SPQR VIII: The River God's Vengeance Read online

  She sat beside me and stroked my brow while ancient Cassandra, who guarded her triclinium serving duties like a dragon, laid out bread, oil, smoked fish, and sliced fruit. Hermes brought in wine with the water added according to my standing instructions—by holding it out a window during a heavy fog.

  “Eat before you drink any of that,” Julia instructed. “Are you going to prosecute?”

  “If at all possible. Metellus Scipio wants to give it to his son.” I wiped a hand across my face. “How much good will it do anyway? One wretched contractor more or less will mean nothing in the long run.”

  “Then,” she said seriously, “perhaps it’s time for you to stand for the tribuneship. As tribune of the people you can introduce legislation to drive all the criminal contractors from the City, demolish all the substandard insulae as a menace to the public good, and institute strict enforcement of the building codes. It would do us all a world of good and set a high tone for your political career.”

  I thought about it. “It’s a good idea. The family has wanted me to stand for tribune for years.”

  “Then it’s time to lay the groundwork,” Julia said, decisive as only a Julian could be. “There is plenty of time between now and the elections. Take a tribuneship for next year, while people still remember this disaster.”

  Then I remembered, and a pall fell over my brief enthusiasm. “Pompey may be dictator next year. A tribune means nothing during a dictatorship.”

  “Surely not!” Julia protested. “Caesar will come back from Gaul and Crassus from Asia before they’ll allow Pompey to be dictator!” Like everyone else, she had begun referring to Caesar by the family name as if he alone bore it. This was an archaic, monarchical practice regarded by many of us with deep suspicion.

  “Something must be done,” I said. “As much as I hate to say it, the chaotic state of the City calls for the most stringent measures. Another year of the usual partisan bickering and we will be ruined. Scipio says we are working for some sort of compromise, but I can’t imagine what it might be. Oh, by the way, it looks as if Scipio’s daughter is to wed Pompey.” I tried to add something, but she stuck a piece of fish in my mouth to keep me quiet while she thought. Political calculation was as natural to her as to me. In fact, she was far more swift and acute than I.

  “I see,” she said at last. “Well, since my cousin died, he has been in need of a wife. It is natural that he would want to forge an alliance with the Metelli.” She spoke of Caesar’s daughter, the other Julia, who had married Pompey and died giving birth to his child.

  “And he truly loved his Julia,” I said. “His grief at her death was not false. His marriage to Caecilia may help to strengthen all our bonds. Pompey just gave Caesar another of his legions for the war in Gaul,” which, I did not add, was a far more sincere pledge of friendship than any number of political marriages.

  “And if it should come to a break between Caesar and Pompey?”

  I placed a hand atop hers. “When Sulla ordered Caesar to divorce his wife, Caesar fied to Spain rather than give her up. I will do no less should it come to that.” She smiled and seemed to be reassured, but I knew what she was thinking: Caesar had been ordered to divorce his wife by a political enemy, not his own family.

  I WAS AT THE SITE OF THE RUINED insula at first light the next morning. Nothing remained but the empty basement, the slave gang having labored through the night to haul away the wreckage. Three men remained, digging through the gravel foundation to ascertain its depth.

  “Three feet of gravel, then river mud!” shouted one of them when the last bucket of rock was handed up.

  “Below code,” I said, “but once again not outrageously so. This may complicate the prosecution, when we have someone to prosecute. If you are going to be a greedy villain, why not go ahead and be egregious about it? Why these half measures?”

  “Maybe they’re like slaves and soldiers,” Hermes suggested. “They know how to push authority just so far without being severely punished.”

  “You may have a point.” I always let Hermes speak to me freely when I was not discussing matters with my peers. In public, certain proprieties had to be observed. As it happened, we were alone in that place. “Let’s go to the Island and see if that slave porter can talk.”

