False God of Rome (41 page)

Despite the practical reason for his visit, Vespasian still felt overawed to see physical proof that Alexander had existed and was not just some hero conjured out of myth. He had felt close to
the great man in Queen Tryphaena’s palace in Thracia standing by the desk that Alexander had used and gazing at the same view that he had seen every morning when he had come to raise Thracian
mercenaries for his conquest of the East; but that was as nothing compared to being in the same chamber as his preserved remains.

Vespasian walked forward to get a better view of the body and also to examine the sarcophagus to see how it might be opened.

‘You may approach it, master, but it is forbidden to touch,’ the priest standing behind them in the chamber’s entrance warned.

Vespasian looked down through the crystal and found himself staring at a face that was at the same time both ancient and youthful. There were no lines on the smooth, brown skin, coloured by age
not race, which stretched over the skull and jaw like the finest vellum; but neither was there substance to it, so the outline of the bone beneath was plainly visible giving the impression of great
age. However, the mouth was closed with the thin lips pulled slightly up in a faint smile; the eyes, which had seen more wonders and riches than any others before or since, were shut as if
sleeping. Long hair, still abundant and blond, covered the ears and lay perfectly dressed on the pillow framing the face with a soft outline of ochre; all this combined to give the effect that here
was a young man resting peacefully. Vespasian drew his breath and looked closer; the only blemish was that the nostril on the shadowed side of the face had fallen away.

‘The great Augustus did that by accident when he had the sarcophagus’ lid removed so that he could touch Alexander,’ the priest said, realising what Vespasian was
examining.

‘Was that the last time the lid was taken off?’

‘No, Germanicus brought his sons here and also we take it off every year to replace the spices that surround and preserve Alexander.’

Vespasian walked around the sarcophagus looking at the seal between the top and bottom halves of the sarcophagus and saw that they were held together by nothing more than the weight of the lid.
‘Do you think two men could lift that?’ he whispered to Felix and Magnus who had joined him as he completed his circuit.

Magnus shrugged. ‘If they can’t they could certainly lift one end enough to get to the breastplate.’

Vespasian’s eyes moved down to the object that Caligula had sent him to Egypt to steal; it was not what he had expected: gilded, inlaid and adorned with jewels. It was evidently the actual
breastplate that he had worn in battle and not one made especially for his eternal rest. Just like Marcus Antonius’ sword it was the choice of a fighting man: made of hardened leather moulded
in the shape of the muscles it concealed. Its only decoration were two rearing horses of inlaid gold facing each other on the chest and bronze edgings around the neck, shoulders and waist to give
it added strength.

‘Can you memorise the inlays?’ Vespasian murmured to Felix.

‘There’s no need to; almost every statue of Alexander in the city depicts him wearing this.’

‘In which case our work here is done.’ Vespasian straightened up and turned to the waiting priest. ‘Thank you for allowing me the honour of gazing at the greatest man who ever
lived,’ he said with genuine feeling.

‘I must stay for few moments to perform the short cleansing ritual that is prescribed every time we visit,’ the priest said, acknowledging their thanks with an inclination of his
head. He stepped aside to allow them to mount the two flights of stone steps leading back up to the temple.

Coming out of the dark staircase, past the armed guard in Macedonian uniform at its top, Vespasian’s eyes took a short while to get used to the bright light; once they had done so he
looked around the cavernous, circular chamber that he had only briefly glimpsed earlier as they had been ushered through its main doors and straight down to the tomb. It was dominated by a huge
equestrian statue of Alexander, helmetless with his hair flowing behind him, mounted on Bucephalus and with a lance couched under his arm as if in mid-thrust. Next to it, rather incongruously,
stood the now obligatory statue of Caligula.

In the absolute centre of the floor was a circular balustrade, waist high, surrounding the opening of the narrow shaft down which the public could gaze at Alexander’s preserved corpse.
Directly above this was a similar sized hole cut in the ceiling, fifty feet above.

‘At noon on the tenth of June, the anniversary of Alexander’s death according to the Roman calendar,’ the priest informed Vespasian as he appeared at the top of the steps, his
ritual complete, ‘the sun is directly aligned to shine down onto his face. I’m afraid that you’ve missed that by a month.’

