Surisca retired to a camp washhouse guided by a slave to complete her toilet. Suetonius presumed she would also perform whatever precautionary arts a woman of her profession uses to avoid pregnancy. He guessed it might be something more artful than an Egyptian crocodile dung pessary or other traditional native contraceptive.
She returned to their chamber dressed in one of her beguilingly translucent nightgowns of Kos lace tied in the high bosomed Syrian style fashionable in the East. Her hair was now fully loosed in a feminine flourish while her increasingly-excited client detected the sweet aura of oil of roses exuding from her skin. Her gown revealed more of her flesh than any woman dared display in public or before a stranger, yet still veiled her limbs and feminine curves beneath layers of obscuring gossamer.
Surisca delicately crossed the chamber to extinguish several of the lamps to dim the light to a soft glow. She brought two goblets of watered wine to the edge of the double-bed arrangement. She sat very close beside Suetonius where he could catch the sweet scents from her body. Her thigh and one of her knees glanced across his leg thrillingly.
They sipped their cups so closely each was touching at the brim and their eyes were only inches apart. The biographer, ever a considerate seducer, ordained to torture his enlarging enthusiasm by introducing conversation to break the ice and restrain his impatience.
“Tell me, Surisca my young beauty, how old are you?” he asked.
“Master, my mother told me I was born at Edessa near the border to the Kingdom of Parthia in the fifth last year of the previous Caesar’s reign. I think this means I am eighteen years of age. Other than that, I do not know,” she replied.
“So Surisca, tell me something of yourself,” he invited. “You have so many hidden talents, I have difficulty knowing which Surisca is the real Surisca. I notice how even with your Syrian accent you speak good street Greek and you handle everyday Latin to an acceptable degree. You appear to have a smattering of the old pharaonic language of Egypt, while your mother tongue is Aramaic, the major language of the East. Do you read or write in these languages, my dear?”
“Master,” she responded openly, “I do not read at all except some words of Greek, a few Latin words, and the simplest of Aramaic words. But I cannot write in any of these for myself, except my own name. I am not a fine scholar like yourself, master.”
“How did you come to your profession, young lady?” Suetonius posed with polite interest, despite the burden of slumber increasingly making its presence felt.
“I was born to it, my lord,” Surisca responded. “My mother was bonded to the mistress of a troupe of entertainers at the city of Zeugma on the border of the Parthian Empire before the previous Caesar defeated Parthia in battle. She and her mistress’s household fled back to the safety of Edessa in the north of King Abgar’s land, where I was born. My mother, of course, did not know who my father was. It was one of her many clients, so I am known simply as Surisca, with no fatherly patronymic.”
Surisca paused to check if her client’s attention had wandered or if such talk of the lower orders offended the noble patrician’s sensibilities. It hadn’t, she realized.
Suetonius was observing Surisca enthuse about her past with a keen gleam in her eyes. This had an agreeable charm all its own, he thought. He assumed very few of her clients were interested in her life story.
“I am told too how, in the year when Trajan put down the Judaean rebels across the East, I turned five years of age,” she continued. “Because of those wars my mother’s mistress was caught up in the movements of people trapped by the upheavals. Temples were destroyed, cities were put to the sword, and many people killed. Then the Legions killed the Judaean, Lucuas, and fiercely put down the rebellion, I am told.
But my mother had accumulated sufficient coins in her trade to buy her freedom from her mistress before my birth. This means I was a freeborn child, not her former mistress’s property.
It is the tradition in our profession to retain some female children to learn the trade to support us in our later years. Clients become less interested as you age, so one or two children are raised to become our breadwinners. I am such a one.”
Suetonius acknowledged to himself how Surisca had the checkered career typical of her caste. Here was a young woman of the world, he contemplated, who is engaged in the most insecure of trades yet who also seemed to possess her own mind to a high degree. Her strengths were attractive. They incited his bloodstream to race to his privates as his imagination conjured the warm touch of her flesh and the all-encompassing folds of her body. He felt a deep longing descend upon him.
