Wrath of the Furies (30 page)

There was a rapping at the door. I gave a start, but it was only a slave who called through the door that the dinner hour had come.

[From the secret diary of Antipater of Sidon:]

I find myself back at the palace.

Early this morning a royal chamberlain appeared on the doorstep of my ostensible hiding place—obviously not a hiding place at all!—and politely asked to see Zoticus of Zeugma. I must have been followed when I came to this house yesterday, thinking to escape the scrutiny of the king and queen. Or can there be spies even in this humble abode?

When I came to the vestibule of the house, the man told me to gather up all my things, as my presence was requested at the royal palace, where a room would be provided for me. A couple of slaves appeared, to carry my things. Outside in the street, I could see armed courtiers. Was I being invited to the palace, or arrested? Or is there a difference, when the summons is issued by an all-powerful monarch?

“Was it the king who sent you?” I asked the chamberlain. “Or was it the queen?”

“My orders never come directly from either of Their Majesties,” he said, and rather condescendingly, as if I were a simpleton. “Be assured I speak with the authority of the royal household.”

“So I have no choice but to obey?”

“None at all,” he said.

And so I was escorted back into the lion's den, so to speak. The quarters I was given are in the lower story of the house, with the acrobats and other riffraff. Among the scant possessions that the slaves dutifully delivered to my room were my writing instruments and the unbound pages of the journal I have been writing, which are tightly rolled up and kept inside a small leather cylinder, a scroll satchel of the sort Roman schoolboys carry and call, in Latin, a
capsa.
How could I ever have thought those words were secret? Undoubtedly the servants assigned to me in the house of Eutropius were spies, and have read every word I've written.

These words, too, will almost certainly be read by some spy from the royal household. I can assume that nothing I do is in secret.

It occurs to me that perhaps I should burn these pages, rather than add more words to them. And yet, the only comfort I find in my predicament is to continue recording my thoughts—but for whom? Who is the imaginary reader for whom these words are intended?

Gordianus. Who else?

But he is far from here, in Alexandria, or perhaps back in Rome. By what possible means could these words ever reach him? It is futile to think that we shall ever be reconciled, or that I could ever make him understand the choices I made. What a fool I have become in my dotage! Truly, Antipater of Sidon has turned into Zoticus, the simpleton poet of Zeugma!

But there is the knock at my door, letting me know that I may now have the pleasure of dining in the company of tumblers and contortionists. Even the doomed must continue to eat …

[Here ends this fragment from the secret diary of Antipater of Sidon.]

As before, I was allowed to bring Bethesda with me into the dining hall. I had put aside the yellow tunic and put on one of my own.

We arrived just in time to behold the spectacle of Sosipater juggling whatever anyone cared to toss his way. Among those watching him, I saw Gnossipus and Damianus.

Sosipater already had several plums in the air, then someone tossed a fig at him, which he deftly caught and added to the circle of flying objects. More items were tossed to him—a small clay cup, a copper bowl, even a shoe. Each in turn joined the other airborne objects, which seemed to fly of their own accord, swooping up and down, and only by coincidence bouncing off the palms of Sosipater's hands. I had seen street entertainers who called themselves jugglers in Alexandria, but I had never seen anything like this.

Sosipater kept this up for quite some time, making various facial expressions to evoke laughter from the crowd, and even closing his eyes for a while, as if he had nodded off. Then he appeared to grow careless, and with a desperate look on his face he bolted this way and that, seemingly on the verge of dropping everything. But this was only a part of the act, which evoked exclamations of alarm followed by raucous laughter.

He ended the performance by letting the copper bowl land upright in one hand, into which the pieces of fruit fell one by one. The shoe fell into his other hand. As for the clay cup, it landed on top of his head and stayed there, perfectly balanced. I could hardly believe my eyes.

“But what sort of fool walks around with a cup on his head?” said Sosipater. “A cup is not a cap! Here, who needs a cup? How about you, old fellow?”

