The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (43 page)

“But you didn’t see him?”

“Oh, I saw. He said he would return again when the moon was dark. I don’t know what that means. Perhaps the
Chrestianoi
fear the Moon Goddess. Anyway, I said nothing to my daughter, but noted how as the time of the dark of the
Moon approached, she grew calmer, but more anxious, as if
expectant
. This time I did what might sound a little ridiculous. I climbed up on the roof of our house. There I was above my daughter’s room. Her window looks out over the sheds and stables by our wall, into the street, where there is a broad space at the edge of a few trees, with a stone bench. You’ve seen the place.

“On the appointed night, then, with all the servants in their rooms at my orders, I watched from the roof. My daughter came to the window right below me. She called out something I couldn’t quite make out, some kind of prayer or incantation, and
Charicles
answered. Her words then were of joy, of how much she loved him and wanted to be with him. He promised that she would be soon, despite anything her ‘cruel jailer’ – meaning me – could possibly do about it, because the power of the Masked One was greater than that of the whole Empire or even the gods. ‘How can I know this?’ says she. ‘Please, give me some proof?’ ‘Isn’t your faith strong enough, even after all we’ve been through?’ ‘I am afraid,’ says she. ‘I am weak. Please.’ She wept piteously, and Charicles assented. ‘
Look at me, Catia. Do you not recognize me?
’ There was a light over among those trees, as if someone had uncovered a lantern, and there
sitting on the bench
was the youth Charicles. He looked – though of course it was hard to tell under the circumstances – pale and
strange
in a way I could not quite define. But it was Charicles, all right. He raised his hand.

“At that point Catia let out a cry, and I was so startled, I admit, that I nearly lost my grip on the roof. I slipped. A couple of loose tiles crashed into the paved yard below, and the light among the trees went out. By the time I could clamber down and summon a couple of manservants, and we could get outside to those trees, we found only the empty bench. There was no sign that anyone had been there.”

“No sign?” said Arpocras.

“What would you expect? We didn’t find the lantern.”

“How was your daughter?” I asked.

“The nurse found her on the floor. She had fallen into a swoon, which became a delirium, from which she has only imperfectly recovered.”

“How long ago was this?”

“But two nights before you arrived in the city.”

Again I wondered how I, who am trained as a lawyer and to some extent as an engineer, could be of any particular assistance. It continued to seem more a matter for a physician – or a priest.

Catius Magnus looked at me, helplessly.

“Couldn’t you . . . make up some document . . . declaring her to be innocent because of her illness, now and into the future?”

I explained that no law can absolve someone for a crime they may commit in the future.

“Then I have no hope,” said Catius Magnus. “It may take years, but this will destroy my daughter. As long as she thinks her boy is alive – as long as he
is alive
– she will believe in the magic of the
Chrestianoi
. I can only restrain her for so long. When she grows up, as an adult woman . . . perhaps after I am gone . . . she will continue to proclaim her adherence to these cultists. And she will have to be punished, as the Emperor’s guidelines have clearly laid down. She will not recant, I am certain of that. So what am I to do? I can only pray uselessly to the gods, and mourn.”

Again there was a moment of awkward silence, and again it was my indispensable Arpocras who saved us.

“I think we can help, sir. I think we can look into this.”

I saw that for once he and Pudens were of one mind. I didn’t let on that
I
was the one who didn’t quite follow.

So we remained for several days as the guests of Catius
Magnus. His daughter was kept out of sight. I inquired once of the serving women, and they said that “The Mistress” was sleeping calmly. There was no other mistress in this house, as Magnus’s wife had died some years before and he had not remarried.

But she couldn’t sleep all the time, could she, even if drugged? Sooner or later she would get into more trouble. I appreciated my host’s dilemma.

Nevertheless, I kept myself occupied with official business. The financial records of Heraclia Pontica were in arrears, like those of so many others in this province. There were the usual improprieties, an aqueduct that cost three times as much as it should, a theatre that never seemed to be finished . . .

