SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead Page 8

  “Yes, and some yielded to his advances,” I said. “Back in the days when a mortal woman had a chance to bed a truly exalted lover, he sowed the world with little bastard demigods. So, how did the girl respond to this eloquent line of reasoning?”

  “She said that it was not my ardency that upset her, but the memory of the last time she had stood upon that spot, when she had witnessed something that disturbed her.”

  “And that was the incident of which she informed us.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, at least you have hope for the effectiveness of your masculine charms. Take me to the spot where you stood during your abortive tryst.”

  He indicated the pillar and we stepped behind it. “It was just about this time of day, wasn’t it?” He concurred that it was.

  The interior of the temple was dim, as is always the case with temples, which have doorways but no windows. I could just barely make out the statue of the god. The pedestal below his feet was even more obscure. What, I thought, must it have looked like at night, when the only illumination was the flickering light of the torches?

  “She claimed that she went no closer than this spot, did she not?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Yet somehow she saw clearly the bit of carving, among such a profusion of floral stonework, that is the concealed latch to the trapdoor.”

  “This is the sort of thing you’re so famous for, isn’t it?” Vespillo said. “Examining scenes and circumstances and picking away at the—the inconsistencies?”

  “It’s a simple and logical process,” I said. “People lie and sometimes they trip themselves up. Unfortunately, I am not now able to interrogate the girl about this improbability. I suspect that this is the reason for her murder.”

  We left the temple and I saw a woman on the dais, her ample bottom perched on the arm of my curule chair, which seemed to have become a public convenience on these days when court was not in session. Catching sight of us, she smiled and waved. It was Porcia, the wealthy freedman’s daughter.

  “Praetor!” she yelled, turning heads for acres around. “And if it isn’t the handsome young Vespillo! Do you have any plans for lunch?”

  I drew closer so I wouldn’t have to shout. “As a matter of fact, we are entirely at loose ends.”

  “Then you must come to my house and have a bite. It’s quite nearby.”

  “Vespillo here yielded to just such an invitation, and bad things can come of it.”

  “If I hadn’t, you’d still be looking for those dead priests,” he objected.

  “You are right, so we must accept this invitation. Lead on.”

  She led us to a huge litter that stood near a fountain, the bearers squatting by the poles, taking advantage of the cool spray. We climbed in and were hoisted. The bearers set off through the motley, alternately festive and sullen crowd.

  Her house lay only a mile from the temple complex, a great, sprawling villa surrounded by orchards and lovingly sculpted formal gardens. We were carried up the steps of the main house and through its extra high and wide doorway and set down in a huge atrium graced with a number of family portrait busts. They all had the look of Italian peasants and no attempt had been made to ape aristocratic practices like a formal chest full of spurious ancestral death masks. I had known social climbers to haunt estate auctions and snap up a whole family tree of spurious ancestors to dignify the atrium.

  “Welcome to the Villa of the Mundus. It’s what my father named the place.”

  “You have a mundus here?” I said. “Is there anyplace in Campania that isn’t in direct contact with the underworld?”

  She laughed raucously. “It’s just a hole in the ground! An old peasant who used to own a piece of this land claimed that people could get in touch with their dead by leaving offerings in his mundus. As you’ve figured out by now, people in this area will believe just about anything. He salted away a lot of denarii before he croaked. He usually charged a denarius per offering, but he was a shrewd judge of what people could afford and he had a sliding scale. He’d accept a copper as if he thought that was all he could get out of you.”

  “A man of enterprise,” I said. “An example of the drive and initiative that have made Italy great among the nations of the world. He should be an inspiration to us all.”

  Again, the great, hooting laugh. “Praetor, you are priceless! Come, you must be famished. I’ve had something laid out by the pool.”

  “Nothing too lavish, I hope,” I said, hoping just the opposite. “After all, you might not have found me in time for lunch.”

  “Oh, I always have a bit laid out just in case I bring someone home from town. I usually do.” We entered a wide, colonnaded courtyard with a central pool.

