Our Man in Alexandria Read online

  Our Man in Alexandria

  GAVIN CHAPPELL

  Copyright © Gavin Chappell 2017

  Cover art by MrSnooks

  All illustrations provided under license from Wikimedia.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher and author, except where permitted by law.

  The right of Gavin Chappell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Published by Schlock! Publications 2017

  ISBN-10: 1975906934

  ISBN-13: 978-1975906931

  This book is a work of fiction and any similarities to actual persons and/or places are purely coincidental.

  Schlock! Publications

  www.schlock.co.uk

  In the same series:

  On Hadrian’s Secret Service

  Murder in Hadrian’s Villa

  The Hadrian Legacy

  By the same author:

  Crocodile and Leopard

  The Man Who Sold the Roman Empire

  Prologue

  His pulse pounded in his temples, his tired legs flailed as he skidded down the dark, noisome crypt passage. A snatched glance over his shoulder showed that they were still after him; dark, threatening figures barely discernible in the gloom. Distant lamplight alone illuminated their forms, but their movement was visible; audible too, even as he sprinted on; an echo of running footsteps.

  His naked body was slick with sweat, and the night air was cold. He was a strong man, and had learnt to endure much since first joining the legions, but this pursuit was telling on him.

  It had been a rash mistake to infiltrate the group, he saw now. And an even greater mistake to drop out of sight from his own people. Now no one knew where he was, or what danger he was in. If only he could get out of the ruined temple, he knew a way to get out of here. No one would help him now, he was sure of that. If he had learnt anything while undercover it was that much. One of them had helped him in the past, or else he would never have got this far, but she couldn’t aid him now. He was not one of them; he was an interloper: they would have no mercy on him now they knew.

  And what had it all been for? If he ever got out of this labyrinth, if he ever returned to camp, what would he include in his report? A strange group; strange beliefs; strange rites; lawless ways. Having studied them for some time, he knew that there was more, that their ambitions somehow threatened the empire. But for all he had learnt, he was still only in the outer sanctum, the lowest level of initiation into the mystery. They were a strange cult, and what he had learnt of their ways was enough for them to be crucified. And yet, he had no idea of how many members of the cult there were, scattered across the empire. Nor of their ultimate intentions.

  He ran up the crypt steps and soon found himself scrambling across starlit waste ground. This part of the city had suffered during the rebellion, the whole place had, but while renovations were ongoing in the other quarters, this sector had been neglected. This was once a place of public worship, he recalled, but it had been destroyed in punitive action. Now everything was peaceful. The rebels had been crushed, driven out of the city. But the cultists even now pursuing him across the ruins might one day prove a greater threat to the empire than any militants ever had.

  His foot caught in a snag and he fell flat, sprawling down a slope of rubble. Frantic, he hauled himself to his bruised knees, hearing his pursuers clattering down the slope after him.

  Someone stepped out of the shadows ahead of him. Starlight sketched a face that he recognised with puzzlement.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ When the man didn’t speak he gripped his rescuer’s arm. ‘Never mind. We’ve got to get out of here. They’re after me!’

  He looked downwards in shock, scrabbled at the blade that had entered his ribs. He looked up, breathed his last.

  He fell at the man’s feet.

  —1—

  Alexandria, Province of Egypt, November 2, 123 AD

  It was still deep in the watches of the night when Tribune Gaius Flaminius Drusus heard that they had sighted land. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, peering in confusion around the narrow, lantern lit cabin, he wondered how that was possible in such darkness. He rose from his bunk and crossed the sloping floor, flinging on his clothes as he did so. His sandaled feet clattered on the rungs of the ladder as he climbed up onto the deck.

  All was dark. He heard sailors speaking, the creak of the deck, the thrum of the rigging. Fog hung in the air, reducing visibility even more in the darkness. He turned forward to see what all the excitement was about. Then he went to the gunwale to get a clearer look.

  On the horizon, glimmering through the fog like some new star, was a light.