It was Arpocras who made more intimate inquiries. He asked to see the girl, and said that he found her awake, not at all delirious, but closely guarded by muscular women the size of small oxen, and the look on her face was one of absolute, venomous hatred for him and for all of us.

He went out into the town and asked certain questions.

One afternoon he deposited a small lump of matter on my desk.

“What is that?”

“Wax, sir.”

“So it is. What of it?”

“I found it on the bench across the street, by the trees.”

“I confess I don’t see the significance.”

“If someone used the kind of lantern which has a candle in it, as opposed to an oil-lamp, it might leave such droppings.”

“So? I am sure many of the citizens possess such lanterns.”

“But I do not think they use them while sitting on that bench in the middle of the night.”

“Perhaps that is so –”

“It means that someone was actually there, sir, as Catius Magnus reported.”

“I didn’t think he was lying. You don’t mean –?”

“No, sir, I don’t,” he said, at his most inscrutable.

What we finally decided to do, following a suggestion which came, inevitably, from Arpocras, and to which I assented, was to attend one of the midnight orgies of the
Chrestianoi
. This was the only way to gain the answers we needed, and to bring our host’s agony to an end.

It raised a tactical problem. It hadn’t been too hard for Arpocras to learn when and roughly where the cultists met. It was an open secret among the lower orders of the town. Some dreaded these meetings as the manifestations of demons, which would bring plague and doom on us all. Others anticipated them. It seemed that the infection was quite widespread . . . and all too many believed the impossible, apocalyptic – a term the
Chrestianoi
used – prophecies of the Masked One. I had to admit that these were not at all like the beliefs of the criminals over whose trials I had presided at Nicomedia, but what respectable Roman can possibly know much about these strange matters? Is it possible that there are differing factions and even various nations of
Chrestianoi
right before our eyes, invisible to all but fellow believers?

But I drift from my theme. The immediate problem was how to attend the meeting without giving alarm. We tried, one last time, to convince the girl to cooperate.

She spat in Arpocras’s face.

“You can kill me,” she said, “but I will not betray them. I am not afraid of you.”

Arpocras, showing a manner I had never before seen in him, yanked the girl’s head back by the hair, held a small knife to her throat, and said, “We’ll see how fearless you really are.”

“Go ahead. I will rise again . . . as Charicles has risen and
you never will
.”

“It’s useless, Arpocras,” I said.

He let her go and put his knife away. He sighed. “Yes, it is. But I have something here which is not.” He revealed a small, stopped phial, which he set on a tabletop.

The two muscular serving-women held the girl Catia firmly while Arpocras forced her mouth open.

“Would you open that for me, please?” he said to Pudens, indicating the phial. Pudens opened it, and, as the Greek nodded, poured the contents down the girl’s throat. He held his hand over her nose and mouth, and, struggle though she might, she eventually swallowed.

Her father looked away.

“She is not harmed,” said Arpocras. “The potion will merely make her docile. She is unlikely to speak, but if she did, her words would be slurred, as if she were drunk. But if we guide her, she will be able to walk, and if we arrive in her company, and are not ourselves recognized, perhaps it will be enough.” He looked at me, as if to say wordlessly,
It’s the best I could come up with
.

It would have to do. All there was left for us to do was to disguise ourselves. Arpocras wore a Greek cloak. Catius Magnus, Pudens, and I wore the plain togas of citizens, but without the stripes of a senator or a knight, which might attract too much attention. That the clothing we donned was not entirely clean was for the best.

We draped our togas up over our heads, like hoods, to hide our faces. We could only hope that perhaps the
Chrestianoi
maintained this custom of covering the head when at religious services . . . in any case, luck was with us. It looked like it was going to rain. It was a dark, windy, overcast night.

At the time appointed, we made our way, the girl between us, with her either arm held by Pudens and her father, out of the city of the living, into the city of the dead. There among the many tombs – some of them alleged to be of Homeric
heroes; I could imagine Arpocras and Pudens chattering about them under happier circumstances – we waited, seated on a flat stone. We had with us a lantern with a candle inside it, but kept it covered.