With his chin, Sosipater pointed toward a man who had just stepped into the room. I was so intent on watching the juggler that I saw the newcomer only from the corner of my eye. I could tell that he had a white beard, but little else.

Somehow, with a toss of his head, Sosipater managed to throw the cup toward the newcomer. The old man was caught by surprise and fumbled the catch. The cup bounced from hand to hand as if it were a hot coal, then fell to the floor, where it broke into pieces.

“You clumsy fellow!” said Sosipater, who now stood with his elbows out and his fists on his hips. Somehow he had made the copper bowl of fruit and the shoe disappear while no one was watching.

Standing next to me, Bethesda joined in the laughter and applause, but I stood like a statue, dumbstruck. The old man who had dropped the cup was Antipater.

Embarrassed and red-faced, he kept his eyes lowered, and didn't see me staring at him from across the room. A moment later, with an exclamation of disgust, he turned around and left the room. When I moved to follow him, a strong hand gripped my shoulder.

“Stay where you are, Agathon,” whispered the voice of Samson in my right ear. “Don't go after him.”

Why not?
I wanted to ask.
For what other purpose am I here, but to find Antipater? Now, at last, I have!

But I didn't dare to speak, even in a whisper, and as I stared at the empty doorway through which Antipater had made his flustered exit, where a slave was kneeling down to pick up the broken pieces of the cup, my sighting of him began to seem unreal, almost as if I had imagined it. I had glimpsed the old man's face for only an instant. Had I seen what I wanted to see? Even as I began to doubt my eyes, Samson spoke again in my ear.

“Yes, that was Zoticus you saw. But this is not the moment. Later.”

I turned and looked him in the eye.

“Later,” Samson repeated. “Tonight, I'll come to you.” Then he turned his back on me and moved away, joining the crowd that was still laughing and talking about Sosipater's performance.

“What did he want, I wonder?” said Bethesda, who stood to the other side of me and had been unable to overhear Samson's words. Nor could she have recognized Antipater, since she had never seen him. The strained look on my face puzzled her. Her eyes followed Samson's broad back as he moved away from us.

“I'm not sure I trust that fellow,” she said.

Nor am I,
I thought. But what choice did I have?

 

XXVII

As soon as we had eaten, we returned to the room. From farther down the hall I heard the sound of a flute being played, and rather badly. I was thankful once again not to be sharing quarters with Gnossipus and Damianus.

As night fell, there was a knock at the door. It was only a slave who had come to light our lamps.

I sat on the bed and waited. Bethesda dozed beside me. We had worn ourselves out with lovemaking that day, and I would have slept, too, had I not been listening for another knock at the door, having no idea when it might come. With Bethesda close to me, I began to feel a stirring of arousal—I had not been drained entirely of desire, after all—but I didn't care to be caught in the act when Samson came, so I let Bethesda sleep, and contented myself with gazing at her by the soft light and gently stroking her long hair.

At last, so softly that I wasn't sure I heard it, there came a rapping at the door. I managed to get up without waking Bethesda. I opened the door. Samson slipped inside.

I sniffed the air, then saw the source of the musty odor that had entered the room with Samson. “By Hercules,” I whispered, “what are you wearing?”

His face brightened. “I wondered if anyone would notice,” he whispered. “Do you like it?”

Over his shoulders he wore a woolen cloak that fell a little past his waist. There were catches in front, but he left them undone. What could there be for anyone to like about such a garment? By the feeble light of my last burning lamp, the color appeared to have faded to a dull, reddish brown. The garment looked well-made, but the fabric was visibly worn and tattered in several places. It also had an odor, like the musty smell of a trunk that hasn't been opened for a long time.

“It suits you,” I said, simply to move on to more important matters.

“Does it? Why, thank you. Can you imagine where it came from?”

I sighed, frustrated at the time and breath being spent on something so trivial. I wrinkled my nose. “From a tomb, perhaps?”

