Before imposing on Professor Jason, the leper-white, thin-lipped physician in the medical school with childhood connections that reached into Nero’s coterie of closest advisors, I needed to verify Baba’s story. So, I called on my bearers, Orestes and Solon, to take me inside the East Gate of the agora, where the list of those sentenced to the summum supplicium, the most extreme punishment, is posted.
Ordinarily I would be excited about going to the agora, about gliding through the streets in the sedan chair high above the ox dung and letting the vigor of the marketplace filter into my arteries. But on that day, I reminded myself, the errand was grim.
I raised my hem to tiptoe around the ripe twists of excrement and the opals of phlegm dotting the pavement to make my way past the quarrels of men, the gossip of women, and the pleas of beggars, who clung to my skirt like a lifeline. Inasmuch as the games would be held later that week, most of the criminals, slaves, and prisoners-of-war would be thrown to the half-starved wild beasts. Why shouldn’t their deaths serve to entertain those ruthless Romans! But one, probably because he’d killed a citizen, would have his death prolonged. He was listed for crucifixion tomorrow at dawn: Isocrates, the textile vendor, for killing Cato, the sandal maker.
Feeling the shock of that terrible reality, I stared at the entry in the harsh afternoon light until the letters began to blur. Then, sliding into despair, I called for Orestes and Solon to turn the sedan chair toward Professor Jason’s office.
#
The sun had already begun its downward slide by the time we headed south on the Street of the Soma. My bearers zigzagged around statues and temples, colonnades and arcades, fountains and sphinxes while I rehearsed my story for the professor. Our most senior medical examiner and head of the department of anatomy, he is best known for his unorthodox conclusions. These opinions have sometimes cast him into bitter disputes with his colleagues, especially when he’s so often been correct, but at other times, he’s accepted his losses like a wound in battle.
Once on the campus of the Museum, I counted the number of cobbled lanes past the botanical gardens to locate the medical school, a massive limestone building, radiating the shimmer of its sun-scoured stones along with the promise of wellness. The moment Orestes and Solon lowered the chair, I dipped into my purse to treat them to a snack in a nearby café. Then I scooted up the medical school’s narrow steps between the scholars’ dormitory and refectory. Breathless with the urgency of my task, I entered through a heavily studded, bronze-hinged double door. Then, darting around a cluster of students, I hustled down a tangle of familiar corridors. When I wasn’t propelled by the smells seeping out of the vivisection laboratories—the odor of feces, the scent of blood, and the stench of decay—I was chased by a mounting awareness that my last few hours were slipping away.
I knocked at Professor Jason’s rude plank door. Before I could compose myself, the once soldierly built man, now stooped, his face pinched by age, opened it and ushered me into his cramped office.
“My dear Miss bat Isaac, I’m delighted to see you, but from the flush of your cheeks, I can tell this is not a social call.” He still spoke with the precise diction of a scholar, but instead of his former stentorian voice, deep enough to boom across a lecture hall, his tone was even thinner and dryer than when I last saw him a year ago.
“Thank you, professor, for seeing me without an appoint—”
“Oh, I’m not so busy these days,” he said, with a dismissive wave. “My students have taken over my work. My only job nowadays is to look important, and my only pleasure is in the cases others bring me, such as the one you’re about to tell me.”
I could read the hunger for a challenge in his eyes. They glittered like two points of light. “Actually, I’m here more to ask a favor—a strange one at that—than to involve you in a case.”
“Come sit down,” he said as he pulled over an empty chair and wiped its seat with the skirt of his tunic.
We seated ourselves across from each other at a wobbly table in this small, strangely angled office. The watery light from the lone east-facing window and a smoking oil lamp hanging from a joist struggled together to push back the late-afternoon shadows.
He knotted his hands in his lap and leaned forward.
Despite my rehearsal, the words were slow in coming. I did not want to mention Baba by name or that he was a produce vendor lest the professor feel obligated to reveal my client’s identity to the authorities. I told him only that I wanted to stop the crucifixion tomorrow and that the prisoner, namely Isocrates the textile vendor, was innocent. In addition, I said that according to my client, this Isocrates was arrested simply because, being lame, he could not run away as the killer had done.
“Hmm. That’s most irregular. Stopping a crucifixion, I mean.” He crossed his legs and gnawed on the corner of his upper lip. “You must know that only the emperor can do that, so I’m not sure how I can help.”
“Well, I remember how close you were with the late Quintus Valens Cinnus, going back to your childhood—”
“Yes, Quintus was the best friend I ever had,” he said with a sad breath. “You know I grew up in Rome with all the other privileged kids in the Palatium, right around the corner from the Domus Augusti. His family was richer than mine, of course, but he shared his opportunities, allowance, and gossip—embellished I’m sure by the tallest of tales—if I shared my homework with him.” A chuckle escaped his lips before grief tightened them into a long white scar.
“And his cousin Burrus?”
