The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  ‘You’ve never been outside Alexandria?’ said Flavia to Seth. ‘Not in your whole life?’

  Seth shook his head. ‘I’m a cosmopolitan. A city-dweller. I don’t do countryside. The only time I venture outside the city walls is when I visit our family tomb in the necropolis.’

  ‘Great Juno’s beard!’ muttered Jonathan.

  ‘And why should I leave?’ exclaimed Seth. ‘The city offers me everything I desire. Books, music, lectures and my synagogue. I can use a marble latrine instead of squatting behind a shrub. There’s fresh water beneath every house, enough for a bath every day. I don’t have to worry about scorpions, snakes and hippos. Why should I leave?’

  ‘He’s got a point,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘What about the treasure?’ asked Flavia.

  ‘For me the only treasure is books, and I have all I want in the chicken coop of the Muses.’

  ‘Then what about adventures?’ said Flavia. ‘And quests and mysteries?’

  ‘Plenty of those in the city.’

  ‘So you’ve never seen the pyramids?’

  ‘We have pyramids in Alexandria.’

  ‘But the great pyramid!’ spluttered Flavia. ‘It’s one of the Seven Sights.’

  ‘We have one of the Seven Sights in Alexandria. The lighthouse.’

  ‘But . . . but . . .’ Flavia was speechless.

  ‘My little cousin is afraid of the big bad countryside!’ said Nathan, appearing on silent bare feet from behind the sail. ‘All those nasty things that creep on sand and riverbank.’ He roughly tickled the back of Seth’s neck.

  ‘Get off!’ snarled Seth.

  ‘And that fiercely burning sun,’ continued Nathan, and added, ‘I suggest you either wear a turban or put your veil back on tomorrow. You’ll burn to a crisp out here in the real world.’

  ‘Be quiet, Nathan,’ growled Seth.

  ‘Better be nice to me. You’re sailing on my boat.’

  Seth glanced back at the limp sail. ‘We don’t seem to be sailing at the moment.’

  ‘That’s because the wind has died. Also, it will be dark in half an hour and the moon won’t rise for another half hour after that. In the meantime I thought I’d make us some dinner. You are hungry, aren’t you?’

  Lupus nodded and Jonathan’s stomach growled enthusiastically.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting company, so you’ll have to settle for what I’ve got.’

  Nathan moved to the bows of the boat, opened a wooden door beneath the storage area there and removed a small brazier. Using a flint and a handful of palm fibres he expertly lit a fire and stirred the coals. When the tinder had caught, he filled a copper beaker and a copper pan with water from the lake. Into the beaker went a handful of sage leaves. Into the pan went lentils and some salt from a papyrus twist. While the soup cooked and the tea brewed, Nathan laid out a striped rug on the flat bottom of the boat and set a bowl-shaped basket of dates at its centre. He added three discs of hard brown bread.

  ‘Half a loaf for each of you,’ he said, breaking one with effort. ‘And one for me because I’m doing all the work. Come. Sit on the rug,’ he said.

  Jonathan and his friends moved to sit in a circle around the dates and bread.

  Nathan reached out a hand to take a date but Seth stopped him with a gesture. He covered his head with his brown woman’s palla and uttered the prayer of thanksgiving in Hebrew.

  ‘Amen,’ said Jonathan and Nathan together at the end.

  ‘You’re Jewish!’ said Nathan in Aramaic, and looked at Flavia and Lupus. ‘All of you?’

  ‘Just me,’ said Jonathan, and then added in Latin. ‘My name is Jonathan ben Mordecai. These are my friends Flavia and Lupus. Flavia is Roman and Lupus is Greek,’ he added.

  ‘You’re a girl?’ Nathan stared at Flavia in astonishment.

  ‘Of course!’ she cried. ‘Don’t I look like a girl?’

  Nathan showed white teeth in a grin. ‘Yes, but wearing all that eye makeup, so do these two.’ He gestured at Seth and Jonathan.

  Flavia lifted her chin a fraction: ‘My name is Flavia Gemina, daughter of Marcus Flavius Geminus, sea captain.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Nathan.

  ‘Ahhh!’ cried Jonathan. ‘I almost broke a tooth on this bread. It’s hard as rock!’

  ‘It’s sun-bread,’ said Nathan. ‘You have to soak it in the soup.’ He reached over and took the soup pan by its wooden handle and placed it in the middle of their little circle. ‘Like this.’ He dipped his bread in the lentil soup, swished it around, then brought it dripping to his mouth.