“Ha! Yes, it does have a bit of a smell, doesn't it? It could use a good airing. But you're not far off. It didn't come from a tomb, but from a treasury. While you no doubt spent the day making love to that beautiful creature on the bed—”

“How could you know that?” I snapped.

He shrugged. “A lucky guess. Anyway, while you were doing that, I was finally allowed to have a look at the Jewish treasury seized at Cos, or at least what's left of it. The hoard is being kept in a storehouse on the waterfront, surrounded by a small army of guards. No one would dare to break in. The guards are mostly there to watch one another, I think, and make sure no one carries anything off—”

“That's wonderful news,” I said. “But what about—”

“Indulge me, Gordianus. We have a bit of time to kill. They're not ready for us yet.”

“
Who
is not yet ready for us? Do you mean … Zoticus?”

“Patience, Gordianus! Now where was I? Oh, yes, I was finally allowed to have a look at the treasure, with several of the king's courtiers as well as a number of armed guards watching me the whole time. Well, not surprisingly, a substantial portion of the treasury has already been carted off to be sold piecemeal, or else melted down to make coins.”

“How could you tell what was missing?”

“From the ledger, of course. A very careful list of every item in the treasury was kept both at Cos and in Alexandria. Oh, there were all sorts of gold and silver vessels, and candelabra, and candlesnuffers, and jewelry, and coins, and other items precious more for their history than for their intrinsic value. The whole collection should have filled a room about three times the size of the one we're standing in now, but at least half the hoard was gone. That tells us two things.”

“Is one of those things about Zoticus?”

“Patience!” he said. “The first and most important thing it tells us is that King Mithridates never intended to return the treasury intact to the Jews of Alexandria.”

“Might he have done such a thing?”

“As a grand gesture, yes. It was a possibility much hoped for by the Alexandrian Jews. The king could have said he seized the treasury from Cos only because it would be safer elsewhere, and then, at some later date—perhaps arriving in Alexandria either as an ally or as a conqueror—imagine what a magnificent gesture that would make, to publicly restore to the Jews of the city the treasury they had thought was lost. Mithridates would have won the trust and good will of Jews everywhere, not just in Egypt but in all of Asia and Judea. But clearly, that was not his intention.”

“And the other thing the liquidation of the treasury tells us? Is it about Zoticus?”

“We'll get to him, never fear. No, the other thing it tells us is that Mithridates has need of that wealth, or else he would have left it intact for his own use later. No matter how loyal they may be, armies have to be paid. They have to be fed, too, and properly equipped. It's all very, very expensive. Running a royal household is also expensive, especially for a king as extravagant as Mithridates. You heard about the sum he was willing to pay Philopoemen, just to make Monime his mistress? Fifteen thousand pieces of gold! Simply on a day-to-day basis, imagine the cost of feeding and clothing all the courtiers and chamberlains and slaves—even the lowliest slave has to eat, and cannot go naked—and then the expense incurred every time the household moves from one city to another. It staggers the imagination.”

“I suppose it does,” I grudgingly admitted. “But when will—”

“So the precious treasury built up by generations of Jews in Egypt, buying and selling, saving whatever they could, year after year, surviving intact even when one Ptolemy threw another off the throne and heads rolled at the palace in Alexandria—half of that treasure is already gone, spent by Mithridates in a matter of months. Even so, I did manage to get my hands on a few items—”

“You were allowed to take some of the treasure?”

“Only a handful of items—literally a handful, or two, I should say, for I was allowed to take no more than I could carry, and each item I selected had to be approved by an assessor from the palace. The agreement was that I could take only items of historical or religious significance, things particularly precious to the Jews of Alexandria. Naturally, I grabbed the most expensive-looking objects I could find. Oh, you won't believe your eyes when you see the jewel-encrusted cup they let me walk away with. That required some special pleading, but I wore them down at last. I told them it was a thousand-year-old drinking cup, presented as a gift to King Solomon by the Queen of Sheba.”

“Is it?”