Smoke & Mirrors

by Harry Sidebottom

  The Ides of May AD236

  Dead of night. The breeze from the mountains soughing through the branches. The near-full moon casting deep shadows. Censorinus sat in the grove looking at the sanctuary. Somewhere down in the town a dog barked. No other sound, except for the wind in the trees.

  Everyone was asleep. It was time. Censorinus got to his feet. Face blackened with burnt cork, he glided between the trees. A final check. Still no sound or light from beyond the walls. He stepped out from cover. It was very bright in the open, the light a cold blue from the moon.

  The bag slung on his back, he reached up for the top of the outer wall. He hauled himself up, and lay full length on top, studying the gardens. Satisfied, he dropped to the ground inside, and made his way into the shade of a stand of fruit trees. Shrugging off the pack, and drawing the long knife, he settled to wait.

  Small nocturnal animals scuttled through the undergrowth. Far away, the dog was still yapping. Others answered. The chorus must have drowned the noise of the approaching watchman. Without warning, he was there, holding a half-shuttered lantern, walking along by the wall. Censorinus’ heart was beating fast. Every instinct urged him to get this over. He fought down the impulse. Precipitous actions belonged to cowards, could ruin everything. He let the watchman approach his hiding place, nearer and nearer.

  Once the man had passed, Censorinus rose, the glitter of the knife held behind his back. Watching where he placed his feet, not looking at the glow of the lantern, he followed. Stealthily, but swiftly, he closed the gap. Suddenly the watchman stopped. He hefted the lantern, started to turn.

  Three strides, and Censorinus was upon him. Left hand clamped over the man’s mouth, he dragged the blade across his throat. The iron smell of blood, its hot wetness on his forearm. The man struggled, fingers clawing at the hand smothering him, clutching at the hilt of the knife. Censorinus stabbed again, gouging and sawing into the soft flesh. Locked together, they staggered, boots stamping. Somehow the watchman broke free. He tottered a few steps, both hands pressed to the wound. His mouth opened to shout. Instead he collapsed. A final few twitches, and his spirit left his body.

  Censorinus stood, panting. He took a deep breath, held it, listening. The dogs were quiet. The wind moved through the shrubbery. No other sound disturbed the night.

  Automatically Censorinus crouched down by the dead man. He cleaned the blade on the man’s cloak, then wiped what he could of the blood off his hands and arms. He was disappointed. It had not been a clean kill. Often he did better. He stood, and walked back to where he had left the pack. Pulling the straps over his shoulders, he looked back at the corpse. Life must be difficult for the Christians with their god’s inexplicable commandment, Thou shalt not kill. Censorinus would rather not have killed the watchman, but prudence had insisted that he die.

  The watchman lay exposed in the full light of the moon. Censorinus had debated this before. It was best to leave him there. If any servants of the temple looked for him, and failed to find him, they might begin a search. If they stumbled upon his corpse, they would raise an outcry, and the horror should send them rushing to raise the alarm. That should give Censorinus enough warning to get clear.

  The inner wall was taller, near twenty feet to the top. It was made of close-fitted smooth blocks of stone. Perhaps the Eurybatus of Aegina that the Sophist had mentioned might have been able to climb it with his irons and sponges. Censorinus took out one of the grappling hooks. To it was attached a thin but strong rope. Censorinus stood well back to give himself room. He swung the hook around his head, the rope swishing through the air. When he had enough momentum, he cast it upwards. Earlier he had wrapped cloth around the prongs, all except the last inch or so. Even so the metal clattered when it landed. Without waiting to see if anyone had been disturbed, Censorinus hauled the rope in. The prongs clinked and scraped, agonisingly loud, up the far side of the wall. A couple of times it caught. But each time Censorinus tugged, it came free. Finally it overtopped the wall, and fell thudding back to earth.

  Now Censorinus stood still. All his being concentrated on listening. Out over the slopes of the mountain an owl hooted. Nothing came from inside the sanctuary. Silently Censorinus recited the Greek alphabet. Alpha, beta – best not to rush – gamma, delta. All the way to omega, and no alarm was raised.