  ‘Some call it the Light of the World,’ said the skipper with a laugh, joining him. He clapped the tribune on the shoulder. ‘Soon be in Alexandria. You can join your legion when you go ashore.’ He took Flaminius’ arm. The tribune could smell the wine on his breath. Vinegar, more like, the rubbish all these Greek sailors drank. ‘Young fellow straight out of Rome, aren’t you? On some secret mission that’s so damn important you can requisition my ship and not pay an obol?’

  ‘I’m not “straight out of Rome”,’ Flaminius protested. Despite his youth, he had seen active service in Britain on two separate occasions, not to mention a brief, unsuccessful stint in the Praetorian Guard.

  ‘Been out East?’ the skipper asked. Flaminius shook his head. ‘Ah,’ added the skipper. ‘A word of warning, then, from an old hand. You’re charging about the place on your important business, nothing can wait, right? Well, it’s different in the East. Egypt especially. Egypt was here before the Deluge, long before. Nothing has changed here in millennia. It exists on a different time. Everything takes much longer. You’ll have to learn patience, son. Patience. Alright? Just a word of friendly advice.’

  As the skipper rolled off across the swaying deck to chivvy his men, Flaminius looked again. The light must be the Pharos, the famous lighthouse of Alexandria, built by the Ptolemies to provide a light for ships at sea, centuries earlier. Back when Egypt was still ruled by Macedonians and Greeks, long before it came into Roman hands. Now it was one of the richest provinces ruled by Rome, and its great metropolis was the second city of the Empire.

  Ever since Augustus had taken it over, it had been a thorn in the side of the reigning emperor. Senators were forbidden to enter the province without express permission, all other visitors required passports, and it was governed by a prefect of equestrian rank who—like Flaminius—was a direct representative of the emperor himself, beholden to no one else. Its rich granaries fed the Roman mob, and should any senator with ambitions and legions at his call seize the province, he would be able to starve the emperor into submission. Such had been the tactics of Vespasian, back in the Year of the Four Emperors.

  Flaminius had spent much of the voyage from Ostia in his cabin, reading reports on the province. It was a long way from the scene of his last assignment, on the other edge of the empire: Britain, with its cold mountains, rain lashed moors and poverty stricken, barbaric tribes. Egypt was the opposite, in accordance with all modern scientific theories of balance in the cosmos, a land of hot, dry deserts and ancient, crumbling cities dependent on the yearly flooding of the Nile.

  A rich land, and impossibly old. Flaminius shivered as he meditated upon the antiquity of the country they were approaching. Ancient and barbaric. The native Egyptians were famous for their worship of animal headed gods, and the city he was sailing for was a m
ass of squabbling creeds and cults, some even more bestial. It was while investigating one of these strange Oriental religions that Flaminius’ predecessor, Commissary Centurion Julius Strabo, had gone missing.

  Pharos was now clear and distinct, soaring above the horizon, flanked on either side by a smudge of shore. Not just its vast light now, blazing from the furnace at the top of that high stone tower, but the rest of it was fully visible, an elaborate limestone edifice designed by Ptolemy’s architects as a work of art. It defied the night of barbarism and superstition, white and pristine, growing up from a small island. And now, as they rounded the Pharos, Flaminius saw more lights, the lights of the city that lined the shore beyond the glassy floored bay in the lea of the lighthouse. The city took up much of the hinterland. It must be at least as large as Rome, he told himself.

  The water was dense with ships, even at this early hour when the sun was just beginning to peek over the eastern horizon, challenging the light of Pharos. As the helmsman guided them expertly into the harbour, Flaminius’ nostrils were filled with the stagnant air of the marshes of the Nile Delta, mixed with the spicy tang of the distant desert. But as they threaded their way across the crowded harbour, making for a massive granite wharf, these alien smells were replaced by clean, crisp winds tainted only by the fug of thousands of cooking fires. The Alexandrians were rising already. Flaminius’ belly was rumbling. He hoped he could get some breakfast when he went ashore.