“Ah yes, I remember when Quintus introduced me to his cousin, the very Sextus Afranius Burrus to become the prefect of Nero’s Praetorian Guard.”
For a time, he leaned back in his chair and fixed his eyes on a corner of the ceiling as if deciphering a code written there. Then, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips, he muttered, “Oh, what’s the use? Burrus is gone too. I suppose my punishment for a long life is having to see my old friends pass away.” Then he re-crossed his legs as if, in a rush of clarity, a fresh idea sparked in his brain. “When did you say the crucifixion would take place?”
“Tomorrow. At dawn.”
“Hmm, we don’t have enough time to contact Nero’s advisors, but I can send a runner to the magistrate with a dispatch asking him at least to postpone the execution.”
“Oh, could you, professor?”
“No guarantee, Miss bat Isaac. The magistrate might not even read my message before dawn. But I’ll do my best.”
And I knew he would.
I expressed my gratitude as we exchanged our ritual of good-byes but left feeling as if a chasm yawned before me. Would Baba be willing to testify as an eyewitness, let alone confess to having killed Cato himself? Somehow I doubted it, or he would’ve come forward sooner. Now, my energy spent, I trudged around the corner and found the sedan chair in front of Hector’s café.
Chapter III: Next Morning
That night, whenever I edged near that sweet state of oblivion, something, perhaps the mournful cry of a distant buoy, wrenched me back to consciousness and stirred my sense of doom. With my head throbbing, my body greased with cold sweat, and the bitter taste of bile coating my tongue, my eyes snapped open to bore into the darkness while I castigated myself for not having gone to the magistrate myself.
Maybe it’s hopeless, I thought, but I wanted to save this man just as I’ve longed to save every innocent soul whose story crosses my threshold. I’ve been like that way since I was a child during the Alexandrian Riots, when my people were hauled into the agora to be stoned, pummeled, torn limb from limb, or burned alive. Then the mob mocked their cries as the pain rippled through their twisted bodies and devoured them.
Jagged from lack of sleep, I crept out of bed as soon as the half-light of dawn seeped through the shutters. I dressed in my sitting room by the light of the setting moon. Then pulling my hair back into a simple bun, working my feet into a pair of ankle-lengthcalcei, wrapping myself in a woolen himation, and grabbing my satchel, I was ready to walk to the East Gate and await news of the crucifixion.
I tiptoed down the stairs like a common thief. Then, after the groan of the latch, the cry of the hinges, and the rattle of the handles, I closed the double doors behind me. At last, I was sucking in the cool morning air and at the same time, welcoming the sun’s thin warmth on my back. I turned up our side street—empty, still quiet at this hour—as vague blurs resolved themselves into the columns, arches, and balconies of my neighborhood. With my weary senses now alert, I counted the clacks of my heels on the unfolding cobblestones to counter the voices urging me to abandon the case. Striding north to the coast and west to the agora accompanied by the rhythm of the surf, I passed on my right the barracks and armoires of the Roman fleet.
By the time I arrived at the East Gate, my heart was galloping with anticipation. Hardly feeling my feet, I nevertheless tore inside the gate to see whether any news of the crucifixion had been posted. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and scanned the notices.
Nothing yet.
But a moment later, I heard the drumming of hooves. Squinting against the needles of sunlight, I saw the legs of horses slashing the air, a centurion’s scarlet plume, and his iron-helmeted military guard flying in a wedge behind him.
I followed the billowing tails of their horses to Zenon’s café.
#
Zenon’s is well-situated in the agora, facing both the central plaza and the Street of the Soma. The one-eyed counterman, his paunch hanging over a spattered butcher’s apron, greeted me with a hand of lacy soapsuds. The meager light leaking past him pasted a dull sheen on the sagging shelves of glassware, cutlery, and crockery. I ordered a bowl of porridge and then crossed the mudbrick threshold into the low-raftered interior, its air sweetened with the aroma of cinnamon rolls and spiced with the jabber of hungry laborers.
I caught a glimpse of the soldiers. At first, the five looked alike, powdered with dust and sprawled in their chairs, the same granite faces working their drinks. But after a quick blink, I distinguished two in particular: the centurion, his face leathery, his jaw pugnacious, and next to him, probably the youngest member of his military guard, a fresh-faced farm boy, somber and wearing a mask of acne.
My gaze swept to the shadowed eaves in the rear, where I took a seat at a rickety table, my back to the soldiers. I was there to eavesdrop not to meet their stares. So, with my head down, I listened to their chatter while pretending to search through my satchel for a nonexistent token to claim a nonexistent document in the Palace of Justice. Their Latin varied from the deep workingman’s drawl of a Sardinian to the swallowed vowels of a Numidian. But their talk was loud, virile, and timely enough; they spoke about the crucifixion.
Soon I could identify the resonant, commanding voice of the centurion. “Don’t worry, kid. The grimness fades. Becomes routine, part of the job, and not the worst part at that.”