  “I can see why you have many takers,” I said, eyeing the long tables stacked with every imaginable delicacy and endless pitchers of wine. Half-naked Egyptian girls wafted huge ostrich-feather fans to keep the flies away. We took couches, and Asian slaves not only took our sandals but washed our feet in the Eastern fashion, finishing by rubbing them with aromatic oils.

  We were handed tall beakers of solid gold filled with a wonderful vintage I recognized as Coan. Vespillo, no veteran, sipped his and made a face. I tried mine and raised my eyebrows, glancing at Porcia.

  She grinned. “I noticed at Duronius’s dinner that you don’t favor too much water in your wine. My own idea of the proper proportion is no water at all.”

  “I can see that we are going to get along famously,” I commended, downing half of it in a gulp.

  Since this was an informal lunch, not a dinner or formal banquet, there was nothing resembling the customary progression of courses starting with eggs and finishing with fruit. Instead, the slaves brought us a succession of small, bite-sized snacks, each very different from the others and all delicious: small skewers of venison wrapped in bacon and broiled over coals; whole squab, each about two bites; ground duck mixed with pine nuts and rolled in grape leaves; squares of melon wrapped in parchment-thin slices of ham cured in the northern fashion; little squid deep-fried in a thin crust; bits of bread toasted with cheese on top and sprinkled with capers; and other things I no longer remember. It was all delicious and, lavish though it was, it was without the vulgarity we commonly associate with rich freedmen. There were no ridiculously rare tidbits or ostentatious servings or grotesque ingredients or preparations. It was all rather simple food, superbly prepared and presented.

  In time I lay back, replete. “Campania is famed for its cuisine,” I said, “but I do not think I have eaten better since coming here, and I’ve been entertained in some of the finest houses.”

  Porcia beamed. “I thought I’d read you right. People who want things like sow’s udders stuffed with Libyan mice and German bear stuffed with oysters just want you to think they’re sophisticated. I like to serve the things I enjoy eating myself and forget about impressing people.”

  “Consider me impressed,” I said.

  “It’s all pretty silly,” she said, “lowborn people like me trying to use their money to gain acceptance by aristocrats. It’s just not going to happen. I’ll always be a freedman’s daughter and I don’t pretend to be anything else.”

  “A wise philosophy,” I said. “Speaking as an aristocrat myself, I can tell you that the advantages of high birth are greatly overrated. You get to hold high office, which can get you killed or prosecuted; you are qualified for the highest priesthoods, and I cannot imagine anything more boring than that. Worst of all, you have to spend a lot of time with your fellow aristocrats, most of whom are bores, insane, or congenital criminals. Be content with wealth and luxury. Those will get you all the respect and deference you could ask for, without all the other headaches.” Vespillo looked scandalized at my disloyalty toward my own class. Perhaps I exaggerated, but throughout my adult years I had been growing more and more embittered toward my class, the senatorial aristocracy, who in their self-seeking folly were dragging the Republic down to r
uin and destroying much of Italy and the Roman world in the process.

  Her eyebrows went up. “Well, that’s blunt enough! It’s what I always suspected, though. My father wasn’t born a slave. His parents sold him when there was a famine here. He never held it against them. They had a lot of children, and by selling a couple of them, they could save the rest from starving. He never thought it made him better than the other slaves, either. Being a slave is a matter of luck, not breeding or the favor of the gods. Some are born slaves, some get made slaves, some stay free all their lives. He worked hard for his master, learned how to handle money, and made a fortune for him in property.”

  “Commercial properties, were they not?” I asked.

  She nodded. “That’s right. His master was interested in farmland, because that’s what the highborn consider respectable. My father pointed out that squeezing rents from peasants was a lot of trouble and there’d be years when you couldn’t get any money out of them at all, because the crops would fail. Buy shops and factories, my father said. Merchants always have money, and if they go broke, you can evict them and rent the place to another merchant. They’re always clamoring for properties they can use. It made the old boy a fortune, and he freed my father and staked him to a good bit of investment money. As you can see”—she made a wide gesture, taking in our surroundings—“he did well out of it.”

