SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead Read online

  The tunnel still took us down. It may be that the smoke and drink distorted our sense of time and distance. Sometimes the flames of the torches seemed to draw far ahead of us and every word spoken or chanted seemed to echo endlessly. As always when venturing underground, I found that the weight of earth and stone above me seemed to press down and I had to slow my breathing, knowing that it would take little for me to burst into panic, a state far too undignified for a praetor.

  Just when I thought the whole ordeal had become unbearable, the air grew humid and there was a smell of sulfurous water. The tunnel opened somewhat and divided, one way sloping up, the other downward. We came to a room that would have seemed intolerably small for a proper shrine, but after the suffocatingly cramped tunnel it was almost like emerging into open air, though the light was still dim and the air full of smoke and mist.

  In the center of the chamber was an altar decked with dead foliage and covered with innumerable bones that piled high and spilled onto the floor. Some of the bones were human, among them the skeletons of infants. Julia and Circe turned away in horror, but Antonia stared in fascination. She was as demented as the rest of her family.

  “Here we pay tribute to the shades of the dead,” intoned Iola, “and to their queen, Hecate.” At that, one of the priests walked to the back of the chamber and thrust his torch into a bowl that contained twigs and brush. The flames rose, revealing an image of the goddess, hewn from the same stone as the surrounding walls. The women gasped, though it was only an archaic carving. The goddess was depicted holding her leashed hounds and she was three-faced, with the face on one side that of a young woman, that on the other an old hag, and the one in the center that of a mature matron, all of it done so crudely that it must have been made long before people in these parts knew anything about Greek sculpture.

  The priest, if that was what he was, cast a handful of incense upon the fire and we were wreathed in fragrant smoke. Iola shouted what sounded like a prayer in some incomprehensible language, although I thought I caught a Marsic word or two.

  Circe gasped. “The goddess moved!”

  “Just the flickering light,” I muttered. Julia turned and glared at me.

  “The goddess grants us permission to approach the Styx and summon her subjects for questioning,” Iola said.

  The Styx? I thought. It was a long walk, but surely we haven’t come that far!

  Now Iola took us down a side passage that descended just a short way and the smell of sulfur water grew more pronounced and the mist more dense. This time the other black-robed figures did not accompany us. There was a sound of rushing water and even my hardened, Skeptical faculties deserted me. We were headed for the Styx, and I wasn’t ready to cross it yet. I didn’t even have a coin beneath my tongue.

  At last we came to a chamber full of steam and there before us was a rushing stream of water, literally boiling as if it had run through Vulcan’s forge before entering the chamber. We could not see the far side of the stream, for the fog obscured it. I had the impression that the distance was not great. In an odd way this was of some comfort to me. I had always heard that the Styx was a wide, slow-moving, black river, but if this was not the true Styx, it was certainly something uncanny.

  I could see that most of my party were quite convinced that they were standing beside the river over which the gods swore their most solemn oaths, but their minds did not work like mine. I was puzzled by something else, something to me as strange as any supernatural manifestation: Somebody, long ago, had driven this tunnel, at the cost of great difficulty, straight down to this underground river, with absolute sureness and no hesitation. In the entrance tunnel I had seen no side shafts or exploratory excavations, as you see when miners search for metal-bearing ore. Whoever cut the tunnel knew exactly where he was going, and accomplished it in such a fashion that the doorway was precisely aligned with the sunrise on Midsummer Day.

  Everyone jumped when we heard a hoarse, croaking voice from the river.

  “Who seeks the wisdom of the Oracle?” I have heard ravens with more melodious voices.

  “A praetor of Rome,” Iola said.

  “Approach.”

  “What?” I said. “I’m already here.”

  “Praetor,” Iola said. “You must stand so that you actually touch the water.”

  “But it’s boiling!” I protested.

  “Wisdom does not come without cost,” she informed me.