I felt a little spray of rain on my face. The night was, indeed, turning foul. A storm approached from across the sea. The air started to turn cold. I saw that the girl Catia’s teeth were chattering, even though the expression on her face was completely blank. She stared forward, into nothing.

But it was by following her gaze that I saw the first sign. A cloaked, furtive shape moved among the tombs. Then there was another, and another. They were all around us. I fancied for a second that we had been overwhelmed and surrounded by some army of beasts, something that crawled up out of the earth or out of graves.

Someone whistled. Someone else began to play, very faintly, on a flute.

“We cannot conceal ourselves,” whispered Arpocras.

We stood up, Catius Magnus and Pudens holding the girl, Arpocras holding the covered lantern under his cloak.

There were little outcries of surprise, but then the cultists – for so they were, ordinary men and women and even a few children, all of the meaner sort – saw that the girl was with us, and this soothed them.

They parted before us and bade us proceed, and so we did proceed into a low area, where running water had cut away part of a hillside, and some of the tombs seemed about ready to tumble down on our heads. Far away, lightning flashed. Thunder came a while after. The rain was more than spray now, light, but persistent. I will admit that I was afraid, that every superstitious fear which we try to banish away by philosophy and reason came washing back over me like a tide. I feared the wrath of Hecate, absurd as that seemed. I feared hungry, angry ghosts, and the demons of the
Chrestianoi
, who might well reach up through the muddy earth and pull me down into that underworld of fire and torment the
Chrestianoi
supposedly believe in.

We proceeded to the mouth of a cave, where a rude tent had been set up, as if to extend the cave mouth out among the tombs. There the
Chrestianoi
seated themselves, on stones or on the bare ground. Some food and wine was passed around. I had heard of this from the prisoners at Nicomedia, the “love feast” of the Christ-followers. It was hardly a feast. We all took a few mouthfuls of whatever was offered, and pretended to give some to the girl Catia, who sat among us as if she had walked in her sleep.

Someone got out – strange as it may seem – a small wooden cross, and reminded those assembled of Christ, who had died on a cross and risen again. Prayers and chants followed, as if to a god. My companions and I mumbled and pretended to follow along. I noticed, to my alarm, that the girl was actually mouthing the words.

Then someone cried out, “Behold! Our prophet comes and brings with him the martyr who has been resurrected!”

There was a flash, like lightning, but
inside the cave
. I don’t know what it was, but I smelled a foul, sulphurous smoke. I didn’t have time to consider the matter further, because there, illuminated by two uncovered lanterns at the back of the cave, stood the infamous Masked One, who wore a beaten silver mask fashioned like the rising sun – that is, the rays spread out from the sides and the top, but not the bottom, giving it the overall shape of a fan. He wore a black robe. I couldn’t see his hands. Either closely-fitting gloves covered them or he had painted his hands black. The effect was to make the mask seem to float in the air.

Then he began to speak, in a loud, resonant voice.

“I, the foremost disciple of the risen and true Christ, of Jesus of Nazareth, who died, as you know, in Judea in the
time of Tiberius, but rose again – and I say to you that on the night he rose he came to
my house
to tell me, first of all those he loved, that he had indeed risen; and he bade me go forth into the world and continue his work, raising up our believers from out of their graves, so that they might never die. I was his
most
intimate friend, the only one to whom he revealed
all
his secrets. Those others who claim to have the truth have but part of it. To me
alone
he revealed the mysteries of the inner light, which is in all of us and in all things, which shines through the flesh and will never die. He said to me,
Lo, I am as the risen sun in glory
.

“Now there is one among us here tonight who has suffered a great loss, whose heart has been torn by the seeming murder of one she loved –”

All eyes turned to us, and to the girl. I froze. Pudens and Catius Magnus looked terrified. Arpocras seemed as expressionless as some ancient, grim statue.

The girl struggled and moaned.

“Yes,” said the Masked One, “I can offer you another glimpse of your beloved Charicles. He cannot yet lie in your arms, my dear, for the path back from death is long and hard. Every day I must accompany him for a time on his journey. But you may see him again. Look –”