SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead Read online

  “On a less happy note,” Marcus went on, “Caesar and the Senate seem to be on a collision course.”

  “Well,” I said resignedly, “it’s been coming.” Caesar wanted to retain his extraordinary command in Gaul and Illyria. He also wanted to stand for consul in the elections for the coming year. The problem was, the Senate demanded that he return to Rome to stand for office in the traditional manner, but a Roman propraetor or proconsul lost his imperium the moment he stepped across the pomerium. The Senate already had Caesar’s successor picked out.

  “The Senate has decreed that Caesar, if he wants to keep his proconsulship, is to stay north of the Rubicon.” This river was the border between Italy and Caesar’s province.

  “He won’t,” I said. “He’ll cross, and he’ll bring all his legions with him. I know him and I know his soldiers. After what he’s accomplished the last ten years, all the victory and loot he’s brought them, those men will lay siege to Rome if he asks them. And he will.”

  “Rubbish!” Julia said heatedly. “Caesar will never oppose the Senate with armed force. He has too great a respect for Roman traditions. There are senators who foolishly wish to dishonor him, but he respects that august body like any good Roman. What has Lepidus to say?” Lucius Aemilius Lepidus Paullus, one of that year’s consuls, tried to support Caesar, who had, among other favors, given him the money to restore the ancestral Basilica Aemilia. Unfortunately his colleague, Claudius Marcellus, was Caesar’s deadly enemy and a much more forceful man. Julia’s affection for her uncle led her into the dangerous paths of wishful thinking.

  “Lepidus tries, as always, to support Caesar. But that is getting to be a minority position in the Senate. The Assemblies, as always, favor Caesar.”

  “Cicero,” Marcus went on, trying to lighten the mood, “has already run from Cilicia. He made huge efforts to prevent having his proconsulship prorogued. He’s already petitioned the Senate for a triumph.”

  “A triumph?” I said. “For that trifling victory?” Cicero, that most reluctant of soldiers, had gone to govern Cilicia and had eventually scored a win over what amounted to a pack of bandits.

  “His troops hailed him as imperator.” Marcus said.

  “The standards of Roman legionaries have fallen if that lot declared Cicero imperator.” Ordinarily I did not speak disparagingly of Cicero, whom I admired above most Romans and counted as a friend. Although in his later career he became foolishly grandiose and self-important. The very thought of the spindly, unmilitary Cicero riding in triumph through Rome for so trifling a victory was deeply embarrassing.

  “Curio continues to be controversial,” Marcus went on. “He’s gone over to Caesar wholeheartedly now, after months of vacillating.” Scribonius Curio was the most remarkable Tribune of the People in a long time. His rise to power had been phenomenal, and he was uncommonly effective, proposing and ramming through the Assemblies a program of legislation unprecedented in its scope and volume. Rumor had it that Caesar had suborned him with a bribe of unprecedented extravagance and now it appeared that the bribe had been successful. If so, Curio was a man of character, for in the years to come he hewed faithfully to Caesar, right until his death in Africa. I had always liked him, even when we ran afoul of one another.

  “Oh, enough of this dreary political blather!” Antonia cried. “Let’s have the real gossip! What’s Fulvia been up to?” This Fulvia was one of those scandalous women who livened Roman discourse of the day. She had been briefly involved with some ill-fated political rogues and had been a center of attention ever since.

  “Well,” Marcus began, “she has been linked with the aedile Caelius Rufus, who has been prosecuting those who illegally divert water from the aqueducts. And, since her own family are notorious for just that crime—” and so on. I was eager for the political news, but petty gossip about who was sleeping with whom, who was bribing whom for financial gain, who had murdered whom for banal motives, left me utterly unconcerned.

  Still, I was grateful for the way Marcus had turned the conversation to lighter subjects. It was well that we ended the evening on a cheerful note, because the next morning brought us yet another murder at the temple.

  4

  WHAT?” I SHOUTED. “WHO’S LEFT TO kill? The whole staff of priests are gamboling happily amid the Elysian Fields already!”

  “Calm down, dear,” Julia admonished. “With all you ate and drank last night you’re liable to bring on a seizure.”

  It was early morning, never the best hour for me. Hermes had come in to wake me more than an hour before my accustomed time. It was still dark enough to need lamps. I threw on a toga, ignoring Julia’s demands to wait for her. I knew she would take far too long to get dressed and made up. Preceded by torchbearers, we made our way up to the temple. In what had become the market area, I could see the embers of some campfires still burning, though most of the visitors were fast asleep. A steward met us at the entrance to the temple grounds. He looked distressed, and understandably so. Temples of Apollo were supposed to be serene places and this one was anything but.

  He led us to the stable area, where horses and asses shifted quietly in the cool morning. There on the straw lay the body, and the torchbearers lowered their flames so that we could see, but it was scarcely necessary in the growing dawn light.

  It was the slave girl, Hypatia. I closed my eyes for a moment. Such a beautiful child.

  “Well,” Hermes said, “at least this time there’s no mystery about how she died.”

  Indeed, she had been stabbed just beneath the sternum. It was an expert’s blow, sure to kill quickly with one thrust slanting upward into the heart. Hermes parted her gown to view the wound.