  “Go ahead,” said my beloved wife. “Don’t be so timid.” I heard chuckles from behind me. My loyal entourage, no doubt.

  So, much against my better judgment, I stepped to the edge of the stream and just let the tips of my toes touch the water. To my surprise, while quite warm it was not truly boiling, despite the turbulence and foaming bubbles. Reassured, I went out ankle-deep. The bottom was perfectly smooth rock, not a trace of sand or gravel.

  “What would the praetor know?” croaked the goddess or whatever it was.

  Might as well ask something of consequence, I thought. “What will be the outcome of the current strife between Caesar and the Senate?” This was the great question on everyone’s mind, and a source of great dread.

  “Caesar is doomed,” Hecate said baldly.

  “Well, that’s plain enough,” I said. “Not like that old hag at Cumae who only babbles gibberish.”

  “Decius!” Julia hissed. She suspected me of disrespect, no doubt.

  “Well, then, will the Senate prevail, and our republican institutions remain safe?”

  “The Senate is doomed,” she said.

  “How can they both be doomed? Who will triumph ultimately, then?”

  “Caesar will be victorious, and will rule for many, many years.”

  “I take it back. She does speak gibberish. How can Caesar rule for many years, yet be doomed?”

  “Praetor,” Iola said, “you have asked three questions and have been answered. Three questions are all that are permitted.”

  “What? You never said that before we came down here.”

  “Nonetheless, it is ancient custom. Three questions and no more.”

  I felt cheated, but I am not certain why. More questions would merely have meant more such nonsense. I backed out of the water and went to rejoin my party. Hermes passed me a flask and I took a swig of good Falernian.

  “Reverend Iola,” Julia said, “might I approach the goddess?” I suppressed a groan at her piety. She never talked to me like that.

  “You may.”

  Julia stepped into the water and I dreaded what was about to happen. I knew she would ask the goddess about a cure for her infertility, right there in front of all those people. Instead, to my surprise and somewhat to my relief, she screamed loudly.

  “Julia,” I chided. “The water’s not all that hot.”

  But she was pointing at the water a few feet before her. My thinning hair stood on end as I saw something surfacing there. I dashed forward and jerked Julia back. Now some of the other women were screaming. Some of the men, too, I think.

  “What is it?” Iola gasped. Her eyes bugged out.

  “Surely nothing can live in this water!” Antonia cried, hustling forward to get a good look.

  “Actually,” I said, “it’s nothing living at all. It’s quite dead, in fact.” By now I saw that it was a white-robed corpse, floating on its stomach. “Iola, have your slaves take this unfortunate person from the water.”

  She hissed her orders and a pair of black-robed slaves waded into the water and dragged the corpse ashore. They laid it on its back and I called for torches. A couple were lowered toward the bloodless face and a great collective gasp arose.

  “Why,” I said, “if it isn’t Eugaeon, priest of Apollo!”

  “How can this be?” Iola wailed. “How did the priest enter the sacred river?”

  “I’m rather more concerned whether he did it willingly or unwillingly,” I said.

  Sextus Plotius crowded forward and stared at the corpse, his face pale. “Praetor, I
do not understand this. There is no access to this river except by way of this tunnel.”

  “Surely it must surface somewhere near the temple,” I said. “And it would have to be upstream from here.”

  He shook his head. “No, there is no flowing surface water in the vicinity. There are hot springs in abundance in Campania, but none nearer than ten miles from this spot. Even if one of them flows into this chamber, there is no way that he could have gone there, jumped in, and surfaced here in the time since we last saw him, no more than an hour ago.”

  “Maybe he sneaked down here while we were undergoing the rites above,” Hermes suggested.

  “Don’t speak foolishly!” Iola said. “The sacred black bitches of Hecate would never let a priest of Apollo approach the holy precincts. The very scent drives them wild.”

  “Be that as it may,” I said, “the man is dead and may have been murdered. As praetor, I will investigate this.”