  Censorinus moved along the wall. A second noise overhead might awake a man whose sleep had been disturbed by the first. Finding a spot some way off, where the trees and bushes left room to swing the rope, he repeated the procedure. Again the horrible clangour of its hitting the wall, but this time it caught fast on something.

  Hand over hand, feet braced on the wall, Censorinus climbed. He had knotted the rope at intervals to aid his ascent. Even so, the pack on his back seemed to try to drag him down. The sweat was pouring off him, his muscles twitching and jumping, when he reached the top.

  Inside there was a drop of about three feet to the sloping roof of a building abutting the wall. Censorinus stepped down softly. Giving all his concentration to the task, he pulled the rope up after him, then freed the hook. Working intently, he wedged the hook over the coping on the outer side, fixing the steel tips into the mortar between the stones. Only when his way down was assured, did he crouch, in the shadow of the wall, and survey the courtyard.

  Nothing moved in the eerie wash of moonlight. Censorinus did not consider himself a superstitious man. He was sure the gossip in the inns about supernatural guards was nonsense. But it was best to be careful. A watchdog or another guard would be danger enough. Censorinus removed the dead dormouse from his pack. He had smeared it with honey to mask the smell of the poison with which it was laced. There was another in the bag. He was nothing if not thorough.

  When he was convinced that no guard, human or bestial, would appear, his breathing returned to something like normal, and much of the ache left his back and limbs. After replacing the dormouse, he uncoiled the rope, and set off. He tested each step before he let his weight down. Not a single tile shifted.

  Peering over the edge, he saw the rope hanging down between two windows. Too close for comfort, but it could not be helped. Anyway they were tightly shuttered. It was little more than twice his height to the ground. Gripping the rope, and leaning back, he abseiled down.

  A final check of the empty yard, and he padded across the pavement to the steps at the front of the temple. The rope was a problem. It would catch the notice of any sleepless temple servant who might look out. But it would have to remain. There was a strong possibility that he might need to make his escape in a hurry.

  In the gloom on the platform behind the columns, he approached one of the doors. It was locked. He went to the other. It was also locked. He took the thin metal picks from his bag, and set to work. Few locks were that difficult to open. He knew from experience that it was a question of patience. Probing with expert touch, he found the tumblers, felt them give and one by one click free.

  The door opened softly. The distant moonlight revealed a long, empty corridor. There was a door at the far end, and another halfway along. Censorinus went in, and pulled the door shut behind him. In the Stygian blackness, he felt his way along. This was where the priests came and went, no need to fear a trap.

  His outstretched fingers found the far door. This one was unlocked. The hinges squealed as it opened. Censorinus looked out. The three outer walls of the temple surrounded a yard, bathed in moonlight, and bare except for an altar in the middle. Nothing of interest, and no form of threat.

  Before he closed the door, Censorinus found the small lantern, and the flint and steel in his bag. In the darkness, he lit the lantern, then arranged it so that it emitted only the thinnest beam of light.

  The door half way down the corridor was also unlocked. It gave onto a staircase running up to a landing. Censorinus mounted as quietly as he could. The steps turned and went up to another landing. A doorway opened off the latter.

  Outside the door, Censorinus fully shuttered the lantern.
No hint of light came from around the doorframe. Knife in one hand, he opened the door. Crouching in the entrance, his senses probed the room. Smells of food, and stale wine. No sound at all. Nothing to indicate a living presence.

  Unshuttering the lantern, he saw a room with three couches at the far end, tables pushed back against one wall. As he had suspected, it was a communal dining room, where the priests took their meals.

  The next flight of stairs led to the uppermost floor and a final shut door. This time slivers of faint light showed from inside. Censorinus took off his pack, and extinguished the lantern. He let it cool, before putting it in the pack, which he left on the floor. Rolling his neck, he tried to work out some of the tension in his muscles. When he was ready, hilt of the knife snug in his fist, he tried the door.

