Death of an Eye

by Dana Stabenow

  Cleopatra stretched, rubbing her knuckles into the base of her spine, before opening the drawer of a small chest sitting on one of the shelves. She removed a small round, flat object and tossed it to Tetisheri.

  Tetisheri had to fall back a step but she caught it neatly in her right hand. “Wouldn’t we have looked the idiots if I’d missed,” she said with some asperity, “crawling around on the floor looking for it.”

  “Queens don’t crawl around on the floor,” Cleopatra said with her nose in the air. “We have minions who crawl for us.” She nodded. “Take a look.”

  It was a coin, a brand new bronze coin, images clear, edges unworn, very shiny. On one side was a strongly drawn image of Isis suckling Horus. “Horus,” said Tetisheri. “You’re very sure. Because Caesar must have a son?”

  The queen winced and rubbed her belly again. “No, because this one is trying out for the Olympics before he’s even out of the womb.”

  On the other side of the coin was a monogram shaped like a tree, with Cleopatra’s name and title spelled out around the rim. “Cyprus?”

  The queen nodded. “We strike all our new coins there.”

  “A new drachma?”

  The queen nodded.

  “That’s the second in two years.”

  “I have to do something, Sheri. There hasn’t been an adequate supply of coins in circulation since Ptolemy X. If there is no coin to spend no one can buy, and that is not a recipe for a stable economy in the largest port on the Middle Sea.”

  “Most of the coin we see is silver.”

  Cleopatra nodded. “And Roman. You don’t have to say it, Sheri, I know.”

  “So.” Tetisheri tossed the coin back and Cleopatra caught it every bit as neatly as Tetisheri had. “A new issue. A nice likeness, too, Oh Great Isis. I don’t know whether to bow or just abase myself before your image and be done with it.”

  Cleopatra’s smile was only perfunctory. Tetisheri cocked her head. “What’s wrong, Pati?”

  “Walk with me,” the queen said, and Tetisheri followed her out the door, Apollodorus falling in behind them. They went down the corridor, up some stairs, down another corridor, and up some more stairs to emerge onto a small balcony that overlooked the Royal Harbor. Pharos stood tall and proud across the mouth of the harbor, ready to light the way home when night fell. For now the cataract of sunlight flooded the shadows so that the warren of buildings that made up the palace seemed flattened, as if they were a two-dimensional map of themselves.

  A striped awning had been unrolled to shade the balcony. There was a small table bearing a pitcher and glasses and a tray of bread and fruit and cheese. “Sit,” the queen said. Tetisheri and Apollodorus sat while the queen poured.

  Tetisheri accepted a glass and a bit of cheese and sat. The juice was cold and of some pleasing mixture of citrus sweetened with honey. The cheese was velvety smooth and slightly tart. The rounds of bread were still warm from the oven. For a moment the three of them ate and drank and admired the view. It was an oddly peaceful one, as land and seascape both were relatively deserted as Alexandrians broke their fast under shelter from the heat of midday. Even the gulls were silent.

  The queen licked her fingers clean and drained her glass and set it down. “The first shipment of the new coinage went missing five days ago.”

  Tetisheri, who had been on the alert since the queen had served them with her own hands, said, “How unfortunate.” She was unable to keep her tone wholly free of suspicion.

  Cleopatra’s smile was wide and knowing and utterly charming. “How carefully disinterested you sound, my dear Sheri.”

  “And how well you wear that cobra on your forehead, Pati,” Tetisheri said, and then cast an involuntary look over her shoulder. It was one thing to revert to childhood nicknames behind closed doors, and another entirely to use them where anyone might hear.

  “Don’t worry, Iras and Charmion have instructions to ensure our privacy.” Cleopatra’s smile faded. “I tasked my Eye with finding the lost shipment.”

  Tetisheri felt a sense of growing dread. “Not Aristander?”

  “He knows, but in his office he is constrained to answer also to my brother.” The words “at present” were unsaid but felt by all three of them.

  “And?” Tetisheri said.

