Furies

by D. L. Johnstone

  And there lay Iovinus. His face was grey in pallor and slightly bloated now. The scent of rot and the noisy buzz of flies filled the airless little room.

  “Bring the torch closer.” The flickering torchlight highlighted the gauntness of Iovinus’ face, the sharp edges of his cheekbones. The purplish tip of his tongue protruded partially from his mouth. As Aculeo took a queasy closer look, he noticed the right cheek was indeed shadowed with bruising, while the left side of his jaw was quite swollen. “See now?” she said. “His jaw was fractured. His left cheekbone as well I think.”

  “That could have happened when we cut him down. He fell on the floor. And one of my associates may have kicked him once or twice.”

  “Then his injuries wouldn’t be so apparent. As it is, he had barely enough time to swell and bruise before his death. It doesn’t happen afterwards. Do you know who might have done this to him?”

  “Yes. I’d have beaten him myself if I’d had the chance.” Still, Aculeo was puzzled by this news.

  “Hm,” Sekhet said. She took a sharp knife from her satchel and cut open Iovinus’ tunic. His ribs were edged in shadows, his belly distended, tinted greenish yellow. She probed her fingers around his abdomen, eyes closed, humming to herself. “He was ill. Wasting disease.”

  “Oh?”

  His groin was bound with strips of cloth dark with congealed blood. Sekhet cut them off and delicately peeled them off the man’s skin. “Ah,” she said when she was done. “He was castrated recently.”

  “Castrated?” Aculeo asked, feeling ill.

  Sekhet said nothing as she reached her gnarled fingers beneath the back of Iovinus’ long, skinny neck, probing, then turned his lifeless head side to side with her other hand. “His neck’s not broken, so death by hanging would have been from strangulation.” She said it quite easily, as though she were discussing the weather. “Were his hands bound?”

  “No,” Aculeo said, turning away – he felt like he’d be sick any moment. Like most civilized men, he’d never understood the fellahins’ obsession with death. Sekhet eased Iovinus’ eyelids open with her thumbs and made another tsk tsk sound.

  “What?” Aculeo asked.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  He glanced reluctantly into Iovinus’ eyes. “What should I be looking for?”

  “When someone is strangled, the tiny vessels in their eyes will burst like flooded dams and they will appear shot with blood. That’s not the case with you, though, is it Roman?” Iovinus’ lifeless eyes remained open, unseeing, like the painted eyes of a statue. “This tells us he was already dead before the rope was slung around his neck. Which means that hanging himself would have been quite an impressive feat.”

  “You’re saying that someone castrated him, then beat him to death and finally hanged him?” Aculeo asked dubiously. Sekhet nodded. “But why hang a man who’s already dead?”

  “I know not. From what you told me, the man had his enemies.”

  “More of them than friends these days.”

  “Hm. Was anything stolen from him?”

  “Some tablets. I don’t know what else. Oh, we found this on him.” Aculeo dug around in his satchel for the little silver box and handed it to her. “Incense.”

  Sekhet opened the box, carefully sniffed the contents, then pinched off a bit and touched it to her tongue. She made a bitter face. “It’s not incense, it’s opium.”

  “What?”

  “Opium. It’s made from the sap of Persian poppies. It’s used to bring pleasure and sleep, and relieve pain. It’s also extraordinarily expensive.”

  “Why leave it on him then? Even if the murderer didn’t know the value of the contents, the box alone would have fetched a few sesterces.”

  “Robbery of that sort may not have been the goal,” the healer said with a shrug. “I should also be curious where your friend may have gotten the opium from in the first place. It’s not an easy thing to acquire.” She pulled the shroud back up to Iovinus’ chin. “So, I think he’s told us all he can. More questions than answers I’m afraid, but that can’t be helped. Would you care to say your last farewells?”

  Aculeo gazed into the dead man’s eyes one last time, open wide as though in wonder, then shook his head. “I’ve nothing to say that might give him rest. The truth of what happened died with him.” He hesitated before placing an as for Charon in Iovinus’ mouth.

