"Life is restored to its Pharaoh, did you say?" Suetonius queried.
"This is what these people believe in this land," Perenna claimed.
"We too are obliged to attend the dawn assembly," Clarus interjected, "so we'd better get a move on with our interviews. Time is passing."
Suetonius was reluctant to depart. He was not entirely satisfied with the woman's testimony. He also wondered where he had previously seen a striking ring similar to the one on the priestess's hand.
CHAPTER 23
"Well what do we make of her?" Suetonius asked the others. "She's a very cool lady, despite the afflictions beneath the pastes and the kohl.?"
The biographer scanned his three companions for a response. They had alighted from a gondola ferrying their return to shore from The Alexandros.
The runabout to the Governor's barque was an elegant vessel whose single sail was emblazoned with the Governor's symbol of an Alexandrine eight-pointed golden star upon a field of sky blue. A wharf patrol in similar colors carefully recorded the group of four's return from The Alexandros. Their return was inscribed in the patrol's papyrus list of movements to-and-fro from the riverside jetty. Suetonius noted this clerical diligence, but had other things on his mind.
"Surisca, my dear, from a woman's perspective do you have an opinion of this Grandmother of Time?"
The Syri entertainer held her own counsel momentarily.
"Well, what did you think?" he pressured again. "Don't be shy, my dear, we've come to value your views."
"This lady is a dissembler, Master. She is lying to you, I'd say," Surisca quietly offered.
"Lying? A liar? In what way, Surisca? What makes you think so?"
"It's my intuition, Master. A woman senses these things. She often knows when another woman is hiding a truth," was the young woman's reply. "There's something amiss with the Lady Priestess in my view, my lords."
Clarus and Suetonius paused in suspended agreement to the statement. Strabon now interrupted.
"I agree, gentlemen. I don't know why I believe so, but as I notated her words I sensed she was holding something back. It was in the tone in her voice. It was a feigned confidence. I have listened intently to many voices in my time and can often detect fraud."
"What sort of thing, I wonder?" Suetonius asked. "We can't judge a woman merely on the tone of her voice."
Surisca again raised her hand to speak.
"Were you aware of the blood, Masters?" she asked.
"Blood? Blood!? What blood?" Clarus yelped.
"If I'm not mistaken, my lords, there were droplets of blood or something similar oozing from the amphora up on the wall niche. They were leaking through a fine crack in the clay lip and dripping down the timbers behind. Perhaps it was some other dark fluid such as wine or garam sauce?" she proposed.
"Did anyone else notice a fluid?" Suetonius asked. "I certainly didn't, though I did notice a thin dark line running down the hull. You sense it was blood, was it? My eyes aren't what they once were."
"But what would a respectable Roman priestess companion of the Prefect Governor be doing with a jug of blood in her workshop?" Clarus asked. "Is the juice of life a component of her priestly pharmacopeia, or does she store the gore of her daily divination victims for sanctification? Theurgists are known to harvest and hoard many odd materials. But stored blood goes off very speedily. It gels and rots. It smells very badly very quickly, like an arena's sands or a charnel house. It's not a pleasing odor, I assure you."
"But not if it was relatively fresh," Suetonius said. "Yet the jar seemed to be enshrined in some way? It was being venerated by the Governor's consort. It was being adored with a votive lamp and a talisman or two."
"What did you make of her facial lesions?" Clarus asked his companions. "Surisca?" he invited again.
Clarus was warming to the courtesan's opinions.
"The lesions? Are they a pox? A canker? Leprosy?" Clarus added. "Or some nightmare Egyptian affliction not worth contemplating?"
"I have never seen such abrasions before, my lord," Surisca said, "except, perhaps, her abrasions are similar to the scars left by surgeons who try to scrape away a freed slave's branding or owner's tattoo."
"Scrape away?" Clarus repeated.
"And what to make of the three rings? Or the beautiful stone on her right hand?" the Special Investigator put forward. "Three fine iron rings on consecutive fingers. Iron, not silver or gold. Is this a local Egyptian fashion, young lady?"
"I do not know of such a fashion, Master," Surisca replied, "neither here in Egypt nor elsewhere in the East. Perhaps fine ladies wear such things at Rome, or they are tokens of her sacred vocation."
Suetonius became darkly serious.
"The Lady Anna Perenna made two comments of interest to me. One was her observation about the deceased youth's resolve. What could she mean by his resolve, I wonder? Resolve to do what? And separately, she spoke of the night of his death. She, without any advice from us, had concluded his death had occurred at night, not some other time of day. Is this a justifiable query?"
"She explained his resolve by suggesting the Bithynian was on a mission to regain his erastes' favor in some way," Clarus explained. "Yet I too sensed she was talking of some other purpose in the lad's intentions. What could that be?"
"And her certitude of the night of his death?" Suetonius reminded.
"Well the options are only two aren't they, daytime or night?" Clarus said.
"Further, she said the effects of Antinous's death are yet to be seen. She implied the matter is not closed. What did she mean by this?" the Special Inspector advanced. "She also claimed Antinous had a new companion since his dismissal as Caesar's eromenos. Yet who would dare be so unwise as to supplant Great Caesar so soon in this way?"
"No one else has mentioned this fact," Clarus indicated. "Is she confabulating? Would the boy pursue a new conquest so soon after five years of fidelity to his erastes? By the useful principle of cui bono? what benefit has this woman to gain from the young Favorite's death, I wonder?"
The biographer's eye was caught by the keeper of the jetty records at his duties. The officer was seated on a high stool at a lectern on the wharf protected by a trio of Alexandrian guardsmen. Suetonius beckoned the others to follow him to the clerk's desk.
"My good fellow," Suetonius sweetly addressed the officer, "you maintain a daily record of the comings and goings to The Alexandros on behalf of your master, the Prefect Governor, do you not?"
The Special Inspector equestrian adjusted the folds of his purple-striped toga with a generous flourish as he spoke, drawing attention to his status in the pecking order of Rome. The clerk was already cognizant of his status and rose abruptly from his seat to attention before his social superior.
"Yes, indeed we do, sir. We maintain daily records on behalf of His Excellency," the trooper announced helpfully in the strongly Greek-inflected Latin of Alexandrians. "We register each of those who pass to and fro to the Governor's barque through the day."
"Each day, every day?" Suetonius probed.
"Yes, my lord, from midnight to midnight in three changes of watch," the clerk explained.
"Do you still possess your records for the past few days, officer?" Suetonius continued in his best legalist voice.
"Indeed, sir, we retain three days at a time. After three days we dispatch the pages to the Governor's staff for safe-keeping."
"Do you still possess the traffic records for the day and night before last?" Suetonius enquired further.
"Yes, my lord, I do. This is the third day of the cycle."