Things then shifted unexpectedly.
Suetonius didn’t recall the precise details, the memory was a little hazy, but he later guessed he had simply fallen dead asleep during Surisca’s explanations. He slowly crumpled head first into the basin of her lace-garbed lap, mid-sentence. Here was a warm, comforting, secure place redolent with floral fragrances which, in his drowsiness, reminded him of his concubine Priscilla’s intimate nooks-and-crannies long ago. Or was it his mother at some even earlier era?
In fact, ageing years and the call of rest had finally consumed the Special Inspector. He fell into deep slumber and its pleasing reminiscences.
“Master! Master!” a close voice cried. “Wake, master, the hour is late!”
The biographer revived from his fuddled reverie to perceive Surisca was looking down at him with an expression of great concern. It was a long time since a woman had expressed concern over Suetonius and looked into his face so closely and seemed to mean it.
“Good grief,” he mumbled, “I must have drifted off. Please forgive me.”
“My lord, it is time to rise. The Watch has already called the hour before dawn,” she announced.
“An hour before dawn? Is that possible?!”
“You’ve been asleep for more than four hours, master,” she said. “You have appointments immediately at dawn. I heard you demand it of your companions last night.”
Suetonius sat up in the bed and looked around, his wispy hair askew.
Surisca and he were lying close together on the side-by-side traveling beds. He was scantily attired in his under-tunic and cloths. Surisca was almost naked with her long hair falling fulsomely around her shoulders. He realized she must have undressed him of his tunic and belts once he had fallen asleep, and put him to bed like a babe, though he had no recollection of that happy occasion.
A chamber slave clapped her hands from her sleeping post beyond the entrance for permission to enter. Suetonius stammered approval as she entered and bowed.
“Master, His Excellency, Secretary Julius Vestinus awaits you outside.”
He nodded acknowledgement and dismissed the girl.
“My dear Surisca,” he offered to his young hireling, “I must wash and dress. We have a busy day ahead of us. You too should prepare yourself for the day’s chores, and make yourself presentable.”
On second thoughts it occurred to him, however, how she was quite presentable just as she was. A query crossed his mind.
“But one question, my dear. Um, did we, er, make love last night? --- or this morning?” he asked in a very small voice in case his memory of the joyful event had somehow evaded him by. He had been known to be forgetful of a night-time, especially after wine.
Surisca looked to the ground in the manner servants or slaves pretend when they are being scolded for their slackness in performing duties and a beating might be on the horizon.
“No, master, we have not. Have I given you bad service, master?” she replied, as any conscientious service provider would do.
“Oh, I just wondered. That’s all,” he responded half-heartedly. He had hoped he might have had some simple, delicious pleasure, yet had merely lost recall.
“Before we both address our morning toilet, Surisca my dear, one or two questions arose to mind in my sleep, my dear,” he continued. “You remember yesterday at the embalmer’s pavilion you commented upon the love bi
tes on the neck of the corpse of Antinous on the table? You said you believed they were implanted by two different people, one set low at the front and another set higher on the throat stem? Are you sure in that opinion, my dear?”
Surisca crumpled her features in a girlish manner displaying a struggle for certainty.
“Master, I am not expert in understanding such things --- especially upon the dead, who quickly develop all manner of blemishes. Nevertheless, the marks on your young friend’s neck looked to me to be about a day in age. I am rash enough to estimate that the hickeys imposed by the male companion were more recent than the smaller ones with the yellow rim. Those appeared older. They could have been acquired some hours apart, possibly as much as half a day. This is my humble opinion, my lord,” she concluded.
Well, Suetonius thought, a true professional had spoken. So it seemed the boy was not as absolutely faithful to his erastes, Caesar, as common gossip would have it?
