The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (39 page)

“Pollux!” cursed Flavia under her breath. “We’ve lost him.”

“Behold!” Nubia pointed. “Others come.”

The two girls pressed themselves into the black shadows of a doorway and watched two women move quickly across the narrow street. Their pallas covered their heads but Nubia could tell they were poor, perhaps even slaves.

Then another man arrived from the direction of the theatre. The silver moonlight illuminated him, too, and before he slipped inside Nubia saw that he wore the conical hat of a freedman. Next to arrive were a man and woman with three children – presumably a family. The man whispered the password and they disappeared inside. Then all was silent.

“Come on,” whispered Flavia after several minutes. “Let’s go closer.”

The brick walls of the granary were thick enough to keep out fire and damp, and the double wooden doors were heavy,
too, but as they stood outside, Nubia could distinctly hear the faint sound of singing.

The moon sank behind the town wall to the west and plunged Ostia into darkness. The girls stood near the double wooden doors, shivering. Inside, the singing had given way to chanting.

“You girls shouldn’t be out alone,” said a deep voice right behind Flavia.

“Ah!” Flavia and Nubia clutched each other in terror.

The man laughed, stretched out his arm to reach past them and knocked on the door. “Come in out of the cold,” he said to them, and to the person who opened the door a few moments later: “The sower, Arepo, holds the wheels at work.”

“Welcome, brother Stephanos,” said the doorkeeper. “Er . . . and sisters.”

Flavia was swept inside with Nubia. She caught a glimpse of a huge dark columned courtyard before the man guided them towards a room on the left.

He pushed open another wooden door and they stepped into a vaulted room, almost bare apart from a few sacks of grain. As they entered, a dozen lamplit faces turned to look at them. Most of the faces relaxed into smiles of welcome and curiosity when they saw the girls, but one face grew pale.

It was the face of the thief.

“How did you know it was me?” Tertius asked them later, as the three of them walked back towards the bakery. The fair-haired slave was holding a sack from the granary, his pretext for being out of the house. In the sack was some of the free grain which would be ground and kneaded and baked into bread for Roman citizens.

“Your magic square was the clue I needed,” said Flavia. “The palindrome.” Flavia opened her wax tablet and held the clay oil-lamp up to it. “I realized that if you arrange the letters in the shape of a cross, they spell out PATER NOSTER twice with an A and an O left over. Alpha and omega: the beginning and the end.”

“How do you know about that?” said Tertius. “Do you follow the Way?”

“No, but my friend Jonathan does. They have secret predawn meetings, too.”

“Ah! The doctor’s son. They’re a group of Jewish believers.”

“Yes,” said Flavia. “Jonathan started to teach me your prayer the other day. The one about the father in heaven giving us bread and forgiving us.” She looked at Tertius. “Is Arepo another name for your god?”

He nodded. “It’s a secret name for God’s son, whom we worship.”

“God’s son,” Flavia repeated. “Stephanos was talking about him after he read from the scroll.”

Tertius gave her a shy glance. “Did you like it? Our service, I mean?”

“Yes,” said Flavia thoughtfully. “Yes, I did. I didn’t understand everything. But that room had a nice feeling. And everybody seemed so happy, even though they were poor.”

“And do you see now why I bring a dozen rolls every Sunday? Did you see those little girls’ eyes light up when we celebrated the Lord’s supper and they each received one of Pistor’s finest poppy-seed rolls?”

Flavia nodded, then stopped in the street. Nubia and Tertius stopped, too.

“But Tertius –”

“I know,” he interrupted. “I’ve been stealing and it’s wrong. The moment I saw you come in I felt convicted. I knew my God was disappointed in me. I suppose I’ve been justifying my theft: ‘Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.’ ”

“What?”

“Never mind.” He shook his head. “You know, some masters give their slaves a few coins, or the odd gift. Pistor doesn’t give us anything. Only the lash. But I won’t steal the rolls again, Miss Flavia. I promise.”

“Good,” said Flavia.

“You won’t give me away, will you? My master could sell me to the mines of Sicily. Even have me crucified.”

Flavia looked at Nubia, who also knew the truth. Jonathan and Lupus would have to be told, too.

But nobody else could know. Not even Aristo.

Flavia sighed at the thought of emptying the latrine bucket for a month and of doing maths instead of reading Ovid. She thought of how smug Aristo would be when she admitted defeat.

But really it didn’t matter, because now she knew for certain that she was a detective.

In the dark streets of Ostia, holding her little clay oil-lamp, Flavia Gemina looked up at the slave who stood before her.

“No, Tertius,” she said with a smile. “I promise I won’t breathe a word.”

“H
ow cursedly hot it is,” muttered the Centurion Septimius to his lieutenant, grave old Lepidus, as he lay half stripped in the shade of his tent, longing for the Northern wind.

And he might well say so. The place was Syene, the time the month of August, and the almost vertical sun was pouring down his rays with a fierceness such as the Roman officer had never felt before.

Septimius and his cohort had been marched up to Syene to hold in check the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who, servile in general, and little recking then as now who was their master, provided the taxes were not too heavy, had been stirred up by the priests to a state of most unwonted agitation, in consequence of some insult offered by the Roman soldiery to the sacred animals of the district.

