SPQR IV: The Temple of the Muses

by John Maddox Roberts

  I always hated it when she was so penetrating and insightful. “It’s nothing you need to bother yourself about,” I insisted.

  “Come on, tell me.” She sounded amused. “If I’m to be your assistant, I want to know.”

  “Well,” I said uneasily, “it’s something about the place. Not the Museum or Library so much, but the Temple itself.”

  “And?” she prodded.

  “And it’s wrong to commit murder in a temple. Even the place where Iphicrates was killed is a part of the Temple complex.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Even a foreign temple?”

  “The Muses are legitimate goddesses,” I maintained. “We worship them in Rome.”

  “I never thought you all that pious, Decius,” she said.

  “This Temple is different,” I stubbornly insisted.

  She lay back on the cushions. “I’ll accept that. But I want you to show me this Temple.” She said nothing more the rest of the way back to the Palace.

  I had more than enough to occupy my mind.

  4

  “WHAT’S ALL THIS ABOUT A MURDER?” Creticus demanded.

  So I told him all about it, at least what little I knew so far. We were taking breakfast in the shaded courtyard of the embassy: flat Egyptian bread, dates, figs in milk and honey.

  “Local matter, then,” he said when I’d finished. “Nothing to concern ourselves about.”

  “Still, I want to look into it,” I said. “It’s bad form to kill someone when royalty and Romans are present. Especially Romans. They ought to show more respect to a Senator and two visiting patrician ladies.”

  “I’m sure the slight was unintended,” Creticus said, spreading honey on a scrap of bread, to the delight of the hovering flies. “Still, if it amuses you, I see no harm in it. It can’t amount to anything, though. He was just a scholar.”

  “Thank you, sir. These Egyptians are a touchy lot where their supposed authority is concerned, though. If they give me trouble, may I count on you for support?”

  He shrugged. “As long as it doesn’t cause me too much difficulty.”

  After breakfast I hurried to the royal quarters, where my toga and senatorial insignia quickly got me admitted to the royal presence.

  I found Ptolemy enjoying a far more substantial breakfast than I had just left. There were whole roast peacocks and Nile fish the size of pigs, oysters by the bucket and a roast gazelle. Those were only the main courses. How he could face any sort of food in his condition was something of a mystery.

  When I entered he looked up from his platter with eyes like ripe cherries. His nose looked as if it had been carved and lovingly polished from the finest porphyry. The rest of his face was veined somewhat less luridly. He had once been a fine-looking man, although a certain leap of imagination was required to discern this.

  “Ah, Senator … Metellus, is it?”

  “Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, your Majesty. I am with the Roman embassy.”

  “Of course, of course. Come, sit down. Have you eaten yet?”

  “Just minutes ago,” I assured him.

  “Well, have some more. More than I can eat here, anyway. Have some wine, at the very least.”

  It was early to be drinking, but you don’t get to sample a king’s private stock every day, so I partook.

  “You’ve heard about the murder at the Museum, sir?” I began.

  “Berenice mentioned something about it earlier, but I was still a little fuzzy. What happened?” So I gave my account yet another time. I was used to this sort of repetition. When dealing with the Senate and its committees, you render your report in full to the lowest committee chief, who listens with a serious expression until you’ve finished and then sends you to the next higher-up to do it all over again, and so forth until you address the full Senate, most of whom snore through it.

  “Iphicrates of Chios?” the king said. “Designed cranes and water wheels and catapults, didn’t he?”

  “Well, he said he didn’t work on war machines, but that was the sort of work he did. The others seemed to think it was undignified, doing truly useful work like that.”

  “Philosophers!” Ptolemy snorted. “Let me tell you something, Senator. My family owns that Museum and we support everyone in the place. If I want costumes and masks designed for my next theatricals, I send an order there and they put their artists to work on it. If I want a new water-clock, they design it for me. If I need a new Nile barge, they will design and have it built for me, and if one of my officers comes back from a campaign with an arrow lodged in him, those physicians will damned well come and get that arrow out, even if they have to get their philosophical fingers bloody in the process.”

