"Can you tell me anything, Centurion?" he asked the officer as his horse frisked under its new rider, "…anything at all?"

Suetonius used the most authoritarian patrician's vocal timbre he could muster. He was sure it would impact on a soldier's sense of rank and duty. Meanwhile he toyed with his equestrian knight's gold ring on one hand, the symbol of his lofty status in the pecking order of things. But the officer already knew his rank.

The centurion looked Suetonius over to assess the risks. He calculated his likely value as a person of influence at the Imperial Court, an impression to which Surisca's and the steward's coins had added persuasively. He leaned forward out of earshot of his companions.

"Sir, Antinous of Bithynia, Caesar's personal companion and Favorite, is dead."

Suetonius sensed he instantly regretted telling him. Suetonius was thunderstruck.

Antinous dead! How? Why? Where? Of what? Healthy twenty-three year-olds at the peak of physical fitness do not die suddenly of good health.

With such questions spinning through his brain, Suetonius and the Guard escort cantered off into the dusk through the town's narrow lanes towards the Nile's shore.

CHAPTER 2

An unexplained death among the Court's inner circle is sobering, Suetonius mused while the Praetorians stabled their horses at a ferry jetty by the Nile's shore. Such deaths often had cryptic features. There might be more to it than immediately met the eye.

The historical biographer had noticed as they cantered through the stony back streets of Hermopolis how the celebrants of Isis were still making a great din with their rites. Shaven-headed priests in leopard skin mantles, linen-garbed acolytes, and simple householders or workers in rags were loudly shaking tambourines or sistra, beating drums, and chanting, dancing, or mourning with cheerful abandon. It seemed the first day of The Isia's three days of commemoration would proceed long into the night.