  He bade the skipper farewell once they were moored, receiving the distinct impression that the man was glad to see the back of an imperial agent, and went ashore. On the crowded stone wharf he was stopped by men of the Twenty Second Legion.

  ‘May I see your identification, sir?’

  Flaminius had donned his equestrian toga, with its narrow purple stripe. It made him look very important, although he hated wearing it even in Rome, and in the warm morning air of Egypt it was very heavy. But no doubt it was his clothing that inspired the respectful tone in the voice of the legionary who had addressed him.

  Red-faced, the man’s eyes were slitted against the glare, and he looked very much out of his element in Egypt. Seeing the raven of Mithras branded between the man’s brows, Flaminius half consciously rubbed the identical mark on his own forehead.

  From beneath the folds of his toga he produced his lance-head brooch and flashed it at the legionary, whose tone grew even more respectful. ‘Make way for the imperial courier,’ he announced, and his comrades saluted Flaminius smartly. The tribune didn’t stop to correct their mistake: the lance-head brooch was also used as identification by the messenger corps, but he carried it as an agent of the Commissary, the imperial secret service.

  ‘Thanks, legionary,’ he said. ‘I’m here to report to the legate of your legion, Lucius Avidius Pollio. Can you direct me to the barracks?’

  The legionary gave a series of instructions and Flaminius listened intently, committing it all to memory. He was here to join the Twenty Second Legion, as a replacement for the mysteriously absent Julius Strabo, although he was also under secret orders to investigate the man’s disappearance. Most men posted to a new legion would report to the relevant cohort’s tribune. However, as an imperial agent, he was an equal of the legate: a direct representative of the emperor.

  Besides, he wanted to get off on the right foot. He would not even be here if his recent work in Britain had not made that province too hot for him right now. He had made Roman enemies, even while he was fighting the enemies of Rome, and now Hadrian’s recently restored city of Londinium lay in smoking ashes.

  As he walked through the streets of the city, which became more crowded as the morning wore on, he saw that it also showed signs of war in recent years, but it too had seen new building. In the days of the previous emperor, Trajan of Blessed Memory, a rebellion in the East had seen fierce fighting, and Trajan’s successor had taken the opportunity to rebuild the city of the Ptolemies in even more grandiose style. Theatres and temples, public gardens and gymnasiums glinted whitely in the blinding Egyptian sun, while the city’s wide, tree lined streets were thronged with all the peoples of the East.

  Arabs rode past him on dromedaries, Parthians on elephants, Greeks passed, clad in chitons, chattering volubly. Nubians and Armenians, Judaeans and Galatians eagerly devoured flatbreads and olives in the eating house where he stopped for breakfast. Two fat Syrians sat outside a wineshop, drinking Greek wine and laughing in the shadow of a statue of a Roman emperor, whose face was frozen in stony disapproval. Native Egyptians clad only in white kilts and headdresses stood in groups on corners of the street, their eyes rimmed with kohl. Roman legionaries patrolled the broad boulevard, dwarfed by the immensity of the buildings. Palm trees nodded in the gentle breeze from the sea. The air was filled with heady perfumes that masked the smell of cooking food of numerous exotic kinds. Down the middle of the boulevard, fountains gushed into serried ranks of ornamental pools. Although it was early winter, the heat grew as the morning continued until it seemed as hot as Rome in the dog days of summer.

  The legionary camp proved to be further away than Flaminius had thought, outside the city walls, beyond the district known as Eleusis, in another suburb called Nicopolis. As he headed up the broad Canopic Street that was the main thoroughfare of the city, some sixty-five cubits wide, and went out into the suburbs through the magnificent Gate of the Sun, he saw that he had gone beyond the confines of Hadrian’s building project. This area still showed marks of war and rioting. Burnt out shops replaced the bustling emporia he had seen earlier. The people also looked less prosperous, less confident.