  As they made their way back into the main chamber, Aculeo paused outside the open door of a room where a number of other bodies had been laid out on wooden tables, covered in canvas shrouds. “It’s a common chamber,” the healer said. “It contains the bodies brought here for ordinary funerals over the past few days.”

  “A woman was found murdered in the Sarapeion yesterday.”

  “Oh? You seem better acquainted with our newest residents than I am. Shall we examine her as well?”

  “She was just some nameless porne. Let’s go.”

  But Sekhet had already headed into the carved stone chamber. Aculeo reluctantly followed. As anxious as he was to leave this wretched place, he wasn’t about to head back through the dark passageways on his own.

  Sekhet used her torch to light the oil lamps set about the room then approached the nearest table and flipped back the canvas shroud. It was an old man, his skin sallow, ripe with the stench of death. The next body was a fellahin youth with bluish-tinged lips. “Drowning,” she muttered. Then a woman, her face contorted in pain. “Breech birth.”

  Then she pulled back the shroud of the next table. “That’s her,” Aculeo said. Sekhet eased the shroud off the woman’s body. Her skin was the colour of tallow and her belly had already begun to bloat. Tiny black flies crawled around her eyes, mouth and nostrils. Aculeo shuddered, looking away.

  Sekhet stroked the girl’s cheek. “Poor thing,” she said. “How did you come across her?”

  “Iovinus had patronized a porne named Neaera. I’d hoped she could tell me his whereabouts through her but she disappeared a few days ago. When I heard a dead woman had been found in the Sarapeion I’d thought it might be her.”

  “And?” Aculeo shook his head. The old woman pursed her lips, then took her knife and carefully cut away the girl’s soiled chiton, exposing her naked body, thin and malnourished, with lean, ropey muscles and breasts small as figs. She examined the cut that ran the length of her forearm. “Fairly shallow, just enough to break the skin,” she mused. “And done just prior to her death, barely enough time to scab.”

  A thin braid of frayed yellow jute cord was knotted around one of the girl’s wrists. “Someone tied her up,” Aculeo said.

  The old woman examined the girl’s wrists, both of which were marked with the dim red imprint of rope, then took the cord firmly in her hands and yanked – it snapped easily. “Yes. Not with this though.” She inspected the girl’s face, looked in her eyes, her ears, her nose. “The side of her face is bruised, she was struck recently.” She opened her mouth then, prying open the jaws. “Her teeth are worn flat along the surfaces. Common in the poorer classes – all the sand and mill-grist that gets into cheap bread. Bring that lamp closer.”

  A gaping wound ran down the side of her abdomen beneath the ribs, caked with dark blood. The girl’s hips were narrow as an adolescent boy’s, her legs long and skinny. Her body was still locked in the pose it had been in when they’d found her, with one arm raised over her head as if to ward off a blow, the other crooked before her, her hand covering the dark triangle between her legs, giving the impression of modesty.

  “Pour some water into that basin,” Sekhet said. Aculeo did so and watched as the healer dabbed a wet rag at the blood encrusted wound on the girl’s abdomen. “So deep!” she said, pressing along the edges of the gash with a long metal instrument. “The wound’s too short for a knife, too wide for a javelin. A sword perhaps.” Sekhet carefully rolled the body onto its stomach, waving away the little flies that rose in an angry, buzzing cloud.

  Several raised, pinkish scars criss-c
rossed the girl’s back and shoulders. “Whip marks – not recent.” The healer rolled her onto her back again, examined her hands which were caked in pinkish-grey dirt and blood. She began to clean them. Her nails were broken to the quick, her fingertips covered in tiny cuts. As though she’d been clawing at something, Aculeo thought. Or someone. “Perhaps she was defending herself from her attacker,” he said.

  “No,” Sekhet mused. “If she was that close to her attacker there would be cuts and bruises on her hands or arms as well. Yet only her fingertips are injured. She was digging at the earth with her bare hands.”

