The Bull Slayer

CHAPTER Twenty-seven

“What a question!” Nymphidius shouted. “It’s wasteland, scrub, nobody owns it.”

“No, wait,” said Pliny. “He’s got something here. Think about it. These cultists—they aren’t peasants, they’re city men, wealthy men, if Glaucon is typical. They don’t just go out in the woods and squat in some cave. They own things, improve them, pass them on. It’s the kind of people they are—the kind of people we are. I believe this cave is on land that someone owns and has used for a purpose.”

“It’s a long shot,” Nymphidius muttered.

“Yes, well what isn’t here?” Pliny retorted. “Zosimus, my boy, I’m proud of you. And, as it’s your idea, I’m putting you in charge of it. Go off to the city record office tomorrow and start looking at land deeds for parcels east of the city to a distance of, say, a hundred stades. If it was legally acquired, there’ll be a record. Take Caelianus to help you. Counting the coin in the treasury can wait.”

***

“Of course, I respect your modesty, Calpurnia, but you must understand that I am a physician. If I had a trained nurse, I would employ her. Unfortunately, I do not have such a person. Now please relax, there is absolutely no danger, the pain is slight, and the marks will disappear within a day or two. And you will feel much, much better for it, I assure you.”

Calpurnia watched him with staring eyes as he heated the brass cupping vessels over a candle flame. Her hands, white-knuckled, gripped the arms of her chair.

Ione hovered beside her. “I had it done once, matrona, it isn’t so bad.”

“If I refuse?”

Marinus looked at her sternly. “Lady, it is your husband’s wish. He’s worried about you. We all are. It’s plain your humors are unbalanced. Every physician from Hippocrates to our own time has advocated this procedure. Now please let us have no more difficulties.” He spread out his instruments on the side table, selected a lancet and tested its edge against his thumb. “Ione, kindly pull your mistress’ gown up to uncover her thighs.”

Calpurnia looked away. What could she do but submit to this man?

Her flesh quivered under his fingers, touching her where no man but her husband—and her lover—had ever touched her. Brisk, businesslike, Marinus made an incision on the inside of each thigh and, as the blood flowed, pressed a cup over the wounds. She gasped as the hot metal burned her. He took his hands away and cups clung to her.

“So,” he said, “we create a vacuum and draw out the bad blood. You’re not going to faint, are you? Ione, put a cold cloth on your mistress’ forehead. Just another minute now.”

She let out her breath slowly.

The cups cooled and loosened. Marinus wiped the blood away with a ball of wool soaked in wine and applied a styptic that stung horribly. “Brave girl. All done.” He smiled through the thicket of his beard. “As for the red rings, no one will see them who shouldn’t.” He chuckled. “You just rest now. With luck, we won’t have to do this again. I’ll see myself out.”

Ione wiped her forehead. “’Purnia, dear, how do you feel?”

“Raped,” she said between her teeth.

***

The archives of Nicomedia reposed in a colonnaded building adjacent to the council house on the south side of the agora. Zosimus and Caelianus presented the governor’s written order to the elderly clerk, who looked them up and down suspiciously and finally stood aside to admit them. It was a grey morning and daylight barely penetrated the cold interior.

“Suppose you’ll be wanting lamps,” the clerk mumbled. “Mind, you must pay for the oil.”

“How are your records organized?” Zosimus asked.

“Organized?” the clerk repeated the word tentatively as though it were a term in a language with which he was unfamiliar. Organized?”

“Yes, organized,” said Caelianus. “Kindly show us where the land deeds are kept.”

“Land deeds?”

Was the man deaf or half-witted?

“Land deeds!” Caelianus was losing patience.

“No cause to shout,” said the clerk. “This way.”

He turned and shuffled off, leading them into a long, low room whose corners were lost in shadow. Sagging shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling. On the shelves were wooden boxes. “Each shelf for a year,” said the clerk. “Going back maybe a hundred, maybe two hundred years. Who knows?”

“And different kinds of documents are sorted into boxes?” Zosimus asked hopefully.

“Sorted?”

Nothing, it turned out was sorted. The boxes were loaded with scrolls and papers of every description, both private and public, in no discernible order—treaties, decrees of the assembly, edicts of governors, deeds, loans, mortgages, wills, bills of sale, leases, gifts, dowries. Caelianus sighed.

“We are looking,” Zosimus told the clerk, “for a deed to some country property. Is there a cadastral map of the hinterland?”

“Map?”

There was no map. And property boundaries, it emerged, were described in the vaguest terms as so-and-so many stades from this or that hilltop, or river, or milestone.