  When Flaminius reached the legionary camp in Nicopolis, he was told that Avidius Pollio was on manoeuvres in the Thebaid. The heat was growing and so was Flaminius’ frustration. Why couldn’t the legionary at the harbour have told him this? The legate would not be back for weeks and could not confirm Flaminius’ new posting.

  Flaminius reminded himself that he had an investigation to complete.

  ‘Julius Strabo?’ drawled a young tribune, idly flicking at flies with a horsehair flywhisk. ‘The centurion was very close mouthed before he disappeared, old boy. He spent more time with the commander of the Alexandrian civic guard, Gnaeus Flavius Paulus Alexander. You’ll learn more from that gentleman than anyone in the legion.’

  ‘Where will I find this commander?’

  ‘At his office in the Greek Quarter,’ said the tribune. His face was as ruddy. ‘The palace of Hadrian.’

  This time, Flaminius requisitioned a litter. He returned to the city in some style, like a rich Roman matron back home, carried by two slaves who bore him hastily through the streets of the Greek Quarter or Brucheium, despite the baking heat of the noonday sun.

  At last they reached the palace of Hadrian, part of the vast complex of palaces and public spaces that made up the Brucheium, where the commander of the civic guard had his office. After ascending a series of flights of steps, Flaminius overawed the brown skinned Egyptian scribe in the antechamber with another flash of his lance-head brooch and entered the office.

  A middle-aged man sat at the broad marble topped desk, reading a report, fanned by a slave. He looked up in some irritation as Flaminius strode in, only slightly mollified by the tribune’s identification.

  ‘My name is Gaius Flaminius Drusus,’ Flaminius said, mopping at his brow. ‘I am an imperial agent. I was sent here to investigate the disappearance of Commissary Centurion Julius Strabo.’

  The commander of the Alexandrian civic guard was a dark haired, sallow skinned man, thickset, in his mid-forties. He wore a similar uniform to a centurion, with a red tunic and military belt, while a plumed helmet sat on his desk and a breastplate stood on a stand in one corner, draped with a sword belt also holding a dagger.

  He gave Flaminius a lugubrious glance over the top of the report. His kohl-rimmed eyes—like the scribe he wore kohl; everyone seemed to wear it in this city except the Romans—reminded Flaminius of an ageing courtesan.

  ‘Y
ou may find it difficult to carry out your assignment, Flaminius,’ said the commander. ‘Julius Strabo’s naked body was found last night in a ruined temple in the Old Judaean Quarter. He seems to have been murdered.’

  —2—

  Palace of Hadrian, Alexandria, November 2, 123 AD

  Flaminius kicked over a stool and sat down on it. He had been expecting a brief stay in this city, hoping to stand in for the missing commissary centurion until Julius Strabo was found, then back to Rome, hopefully, and its fleshpots, if not to Britain, where a certain British girl was waiting for him. If the commissary centurion could be found, then there would be no need for Flaminius to stay, right? But all those hopes were dashed to fragments by Paulus Alexander’s news.

  ‘I was sent here from the Peregrine Camp in Rome,’ he found himself telling the commander, ‘the camp of the commissary corps—to find out what had happened to him, alive or dead, and ensure justice was done if the latter turned out to be the case. The legate asked for help—but he’s off on manoeuvres. No one in the camp seemed to know what’s going on. And now this! Murdered? Who by?’

  Paulus Alexander looked away. ‘That I can’t tell you.’ He called for wine and a second slave entered bearing an amphora and two winecups which he filled. Flaminius took one and nursed it.

  ‘My mission is clear,’ he said. ‘I must find who was responsible and ensure they are brought to justice. The tribune in camp said you had been working closely with Julius Strabo. You’ll have to help me. I’ll be taking over the case now, as an imperial agent, but I’ll need your aid.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Paulus Alexander after a pause. ‘You’ll have to speak with my man Ozymandias for all the details, of course, but that can wait.’