  “It was done with a broad-bladed dagger or a short sword, maybe a soldier’s pugio.”

  “I wish Asklepiodes were here,” I said, not for the first time.

  “He probably couldn’t tell you much. This looks pretty straightforward.”

  I spoke to the steward. “When was she found?”

  “Less than an hour ago, Praetor. The boy who cares for the animals is always here before first light. I am afraid he tripped over her. He came running to me and I sent word to you at once.”

  “Commendable. Besides the boy, how many people have been trampling around here since she was found?”

  “Just ourselves, sir.”

  “Hermes, go get my lictors and have them guard this area. We’ll make a thorough search at full light.”

  He was back in a few minutes, and Julia arrived as well, looking grim when she saw the body. “That poor girl,” she said. “She was afraid to speak out and she had reason to be, it seems.”

  “I blame myself for this,” I told her. “I should have taken her into custody. I said right in front of everybody that I might be questioning her further. Clearly somebody did not want her to talk.”

  “Do you think she saw more than she told you?”

  “Probably not, but sometimes it is best not to take chances. Whoever is behind this decided to eliminate a possible problem. They didn’t see fit to employ arcane murder methods this time.”

  “Why at the stables?” Julia mused. “What was she doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  “I’ve been pondering that myself. Perhaps she was frightened enough to try to escape and she came down here to steal a mount. But it can be no coincidence that the murderer was here waiting for her.”

  “She must have been summoned here by someone she thought she had reason to trust.”

  “If so, she was mistaken in that belief. In fact, it causes me to wonder about her depth of involvement in this matter.”

  “You think she might have been an accomplice?” Julia said.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time someone suborned a slave to spy on a master. Nor would it be the first time an accomplice was eliminated in just this fashion.”

  With full light we went over the scene. As is common with stables, the ground in front, where the body lay, was a mash of tram
pled mud and straw. Footprints, both human and animal, were so plentiful that they told us nothing. I examined the ground closely for any foreign matter, but there was nothing. Just the beautiful girl, whose eyes stared up at nothing, expressing nothing, not even the reproach I deserved.

  “Well, my dear,” I said, “I don’t think we’re going to learn anything here.”

  “Don’t be so sure, my love,” Julia said. To my horror, she further opened the unfortunate girl’s gown and felt her breasts, then her belly. Apparently satisfied, she straightened. “This girl is—was, I should say, pregnant. About three months along.”

  Her words did not shock me at all, but her actions did. Romans do not at all mind turning live bodies into dead ones. We do it all the time. However, we have a ritual revulsion for touching dead bodies before the proper rites have been performed. Death contaminates, and the purificatory lustrum must be performed before the body can be handled. And here was Julia, the very personification of patrician rectitude, touching the body of a murdered slave.

  Mind you, I did not doubt for a second that her judgment was correct. Few women knew more about pregnancy than Julia, since the subject was her passion. She suffered from the Julians’ famous infertility and she had been to every midwife, medium, and quack physician in Rome to find a cure. Still, as many years as we tried, she had achieved pregnancy rarely, carried a child to term only twice, and these infants had not survived their first four months. I accepted this as the gods’ will where it came to the Julians, as opposed to my own family, whose fertility was little less than pestilential. In our circles, where you cannot produce heirs, you adopt. But Julia resisted this expedient, still hoping to produce an heir of good Julian-Caecilian stock.

  “What of it?” I asked, when I got over my shock. “Girl slaves get pregnant all the time, and a beauty like this one must have had more opportunity than most. Julia, you’ve contaminated yourself! We’ll have to summon a priest and perform a lustrum.”

  “Don’t be an idiot!” she snapped. “Touching the dead can’t contaminate anyone. The gods aren’t that petty.”

  I was astonished. This was the first time I had ever heard Julia speak against ritual law. Of course, I never truly credited all that primitive mumbo-jumbo myself, but I had never seen any point in taking chances. Moreover, I had always thought that old, patrician families like the Julians were even more tradition-bound than mine. But Julia had become something of a freethinker. She had been consulting with Alexandrian philosophers.

  “All right, I grant your point. What difference does it make that this poor child was pregnant?”

  “We can’t know, but it’s something we didn’t know before. As you’ve so often intoned to me in such portentous tones, my love, ‘every fact, however innocuous it may seem at the moment, may have a crucial bearing upon the case.’ ”

  “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I? I think it was that lecture I delivered in the Basilica Julia just after that business with the flood and Scaurus’s death.”

  “Maybe you just practiced on me,” she said, with that tired patience she sometimes showed when she judged me an especial idiot. “But we have here a temple whose staff are expected to be renowned for chastity. This girl’s condition coincides with the mass murder of its priesthood. Might there not be some connection?”

  “Well, I suppose so,” I said, still having trouble dealing with the fact that Julia had just handled a corpse with her bare hands. “But what might that connection be?”

  “That’s your field, dear,” she said, turning away. “As for me, I will concentrate upon the staff of the Oracle, and the women of the district.” She left a warning unspoken: I had better be circumspect about the women of the district. I had learned to heed Julia’s warnings in such matters.

