The Beacon at Alexandria

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Festinus stared at him, then at the purple hanging on the couch. Once I had pointed out what the cloth was, it was hard to imagine it as anything other than a chariot frontal. If my father had been less panic-stricken, he could have pointed it out himself. Though perhaps no one would have believed him while he was threatened with the rack.

  “Go fetch the groom,” Festinus ordered his men, still staring at Father. “Take him off and ask him, under torture, whether this is true. And arrest that charioteer — what’s his name?”

  Father winced. “Daniel.”

  “Arrest him, and ask him about the purple cloth found in Theodoros’ possession. Give him a taste of the rack — not too much, he’s not charged with anything. And check this story with those councilors.”

  The officials nodded, bowed, and went out. Festinus bared his teeth at Father — the return of the amused smile. “A chariot frontal. Well.”“ He laughed, throwing back his head, then stopped abruptly. “How did you get the purple?”

  Father climbed slowly to his feet, stared at Festinus, then sat down on the couch. “I wrote letters to the factory at Tyre, telling the officials there what I wanted it for, and it was given to me in the usual way. They should have the letters, or at least remember about them. I paid thirty solidi for it.”

  Another soldier came into the room and saluted. “We have finished the search, Your Excellency.”

  “Good. Any letters, any evidence of sorcery?”

  “We’re taking the letters back, sir, to go through them at leisure, but nothing stands out. There’s a book on astrology.”

  “What?”

  The soldier consulted a note. “It’s called Phenomena, Excellency. It’s by a sorcerer called Aratos.”

  Festinus snorted with disgust. “You idiot. Everyone owns that book; it’s a classic poem. Nothing else?”

  “Nothing, Your Excellency,” said the soldier, disappointed.

  “Then tell your men to take a few of the slaves for questioning and go,” said Festinus. “And don’t be too rough on the slaves; it appears that Theodoros is probably innocent, after all.” He bared his teeth at Father again, then glanced round the room. “We will need to question a few more of your slaves, most excellent Theodoros,” he said, polite now. “Your steward, your private secretary, one or two others . . .” He glanced round again, and his eyes fell on Maia, who was standing behind Father and fanning him. It happened that she was looking at Festinus, not at the floor, and no one could have mistaken the look of hatred on her face. Festinus smiled. “And that woman there.”

  Maia said nothing. One of the soldiers came over and tied her hands, and she did not resist. Johannes the steward began sobbing again. He was an old man; he’d been steward for my grandfather. He had a lot of money stashed away somewhere, and Father was always saying that he’d free Johannes and let him retire and give the management of the house to Johannes’ son. Well, he might have to do it now.

  Father cleared his throat. “You . . . you won’t do anything extreme to them, excellent Festinus?”

  Another baring of teeth. “Nothing that they won’t recover from in three days’ time. You won’t need to claim compensation on them — unless we discover anything. If not, we will return them to you tomorrow.”

  “Maia,” I said.

  She looked up at me, her sharp face haggard, and she managed to smile. “Never mind, my dear,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”

  Festinus and his party left, taking with them all my father’s correspondence, all his accounts, the purple cloth, and Maia, Johannes, Philoxenos, two stableboys, three housemaids, and my father’s secretary, Georgos. I would have wept for Philoxenos and Johannes and the others, only I couldn’t think of any of them but Maia.

  From the front of the house we had a view over the whole of Ephesus, down the street past the theater into the marketplace and on to the blue of the harbor. I watched from one of the windows as the party wound down the street. Some of the soldiers went first, then the governor in his litter, then the officials on foot, followed by the rest of the soldiers with the slaves. Maia was walking very straight and proud, but she looked tiny among all the others. I wondered if the soldier who’d been rude to her was the one next to her. I wondered what they’d do to her. They always torture slaves when they question them; they say that otherwise they won’t get the truth. I don’t know how they expect to get truth by torturing people.

