SPQR I: The Kings Gambit Read online

  As we left the Circus, I saw the troop of gladiators marching in formation back to the Statilian school. Accompanying them was the Greek physician, Asklepiodes. I excused myself from my party after promising to attend dinner at Hortalus’s house that evening. I crossed the plaza, which was still heavily redolent of the previous day’s fire, and stopped the Greek, who greeted me courteously.

  “Master Asklepiodes,” I said, “your skill at reading wounds has been much on my mind of late. I am investigating a murder, and something about the death-wound bothers me. Lacking your skill, I can’t decide what it is that is so singular.”

  “A murder?” said Asklepiodes, intrigued. “I have never heard before of a physician being consulted on a police matter. But then, why not?”

  “You understand,” I went on, “I can’t ask this of you officially, because today is a holiday. However, you must view the body before it is taken away for burial this evening.”

  “In that case, young master, consider my expertise to be at your service.” I led him through the dismal streets to the house of Paramedes, where I had to bribe the guard to let us in. Since I could not be on official business that day, he did not have to admit me. Petty power is a truly pernicious thing.

  Due to the chilly weather, the smell was not overpowering and the body had not bloated. The stiffening had worn off and Paramedes looked almost freshly killed, except for the blackened blood. Asklepiodes examined the corpse quickly, pulling back the edges of the wound to look inside. When he was finished, he straightened and gave me his analysis.

  “Knife wound, from right hipbone almost to the sternum. Done with a sica.”

  “Why necessarily a sica?” I asked.

  “The curvature of a sica blade keeps the point from piercing the inner organs. The wounds on this man’s organs are clean cuts, with none of the ripping characteristic of the straight-bladed pugio. Also, only a man of extraordinary strength could drag a straight blade upward through a body like that, while the curved sica blade makes such carving easy.” He though a moment. “Also, this blow was delivered by a left-handed man.”

  Of course. That was what had bothered me about the wound. Nine out of ten wounds one sees are on the left side when delivered from in front by a right-handed assailant. An armorer had once told me that helmets are always made thicker on the left side for that very reason.

  We left the importer’s house and strolled toward the Forum. We passed through a small side-market and there I bought a gift for Asklepiodes: a hair-fillet made of plaited silver wire. He thanked me profusely and begged me to call on his services at any time I thought he might aid my investigations. I would have to see whether I could get Junius to reimburse me for the fillet out of the Senate’s semiofficial bribe fund. He was sure to refuse, the officious little Gree-kling.

  I stopped at a favorite wineshop and sat at a bench sipping warmed Falernian and studying the murals of Games twenty years past while many facts sorted themselves out and many disturbing associations raised ugly questions. I knew that my wisest course would be to turn in the mere form of an investigation. Tomorrow, I should report that Par-amedes had been killed during a botched robbery, that the arson at his warehouse was a coincidence, probably ordered by a jealous competitor. (The Senate is made up primarily of landowners, always willing to attribute the basest motives to businessmen.) I could leave it at that. Marcus Ager need not come into it. The break-in at my house need not come into it.

  I make no claim to be more honest than other men. I have not always observed the very letter of the law. There may have been times when a generous gift has swayed my judgment on some trifling matter. But this was a matter of murder and arson within the city. My city. And there was a likelihood of collusion with an enemy of Rome. This went far beyond ordinary, petty corruption.

  I had certain standards to live up to. The Caecilii Me-telli have been servants of the state since Rome was no more than a village. Members of our family were Consuls at a time when few but patricians ever held that office. The first Plebeian Censor was a Caecilius Metellus. Metellans were generals in our wars with Macedon, Numidia, Carthage.

  These were evil times, the previous years having been marred by civil wars, insurrections, rebellions of provincial governors, the actions of self-seeking generals, even a massive slave rebellion. There had been proscription lists, dictatorships, the unprecedented seven Consulships of Gaius Marius. Within my own lifetime soldiers had actually fought within the city, and there had been bloodshed within the sacred precincts of the Curia.