‘That is a pity,’ Vespasian said gazing up at the hole. ‘What happens when it rains?’

‘It rarely does here, but there is a hatch up there that we can close.’

Vespasian nodded thoughtfully. ‘Thank you, you’ve been most accommodating.’ As he turned to leave, his foot slipped and he would have stumbled had Magnus not caught his arm; he
looked down at a smear of greenish slime on the floor.

‘Please accept my apologies, senator,’ the priest said hastily, ‘I will have the slaves who clean the floor punished for their slackness.’

‘What is it?’

‘We keep geese in the temple at night as a security; should anyone overpower the guards outside and gain access their noise would raise the alarm. I’m afraid that is their
residue.’

‘You’re right, the windows are out of the question; the best way in and out is through the roof, if the hatch is strong enough to attach a rope to,’ Magnus
agreed as they sat in some shade in the long and wide central courtyard of the Soma surrounded by the individual mausoleums of the Ptolemaic dynasty and with Alexander’s temple at its
northern end. At its centre stood an altar at which a priest waited to accept the offerings brought by the people of the city in the hope that their semi-divine dead rulers would intercede for them
with the gods on matters close to their heart, be they financial, legal or personal.

‘But first we’ve got to get into the Soma,’ Vespasian pointed out, looking at the only gate through the high walls of the complex through which a group of Greeks walked leading
a lamb.

‘That should be fairly straightforward,’ Felix assured them. ‘The main gate is guarded but never closed so that the people have access to the altar day and night.’

‘So we just pretend to be supplicants?’

‘Exactly.’

‘All right,’ Magnus said sceptically, ‘say that we do get in and manage to sneak off unnoticed to the temple, get up onto the roof and then down through that hole, how the fuck
do we deal with the geese?’ He indicated across to a small enclosure to the left of the temple in which were housed two dozen of the nocturnal guards.

Vespasian shrugged and looked at Felix.

‘The problem of the geese I can solve,’ Felix assured them, ‘we just need to get a man on the inside the evening before we go in – Ziri could do that. The big dilemma is
the replica breastplate.’

‘What’s so hard about that?’ Vespasian asked. ‘You said the pattern is easy to replicate.’

‘It’s not the pattern that worries me. You said that the switch must never be noticed, which would be fine if the priests were just looking at it through the crystal. The trouble is
that once a year they take the lid off and would then see that the leather isn’t old. No matter how much we try to age it it’ll never match the original if they inspect it
closely.’

‘So we need to find a leather breastplate that’s three hundred years old or so?’ Vespasian questioned, raising his eyebrows.

‘Exactly,’ Felix replied, looking beaten.

‘That won’t be a problem; I saw more than a dozen of them last night.’

‘T
HAT
’
S VERY GOOD
, Felix, very good indeed,’ Vespasian said, admiring the leather
cuirass on the table in Felix’s study.

‘It looks old to me,’ Magnus affirmed, nodding his head appreciatively.

‘It’s good enough,’ Felix agreed, ‘but it won’t stand up to close scrutiny.’

‘I can’t imagine that anyone stops and takes a very close look at Ptolemy Soter’s statue, and even if someone did it would be to examine it for the first time, in which case
they wouldn’t have seen the original and will accept this one as real.’ Vespasian picked up the breastplate and examined the bronze edgings around the neck, shoulders and waist; they
were not identical to Alexander’s but looked exactly like the workmanship on the original that they would replace: that of the first Ptolemy. Vespasian had chosen Ptolemy Soter’s
breastplate because it was the plainest as compared to his descendants, whose armour became more and more ornate as their martial prowess diminished. As one of Alexander’s generals he had
emulated his leader’s habit of wearing plain but functional Macedonian armour, so that there was no gaudy protuberance for a spear point to catch and gain purchase on to pierce the hardened
leather. All that needed to be done to this breastplate was to replace the edgings and then inlay the rearing horses.

‘What about Flaccus?’ Magnus asked.

