“I don’t think Tarius Rufus was really as angry as he pretended to be,” Menestor volunteered suddenly, looking up sideways at Crispus. “Not at first, anyway. That is, he was angry, but he also thought that if he flew into a rage, my master would be so frightened by it that he’d back off. When he saw that my master wasn’t frightened, he didn’t know what to do.”
Hermogenes looked at him curiously.
“That other man who was with him,” Menestor explained. “Not the secretary who took the papers, the other one. The thin one in the red tunic. When Rufus jumped up and hit you, he smiled and nodded, like he was saying, yes, that’s the way. Then when you’d been knocked down and you still asked Rufus when he was going to pay you, he looked … he looked like something had gone very wrong. Rufus didn’t know what to make of it, either. The way he was angry was different, after that. At first it was like a master—like some masters, I mean—shouting at a slave to scare him, but after that it was quieter and more real. And the other man was angry, too, after that, even though he hadn’t been before.”
Hermogenes realized, with chagrin, that he hadn’t really noticed anybody in that room except the consul.
“You’re an observant boy,” Crispus commented appreciatively, and squeezed Menestor’s shoulder. He straightened with a grunt, gazed down at his guest for another moment, then said resolutely, “I can’t possibly turn you out of my house, not after all the times you and your father received me in Alexandria, and that time I … well, you remember. Besides, I’ve been telling my friends about Alexandria for years, and now I’ve introduced some of them to you. What would they think of me if I admitted that you’d left my house for an inn?”
Hermogenes was both touched and surprised. “I don’t want to bring trouble down on your house, Titus.”
“You said you thought it was essentially over,” Crispus said, with growing confidence. “No, no, my friend. You stay here. I think your lad’s right, and that cut needs stitching. I’ll send for my doctor.” He smiled broadly and went off.
The doctor came, stitched the cut, and provided a dose of hellebore for the headache, which had not diminished. He advised rest and a low and cooling diet. Hermogenes spent the rest of the day in bed.
He woke in the small hours of the morning. The headache was better, but had left in its place a black shadow of acute anxiety. He remembered the scene with the consul in tiny, crystalline detail, from the first genial smile to the final furious dismissal. He remembered, too, the way the consul’s attendants had whispered in his ear. He was filled with a panicky certainty that Rufus was going to have him murdered.
He sat up, then leaned his hot cheek against the cool wall and tried to reason with himself. If Rufus was going to have him killed, he would have done it then and there. It would have been easier than sending men to break into Crispus’s house and slaughter him in his bed. To be sure, there were plenty of people who had known that Hermogenes was at the consul’s house—but who would bring charges against a consul, a friend of the emperor? Crispus certainly wouldn’t. Rufus could have had him killed, but Rufus hadn’t, so therefore Rufus wasn’t willing to go that far over a debt which he could easily afford to pay.
It didn’t satisfy him. Rufus might have delayed only because he wanted to investigate the situation first. He might want to get his hands on the documents that proved his debt and his default before he took action.
Hermogenes got up and went through to the dayroom, silent on bare feet. He fumbled around on the lampstand until he found the lighter, then struck it repeatedly, the spark brilliant in the dark room.
Menestor’s sleepy voice from behind him said “Sir?”
“Go back to sleep,” Hermogenes told him. “I just want to write a letter.” The tinder caught, and he lit one of the little crocodile lamps and moved it over to the writing table. The gold light showed him Menestor sitting up on his pallet, his eyes wide and black in the dimness.
“Just go back to sleep,” Hermogenes told him.
The boy lay down again, but remained awake, watching as his master took out the writing things and sat down.
MARCUS AELIUS HERMOGENES TO PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO: GREETINGS.
My lord, you do not know me, but your reputation for nobility makes me bold to approach you. L. Tarius Rufus, who supplanted you in the consulship, owes me a debt of over four hundred thousand sestertii, and I fear that he may have me murdered rather than repay it. If you receive this, it is because I am dead.
