House Of The Vestals (12 page)

Everyone who breathed it was intoxicated and stricken with a temporary madness. Once we escaped the smoke, the madness passed, like a fever burning itself out."

"Then the lemures never existed?"

"I think not."

"And if I uproot that accursed bush and cast it in the Tiber, I will never see the lemures again?"

"Perhaps not." Though you may always see them in your nightmares, I thought.

"So, it was just as I told you," said Bethesda that afternoon, bringing a moist cloth to cool my forehead. Flashes of pain still coursed through my temples from time to time, and whenever I closed my eyes alarming visions loomed in the blackness.

"Just as you told me? Nonsense!" I said. "You thought that Titus was pushed from his balcony-and that his wife Cornelia did it!"

"A woman pretending to be a lemur drove him to jump- which is almost the same," she insisted.

"And you said the soldier's old slave was lying about having seen the lemures himself, when in fact he was telling the Tilth."

"What I said was that the dead cannot go walking about unless they have been properly mummified, and I was absolutely right. And it was I who once told you about the burning bush which speaks, remember? Without that, you would never have figured the cause."

"Fair enough," I admitted, deciding it was impossible to win the argument.

"This quaint Roman idea about lemures haunting the living is completely absurd," she went on.

"About that I am not so sure."

"But with your own eyes you have seen the truth! By your own wits you have proved in not one but two instances that what everyone thought to be lemures were not lemures at all, only a vengeful pretense in one case, intoxicating smoke in the other- and at the root of both cases, a guilty conscience!"

"You miss the point, Bethesda."

"What do you mean?"

"Lemures do exist-perhaps not as visitors perceptible to the senses, but in another way. The dead do have power to spread misery among the living. The spirit of a man can carry on and cause untold havoc from beyond the grave. The more powerful the man, the more terrible his legacy." I shivered-not at lurid visions remembered from the soldier's garden, but at the naked truth, which was infinitely more awful. "Rome is a haunted city. The lemur of the dictator Sulla haunts us all. Dead he may be, but not departed. His wickedness lingers on, bringing despair and suffering upon his friends and foes alike."

To this Bethesda had no answer. I closed my eyes and saw no more monsters, but slept a dreamless sleep until dawn of the following day.

"Well met, Gordianus! Tell me, have you heard what they're saying down in the Forum about Marius's young nephew, Julius Caesar?"

It was my good friend Lucius Claudius who called to me on the steps of the Senian Baths. He appeared to be on his way out, while I was on my way in.

"If you mean that old story about pretty young Caesar playing queen to King Nicomedes while he was in Bithynia, I've heard it all before-from you, I believe, more than once, and with increasingly more graphic details each time."

"No, no, that bit of gossip is ancient history now. I'm talking about this tale of pirates, ransom, revenge-crucifixions!"

I looked at him blankly.

Lucius grinned, which caused his two chins to meld into one. His chubby cheeks were pink from the heat of the baths and his frizzled orange curls were still damp. The twinkle in his eyes held that special joy of being the first to relate an especially juicy bit of gossip.

I confessed to him that my curiosity was piqued. However, as it appeared that Lucius was leaving the baths, while I had only just arrived, and as I was especially looking forward to the hot plunge, given the slight nip that lingered in the spring air-alas, the story would have to wait.

"What, and let someone else tell it to you, and get the details all confused? I think not, Gordianus.' No, I'll accompany you." He gestured to his entourage to turn around. The dresser, the barber, the manicurist, the masseur and the bodyguards all looked a bit confused but followed us compliantly back into the baths.

This turned out to be a stroke of luck for me, as I was in need of a bit of pampering. Bethesda did her best at cutting my hair, and as a masseuse her touch was golden, but Lucius Claudius was wealthy enough to afford the very best in body servants. There is something to be said for having occasional access to the services of a rich man's slaves. As my fingernails and toenails were carefully clipped and filed and buffed, my hair expertly trimmed, and my beard painlessly shorn, Lucius kept trying to begin his tale and I kept putting him off, wanting to make sure I received the full treatment.

