It was an easy walk from the Paneum to the Palace, but I was sorry to see the place again. I was weary of its plots and intrigues, and for all its luxuries it seemed a grim place after a magical night spent in the Daphne.
"I must leave you here," Hypatia said as we approached the gate nearest the Roman embassy. "My protector keeps me in a house close by. It is forbidden for women to be housed in the Parthian embassy."
"How will you come to me tomorrow?" I asked, reluctant to see her go despite my better instincts.
She pushed back her mask, came into my arms and kissed me. She was like a sack of wriggling eels, and I was ready to carry her into a doorway and make good on the offer I had turned down in the Necropolis. But she pulled away and placed her fingers across my lips.
"It is too late now, the time is past. But look for me to come tomorrow evening. One with the right friends can go about freely within the Palace, and I have more friends than most. I will bring the book, and you will help me to establish myself in Rome."
"I have given my word," I said.
"Good night, then. Until tomorrow." She turned and was gone.
With a sigh I staggered toward the gate. I remembered to take off my mask and stuck it inside my tunic. The guard at the gate sleepily returned my equally sleepy salute. The Palace was as lifeless as the Necropolis as I made my way across its elaborate pavements.
The embassy was, if anything, even more devoid of life, not even a slave stirring. That suited me perfectly. I was sure that, by this time, my appearance must confirm Creticus's worst fears about me. I made my way to my quarters undetected and dropped my cloak to the floor, let my weapons clank onto a table, then thought better of that and locked them away in my chest. The mask I hung on the wall.
I left my tunic where it fell and brushed the vine leaves from my hair before collapsing into my bed. It had been one of the most eventful days of my life. Had it really started out with my visit to Baal-Ahriman? It seemed more like weeks ago. First the fine intellectual exercise of deciphering the trickery of Ataxas, then my flight through the Rakhotis, culminating in the Salt Market riot.
Then the night, which had begun in a city of the dead and ended in a veritable Arcadian fertility rite. Even at my most adventurous, I was unaccustomed to so many changes of venue and circumstance. In this place death lurked in many places and took many guises, but I would never die of boredom.
The memory of Hypatia writhing against me was unsettling, but I knew that I would see her again the next night. Perhaps there was some other site of exotic debauchery we could try. And perhaps what she was to bring me would solve the mysteries surrounding the death of Iphicrates.
I was well pleased with the events of the day and the prospects for the morrow. It was just as well that I could go to sleep in such a state of complacency, because when I woke up, there was a dead woman in bed with me.
Chapter XI
I could not understand why a legion of cocks was crowing in my ear. Surely, with all their strange tastes, these pseudo-Egyptian Macedonians didn't keep livestock in the Palace. Then my head began to clear and I realized that it was the embassy slaves raising the racket. Some of them were eunuchs and these added a falsetto quality to the uproar. What on earth had them so upset?
I struggled to a sitting position, rubbing my eyes to get them into focus. Right away, I knew that I had the sort of hangover that makes you certain that the gods robbed you of your youth in your sleep. My mouth tasted like the bottom of a garum vat. The resin from the Greek wine lent a certain dockside element to the foulness, as if my mouth had been tarred and caulked.
I glared blearily at the slave who stood in the doorway pointing at me and gabbling something in Egyptian. Others behind him stared wide-eyed.
"What are you pointing at?" I demanded. I intended to sound forceful, but my voice came out in a croak. "Have you all gone mad?"
Then I realized that he was not pointing at me. He was pointing just to one side of me. With a prickling scalp I turned to see, then squeezed my eyes shut. It didn't help. When I opened them again, she was still there. It was Hypatia, and she was quite dead. Were I a poet, I would say that her staring eyes were full of reproach, but they expressed nothing at all. The eyes of the dead never do.
She was naked, and the bone hilt of a dagger pro-traded from just below her left breast. There was a small wound below her left ear, and her lovely black hair was matted with blood. I saw her bloodstained gown on the floor by her.
"What is this?" Creticus came storming in and went pale when he saw the little tableau. Behind him were Rufus and the others.
"It isn't:" I cursed my thick tongue.
Creticus pointed at me. "Decius Caecilius Metellus, I arrest you. Bind him and throw him in the cellar."
A pair of burly, shaven-headed men came forward and aid hands on me. These were the Binder and the Whipper, the slave disciplinarians belonging to the embassy. They didn't often get a chance to practice their skills on a free man and they made the most of it. They jerked my arms behind me and slapped manacles around my wrists. Then they hauled me to my feet.
"At least let me get dressed!" I hissed.
"Decius, you are not only a degenerate but a madman," Creticus said. "I will go to talk to the king. Since you are part of the embassy, he can't call for your head, but rest assured I'll have you tried before the Senate and banished to the smallest, most barren island in the sea!"
"I'm innocent!" I croaked. "Bring Asklepiodes!"
"What?" Creticus said. "Who?"
"Asklepiodes, the physician! I want him to examine that body before these Greeks cremate it! He can prove that I am innocent!" Actually I was confident of no such thing, but I was desperate. "Rufus! Go to the Museum and fetch him." His shocked face nodded minutely. I was not even sure he understood my words.
The Whipper and the Binder hustled me through the halls and past goggling slaves, then down a flight of steps to the cellar. There they bolted a neck-ring on me and chained me to the wall. They talked to each other merrily in some barbarous tongue, their bronze-studded belts scraping my abused hide as they disposed of me. With their big bellies and thick, leather-banded arms, they looked like apes imitating men. Well, one doesn't employ disciplinarians for their refinements. With a final test of my bonds, they left me to my thoughts. These were not pleasant.
Somehow, I had been neatly bagged. I was not sure how this had been done, but it seemed to have been done with my fullest cooperation. I was now assumed by everyone to be a murderer. The victim had been a free woman and a resident of Alexandria, although of foreign origin. At the very best, Ptolemy would allow me to be quietly shipped off to Rome. I had no doubt that Creticus would make good on his threat to impeach me before the Senate. Roman officials were allowed a certain license in foreign lands, but for a member of a diplomatic mission to disgrace the Republic was unconscionable.
How to get out of this? It had all been so sudden, and my mind so benumbed, that I had not been able to take in the circumstances, much less devise a defense. I knew a few basic facts: The woman was Hypatia, she was in my bed and she was unquestionably dead. What, if anything, was in my favor?
The knife buried in her body was not mine. I remembered with relief that I had locked my weapons away before retiring. Perhaps something could be made of that. I certainly had no reason to kill her, but I had enough experience with murder trials to know that a motive is the least of considerations, especially when evidence of culpability is strong. It was certainly strong in this case.