Anna Perenna is an independent woman who possesses her own wealth and is not subject to my will."
Titianus fell moodily, angrily silent. Clarus took the opportunity to enquire about the night of the boy's death.
"Lord Prefect Governor, you said you slept the night in question at Caesar's marquee after the banquet. Did you share company in this?" he asked in his usual unsubtle manner.
"My good Senator Septicius Clarus, don't you trust the Governor of Egypt? Several of those at the celebration were sufficiently persuaded after the banquet to remain at our couches, excess wine or not," Titianus regaled. "Mine was the wine plus an Iberian serving-lass named Sotira. Others made other choices."
"Who else remained accompanied in this manner, or departed accompanied?" Suetonius pressed the questioning further.
"Why, I wasn't especially observant of what others were up to, Tranquillus. But that up-and-coming Tribune Macedo seemed to have his hooks into a pert young girl, a local of Egyptian descent I think, while the former Master of the Hunt Salvius Julianus, who is now an important legal advisor to Caesar, was accompanied by his usual equerry friend."
"What of Caesar himself and the guest-of-honor Commodus?" Clarus explored.
"Caesar retired alone, as has been his usual habit since this tour began. Commodus and he do not share a bed these days, to the knowledge of my agents," the spymaster knower-of-all confided. "Commodus retired late about the same time as Caesar's friend Arrian. Put whatever spin you wish upon that, my friends. But I had my Sotira to amuse me, so I was comfortable where I was."
"And where was Antinous, do you suppose?" Suetonius asked.
"Perhaps he was down in his cups drowning his misfortunes, if you forgive the bad pun," the stocky Roman contributed. "The last I saw of him was some days earlier when he was consulting with my companion, Anna Perenna, on matters of advice for the lovelorn. At least that's what I assume they were discussing.
Perhaps my lady was invoking some potion or magician's effigy with special powers for him to attract Caesar's attentions again? You'll have to ask her yourself, my friends. She knew the lad far better than I. She can be found on this very vessel at the stern cabin.
Go knock at her door, gentlemen. I must now bid you farewell."
CHAPTER 22
After a long pause a husky female voice responded from behind the locked portal.
"Tell them to be gone, girl! I'm engaged in sacred rites," the voice firmly instructed her servant from within the cabin.
Clarus would have none of this.
"Lady Anna Perenna of Alexandria, your visitors attend you on command of Great Caesar!" he bellowed. "We are on Imperial business and demand your immediate presence! We possess Imperial authority and the right to enforce it!"
Again a few moments elapsed before the group of four and the serving girl heard the bolts and braces of the cabin door being shunted open. The gilded carvings of the portal widened marginally to reveal a shadowy interior whose darkness at midday was illumed with a few lamps or tapers.
A billow of air steeped in expensive Arabian frankincense wafted through the portal from within the gloom. Fine streams of daylight pierced the vessel's timbers as suspended dust particles shimmered sinuously through the pall.
"Enter!" the woman's voice commanded gruffly. The serving girl pushed the door wider to permit entry to the visitors.
When the four came to rest a few steps within the cabin's gloom their eyes settled on the solitary figure standing aloof before them. Amid the velvety glow of oil-lamps and an amber radiance emitted by thin alabaster portholes diffusing the afternoon's external blaze, the Special Inspector's group found itself in the presence of a tall, slender, dark skinned, dark haired female of a strikingly grave countenance.
Her ebony black pupils pierced the gloom from behind a face lacquered in an opaque mask of white pastes in the fashionable Palatine style. Her lips were painted with cosmetic oil the color of drab clotted blood. Carefully applied outlines in kohl eyeliner highlighted her eyes in the manner worn by the upper-classes at Egypt, with scarlet dots and edgings to augment the impact elaborately.
Suetonius perceived on closer scrutiny how the generous coat of face paint was also a camouflage aiming to conceal significant skin lacerations or the eruptions of a defunct pox beneath the ashen patina.
Poxes are egalitarian in their impact on both the plebs and the elites of the Empire, at least among those who had survived their vicissitudes in youth, Suetonius recalled. Poxes and leprosies were a cautionary sight, possibly intimating a risk of the presence of some vile contagion.
Anna Perenna's hair was carefully wound and woven into a high mound of elaborate whorls giving the woman an even greater sense of height, while her plain silken tunic was cross-tied and belted with silk cords announcing her to be of Latin rather than of Greek or Egyptian provenance. She wore little jewelry other than delicate shoulder-length drop earrings of a primitive design with fine iron rings on three fingers of her left hand.
Something about the woman's appearance was familiar to the biographer, though he couldn't put his finger on the precise recall. She spoke educated Latin in a studied manner which communicated strong resolution of purpose.
"You are here upon imperial business, you say?" she asked without any hint of apprehension.
"Indeed, madam," Clarus responded, once again waving his scroll of authority.
"Perform your duty then," she announced in a manner suggesting an instruction rather than her own compliance.
She turned to perform a ritual wafting of her hands across a set of miniature lares figurines arranged in a sand tray between ornate lamps and incense burners as she murmured a liturgical formula in some indecipherable language. She then took her seat on a high matron's chair facing the visitors where she primly awaited their obedience.
The group of four scanned the contents of this aft-cabin at the stern of The Alexandros as river waters audibly slapped against the timbers of the brace of biremes lashed underneath. Open chests on the cabin floor revealed stacked arrays of small bottles, jars, and flasks containing fluids, powders, herbs, or morsels of organic materials.
A work table was laden with writing instruments, a mortar and pestle, mixing bowls, and a frosty glass beaker on a tripod with a heating lamp beneath. A nest of aged scrolls stood to one side while around the walls hung fronds of dried flora, wild grasses, and unknown organic debris.
Finely worked instruments of bronze including knives, spoons, serrated saws, probes, and surgical paraphernalia were suspended along the hull in racks. Crumbling remnants of a mummified cat, an ibis, an infant crocodile and, Suetonius suspected, a desiccated human fetus were slung on hooks across a corner stall, while knitted drapes veiled sections of the compartment from view.
High on a crossbeam one solitary lamp sat before a shrine's niche to cast its sacramental glow across the nebulous features of a miniature figurine in human form. The effigy was looped with a thong securing a gilded locket or coin purse around its shoulders. The figurine rested against a terracotta amphora used for storing middling measures of oil or wine. The amphora appeared to have leaked a thin drip of its contents down the timber bulwark.
Each of the intruders suspected how without the generous effusion of aromatic incense and perfume the cabin would probably reek of musty decay, or worse.
"What is your purpose, gentlemen?" the Alexandrian priestess enquired
"Madam, we are here under Caesar's instruction to enquire into your knowledge of the details of the death of Caesar's Companion of the Hunt, Antinous of Bithynia. We seek all information possible about the young man's death and his whereabouts the night before last. We are obliged to record our interview for the legal register, if you please. So you will respond to our individual questions," Clarus intoned crisply