  Yes, they were evil times, but in my long lifetime I have come to see that the times have always been evil, and the idyllic old days of nobility and virtue never really occurred, but are only the fantasies of poets and moralists. Many men involved in the politics of my younger days used this supposedly unique depravity of the times to excuse unconscionable behavior, but I could not.

  Very well, if there was little virtue to be found in public life, there was still duty. I was a Caecilius Metellus, and no member of that family had ever betrayed Rome. As long as there was even the appearance of a danger to the city, I would pursue this case to its very depths and bring the guilty parties to justice.

  I sat back feeling greatly relieved, now that the decision had been made. Even the wine tasted better. So what did I have?

  Paramedes had been murdered. Paramedes had been the owner of a warehouse which had burned down on the night of his murder. The fire had been a result of arson. He had been in partnership with one of Rome’s wealthiest men. He was rumored (ah, those evasive rumors!) to have connections with the King of Pontus. At the highest levels of the Senate there was concern, a virtual panic, about this case. Important information concerning the doings of Paramedes had been seized and sequestered in the Temple of Vesta.

  Marcus Ager, formerly known as Sinistrus, had been murdered on the same night. Paramedes had been killed with a sica. There was nothing unusual in that. The sica is the favored weapon of the common street-killers. Its curved blade makes it easy to wear concealed in a sheath beneath the armpit. It is so common among cutthroats that it is considered infamous, and soldiers will only use the straight-bladed pugio, an honorable weapon.

  The sica is also the weapon of the Thracian gladiators. Marcus Ager had been a Thracian daggerman. Paramedes had been killed by a left-handed man. Marcus Ager had fought under the name Sinistrus. And Sinistrus, of course, means left-handed.

  3

  THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER MY routine duties were taken care of, I went to examine the site of the fire. The ruins of the warehouse formerly owned by Paramedes stood on a piece of riverside property with docking facilities on the bank. These were always desirable properties, since barges coming up from Ostia could make their deliveries directly instead of having the goods off-loaded and hauled by wagon or porter to their destination. So valuable, in fact, that now, two days after the fire, the ruins were being cleared away and new construction was beginning.

  Heat from the burning oil had been such that the warehouse had burned right down to its foundations and the wharf had been destroyed. Luckily, the wind that night had blown most of the sparks out onto the river, and the blaze had been confined to the warehouse. Gangs of slaves were employed in clearing away the wreckage while surveyors took sightings with their instruments to lay out the foundations of a new building. I made a mental note to look into the question of ownership.

  A brief inquiry among the idlers lounging about to watch the work in progress elicited a few facts: Some men had been seen to rush into the warehouse in the early morning hours (there are always sleepless persons who observe such things), there had been crashing sounds from inside and shortly thereafter the structure had burst into flames. For all its fearsome aspect, arson was only slightly less common than a head cold in Rome. Vigiles could do little more than douse the odd kitchen-fire or lamp flare-up. The fabled General Crassus had built a good part of his fortune with his private fire-fighting squad. They would rush to the s
ite of a fire, fight off other fire fighters, and Crassus would make the owner an offer for the still-burning property. The unfortunate owner would naturally accept any offer and then Crassus would send in his men to put out the fire while his new property was still salvageable. It was rumored (ah, those rumors!) that other employees set the fires for him. He was always first at the site, at any rate. Scandalous, and highly profitable.

  Perhaps it was a sign of the times that such behavior did not prevent Crassus from being elected Consul for that year. As a balance, his colleague as Consul was Pompey, his rival general. Ruling on alternate days, the two neatly canceled each other’s effect, which suited everybody, and it meant that they would both be out of Rome for an extended period when their year in office was over. That was better yet.

  However, just then my business was not with such high personages. Now I had to go see someone nearly as influential, but not quite so respectable. This was a matter calling for extreme circumspection. I went to question Macro.