The palm-trees were standing motionless, not a breath stirring their long pendent branches; the broad, swollen Nile was glittering like molten metal as he rolled majestically to the sea. In the background the steep sandy ridges and black crags were baking in the sun, and the only sound that broke the silence was the roar of the distant cataract.

“Curse these Egyptians and their gods,” said Septimius. “I only wish I had the bull Apis here to-day, or that lumbering brute Basis which pretty Cleopatra used to worship at Hermonthis and I would see how
he
could stand this weather. I say, Lepidus, a steak cut out of Apis would be a blessed change for us from those eternal scraggy fowls that they feed us on. How snug the fat brute looked in his temple at Memphis. I only wish the Emperor’s Centurions were put up half as luxuriously.”

“Hush,” answered Lepidus, his second in command, “you shouldn’t ventilate those free-thinking opinions of yours so openly. Whatever you
think
, keep a check on your tongue, for the old priesthood is jealous and powerful even yet, and strange stories are told of their secret doings.”

“A fig for the priesthood! What care I for Apis or Osiris either? I am a Roman citizen and a Roman soldier. I fear no
man but my superior officer, and I know no god but the Emperor.”

“Mark my words, Antony was a greater man than you, Septimius, and
he
bowed the knee to Apis and Osiris too; why, they say he was consecrated himself, and stood high in the priestly ranks, and yet he crouched like a beaten hound to old Petamon, the priest of Isis, and obeyed his very nod. I have heard strange things of that Petamon; men say he knew the old Egyptian secrets and could raise the very dead from their long sleep to answer him. And his grandson and successor is a mightier enchanter than his sire. It was he that stirred up these poor Egyptian slaves almost to rebellion not ten days ago, because one of the legionaries broke the head of a dirty ape that he caught stealing the stores. They say he is at Philae just now concocting some new plot; so, my good fellow,
do
keep your eyes open and your mouth shut – if you can.”

Septimius laughed, half good-naturedly, half contemptuously; and turned in to take a nap, while Lepidus went round the sentries to see that none were sleeping on their posts.

It was evening, the sun had set some half-hour before; and the sky, after melting through all the hues of the rainbow had merged in one delicious violet, in which the clear moon and the planet Venus were shining with a glorious light such as they never attain in duller climes, and throwing long, quivering, silver reflections across the dark waters; the soldiery were preparing for their night’s rest, and the country people had already forgotten all their cares in sleep. The silence was broken only by the baying of dogs and the howl of a distant jackal when Septimius, shaking off his drowsiness, left his tent to saunter through the village and see how his troops were faring.

The beauty and stillness of the night tempted him to
extend his ramble. The few dogs he met shrank cowering from before his tall form and the clank of the good sword at his side, and in a few moments he was alone in the desert. He had more than once followed the same track towards the now silent quarries, where the old Egyptians once hewed those blocks of granite which are a wonder to all succeeding ages. When he had marched over the ground once before at the head of his legionaries to check an incursion of one of the marauding desert tribes, the sky seemed brass, the earth iron, the sun was blazing overhead, scorching all colour and life out of the landscape; the heat, reflected from the black basalt and red syenite rocks, had beaten on his armour almost beyond endurance, while his stout soldiers could barely struggle on through the heavy sand, sighing and groaning for one drop of water where none was to be had.

How different it was now; the moon, hanging low in the heavens threw the long black shadows of the craggy rocks over the silvered sand; and the air was deliciously cool and fresh.

So he wandered on till he reached a huge boulder, on which some old Pharaoh, now forgotten, had carved the record of his marches and victories. The figures of gods and kings were half obliterated, but the Centurion stood trying to follow the mouldering lines in idle curiosity.

“Be their gods true or false,” muttered he, “they were great men, these Egyptians, and their works are mighty.”

As he turned round a huge crag behind him was shaped out by the uncertain moonlight into the figure of a colossus seated on a throne, such as he had seen at Thebes, on his way to Syene, and that so distinctly that he was for a moment fairly startled. Ere long the light changed and the colossus faded away again into an ordinary rock.

From behind the boulder an old man advanced to him, and bowing low, with the cringing servility to which the lower
classes of the Egyptians had been reduced by long ages of tyranny, prostrated himself at the feet of the Centurion, and in broken Greek craved a hearing. Septimius was good-natured and at a loss for occupation; he welcomed the interruption, and as he was, like all well-educated men of his time, as well or better acquainted with Greek than with his native tongue, in a few kindly words bade the old man speak on.

“My lord Centurion,” said the beggar, “I have followed your steps for days in the hope of obtaining a hearing. My tongue is Greek, but my heart is true. You have heard of the Egyptian priesthood and their wiles; not long ago one of your nation, a Centurion like yourself, fell into their hands, and they hold him captive in the neighbourhood. If you would deliver him come here tomorrow night, and come alone; I will tell you
then
what must be done, but I cannot now – farewell.” Then he vanished behind the rocks.

“By Castor and Pollux,” muttered Septimius, “it
may
be a trap set for me; yet surely they
dare
not touch a soldier of the Emperor’s – a Centurion too,” he said. “Ay, poor Claudius vanished a month ago; they said it was a crocodile, but none saw it – yes, it must be Claudius; go I will, let Lepidus say what he likes; but if I tell Lepidus he will have my steps dogged, or some such nonsense. I’ll keep my own counsel; I’ll go, and go alone.” With a brisk step he turned on his heel and headed back to his quarters.