  The walk was not a long one. We crossed the fine, still new Fabrician Bridge to the Island and its complex of buildings that combine temple and hospital. The temple itself re joiced in a new facade, provided by some ambitious politician to celebrate his own glory. I didn’t even glance up to see whose name now decorated the pediment. We were barely off the bridge when we heard the groaning.

  “Sounds like a battlefield after a fight,” Hermes said.

  “It means there are more survivors than I’d expected. Maybe some of them can give us some answers.”

  We climbed the steps, newly resurfaced with gleaming white marble, and passed between a pair of splendid braziers of shining bronze wrought in the shape of the god’s serpent-wound staff, topped with a bronze basket in which fire would burn on special occasions. These were also new.

  We found the big fellow in a recovery room attended by a temple slave. The priests had taken my instructions for special treatment to heart, it seemed.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t come around since I’ve been attending him,” the slave said. “He mumbles a little, but mostly he’s like this, completely unconscious.” The attendant was a young man wearing the livery of the temple, a white tunic embroidered on front and back with the caduceus. He rose. “I will fetch the attending priest.”

  The comatose slave was as big as any Gaul or German; but washed free of dust and plaster, he proved to have the common features and coloration of southern Italy. He was olive skinned and black bearded, and I thought I detected something of Bruttium in the cast of his features. His eyes were open but unfocussed, and he mumbled continuously, although I could make out no words.

  “I don’t think this one is going to be with us much longer,” Hermes opined. “Should I go get Asklepiodes?”

  “I doubt he could do much. In any case, his specialty is wounds caused by weapons.”

  Moments later the priest arrived. He was one I knew from previous visits to the temple, a slave named Harmodias. By ancient tradition, one-third of the priests of this temple are freeborn, one-third freedmen, and one-third slaves. The freedmen and slaves are the best consultants on injuries and treatable diseases. The freeborn priests confine themselves mainly to interpreting the dreams of ailing people brought in to sleep in the nave before the statue of Aesculapius.

  “Will he be able to speak?” I asked him.

  “He has suffered severe injuries to the skull and spine, Aedile. I’ve seen a good many cases like this, and I’ve never seen a complete recovery. Even partial recovery is rare.”

  “I just want him to recover enough to talk,” I said.

  “He may babble incoherently for a while, although periods of lucidity are not out of the question.”

  “I can’t wait around for that. Have you a secretary who can take down any coherent statements he might make?”

  “I could do it myself, but what sort of statement might be of interest?”

  “This one seems to have been awake when the disaster occurred. He was dressed at any rate, and it looks as if he was on his feet when the fioor collapsed under him. Anything he can say about the events of last night could be of help. Also, we are having difficulty learning anything about the equestrian family to whom he belonged. The name Lucius Folius is all I’ve been able to find out. I want to know anything he can tell me, even if it’s just scurrilous slave gossip. I’d prefer, of course, to hear it personally. If he seems to come around, send a messenger to fetch me.”

  “I shall do it without fail,” he promised. “Of course, this will detain me from other duties—” I snapped my fingers and Hermes passed me my money pouch. I gave Harmodias a couple of silver denarii, and he tucked them away, bowing. “
I shall send for you the moment he begins to talk coherently, recording diligently anything he might say before you get here. If he dies, you shall likewise be notified.”

  “Good. Tell him he’ll have a decent funeral. That may put him in a cooperative frame of mind.” Slaves usually were thrown into the Puticuli if nobody claimed them for burial.

  I tried to question some of the other survivors, but, as I feared, they had nothing to tell me. All had been sound asleep at the time of the disaster. They had awakened to noise, pain, terror, and confusion. Many remembered nothing at all of that night, the shock having disordered their minds.

  We left the temple and made our way back across the bridge, thence south along the river to the Temple of Ceres, where I had a cramped cubicle laughably termed an office. For centuries the temple had been the headquarters of the aediles, but in the early days the duties of that office had been far less comprehensive. Office space was as inadequate as everything else attached to the title.