  The sound of snoring. The door creaked, and the snoring faltered. Censorinus froze. The steady breathing resumed. The sleeper was in a bed, hung with screens, on the other side of the room. There were couches and tables. Rugs on the stone floor. A nightlight burned on a table next to the bed. The walls were lined with bookcases. The atmosphere was frowsty, but scented by cedar wood.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Censorinus thought he saw a movement. He whirled, knife out. There was nothing in sight. He steadied himself. Self-control was the mark of a man.

  It was good the floor was paved. No danger of a creaking floorboard. Censorinus sheathed his knife, and picked up a cushion from one of the couches as he crossed the room.

  A curtain ring caught, as he pulled back the hangings. The priest muttered in his sleep: Demetrius. Maybe the name of a slave, or a loved one.

  The bed was large. The old man looked small in it. To reach the middle, Censorinus had to climb on the mattress. It gave under his weight. The priest’s eyes opened. He gasped. Ghosts had black faces. At first perhaps he thought he saw a ghost, but then there was recognition.

  ‘You! What are you—’

  Censorinus pressed the cushion down over his face.

  The elderly priest had a lot of life in him. He thrashed and struggled. But he was old, not that strong, and Censorinus used all his weight. After a time, the priest stopped moving, and there was a sharp stench of urine and faeces. Dying men often voided bladder and bowels. A last cruel joke of the gods to rob them of dignity as they went into the dark.

  Censorinus went and fetched the pack. The bookcases were stuffed with rolled papyri. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of petitions to the god. The shelves were labelled with Greek letters. They did not run alphabetically. The system meant nothing to Censorinus. There was no way of telling which might be incriminating, and there were far too many documents to take all of them.

  Standing irresolute, he heard a sound. Like something slithering within the room. Spinning around, eyes darting everywhere, he could not find its cause. Be a man, he said to himself. This was no time to let his imagination undermine him. It was probably just a badly stacked papyrus roll shifted loose by the struggle on the bed. Be a man.

  Censorinus decided to take a random armful from each of the bookcases. He worked methodically, but with haste. There was no time to waste.

  He was on one knee, scooping rolls from a low shelf, when an atavistic sense of danger hit him. He drew the knife, turned, and struck out blindly, all in one fluid motion. The serpent was huge, rearing up. The blade sliced into its neck, knocking the creature away.

  Censorinus jumped to his feet, horrified, backing against the bookcase. The snake – its scales slashed, flesh exposed – coiled off across the room. Censorinus knew he should follow, finish the thing. But he could not move.

  The serpent vanished between the papyri behind the shelves.

  Censorinus stepped away from the bookcase against which he had been pressed. Gods below, were there any more of the things? The chamber could be crawling with them. They could lurk behind every roll, fangs dripping venom.

  Now the silence exuded menace. What punishment awaited those who stole from the gods? An eternity of torture. What worse fate for a man who tried to kill a deity?

  Control yourself. That was no god. It did not have the face of a man. There was no god called Glycon. The whole thing was a fraud. Lucian said so. He was an educated man. For all Censorinus knew, the snake was harmless. It could be one of those that the Macedonians kept as pets.

  Censorinus gazed around at the dimly lit shelves. There were enough documents already in the bag. He could not take them all. With sudden decision, he tied up the pack, strapped it on his back, picked up the lamp, and walked out of the room.

  V

  The City of Byzantium on the Bosporus

  Six days before the Kalends of June AD236

  Byzantium at last, and with it privacy. The Chresmos was a big merchantman, but not so big that it could provide a private cabin for a passenger who had clumped up the gangplank with two slaves just before it had weighed anchor. No remonstrations, and not all the money in the world could change that. The whole way from Abonouteichus to the Bosporus it had had to beat into the gusting westerly winds. Its master had stood well out to sea until they tacked around Cape Ancyreum, and it had stopped at no ports until it had docked at Byzantium. The voyage had taken twelve days. Twelve crowded and uncomfortable days in which Censorinus had never let the leather pack out of his sight, but could find no opportunity to study its contents.