  This was illuminating. “So their philosophical detachment from the real world is a pose?”

  “Where I and my court are concerned it is. They may think they’re some sort of Platonic sages, but to me they’re just workmen in my employ.”

  “So if you tell them to cooperate in my investigation of this murder, they’ll be sure to comply?”

  “Eh? Why should you investigate?” The old sot was a bit sharper than I had anticipated.

  “For one thing, I was present, as were two patrician ladies, and therefore Rome is involved.” This was a stupendously tenuous connection, but I needed something. “And, in Rome, I have a certain reputation for getting to the bottom of these matters.”

  He squinted at me with his reddened eyes. “You mean it’s your hobby?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so.” This was truly lame.

  “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? A man ought to be allowed to indulge his hobbies. Go ahead.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “You mean you’ll give me your official authorization?”

  “Certainly. Have your secretary draw up the proper document and send it to my chamberlain for my lesser seal.”

  “Thank you, your Majesty,” I said.

  “Odd sort of hobby, looking into who killed somebody. Well, a man finds his pleasures where he can. Sometime I must tell you about the satrap of the Arsinoene Nome and his crocodile.”

  “Perhaps another time,” I said hastily, finishing the excellent wine and getting to my feet. “I’ll have the requisite document here shortly.”

  “Sure you won’t have some smoked ostrich?”

  “You are too generous. But duty calls.”

  “Good day to you, then.”

  I hurried back to the embassy and browbeat a scribe into composing a document making me official investigating officer for Ptolemy. That is the good thing about dealing with a king if he’s favorable to you: He doesn’t have to justify himself to anybody. If the Flute-Player wanted to name a foreign embassy official investigator in a murder, he could do it and nobody could contradict him.

  I took the document personally to the chamberlain’s office. That functionary, the eunuch named Pothinus, looked at it skeptically.

  “This is most irregular.” He was a Greek wearing Asiatic jewelry and an Egyptian wig, not an uncommon Alexandrian combination.

  “I have yet to see anything regular at this court,” I said. “Be so good as to append the king’s lesser seal. He has agreed to this arrangement.”

  “It is unethical to approach his Majesty so early in the morning. It is not the hour of his most discriminating discernment.”

  “I found his Majesty to be most perspicacious and in fullest command of his mental faculties,” I said. “You speak disloyally, sir.

  “I … I … I protest, Senator!” he sputtered. “Never would I offer the slightest disloyalty to my king!”

  “See that you don’t,” I said coldly, and no one can speak as coldly as a Roman Senator. One must always maintain a firm hand with eunuchs. He appended the seal without further back talk and I left with it clutched happily in my fist. I was official now.

  I found Julia and Fausta waiting for me in the courtyard of the embassy. I held up my royal commission triumphantly. Julia clapped her hands.
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  “You got it! Don’t take full credit. I talked to Berenice and she went to the king when he rose this morning.”

  “He had very little memory of the event, but enough stuck in his mind to accomplish my ends,” I said.

  Fausta arched a patrician eyebrow. “Do you think that if you find the murderer, that will put Ptolemy in your debt?” Being who she was, Fausta could only assume that I sought some sort of political advantage.

  “When did the gratitude of a Ptolemy ever do anyone any good?” I asked. “He barely knew who Iphicrates was, and I doubt he cares who the murderer might be.”

  “Why, then?” She was genuinely puzzled.

  “Just being in Alexandria I have caught the fever of philosophy,” I explained. “I am now developing my own school of logic. I propose to demonstrate the validity of my theories by uncovering the culprit.”

  She turned to Julia. “The Metellans are such a dull, plodding lot as a whole. It’s good that they have a madman to lend them a bit of color.”

  “Isn’t he amusing? He’s better than Berenice’s entourage.”

  I was outnumbered. “Jest as you will,” I said, “but I am going to be doing something infinitely more interesting than sorting out the problems of a pack of brainless Macedonian bumpkins who masquerade as the royalty of Egypt.” I stalked off haughtily, bellowing for Hermes to show himself. He came running.

