The Bull Slayer (22 page)

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!”

Chapter Twenty-eight

The day before the Ides of November
The second hour of the night

Pliny and Suetonius trod carefully on the slick cobblestones of the crooked alley. A rivulet of liquid filth ran down the middle of it; rats squeaked and scuttled in its dark corners. The tottering buildings on either side nearly met above their heads. Their way was lit only by the flaring torch of the Night Watch slave who guided them. Behind them, Galeo and three other
lictors
dressed in dark-colored clothing loitered along the way, just close enough to come running if summoned. The damp stones, the sagging tenement walls of rotting timber and crumbling plaster, seemed to exhale a breath redolent of the toilet. Here, on the eastern outskirts of the city, was Nicomedia’s largest fullery, where vats of urine and burning sulfur were used in the process of cleaning and whitening cloth. Understandable how, living here, the smell might cling to your clothes, your hair. Doubtless, the inhabitants of the quarter had long since stopped noticing it.

Two days had passed since the meeting with the Persians. Pliny had summoned the city’s Night Watch—a score of public slaves, most of them elderly—who knew intimately the city’s every corner and cul-de-sac, every wine shop and cook shop and run-down bath house. He had promised a reward to whoever could track down a certain old foreigner, poorly dressed but haughty, living in the vicinity of a fuller’s establishment. He hadn’t hoped for much.

But then one of the slaves had come back that morning to report that the proprietor of a cook shop knew of a man answering the description. He would come in now and then for a plate of sausage or a bowl of broth, the man said. He was an old geezer who walked with the aid of a stick. He didn’t say much but his accent was foreign. He never gave his name. The cook shop man took him for a Jew, but he might be anything. He never mixed with the other customers but ordered the serving girl around as if she were his slave and even slapped her once when she was clumsy. Altogether, a nasty old piece of goods. The cook shop man thought he lived in an
insula
on the corner.

And so here they were, creeping up on the four-story apartment building, its plaster walls patchy and grimy with age, in what was almost certainly a pointless exercise. Pliny could believe that this was the Barzanes that Arsames’ father had known. But could such a person be the mover behind a secret cult to which the likes of Balbus and Glaucon had belonged? They would feel like fools when he turned out to be nothing more than a surly old eccentric.

It wasn’t the worst tenement Pliny had ever been in—that had been in Rome years ago when he was searching for a runaway murderer— but it was bad enough: dark and smoky and verminous, like all such places.

There was nothing to do but knock on the door of the ground floor apartment. It opened a crack and a man’s face, double-chinned and shiny with oil, peered out. The odor of cabbage, burnt oil, and
garum
escaped from the interior, and the sound of a baby crying. The man’s eyes widened, seeing the unfamiliar figures of two well-dressed men.

Did an old man live in the building? Foreign accent? Unfriendly?

“Him? Third floor.”

A cat fled before them as Pliny and Suetonius mounted the sagging stairs.

There was no answer to Pliny’s knock. He put his ear to the door. Did he hear someone breathing? He was almost sure he did.

“Barzanes?”

No sound. Then an explosive, hacking cough.

Pliny put his shoulder to the door; the bolt came away easily from the rotted door jamb.

He was ancient. Bent-backed like the letter C. A nimbus of white hair surrounded a face that was withered and spotted like an old apple. But the forehead was broad and the nose large and strong like an eagle’s beak. He might have been handsome once, even kingly. He wore a long-sleeved tunic which hung to his shins; a threadbare shawl around his shoulders. He steadied himself with his left hand on the back of his chair. In his right hand, which shook visibly, was a butcher knife. He held it in front of him

“Who are you?”

“I am the governor of this province. I mean you no harm, Barzanes, put the knife down, please.”

The man made no move to obey.

Pliny took in the room with a glance: a table with the remains of a meal on it, one chair, a smoking brazier, a narrow cot with a plain spread, a small wooden chest, a bookshelf with a few scrolls, a cupboard with some plain crockery, a rush mat on the floor. Clean, neat. But so bare.
Surely this is not the man who purchases property for three thousand drachmas
. He was almost tempted to turn and leave. He took another step into the room, Suetonius coming in behind him.

“You own a piece of land on which there is a cave where the rites of Mithras are conducted. I need to know precisely where that cave is and who are the members this cult.”

The knife sliced the air. “Get out! I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no—” the words ended in a fit of coughing and the old man sank onto his chair. The knife clattered to the floor.

There was fear in those rheumy eyes, and understanding.

It is him.
Pliny waited until the coughing fit ended.

“Two members of the cult, the Lion and Bridegroom, have been murdered, apparently by another member, the one called the Persian. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t deny it.”

He flung out an arm. “No one has been
murdered
. A riding accident, food poisoning.”

The shock was wearing off, the man gaining control of himself.

“You don’t believe that. Help me find this murderer. Or perhaps you already know, or can guess who it is. Maybe you should fear for your own life.”

The old man waved this away.

“You understand you are violating the law on illicit associations. I can prosecute you for that alone. I will overlook it in return for your cooperation. Come now, who is the Persian?”

The old eyes looked fierce. “No. I don’t know how you know what you do, but these are mysteries and you are not an initiate. You want to arrest me, torture me? Do so, by all means. It will take very little to separate my spirit from my body and send it flying up to the stars. Do you want someone to persecute?” The eyes narrowed now and there was a hint of a smile around the withered lips. “I know of some who worship a crucified criminal. They meet in secret on the day of the Sun and shamelessly imitate our own rites. And I’m told they refuse to sacrifice to the gods or the emperor. I can tell you where to find them.”

“I’ve dealt with Christians before,” said Pliny impatiently. “They are not my concern at the moment. You are. Now, listen to me, Barzanes.” There was no other chair in the room. Pliny pulled over the wooden chest and sat down on it. He brought his face close to the old man’s. “I know you aren’t an enemy of Rome like the Christians. I have no wish to persecute you. What if I were to become an initiate in your mysteries?”

The old man snorted.

“No, I mean it. I am a seeker of ancient wisdom. I’ve been initiated into the mysteries of Isis and the Eleusinian goddesses.” Pliny was never comfortable lying; he could almost feel Suetonius smirking behind his back. “If this Mithras is a great god, I want to know him. As does my friend here.”

He’ll take the bait.
Pliny thought.
Pancrates wouldn’t, he’s a swindler. But this man is a true believer. He
wants
to convert me.

Barzanes looked into Pliny’s eyes long and searchingly. “I am the Father,” he said at last. His bent back straightened, his chin came up. “I am sprung from the prophet Zoroaster. I preach eternal life through the life-giving blood of the Bull, slain by Mithras, the Unconquered Sun, the Light of Truth. He is young and strong, a god of soldiers. Only men are permitted to worship him. The Persians have known him since ancient times.” Barzanes’ voice was hoarse with age but there was still power in it; the accent foreign, but the Greek excellent. Once, it might have been a commanding voice, even stirring.