  I went back to my room. I’d shared it with Maia since she came to the house: there was her bed beside mine, and her little clothes chest beside my big one. I sat down on her bed and cried, then curled up on the bed and cried harder, holding the dented impression of her body there as I wanted to hold her. She’d always comforted me when I was hurt. Now she would be the one to suffer, and no one would comfort her. I wished that I had clung to her and cried — but what would have been the point? She’d been trying very hard to keep her dignity, and no one else would have paid any attention to me.

  After a little while I noticed that I was sitting on a lump of something. It was my leather cosmetics purse — or, to be more accurate, it was the thrush.

  I sat up, stopped crying, and took the bird out. It was cold now, and going stiff; its eyes seemed still more shrunken. What would happen if I did mutilate the body? If I prayed to Hekate, Tisiphone, and the Evil One, and worked at it with hate and the right words, would Festinus the governor crumple up and die? I tried to picture him dying of some painful disease, his fat red face beaded with sweat, his eyes glazed and bloody. But the picture didn’t comfort me at all; his pain wouldn’t stop Maia’s.

  In the oath of Hippocrates a doctor promises to use his art to heal the sick, and to abstain from harming anyone. I supposed that this should extend to using other arts to harm anyone. Anyhow, I didn’t know how to work black magic.

  I got up, washed my face, then went and dropped the bird in the First Court, beside the fountain.

  When I went back to the room, Thorion was there, sitting on Maia’s bed and holding her favorite icon, a picture of Mary the Godbearer and her Son which ordinarily stood in a niche by the window. He’d been crying too. I sat down beside him and we hugged each other.

  “Festinus won’t dare hurt her badly,” Thorion said after a minute. “He knows that Father’s not guilty. He’s done this out of sheer love of evil.”

  He too was thinking only of Maia. It was odd: we were always laughing at Maia, making fun of her love of propriety, cringing before her urge to show off — we never said anything about loving her. But she was our mother, much more than that “perfect lady” who had disappeared after I was born, and there was no one on earth we loved more.

  “It was clever spotting that chariot frontal,” Thorion said after another minute. “Had Father told you about it? I thought not.”

  “He’d have managed to explain it eventually,” I said.

  “They wouldn’t have trusted it, eventually,” said Thorion. “He had to say it right away. He should have explained it before they found it. I wish he were stronger. I wouldn’t have let that bastard get away with it.” His hands twisted into fists as he said this, and he scowled at the icon. “That jumped-up nobody from Gaul! He’s only here because he went to school with the prefect Maximinus! I’d like to flog him like the slave he is!”

  There was nothing I could say to that.

  The following afternoon Festinus sent a messenger to say we could have our slaves back. Father at once sent two carriages to fetch them. They had all been racked — tied on their backs along a post with lead weights fastened to their arms and legs. They had also been beaten with rods; one of the housemaids had been repeatedly raped. Philoxenos, who had been questioned hardest, had been torn on the chest and thighs with the implement they call the fork, and couldn’t stand. Father had all of them put to bed and sent for his own doctor to attend to them.

  While the doctor was attending to the others (he looked after Philoxenos first), I did what I could to make Maia comfortable. Thorion an
d I helped her out of the carriage, and she staggered along to our room with each of us holding one of her arms. She hugged us both when she saw us, but winced when we hugged her back. Some muscles had been torn on the rack, and the joints of her shoulders were swollen. The marks of the rod were all over her arms and across her chest, and one long bloody slash lay across her face.

  “That needs to be washed with warm water,” I told her. “And bandaged with white cerate. Would you like some hot compresses for your poor shoulders?”

  Maia smiled at me, leaning back on her bed. “My little doctor,” she said. “Well, for once I don’t mind you playing Hippocrates. I would like some hot compresses. Later on I would like a bath, but just now . . . just now I don’t want to move.”