If you wish to bring Rufus to the disgrace he deserves, take the enclosed token to the Tabularium. The documents deposited there in FIII will prove that Rufus borrowed the money from my uncle and defaulted, and that I inherited the debt, an offense for which I have paid dearly.
If this information is useful to you, my lord, I beg you to ensure that my daughter receives the money for which I died.
He read it over, then pulled out the little leather bag with the token, which now hung about his neck next to the trunk key. He folded the sheet of papyrus, rolled it up, and stuffed it into the bag with the token. He drew the drawstrings tight, then melted some wax onto them and marked it with his seal.
“What are you doing?” asked Menestor, not sleepy now at all.
Hermogenes took another sheet of papyrus and wrote on it, To be delivered to the consular, P. Cornelius Scipio, on the first of July, unless it is first reclaimed by me, M. Aelius Hermogenes. “I want to ensure that Rufus sees no advantage in killing me,” he said in a low voice. “If he knows that this will go to his enemies unless I reclaim it, he has nothing to gain from my death.” He frowned. “The question is, who to leave it with?”
“You think he might kill us?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. It seems to me that paying would be by far the most reasonable thing for him to do. He can afford it, and murdering a Roman citizen must be a risky undertaking, even for a man as powerful as he is. Even if no one charged him, the rumor of it could hurt his reputation, and he seems to care for that. He seemed very indignant, though, at the prospect of paying, and he also seemed very arrogant, accustomed to thinking himself above the law. He might do it. This should ensure that he doesn’t—if I can find someone to leave it with.”
“So why…” began Menestor, who then paused and licked his lips.
“So why?”
“So why are you doing this?” Menestor burst out. “I was so scared when he hit you. I thought he was going to kill you, and then … I don’t know, kill me and Phormion, or cut out our tongues and send us to the mines or something. You said that even at the worst this wouldn’t ruin you, and I bet you could fix it so that it didn’t ruin anybody else, either. So why are you setting yourself up against a consul of Rome?”
Hermogenes looked at him for a long moment, then turned away and began to attach the direction to the drawstring of the little leather bag. “When Rufus was commanding the left wing at Actium,” he said slowly, “I was your age. I grew up under the queen, Menestor. I know my family never supported Cleopatra—she was a cruel, incompetent tyrant!—but at least she was Greek. I grew up in an independent nation.” He dribbled some more wax onto the tag, and pressed his seal into it again. “She was the last Greek to rule a kingdom, the last of the heirs of world-conquering Alexander. After she died, sovereignty abandoned the Greeks altogether, and passed entirely to Rome.”
He looked Menestor in the eye. “Rufus called me ‘Greekling’ and ‘Egyptian’ and spat on me. He thinks that the fact that he defeated us in war gives him the right to take what he wants from us, even now, after fourteen years of peace. My citizenship he regards as a fraud. While he was only a proconsul he felt bound to make payments on his debt, but as soon as he grew powerful enough, he thought it beneath him. To him, no Greek is any better than a slave.
“You said last night that anyone would prefer freedom to slavery. You are a slave, and you would be willing to prostitute your body to obtain your freedom. Well, I am a free man, and I would be willing to die rathe
r than submit to the iniquity of Tarius Rufus. He borrowed the money, and he will repay it.”
“What about Myrrhine?” asked Menestor.
It was the most potent argument he could have found. Hermogenes had to look away, down at the sealed bag between his hands. He remembered again how his daughter had clung to him before he set out. “I hope I will not die,” he said at last. “I am doing everything I can to ensure that I don’t.” He touched the little bag. “He has agreed to pay. I must find someone to leave this with—as a precaution.”
The boy was silent for a moment. “You don’t think Titus Fiducius…”
“No,” Hermogenes said firmly. “If I were dead and he were threatened, he would give it to Rufus immediately. He is a well-meaning man, but he is not strong.” He frowned again. “Not the record office again: I doubt I could persuade them to send it on. Perhaps a temple. I will ask in the morning.” He glanced back at the young man, ironically now. “Go to sleep, Menestor, and I will try to do the same.”