  “Here are the things you asked for,” Hermes said. I took my dagger and caestus and tucked them inside my tunic. My sightseeing idyll was over and I was ready for serious business.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “To the Museum,” I said.

  He looked around. “Where’s the litter?”

  “We are going to walk.”

  “Walk? Here? You’ll cause a scandal!”

  “I can’t set my mind to serious work if I’m being carried around like a sack of meal. It’s all right for decadent, inert foreigners, but a Roman should have more gravitas.”

  “If I could be carried about, I’d never wear out another pair of sandals,” Hermes said.

  Actually, I wanted a closer look at the city. Prowling the streets and alleys of Rome had always been one of my choicest amusements, but I had as yet had no opportunity to do the same in Alexandria. The attendants and guards at the Palace gate stared in amazement to see me walking out attended only by a single slave. I half expected them to come chasing after me, begging to carry me wherever I wanted to go.

  It was a strange, disorienting experience to walk in a city made up of straight lines and right-angled intersections. Merely crossing one of the wide streets gave me an odd sensation of exposure and vulnerability.

  “It must be hard to elude the nightwatch in a city like this,” Hermes observed.

  “They might have been thinking something of the sort when they designed it. A bad place for a riot, too. See, you could line up troops at one end of the city and sweep through the whole town. You could herd rioters down the side streets, separate them into little groups or crowd them into one place, wherever you want.”

  “It’s unnatural,” Hermes said.

  “I agree. I can see the advantages, though.”

  “All made of stone, too,” Hermes said.

  “Timber is scarce in Egypt. It’s comforting, knowing you aren’t likely to be incinerated while you sleep.”

  The people who thronged the streets were of all nations, but the bulk of them were native Egyptians. The rest were Greeks, Syrians, Jews, Sabaeans, Arabs, Galatians and people whose features and dress I did not recognize. There were Nubians and Ethiopians in every shade of black, most of them slaves but some traders. Everyone spoke Greek, but other languages formed a subcurrent beneath the predominant Greek tide, especially Egyptian. The Egyptian language actually sounds the way those hieroglyphs look. At every street corner there were mountebanks to be seen, dancing, tumbling and performing magic tricks. Trained animals went through their paces, and jugglers kept unlikely objects in the air with uncanny skill. Hermes wanted to gawk at all of these, but I tugged him past them, my mind set on greater matters.

  We could have entered the rear of the Museum complex from the Palace itself, but I preferred to get a feel of the city. One raised in a great city has a feel for cities, as a peasant has a feel for arable land and a sailor for the sea. I had grown up in Rome and had urban bones. These people were foreigners, but they were city-dwellers, and all such have certain things in common.

  My bones told me that this was a fat, happy, complacent populace. Whatever discontent there might be was minor. Had there been a riot or insurrection brewing, I would have known it. Alexandrians were known to riot from time to time, even killing or expelling a king or two, but these people were too busy making money or otherwise enjoying themselves to represent a threat. Civil discontent is always a menace in polyglot cities like Alexandria, where tribal antipathies sometimes override respect for law and authority. Not that Rome has place of pride in that respect. Our civil disorders tend to involve class rather than national divisions.

  “Don’t even think it, Hermes,” I said.

  “How do you know what I’m thinking?” he said, all wounded innocence. I knew when he said it that I was right.

  “You’re thinking: ‘Here’s a place where a presentable lad can fade into the population, and who’s to notice? Here I can pass myself off as a free man, and no one will know I was ever a slave.’ Isn’t that what you were thinking?”

  “Never!” he said vehemently.

  “Well, that is good to hear, Hermes, because there are many cruel, brutal men in this city who do nothing but look for runaways to haul back to their masters for the reward, or to sell off to new masters. Should you disappear some morning, I would only have to pass the word and you would be back before nightfall. This is a large city, but the accents and inflections of the Roman streets aren’t at all common here. So forget such fantasies and apply yourself to my service. I’ll free you one of these days.”

