SPQR III: The Sacrilege Page 16

  Lucullus rose. “I wish you the best of fortune, Decius. The woman is self-willed, but not without a certain intelligence. She regards the sort of men I favor as too dull to hold her interest. If any man could strike her fancy, I suppose it would have to be someone like Milo.”

  He left me in the garden, leaving likewise the golden pitcher. I helped myself to another cup. Caecuban like that didn’t come my way every day. While I waited for Fausta I lazed back in my chair, trying to imagine what it would be like living as Lucullus did. Without turning my head very far, I could see at least fifty slaves working in the garden. This, I knew, was only a fraction of his household staff. The table was fine porphyry, and the pitcher that sat on it was solid gold. It looked as if it would weigh more empty than a common pitcher when full. I determined to empty it and find out.

  What must it be like, I thought, to pass a particularly lovely spot when traveling between, say, Rome and Brundisium, decide that you fancy the place, turn to your steward and say: “Buy all the land for ten miles around and build me a villa there.” And then pass by a year later and see a mansion the size of a middling town, fully landscaped, decorated with the pick of the loot of Greece and Asia, and ready for you to move in if you should feel like resting from your trip. I thought this seemed like an extremely pleasant way to live. The problem was that the only way to amass such wealth was to conquer some extremely rich kings, as Lucullus had.

  By the time Fausta arrived, a warm, fuzzy mantle had settled over the world. It was truly excellent Caecuban.

  “I am terribly sorry to have kept you waiting so long, Decius Caecilius.” She was no less beautiful than when I had seen her before, dressed in a gown of saffron linen over which she had thrown a brief pallium of fine white wool.

  “I came unannounced,” I said as I rose, “and to wait in the house of Lucullus is to live like a king. Who can complain of that?” A slave hovered nearby with a tray, from which I seized a goblet which I filled for her. The old rules against women drinking with men were fast fading, especially for informal occasions such as this. Ordinary rules never applied to women like Fausta in any case.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking the cup but not drinking. “Word is spreading that you are investigating the profanation of the rites. Is that why you are here?”

  “I am hurt,” I said. “Everyone thinks that all I do is snoop. Actually, nothing could be further from my thoughts at this moment.” This was not strictly true. “Actually, I come in the guise of Cupid.”

  “A marriage proposal?” she said coolly. “I had heard that you were not married.” The idea seemed to interest her about as much as looking for toads under rocks.

  “Not at all. If that had been the case, my father would have called upon your guardian. No, I come on behalf of my good friend, Titus Annius Milo Papianus. He met you here a few days ago and was smitten, as might any man have been.”

  Instantly, she grew more animated. “Milo! He is no ordinary man, to be sure. I found him fascinating. But his family is unknown to me. He has an adoptive name. How did that come about?”

  “His father was Caius Papius Celsus, a landholder from the south. When he came to Rome he had himself adopted by his maternal grandfather, Titus Annius Luscus. This was strictly for political reasons, so that he would have city residency and membership in an urban tribe.” At least this was simple. A patrician pedigree might have forced me to drone on for an hour.

  “But the rural tribes are more respectable,” she pointed out. “All the best families belong to rural tribes.”

  “That was the old days, my lady. Power in Rome now resides in the urban mob, which Milo intends to lead. Forget names and lineages. Milo intends to make his own name and he is well on his way. Many men with fine old patrician names live in near-beggary. Marry respectability and that is all you get. With Milo you would lead what can only be described as an interesting life.”

  “That does sound intriguing. I suppose he has a city house of suitable magnificence?”

  “One of the largest and best-staffed in Rome,” I assured her. I suppose I should have told her that it was a fortress and its staff consisted of thugs, arena-bait and cutthroats such as one rarely encounters, but why deprive her of a unique surprise?

  “I get so many suitors,” she said, “and they are all so boring. I am twenty-seven years old, you know. I had all but decided to remain unmarried, even if that meant remaining a legal child under the care of Lucullus. This is the first interesting offer to come my way. You may inform Milo that I am willing to entertain his suit. He may call upon me informally, but he is to understand that any agreement must be between the two of us. I have sworn to open my veins rather than submit to an arranged marriage.”

