György Spiró - Captivity

A smart woman she must have been.

Kainis smiled.

“Just imagine: you almost get yourself killed for being Mark Antony’s daughter, even though your father had abandoned you when you were just a tiny tot, along with your elder sister, your brothers, and your mother, just because he fell in love with an Egyptian whore who just happens to be the queen; your elder brothers are murdered even though innocent, out of gratitude for being spared your life you are forced to marry a dreadful, intolerable man whose father just happens to be the emperor — your father’s one-time friend, who had your brothers murdered and on whose account your father took his own life, and so you hate your husband, though you have no choice but to bear him two sons; your husband dies young, and you know that your brother-in-law, now become emperor, whatever else he does, is bound to have your son poisoned… It is hardly surprising that one would learn a thing or two from all that, even if you are a woman.”

Uri would pay calls on Kainis in her quarters, and he did not care if the other servants saw him. Kainis got bored with it, though.

“What do you want from me?”

“You.”

“You’re married.”

“That was before I got to know you…”

“I’m older than you.”

“That’s neither here nor there.”

“Get a divorce.”

Uri sighed.

“I had to marry for money…”

“So does every man,” Kainis said wickedly.

“Fair enough, I’ll get a divorce… But I have a son whom the Eternal One entrusted to me… How am I going to raise him on my own? Would you be his mother?”

“I’m not Jewish,”

“Become one.”

“I don’t believe in your god.”

“What god do you believe in?”

“None.”

Uri was left not knowing what to say, but he started up again a few days later. Kainis giggled:

“Kill your wife,” she suggested.

Uri was far from certain if this was a jest or whether Kainis meant it seriously.

She had once told him that in Claudius’s house she felt a bit like she was wandering around a vegetable bed in which rare sorts of magic plants were blooming, though she had no idea what they were.

Kainis finished that off by saying:

“Everyone is a bean, but don’t worry: no one will murder you.”

Pythagoras, so the popular myth had it, had been killed at the edge of a vast bean field.

It was the sort of thing one would never expect to hear from the mouth of a woman; Uri was entranced, but then again he would have been entranced even if she had been unaware of the legend.

It emerged that Kainis had license to poke about in Claudius’s library any time she liked and was free to read whatever she wanted. She could quote from any work of Greek literature or philosophy from memory; once she had cast eyes on anything she was unable to rid her brain of it, but it was not that which Uri marveled at so much as the fact that she was clever, confoundedly clever.

Narcissus told a story of how, around a decade and a half ago, Antonia had dictated a letter to Kainis because no one else happened to be at hand: it was a letter to Tiberius on Capri about matters concerning Sejanus. The mistress had then had second thoughts and ripped the letter up. Kainis, still a young girl, laughed, told her mistress that she had not ripped the letter up in her mind, and went on to quote the letter word for word. Antonia realized what sort of treasure she had found when a week later the girl could still remember every single word. That was when a new type of courier began making the rounds between Rome and Capri, until Sejanus’s fall, and indeed beyond: Kainis would set off with Narcissus and the other male servants, with the ostensible aim of overhauling a villa in Campania; beforehand Antonia would dictate her letter to Kainis before tearing it up, once at the villa in Campania Kainis would dictate it back to either Narcissus or Pallas, who would take the letter to Capri. Still at the villa, Kainis would read Tiberius’s reply, that too would be torn up, and the group would travel back to Rome. No documents would ever be found on them, though the sentries and Praetorian guards frisked them often enough, as not only Sejanus harbored suspicions but his successor, Macro, too.

Servants are privy to big secrets, and Uri learned about many strange matters. In exchange he told stories about Judaea and Alexandria, talking about the Gymnasium, the drinking dens, Delta and the Bane, spoke about the spread of Greco-Jewish hatred, with Kainis listening out of interest.

“Don’t be fooled,” she warned Uri once. “Those people don’t hate each other.”

“Who’s that?”

“The alabarch’s crowd and the Greek envoys.”

She argued that while the Greeks in Caligula’s entourage might scheme against the Jews, and they enjoyed the support of Helicon, powerful as he was, the costs of the alabarch’s stay in Rome were in reality being funded not by Jewish financiers, but by Isidoros and Lampo.

At first Uri did not understand what Kainis was driving at.

“As long as the alabarch’s group are in Rome the Greeks will pick up their expenses,” explained Kainis. “They don’t live off what they get from the Jews. The alabarch’s Jewish bankers in Alexandria pay off Isidoros and Lampo’s people in Alexandria. Promissory notes are made out to pay out to the bearer a certain amount, and they pay that out…”

Uri shook his head: there was so much hatred between Greeks and Jews, most especially after the Bane, that it was inconceivable.

“Don’t be so stupid!” Kainis admonished him affectionately. “Isidoros and the alabarch made a pact that they were not going to give back the money and gifts that the wealthy Greeks and Jews had granted Flaccus. Bassus brought back to Rome as much as a tenth of Flaccus’s fortune, and Caligula could be happy even with that; he has no idea of how much a procurator or prefect steals. The remaining nine-tenths was split between Isidoros and the alabarch, and that is why no compensation will ever be paid in Alexandria.It’s a huge fortune, hundreds of millions… They would be mad to give that back. Anyone who seeks to denounce them to the emperor is sent packing. Why do you think the Judaeophobic Apion set off for the Greek islands to bore audiences with his commentaries on Homer? Because he sniffed out the plan and wanted a piece of the action… It’s an exile, not a triumphal procession… And why did Flaccus have to be killed in exile? He was no danger to anybody, except for those who had his wealth seized: he would have been able to let drop a thing or two about them…”

Uri blanched. That sounded like sense, but did Philo know about all this, he wondered.

“He knows,” Kainis read his silent question. “Has it never occurred to you that Flaccus was never charged with extortion? Neither by the Greeks nor the Jews? Does Philo write anything in his book about the presents Flaccus received from the Greeks and Jews? Or at least about how big a bribe the Greeks paid him?”

He had not written about that, not one word.

“Have you read it?” Uri asked.

“I didn’t need to to find that out,” Kainis replied gleefully.

The eunuch Posides, who was dilly-dallying next to them, nodded that was how it was done, and it usually worked.

“Antonia always tittered when inquiries were made about the money she had inherited from her father,” said Posides. “Before making war on Augustus, Cleopatra and Mark Antony ransacked all of Egypt’s wealthy, taking away even what was theirs personally — it made no difference whether you were Egyptian, Greek, or Jewish. They piled it up in the palace in Alexandria, but they had no time to make any use of it because as soon as Augustus Divus arrived triumphantly in Alexandria he was sought out by petitioners wanting back the money Cleopatra had stolen, then along came the priests asking for the return of devotional objects, gold… ‘Where are all those treasures, then?’ Augustus asked in astonishment. ‘In the palace cellars,’ he was told. Augustus thanked them kindly for the information, loaded up the entire fortune onto a ship and brought it back to Rome.”