  Ceres is an imported Greek goddess, and therefore her worship is in the Greek fashion, overseen by patrician women, unlike the native Roman deities whose priests are all male. The high priestess at that time was a formidable Cornelia, a close kinswoman of the Dictator Sulla and as high-handed as most members of that family. She was waiting for me when I arrived.

  “Aedile!” She stalked down the steps of the lovely tem ple and I could almost see thunderclouds gathering around her head. “Explain this outrage!” She pointed to the great heap of timber piled helter-skelter upon the pavement of the courtyard.

  “And good morning to you, revered Cornelia,” I said. “Allow me to note that you are especially lovely today.”

  “Don’t try to distract me. The aediles have their offices in the basement of the temple, not in the courtyard! Remove this trash at once!”

  “Lovely, gracious Cornelia, this is evidence in an investigation into gross negligence in the building trades. If Rome had such a thing as a municipal wood yard, I would certainly send this evidence there. Alas, there is none. Someone must be prosecuted for using unfit timber for these— these—I think they are called ‘joists.’ And to do this, I must have the evidence, and this is the only place I have to store it. I promise it will only be for a few more days.” I gave her a conciliatory smile, to which she replied with a most unconciliatory glare. Cornelians were notoriously averse to being crossed in any way.

  “In ten days,” she said, “we begin rehearsing for the Cerialia. If the wood is not gone by that time, it will make you an excellent funeral pyre.”

  “You are too kind, splendid Cornelia,” I assured her.

  “Too kind by half. I want every termite-chewed splinter of that heap off the courtyard and the fiagstones swept before we begin rehearsal or I will speak to the wife of the Pontifex Maximus and have you impeached before the Senate the minute you step down from office, do you understand?”

  “Perfectly, glorious and pulchritudinous—” but she had already whirled about and stalked back up the steps, surrounded by a cloud of twittery eunuchs. Impeach me, would she? By law, the eunuchs were one part of the Ceres cult forbidden in Rome, and part of my job was to purge the City of degenerate, foreign religious practices. We’d just see about that. The Cerialia, the great annual festival of Ceres, would be just the occasion to confront her with it, too.

  “Termite-chewed?” Hermes said. “I didn’t see any termite damage in the basement.”

  “We never got a good look at the timber. Perhaps she spoke metaphorically. Go get some of the office slaves and go over every piece of wood in the pile. Mark the ones that look especially unfit. I have other duties to attend to for a while.”

  He went off in search of some help as I walked toward the little terrace where the plebeian aediles conducted business in good weather. Other duties indeed. The insula disaster had cost me a full day I could ill afford to spare in the busiest of all Roman magistracies. Even as I drew near the terrace, I saw the mob of citizens, each of them with a demand that fell beneath the purview of my office.

  Besides supervising compliance with the building codes, the aediles were in charge of the streets, drains, and sewers; upkeep of the City streets and public buildings; putting on the public Games; and the aforementioned oversight of foreign cults. Since the State funds allowed for these activities hadn’t changed since the days of Tarquin the Proud, the aediles had to pay for much of this work out of their own purses. No wonder so many men spent the rest of their careers using the higher offices to enrich themselves after the expenses they had incurred as aediles.

  “Aedile!” chorused a small crowd of men, detaching themselves from the larger crowd of petitioners. These were my clients, who on most days called on me at my home at first light. They now had standing instructions to meet me at the temple except on days when official business was forbidden. This was the year when my clients earned their keep. Ordinarily I sent them home with gifts and thanks except when I needed a cheering section in the Forum, but not this year. This year I needed assistants, and the State wasn’t going to give me any.

  Burrus strode importantly forward. He was my senior client, a retired soldier from my old legion in Spain. “Aedile, the supervisor of drains and sewers wants your attention, and he says this won’t wait.”

  “They all say that.” I sighed, knowing full well what the complaint would be. “Let’s hear him.”