  “Perfectly understandable. You could end up married to Cato otherwise. I am sure that this news will give Milo the greatest joy. Would you care for some more of this excellent Caecuban?” She shook her head. I do not believe she had so much as sipped at her own cup. I refilled mine. “Now that that is settled, I don’t suppose you would like to enlighten me concerning the scandalous evening that has become the delight of all Rome?”

  “I’m afraid that I can’t,” she said.

  “Ah. Forbidden by ritual law, like everyone else?”

  “Not a bit of it. I didn’t go to Caesar’s house that night.”

  The cup stopped halfway to my mouth. “You did not? But you were seen there.”

  Her eyes didn’t flicker. “Then someone was mistaken or else lying. Only married women take part, and I wasn’t about to waste an evening gossiping with a pack of well-born girls half my age.”

  “Then I must have been misinformed,” I said. “Please forgive me.”

  “Why? I haven’t been offended. Tell Milo I shall look forward to hearing from him.” She rose and extended her hand, which I took. “Good day, Decius Caecilius.” I watched her walk away. That was pleasant, but it told me nothing of her truthfulness. Either she was lying, or Julia was. I knew which one I preferred to believe.

  I found Hermes waiting on a bench in the atrium. He looked up, annoyed, when I gestured for him to join me.

  “You look like you ducked out and went to a tavern,” he said. “Are you going to have to lean on me all the way home?”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “No one gets drunk on vintage as fine as I’ve been drinking.” We left the house and walked toward the Forum.

  “I’ve attended at banquets in houses as fine as this,” he said. “I never realized the guests were puking from sheer joy.”

  “You are a vulgar little rascal,” I chided. “You should not speak about your betters in such a fashion.”

  “You ought to hear how we slaves talk about you when there are no freemen about.”

  “You aren’t earning yourself any favors this way,” I warned him.

  “Hah. You probably won’t remember—uh-oh.” His eyes went wide and so, I confess, did mine. A crowd of brutal-looking men swaggered toward us, blocking the narrow street. In center front was the ugliest of the lot: Publius Clodius Pulcher.

  “Uh-oh, indeed,” I muttered. “Hermes, be ready to back my play.”

  “Back you? What can you do against that lot?” The boy’s voice quivered with terror.

  “Just watch and keep your wits about you,” I said reassuringly. I picked a level spot. To my left, a flight of steps led between two buildings to a higher street. Behind us, the street was relatively clear, but it ascended steeply. While I was by no means drunk, I wished belatedly that I had been more moderate with the Caecuban.

  “Metellus! I have the feeling that you have been avoiding me! I am hurt!” He grinned his ugly, oily grin. Clodius had been making no formal calls and was dressed only in tunic and sandals. These latter were ordinary brown leather, although he was entitled to the thick-soled red buskins with the ivory crescent at the ankle. Even his tunic was the workingman’s exomis, the Greek type that leaves the right shoulder and half the chest bare. Clodius, man of the people.

/>   “You know how dearly I cherish your company, Publius,” I said. “You have but to call at my house during my morning reception.”

  His laugh was loud and false. “When did a Claudian ever come calling on a Metellan?”

  I waggled a finger at him. “Careful, Publius, your patricianship is showing. People might think you were wellborn, and you’ll have wasted all that slumming and hanging around with low company.”

  “He’s drunk,” said one of the thugs.

  “Drunk is as good a way to die as any,” Clodius said. “Get him.”

  “Just a moment,” I said, holding out a palm. “You have the advantage. Give me a moment.” Ceremoniously, I removed my toga and folded it.

  “He wants to make a fight of it,” Clodius said. “I wouldn’t have given him credit. Go ahead, Decius. Afterward we’ll wrap you up in it, and you won’t look so bad when your servants come to carry you home. You’ll look better than poor Appius Nero did after you murdered him.”