As countless impetuous paramours discovered in the reign of past emperors, it would be a risky itch indeed to indulge oneself with Caesar’s wife, favorite, or other bed partners. Such behavior could possess fatal consequences. In the past this itch had rapidly propelled offenders to lifetime exile at some far away barren desert. Alternatively, they could find themselves upon a funerary pyre following an inexplicable misadventure upon a sword or unexpected fall from a high place.
Yet the prospect of Antinous having a concealed bit of fluff in his life was a prospect which might, or might not, possess value in fulfilling Caesar’s commission, Suetonius considered. Perhaps jealousy and duplicity are involved in the young man’s death, or some other commonplace passion?
The launch of the second but final day and night of Hadrian’s assigned allotment for investigation possessed interesting promise.
CHAPTER 15
“Hail, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus! Welcome to Day Two of your assignment as Special Inspector!” Julius Vestinus was as efficient as ever despite the early hour.
“My staff has arranged the list of interviews you ordered, by the hour every hour. The only person on your list who has not been located is the youngest member of Antinous’s retinue, the language tutor Thais of Cyrene. I have instructed Tribune Macedo to assign soldiers to search for the woman on your behalf. In fact I’ve had Macedo issue a warrant to that effect under Caesar’s seal in case the young lady has met with some misadventure or is being purposely evasive.”
“Thank you, Vestinus.”
“For your convenience, you are set up in the courtyard close-by. Your scribe Strabon and his assistant are waiting for you there now, as well as your Praetorian centurion Quintus Urbicus with his two sidekicks.”
“Once again, you’ve thought of everything, Vestinus,” Suetonius acknowledged.
Centurion Quintus Urbicus and his men were standing in the early morning light of the courtyard. They were dressed in local Egyptian habits instead of their Praetorian uniforms. The three were unkempt and their clothing was oddly stained. Perhaps their costumes were undercover disguises in the style of the local customs? In the crook of one arm Urbicus carried a bulky, stained, rag-cloth bundle.
The three snapped to attention with Praetorian precision as Suetonius arrived to take his place in the center chair at a long bench. Senator Clarus and the scribes were already in place at either end of the table, with a separate chair for Surisca placed a few feet behind the Special Inspector.
“Hail in the name of Caesar!” Urbicus proclaimed as the three Praetorians saluted on Suetonius’s arrival.
“All hail!” the Special Inspector responded in as military a manner as he could muster.
Strabon and his assistant had their writing tools ready for action. Clarus, being the legal magistrate hearing the interviews, had now arranged for a court lictor to attend the sessions. This sturdy young man in a simple tunic emblazoned with its Imperial eagle insignia and carrying his fasces baton of punishment-rods bound around a sharp axe-blade stood impassively to one side. He was wearing the regulation-issue po-face of a court officer. A lictor’s official duties often include witnessing the execution of punishment upon offenders. Clarus, in his role as supervising magistrate, had decided the presence of a lictor during interviews might give the panel greater gravitas.
“Report, Centurion Quintus Urbicus!” Suetonius commanded with military bluster.
Urbicus snapped to attention, stepped forward a few paces, and placed the large cloth-bound bundle on the tabletop before him.
“Special Inspector, sir, as you have instructed, my troop searched for and located the two fishermen who Your Honors interviewed yesterday,” Urbicus recounted. “The men are known to live in a nest of huts with their extended families by the river’s bank outside the village of Besa. The men are well known in the town, so it was not difficult to locate them.
On your instructions, we were to accompany them to identify a river vessel which fits the description they provided, and to determine who may have been sailing this craft upon the Nile at dawn yesterday. However, we were too late to locate the men. Other unknown persons had made contact with them earlier. They inflicted bodily harm.”
“Inflicted harm? Bodily harm?!” Clarus croaked. “What sort of harm?”
Suetonius and the others leaned forward to hear.
Urbicus placed the wet-stained cloth bundle onto the tabletop into a streak of sunlight falling across the bench, and began unwinding its cloths.
Suetonius sat back in uncomfortable apprehension.