  They all followed suit. Soaked in hot soup, the bread was edible, even tasty.

  The heat of the day had died and it was the perfect temperature. As the sky darkened the egrets, herons and geese were flying off to roost, until only the ducks were still with them.

  When they had finished and the soup pan was wiped clean, Nathan burped.

  ‘So,’ he said to them. ‘What are you three doing with my little cousin Seth? Did I hear you mention the word “treasure”?’

  Seth groaned and dropped his head. A moment later he raised it again and sighed. ‘We may as well tell him everything,’ he said. ‘He’ll find out anyway. Besides, if you can’t trust family, who can you trust?’

  ‘I will be a rich man!’ sang Seth’s cousin Nathan in a pleasant tenor voice. ‘Countless gold of Ophir and of Cush!’

  It was morning of the next day. A strong breeze had risen with the sun. They had left Lake Mareotis shortly after dawn and were now sailing on a tributary of the Nile.

  ‘Countless gold of Ophir!’ sang Nathan from the tiller. ‘Yadda, yadda, yadda dee dee dum.’ He had been singing since sunrise.

  ‘We don’t know there’s any treasure,’ observed Jonathan. ‘It’s only Lupus’s theory.’

  ‘No treasure!’ Nathan stopped singing and gazed at Jonathan in mock horror. ‘No countless gold of Ophir and of Cush? Only a theory?’

  ‘Well, I think there is gold,’ said Flavia. ‘I agree with Lupus: this is a Treasure Quest. Imagine Chryses, pecking away in the chicken coop of the Muses, a “man not a man”, scorned by many. Then someone brings in a tub of scrolls taken from a ship. Routine copying. One scroll has little pictures on it, so it is given to the scribe who specialises in hieroglyphs: Chryses. As soon as he sees it, he realises it’s a map showing the location of a fabulous treasure! Heart pounding, he takes it to his cubicle, gets his travelling bag and extra clothes and sets out immediately on the quest.’

  Nathan’s eyes lit up. ‘So you think the treasure is hidden inside the great pyramid? Many have searched it before, you know.’

  ‘Maybe the map tells of a secret chamber in the pyramid. One nobody has found.’

  ‘Assuming you’re right,’ said Jonathan, ‘do you think we’ll get there in time to find them? They have at least a day’s start.’

  ‘If we don’t find them there,’ said Flavia, ‘then maybe we’ll meet them coming back as we sail down the Nile. We’ll have to keep a sharp lookout.’

  ‘This river isn’t actually the Nile,’ said Nathan. ‘It’s one of the seven main tributaries that forms the Delta. We’ll join the proper Nile at a place called Heliopolis. Also, we’re not sailing down it. We’re sailing up.’

  Jonathan frowned. ‘But we’re going south. Away from Rome. Isn’t that down?’

  ‘No,’ said Nathan. ‘It’s up. When you sail away from the mouth of the river, towards the source, it’s called going up river. At the moment we’re travelling against the current and that’s why we can only sail when the wind is blowing.’

  ‘Luckily,’ said Seth, ‘the Lord decreed that the wind would always blow south and the current always flow north.’

  ‘Really?’ said Jonathan. ‘The wind always blows from the north?’

  ‘Not always,’ grinned Nathan. ‘But most of the time.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Flavia suddenly. ‘Where’s the latrine on this boat?’

  Nathan laughed
. ‘For us boys, it’s easy. And if we want to do the other, we just do it over the side of the boat. I suggest you do the same.’

  Flavia looked at him aghast. ‘What? Pull up my tunic and hang my bottom over the side? With all of you watching? Can’t we just go to the bank of the river?’

  Nathan gestured around. ‘As you can see, there are reed beds on either side of the river. We’ll have to wait until we find a place where you can disembark. You should have gone earlier.’

  ‘But I have to go now,’ said Flavia.

  Nathan shrugged. ‘I do have a chamber pot around here somewhere,’ he said. ‘But you won’t get any more privacy.’

  ‘I told you the city was better than the country,’ muttered Seth.

  Jonathan felt a wave of sympathy for Flavia. Her face was bright pink.

  ‘All right, then,’ she said at last. ‘Keep your backs to me and don’t turn around.’