“Mind,” said the clerk, “nothing’s to leave this room. I’ll send the boy for some lamps.”

He shuffled off.

They looked around with sinking hearts.

“Let’s suppose the property was acquired more than twenty years ago,” Caelianus said at last, “and work back from there.”

They counted shelves, each bearing the name of the Archon for that year. Zosimus reached up and pulled down a box, disturbing the dust of decades. He sneezed loudly.

A day-and-a-half later, the two men, weary and dusty and red-eyed, presented Pliny with the fruits of their search.

“Luckily, Patrone,” said Zosimus, “land doesn’t change hands very often around here. Once we separated the deeds from everything else, there weren’t so many to look at.”

“And this one seems the likeliest,” Caelianus said. “We sneaked it out while the clerk was asleep.” He placed a dusty scroll on Pliny’s desk and unrolled it. “A very small parcel, less than a mile square—that caught our eye first of all. What would anyone want with such a small piece of land? And it lies, as near as we can tell, about seventy stades east of the city, which puts it right out in those foothills, not far beyond where Balbus was found.”

“And the most interesting thing,” Zosimus added, “is that it was bought from a larger estate belonging to someone named Hypatius thirty-two years ago for three thousand drachmas by a certain Barzanes. And it says here after his name ‘Resident Alien’.”

“A Persian!” Pliny thumped the desk.

He poured glasses of wine all around and toasted them.

The two men, who had become friends, went off merrily to enjoy a bath.

***

Suetonius put his arm around Sophronia’s naked shoulder and drew her head onto his chest. They lay on her bed in a tangle of silk sheets.

“That was lovely,” she said.

“I have a confession to make, though. I’m combining business with pleasure.”

“And you think I’m not? We understand each other, Gaius Suetonius. We’re not children.”

“Two questions then. First of all, your half-brother, Argyrus. Has he been bothering you?”

“He hasn’t shown his face here since you and the governor questioned him. You must have thrown quite a scare into him. Do you think he killed Balbus?”

“Only if he really feared that you would marry him. He says he didn’t believe it.”

“Oh, he believed it all right. He threatened to strangle me. I laughed at him.”

“And when was this marriage supposed to take place?”

“Balbus told me that he had written a new will naming me as his principal heir and providing for Aulus, his son, but leaving Fabia with nothing. He hadn’t told her yet. He said he was waiting for the Spring so he could divorce her and put her on a ship the same day. He didn’t want her hanging about. He loathed the woman.”

Suetonius stroked her hair. “Did you love him?”

“A little.”

“What will you do now?”

“What I’ve always done. Look out for myself. Argyrus doesn’t frighten me. You said there were two questions.”

“Does the name Barzanes mean anything to you?

“I don’t think so, why?”

“Another angle we’re pursuing. I’m not to talk about it until we know more. But I think we’re going to need the help of your Persians.”

“Count on me, my dear.”

She kissed him.

***

“We were told you wanted to see us.” Arsames avoided mentioning Sophronia’s name.

Pliny explained while Arsames translated for his companions. A minute passed in whispering and gesticulation.

Arsames threw his hands wide. “Barzanes is a common name among us. You say he purchased a piece of land out in the woods somewhere? We are merchants, shopkeepers, not peasants. Why would he do such a thing?”

“What do you know about Mithras?” Suetonius asked.

The black eyebrows shot up. “What do I know about him? He is the god of light. He wages an eternal struggle with the forces of evil. He is your Apollo, your Helios. What is that to you?”

“Do you worship him in caves?”

“Caves! Certainly not.”

“Think again,” Pliny urged, “about this Barzanes. He would be a very old man by now.”

Arsames shrugged, turned again to his companions. The whispering grew animated, finally punctuated with a loud “Ah!”

“My father—” he indicated a frail, stooped old man “—once knew a man from the land of Commagene by that name who lived here and mixed with us Persians for a time. A foolish fellow who used to boast that he came of royal stock although his clothes were shabby. People laughed at him, my father says, and, after a time, he turned his back on us. No one has seen him in years. He’s probably dead.”

Commagene, Pliny knew, was a region in the province of Syria, formerly an independent kingdom, whose ruling caste was culturally Persian. “Does your father know where he lived?” The old man touched his son’s shoulder and spoke in his ear.

“My father remembers,” said Arsames, “that this man’s clothes sometimes had a whiff of urine about them as if he’d spent too much time in a public toilet or a fullery. That’s why people laughed. A prince who smelled of piss!”