  “So he did.” I belched politely. “Now, if it is convenient to you, I would like to see your mundus.”

  “That old place?” she said, astonished. “Whatever for? Like I said, it’s just a hole in the ground.”

  “Nonetheless, I am a collector of odd places, and Campania seems to be full of them. Please indulge me.”

  “Your wish is my dearest pleasure,” she said cheerfully, clapping her hands. Moments later the litter reappeared in the atrium and we tottered, full of food and wine, toward it, with slaves at each elbow just in case we should need assistance. Poor Vespillo had said almost nothing throughout the minor banquet. This was partly because he was young and unsophisticated but mostly because he could make nothing of either Porcia or me. He thought I showed a very unpraetorlike lack of gravitas in consorting with the hospitable but lowly Porcia, and a freedman’s daughter who was richer than his own family was an unsettling prospect for a naive boy brought up on his mother’s tales of the nobility of his ancestors and their natural right to rule. Age and experience would disillusion him, but that was in the future.

  The slaves packed us into the litter, along with a great basin of crushed ice in which a large pitcher of wine cooled. This would have been a wonder in Rome, but I had seen the artificial caves where Campanians kept ice and snow, carted down from the mountains in winter, to cool their drinks all summer long.

  “You think of everything,” I said, holding out my cup to be filled by a rather beautiful Arab girl, who happened to be some sort of dwarf. Her tiny size made her an ideal attendant for a litter, taking up little space and burdening the bearers much less than a normal-sized human.

  “Wouldn’t want you to go thirsty,” Porcia said, accepting another golden beaker herself. She offered it to Vespillo, but he shook his head, already nodding. The boy had little capacity. He needed training. I resolved to undertake this myself. My attendants had to be able to keep up with me if they were to be of any use.

  Our progress took us through the abundant orchards and past a broad vineyard that would soon be ready for harvest. Slaves were readying the great trampling vats where the workers would caper like satyrs and nymphs to the music of flutes, stained purple to their thighs as they extracted the gift of Bacchus. That was always my favorite time of year on an estate, where I could watch other people working from a place of comfort and ease.

  The bearers took us along a road paved with smooth-cut white stone, lined with watchful herms that were draped with fresh garlands, their phalli standing at attention as if in salute. The fields were cultivated, but the many small prominences had been allowed to grow wild and were topped by small forests.

  “You allow plenty of wildland,” I said to Porcia. “I like that. So many slave-worked plantations are overcultivated to increase profits. It ruins the land, in time.”

  “I’m not a farmer, I’m a businesswoman. This place pays for itself, and it supports me and my chattel. I don’t ask more than that and I’d rather watch the deer and foxes than see people sweating all day long. I also like to hunt from time to time. Learned it from my father. He was a keen hunter.”

  “Would that all people were so sensible.”

  Eventually we came to a little swale, deep-shaded by trees and shrubs, where stood the circular ruins of what had once been a peasant’s hut.

  “This is as far as we can get by litter,” Porcia announced, as we were set down. “From here, we march like legionaries.” I prodded Vespillo to wakefulness and we alighted. Swaying only slightly, Porcia led us past the ruins and into the little valley. It was pleasantly cool in the shade and from time to time I sipped from my chilled wine. Slaves followed behind with the pitcher and its basin of ice.

  We came upon a small altar in the form of a stubby pillar with a carved serpent spiraling around it; the usual shrine to the genius loci. Someone had placed on it cakes, a wooden cup of wine, and, oddly, a few small arrows.

  “Did you leave those?” I asked, pointing to the altar.

  “No, I hardly ever come here. The local folk keep up their traditions, though. These are probably offerings to someone nobody five miles away ever heard of.”

  “What do the arrows signify?” Vespillo wanted to know.