  Escaping from the Temple of Glycon had proved easy. Censorinus was not proud of his conduct. He could have fitted more scrolls in the bag. The snake had unsettled him. After his precipitous retreat from the room, he had walked down the stairs, holding the lamp aloft, peering nervously into the shadows. Outside the courtyard had been still and empty in the flood of moonlight. The rope was still hanging undisturbed. It had been the work of moments to shin up it, climb the roof, resecure the grappling hook, and slide down the other side. The rope he left dangling. It would have made too much noise trying to get the hook free, and nothing connected it to him. After crossing the gardens, he had scrambled over the outer wall, and hid in the wood. There he had washed the burnt cork off his face, and the residual blood from his arms. It was a short walk to the villa. Rousing his slaves, ordering them to pack, and be quick about it, he had reached the berth of the Chresmos in the pale light of the false dawn.

  Censorinus settled on a couch, and took a drink. He had taken a well-appointed room at an inn overlooking the Golden Horn. There was wine warming on a brazier by the window. The slaves despatched to the market, at last he had solitude. No time like the present. He undid the drawstring of the pack, and tipped the contents out at his feet.

  Looking down at the heap of papyrus rolls, Censorinus paused. He considered the power of these documents. The world literally was at his feet. It would not be hard for a trained frumentarius to disappear, to lose himself in the millions of subjects of the empire. An imperial spy always dwelt in the shadows. Sicily, Hispania, North Africa, there were many good places to live. Anywhere but Rome, or the wretched mountain slopes of the Alps where he had grown up. Of course there would be a risk when he had to emerge from the obscurity in which he had cloaked himself in order to contact the fools who had committed treasonous queries to writing. But it was in their interest to keep quiet, and they were accustomed to being blackmailed.

  Censorinus picked up a scroll at random. He broke the seal, and unrolled the papyrus.

  Should I journey to Italy by land or sea?

  Censorinus tossed it aside, reached for another.

  What should I do to gain relief from the colic?

  One after another, faster and faster, just scanning them. Crop failures and bankruptcy, hernias and blindness, adultery and impotence; nothing but the quotidian complaints of rich and poor. Lucian had lied. No one asked when the Emperor would die. Or perhaps Lucian had been right, everything about the Oracle of Glycon was a fraud, even its power over others.

  Censorinus looked up as his slaves entered the room without knocking.

  ‘I did not send for you.’
<
br />   ‘No.’ The taller of the two smiled, and reached under his cloak.

  Censorinus went for his sword. The other slave had it in his hands.

  ‘What … What do you want?’ Censorinus had no weapon, but he was not going to die like a sheep. His eyes searched the room: the slaves, the door behind them, the window, the poker by the brazier.

  ‘We want the papyri. You did well getting them. If you had failed, in the disturbance of your execution, we would have secured them.’

  The poker was just out of reach.

  ‘Perhaps that was what Vollo intended, naming you and your father after notorious thieves. Now hand them over.’ The taller one smiled, and held up a small metal disk. On it was inscribed MILES ARCANA. ‘We both outrank you.’

  Censorinus sat back, and laughed. ‘Much pleasure they will give you.’ He raised his glass. ‘Health and great joy.’

  Afterword

  The Town of Newmarket in Suffolk

  Eight days before the Kalends of December AD2016

  Almost everything we know about the Temple of Glycon at Abonouteichus comes from Lucian, Alexander the False Prophet. It would be hard to imagine a more hostile witness. In section 32 he tells of the oracle blackmailing those who asked ‘dangerous and venturesome’ questions: ‘You understand what questions are likely to be put by men who are rich and very powerful.’ Rereading the text, it struck me that these would have been of much interest to the imperial authorities. A dim memory of The Tower of the Elephant, a Conan story by Robert E. Howard, suggested a way they might obtain them.

  There is an English translation of Alexander the False Prophet by A. M. Harmon in volume IV of the Loeb edition of Lucian (Cambridge, Mass., 1925). Excellent introductions to Lucian on Glycon are provided by C. P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), pp.133–48; and Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Harmondsworth, 1986), pp.241–50.