  Cleopatra looked at Apollodorus. “And the Eye was murdered very early this morning,” he said. “Near the Eunostos docks. Not too far from Neb’s warehouse, as it happens.”

  Tetisheri did not make the mistake of imagining for one moment the queen had called her into her presence to accuse her of the crime. They had known each other far too long and too well. No, the queen had something else in mind and unfortunately, Tetisheri was horribly afraid she knew what it was. “Pati—”

  The queen’s expression was inexorable. “We have to find that shipment, Sheri, and we have to find it immediately. I’ve already commissioned another issue but the people who stole the first can hide it away and start spending it when the second issue is in circulation, which will only lower the face value of both and upset Alexandria’s trade further. The plan was to exchange the old coin for the new, slowly, carefully, so there was no panic, so that the new currency has time to build in value and the old doesn’t lose its value too quickly. Remember what Sosigenes taught us when we were studying the ancient Greeks? Too much new currency dumped all at once into the marketplace is as destabilizing to an economy as too little.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her voice deepened. “And even if I had the new coins with me in the Royal Palace right now, every last one of them under lock and key, murder has been done. Murder, here in Alexandria, bloody murder of an Alexandrian citizen, and further, of one of my closest and most valuable servants. This cannot, this may not, go undiscovered, or unpunished.”

  “I agree, of course I do. But I’m not—”

  “Apollodorus will aid you in your investigation. The body is with the Shurta, and Aristander has promised me personally that unless he is asked, he will volunteer no information about the murder or the investigation. To anyone. Other than yourselves.”

  Tetisheri closed her eyes. “Please don’t ask this of me.”

  Cleopatra leaned forward and slipped her hand into Tetisheri’s. It felt smooth and strong and warm. So did the drachma she pressed into Tetisheri’s palm. The Eye she handed her openly. It did not feel nearly so warm to the touch. “There is no one but you I can ask this of, Tetisheri. I am surrounded by spies set in place by the Romans, by the nobles, by my brother, all of whom are watching and waiting for me to make that one slip so they can push me the rest of the way over the edge and applaud as I fall. If those coins are not found, this could be that slip.”

  She would have said more when Charmion slipped out onto the balcony, gave Tetisheri a quick nod, and whispered something into the queen’s ear. The queen was instantly on her feet and in motion, prodigiously pregnant or not. “Tell her, Apollodorus. Tell her everything. She is to have immediate and unquestioned access to whatever she needs. Find the coin, find the thieves, and find the killer and bring all to me.”

  “On the floor,” Charmion hissed. There was the sound of feet that sounded very much like soldiers marching. Tetisheri and Apollodorus both went from chair to knees in one motion, their foreheads pressed to the cool marble. Tetisheri slipped the drachma into the purse at her waist just in time.

  “Ah, lovey, I was just in search of you.” The male voice was hoarse and a trifle high. Tetisheri, peeking over her arm, saw a tall man, a little thick with age around the middle, dressed in a white tunic with a purple hem. He had a beaky nose and his hair was combed forward to cover his bald spot. His scalp shone pinkly through the scant iron gray strands nonetheless.

  Cleopatra’s voice was indulgent and more than a little suggestive. “And how may I serve the mighty Caesar?”

  There was a loud smack, and after a stupefied moment Tetisheri realized that Julius Caesar had just slapped Cleopatra Philopator, the Lady of the Two Lands, seven
th of her name, seventeenth in her line and the incarnation of Isis on the earth, on her behind. “You may get yourself to your bed, lady, and myself after you. We don’t have much time left to play, you and I.”

  “Your son may take exception to that, my Caesar.”

  A loud, neighing laugh. “My son will one day be a man and understand, my queen.”

  This was more than Tetisheri ever wanted to know about her queen’s private life, and at the same time she had to stifle a highly inappropriate giggle. She sneaked a look to her side. Apollodorus had his forehead on his hands and his behind in the air, which prompted another stifled giggle.

  “Who have we here?” Sandal-clad feet stopped in front of Tetisheri, and a dry hand reached beneath her chin and raised her inexorably to her feet. Dark, piercing eyes gave her a thorough and comprehensive look and warmed to what they saw. “Jupiter, look at those eyes. As blue as the sky at morning. And who might you be?”