  I went down to the kitchens and got some hot compresses; the house slaves were warming up a lot of them on top of the stove, getting them ready for all the slaves who had been tortured. I took three for Maia and wrapped them in a blanket to keep them warm. They were made from barley mixed with vinegar and sewn up in little leather bags; these stay hot for a long time, and are very soothing for sore joints. I put one on each of Maia’s shoulders and one under her back, wrapped in a piece of cloth so it wouldn’t be too hot for her.

  “Festinus will regret this,” Thorion said.

  Maia snorted. “Don’t waste your time on him, my dear! He isn’t worth your attention.” She thought for a moment, then added, “And our Lord Christ said that we must forgive our enemies and pray for those who injure us.”

  “How can you forgive an evil man who hasn’t repented in the least? He’s pleased about what he’s done to our house, pleased that he frightened the master and tortured the slaves!”

  “Well,” said Maia practically, “as a Christian nobleman, you can at least not seek revenge. It isn’t proper for you to talk in that barbarian fashion. And Festinus is a nobody, and doesn’t deserve a gentleman’s hatred.”

  “Maia,” I said, “I love you.” Only she could have coupled pure Christian forgiveness with such snobbery.

  Of course Festinus had discovered nothing except that Father was very fond of chariot racing, and that the purple cloth was exactly what he had said it was. The slaves who had been tortured were all back on their feet within three days, even Philoxenos, though the housemaid who had been raped kept having nightmares and woke up screaming several times a night. In the end Father sent her out to one of the farms to keep house there, hoping that the quiet of the countryside would settle her nerves again. He did free Johannes, and he talked about freeing Philoxenos, but didn’t. Philoxenos was worth too much. Because of Father’s enthusiasm for racing, Philoxenos was one of the more important slaves in our household. He’d been born into the family, the son of my grandfather’s chief groom, and he bossed all the stable lads and gardeners about. People sometimes think that if you’re the child of a wealthy father, you just snap your fingers and point at what you want your slaves to do, and they go do it. But slaves run a house just as much as their owners do, and a prudent master has to treat them reasonably. Father would have liked to free Philoxenos, but didn’t feel wealthy enough. He always said that we weren’t that wealthy, not by the standards they use in the West. He owned just over two hundred slaves, and most of them lived on his estates and worked the land; only forty were in our house in town at any one time. It would cost him a lot to buy a groom as good as Philoxenos, if he could manage it at all, and he’d still feel obliged to spend more to set Philoxenos up in business. Philoxenos was eager to strike up on his own; he wanted to breed and train horses in the country. In the end Father gave him a brood mare instead, to contribute to this stud farm. I didn’t think that was much compensation for the torture Philoxenos had endured because of his master’s vanity, but Philoxenos was pleased with it.

  Father’s chariot driver, Daniel, had been tortured as well, but not badly. We were lucky that there had been the earlier scare over sorcery in Ephesus: Festinus’ men found no evidence of black magic in Daniel’s house. I was fairly sure that this was because Daniel had hidden his books and tablets somewhere else, but he played the unfamiliar role of outraged innocent with some relish, and Father had to give him a lot of money to soothe his feelings.

  But we escaped lightly. All over the East men were being put to death for having so much as heard of the conspiracy, and nowhere more so than in Ephesus under Festinus. The philosopher Maximus, who had been the emperor Julian’s most trusted adviser, was beheaded in the hippodrome before the races because he had heard the oracular verses about Valens’ successor. So instead of my father’s surprise parade, we had Festinus’ surprise execution. Festinus had the poor man marched into the middle of the ring, then stood up in his place of honor and made a speech about the wickedness of disloyalty. Maximus had no chance to say anything. He stood there, bareheaded in the hot sun, wearing only a brown tunic, looking old and ill. The city had been proud of him, and was horrified. When Festinus finished speaking, his guards threw Maximus to his knees, and the executioner brought down the sword. His blood splashed widely over the ground, and many took it to be an omen.