  “I didn’t kill him, Publius, you did, or maybe it was Clodia.”

  He went into his vein-popping routine again. “Enough of this! Kill him!”

  As I have already said, running in a toga is futile. Since I was no longer encumbered with mine, I bounded like a deer up the steps to my left. When I reached the street at the top of the steps, I turned right, downhill. I survived the next few seconds only because Clodius and his men were temporarily surprised by my bolting. Only a fool could have expected me to stand and fight against such odds, but men are capable of endless folly, and Publius Clodius of more than most men.

  Nonetheless, I could almost feel their breath on my heels as I dashed down the street, with startled pedestrians dodging out of my way. Romans were all too familiar with the sight of a man running for his life and knew how to behave accordingly. I mentally vowed a goat to Jove, asking him to cloud the eyes of the people before me. My greatest fear was that someone would recognize Clodius behind me and would try to stop me to curry favor with him.

  I was far from Milo’s territory and I did not know what Clodius’s strength might be in this area. If I could make it to the Subura, I would be safe. Clodius and his men would probably not make it back out alive. Unfortunately, to make it all the way to the Subura I would have to be as swift and enduring as that Greek who ran with the news from Marathon to Athens. I cannot recall his name just now.

  Our fine new colonial cities have beautiful, wide boulevards, flat as a pond and straight as a javelin. Rome has none. The streets I ran on rose and dipped, bent in serpentine curves on sharp angles, narrowed without warning and transformed into steps with no order or reason. This worked to my advantage, because I was recently returned from military service and Celer had insisted that his officers train as hard as the legionaries, to include broken-field running in armor. This stood me in good stead as I dodged, hopped, turned and leapt over the occasional recumbent drunk.

  Clodius had no athletes in his following, and most of his ex-gladiators were well-drilled in arms but not in running. When I risked a glance over my shoulder, I saw that Clodius was close behind, but he had lost all but three or four of his men. The odds were getting better all the time.

  I came to a warren of low wineshops and whores’ cribs. The road had narrowed to an alley and took a right-angled turn to the right. On both sides rows of low doorways gave access to tiny cubicles and the services of their inhabitants. I ducked into one, and such was my state of heightened awareness that I still remember the sign above the doorway. It read: Phoebe: Skilled in Greek, Spanish, Libyan and Phoenician (this did not refer to languages). Price: 3 sesterces. 2 denarii for Phoenician. The smell within was rank, and from the back of the room came heavy breathing and the sound of flesh slapping rhythmically against flesh. I had my dagger and caestus out, and when a shadow crossed the doorway I lunged. There was a sharp indrawing of breath and the man toppled, clutching his belly. The face was bearded. Not Clodius, worse luck. Another man tripped over the one I had stabbed, and I kicked him in the jaw as he fell. I barged out the doorway, swinging at the first face I saw, and felt a jawbone crack under the bronze spikes of my caestus. Someone swung a curved short sword at me and I felt it draw a cold line along my shoulder, missing my throat by a finger’s breadth. Before the man with the broken jaw had a chance to fall, I got my unwounded shoulder into him and sent him crashing into Clodius.

  With a single leap I cleared the tangle of bodies and flailing limbs and was running at top speed down the alley. I passed a crowd seated in the open front of a wineshop, and they whistled and clapped in appreciation. In the years since, I have sometimes had cause to wonder what the Phoenician style might be. It must have been complicated. Two denarii was awfully expensive for a girl in that part of town.

  My shoulder began to sting, but the fire in my lungs was worse. The alley opened onto a small plaza in front of a temple of Vertumnus. This gave me my bearings, and I ran toward the temple with the sound of sandals slapping close behind me. A few more of Clodius’s men must have caught up with him. I veered to the right and went down the narrow street that ran between the temple and a towering tenement. Unwillingly, I had to slow down and tread carefully. The pavement before a tenement is often slick, because the wretches who inhabit such places are often too lazy to carry their chamberpots to the nearest sewer opening and just dump them into the street. Squawks and thuds behind me told me I was correct in being cautious.