  “The one tasked with cooking your supper this evening, mighty Caesar, so if you don’t want her to poison the soup I suggest you let her be about her business.” Cleopatra nodded at Tetisheri, who abased herself before her queen once more before getting to her feet. She tried not to hurry herself out of their presence, not entirely successfully. “Apollodorus, to your station.”

  “My queen.”

  In the doorway Tetisheri nearly bumped into a second Roman, near to Caesar in age, his tunic white but without the purple trim, tall and with no spare ounce of flesh about his person. A long face descended from a high forehead that went all the way back to the nape of his neck. The hollows in his cheeks were cavernous, his lips a thin, clamped line. His deep-set eyes were dark, and his burning gaze was fixed on the queen. In the brief glimpse she had of him Tetisheri could not tell if that gaze said more of disapproval or desire.

  She slipped past him, only to trip over a third Roman in the hallway. This one was of an age with the first two but a little shorter and with more hair. He was dressed in a simple tunic belted at the waist, but the confident set of his shoulders and the proud carriage of his head said soldier.

  Impersonal hands caught her by the shoulders before she fell and released her the moment she regained her balance. Their eyes met and held for a brief moment, hers startled, his at first indifferent and then intent. She looked away and continued down the hall.

  The great scar that notched the left side of his forehead betrayed his identity. Cotta, that would be, Caesar’s cousin who had been with him since Gaul. It was in Gaul, it was said, that Cotta had deliberately caught the killing blow by an Arveni chieftain meant for Caesar.

  There was no more trusted member of Caesar’s retinue. Rumor had it he would be left behind when Caesar departed, stationed in Alexandria, ostensibly as Roman legate to the Alexandrian crown but really to safeguard Caesar’s interests in the Nile’s annual grain crops.

  Anyone who wanted a Roman triumph needed first of all bread made from Egyptian grain to feed the Roman rabble, and second, Egyptian gold to sweeten the Roman Senate.

  3

  on the afternoon of the Tenth Day of the Second Week

  at the Eighth Hour…

  The Shurta, Alexandria’s local police force, was housed in a large rectangular building set back from the Canopic Way. Its frontage had no paint of any color whatsoever to mar the single dignified row of columns below or highlight the absence of a frieze above. This severe lack of ostentation was in stark contrast to the gloriously detailed peacocks of the main building of the Great Library and the Soma to either side and to the Dicasterium across the Way. Its very reticence rather drew the eye than elided it. At any rate, no citizen of Alexandria or visitor thereof was in doubt as to the service the building housed, and care was taken by everyone of any station or origin not to catch the eye of the guards posted in front. Even the long-legged ibises that stalked the cross streets begging for crumbs seemed to avoid that section of the Way. The Shurta’s reputation for probity and efficiency stood out in a nation whose bureaucracy was otherwise infamous for graft and bribery.

  A young officer, correct in uniform and discreet in demeanor, murmured, “This way, please,” when Apollodorus gave his name and said Aristander was expecting them. He brought them to a long, narrow room containing a long wooden table. Beneath it a deep, central gutter ran from west wall to east. A slave in a shenti and nothing else washed blood and small, unidentifiable bits and pieces down the gutter with a broom and buckets of water. The gutter emptied through the hole in the eastern wall, where its contents could be heard rushing down a pipe to somewhere else—one hoped the central sewer which emptied into the sea and not Lake Mareotis, which was where the city’s drinking water came from.

  The room was cool and dim and a large cone of incense burned in every corner, the smoke drifting upwards to vent through holes in the three exterior walls just beneath the ceiling. It took most of the noxious smells with it and a good thing, too, since other tables were occupied by bodies sewn into shrouds prior to being transferred to the embalmers and the priests for the tomb or the pot.

  “Tetisheri!” A slim man with bright brown eyes hurried forward with his hands outstretched. “It has been too long since we have met.”

  She accepted his hands in her own and regarded him with affection. “It has at that, Aristander. You are well? Merti? The children?”

