Wrath of the Furies (15 page)

“Ah, yes, I see.” Posidonius produced a stylus and wax tablet and began scribbling notes. He was famous for recording the habits of Gauls and Celts and other exotic folk he had observed in his travels. Did he intend to record the appearance and behavior of King Ptolemy for posterity? Such gossip hardly seemed the kind of thing that would be of use to some future historian.

*   *   *

Because we came from Rhodes, everyone disembarking at Ephesus from the
Phoenix
was herded by port officials into a special queue for passengers arriving from “unfriendly” ports. After an hour or so of waiting in line on the wharf, my turn at last arrived to pass through the city gates. As it turned out, I was not exposed as a Roman spy. Nor was I allowed to simply enter the city, as I had hoped. As so often happens, there was a third possibility that I could not have foreseen.

Before we left Alexandria, the eunuchs and Bethesda and I had rehearsed the scene of my arrival, employing several different scenarios. Kettel and Berynus played the Ephesian entry officials, asking all the many questions that might come up. I had been made to maintain complete silence, while Bethesda had been coached to answer as simply and briefly as she could. (“And if the snooty bureaucrat seems even the least bit susceptible to your charms, my dear, do not hesitate to use them,” Kettel had advised her, putting his hands on his hips and batting his eyelashes to demonstrate, at which an unamused Bethesda returned an unblinking sphinxlike stare that was infinitely more provocative.)

As it turned out, the eunuchs had done an excellent job of anticipating the kinds of questions we would be asked, and all the various reactions our answers might elicit—all except one.

Things seemed to be going very well, I thought. The official was a young man, decidedly not a eunuch to judge by his neatly trimmed beard. As he looked over my travel documents, his manner was brisk and efficient, but not unfeeling. He seemed mildly susceptible to Bethesda's charms, and not unsympathetic with the plight of a man in the prime of youth struck dumb and desperately in search of a cure.

“Do you have a place to stay in the city?” he asked.

“The last time my master was in Ephesus,” answered Bethesda, “he stayed with a man called Eutropius, who lives up the hill, near the theater.”

“Not a cheap neighborhood. This Eutropius must be a man of means.”

Bethesda turned to me. I nodded vigorously, and she replied, “Oh, yes, Eutropius is a man of considerable means.”

The young bureaucrat cast a skeptical glance at my clothes, obviously wondering what relationship might exist between a man as humble as me and a rich Ephesian.

Bethesda, too, noticed his skepticism. “I believe my master and this Eutropius met through a mutual friend, a traveling tutor by the name of Zoticus. Zoticus of Zeugma—perhaps you've heard of him?”

The young man seemed amused. No one famous ever came from Zeugma. “I don't think so.”

“Oh, he's quite widely known,” said Bethesda with a sly smile. “He writes poetry, too. My master would recite some lines of it for you, I'm sure, except that … well, as I explained … my master is dumb.”

I bit my tongue and resisted the urge to give her a kick. Giving complete answers was one thing. Spinning needless elaborations was another.

“Dumb, did she say?” Another functionary suddenly appeared—this one a eunuch, to judge by the softness of his downy jowls. He was more senior than the official who had been questioning us, to judge by the ostentatious headdress he wore, a kind of turban from which dangled a great many gewgaws made of cheap metal and colored glass.

The younger official nodded. “Yes, sir. He's an Alexandrian come to seek healing at the Temple of Artemis. I explained that he'd be lucky to get in, with that mob of Romans cramming themselves inside, seeking sanctuary—”

“And mute?” said the older man, giving me a hard look.

“So he says. Or rather, so his slave says—”

“Can't say a word?” The eunuch kept staring at me until I nodded. He snatched my documents from the younger man and gave them a cursory glance. “Well, then—Agathon of Alexandria—this is your lucky day.” He swatted his underling with the documents. “Did you forget, Terpsicles, that we're to be on the lookout for specimens exactly such as this one?”

Terpsicles grimaced to acknowledge some oversight. I frowned, not liking the sound of that word:
specimens
.

“Follow me, Agathon of Alexandria,” said the eunuch.