  Aculeo looked away again as the healer examined the girl’s pelvis. “She was raped recently,” she said with a sigh. “She shows no signs of the diseases pornes tend to get.” She examined the girl’s legs, clicking her tongue. Her buttocks and the backs of her thighs were covered with purplish-yellow bruises, her calves and ankles streaked with dried pinkish-grey mud. “An unusual colour,” she mused. “Not from around here.” Sekhet washed the girl’s calves, running a fingertip along a pale ridge that ran half the length of one leg. “Guinea worm. It lives in the shallows of rivers and lays its eggs in small cuts in the feet and toes. It’s a common enough thing with river slaves.” The soles of the girl’s feet were like thick sandal leather, the toenails brown, cracked and broken, the tops of the toes cut and raw.

  “You think she was a porne?”

  “More likely a working slave. And yet she was murdered near the Sarapeion in the middle of the night, when the only other visitors are supplicants and pornes.”

  “I found this in her hand,” Aculeo recalled, taking the tiny gold earring from his coin purse and handing it to the healer.

  Sekhet turned it over in her hand, pensive. “Hardly the sort of thing to be worn by a river slave. She must have stolen it. You’ll know more about her if you learn who she stole it from. So, the more we know, the more questions we have. What shall we do with her body?”

  “The slaves who brought her must have given you money for her burial.”

  “If she’s in the common room then we got barely enough to cover her with a shovelful of bitumite and dropped in a pit,” Sekhet said with a weary sigh, stroking the girl’s small, pale face. “I suppose little more could be expected for a nameless slave. Murdered and tossed aside like garbage, her death unmarked, her soul unable to reach the afterlife. A shame, when for just one more sesterce we could take care of her properly.”

  “You are a thieving old crone, aren’t you? Here,” Aculeo said, tossing her the coin. The girl’s shade won’t linger in the Harbour of Souls to haunt me at least, he thought irritably.

  Sekhet nodded and placed a twisted hand over the girl’s eyes, then closed her own. “We will shed our sorrows and put away our mourning, O Isis, and by your foresight you will enclose our days with wholesome health and beneficial wealth. On this day, and whatever days shall be born from this night hence, we shall direct our troubled thoughts to your commands alone.”

  Gellius answered the door, blinking in the dim morning light, eyes caked with sleep. “Aculeo,” he said in surprise. “Is everything alright?”

  “Yes.”

  “You took care of Iovinus?”

  “Yes, I …”

  “What the fuck does he want?” Trogus growled from the shadows, then began coughing, a wretched interminable sound. Gellius put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. It was painful to witness Trogus in this state, especially given he’d always been such a hale, cheerful man. To see him now so bitter and sickly was truly dreadful.

  “There’s a healer I know of …” Aculeo offered.

  “Don’t you get it yet?” Trogus cried between coughs. “I want nothing … nothing to do with you, you … son-of-a-bitch … just leave me be!”

  Aculeo held up a round loaf of fresh hard bread, an amphora of wine, a small block of fresh cheese and a few dried plums. He said nothing as he handed it to Gellius. “I’ll leave this here for when you’re hungry.”

  “D’you expect gratitude for your charity now?” Trogus said angrily.

  “It’s not necessary …”

  “Nor is it deserved. Though I’m sure it lessens the guilt poisoning your heart.”

  “What guilt? It’s hardly my fault you’re here. I’ve fallen almost as far as you, as have dozens of others.”

  “And whose fault is it?” Trogus said, trying to restrain a cough. “Iovinus’?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Blame a dead man, why not? Just do me a favour, Aculeo – stay out of my sight. I detest your sympathy and I don’t really need the reminder of all I’ve left behind. Just go fuck yourself.” With that, the man pulled his blanket up over his shoulders and rolled to face the wall, his shoulders hitching up and down with each wretched cough.

  Gellius touched Aculeo’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  The two men threaded their way through the morning crowds that thronged and chattered along the Canopic Way. The eastern harbour had a fine view of the magnificent palace grounds, nestled within the Royal Harbour where elegant skiffs and great triremes sat at anchor. Treacherous shoals blocked all but one entrance, but the harbour was deep enough to allow large ships to moor right up against the palace steps. Beta, the palace district, sprawled across close to a quarter of the city with its winding porticoes, lush groves, and grandiose public buildings. Once home to the great Greek kings and queens of Egypt, from Ptolemy Soter to Cleopatra VII herself, the magnificent old buildings now served as the headquarters for the Roman Prefect Flaccus and the various officials who ran the city, as well as the Library, the Museion and the Gymnasion.

