, taking notes.

  “Actually, yes. I’d like to be within reach of a good, library or well-stocked bookstores. How long will it take you to find me a place?”

  “Well, let’s see.” From a stack of papers, the real estate man took out a list of property to let, and buried his nose in it. “Ready to go, furnished and with servants, there’s this small house on the heights overlooking the Altar of Peace. Lovely spot. You’d also have a good view of the temple of all the gods, the deified Augustus’s tomb and sundial, the celebration columns—plus of course Domitia’s Gardens and Hadrian’s Tomb, across the river. Or you could take a two-story flat on the east side of the Caelian, close to the old Foreign Unit Barracks, across from the Guards’ Barracks, old and new. It’s not what you’d call a quiet neighborhood, but it’s becoming fancy, and you can look out the upper windows onto the Antoninian Baths, the gardens near Old Hope, and be close to four of the principal roads out of Rome. Public libraries are everywhere, so take your pick.”

  The house across the river from Hadrian’s monument was tempting, but there were practical advantages to the barracks district, in view of having to deploy his bodyguard sooner or later. Aelius made his choice site unseen, strong of his recollection that historical families lived on the Caelian, and three emperors had called it home.

  That evening, The place is perfect, he wrote in his notes.

  My quarters overlook the street leading from the Special Agent-Old Foreign Unit Barracks (westward) down to the valley. Immediately to my left is the V Cohort of Fire Police and Night Patrol, and farther to the center of the hill, the road splits
under the arch of Dolabella and Silanus to reach the Temple of the Sun and that of the deified Claudius. Facing the entrance to the northeast lies the sprawling house of the Valerii, and behind this, the army brothels; these face the aqueduct, and the residences of Licinius, the Anicii, and Nicomachi. In the house, baths, bodyguard rooms, and service areas are on the ground floor, and studio, bedroom, and balcony with dining area upstairs. My studio window faces the front and valley side; off the dining room is a balcony on the valley side; the bedroom looks on the back; no windows upstairs on the cohort side.

  Not only do the great families have their fabulous townhouses in this district named for Isis and Serapis; one of the tyrants defeated by Aurelian (Tetricus) lived there, and so did Philip, and Commodus, too: The bedroom where he was assassinated, I went to see already, availing myself of His Divinity’s ever-useful letters of presentation. The guardian (but I don’t know how much one can believe these things) pointed out an alcove with blood stains still visible on the wall, there where the bedstead of the corrupt prince had once stood.

  The name Castra Peregrina—Foreign Unit—has been removed from the facade of the barracks, as by imperial order (still affixed by the entry gate), although folks still refer to it as such, by habit. For all the concentration of army units on this hillside, still there is great order, and not much noise. The gardens of the wealthy buffer sounds. Regarding my research, upon arrival I ensured the deified Hadrian’s letter’s safekeeping. The closest libraries to my quarters are those in the Titian Baths, and especially the great one in Trajan’s. Not far from Tetricus’s house is the temple popularly known as Metellus’s Isis, which I have admired from the outside. From its priests, I am soon bound to ask whether someone else can supply me with the information on Antinous, his death, and his burial place that I so hoped to receive from the late Lucinus Soter.

  3 August, Supplicia Canum, Thursday (10 Mesore)

  On the day when—in the past—watchdogs were crucified in memory of their silence during the Gauls’ invasion of Rome, Aelius continued his intensive sightseeing. He strove to form a mental map of the city within the City Hadrian had built, from the hillside of marble dedicated to Venus and Rome to the temple of all the gods, and from the completion of the brightly painted Dacian column to restorations everywhere. No temple was dedicated to Antinous per se, although a religious order in his name existed at the Iseum Campense. His portrait was also recognizable in the decorative rounds of the triumphal arch on Broad Street, and in the occasional roadside altar. In his biography, Hadrian had never mentioned a shrine to the Boy within the walls, nor a burial place: As the list of his constructions seemed to go on forever, it’d take some time to sort out which ones he ought to investigate. Meanwhile, Aelius’s books and papers were being arranged in the upper floor of his flat, where, having learned from him that his arrival in Italy had not gone unnoticed, the head of his bodyguard and two hand-picked men insisted on joining him.

  Aelius resisted at first, and even after giving in, it seemed to him that there was no reason for such alarm, but his soldiers’ concern had stuck, or else exhaustion from travel caught up with him, because he had nightmares. At one point, he dreamed to be facing a sky-high, gleaming tower that burst suddenly into flames as if struck by Greek fire. The place resembled neither Rome nor Nicomedia, but a city God knows where: All he knew was that he stood directly below it, and there was no escaping what seemed to crumble from heaven itself. Awake in the dark, he could not at first remember where he lay, and struggled for a while to control fear, but already the bed under him was real, Rome sprawled outside the window; Soter’s burned-out house accounted for the rest.

  4 August, Friday, (11 Mesore)

  In the morning he received an invitation, requesting his presence at Philo’s banquet of the Lord Anubis on the following day. This, Aelius understood to be a memorial dinner, held in one of those religious institutions called Houses of Life by the secretary’s brother. The address pointed to the neighborhood of the great Isiac shrine, Iseum Campense. As it might introduce him directly to the Egyptian community in Rome, he accepted, and then gave himself a three hours’ pass of leisure and art in the deified Trajan’s Baths.

