Terpsicles grimaced to acknowledge some oversight. I frowned, not liking the sound of that word: specimens.
“Follow me, Agathon of Alexandria,” said the eunuch.
Bethesda shot me a questioning glance. I shrugged.
“Is there some problem?” she asked.
“No problem at all,” the eunuch called over his shoulder. “Did you not hear me? Not deaf as well, are you? Follow me!”
“Follow you where?” insisted Bethesda.
“To the royal palace.”
“Royal … palace?” Bethesda wrinkled her brow. So did I.
“Yes. You know, the big building where the king stays when he’s in residence. You have one of those in Alexandria, don’t you?” He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “What a pair the two of you make. A mute master and a simple slave!”
Bethesda’s expression turned stormy. She opened her mouth, but I silenced her with a jab from my elbow. I took her by the arm and pulled her after me.
“But why are we going to the palace?” she whispered.
The question was spoken to me, but it was the keen-eared eunuch who answered. “To meet Queen Monime, you silly girl.”
Until then I had only been pretending. Now I was genuinely dumbstruck.
XI
“His vicious little queen,” Antipater had written about this woman called Monime. What threat did she pose to Antipater, and how great was the danger? For what possible reason had I been summoned to her royal presence? Was such an unexpected privilege the best thing that could happen-or the worst?
Gaius Cassius had been able to give me only a few pieces of information about Monime. Her father was one Philopoemen, a man of Macedonian blood and a person of considerable importance in the city of Stratonicea. When Mithridates laid claim to Stratonicea, he met with the city’s most powerful families, and the alluring Monime caught his eye.
It had not, at first, been the king’s intention to marry the young woman. Mithridates had been married only once before, to his own sister, Laodice, whom he had executed for sleeping with his friends and plotting against him. Having been given several male heirs already by the late Laodice, and having access to any number of beautiful courtesans for his pleasure, Mithridates had vowed never to marry again. Probably he thought Monime would be flattered to become yet another of his courtesans, but the young woman resisted his advances, and her father stepped in to negotiate. In such cases, money usually sufficed. Flush from his victories and his acquisition of the treasuries on Cos, Mithridates offered an astounding sum-fifteen thousand gold pieces-that Monime refused. She insisted on a marriage contract, a royal diadem, and the title of queen.
Monime had nerve-a quality Mithridates apparently found as appealing as her beauty. Instead of incurring his wrath, her audacity only whetted his appetite for the nuptial bed. Monime’s resolve was rewarded with a royal marriage. For his reward, the king’s new father-in-law was appointed royal overseer of Ephesus.
These bits of information gave me some idea of the sort of woman I was soon to meet, but no clue as to why she wanted to meet me.
Clucking his tongue and shooing various lesser functionaries out of his way, the eunuch escorted us to a shaded portico just inside the city gate. A great many litters, large and small, were stationed on blocks; the bearers to carry them stood idly by, awaiting orders. The eunuch practically shoved me into one of the two-person litters, then got into it himself, taking the seat across from me. It was a covered litter, with curtains that could either be tucked behind hooks or closed for privacy.
The eunuch unhooked the curtains and let them fall shut, then thrust one arm outside the box and snapped his fingers. I heard the shuffling sounds of a team of bearers taking their stations at the poles on either side of the box.
“The royal palace!” he said.
I grabbed my seat as the bearers lifted us off the blocks.
What of Bethesda? Apparently the eunuch expected her to walk. I did not like the idea. Nor did she. She parted the curtains and peered inside.
“Am I not to ride, as well?” she asked.
“You? A slave?” said the eunuch.
“But I am my master’s tongue-the only voice he possesses. Do you not intend to converse with him during the trip?”
The eunuch considered this for a moment, then dismissed her with a wave. “We shall ride in silence,” he said. “Follow along behind us, girl. You look fit enough to keep up.”
Bethesda pursed her lips, then vanished from sight as the curtain of the litter fell shut and we headed off.
Where exactly was I being taken? That was another question I might have asked the eunuch, had I a voice.
The last time I had been in Ephesus, there had been no such thing as a royal palace, because there had been no royalty. Like many a Greek-speaking city, Ephesus had become a Roman protectorate, having been bequeathed to the Senate and People of Rome in the will of its last ruler, the heirless King Attalus III of Pergamon. As governor of Asia, Gaius Cassius had been in charge of Ephesus, ruling from Pergamon. More locally, the city had been governed by a council of city fathers. Antipater had undoubtedly explained the governing structure of Ephesus to me, but I had not paid much attention to the details-I had been too busy saving Anthea, and receiving my reward from Amestris. But I was certain there had been no king or queen running the place. That had changed with the city’s “liberation” by Mithridates. He was now the king, Monime was the queen, and Philopoemen was the episcopus, or royal overseer.
What, then, was this so-called “royal palace” to which I was being taken? As I would later learn, Attalus III had kept a residence in the city-not surprisingly, the grandest dwelling in Ephesus. Subsequently, this dwelling had become the property of the richest Roman banker in the city, who filled it with artworks and furnishings fit for a king-quite literally, as it turned out, for when the Roman banker fled for his life to Rhodes, Mithridates claimed the abandoned property for his royal residence.
As our journey progressed, I quickly grew bored of looking at the eunuch across from me, and parted the curtains of the litter so I could look outside. One waterside market looks much like any other, I thought, until my attention was drawn to a placard posted in a conspicuous spot. It was daubed with red paint that read, in both Latin and Greek:
BY DECREE OF HIS MAJESTY
KING MITHRIDATES, KING OF KINGS,
AND UPON PAIN OF IMMEDIATE DEATH,
ALL ROMANS MUST WEAR THE TOGA
AT ALL TIMES.
Pythion had told me about this proclamation. But to hear of such a decree is one thing; to see it with my own eyes was another. And I saw it not once, but many times, repeated on placards posted in every available spot, not just in the markets but in the residential streets beyond. Appended to many of these placards was a second decree, apparently added later since the paint was another shade of red and the smaller letters were cramped to fit the remaining space:
IT IS FURTHER DECREED,
ALSO UPON PAIN OF IMMEDIATE DEATH,
THAT ALL ROMANS MUST SURRENDER ALL ARMS,
LARGE AND SMALL, TO THE CIVIL AUTHORITIES.
What made the first decree so sinister? Why did it raise hackles on the back of my neck? It was something about the words “immediate death”-not just death, but immediate death, inflicted on the spot-and the coupling of such a frightful punishment with the toga. The donning of his first toga marks every Roman boy’s induction into manhood. To wear the toga in Rome is to feel one is a Roman among many Romans, not only the living but the ancestors as well, all sharing centuries of tradition. To wear the toga in foreign lands is to show one’s pride at being Roman among those who are not. But there could be no pride in wearing a garment because a king demanded it, knowing that failure to do so would bring immediate death. A mark of pride had been made into something shameful.