  Jonathan grinned at Lupus and they obediently turned their backs to the port side.

  Jonathan felt the boat rock as Flavia walked to the side. Then he heard her breathing heavily. Presumably she was negotiating herself into position. Then silence.

  ‘I can’t do it while you’re all quiet,’ came her voice. ‘Sing. Or whistle. Do something!’

  Without hesitation, Seth began to sing one of the psalms in Hebrew: ‘I lift my eyes to the mountains,’ he sang. ‘Where does my help come from?’ He had a wonderful deep voice and after a moment Nathan and Jonathan joined in. ‘My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth,’ they sang. Lupus patted the beat on his knees.

  When they finished the song, Jonathan said. ‘Can we turn around yet?’

  ‘Just a moment,’ came Flavia’s voice.

  ‘I wouldn’t hang your rear end over the boat for too long,’ remarked Nathan. ‘Those reed-beds are a favourite haunt of crocodiles.’

  Behind them came a squeal and a splash.

  Flavia had fallen into the river.

  Jonathan and the others ran to the side and pulled a spluttering Flavia out of the water.

  ‘Flavia!’ cried Jonathan. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh, Pollux! My sandal fell in the river.’ Flavia pulled a slimy strand of duckweed from her hair.

  Lupus grunted and pointed to something floating downstream. Nathan hurried to the stern, grasped his punt pole and fished out the dripping sandal. Meanwhile, Lupus had found a rough brown blanket in one of the little cupboards beneath the bench which ran around the inside of the boat’s hull.

  ‘Thanks, Lupus,’ said Jonathan, and to Flavia: ‘Here. Wrap yourself in this.’

  Flavia pulled the blanket round her and scowled up at their concerned faces. Then she burst out laughing. ‘At least I finished doing what I had to do,’ she said, when their laughter subsided.

  Nathan bowed and extended a dripping object. ‘Your sandal, Princess Rhodopis, has captured my heart.’

  ‘Rhodopis?’

  ‘She was a rich and beautiful girl from Naucratis, a town not far from here. An eagle snatched her gilded sandal from one of her slave-girls and dropped it hundreds of miles away, right into the lap of pharaoh. After one glance at the enchanting object, he vowed to find its owner and make her his queen.’ Nathan looked at Flavia with his dark eyes. ‘And so he did.’

  ‘Stop flirting with the child, Nathan,’ growled Seth. ‘It’s not seemly.’

  Flavia felt her face growing hot so she turned and pretended to look out over the smooth surface of the river, opalescent under the pink and blue sky of dusk. ‘Are there really crocodiles in there?’ she murmured.

  ‘Not so many this far north,’ admitted Nathan. ‘I was just teasing you.’

  ‘Aaaah!’ she squealed, as a quacking duck came flapping out of the reeds and across the water.

  ‘Look out, Flavia!’ said Jonathan with a grin. ‘It’s a duck!’

  Lupus guffawed.

  ‘Actually,’ said Nathan, ‘some Egyptians are very afraid of ducks. They believe they have demons which will possess you if they follow you into a tomb.’

  ‘Superstitious pagans,’ muttered Seth.

  Jonathan grinned at Flavia. ‘Better watch out for those evil ducks!’

  Flavia sat on the bench and dried her legs with the blanket. ‘I’m not afraid of ducks,’ she said. ‘But I have good reason to be frightened of crocodiles.’

  ‘What is this reason?’ said Nathan, and winked at Jonathan.

  ‘I had to face one last year in the big new amphitheatre at Rome. The arena was flooded and I was in a boat with some other girls. We were supposed to be nymphs,’ she added. ‘But then they released some hungry crocs and hippos, and sank the boat we were in.’ She shuddered.

  ‘Master of the Universe!’ exclaimed Seth and Nathan together.

  ‘I was nearly eaten by a lion,’ said Jonathan. ‘And Lupus exposed a plot against the Emperor.’

  Nathan looked from one to the other. ‘Who are you children?’

  ‘We’re detectives,’ said Flavia firmly. ‘We solve mysteries. And the mystery we’re trying to solve now is what treasure Chryses is after and whether Nubia is still with him.’

  ‘Wake up, Nubia. We’ve arrived.’

  Nubia opened her eyes to see a good-looking youth in a cream tunic smiling down at her. He had slanting grey-green eyes, honey-coloured skin and straight dark eyebrows beneath a small white turban. Behind him the sky was vivid orange. There was a strong smell of sweet green fodder.

