The priest sharply interrupted the Greek's reply. He sensed the drift of the query.
"This is irregular, my lord!", he called.
Clarus simply replied, "Shut up, priest!"
The Greek artisan, a quiet sensitive man who would not have been aware of the nature of the interrogations underway but who was fully aware of the status and powers of the men before him in russet-striped white togas, muttered his hesitant response.
"I was instructed to be at Besa before the first day of The Isia, my lord," he said plainly.
"By whom?" Suetonius asked as sweetly as possible.
"I was contracted by Priest Kenamun's servants, my lord," he responded cautiously, nodding towards the Egyptian priest before them. The priest, now known to the team to be named Kenamun, seethed with suppressed anger.
"And when was that?" the Roman finalized. "When were you asked to come to Besa?"
"Six weeks ago, sir," he continued. "Priest Kenamun's servant contracted me at The Fayum six weeks ago. It takes at least three weeks by mule and sail to reach Besa from The Fayum, my lords, where I am a well known painter of portraits for funerals."
Suetonius looked across at the Egyptian. His brow was furrowed. Clarus, Vestinus, and Suetonius realized they had uncovered something unexpected. Surisca understood the situation as well.
"Six weeks ago? That's long before the death of your client, isn't it," Suetonius offered graciously. "This is such remarkable prescience of mind. Please continue with your duties, gentlemen."
Outside the pavilion in the balmy night air the group of four took stock of the situation.
"Gentlemen," Suetonius said, incidentally acknowledging Surisca as a token male, "we have here a circumstance where Caesar's companion has seven love bites to his throat. This may indicate his last day or night was a time of intimate passion?
His left wrist possesses a deep incision sufficient to bleed fatally, despite his death seeming to be by drowning only a day ago. And yet a specialist painter of funerary portraits was contracted many weeks ago before the lad's death to fulfill a mission to prepare an effigy of the dead youth. I might also add, the Greek artisan was contracted by a priest who dissembles about the concealment of wounds on a corpse. These might be seen to be a suspicious set of circumstances? What do we make of it?"
They were each silent for a period. Surisca spoke politely again.
"With permission, masters, may I offer an opinion about the marks of his neck?"
Even Clarus now was coming around to an acceptance of the young woman's contribution to their investigation, though with patrician reluctance.
"Speak."
"The marks upon the young man's neck? I have seen many such markings in my time," she offered in a manner which received little dispute from her hearers.
"To my eye, they are the loving attentions of two people. A woman and a man."
"What on earth makes you think that?" asked Clarus, surprised. A male was to be assumed. But a female was less expected. Surisca continued in her matter-of-fact way.
"The hickeys at the far right side of his neck are higher up and are of a large size, while the ones to the left of his neck are lower down and smaller in size. The positions of the lower small ones makes me think they indicate a partner who is shorter than the dead youth, and therefore possibly female. The higher large ones suggest a male partner. Also, the female bites were placed several hours earlier than the male ones."
"Why do you say they were implanted some hours apart, woman?" Clarus queried.
"It has been my observation how hickeys change their coloring over a very short period of time," she explained. "At first they appear as pale pink blemishes, but over the hours their color changes to a deeper hue and eventually go from rosy to gray with a fine yellow rim. It takes almost a day for a hickey to develop the yellow rim.
The two sets of love bites on your friend's neck show a distinct difference in color. The smaller ones already possess a graying color and a thin yellow rim, while the larger ones are still at the rose stage. I've seen it often on the necks of my colleagues and noted it, too, on my own."
When they thought about it, they felt Surisca had a point. There was no issue with the young man's diverse choice of partners, Suetonius acknowledged to himself. Yet Antinous was known by all to be the emotional property of Caesar for the previous five years, so it would be a brave man or woman indeed who would be so unwise as to engage in intimacy with the emperor's recent Favorite.
"What about the incision in his wrist?" Suetonius asked. "It was deep enough to sever all vital veins. This was no accident. If it were done before his drowning, he would have bled to death long before he drowned. If it were done after his drowning, it would be pointless. Did he do it himself? Or was it done to him? And when? So, is this suicide or murder?"
"Yet I understand Antinous was left-handed?" Clarus reminded. "In wielding a weapon Antinous would logically use his left hand to cut at his right wrist, not at his left wrist. But the incision was in his left wrist. What do we make of this?"
"I have seen the youth playing ball games and casting javelin," the Special Inspector offered, "and from recall he was adept at utilizing both right and left hands. He often drank from his cups with his left hand, while he also reclined at his dining couch on his left side as is normal. Nevertheless he wore his weapons to his right side. So perhaps he was ambidextrous?"
"That indeed it seems," said Clarus with irony, alluding to Surisca's theory of the hickeys. "And despite these issues not one of us knew of Caesar's appointment with the magician Pachrates and his 'holy divination' ceremony?" Clarus forwarded. "Is this what our two day deadline is all about?"
"I admit it is not the sort of thing I would have thought Caesar would contemplate. After all, only a few hours ago he was utterly distraught at his companion's demise. I can't see how an occult reading of the lad's exposed innards fits my picture of his mood at this time."
Suetonius scratched his head. "There's something missing from our understanding of the situation. Hadrian is not a cruel-minded Caligula nor a rapacious Nero, is he? So what could our Princeps hope to gain from such a disrespectful augury?"
"Gentlemen, and the lady Surisca, I'd say it is time for each of us to sleep," Clarus declared. He was exhausted.
Suetonius was surprised to hear his patron acknowledge his assistant as a 'Lady'. Perhaps she had earned her acknowledgement in his eyes by her contributions.
"I agree, my good Clarus," he responded. "I too wish to sleep on the day's adventures and digest its meaning. Tomorrow will be a very busy day."
His eyes lingered upon the shapely proportions of his Honorary Male companion, Surisca. Her post-midnight pleasurable potentials skated through his imagination. Perhaps, he considered, it was time the activities rudely interrupted at the House of the Blue Lotus were fulfilled?
CHAPTER 14
Suetonius looked around the chamber. Vestinus had arranged the space for Surisca and him to share. Two simple traveling beds adorned the chamber. Each was dressed with a thin mattress and a linen sheet accompanied by a simple pillow. Considering how Suetonius had been slumming-it in a rented Nile ferry with five antiquarian notables of Alexandria, the encampment chamber was luxuriously appointed.
A single net tumbled from a high pole as protection from the airborne creatures buzzing around. Suetonius instructed a slave to drag the two beds together side by side for Surisca and he to share, despite a central separating ridge. It was as good as excuse as any, he thought, to encourage intimacy for the night.
Surisca retired to a camp washhouse guided by a slave to complete her toilet. Suetonius presumed she would also perform whatever precautionary arts a woman of her profession uses to avoid pregnancy. He guessed it might be something more artful than an Egyptian crocodile dung pessary or other traditional native contraceptive.