  He beamed. “They are all well, and would love to see you.” He dropped her hands and his face sobered. “I’m happy to see you, but I am sorry for the circumstances that brought us together today. A less auspicious occasion could hardly be imagined.”

  She remembered then that Aristander was a religious man. The figure of Maat on his pectoral was not only the badge of his office as the head of the Shurta but the image of the goddess of truth, justice, and morality he worshipped daily and sacrificed to every feast day. “You know why I’m here,” she said.

  “Yes, this way.” He led them to a table in the back, the figure of a woman discernible beneath a length of linen. “Idut, if you please.”

  The morgue attendant stepped to the head of the table and drew back the cloth.

  “Khemit?” Tetisheri said.

  Apollodorus was surprised. “You didn’t know?”

  She cast a warning glance at Idut, and Aristander motioned the man out of earshot. “I think that’s the point of the position,” she said in a low voice. “Only the queen knows the identity of the Eye.” She looked back at the body.

  Khemit had been in her late fifties, thin to the point of gauntness, and gifted by the gods with a ceaseless energy that Tetisheri and the rest of Alexandria—save two: the queen and Khemit’s murderer—thought had been expended in overseeing the successful weaving business she owned near the Western Gate, the area where most of Alexandria’s weavers clustered together. Tetisheri had bought all her household linens there, and knew Khemit as a woman never too busy to greet a customer by name and not too proud to untangle a novice weaver’s reversal of warp and weft. They had known each other as seller and buyer but they had never socialized. Khemit lived in Rhakotis and Tetisheri on the waterfront, Khemit was all Greek and Tetisheri only half, there were at least thirty years between them, and their paths had crossed only on business. Tetisheri had known Cleopatra all of her life and had never once seen the queen and Khemit together. That in all that time she had heard no whisper of Khemit’s other line of work only added to the mystique of the Queen’s Eye.

  Khemit frowned in death, eyebrows drawn together, mouth pulled into a scowl. “She looks angry.”

  Aristander looked at the dead woman’s face. “Why, so she does. I hadn’t noticed.”

  “And… dark?” Khemit’s face was several shades darker than when Tetisheri had last seen her alive.

  “Yes, she fell face down. The blood pools in the lowest parts of the body after death. She wasn’t discovered until sunrise and she was cool by then, but her body had not yet stiffened so I would estimate she had been dead for less than twelve hours. She beg
an to stiffen after she was brought here—I had Idut check every half hour. My best guess is she was killed near the Twentieth Hour, but it is just that, only a guess.”

  “Who found her?”

  “A street sweeper. He came to us at once. I am confident he knows nothing of the circumstances around her death.”

  “How was she killed?”

  “A blow to the head.” Aristander slid his hands beneath Khemit’s head and raised it to show them. All of Khemit’s body came up with her, her form rigid from head to toe. He turned the body on its side, facing him, and pointed. “You see the depression in the skull there?”

  They could hardly miss it. The blow had struck hard enough to leave the skull misshapen. Khemit’s hair was matted with dried blood and gray matter.

  “Right side,” Apollodorus said. “The killer was right-handed?”

  “Perhaps just an expert who knew where he had to strike, and how hard,” Aristander said. “It would depend on which side the killer attacked from.”

  Tetisheri swallowed hard. “Was she harmed in any other way?”

  Aristander shook his head. “The blow to the head only.”

  “And the weapon?”

  “A club or a stick of some kind,” Aristander said. “A sword or an axe would have cleaved the skull, not broken it.”

  “Did you find anything unusual upon her person? Something she might not ordinarily be carrying?”

  Aristander glanced at Idut and lowered his voice. “Only the Eye.”

  “Who else saw it?”

  He laid the body back down with gentle hands. “Idut here was alone on duty when the street sweeper arrived. He described the Eye, hanging from her neck by a chain. Idut knew immediately what it was. He went from here to my home and from there we went directly to where her body lay. No other than Idut and myself have touched her. Other than myself, only the streetsweeper and Idut have seen the body. Only Idut saw the Eye. I have sworn both to secrecy.”