Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (99 page)

‘If the creature comes back, I shall have it killed,’ Lucius muttered under his breath, nervously eyeing the roof.

‘In Egypt,’ I said, ‘such an act would be considered murder, punishable by death.’

Lucius looked at me askance. ‘Surely you exaggerate! I realize that the Egyptians worship all sorts of birds and beasts, but it doesn’t prevent them from stealing their eggs or eating their flesh. Is the slaughter of a cow considered murder?’

‘Perhaps not, but the slaying of a cat most certainly is. In fact, when I was a footloose young man in Alexandria, one of my earliest investigations involved the murder of a cat.’

‘Oh, Gordianus, you must be joking! You’re not saying that you were actually hired to track down the killer of a cat, are you?’

‘It was a bit more complicated than that.’

Lucius smiled for the first time since we had been interrupted by the squabbling cats. ‘Come, Gordianus, don’t tease me,’ he said, clapping his hands for the slave to bring more wine. ‘You must tell me the story.’

I was glad to see him regain his good spirits. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I shall tell you the tale of the Alexandrian cat . . .’

The precinct called Rhakotis is the most ancient part of Alexandria. The heart of Rhakotis is the Temple of Serapis, a magnificent marble edifice constructed on a huge scale and decorated with fabulous conceits of alabaster, gold and ivory. Romans who have seen the temple begrudgingly admit that for sheer splendour it might (mind you,
might
) rival our own austere Temple of Jupiter – a telling comment on Roman provincialism rather than on the respective architectural merits of the two temples. If I were a god, I know in which house I would choose to live.

The temple is an oasis of light and splendour surrounded by a maze of narrow streets. The houses in Rhakotis, made of hardened earth, are built high and jammed close together. The streets are strung with ropes upon which the inhabitants hang laundry and fish and plucked fowl. The air is generally still and hot, but occasionally a sea breeze will manage to cross the Island of Pharos and the great harbour and the high city wall to stir the tall palm trees which grow in the little squares and gardens of Rhakotis.

In Rhakotis, one can almost imagine that the Greek conquest never occurred. The city may be named for Alexander and ruled by a Ptolemy, but the people of the ancient district are distinctly Egyptian, darkly complexioned with dark eyes and the type of features one sees on the old statues of the pharaohs. These people are different from us, and so are their gods, who are not the Greek and Roman gods of perfect human form but strange hybrids of animals and men, frightful to look at.

One sees many cats in Rhakotis. They wander about as they wish, undisturbed, warming themselves in patches of sunlight, chasing grasshoppers, dozing on ledges and rooftops, staring at inaccessible fish and fowl hung well beyond their reach. But the cats of Rhakotis do not go hungry; far from it. People set bowls of food out on the street for them, muttering incantations as they do so, and not even a starving beggar would consider taking such consecrated food for himself – for the cats of Rhakotis, like all cats throughout Egypt, are considered to be gods. Men bow as they pass them in the street, and woe unto the crass visitor from Rome or Athens who dares to snigger at such a sight, for the Egyptians are as vengeful as they are pious.

At the age of twenty, after travelling to the Seven Wonders of the World, I found myself in Alexandria. I took up residence in Rhakotis for a number of reasons. For one thing, a young foreigner with little money could find lodgings there to suit his means. But Rhakotis offered far more than cheap dwellings. To feed my stomach, vendors at crowded street corners hawked exotic delicacies unheard of in Rome. To feed my mind, I listened to the philosophers who lectured and debated one another on the steps of the library next to the Temple of Serapis. It was there that I met the philosopher Dio; but that is another story. As for the other appetites common to young men, those were easily satisfied as well; the Alexandrians consider themselves to be the most worldly of people, and any Roman who disputes the point only demonstrates his own ignorance. Eventually, I met Bethesda in Alexandria; but that, too, is another story.