  Sunday afternoon he followed up on the matter of Soter’s watchdog. Taking the long way around, he made an excursion to the Sitting Hall and monumental apartments once belonging to the Varian family; nearby was the barracks arena, which Aurelian had embedded in the walls, bricking up part of its archways. The sight of this building once impressive and freestanding (as had been the laid pyramid tomb by the Ostia Gate or the Praetorian Field) struck him negatively, bound as it was to hurried graceless bastions. For the first time after so many hours of numb admiration, Aelius was reminded that danger did exist, even for Rome. That bricks and mortar and added courses of cemented stones, blocked doorways and wall-encased buildings do mean something in the life of a City. National security—more and more of late celebrated on monuments and coinage—may be like other official phrases about eternity, peace, invincibility: an idea in need of reinforcing.

  It was only an aging arena built for the army, gobbled by walls, Yet, Hadrian’s ancient letter speaking of danger to the state didn’t seem so remote in front of this place, built to entertain the army, then used by the army as an obstacle against aggression. Outside the City altogether now lay the rest of the Varian Gardens: their largest part, with the overgrown racetrack—the obelisk marking its middle fallen sometime over the past thirty years—fountains choked with weeds, paths invaded by grass. Nothing that a good cleaning couldn’t make spiffy again, Aelius thought as he went past to rejoin the main road, but somehow the feeling was of abandonment planned for a long time, if not forever.

  The kennel lay along the Via Labicana, at the IV mile out of the great travertine gate stacked with aqueducts, where the roads to Praeneste and Labicum parted. Aelius cantered by the garden wall and thickets that gave name to the vast imperial property of Two Laurels, lost behind bird-filled trees. Turrets and cupolas, tiled roofs showed here and there. Just beyond, he’d read, Hannibal had camped five hundred years earlier. Across the road—if the sources told the truth—that first casualty of the wars against Carthage, Attilius Regulus, had once worked his modest farm. Presently the Imperial Guard had its graves there.

  History filled this land like a sponge, one could squeeze it forever and still not get it all. Now the imperial property aged perceptibly under each blanching summer, the laurels grew wild, and nothing remained of those frugal ancient habits. Mown fields, roadside shrines and tombs, still and without shadows, seemed enchanted. Aelius wondered what this stretch of land would look like in another five hundred years, whether the City would overtake it with its noise and pavement, or else walls and shrines would be left to decay more, as it had been for the great Egyptian cities the desert covered today. Surely no one would know or care that he had once taken this road, on this errand, nor whether his search had met with success.

  Past the arches of Severus Alexander’s aqueduct, at the foot of a narrow bridge, he slowed down, then halted his horse to look. His first impression was that the dogs had gotten loose from their cages and climbed a hillock to the right of the road, where their silhouettes could be seen crouching against the white sky, but he realized as he drew closer that the hillock was actually a funerary mound topped by a garden, and the dogs, statues of dogs. Hadn’t he read that the deified Hadrian had built monuments to his favorite hounds? It seemed to him a sign, when he came near enough to read the inscription, and recognized it as one such memorial.

  The live dogs, instead, could be heard from afar, ahead where the road dipped slightly among cane groves. A homemade sign marked a side track to the left as leading to Vivariolum. Less pitiless than the Egyptian skies, but so much more open than any he’d known in his fog-filled childhood and mountain soldiering, the horizon had no color whatever in the fullness of the early afternoon. Left and right of the track, aside from the occasional family tomb (most of them wor
n by rain and showing increasingly featureless marble portraits), sparse estates dotted the foothills, their gardens lost behind walls, the tracks leading to them lined by stumpy mulberry trees or unequal cypresses.

  Disappointment awaited at the kennel. The Ludus attendant scratched his head as he spoke. “A widowed lady came yesterday with her maidservant, looking for a good watchdog, Commander, and as she offered what I wanted for it, I couldn’t pass it up, but I did keep the collar and piece of chain for you, since she wanted to choose her own leash, and all that. Women have no business choosing dogs, I say, because they get all mushy and end up putting cloaks on them and other such nonsense, and give them names like Love and Trinket.”

  When he was handed the links of chain, Aelius knew it had been artificially weakened. A well-executed plan had permitted at least one killer to enter Soter’s house undisturbed. Late at night, the household would be sleepy if not asleep; in the confusion of people following any fire, strangers going in and out might not be noticed. Why, then, had the money bags not been stolen at once, waiting for Philo to retrieve them? Why was the silver left untouched? Perhaps murdering Soter had been the sole aim all along.

  Aelius put the chain link in his travel bag. “Any idea of who the lady was?”

  “The way she spoke to the dog, I figured she had seen it before.” From a kettle on the open fire, the attendant busied himself filling bowls with a mix of gruel and meat scraps for the dogs’ supper. “Her face was covered, see. Maybe she was the dead man’s wife or girlfriend. Well, yes, sir, I agree—it don’t make sense that she ought to pay for what was hers: beyond the reward money, I mean. But she offered full price, so I wasn’t about to argue.”

  Far from being married, according to Theo’s concise gossip, Soter’s sexual tastes had been wholly different. Aelius was intrigued at the idea that a mystery woman had come, veiled and in the sole company of a servant, ready to pay more than the dog was worth. Did she plan to get rid of the animal, in case the fire brigade should come looking? If she was an accomplice, why had she not demanded the broken chain, proof of foul play in connection to murder and fire?