  So I summoned young Sextus Vespillo. He appeared with commendable dispatch, and turned pale when he saw the girl’s corpse. He was old enough not to be dismayed by the occasional corpse, but he clearly had been fond of the girl. I gave him a moment to regain his composure.

  “I heard there had been another killing,” he said, when his color returned. “I didn’t know who it was.”

  “It’s time you told me how you encountered this girl and how she came to reveal the hidden tunnel to you.” We walked from the stables and turned our steps toward the temple. I had no urgent business there but it was more pleasant than the crime scene.

  “We’d been combing the district for the priests and using the temple as our base of operations, as you instructed. Hermes often left me behind here because he says I’m a wretched horseman and would just slow the rest down. Actually, I’m quite good at—”

  I raised a hand to silence him. “That is of no account. Let it suffice that you remained behind here at the temple instead of riding off with the rest. What then?” We had come to the space before the temple where I had set up my headquarters.

  “I, ah, that is, I was—sitting over there—” he gestured idly toward the low dais, hoping that I would not grasp the implication. Not much chance of that.

  “Were you sitting in my curule chair?” I shouted, drawing many curious stares from the idlers all about. I have not mentioned that the impromptu market had by now swollen to the size of a modest town, so we were well supplied with such persons.

  “Forgive me, Praetor, but it seemed harmless enough, with you and your lictors absent—”

  “And just the thing to impress pretty serving girls with your importance as the close associate of a Roman magistrate, eh? I will remind you that that chair is a part of the regalia of imperium, and no one who has not had imperium bestowed by the Senate is permitted to use it.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, gaze downcast. “I am sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

  “If it does, I’ll have you before me on charges of sacrilege or maiestas or some other charge that carries gruesome penalties, which I will proceed to inflict.”

  “But you only try cases that involve foreigners!” he protested.

  “A petty legal quibble. I can have you executed and when I step down from office your relatives can try to prosecute me. They won’t be successful because my family is more important than yours. It won’t do you any good anyway, because you’ll be dead.”

  “But—”

  “All right, so there you were, lounging feloniously in my curule chair. What happened next? Did you order wine from my private stock?”

  “Nothing of the sort. A few people approached me, mostly with questions about your investigation—”

  “What sort of questions?” I kept interrupting him because it is an excellent trial lawyer’s tactic. It keeps people off-balance and in such a state they frequently say things they would not if given time to think and frame their statements.

  “What you would expect. Had you made any progress, were the missing priests found, and so forth. Some wanted to accuse their neighbors or enemies.”

  “Were any of those credible?”

  He shook his head. “Clearly deranged or just petty troublemakers.”

  “Did anyone have political questions, questions not concerning the case?” This concerned me because, with the countryside so full of Pompey’s adherents, some of them surely would be sounding me out. My family had not yet picked a side in the upcoming showdown between Pompey and Caesar. I was of two minds myself. No, I was of three or four minds, and none of them had a satisfactory answer for me.

  “That lady from Stabiae, Sabinilla, she came by. Asked the usual questions and then wanted to know if you were in the confidence of your wife’s uncle, Caesar. She acted as if that made you fascinating.”

  “It would, to some people. Anyone else?”

  “A man called Drusianus badgered me, acting rather drunk. He hinted that he’s the spokesman for Pompey’s veterans in the area. He said you’d better settle this matter quickly or there will be trouble.”

  “He said that, eh? I had the impression that Pompey’s men aren’t very numerous in the region, but there may be more
than I thought.”

  “Or he may be some local bully trying to pretend he’s a power in the district.”

  “Most likely,” I concurred. Still, the prospect of trouble from that quarter made me uneasy. “Now, at what point did you go after the girl?’

  “I didn’t go after her!” he said indignantly.

  “Yes, far beneath your dignity, I’m sure. How, then, did the two of you happen to occupy the same space at the same time?”

  “It was just past noon. The girl came from the temple and asked if I would like some refreshment—”

  “Refreshment,” I said tonelessly.

  “Well, I thought she meant some lunch or wine, something like that. I followed her into the temple.”

  “A temple being, of course, the sort of place where an impromptu luncheon is always likely to be laid out.”

  “All right, I wasn’t really all that eager to ask questions.”

  “That’s more like it. So you followed that shapely backside into the interior of a dark and deserted temple. A very promising prospect, I admit. After all, the word ‘refreshment’ is subject to generous interpretation. What next, if I may make so indelicate an inquiry?”

  “Nothing that’s very indelicate to tell about, I’m afraid.” He looked downcast like any other unsuccessful would-be swain. “She got—ah—very friendly and pulled me behind a pillar and while I was preparing to—”

  “Do something indelicate?” I prodded.

  “Very indelicate,” he said, perking up at the thought of his intention. “But then she pulled back and stared at the statue of the god, as if she feared his disapproval.”

  “I don’t see why,” I said. “Old Apollo was as randy as the rest of the male gods, always chasing mortal women and getting them turned into plants, like Daphne.”

  “My very thought. In fact, I was making exactly that objection, only using the example of Castalia, the girl of Delphi, who got turned into a fountain.”