  Macro controlled the most powerful gang in Rome at that time. He was the terror of the whole city, and relatively immune from prosecution because of his political connections. He was a supporter of the Optimates and a particular client of Quintus Hortensius Hortalus. He was not, as one might infer, the sort of client who called upon the great man every morning. Macro’s clientage made Hortalus’s elections a foregone conclusion.

  Macro’s house was a minor fortress in the Subura surrounded by tenements owned by Macro and his cronies. It fronted on a narrow street lined with wineshops and fishmongers’ stalls. A nearby liquamen factory added the pungency of its product to the general reek of the neighborhood. The street entrance of the house was flanked by a pair of louts with the telltale bulges of sica handles showing beneath their arms.

  I had to demand the presence of Macro himself before the daggermen would let me in. After a considerable period of bickering during which my official dignity suffered mightily at their insolence, Macro finally arrived. He took one look and began to bark: “Don’t you fools know a Commissioner when you see one? Let the gentleman in!” With ill grace, the thugs admitted me.

  “I must apologize for those two,” Macro said. “You understand, it’s hard to get good boys these days. Not like in the old days.” Everybody was lamenting the decadence of the times.

  “Those two arena-cheaters had better not appear before me in court,” I remarked affably. “The Sicilian sulfur mines are shockingly understaffed, I hear.”

  “Probably a good place for them,” he said. Macro was about forty-five years old, big and bald-headed and covered with more scars than I ever saw on a man who wasn’t an old veteran of the legions or the arena. We had had dealings in the past. His connections protected him and my office protected me, so we could talk easily.

  “I trust your father is well,” he said.

  “Perfectly,” I answered. “I understand that your man Aemilius will be up before him just after the Nones.”

  We came to the peristylium, open to the blue sky, where incense burned continuously to combat the smells from outside. We reclined at a table and a slave brought wine and sweetmeats. The wine was Caecuban. Macro could afford the best.

  “I’d been meaning to look you up on that matter,” Macro said. “A good word from the right quarter might keep the boy out of the ludus.” I had been hoping to hear that. I needed a bargaining point. I said nothing. “Much as we always enjoy each other’s company,” Macro went on, “I presume this is more than a social visit.”

  “As a matter of fact, I am investigating a number of matters in which you might be able to assist me.”

  “I am always at the service of Senate and People.”

  “And very grateful we all are,” I said. “What might you know concerning a fire at the warehouse belonging to one Paramedes of Antioch?”

  Macro spread his hands and shrugged. “Just another fire, as far as I know.”

  “And the murder of Paramedes?”

  "He was murdered?”

  “And the murder of one Marcus Ager, once known as Sinistrus?”

  “Marcus who?”

  “Enough of this!” I snapped. “Nobody cuts a purse or a throat in this district without your knowledge. I’m not after you, I just want to clear up some matters that fall within my jurisdiction. If you can help me, do so. If not, then I may not be able to help you with young Aemilius.”

  Macro brooded in his winecup for a minute. “All I can tell you, Decius Caecilius, is that these are matters I would prefer not to be associated with.” This was disturbing news, indeed. For a matter to be so foul that Macro wanted nothing to do with it portended something truly awesome.

  “However,” he continued, “I shall make inquiries. Anything I can find I shall put at your disposal. If,” he amended hastily, “I can do so safely.”

  That was better than nothing. “I would like to have the information as soon as possible,” I said. “It isn’t long until the Nones.”

  “We all depend upon political favor, Decius Caecilius. I shall do for you what I can without endangering mine. I want to save Aemilius, he’s my sister’s boy, but neither for him nor for you can I commit suicide.”

  “No need to,” I assured him. “Do me this favor: Sinistrus was bought from the Ludus of Statilius Taurus by someone who identified himself as the steward of someone named H. Ager. The slave rebellion was in full swing two years ago, so if someone bought this slave under false pretenses, one of your colleagues must have had a hand in it. Find out who bought him and send me the name, as secretly as you like. I’ll try to prevail on my father to go easy on your nephew.”

  “I shall have the name by this time tomorrow,” Macro said.

  “Oh, one more thing.” I told him of the break-in at my house.

