I scrambled back from the wall, desperate to get away. One of my feet slipped from its toehold and I tumbled backward.
* * *
The next thing I knew, I was coming to my senses, propped up in a chair in the common room of the inn.
“Gordianus, are you all right?” said Antipater, hovering over me. “What happened to you? Were you set upon by robbers?”
“No, I fell.”
“In the middle of the street? That’s where Mushezib says he found you. It’s a good thing he happened by, or you’d still be lying out there, at the mercy of any cutthroat who came along.”
Through bleary eyes, I saw that the astrologer stood nearby. Farther back, a few other guests were gathered around. The innkeeper was in their midst, standing a head taller than anyone else. He frowned and shook his head. Talk of robbers was bad for business.
“No one attacked me, Antipater. I simply … fell.” I was too chagrined to confess that I had attempted to scale the temple wall.
“The lad must have the falling sickness. Common among Romans,” said one of the guests, turning up his nose. This seemed to satisfy the others, who drew back and dispersed.
Antipater wrinkled his brow. “What really happened, Gordianus?”
Mushezib also remained. I saw no reason not to tell them both the truth. “I was curious. I wanted to have a look at the old temple of Ishtar, so I climbed to the top of the wall-”
“I knew it!” said Antipater. He scowled, then raised an eyebrow. “And? What did you see?”
“Ruins-there are only ruins left. And…”
“Go on,” said Antipater. He and Mushezib both leaned closer.
“I saw the lemur,” I whispered. “In the courtyard of the temple. She walked toward me-”
Mushezib made a scoffing sound. “Gordianus, you did not see a lemur.”
“How do you know what I saw?”
“A young man with a powerful imagination, alone in the dark in a strange city, looking at a ruined courtyard that he has been told is haunted by a lemur-it’s not hard to understand how you came to think you saw such a thing.”
“I trust the evidence of my own eyes,” I said irritably. My head had begun to pound. “Don’t you believe that lemures exist?”
“I do not,” declared the astrologer. “The mechanisms of the stars, which rule all human action, do not allow the dead to remain among the living. It is scientifically impossible.”
“Ah, here we see where Chaldean stargazing comes into conflict with Greek religion, not to mention common sense,” said Antipater, ever ready to play pedagogue, even with his young traveling companion still barely conscious after a dangerous fall. “As they rule supreme over the living, so the gods rule over the dead-”
“If one believes in these gods,” said Mushezib.
“You astrologers worship stars instead!” Antipater threw up his hands.
“We do not worship the stars,” said Mushezib calmly. “We study them. Unlike your so-called gods, the vast interlocking mechanisms of the firmament do not care whether mortals make supplication to them or not. They do not watch over us or concern themselves with our behavior; their action is completely impersonal as they exert their rays of invisible force upon the earth. Just as the heavenly bodies control the tides and seasons, so they control the fates of mankind and of individual men. The gods, if they exist, may be more powerful than men, but they too are controlled by the sympathies and antipathies of the stars in conjunction-”
“What nonsense!” declared Antipater. “And you call this science?”
Mushezib drew a deep breath. “Let us not speak of matters about which our opinions are so divergent. Our concern now must be for your young friend. Are you feeling better, Gordianus?”
“I would be, if the two of you would stop squabbling.”
Mushezib smiled. “For your sake, Gordianus, we will change the subject.” He glanced at the innkeeper, who was serving some other guests, and lowered his voice. “Whatever you saw or did not see, it was good of you to calm the fears of the other guests-about the presence of robbers in the streets, I mean. Our poor host must hate all this talk of robbers, and of lemures, for that matter. He tells me he’s negotiating to buy the empty building next door. By this time next year, he hopes to expand his business to fill both buildings.”
Antipater surveyed the handful of guests in the room. “There hardly seems to be custom enough to fill this place, let alone an inn twice the size.”
“Our host is an optimist,” said Mushezib with a shrug. “One must be an optimist, I think, to live in Babylon.”
* * *
That night I slept fitfully, disturbed by terrible dreams. At some point I woke to find myself drenched with sweat. It seemed to me that I had heard a distant scream-not a shriek such as the lemur had made, but the sound of a man crying out. I decided the sound must have been part of my nightmare. I closed my eyes and slept soundly until the first glimmer of daylight from the window woke me.
When Antipater and I descended the stairs, we found the common room completely deserted, except for Darius, who was waiting for us to appear. He rushed up to us, his eyes wide with excitement.
“Come see, come see!” he said.
“What’s going on?” said Antipater.
“You must see for yourself. Something terrible-at the ruined temple of Ishtar!”
We followed him. A considerable crowd had gathered in the street. The gate in the wall stood wide open. People took turns peering inside, but no one dared to enter the courtyard.
“What on earth are they all looking at?” muttered Antipater. He pressed his way to the front of the crowd. I followed him, but Darius hung back.
“Oh dear!” whispered Antipater, peering through the gateway. He stepped aside so that I could take a look.
The courtyard did not appear as frightening by morning light as it had the night before, but it was still a gloomy place, with weeds amid the broken paving blocks and the ugly reddish brown wall looming behind it. I saw more clearly the stone chairs I had seen the night before-all empty now-and then I saw the body on the temple steps.
The man’s face was turned away, with his neck twisted at an odd angle, but he was dressed in a familiar blue robe embroidered with yellow stars, with spiral-toed shoes on his feet. His ziggurat-shaped hat had fallen from his head and lay near him on the top step.
“Is it Mushezib?” I whispered.
“Perhaps it’s another astrologer,” said Antipater. He turned to the crowd behind us. “Is Mushezib here? Has anyone seen Mushezib this morning?”
People shook their heads and murmured.
I had to know. I strode through the gateway and crossed the courtyard. Behind me I heard gasps and cries from the others, including Darius, who shouted, “No, no, no, young Roman! Come back!”
I ascended the steps. The body lay chest down, with the arms folded beneath it. I looked down and saw in profile the face of Mushezib. His eyes were wide open. His teeth were bared in a grimace. The way his neck was bent, there could be no doubt that it was broken. I knelt and waved my hand to scatter the flies that had gathered on his lips and eyelashes.
A glint of reflected sunlight caught my eye. It came from something inside his fallen hat, which lay nearby. I reached out and found, nestled inside, a piece of glazed tile no bigger than the palm of my hand. Bits of mortar clung to the edges, but otherwise it was in perfect condition; the glaze was a very dark blue, almost black. Mushezib must have taken it from the ziggurat the previous day, breaking it off one of the walls, I thought. What had Darius said? “Everyone does it”-including godless astrologers, apparently, though Mushezib had not been proud of taking the memento if he had seen fit to conceal it inside his hat.
Looking up, I saw an image of Ishtar looming above me. Etched in low relief on a large panel of baked clay built into the front wall of the temple, the image had not been visible to me the night before. Could this really be Venus, as seen through the eyes of the Babylonians? She was completely naked, with voluptuous hips and enormous breasts, but the goddess struck me as more frightening than alluring, with a strange conical cap on her head, huge wings folded behind her, and legs that ended in claws like those of a giant bird of prey. She stood upon two lions, grasping them with her talons, and was flanked by huge, staring owls.