  “I’ve no idea. Maybe some hunter wanting to find game here.”

  We ventured farther into the valley, which I now saw was actually a cleft in almost solid stone, perhaps left over from some upheaval of the earth such as might be wrought by the nearby volcano. Over the ages, the stone had acquired a covering of soil and from this soil sprang the dense growth and twining vines that shaded us. Everywhere, though, crags of solid stone thrust upward through the growth like the snaggled teeth of some long-dead dragon.

  “It’s over here somewhere,” Porcia said, poking about in the undergrowth. “Ah, here it is.”

  We went to stand beside her. She stood on the brink of a broad, circular well, perhaps three yards in diameter. It merited better than her description of it as a hole in the ground. The rim was of finely cut stone, unornamented but bearing the remains of what was once a fine polish. Careful of my clothes, I knelt on the rim stone and leaned over. A few feet down, the cut stone ended and the well was carved into solid rock. The walls were smooth and the bottom was lost in obscurity.

  “I think it’s just an old well,” Porcia said. “It must’ve gone dry and was abandoned.”

  “Awfully wide for a well,” Vespillo said.

  “A sacred well gets more attention than the ordinary sort,” I pointed out. “We have more than one in Rome as elaborate as this one.” I looked about and found a black stone streaked with green the size of my fist. I dropped it in and a few moments later was rewarded with a solid thunk.

  “See?” Porcia said. “It’s dry.”

  “So it would seem. Did the old peasant’s callers claim any extraordinary results arising from their visits here?”

  “Not that I ever heard of. It’s a mundus, not an oracle. I think they just left offerings and prayers and good wishes for their dead.”

  I was vaguely disappointed and unsatisfied, and I wondered, as we passed the little altar on the way back to our litter, why people had left arrows there.

  5

  FOR BREAKFAST WE HAD CHERRIES IN cream to go along with the fresh, hot bread I insisted on every morning. Cherries had been introduced into Italy only about seventeen years before this time, and they were still something exotic and a bit of a luxury. Lucullus had brought cherry trees from Asia as part of his triumphal loot after his victories over Mithridates and Tigranes. He had planted a lavish orchard, and had made seedlings and cuttings available at
nominal cost.

  Julia finished a dish of them and called for more. “Long after people have forgotten who Mithridates was,” she said wistfully, “they will praise Lucullus for the gift of cherries.” She was passionately fond of the little fruit, and had a cook whose only employment was dreaming up new ways to prepare and present them.

  “An estimable accomplishment,” I admitted. “It’s been my misfortune to campaign in places already well picked over, or else that have nothing of culinary interest to offer. Britannia is just more of Gaul, only colder, and the Germans eat little except meat.” These two being the only places I had visited ahead of most Romans. Egypt and Cyprus and the rest were well-worn territory where we’d already looted whatever was useful.

  Along with her second helping, Julia received a letter. She opened it and read while popping cherries into her mouth. As usual she took her time. From Uncle Julius she had learned the useful skill of reading silently, something I had never fully mastered. I dipped hot bread in a pot of honey and waited, knowing that it was no use trying to hurry her. From the intensity of her attention, I knew that it was something significant. Making me wait was annoying to me, something she enjoyed.

  “Well, who’s it from?” I demanded at last.

  “It’s from my aunt Atia.” This woman was actually a niece of Julius Caesar, married to Caius Octavius, who had been proconsul in Macedonia and had died about eight years previously. Octavius had been what we called novus homo, a “new man,” meaning that he was the first of his family to achieve curule rank at Rome. After his death she had married the very distinguished Lucius Marcius Philippus.

  “Well, what does she say?”

  “She tells me that young Octavius is the darling of the public. You’ll recall that he delivered the eulogy at his grandmother’s funeral last year. Everyone was astonished that so young a boy could speak with such dignity and eloquence.”

  “I remember the event.” I had attended the funeral, since there was a family connection, but I was busy politicking for the office of praetor and paid little attention to the speakers.