  “You’ve never trusted me,” he complained. I could understand why he thought so, since I delivered that same speech, with minor variations, every few days. One can never truly trust slaves, and some, like Hermes, are less trustworthy than others.

  The day was a pleasant one, as most are in Alexandria. The climate was not as ideal as that of Italy, but then, no place save Italy has such a climate. The throngs were lively and cheerful, and the scent of incense mixed with the pervasive smell of the sea. In most respects Alexandria was a more pleasantly aromatic city than Rome.

  Armed with my royal commission, I mounted the steps of the Museum. I wanted to pay another visit to the Temple, but on this morning I had more urgent business. I passed through the entrance and made my way past the lecture halls that resounded with the droning of the philosophers, down the long colonnade of the Peripatetics, back to the courtyard where Iphicrates’s marvelous canal lock sat forlornly, unattended. This, I thought, was a project that might not see completion for a while.

  I went into Iphicrates’s quarters, which had been tidied up. The blood had been scrubbed from the floor and a pair of secretaries were scribbling away, collating the writings and drawings on a large desk. A third man wandered around the study with a puzzled expression.

  “Is the inventory nearly complete?” I asked.

  “Almost, Senator,” said the elder of the two secretaries. “We will soon be finished with the drawings. This”—he indicated a papyrus lying on the table—“is the list of his writings and this”—he pointed to another—“is a listing of all the objects we found in these quarters.” I began to study the latter. It would have helped immeasurably to know what had been there before the murder, but this was better than nothing.

  “And what might be your business?” I asked the third man. He was a Greek with a long nose and a bald head, dressed like the Librarians I had seen.

  “I am Eumenes of Eleusis, Librarian of the Pergamese Books. I came here to find a scroll that the late Iphicrates
borrowed from my department.”

  “I see. Was it by any chance a large scroll, of Pergamese skin-paper, with olive wood rollers, the handles stained vermilion?”

  He looked surprised. “Why, yes, Senator. Have you seen it? I’ve been looking all morning.”

  “What is the subject of this book?” I asked, ignoring his question.

  “Forgive me, Senator, but Iphicrates borrowed this book in strictest confidence.”

  “Iphicrates is dead, and I have been appointed to investigate. Now tell me—”

  “Who are you?” interrupted someone from the doorway. Annoyed, I turned to see two men standing in the doorway. The one who had spoken I did not recognize. Just behind him stood a man who looked familiar.

  I drew myself up. “I am Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus and I am investigating the murder of Iphicrates of Chios. Who might you be?”

  The man came into the room, followed by the other. Now I remembered where I had seen that one. He was the hatchet-faced officer who had shooed me away from the parade ground.

  “I am Achillas,” said the first man, “Commander of the Royal Army.” He wore studded boots and a rich, red tunic. Over that he wore one of those leather strap-harnesses that military men sometimes wear to give the appearance of armor, without having to endure its weight. His hair and beard were trimmed close all around.

  “And I’m Memnon, Commander of the Macedonian Barracks,” said the other. “We’ve met.” They were both Macedonians, a nation of men who simply use their names, without the of-this-or-that the Greeks delight in so.

  “So we have. And what are you two doing here?”

  “By whose authority do you investigate?” demanded Achillas.

  I was ready for that one.

  “The king’s,” I said, holding out my sealed document. He studied it through slitted eyes.

  “That damned, drunken fool,” he muttered. Then, to me: “What is your interest in this matter, Roman?”

  “Rome is the friend of Egypt,” I said, “and we are always pleased to render aid to King Ptolemy, Friend and Ally of the Roman People.” I always loved this sort of diplomatic hypocrisy. “I am known in Rome as a skillful investigator of criminal acts, and I am more than happy to place my expertise at the service of the king.” I refolded my commission and placed it inside my tunic, leaving my hand there for the nonce. Memnon pushed forward, glaring at me. He wore cuirass and greaves, but no helmet. I was intensely aware of the short sword belted at his side.