One morning I happened to be walking through one of the district’s less crowded streets when I heard a noise behind me. It was a vague, indistinct noise, like the sound of a roaring crowd some distance away. The government of Egypt is notoriously unstable, and riots are fairly common, but it seemed too early in the day for people to be raging through the streets. Nevertheless, as I paused to listen, the noise became louder and the echoing din resolved into the sound of angry human voices.

A moment later, a man in a blue tunic appeared from around a bend in the street, running headlong towards me, his head turned to look behind him. I hurriedly stepped out of the way, but he blindly changed his course and ran straight into me. We tumbled to the ground in a confusion of arms and legs.

‘Numa’s balls!’ I shouted, for the fool had caused me to scrape my hands and knees on the rough paving stones.

The stranger suddenly stopped his mad scramble to get to his feet and stared at me. He was a man of middle age, well groomed and well fed. There was absolute panic in his eyes, but also a glimmer of hope.

‘You curse in Latin!’ he said hoarsely. ‘You’re a Roman, then, like me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Countryman – save me!’ By this time we were both on our feet again, but the stranger moved in such a spastic manner and clutched at me so desperately that he nearly pulled us to the ground again.

The roar of angry voices grew nearer. The man looked back to the way he had come. Fear danced across his face like a flame. He clutched me with both hands.

‘I swear, I never touched the beast!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘The little girl said I killed it, but it was already dead when I came upon it.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘The cat! I didn’t kill the cat! It was already dead, lying in the street. But they’ll tear me limb from limb, these mad Egyptians! If I can only reach my house – ’

At that moment, a number of people appeared at the bend in the street, men and women dressed in the tattered clothing of the poorer classes. More people appeared, and more, shouting and twisting their faces into expressions of pure hatred. They came rushing towards us, some of them brandishing sticks and knives, others shaking their bare fists in the air.

‘Help me!’ the man shrieked, his voice breaking like a boy’s. ‘Save me! I’ll reward you!’ The mob was almost upon us. I struggled to escape his grip. At last he broke away and resumed his headlong flight. As the angry mob drew nearer, for a moment it seemed that I had become the object of their fury. Indeed, a few of them headed straight for me, and I saw no possibility of escape. ‘Death comes as the end’ goes the old Egyptian poem, and I felt it drawing very near.

But a man near the front of the crowd, notable for his great long beard curled in the Babylonian fashion, saw the mistake and shouted in a booming voice, ‘Not that one! The man in blue is the one we want! Up there, at the end of the street! Quick, or he’ll escape us again!’

The men and women who had been ready to strike me veered away at the last moment and ran on. I drew into a doorway, out of sight, and marvelled at the size of the mob as it passed by. Half the residents of Rhakotis were after the Roman in blue!

Once the main body of the mob had passed, I stepped back into the street. Following behind were a number of stragglers. Among them I recognized a man who sold pastries from a shop on the Street of the Breadmakers. He was breathing hard but walked at a deliberate pace. In his hand he clutched a wooden rod for rolling dough. I knew him as a fat, cheerful baker whose chief joy was filling other people’s stomachs, but on this morning he wore the grim countenance of a determined avenger.

‘Menapis, what is happening?’ I said, falling into step beside him.

He gave me such a withering look that I thought he did not recognize me, but when he spoke it was all too clear that he did. ‘You Romans come here with your pompous ways and your ill-gotten wealth, and we do our best to put up with you. You foist yourselves upon us, and we endure it. But when you turn to desecration, you go too far! There are some things even a Roman can’t get away with!’

‘Menapis, tell me what’s happened.’

‘He killed a cat! The fool killed a cat just a stone’s throw from my shop.’

‘Did you see it happen?’

‘A little girl saw him do it. She screamed in terror, naturally enough, and a crowd came running. They thought the little girl was in danger, but it turned out to be something even worse. The Roman fool had killed a cat! We’d have stoned him to death right on the spot, but he managed to slip away and start running. The longer the chase went on, the more people came out to join it. He’ll never escape us now. Look up ahead – the Roman rat must be trapped!’