  The grounds of the Museion were just ahead. The heavy fragrance of flowering acacia hung in the air, along with the softly clattering sound of leaves from a grove of date palms growing outside the walls. A colossal pair of Aswan marble statues of some ancient Egyptian kings and queens stood solemn-faced on either side of a towering marble archway.

  “Everything else may have been taken from us, but we can still appreciate beauty,” Gellius said gently, taking a seat on a marble bench beneath a shaded portico. “This truly is the loveliest place in the entire city. It seems so different now, though I suppose it’s really me who’s different. I can reflect on what I once had at least.”

  “You sound like you’ve already given up,” Aculeo said, sitting next to his old friend.

  Gellius said nothing for a while. Then he turned to Aculeo, taking his hands in his, squeezing tight. “I pray you forgive dear Trogus. The moneylenders are after us, you see. We’re so terribly in debt, I fear we can never be free again. Yet Trogus is far too proud to ask anyone for help. And I can’t go against his wishes. I won’t.”

  “But what will you do?”

  “We want to go back to Rome but we can barely afford food and a roof over our heads much less ship’s passage.”

  “You know I’d help you if I could,” Aculeo said. “It’s just …”

  “It’s alright – what would be the point?” Gellius said. “Leave here so we could be paupers in another place? No. Besides, Trogus is too ill to travel.”

  “And yet he refuses to see a healer.”

  “I’ll try to get him to see reason. In the meantime we’ll just hide as long as we can, as long as we can afford the rent, which isn’t much longer I fear.”

  “Stay with me then,” Aculeo said. “What little room I have is yours.”

  Gellius smiled. “Thank you, but I doubt Trogus would accept your gracious hospitality, however well intended. No, we’ll just stick it out where we are and try to leave once he’s feeling better. In the meantime, there’s still a chance we can recover something of what Iovinus stole from us.”

  “A fading chance I fear,” Aculeo said. “I’ve some bad news. Iovinus didn’t take his own life. He was murdered.”

  Gellius gave a sharp intake of breath and his eyes narrowed warily. “What are you talking about?” And Aculeo recounted wh
at he’d learned from his visit to Sekhet. “Shit!” Gellius said, slumping down in the marble bench, pounding his fists against his head. “Shit shit shit! Why? Who would have done such a thing?”

  “I can think of several names off the top of my head who would have gladly done the deed once the word got out of where to find him.”

  “This is a disaster! What shall we do? What of his porne, Neaera? Any luck finding her?”

  “Not yet. I doubt it was a coincidence she disappeared within days of Iovinus’ murder though.”

  “Perhaps not.” Aculeo pulled the portrait of the three women near Pharos and unrolled it on the bench between them. “What’s that?” Gellius asked.

  “I took it from Neaera’s flat.” He pointed to the woman in the middle of the portrait with the cameo necklace about her pale throat. “This is Neaera.”

  “She’s lovely,” Gellius said.

  “Do you recognize the other two?”

  Gellius examined the portrait more thoroughly, then tapped the dark-haired woman standing to Neaera’s right. “This one I know,” he said, stroking her cheek, a smile curving his lips. “Calisto. I’m sure of it. It’s rather a fine likeness.”

  “Who is she? Another porne?”

  “Hardly. She’s a hetaira, and an expensive one at that. She entertains at only the finest symposia. I don’t attend those much myself these days. My social life is rather limited of late.”

  “As is mine,” Aculeo said. “Where could I find her?”

  Dotted about the Beta Quarter, like seeds on a crust of bread, were a number of exclusive little demes where the city’s wealthiest citizens resided, including Aculeo and his family only a few months before – it felt so terribly long ago to him now. The winding streets of Olympia were carved into a hill above the central city area. From the top of the hill one could see the Sarapeion to the southwest and the Lighthouse in the northern harbour.