Bethesda shot me a questioning glance. I shrugged.

“Is there some problem?” she asked.

“No problem at all,” the eunuch called over his shoulder. “Did you not hear me? Not deaf as well, are you? Follow me!”

“Follow you
where
?” insisted Bethesda.

“To the royal palace.”

“Royal … palace?” Bethesda wrinkled her brow. So did I.

“Yes. You know, the big building where the king stays when he's in residence. You have one of those in Alexandria, don't you?” He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “What a pair the two of you make. A mute master and a simple slave!”

Bethesda's expression turned stormy. She opened her mouth, but I silenced her with a jab from my elbow. I took her by the arm and pulled her after me.

“But why are we going to the palace?” she whispered.

The question was spoken to me, but it was the keen-eared eunuch who answered. “To meet Queen Monime, you silly girl.”

Until then I had only been pretending. Now I was genuinely dumbstruck.

 

XI

“His vicious little queen,” Antipater had written about this woman called Monime. What threat did she pose to Antipater, and how great was the danger? For what possible reason had I been summoned to her royal presence? Was such an unexpected privilege the best thing that could happen—or the worst?

Gaius Cassius had been able to give me only a few pieces of information about Monime. Her father was one Philopoemen, a man of Macedonian blood and a person of considerable importance in the city of Stratonicea. When Mithridates laid claim to Stratonicea, he met with the city's most powerful families, and the alluring Monime caught his eye.

It had not, at first, been the king's intention to marry the young woman. Mithridates had been married only once before, to his own sister, Laodice, whom he had executed for sleeping with his friends and plotting against him. Having been given several male heirs already by the late Laodice, and having access to any number of beautiful courtesans for his pleasure, Mithridates had vowed never to marry again. Probably he thought Monime would be flattered to become yet another of his courtesans, but the young woman resisted his advances, and her father stepped in to negotiate. In such cases, money usually sufficed. Flush from his victories and his acquisition of the treasuries on Cos, Mithridates offered an astounding sum—fifteen thousand gold pieces—that Monime refused. She insisted on a marriage contract, a royal diadem, and the title of queen.

Monime had nerve—a quality Mithridates apparently found as appealing as her beauty. Instead of incurring his wrath, her audacity only whetted his appetite for the nuptial bed. Monime's resolve was rewarded with a royal marriage. For his reward, the king's new father-in-law was appointed royal overseer of Ephesus.

These bits of information gave me some idea of the sort of woman I was soon to meet, but no clue as to why she wanted to meet me.

Clucking his tongue and shooing various lesser functionaries out of his way, the eunuch escorted us to a shaded portico just inside the city gate. A great many litters, large and small, were stationed on blocks; the bearers to carry them stood idly by, awaiting orders. The eunuch practically shoved me into one of the two-person litters, then got into it himself, taking the seat across from me. It was a covered litter, with curtains that could either be tucked behind hooks or closed for privacy.

The eunuch unhooked the curtains and let them fall shut, then thrust one arm outside the box and snapped his fingers. I heard the shuffling sounds of a team of bearers taking their stations at the poles on either side of the box.

“The royal palace!” he said.

I grabbed my seat as the bearers lifted us off the blocks.

What of Bethesda? Apparently the eunuch expected her to walk. I did not like the idea. Nor did she. She parted the curtains and peered inside.

“Am I not to ride, as well?” she asked.

“You? A slave?” said the eunuch.

“But I am my master's tongue—the only voice he possesses. Do you not intend to converse with him during the trip?”

The eunuch considered this for a moment, then dismissed her with a wave. “We shall ride in silence,” he said. “Follow along behind us, girl. You look fit enough to keep up.”

Bethesda pursed her lips, then vanished from sight as the curtain of the litter fell shut and we headed off.

Where exactly was I being taken? That was another question I might have asked the eunuch, had I a voice.