The words grabbed me like a fishhook.
Then a backcountry twang, probably the farm boy’s: “But his spine so fuckin’ twisted. Couldn’t hardly position his feet after we nailed his wrists.” And after a hard swallow: “Them screams, so fuckin’ shrill. Gonna hear ’em into Etern—”
“Cheer up, kid. It coulda’ been you.”
A chorus of gusty guffaws swelled to a maniacal dimension before caroming off the walls.
“Sounded ta me more like a sealion barking on the banks of the Nile.”
Forced laughter now, false and hollow. It bled the energy right out of me. All I could do was slump into my chair.
“Why’d you go’n’break the poor asshole’s legs anyway? He was a goner before we even strung up the crossbar. Couldn’t even carry it without our help.”
“Yeah. And then why’d you pierce his heart?”
By now, their alcohol-thicken voices filled the room.
“Look guys, you wanna waste the whole fuckin’ day waiting for ’im to die? Not me. I’d rather go home and give my old lady a bounce. Besides, better for us and better for ’im to end it and get the fuck out there.”
“What’s with you? Always got some kinda hardon.”
“You fuckin’ got that right.”
Just then, I saw the counterman maneuvering through the maze of customers with my porridge. I signaled him with a shake of my head, grabbed my satchel, left more than enough change on the table, and staggered toward the door like a toddler learning to walk. With a sense of irreparable loss twisting inside me, I knew I had to tell Baba.
#
I felt my way like a blind woman through the blur of stinging tears and the fog of people in the central plaza.
Where’s Baba? Didn’t he say I could find him behind his produce cart?
I checked under every portico and inside every stall, café, and workshop. I asked every beggar, loiterer, prostitute, peddler, and snake charmer.
No Baba.
I stopped at every portable business: the moneychangers’ tables, merchants’ wagons, and awning-sheltered barrows that vie each day for a favorable location.
Never heard of him.
Until I described him, his child-like face, Egyptian patois, gap-toothed mouth, and thick mottled hands. Then everyone knew him. But no, his name isn’t Baba, and he’s not a produce vendor. He’s just some crazy guy, they said, who goes around confessing to every murder. He thinks he can get to meet the emperor that way, by pleading to have the culprit’s execution halted.
Heartsick, I let my feet drag me to Professor Jason’s.
Chapter IV: That Afternoon
Professor Jason opened his office door, with a shiver of surprise. “My dear Miss bat Isaac, I sent a student out this morning to look for you.” A pucker settled on his brow as he shook his head in disbelief. “He hasn’t come back yet, but here you are.”
“Is something wrong?”
He paused to gather his thoughts. “I need to tell you something, but first I want to apologize.”
“Apologize?”
“Yes but have a seat.” He pulled over that same chair, sat across from me, and crossed his legs.
This time his voice took on a confidential manner. “Listen, Miriam—may I call you that? I feel as if we’ve become friends over these last two years.”
“Three actually.”
“Yes, and so many cases beginning with those two cousins who weren’t really cousins. Remember?” For a moment, his thoughts got tangled in that memory.
“What is it professor? Actually, I came here to apologize to you.”
“You? For what?” His voice rang with incredulity.
“The man I told you about. He called himself Baba. Apparently he doesn’t exist as anything but a phony, a liar who fooled me into thinking Isocrates, that crippled textile vendor, was innocent of killing Cato. So, I troubled you for nothing.”
“My dear, I should apologize to you for not promising to go to the magistrate immediately. But I did go—”
My eyes flew open.
“—and I want to tell you what I learned.” Now his eyes were aflame with excitement. “The magistrate is the very one who presided over Isocrates’s trial. A witness outside the latrina that day came forward. He’d heard Isocrates argue with, bully, and kill Cato, who’d stolen from the textile vendor frequently. So, the magistrate never would have postponed the execution.”
“So then, I surely wasted your time—and the magistrate’s as well.”
“But I’m not finished. The magistrate also recognized the antics of the man you call Baba. He too has been before the magistrate enumerable times for petty crimes, but now the magistrate has charged him with attempting to obstruct justice.”
The shock stung me like a rock on impact, so much so that now I was the one to shake my head in disbelief.
“He has been declared a homo sacer, meaning a man now cursed in the eyes of the law. He has been excommunicated from society, removed from its safeguards so no one can be punished for even killing him.”
I sat there like an actor who’d forgotten my lines.
“Cato’s son will surely hunt him down.”
“Oh professor, I’ve been such a fool!”
“Now, now my dear, we all have to accept our losses.”
“But why did this man come to me?”
“Well, you have enough of a following for him to have heard that you’re a person of compassion with a mission to protect the innocent. Surely that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
After a flicker of understanding, I said, “At least an innocent man wasn’t executed.” Then I sat for a few minutes watching the watery light from the lone east-facing window and the smoking oil lamp struggle together to push back the late-afternoon shadows.