  “Ah, noble Praetor Metellus,” Plotius said diffidently, “you are praetor peregrinus, in charge of cases involving foreigners. There seem to be none but natives here.”

  “Nonsense,” I said, gesturing toward the black-clad devotees of Hecate, “these creatures are as foreign as a pack of Britons. I will take charge.”

  “As you wish,” Plotius sighed.

  “I want this body carried above into daylight,” I ordered. “Now, everyone, back up that tunnel, and I’d better not smell any smoke that doesn’t come from a torch or lamp.”

  “But, Praetor,” Iola said, all but wringing her hands, “there are ceremonies we must perform. This holy place has been contaminated by death. There are lustrations and sacrifices . . .”

  “Do them later,” I told her. “I want none of your people to leave before I have questioned them, either.”

  She bowed in an almost Oriental fashion. “As you wish, Praetor.”

  So we made the long trudge back up the strange tunnel, but this time I had no leisure to ponder its oddity. What could this possibly portend? In spite of my matter-of-fact pose, I was almost as unsettled as the rest. First, the whole alien ritual and the descent into the uncanny tunnel, the weird river with its putative goddess, and now a man we had met so recently, dead in an unfathomable fashion. It was enough to unsettle a philosopher.

  Then I cheered up. I had been getting bored, and now there was something interesting to do.

  Clean air and sunshine quickly restored everyone’s spirits, except for Iola’s.

  The slaves laid the body of the late Eugaeon upon the ground and I took a closer look at him. “Remove his clothing,” I instructed the slaves.

  “Decius!” my wife cried, shocked. “That is terribly undignified!”

  “Oh, he shouldn’t mind being naked. He’s Greek, isn’t he? Was Greek, I should say.” She whirled and stalked off, taking the other women of the party with her. Except for Antonia, of course, who came closer to get a better look.

  With his clothes off, the man looked shrunken. He was not fat, as so many priests are. His face and body were typical for a man of about forty years, rather spare, but not underfed. The only thing strange about him was that he was completely depilated.

  “Not a hair on him,” I remarked. “Is this required of priests of Apollo?”

  “I wish more Roman men would do that,” Antonia said. “I think it’s attractive. I have all my slaves depilated.” Something else I really didn’t need to know about Antonia.

  “Has someone gone to fetch the other priests? Maybe they can tell me if they’re supposed to be hairless.” One of my assistants ran off to fetch them. I could see no mark of violence on the front of the body. “Turn him over,” I told the slaves. No mark on the back, either.

  “He must have drowned,” Hermes said.

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “There are plenty of ways to kill a man that leave no mark on the body: poison and asphyxiation come immediately to mind.”

  “Maybe he was frightened to death,” somebody suggested.

  “He doesn’t have a frightened expression on his face,” somebody else pointed out.

  “I never saw a corpse that wore any sort of expression at all,” I told them, “and many of the deceased were plenty frightened immediately prior to expiring.”

  A moment later the boy sent to fetch the priests came running back. His name was Sextus Lucretius Vespillo, the son of a friend. He was about fourteen, had recently shaved his first beard for his manhood ceremony, and was rather easily excited. “They’re all gone!” he shouted. “Not a sign of them.”

  “Well,” I said, “I suppose that tells us who killed the bugger.”

  “But we don’t know he was murdered,” Plotius cautioned.

  “Then why did they run off like Persians at the sight of a Roman?” I asked. “That looks like guilty behavior to me. I want a thorough search made for those priests. And I want all of you men mounted and out looking for those priests. Also for some way that Eugaeon got into that water. There has to be an access to the underground river somewhere nearby. It’s probably hidden, but don’t let that stop you.”

  Julia returned when she saw that the body had been decently covered. “Ah, my dear, you can be of great assistance to me in this matter.”

  “How so?” she said, suspiciously.

  “You seem to be conversant with this Hecate cult.”

  “I’ve studied the ancient religions. I wouldn’t call myself an expert on them.”