The chase seemed to have ended, for the mob had come to a stop in a wide square. If they had overtaken him, the man in blue must already have been trampled to a pulp, I thought, with a feeling of nausea. But as I drew nearer, the crowd began to chant: ‘Come out! Come out! Killer of the cat!’ Beside me, Menapis took up the chant with the others, slapping his rolling pin against his palm and stamping his feet.

It seemed that the fugitive had taken refuge in a prosperous-looking house. From the faces that stared in horror from the upper-storey windows before they were thrown shut, the place appeared to be full of Romans – the man’s private dwelling, it seemed. That he was a man of no small means I had already presumed from the quality of his blue tunic, but the size of his house confirmed it. A rich merchant, I thought – but neither silver nor a silvery tongue was likely to save him from the wrath of the mob. They continued to chant and began to beat upon the door with clubs.

Menapis shouted, ‘Clubs will never break such a door! We’ll have to make a battering ram.’ I looked at the normally genial baker beside me and a shiver ran up my spine. All this – for a cat!

I withdrew to a quieter corner of the square, where a few of the local residents had ventured out of their houses to watch the commotion. An elderly Egyptian woman, impeccably dressed in a white linen gown, gazed at the mob disparagingly. ‘What a rabble!’ she remarked to no one in particular. ‘What are they thinking of, attacking the house of a man like Marcus Lepidus?’

‘Your neighbour?’ I said.

‘For many years, as was his father before him. An honest Roman trader, and a greater credit to Alexandria than any of this rabble will ever be. Are you a Roman, too, young man?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought so, from your accent. Well, I have no quarrel with Romans. Dealing with men like Marcus Lepidus and his father made my late husband a wealthy man. Whatever has Marcus done to bring such a mob to his door?’

‘They accuse him of killing a cat.’

She gasped. A look of horror contorted her wrinkled face. ‘That would be unforgivable!’

‘He claims to be innocent. Tell me, who else lives in that house?’

‘Marcus Lepidus lives with his two cousins. They help him run his business.’

‘And their wives?’

‘The cousins are married, but their wives and children remain in Rome. Marcus is a widower. He has no children. Look there! What madness is this?’

Moving through the mob like a crocodile through lily pads was a great uprooted palm tree. At the head of those who carried it I saw the man with the Babylonian beard. As they aligned the tree perpendicular to the door of Marcus Lepidus’ house, its purpose became unmistakable: it was a battering ram.

‘
I didn’t kill the cat!’
Marcus Lepidus had said. And
‘Help me! Save me!
’ And – no less significantly, to my ears – ‘
I’ll reward you!
’ It seemed to me, as a fellow Roman who had been called on for help, that my course was clear: if the man in blue was innocent of the crime, it was my duty to help him. If duty alone was insufficient, my growling stomach and empty purse tipped the scales conclusively.

I would need to act swiftly. I headed back the way I had come.

The way to the Street of the Breadmakers, usually thronged with people, was almost deserted; the shoppers and hawkers had all run off to kill the Roman, it seemed. The shop of Menapis was empty; peering within I saw that piles of dough lay unshapen on the table and the fire in his oven had gone out. The cat had been killed, he said, only a stone’s throw from his shop, and it was at about that distance, around the corner on a little side street, that I came upon a group of shaven-headed priests who stood in a circle with bowed heads.

Peering between the orange robes of the priests I saw the corpse of the cat sprawled on the paving stones. It had been a beautiful creature, with sleek limbs and a coat of midnight black. That it had been deliberately killed could not be doubted, for its throat had been cut.

The priests knelt down and lifted the dead cat onto a small funeral bier, which they hoisted onto their shoulders. Chanting and lamenting, they began a slow procession towards the Temple of Bast.

I looked around, not quite sure how to proceed. A movement at a window above caught my eye, but when I looked up there was nothing to see. I kept looking until a tiny face appeared, then quickly disappeared again.