Surisca crumpled her features in a girlish manner displaying a struggle for certainty.
"Master, I am not expert in understanding such things — especially upon the dead, who quickly develop all manner of blemishes. Nevertheless, the marks on your young friend's neck looked to me to be about a day in age. I am rash enough to estimate that the hickeys imposed by the male companion were more recent than the smaller ones with the yellow rim. Those appeared older. They could have been acquired some hours apart, possibly as much as half a day. This is my humble opinion, my lord," she concluded.
Well, Suetonius thought, a true professional had spoken. So it seemed the boy was not as absolutely faithful to his erastes, Caesar, as common gossip would have it?
As countless impetuous paramours discovered in the reign of past emperors, it would be a risky itch indeed to indulge oneself with Caesar's wife, favorite, or other bed partners. Such behavior could possess fatal consequences. In the past this itch had rapidly propelled offenders to lifetime exile at some far away barren desert. Alternatively, they could find themselves upon a funerary pyre following an inexplicable misadventure upon a sword or unexpected fall from a high place.
Yet the prospect of Antinous having a concealed bit of fluff in his life was a prospect which might, or might not, possess value in fulfilling Caesar's commission, Suetonius considered. Perhaps jealousy and duplicity are involved in the young man's death, or some other commonplace passion?
The launch of the second but final day and night of Hadrian's assigned allotment for investigation possessed interesting promise.
CHAPTER 15
"Hail, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus! Welcome to Day Two of your assignment as Special Inspector!" Julius Vestinus was as efficient as ever despite the early hour.
"My staff has arranged the list of interviews you ordered, by the hour every hour. The only person on your list who has not been located is the youngest member of Antinous's retinue, the language tutor Thais of Cyrene. I have instructed Tribune Macedo to assign soldiers to search for the woman on your behalf. In fact I've had Macedo issue a warrant to that effect under Caesar's seal in case the young lady has met with some misadventure or is being purposely evasive."
"Thank you, Vestinus."
"For your convenience, you are set up in the courtyard close-by. Your scribe Strabon and his assistant are waiting for you there now, as well as your Praetorian centurion Quintus Urbicus with his two sidekicks."
"Once again, you've thought of everything, Vestinus," Suetonius acknowledged.
Centurion Quintus Urbicus and his men were standing in the early morning light of the courtyard. They were dressed in local Egyptian habits instead of their Praetorian uniforms. The three were unkempt and their clothing was oddly stained. Perhaps their costumes were undercover disguises in the style of the local customs? In the crook of one arm Urbicus carried a bulky, stained, rag-cloth bundle.
The three snapped to attention with Praetorian precision as Suetonius arrived to take his place in the center chair at a long bench. Senator Clarus and the scribes were already in place at either end of the table, with a separate chair for Surisca placed a few feet behind the Special Inspector.
"Hail in the name of Caesar!" Urbicus proclaimed as the three Praetorians saluted on Suetonius's arrival.
"All hail!" the Special Inspector responded in as military a manner as he could muster.
Strabon and his assistant had their writing tools ready for action. Clarus, being the legal magistrate hearing the interviews, had now arranged for a court lictor to attend the sessions. This sturdy young man in a simple tunic emblazoned with its Imperial eagle insignia and carrying his fasces baton of punishment-rods bound around a sharp axe-blade stood impassively to one side. He was wearing the regulation-issue po-face of a court officer. A lictor's official duties often include witnessing the execution of punishment upon offenders. Clarus, in his role as supervising magistrate, had decided the presence of a lictor during interviews might give the panel greater gravitas.
"Report, Centurion Quintus Urbicus!" Suetonius commanded with military bluster.
Urbicus snapped to attention, stepped forward a few paces, and placed the large cloth-bound bundle on the tabletop before him.
"Special Inspector, sir, as you have instructed, my troop searched for and located the two fishermen who Your Honors interviewed yesterday," Urbicus recounted. "The men are known to live in a nest of huts with their extended families by the river's bank outside the village of Besa. The men are well known in the town, so it was not difficult to locate them.
On your instructions, we were to accompany them to identify a river vessel which fits the description they provided, and to determine who may have been sailing this craft upon the Nile at dawn yesterday. However, we were too late to locate the men. Other unknown persons had made contact with them earlier. They inflicted bodily harm."
"Inflicted harm? Bodily harm?!" Clarus croaked. "What sort of harm?"
Suetonius and the others leaned forward to hear.
Urbicus placed the wet-stained cloth bundle onto the tabletop into a streak of sunlight falling across the bench, and began unwinding its cloths.
Suetonius sat back in uncomfortable apprehension.
Ani the Egyptian fisherman's severed head, still recognizable from the previous day's interrogation but somewhat battered and bloody, toppled out and rolled across the table top. His cranium's heavy weight rolled to reveal the bloody serrated neck flesh facing upwards, a mass of all chopped veins and flesh with serrated bone. The incisions seemed to have been hacked crudely with a chopper rather than sliced by sword at a swift stroke.
"The fisherman Ani, who spoke with us yesterday, was dead," Urbicus explained. "He had been killed by persons unknown. The other fisherman Hetu who spoke less yesterday had either run away or been killed elsewhere. Their families were in a state of great distress at their losses. It seems a team of hooded men attacked the family's huts after dusk yesterday, only an hour or so after the fishermen departed us here.
They dragged Ani into the open and killed him, and then chased Hetu away to an unknown fate. We have brought proof of the former's destiny for your confirmation," he concluded with military precision.
Urbicus adjusted the head's position to reveal to the group Ani's sagging-mouth, distantly distracted eyes, and yellowed waxen flesh. Suetonius sensed Surisca drawing her veil across her eyes behind him. Clarus and Vestinus raised themselves from their seats to more closely inspect and confirm the identity of the relic.
"What hooded men?" Clarus demanded. "Who were they? What was their origin?"
"I do not know, sir," Centurion Urbicus responded, smartly snapping again to attention. "The family said the offenders were fully shrouded so they could not identify their features, and they did not speak so they could not hear their language to determine their origin. They could be men of any community at Besa. Egyptian, Nubian, Greek, Jew, or even Roman.
I was told they galloped up to the huts after dark, hunted down the two fishermen, and immediately beheaded one with knives while the other ran off into the night. The killers then followed in the same direction. I retrieved the severed head from the family when we ourselves arrived some time later. I bring it to you as proof of the death. They want it returned, of course, for burial ceremonies today. They will sew the head back to the body, so the man goes to their Underworld in one piece."