The Nero Prediction Read Free Page B

smiled for the first time, showing his perfect white teeth. It was a warm smile, reassuring, winning. “Here,” he said, handing me a wooden box made of lacquered wood. The lid was decorated with a dreadful lion headed man with four wings and a serpent wrapped around its naked torso. Its hands were crossed over its chest. Both held large keys. It stood on a globe that was crossed with an X like the one on Phocion’s moneybag. “This is for you. A parting gift. Do you recognize the figure?”
    We have several lion headed gods and goddesses in Egypt but I didn’t recognize this one. “No sir.”
    “His Egyptian name in Kar-Knum which the Greeks translated as Kronos. He’s lord of the four winds. See the keys in his hands? Those are the keys to the future because Kronos, of course, is also Lord of Time. Well, what are you waiting for? Open it!”
    I opened the box. Inside was a hand, neatly severed at the wrist. Its fat fingers were covered with rings.
     

The First Murder
    September 23 – October 16, 48 A.D.
     
     
    Euodus and I left Tigellinus’s farm after lunch, escorted by the same bodyguards who had walked with us from the Castellum. We walked to the harbor in silence which gave free play to my swarming thoughts.
    Was Phocion really dead? The thought tore my heart but I was sure he was. He must have known that the Copy Master had seen him try to get into the Records Office, must have realized that the fat man would guess that he had come for my certificate, that I was the one the Romans were looking for. When he heard the Copy Master was being interrogated, he knew it was his turn next. That’s why he’d hanged himself, to save himself from torture. He might also have wanted to protect others, too, names he would have been forced to reveal. Mark perhaps? What did Mark mean by ‘You have been chosen’? Chosen for what? A gull cried mournfully. We’d reached the harbor.
     
    A fast, single banked passenger galley was waiting for us. It cast off immediately and was soon speeding through the glassy water. The Pharos lighthouse, wonder of the world, towered four hundred and forty feet above us as we passed out of the mouth of the harbor into the open sea. High above it, tiny smudges in the sky, vultures circled. I saw that Euodus was watching them too. 
    It was calm, at first, nothing more than gently undulating blue-green slopes as we glided over them, the drum keeping time for the rowers beating like the ship’s heart. Three hours later, when it was already dark, the beam of the lighthouse began to settle into the sea like a bright star twinkling with a myriad colors. It reminded me of the star Phocion had taken me to watch rising just two months before, the ceremony he had taken me to ever since I could remember. As always, an hour before dawn we joined the silent congregation which crowded a long narrow aisle, in the great temple of Isis in the center of the city – her temples were everywhere but this one, on the sea side of the old Ptolemaic palace, was the most revered. The aisle, closed to the sky except for a round oculus in the eastern wall, was bordered by massive stone columns carved in the shape of palm trees that supported the lofty roof. All eyes were fixed on where the beautiful statue of the goddess Isis loomed in the darkness against the western wall. I had seen miniature copies of the statue, of course. They were sold by the thousand by street vendors in the market places because she was by far Egypt’s most popular goddess whose worship was spreading around the world. On her head was her crown, still invisible, a disk that was set between cow’s horns, the sign for the royal throne. In her arms was her son, the infant Horus, the falcon god whose eyes were the Sun and the Moon.
    Faintly, at first, as light from the dawn sky streamed through the oculus, the disk in the goddess’s crown began to glow eerily in the darkness – it must have been made of highly polished silver. A sigh of