In the morning his face had swollen and it was impossible to open his left eye. When he borrowed a mirror it showed him the stitched gash sitting like a red caterpillar on a livid black-and-purple bruise. He sighed and resolved to spend as much of the day as he could resting quietly in the house. First, however, he had to find someone to take charge of the bag with the token. In the light of day the possibility that he would be murdered appeared far less real, but the precaution still seemed worth taking. He could not, however, ask his host’s advice on where to leave the token. Crispus would undoubtedly offer to take charge of it himself, and a refusal would insult him.
Crispus came in to check on his health while he was considering the matter. He took one look and exclaimed “Hercules! You look even worse than you did yesterday.” “I’ll tell the slaves to make up a poultice for you. One of the women is good at that.”
The woman who was good at poultices turned out to be Tertia. She came into the room a little while later, carrying a steaming herb-scented cloth on a plate and smiling nervously. Erotion was at her heels.
“You look terrible,” the little girl said, eyeing him with something amounting to admiration.
“I know,” he admitted. “But I expect your mother’s poultice will help it.”
Erotion nodded and Tertia smiled.
“Thank you for my cake,” Erotion continued primly, and looked at her mother for approval.
“And thank you very much for my cake,” her mother added warmly. “It was delicious.”
Hermogenes smiled lopsidedly and waved a dismissive hand. “I have been grateful for the kindness with which my friend’s household has received me, when I know I have given you extra work.”
“You’re very kind, sir,” the woman said. “Here, let me give you your poultice.”
She folded the cloth, arranged it against his cheek and the corner of his eye, and secured it around his head and across his nose with strips of linen. “There you are, sir,” she said. “I’ll come back with a fresh one in a couple of hours.”
“Thank you. Tertia, don’t go yet. There’s another thing I would like your advice on.”
“My advice, sir?” she replied, very taken aback.
“As well yours as anyone’s. You’re a sensible woman. I have a package containing some valuables which I wish to leave with some honest and reliable person who will keep it safe for me until I come to collect it—or, if I don’t come, send it to the person I have designated. I do not want to impose on your master, and—”
“Why can’t you just leave it here, sir?” she asked innocently. “If you’re worried that one of us might steal your things, you can lock it in your trunk.”
“It’s to do with my business,” he said truthfully; and, less truthfully: “I want it available from the forum. I was thinking that the best place to leave it might be in a temple. Do you know if there’s a temple to the Lady Isis near the forum?”
The slave woman’s eyes opened wide. “To Isis, sir? No. The Egyptian cult is banned in Rome. Didn’t you know that?”
He had not known it, and he was stunned. Isis was a divinity adored by men and women of all classes and nations, worshipped throughout the Greek world and honored even in the cities of the West. He had never been a religious man—his education had always ridiculed the superstitions of the masses—but he’d always respected Isis more than any of the Olympian gods. She was the Lady of the Waves, protectress of trade and of civilization; the goddess of a thousand names, of whom all other goddesses were mere reflections. And she was good and just, a wife and mother and lover, not a jealous and vindictive tyrant like so many other divinities. “Why?” he asked in bewilderment.
Tertia shrugged. “They first banned it years and years ago, sir, I suppose because it isn’t Roman. I heard they were going to change their minds, and there was even going to be a big official temple, but then came the war. The queen of Egypt used to say she was Isis incarnate, so the emperor banned the goddess from Rome all over again. Since then people have kept on building temples and setting up shrines, but every now and then the order goes out, and the praetorians come round and tear them down.” She paused, then added, “It’s only in the city itself, sir, and the suburbs for about two miles. There’s a temple in Ostia, but that’s too far.”
“Oh,” Hermogenes said weakly.
Tertia took a step toward him, watching him closely, and with her left middle finger sketched over her breast the Isiac knot—the sign of the initiate into the mysteries of Isis.
Hermogenes had been initiated into the mysteries when he was sixteen—Thaïs had been an enthusiast of the goddess—and he returned the gesture. Tertia broke into a wide smile.
