The large Nubian was toying with his hip dagger and flexing his small wicker shield in readiness for action, unsure of the nature of this confrontation and awaiting the priest's signal for a response. He did so with some trepidation in the presence of three mature-age Romans in formal togas.
It is at times such as this that Clarus performs best, Suetonius recalled. With a sharp hiss through clenched teeth, the magistrate swept the priest and the Nubian aside with one arm and lunged through the pavilion's flaps. The others including Surisca swiftly followed through the opening.
In the gloom of the pavilion's interior the four could see several Egyptian workers hovering around a worktable lit by blazing torches shimmering their fumes through a vent into the night sky. The bench appeared to hold the bodily remains of the drowned youth laid out for the worker's attentions. An intense charge of cloying incense perfumed the chamber to mask the atmosphere, but the underlying sickly-sweet odor of decay cut through the fragrance nonetheless.
A separate table stood nearby with another body's shape lying under a covering. It was attended by two other workers, one of whom wore Greek not Egyptian attire. As the four entered the pavilion Suetonius noted how a covering cloth was quickly flung across the figure on the second table to obscure its features.
Jars of varying sizes and instruments of a surgical nature were laid on other tables, while amphorae of fluids stood in their racks to one side. Strips of linen were piled into several baskets nearby. The group gingerly approached the worktables as the Egyptians ceased their activities and turned to confront the intruders. They had been splashing scoops of river water over the table to sluice its surface.
Antinous lay stretched atop the table, held up by wooden braces under his neck and hip.
The workers were evacuating the innards from his cadaver with surgical hooks. They drew the guts from an incision in the intestinal area and slid the slimy entrails onto a large wicker tray. The perforated wicker allowed the waters to rinse detritus away while the intestinal tissues remained behind.
Streaks of coagulated blood, mucus, and fecal matter from the innards was rinsed away but left the fleshy tissues undamaged. The five intruders immediately drew the folds of their robes to cover their faces against the odors.
"What is going on here, Egyptian, what is this process?" Clarus demanded. "It seems sacrilegious."
"We are preparing the body of the Worthiness for public display, great lord," the priest groveled before his betters. "It is not sacrilegious, it is performed with the prayers and rites suited to a god.
We must cleanse the inner cavities of the deceased of all putrefying organs before they pollute his Great Worthiness. The brain is especially difficult to recover without damaging his features. A body left in its natural state will emit polluting miasmas which quickly corrupt the flesh. Already a day has passed. Bloating and infestation are underway. By removing his organs into pickling jars and packing his cavity with linens drenched in cedar oil, as well as painting protective wax onto the skin, we delay corruption for a few days. But only a few days, lords, no longer. Decay is unavoidable unless we engage in proper Royal Embalming."
Clarus spoke sharply to the priest.
"I am told, Egyptian, you possess arts which will preserve a body indefinitely, not just a few days? I have been shown such miracles at Memphis."
"My lords, Great Caesar has demanded his companion be displayed in two morning's time. Special ceremonies are planned. Caesar requires his young friend to be ready for public showing on that occasion. Royal Embalming takes two months to achieve, not two days," he intoned with unctuous servility but evident honesty. "He would be bathed in special salts for a full month, just to begin."
"What do you do with his innards?" Suetonius asked. "Are these dispensed with?"
"We wash and oil them carefully, my lord, to protect them, and store them in canopic jars in protective lotions to await Holy Divination," the priest informed us. "They are accorded great respect, my lord, as is to be expected of such a Special Worthiness as this noble youth."
"Holy Divination?" Suetonius asked, "what is 'holy divination'?"
"Sirs, I am instructed that the entrails of Caesar's companion are to be prepared for divination. Their occult message is to be interpreted by the great priest Pachrates, Servant of Amun from Memphis," he soothed in a reverential tone. "My master awaits our delivery of the necessary elements as soon as they are prepared."
"Where are you to deliver the entrails?" Clarus demanded. "To whom and where?"
The priest looked anxiously at his workers and the Romans with their solitary female. He hesitated.
"Well?" said Clarus sharply.
"To the Temple of Amun beyond Besa on this east bank," he murmured reluctantly.
"And to whom?" Clarus added.
"To my master, the priest of Amun, Pachrates, my lords — but in the presence of Great Caesar himself," he stated with subtle emphasis on the emperor's name.
"In the presence of Caesar?" Suetonius and Clarus voiced in unison. Suddenly, it occurred to each of the group they had stumbled onto a project which might have been better left unknown.
"May I proceed then with my duties, my lords?" the priest oozed with a glint of victory.
The mention of Caesar was his masterstroke, he believed. But Suetonius felt there was now much more to be known.
"What is beneath the cloth of the other table?" he demanded.
A body shape was clearly evident beneath the folds. Was another corpse being eviscerated here, he wondered? Is there another death involved here?
"It is nothing, my lord, it is not to be considered," the priest fumbled.
Suetonius took the Clarus approach to simply walk to the table to flip the covering away from its contents. The priest cried "No, no, my lord!"
The Greek workman and his Egyptian assistant stood back smartly as the object beneath was revealed.
A figure of a human body carved into a single log of softwood was lying on the table. Its lower limbs were apparently still incomplete in mid-carve. Tools, chisels, and fine-edged razors lay nearby along with pots of paints and brushes.
The shape of the body conformed closely to the proportions of the figure of Antinous lying on the other bench. The head and facial features were already at an advanced stage of sculpting into a likeness of the Bithynian's face. Flesh-tone color had been applied to its surface.
"What is happening here, Greek?" Suetonius demanded. "I am an investigator commissioned by the emperor, Caesar Hadrian. Who are you, and what is this effigy? Name yourself and your status."
The Greek trembled before the man in the toga.
"I am Cronon of the Fayum, sir, registered in my nome as a freeborn artisan" he pleaded in Greek accented with the local guttural Egyptian dialect. "I am a painter of images of the living and the dead, my lord. I prepare coffins with portraits of their inhabitants so the Land Of The Dead can identify the owners throughout posterity. It is my trade, my lord. I have been hired to create an exact portrait of his Great Worthiness, the god Antinous."
The man was obviously a local born tradesman of Greek immigrant descent. Suetonius had seen such portraits of the Greeks and Romans of the Fayum Oasis and at Canopus in their prime of life which are painted onto coffins in anticipation of the day of their funeral. Many people retain these portraits instead of sculpted busts because they are very realistic likenesses. They are displayed in their homes as a record of their appearance at an earlier time of life.
"But what is it you are performing here? This is an effigy, not a painted image," the biographer blurted. The man bowed and offered obeisance in an especially demeaning way for a Greek. He had acculturated well to Egyptian values, Suetonius thought.
"My lord, we are preparing an exact likeness of the god. It, it, it — " he replied, but trailed away uncertainly. The priest interrupted.