Agricola grunted, and anyone who had been thinking of slouching stood up straighter. “Look at the body.”
I assumed he was talking to me, but didn’t wait to find out. Agricola was a sociable man-most successful politicians are. Romans don’t trust people who creep off by themselves too much. Just one of the reasons no one liked Domitian. But the governor wasn’t going to waste time or words tonight. Tonight he had a problem, and I was going to have the very unpleasant experience of telling him the extent of that problem.
I knelt in the moist ground by the Syrian’s side. A few hours in the earth had done nothing to improve his appearance. The cold weather was holding off some of the smell, and his naked limbs were as stiff as a mother-in-law. His head and what was left of his neck were beginning to get a little soft. They were suffused with the ugly green-red of rot, though it hadn’t yet spread all the way down his face. Also due to the cold. I’d wished for a chance to look at him again. Be careful what you wish for, Arcturus.
I tucked my hands into the dirt underneath him and heaved. Agricola stood back; Avitus blended into the darkness by his side. Everyone stepped away a few inches-bad luck to touch a corpse. Except for a medicus, of course. I was used to bad luck. Serenus was craning his neck forward, in imitation of a doctor.
I looked up at him. “I could use some help. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” He looked first at Meditor, who looked at Agricola, who nodded. Meanwhile, I was propping up a very fat, very dead, and very naked Syrian all by myself, and not getting any happier about it. “Hurry the hell up; he’s heavy.”
Serenus knelt beside me and together we rolled him over. I could finally get a look at his back, unhindered by clothes and circumstance. Most of the men stepped back a little further. Romans were good at all kinds of killing, but they got a little squeamish around decaying corpses. Especially ones that used to be buried. Agricola stared down at us, his face immobile.
A thin line of white stood out against the pocked grey skin of his back. I bent over it. Yes. What I’d been looking for, what I thought I should find. A knife-wound, a smooth, hard, sharp thrust of a professional killer, right through the heart. Minimum fuss, minimum blood. Serenus looked it over, too.
“You think maybe a pugio?”
I nodded. A legionary dagger would work. “Sure. Or something equally short, sharp and not too thick. This is what killed him.”
Serenus arched his eyebrows in surprise. “Not the throat?”
I squinted up at Avitus. “No.”
I wasn’t sure how much he’d told Agricola about last night, and how much everyone else knew. Serenus stood up, his imagination exhausted for the evening. I poured over Maecenas for what I hoped was the last time, determined not to miss anything else, front or back. The fact that he was clean, of course, meant that he’d been dug up and laid out here before the rainstorm or during it. Probably late last night, right before dawn.
The corpse was uncooperative. It couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Past time to put it to sleep. I stood up slowly, wondering how my knees got older than the rest of me. I looked Agricola in the eye. “I’ve seen enough. You can bury him.”
The general nodded, a massive head on a bullish neck, looking much like his friend, divus Vespasian. “Avitus, take a few trusted men and bury him.” He glowered. “Deep.” Avitus slunk off. I saw him gesture to Arian and another soldier. “Saturninus, Meditor-we talk at the palace. Two hours.” He turned to face his men.
“My brothers-my sons-a tragedy has befallen our temple. But that does not lessen the duty we owe to each other, to our god, and to Rome. Do not discuss what happened tonight. We will discover who sent this pollution upon us, and why, and gossip will only hinder our efforts.
“We cannot celebrate tonight. But we will cleanse the temple, and practice the rites, and our new brothers will be made one. This I swear, as legatus, as pater, as Agricola. And soon we shall build a new temple, one above the ground for all to see, but where the secrets of the god are forever safe. This also I swear. Go, now, and wait for the purification. You will be called when it is time. And as always, find comfort in the redemption, the blood shed by our master and god. Ad astra in aeternum! Mors ianua vitae! Mithras-Mithras regnet!”
The speech, as always, fired up his troops. They were friends and subordinates, but mostly soldiers from the nine hundred or so singulares living at the nearby fort, handpicked legionaries who served as the governor’s bodyguard, men from every legion in Britain. They’d go back to their families, in Eburacum or Deva, and tell them about the night Agricola stood over a dead man and was inspired by their god. Such was the general’s gift of oratory. Another necessary talent-though Domitian preferred the nimble tongue of flattery to the golden tongue of rhetoric.
The men began to disperse, fading into the clear, dark night like so many shadows. Avitus and his helpers heaved the Syrian off the ground and carried him away, presumably to another spot. The governor turned to me.
“Arcturus. Come to the palace in two hours.” His mud-brown eyes, as dark as the earth beneath his feet, burned into mine. “Be prepared to tell me what you know. All of it.” He turned to Saturninus and the speculator, who were both waiting for him, apparently for some temple purification ceremony.
Well, I’d been told. That didn’t mean I’d listen.
* * * * *
My relationship with Agricola was complicated. I had time to think about it on the walk back home. I could check in on Bilicho before going to the palace, and wash my hands. I still had the dead man’s skin under my fingernails.
The governor was ten years older than I was, but it seemed more like twenty. We had a lot in common: fathers who had been provincial-born procurators, both appointed from the Equestrian to the Senatorial class by the Emperor. I used my purple stripe to impress the denizens of a whorehouse-he’d used his to advance to the highest offices in the Empire. Agricola knew I had no interest in politics. One of the reasons he’d married off Julia to another man. His wife Domitia had never forgiven me for her daughter. Nothing serious had happened between us, though Julia tried like hell to get me into bed with her, and I enjoyed the trying.
Agricola’s mother was murdered by Otho’s thugs when he was an adult. But he knew, a little, how it felt. He liked a good story, either in a bar or a book, and was one of the most affably ferocious men I’d ever met. Genial, generous and devoted to his family, he was also ruthless, ambitious and obsessed. He was a perfect soldier, but saw war as a necessary evil. He was honest, except when he had to not be. And he was optimistic to a fault.
The wind was cold, and I rubbed my nose to keep it from freezing. He’d come through it all right-Agricola knew what the system was like. He’d been a favorite of Vespasian’s, an amicus of Titus’, and now was a “friendly advisor” to Domitian. Agricola was careful. He couldn’t help be everything Domitian was not. But he didn’t have to let Domitian know he knew it.
I’d met the Emperor just once. Even then he was more pedant than scholar. And he never laughed. Vespasian was a garrulous old sod who never minded a good joke, even at his own expense. But his slight, bald, correct-to-the-letter son believed in his own sanctity too much. He wasn’t much of a god, and still less of a man.