  The road began to level out, and I began to feel a bit of hope that I might get out of this alive. The great, hulking building just ahead of me was the Basilica Aemilia. I was looking at its unornamented rear, and I knew that if I could just get past it, I would be in the Forum, where even Publius Clodius might hesitate to murder me. My sides were cramping and my lungs were working so hard that I felt as if blood were about to burst forth from them.

  Then I was past the basilica and down its steps and onto one of the wooden trial platforms in front of it. And, just my luck, there was a trial in progress. I knew that because it was crowded with men and a barrister was in mid-gesture, his beringed hands raised dramatically as he made the crowning point of his argument. I will never forget the look of horror on his face when I ran into him. We went sprawling across the platform, his snowy toga billowing about us like the sail of a ship carried away in a storm.

  I came up in time to see Clodius bearing down on me, his face distorted with transcendent rage, purple as a triumphator’s robe. In one hand he brandished a curved short sword. So he was the one who had cut me. I was swept up with the urge to do the same to him, only worse. The sword came down at me with a wild slash, which I managed to deflect with my caestus. I stabbed straight for his throat, but he lunged forward and ducked, throwing a shoulder into my belly and wrapping his arms around my waist. I went over backward, and this time we both rolled over the unfortunate lawyer. I struggled to keep Clodius from getting his sword arm free while he concentrated on biting my face off. I kneed him in the balls and that, at least, made him open his mouth, freeing my nose. Another good one to the cods and he squealed like a gelded pig. I broke his hold and scrambled out from beneath him, dealing a weak, backhanded blow to the side of his neck as I did so. It was enough to half stun him and send him sprawling on his belly. I clambered onto his back and seized a handful of his thick, curly, greasy, goatlike hair and yanked his head back. I placed my dagger beneath his neck and was poised to cut his throat from larynx to spine when both my arms were grabbed and all but wrenched from their sockets. A lictor’s fasces was placed across my throat and locked there by the official’s arm in a unique variant of the common wrestling hold. The bundle of rods nestled into the crook of his elbow while his hand, on the back of my head, pressed my throat against the rods until the breath whistled in my nostrils. Another team of lictors applied the same treatment to Clodius.

  The jury and spectators whistled and stamped at this rare entertainment. The lictors hauled us before the praetor like reluctant sacrifices.

  �
�Who dares offend the majesty of a Roman court in this fashion?” The man in the curule chair wore an expression of cold fury. It was the distinguished praetor Caius Octavius, famed jurist and soldier and, incidentally, the true father of our esteemed First Citizen, who was still a burping baby in that year.

  We croaked our names, the pressure of the fasces making it very difficult to articulate the simplest sounds. This raised a good laugh. I must admit that my voice sounded rather comical.

  “And what prominent person has died,” Octavius said, “that we have funeral games in the Forum?”

  “Clodius and his thugs attacked me!” I said. “I was running for my life! Do you think I would seek a fight with a dozen armed men?”

  “Just going about your business, eh?” said Octavius. “Just like any other citizen, with a caestus in one hand and a pugio in the other? Bearing arms within the pomerium is another punishable offense.”

  “At least they’re respectable weapons,” I pointed out. “He was carrying a sica!”

  “A pertinent point!” said one of the lawyers, unable to help himself. The distinction between honorable and dishonorable weapons was a strict one in Roman law. The glare Octavius gave the lawyer boded ill for the progress of the trial.

  “What have you say for yourself, Publius Clodius?” the praetor demanded.

  “I am a serving Roman official and cannot be charged with a criminal offense!” he said, gloating.

  Octavius gestured with his baton toward a white-gowned figure seated near him. It was one of the Vestals.

  “You realize,” he said, “that had one of you killed the other in this lady’s presence, the survivor would have been taken outside the walls to the execution ground and there flogged to death with rods. There are few capital offenses left on the tables, but that is one of them.”