on the broad, slightly puffy face. 'He had clearly suffered violence, though not an extreme beating. I found empty drinking vessels at the scene.'
'This occurred at the High Place?' The Brother's tone was not particularly angry, but the careful posing of the question spoke volumes.
'Apparently. Seems to be some drunk who fell out with his friend.'
'You saw them?'
'No. I had heard voices, though. They sounded amiable. I had no reason to rush up after them and investigate.'
'What was your own purpose in visiting the Place of Sacrifice?'
'Reverent curiosity,' I stated. It sounded unconvincing and crass, of course. 'I had been told it is not forbidden?' it is not forbidden,' agreed The Brother, as if he thought that in a just world it should have been. Legislation seemed likely to emanate from his office later that afternoon.
I took a stand. 'I believe that is all the help I can give you.' My remark was ignored. If a foreign visitor foolishly came across a drowned man in the Basin of Fundanus in Rome, he would be thanked for his sense of civic duty, given a public reward of modest proportions, and led quietly out of town-or so I told myself. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he would be flung into the worst jail available, to teach him not to malign the Golden Citadel with sordid discoveries.
The Brother stood back from crouching over the corpse. 'And what is your name?' he enquired, fixing me with those pleasant dark eyes. From deep in their wrinkled pouches of weariness those eyes had already noted the cut of my tunic and style of my sandals. I knew he knew that I was Roman.
'Didius Falco,' I answered, with a more or less clear conscience. 'A traveller from Italy – '
' Ah yes!' he said.
My heart sank. My name was already known here. Somebody had warned the King's Chief Minister to expect me. I could guess who it was. I had told everyone at home that I was going to the Decapolis on a seek-and- retrieve for Thalia's water organist. Apart from Helena Justina, only one person knew I was coming here: Anacrites.
And if Anacrites had written ahead to the Nabataeans, then as sure as honey makes your teeth rot, he wasn't asking The Brother to extend me any diplomatic courtesies.
Chapter X
I would have liked to punch The Brother in the solar plexus and make a run for it. If, as I guessed, he was hated and feared in Petra, then the crowd might let me through. If he was hated and feared even more than I suspected, however, it might be to their advantage to avert his wrath by stopping me.
We Romans are a civilised nation. I kept my fists at my sides and faced him out. 'Sir, I am a man of humble origins. I am surprised you know of me.' He made no attempt to explain. It was vital that I found out his source of information, and quickly. There was no point trying to bluff. 'Can I guess that you heard about me from a functionary called Anacrites? And did he ask you to put me top of the list for sacrifice in Dushara's High Place?'
'Dushara requires immolation only from the pure!' commented The Brother. He had a gentle line in sarcasm - the most dangerous kind. I was in a tricky situation here, and he liked the fact that I was aware of it.
I noticed him make a surreptitious gesture to tell the surrounding crowd to stand off somewhat. A space promptly cleared. I was to be interrogated with a modicum of privacy.
Ignoring the disturbance, I answered him lightly: 'No doubt Petra has other quick and easy systems of disposal?'
'Oh yes. You can be laid out on an offering block for the birds and the sun.' He sounded as if he would enjoy giving the order. Just what I always wanted: to die by being frizzled like offal, then picked clean by a clan of vultures.
'I look forward to the privilege! And what have you been told about me?'
'Naturally that you are a spy.' He appeared to be making a polite joke of it. Somehow I felt no urge to grin at the pleasantry. That was information on which he would certainly act.
'Ah, the usual diplomatic nicety! Do you believe it though?'
'Should I?' he asked, still giving me the dubious courtesy of appearing open and frank. A clever man. Neither vain nor corrupt: nothing to bite back against.
'Oh I think so,' I replied, employing similar tactics. 'Rome has a new emperor, an efficient one for once. Vespasian is taking stock; that includes surveying all the territory which borders on his own. You must have been expecting visitors.'
We both glanced down at the body. He deserved more personal consideration. Instead, some tawdry domestic quarrel had made him an opportunity for this unexpected high-flown discussion of world events. Whoever he was, he had wound himself into my mission. His fate was welded to mine.
'What is Vespasian's interest in Petra?' The Brother asked. His eyes were sly, deceptive slits in that passionless face. A man so astute must know exactly what Rome's interest would be in a rich nation that controlled important trade routes just outside our own boundaries.
I can argue politics as fiercely as the next man who is standing around the Forum with two hours to fill before dinner, but I did not relish putting the Empire's point of view in a foreign city. Not when nobody at the Palace had bothered to instruct me what the Empire's foreign policy was supposed to be. (Nor when the Emperor, being pedantic about such trifles, was likely to hear about my answer sooner or later.) I tried to escape. 'I can't answer you, sir. I'm just a humble information-gatherer.'
'Not so humble, I think!' It sounded elegant in Greek, but was not a compliment. He could sneer without the slightest change of expression.
The Brother folded his arms, still staring down at the dead man lying at our feet. Water from the sodden body and its clothing had seeped into the paving. Every fibre within the cadaver must be growing cold; soon flies would be coming to look for egg-laying sites. 'What is your quality? Do you have many possessions?'
'My house is poor,' I answered. Then I remembered Helena reading out to me a passage from a historian who said the Nabataeans particularly prized the acquisition of possessions. I managed to make my remark sound like polite modesty by adding, 'Though it has seen feasting with the son of the Emperor.' The Nabataeans were supposed to enjoy a good feast, and most cultures are impressed by men who dine freely with their own rulers.
My information left The Brother looking thoughtful. Well it might. My relationship with Titus Caesar had its puzzling aspects, plus one that was perfectly clear: we both hankered for the same girl. Unsure of the Nabataean attitude to women, I kept quiet on this subject.
I thought about it aplenty. Every time I went somewhere dangerous abroad, I wondered if Titus was hoping that I never came back. Maybe Anacrites was not merely plotting to get rid of me for his own reasons; perhaps he had sent me here on prompting from Titus. For all I knew, the Chief Spy's letter to The Brother had suggested that Titus Caesar, the heir to the Empire, would deem it a personal favour if I stayed at Petra for a very long time: for ever, for instance.
'My visit has no sinister implications,' I assured Petra's minister, trying not to look depressed. 'Rome's knowledge of your famous city is somewhat thin and out of date. We rely on a few very old writings that are said to be based on eye-witness reports, chief among them an account by Strabo. This Strabo had his facts from Athenodorus, who was tutor to the Emperor Augustus. His value as an eye-witness may be tempered by the fact that he was blind. Our sharp new Emperor distrusts such stuff.'
'So Vespasian's curiosity is scholarly?' queried The Brother.
'He is a cultured man.' That was to say he was on record as once quoting a rude line from a play by Menander concerning a chap with an enormous phallus, which by the standards of previous emperors made Vespasian a highly educated wit.
But it was Vespasian the crusty old general who must preoccupy foreign politicians. 'True,' The Brother pointed out. 'But he is also a strategist.'