“There are private chapels, sir,” she informed him. “Nobody ever bothers those. I go to one myself. I could take you there now, if you could get permission from my master for me to leave my work during the morning.”
For a moment he debated whether to accept the offer or whether to opt for some more approved divinity. Then he decided that the secrecy of a banned cult, and the bond created by his own involvement in it, made it ideal. “Yes,” he agreed. “Thank you.”
The rest was easy. Crispus appeared to be well aware that his slave woman was a devotee of Isis; he was a little surprised when Hermogenes declared an interest in worshiping the goddess that morning, but accepted it as an not-unnatural consequence of being struck by a consul, and quickly gave his permission for the visit.
The “private chapel” turned out to be a converted basement in a temple of Mercury about six blocks away, a place whose luridly Egyptianizing wall paintings made Crispus’s Nile Rooms look positively tasteful. A young priest of Mercury had conceived a devotion to Thoth, the Egyptian form of his god, and had wanted to worship the queen whom Thoth honored and advised. He welcomed Tertia, and was pleased to meet an Alexandrian worshiper of the goddess, particularly one named after his own favorite god—Hermes, of course, being the Greek god identified with Thoth or Mercury.
It wasn’t possible, however, simply to leave the token without an explanation. Hermogenes found himself compelled to give a version of the truth, emphasizing his growing belief that his fears were groundless, and telling Tertia that he was ashamed even to mention them to his host, but saying that it would set his mind to rest to know that the token was safe. At this the young priest readily accepted the little leather bag and set it behind the pedestal of the statue of Isis, in the curtained-off alcove at the far end of the shrine. They all joined in a prayer to the goddess—Hermogenes found it very odd, saying the familiar phrases in Latin—and anointed themselves with the sacred water of the Nile, of which the priest had a supply in an urn.
As they walked back to the house again afterward, Hermogenes was half-amused and half-dismayed by the way the touch of that water had comforted him. He found himself thinking longingly of the Nile—the waters that flowed to Alexandria through the Canopic canal; the blueness of Lake Mareotis in the sun, even though the water was brown when
you looked down at it; the seasonal rise and fall of the life-giving stream; the taste and the rhythms and the scents of home.
Would he ever see home again? He tried to tell himself that of course he would, that it was merely a question of remaining firm and refusing to be intimidated for a few more days. Now that the token had been hidden, the consul had nothing to gain by killing him. The shadow of his midnight fears, however, refused to be shaken off entirely. He kept remembering the brutal rage in which the consul had erupted from his chair. There had been nothing there that he could reason with.
He thought of Myrrhine waiting for him to come home. Again he imagined her writing him a letter, but this time his mind threw up the image of her scribbling in happy ignorance while he lay dead in some Roman cemetary.
He shook his head. Rufus had agreed to pay. It made sense for Rufus to pay. It made no sense at all for Hermogenes to weaken now, when he had almost won. That would be sheer cowardice, and, even worse, stupidity.
When he got back to the house, Crispus invited him to share a light meal, and the two of them reclined side by side in the dining room eating bread and cheese and olives. Hermogenes expressed his amazement at finding water from the Nile in Rome.
“I think ships from Egypt sell off the surplus of their water supply when they come into port in Italy,” Crispus told him. “There are a lot of Italians who worship the goddess. Even here in Rome.”
“I had not realized that the cult was banned.”
Crispus made a condemning sound. “It’s a piece of idiocy that it should be! Cybele has a great temple right in the middle of the Palatine, her festivals have a place on the calendar, and her eunuch priests are everywhere. Why should Isis be banned? She’s far more civilized than a goddess who requires her priests to cut their balls off!” He pulled himself up. “You know what I think it is, Hermogenes? It’s that we Romans know that the Phrygians are barbarians, so we aren’t afraid of their gods—but you Greeks, especially you Alexandrians, are another matter. Rome can call Phrygia her handmaid, but Alexandria was her rival.”
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