  Nubia had been dreaming of Ostia. It took her a moment to remember where she was and what had happened. Her heart sank as it all came flooding back.

  She had been shipwrecked in Egypt.

  Now she was travelling with a young man called Chryses, riding in a donkey cart full of sweet-smelling clover. He had found her wandering the beach the morning after the shipwreck and he had taken her to the Temple of Neptune to fulfil her vow. When Nubia told him she wanted to go home, he had offered to travel with her. He said he had been planning a trip to the Land of Nubia for some time, in order to collect an inheritance. He suggested that the gods had brought them together for this purpose. Nubia agreed. As Neptune had provided the dolphin, so he must have provided this travelling companion.

  Also, something about the youth’s laughing eyes and soft voice made her trust him. Nubia’s eyes welled with tears at his kindness and at the overwhelming ache for her lost friends.

  ‘We’re here,’ said Chryses gently: ‘And it’s later than I hoped. The sun has set.’

  Nubia sat up on the soft bed of clover and blinked back tears. Beyond Chryses, she saw an undulating plain of stony ground with jagged mountains silhouetted against a copper sky. Her head felt oddly cool and light and as she reached up to touch it, she remembered that the priest had cut off her hair and that she was pretending to be a boy.

  ‘Look behind you,’ said Chryses.

  Nubia turned and gasped. Rearing up above her, and blocking out half the sky, was a massive pyramid, black against the fiery sunset.

  ‘Great Neptune’s beard!’ she exclaimed.

  Chryses laughed. ‘You say the funniest things.’

  The cart driver turned his head and said something to Chryses in rapid Egyptian. Chryses replied in the same language and the cart driver whipped his tired donkey into a trot.

  ‘He told me there’s a camel market here every fourth and seventh day,’ explained Chryses in Latin, ‘but they usually pack up at dusk. If we miss them we’ll have to wait another three days. I told him I’d pay him double if he got us here before they left.’

  The cart driver began to babble excitedly and whooped and waved his arm.

  ‘There!’ said Chryses. ‘There they are!’

  Nubia saw a line of camels moving out from behind the pyramid.

  The cart driver reined his donkeys to a halt and said something to Chryses. They had a short, heated exchange. Finally Chryses shook his head in exasperation, reached into his shoulder bag and took out a coin. He flipped it to the d
river and jumped down from the cart.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Nubia. ‘He claims he’s done his part. He promised to take us to the pyramid and no further. We’ve got to catch up to those camels.’

  Nubia gripped Chryses’s outstretched hands and jumped down onto the stony ground, then almost tripped as she hurried after him. She was wearing one of his cream linen tunics and she was not used to a garment that touched the ground. Also, his spare pair of sandals were slightly too big for her.

  ‘Walk quickly,’ said Chryses, ‘but don’t look like you’re hurrying. And for Serapis’s sake, walk like a boy! Stomp, don’t glide.’

  Nubia nodded and followed him over the stony undulating ground. As they approached the rear of the camel train, the last driver in the line glanced over his shoulder at them.

  ‘Pretend we’re deep in conversation,’ said Chryses. ‘Discussing some philosophical point or other. We don’t want to seem too eager. On the one hand,’ he gestured with his right arm, ‘and on the other . . .’ here he flung out his left. ‘You know: that kind of thing – Look! It’s worked!’ he hissed. ‘He’s stopped.’

  ‘Camel?’ called the trader in Greek as they passed by. He was an elderly Egyptian in knee-length tunic and tattered leggings. ‘Hey! Pretty boys! Want to buy a camel? This camel here is gentle as a dove but fast as a hawk. I’ll give you a good price.’ He recited the words without much enthusiasm, but when Chryses stopped and casually asked ‘How much?’ the trader ran towards them.

  ‘Not much,’ replied the old Egyptian eagerly. ‘I give you very good price. She is very good camel but I sell her very cheap to such pretty boys.’

  ‘What do you think, Nubia . . . er, Nubian boy?’ said Chryses. ‘Is she a good camel?’

  Nubia reached into the leather belt pouch Chryses had given her and took out a date. The camel accepted it eagerly, spat out the stone and opened her mouth for another. Nubia leaned forward and studied the animal’s teeth. ‘How old is she,’ Nubia said to the trader in Greek. ‘About five years old?’