  If so, it was an accurate one. All summer people were being accused, dragged into court, tortured, and executed on the flimsiest grounds. One merchant had his business papers confiscated on a charge of peculation. Among these was discovered a horoscope cast for one Valens. The merchant said that this was his brother, who had died several years before; he offered to get proof of this assertion from the astrologer who had cast the horoscope and from people who had known his brother. He wasn’t given any chance to do so, but was sent off to the rack and the executioner’s sword. There was a silly old woman who used to try to cure fevers with a charm (as every doctor knows, an unreliable method): she was accused of witchcraft and executed after she cured a slave of Festinus’, with Festinus’ own knowledge. And these cases were only a few of many.

  And Festinus was rewarded for his loyalty to His Sacred Majesty, the most religious Augustus, our Lord Valens. In the autumn it became known that his term of office would be extended for another year, and he was given a hundred-year lease on some crown lands in the Cayster Valley, which had formerly been managed by one of his victims. Such lands are much sought after, because they are untaxed. And it was good land, too, rich and level.

  To celebrate his gains in wealth and position, Festinus gave a party to which he invited all the important men in Ephesus, including Father and Thorion. Everyone was too afraid of him to refuse. So Thorion put on his best cloak and tunic, let Maia brush his hair and pin his cloak — he’d got it crooked, she said — and set off, scowling. I wasn’t going, of course. I’d had my sixteenth birthday in late spring, but girls aren’t considered to be of age until they’re married, and don’t go out to dinner parties.

  If Thorion was scowling when he set out that afternoon, he looked like thunder when he came back that night. I heard the group come in and ran out into the First Court to see. Father just looked limp, and went straight to his room; Thorion came up to my room and told Maia and me all about it.

  “He thinks he’s a gentleman now!” Thorion said bitterly. “A gentleman and a landowner; he was talking of settling in Ephesus, when he’s done at court, and becoming a citizen!”

  “He’s nothing but a peasant,” said Maia. She was sitting on her chair by the window, spinning. It was dark, and we’d lit the lamps: the little room looked rich and warm. The white walls glowed golden in the lamplight; Maia’s icons smiled tenderly from the wall; Maia’s spindle whirred softly in her hands. From outside came the sound of the crickets singing and the rustle of trees in the courtyard. I’d been getting ready for bed when Thorion came in, and I sat on the bed in my tunic, hugging my knees; my cloak was folded up on top of the clothes chest, waiting to be cleaned. (It was white and green, with the inevitable purple stripe. Why does it have to be white for young girls? It’s impossible to keep anything white clean, and now I had some bloodstains on it from watching Philoxenos geld some of the young s
tallions.) Despite the angry summer, I felt that everything was back to normal at home. I didn’t want to think about Festinus, so I didn’t say anything — though I might have pointed out that we were hardly the ones to talk about peasants scrambling into noble homes and titles.

  “He’s a common thief!” said Thorion. “He was wearing a cloak with a purple stripe as wide as my hand” — he held out his big peasant hand, fingers outspread — “and he had a purple stripe down the tablecloth. I thought it looked familiar somehow, and about halfway through the first course I realized why. It was our purple, that cost us thirty solidi, which Festinus confiscated and never gave back!”

  “The dirty robber!” said Maia, shocked. “Did he say anything about it?”

  “No. I think he’d forgotten where it came from, he was so busy congratulating himself.” He paused to catch his breath, then went on in a peculiarly even tone. “And he talked about you, Charition.”

  “About me?” I asked, shocked in turn. Thorion nodded, looking more thunderous than ever. Maia gave a hiss of disapproval, and looked at me uneasily.

  “He asked Father, “How’s your pretty daughter?” “ said Thorion. “And when Father said that you were very well, Festinus told everyone there that you were a very pretty girl, and modest; and he said that when Father was under suspicion — just like that, “when His Excellency Theodoros was under suspicion” — you’d kept your head and pointed out proofs of innocence that everyone else was too excited to think of. And he asked Father your name; he said he’d forgotten it.”