  “Still, you know more than I do. And it seems that women play a leading role in this cult. I want you to question Iola and the other priests and priestesses or acolytes or whatever they are. Women seem to be more comfortable talking to women than to male officials.”

  “For good reason,” Julia said.

  “Exactly. I, in the meantime, will set up a temporary headquarters for investigation here at the temple.”

  “Do you think the matter is all that important? You are a Roman praetor with imperium. You could assign one of your men to conduct the investigation. You have more important matters demanding your attention.”

  I looked about at our strange surroundings; the funereal glade with the beautiful temple rising above it. “I am not so sure about that. This is a very odd business and we know how upset people can get when someone of local prestige gets murdered. People are on edge right now anyway. All this tension between Caesar and Pompey and the Senate has people expecting the days of Marius and Sulla to return.”

  “That is preposterous,” she protested.

  “Nevertheless, the fear is there. I want a quick end to this business before the whole countryside is up in arms over a common murder.”

  But I was soon to find that there was nothing at all common about this particular murder.

  2

  THE TROUBLE WAS NOT LONG IN STARTing. The first evening ended without either the fleeing priests or the mysterious access to the underground river found. The temple and its compound afforded fairly comfortable lodgings for me and the members of my entourage I chose to assist me. The rest I packed off to the villa where I was staying. It was an exceedingly luxurious establishment, built by Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, and one which he had hinted he might leave to me in his will. He lay even then on his deathbed so I knew the will would be read soon.

  The next morning, people began calling upon me. I sat on the temple portico in my curule chair, which was draped with the customary leopard pelts, my lictors ranged before me with their fasces. First to arrive were a gaggle of white-robed priests of Apollo from several nearby temples. They were all Greek, of course. Apollo is a god respected by Rome, but he is not native to Italy and was imported from Greece. Thus his principal sacerdotes are Greek and his rituals are performed in the Greek fashion. Personally, I found him quite respectable, unlike some of the truly lunatic deities that had wormed their way into Italy in recent years. For some reason, despite having a perfectly good set of gods to see to their needs, Romans and other Italians were unreasonably enthusiastic about adopting new g
ods from all over the world, principally from Asia, where they breed gods like livestock. Many of these alien deities were so scabrous and their rites so scandalous that the censors expelled them from Rome with some frequency.

  “Noble Praetor,” began the leader of this delegation, one Simonides. “We have come to ask of you what has been done about the atrocious murder of our beloved colleague, Eugaeon?”

  “The investigation proceeds apace,” I assured him. “In fact, I suspect certain others of your colleagues of this murder.”

  “That is out of the question,” he said, scandalized. “No priests of Apollo would ever do violence to one of their own!”

  “Say you so? I’ve never noticed that any sort of person, given a motive, was ever backward about committing murder, priests included. You haven’t seen any of these furtive clergy, have you? My men have been searching all over for them.”

  “None of them has appeared at our temples,” Simonides said. “We fear that they have been murdered as well.”

  “Really? Maybe I should send someone down the tunnel to see if they’ve come bobbing to the surface. Who do you think would want to murder a whole temple staff?”

  “The accursed followers of Hecate, of course!” snarled another of them.

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “they are about the only people in the vicinity I do not suspect. They were with my party from the time we said good-bye to Eugaeon until the moment he surfaced. I do not see how they could be culpable.”

  “Do you know that all of them were with you, all of the time?” asked Simonides.

  “Well, no. But they are being interrogated by one of my most merciless investigators.” The description fitted Julia pretty well.

  “They will speak if you use rigorous methods,” advised Simonides. “They are no better than slaves, anyway. Use torture on them.”

  “You speak rather harshly for the priest of the god of enlightenment,” I noted.

  “They are the enemies of all mankind!” cried yet another devotee of Apollo. “They practice sorcery, necromancy, and all manner of black arts. Many of us have felt their curse.”