The last time I had been in Ephesus, there had been no such thing as a royal palace, because there had been no royalty. Like many a Greek-speaking city, Ephesus had become a Roman protectorate, having been bequeathed to the Senate and People of Rome in the will of its last ruler, the heirless King Attalus III of Pergamon. As governor of Asia, Gaius Cassius had been in charge of Ephesus, ruling from Pergamon. More locally, the city had been governed by a council of city fathers. Antipater had undoubtedly explained the governing structure of Ephesus to me, but I had not paid much attention to the details—I had been too busy saving Anthea, and receiving my reward from Amestris. But I was certain there had been no king or queen running the place. That had changed with the city's “liberation” by Mithridates. He was now the king, Monime was the queen, and Philopoemen was the episcopus, or royal overseer.

What, then, was this so-called “royal palace” to which I was being taken? As I would later learn, Attalus III had kept a residence in the city—not surprisingly, the grandest dwelling in Ephesus. Subsequently, this dwelling had become the property of the richest Roman banker in the city, who filled it with artworks and furnishings fit for a king—quite literally, as it turned out, for when the Roman banker fled for his life to Rhodes, Mithridates claimed the abandoned property for his royal residence.

As our journey progressed, I quickly grew bored of looking at the eunuch across from me, and parted the curtains of the litter so I could look outside. One waterside market looks much like any other, I thought, until my attention was drawn to a placard posted in a conspicuous spot. It was daubed with red paint that read, in both Latin and Greek:

BY DECREE OF HIS MAJESTY

KING MITHRIDATES, KING OF KINGS,

AND UPON PAIN OF IMMEDIATE DEATH,

ALL ROMANS MUST WEAR THE TOGA

AT ALL TIMES.

Pythion had told me about this proclamation. But to hear of such a decree is one thing; to see it with my own eyes was another. And I saw it not once, but many times, repeated on placards posted in every available spot, not just in the markets but in the residential streets beyond. Appended to many of these placards was a second decree, apparently added later since the paint was another shade of red and the smaller letters were cramped to fit the remaining space:

IT IS FURTHER DECREED,

ALSO UPON PAIN OF IMMEDIATE DEATH,

THAT ALL ROMANS MUST SURRENDER ALL ARMS,

LARGE AND SMALL, TO THE CIVIL AUTHORITIES.

What made the first decree so sinister? Why did it raise hackles on the back of my neck? It was something about the words “immediate death”—not just death, but
immediate
death, inflicted on the spot—and the coupling of such a frightful punishment with the toga. The donning of his first toga marks every Roman boy's induction into manhood. To wear the toga in Rome is to feel one is a Roman among many Romans, not only the living but the ancestors as well, all sharing centuries of tradition. To wear the toga in foreign lands is to show one's pride at being Roman among those who are not. But there could be no pride in wearing a garment because a king demanded it, knowing that failure to do so would bring immediate death. A mark of pride had been made into something shameful.

Why were the decrees in both Latin and Greek? To a Roman the message would mean one thing. To a Greek it would mean something quite different—that the outsiders had been forced to wear an identifying garment, making them easy to spot at a distance. Easy to shun, or to follow, or to track. Easy to round up, as Pythion had said.

Now these outcasts had been stripped of their weapons, as well.

The placards grew less frequent as the bearers began to ascend one winding street after another, taking us into the district of fine mansions in the vicinity of the theater. This was the neighborhood where Antipater's friend and former pupil Eutropius lived. Studying the passing scene, I recognized certain landmarks, and drew in a sharp breath as we passed directly in front of Eutropius's house.

Antipater had written that he was being allowed to reside away from the royal court, in the house of Eutropius. Was he inside the house at that very moment, perhaps sitting down to dinner with his host and his host's daughter? And was the lovely Anthea being waited upon by her equally lovely slave Amestris, she whose hair was the color of midnight?

Even as my thoughts took a certain turn, I again saw before me, peering into the litter, the face of … not Amestris, but Bethesda!

She gave me a blank stare, and then I quickly averted my face, feeling my cheeks grow hot. Simply by looking at me, Bethesda was often able to read my thoughts. This ability had proven useful to a master feigning muteness, but it could also be disconcerting. How did she do it? I suspected sorcery. It seemed to me that her ability had grown stronger since the time she spent as a captive in the Nile Delta, under the protection and possible tutelage of the Corinthian witch, Ismene.