‘He walks down that corridor every day and probably never even looks at the statues,’ Vespasian replied, feeling the hardened leather of the cuirass and admiring how the craftsman
had made it feel slightly supple, as if it were very old. ‘And anyway, if he did notice that the breastplate had been swapped and then realise that I had done it and why, do you think that he
would announce to the Greek population of this city that the Emperor of Rome, the man he represents, has had one of their most venerated artefacts stolen? Bollocks he would. He’d have an
uprising on his hands before you could say “Caligula’s mad”.’

‘He seems to have one on his hands already,’ Magnus commented, ‘which appears to be getting worse, judging by the smoke coming from various parts of the city this
morning.’

‘Yes, the civil unrest is escalating,’ Felix agreed. ‘Now that the Greeks see the Jewish demands for equal status as a threat to their dominant position, they’re taking
matters into their own hands; but that may work in our favour by acting as a diversion.’

In the ten days that they had been waiting for the breastplate to be made, interracial violence in the city had been on the increase. The Jews had retaliated for the man murdered on the Canopic
Way, but when Flaccus had merely had his murderers flogged, not crucified, the Greeks had felt emboldened to escalate their violence and began burning Jewish houses that were not in the Jewish
Quarter and attacking any Jew who ventured into another part of the city. For their part the Jews had started sending out sorties and attacking, sometimes killing, anyone not of their race. Flaccus
had brought in more troops in an effort to keep the Jews confined to their quarter, but it had not been successful; the legionaries had become targets for both factions.

‘So all we’ve got to do now is swap them over,’ Magnus said. ‘Who’s going to do that?’

‘I will, I’ll do it late tonight,’ Vespasian replied, fitting the breastplate to his chest. ‘It should be simple enough; I’ll wear this under a cloak, then swap it
with the original from the statue and wear that as I go back to my suite. No one would dare stop and ask me, on the way there and back, what I’m doing and the corridor is in an area of the
palace not used at night.’

Felix approved. ‘Good. My craftsman reckons that it will take him five days to do the inlays and change the edgings so, assuming that I can get it to him tomorrow, we should aim for the
night of six days hence.’

‘How much will he charge this time?’

‘Double; plus the value of the gold for the inlays, which he calculates to be about ten aurii.’

Vespasian did some quick mental arithmetic and blanched. ‘Six hundred and fifty denarii! That’s robbery.’

‘He’s not stupid; he knows exactly what he’s making and wants to be paid for his discretion in the matter.’

Vespasian could not argue; the craftsman was entitled to a premium for not asking questions, and besides, since withdrawing the money from Thales, he had plenty stored in a large chest on the
ship waiting to take them home. He was just not very good at parting with it, he reflected. ‘Very well, I’ll pick up the cash on the way back to the palace.’

‘Thank you. So, gentlemen, I have enough rope and a boat and I’ve worked out how to get onto the roof of the temple without the guards outside seeing; that just leaves us with one
outstanding problem: the geese.’

‘I thought that you knew how to solve that.’

‘I do; the only way to stop them from raising the alarm is to keep them occupied and the only way to do that is to feed them; so, as I said, we need Ziri already inside the temple to
scatter grain for them before we come down the rope. The question is where can he hide? I went back there yesterday and there’s nowhere within the temple itself; so that just leaves the
burial chamber. Now, there is a small gap between the two uprights supporting the slab that the sarcophagus rests upon that a small man like Ziri could fit into but…’

‘How do we get him past the guard who’s at the top of the steps during the day,’ Vespasian said, seeing the problem.

‘We need a diversion,’ Magnus suggested.

Felix nodded. ‘Yes, but what? The priests know us so they’ll be suspicious if we go in there and start fighting or arguing or whatever.’

‘I could fall down pretending to be ill.’

‘You could, but what kind of guard would leave his post for long enough for Ziri to slip behind him for the likes of you?’

‘He’s right, Magnus,’ Vespasian said with a grin, ‘a battered ex-boxer like you isn’t going to elicit a great deal of concern no matter how much you writhe and
wail; a beautiful woman on the other hand?’

‘A diversion? You think of me as a mere diversion?’

‘No, Flavia, I want you to be a diversion.’

‘For you?’