Ani the Egyptian fisherman’s severed head, still recognizable from the previous day’s interrogation but somewhat battered and bloody, toppled out and rolled across the table top. His cranium’s heavy weight rolled to reveal the bloody serrated neck flesh facing upwards, a mass of all chopped veins and flesh with serrated bone. The incisions seemed to have been hacked crudely with a chopper rather than sliced by sword at a swift stroke.
“The fisherman Ani, who spoke with us yesterday, was dead,” Urbicus explained. “He had been killed by persons unknown. The other fisherman Hetu who spoke less yesterday had either run away or been killed elsewhere. Their families were in a state of great distress at their losses. It seems a team of hooded men attacked the family’s huts after dusk yesterday, only an hour or so after the fishermen departed us here.
They dragged Ani into the open and killed him, and then chased Hetu away to an unknown fate. We have brought proof of the former’s destiny for your confirmation,” he concluded with military precision.
Urbicus adjusted the head’s position to reveal to the group Ani’s sagging-mouth, distantly distracted eyes, and yellowed waxen flesh. Suetonius sensed Surisca drawing her veil across her eyes behind him. Clarus and Vestinus raised themselves from their seats to more closely inspect and confirm the identity of the relic.
“What hooded men?” Clarus demanded. “Who were they? What was their origin?”
“I do not know, sir,” Centurion Urbicus responded, smartly snapping again to attention. “The family said the offenders were fully shrouded so they could not identify their features, and they did not speak so they could not hear their language to determine their origin. They could be men of any community at Besa. Egyptian, Nubian, Greek, Jew, or even Roman.
I was told they galloped up to the huts after dark, hunted down the two fishermen, and immediately beheaded one with knives while the other ran off into the night. The killers then followed in the same direction. I retrieved the severed head from the family when we ourselves arrived some time later. I bring it to you as proof of the death. They want it returned, of course, for burial ceremonies today. They will sew the head back to the body, so the man goes to their Underworld in one piece.”
“What does this mean?” Clarus turned to Suetonius. “Why would anyone want two humble fisher folk dead?” The two subsided into their seats.
“I’d say the sailors of that river craft emblazoned with the Eye Of Horus might not want to be identified?” the biographer suggest
ed forlornly. He moved closer to Clarus to add a further observation in a low whisper.
“But it also seems, my good friend, that someone among us here has communicated our desire to identify that river craft to some other party with an interest in this matter,” he murmured low. “That other party wanted those two witnesses out of the way promptly.”
Clarus paused thoughtfully.
“But who in this godforsaken place, Suetonius,” the ageing senator murmured, “has the authority or soldiery to prosecute such an attack? They were mounted on horses! Whose horses? Who has the power to organize a cohort of riders to kill two mere fishermen? Neither Caesar nor his officers have issued such orders, to our knowledge. Nor why should they? Who else here has such authority?”
“Unless those priests of Amun are more combative than we imagined,” Suetonius rationalized, “or there are local bandits involved somewhere? There aren’t many options really. The local town militia is a scruffy ragbag of imported Nubians, but they keep well out of Rome’s way. The local nobility are few and far between. This then leaves only our own people.”
Suetonius shifted closer to the senator so only Clarus, Surisca, and the scribe could hear his conjecture.
“Are Governor Titianus and his Alexandrians on a private mission? Or, have some of Tribune Macedo’s Praetorians gone feral? Are there disaffected Horse Guards around Caesar, unknown to anyone? Yet who traveling with us has the authority to instruct soldiers or cavalry independently of Caesar’s commanders? But then, why should they murder simple fishermen? Is it because they were the only known witnesses to that suspect vessel on the river yesterday?”
Suetonius gave Centurion Urbicus new orders.
“The death of the fishermen affects our enquiry greatly, Praetorian. Even if they have both been killed, it doesn’t change our need. In fact, it makes it more necessary. We must discover who was sailing the craft emblazoned with the Eye of Horus. Who? To where? And why? This is your primary duty, Praetorian,” he affirmed. “And we need the details by high sun today. Perhaps their families know of other fisher folk who can assist you?”
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