  He thought it over for a while. “I have heard nothing of this. Why anyone should want a bronze amulet I cannot imagine, unless it had some magical power. As for the thief— how did he come in? Over the roof and into the peristylium?”

  “So I suspect. There was no forcing of doors or windows.”

  “A lightweight, then, to come in over rooftiles without making noise. That would go with the eyesight, too. Few can see so well in the dark past the age of fifteen. I think your intruder was probably a young boy.”

  I massaged my scalp, wincing. “He hit hard, for a child.”

  Macro nodded. “We learn to hit very hard, very young, in this part of Rome.”

  An hour later, I was on the Campus Martius. Except for walking about the city, I had not exercised for weeks. I have never made a cult of physical activity, but dining with the likes of Sergius Paulus and Hortensius Hortalus made me feel like a fat Oriental potentate. Someone like, now that I thought of it, Mithridates of Pontus.

  At the side of the field, near the shrine of Pollentia where the running-track began, I paid an urchin a quadrans to watch my toga and sandals. Stripped to my tunic, I started to run. Before I had gone a quarter-circuit I knew how out of practice I was, and made one of my customary vows to go there every day and run for an hour until I had worn away the effects of soft living. Running is marvelously effective for ordering one’s thoughts, though, and since some god had seen fit to put Mithridates in my mind, I reviewed what I knew of him. There was always some rogue of that name troubling the eastern world, kings of Parthia or Pontus. The one giving us so much trouble that year was the King of Pontus, the sixth Pontine king of that name. He was something of a marvel, because he had been no more than eleven years old when he inherited the throne from his father (Mithridates V, naturally), had been a prize troublemaker for every minute of his reign and was still alive at sixty. Romans of his disposition seldom survived for a decade.

  While still of tender years he had clapped his mother in prison for trying to seize power, then eliminated his brother (another Mithridates, too inconsequential to rate a number). Over the next half-century he had repeatedly invaded, often successfully, the small but rich kingdoms that make up that
part of the world. This brought him into conflict with Rome, since we had possessions in his path, and alliances with some of his rival kings. He tried to expel all Romans from Asia, but was defeated by Sulla and Fimbria. Some years later our General Licinius Murena took it into his head to invade Pontus and was soundly drubbed for his pains. There was a spell of peace, then the Consul Aurelius Cotta tried his luck and was beaten. Most recently, Lucius Licinius Lucullus was having a go at Mithridates, and enjoying some success. If Mithridates had a philosophy, it seemed to be that any enemy he could not defeat in battle he would outlive.

  He was said to be a huge man, a champion with all weapons, the fastest foot-racer in the world, a superb horseman, a poet and more. It was said that he could speak twenty-two languages and that he could outeat, outdrink and outfornicate any ordinary human being. But then, it is always the Roman tendency to ascribe heroic qualities to someone who has repeatedly bested us. We did the same, briefly, for Hannibal, Jugurtha and even Spartacus. It would be too humiliating to admit that our most successful foe was probably some disgusting little Asiatic hunchback with a squint and a hanging lower lip.

  Puffing and sweating, I went to the javelin range and took a weapon from the rack. Casting the javelin was the only martial exercise in which I excelled, and it behooved me to be good at something, since service with the legions was a requirement for anyone running for office.

  Standing at the stone marker, I cast at the nearest target. The javelin spun properly, arched upward prettily and plunged downward, skewering the target dead center. I worked my way out to more distant targets, trotting out onto the field from time to time to gather up my javelins. After one such trip, I glanced up to admire the full splendor of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline, looming above the ominous crag of the Tarpeian Rock. It was then that I noticed someone was watching me.

  Below the temple, below the rock, below the tumbling vista of tenements and palaces, right at the edge of the field, stood a veiled lady, attended by a serving-girl. The day was cloudy, but the lady wore a wide hat of plaited straw. She was being careful of her complexion or her identity or both. Since she stood near the javelin-rack, I would have to approach her, a not-unpleasant prospect except for my disheveled and sweaty condition.