  The man came forward, a freedman named Acilius, followed by a small group of freedmen who likewise served the City. All wore the harried look of such functionaries. It is a thing practiced even by those with no work to do at all. Perhaps those wear the most harried looks.

  “Aedile,” Acilius began, “the drains must be cleaned, and you can delay no longer. For the last five years, the aediles have ignored them, and now all of them are utterly choked with mud and trash and unmentionable filth. It is a disgrace!”

  “Well, they’ve gone for five years, why not another?” I did not want to face this problem. The voters remembered your aedileship for the splendor of the Games you put on, not for doing the necessary but disagreeable tasks that kept the City a functioning entity.

  “Because,” he said, with malevolent satisfaction, “the river is rising, and the rivermen predict a fiood before the next full moon.”

  “Sir,” Burrus said, “those men know the river better than you know politics.”

  “You don’t need to remind me,” I told him, “but I don’t see how they can be so sure. The rains haven’t been heavy of late.”

  “There was unusually heavy snow in the mountains,” Acilius said gloatingly. “It’s melting.”

  “Bring me an assessment of the labor and funds necessary to clean and repair the drains,” I said. “I will consult with the other aediles, and we will get the job done.” I said this with more hope than confidence. My colleagues were more interested in putting on their career-boosting Games than in doing anything constructive for the City.

  The sad fact was that the important office of aedile had become little more than a stepping-stone to higher office, and most ambitious men undertook it solely for that purpose. When one of them bothered to undertake the construction or restoration of a public building, it was usually a temple located in a prominent place, and then only because it entitled him to put his name on its pediment in letters two feet high.

  Very few of us had the wealth to build a truly useful structure such as a bridge, basilica, or highway. Centuries before, an Appius Claudius had built the great Rome-Capua highway, the Appian Way, and his name will live forever. Quintus Fabricius built the bridge I had crossed twice that morning; and while it might not last as long as the Appian Way, it will ensure his memory for generations to come.

  But it was the Games that had come more and more to dominate the office, and my own upcoming munera distracted me from my other duties as would an invading army bearing down upon the City. Quite aside from the plays, banquets, and chariot races of the regular ludi, which are costly enough, the ex
otic beasts and gladiators of the munera are staggeringly expensive.

  I shook off the daunting prospect and turned to the crowd of petitioners, each of whom had a complaint that demanded the attention of a plebeian aedile. One would complain of the shocking state of the street in front of his place of business, another of the disorderliness of the whorehouse next door. Malicious citizens accused neighbors of infractions that would prove nonexistent, but an aedile could turn no citizen away, just as a tribune of the people was forbidden even to close the doors of his house during his year in office. I had to deal with them all.

  While I endured this daily tedium and assigned each case to one of my clients for investigation and report, I allowed myself to envy the curule aedile. He got to wear a purple border on his toga, and all he had to do was sit around all day in his folding chair and supervise the markets, levying fines for infractions. The office that year had been held by Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a man who had never amounted to much but who became famous anyway years later because he had a lot of soldiers behind him just when two more capable men needed them. They made him a triumvir.

  I disposed of the last of the petitioners just before midday and went to see what Hermes had been able to discover. I found him going over the timbers, now laid out parallel to one another. He squatted by one, poking at it with his knife.

  “Well?” I asked, walking up to him.

  “Termites, all right.” He held up a handful of dusty wood pulp. His knife had pried up a slab of wood, revealing a honeycomb of tunnels beneath.

  My mind pondered the legal ramifications of these malicious little insects. “Unfit wood, no doubt about it. The builder, when we find him, will, of course, claim that the infestation occurred after he built the insula. I am not intimately familiar with the nature of these loathsome little creatures and therefore will have to consult with one of the natural philosophers to find out if there was adequate time between the construction of the insula and its collapse for such an infestation to occur. Hermes, I want you to find out who might know about—”