It was not until our second visit to the hot plunge that I allowed him to begin in earnest. Amid clouds of steam, with our heads bobbing on the water like little islands in the mist, he related his nautical tale.

"As you know, Gordianus, in recent years the problem of piracy has grown increasingly severe."

"Blame it on Sulla and Marius and the civil war," I said. "Wars mean refugees, and refugees mean more bandits on the highways and more pirates on the sea."

"Yes, well, whatever the cause, we all see the results. Ships seized and looted, cities sacked, Roman citizens taken hostage."

"While the Senate vacillates, as usual."

"What can they do? Would you have them grant a special naval command to some power-mad general, who can then use the forces we give him to attack his political rivals and set off another civil war?"

I shook my head. "Trapped between warlords and brigands, with the Roman Senate to lead us-sometimes I despair for our republic."

"As do all thinking men," agreed Lucius. We shared a moment of silent contemplation on the crisis of the Roman state, then he eagerly launched into his tale again.

"Anyway, when I say that the pirates have grown so bold as to kidnap Roman citizens, I don't simply mean some merchant they happened to pluck from a trading vessel. I mean citizens of distinction, noble Romans whom even ignorant pirates should know better than to molest. I mean young Julius Caesar himself."

"When was this?"

"Just as winter was setting in. Caesar had spent the summer on the island of Rhodes, studying rhetoric under Apollonius Molo. He was due to serve as an attache to the governor of Cilicia, but he lingered on Rhodes as long as he could, and set out at the very close of the sailing season. Just off the island of Pharmacusa his ship was given chase and captured by pirates. Caesar and his whole entourage were taken prisoner!"

Lucius raised an eyebrow, which prompted a curious pattern of wrinkles across his fleshy brow. "Now keep in mind that Caesar is only twenty-two, which may explain how he could be so recklessly bold. Remember also that his good looks, wealth and connections have pretty much always gotten him whatever he wants. Imagine, he finds himself in the clutches of Cilician pirates, the most bloodthirsty people on earth. Does he cringe beneath their threats? Bow his head? Make himself humble and meek? Far from it. Exactly the opposite! He taunted his captors from the very beginning. They told him they were planning to demand a ransom of half a million sesterces. Caesar laughed in their faces! For a captive such as himself, he told them, they were fools not to demand at least a million-which they did!"

"Interesting," I said. "By placing a greater value on his life, he forced the pirates to do likewise. I suppose even bloodthirsty killers tend to take better care of a million-sesterce hostage than one worth only half as much."

"So you think the gambit shows Caesar's cleverness? His enemies ascribe it to simple vanity. But I give him full credit for what he did next, which was to arrange for the release of almost everyone else in his party. His numerous secretaries and assistants were let go because Caesar insisted that the ransom of a million sesterces would have to be raised from various sources in various places, requiring the labor of his whole entourage. The only ones he kept with him were two slaves-that being the absolute minimum to see to a nobleman's comfort-and his personal physician, whom Caesar can hardly do without because of his bouts of falling sickness.

"Well, they say Caesar spent nearly forty days in the pirates' clutches, and treated his captivity as if it were a vacation. If he had a mind to take a nap and the pirates were making too much noise, he would send one of his slaves to tell them to shut up! When the pirates engaged in exercises and games, Caesar joined them, and as often as not bested them, treating them as if they were not his captors but his guards. To fill his idle time he wrote speeches and composed verses, such as he had learned to do under Apollonius Molo, and when he finished a work he would make the pirates sit quietly and listen to him. If they interrupted him or made critical remarks, he called them barbarians and illiterates to their faces. He made jokes about having them whipped, as if they were unruly children, and even joked about having them put to death on the cross for insulting the dignity of a Roman patrician."

"The pirates put up with such insolence?"

"They seemed to adore it! Caesar exercised a kind of fascination over them, by sheer power of his will. The more he abused and insulted them, the more they were charmed.

"At last, the ransom arrived, and Caesar was released. Right away he headed for Miletus, took charge of some ships, and went straight back to the island where the pirates were stationed. He took them by surprise, captured most of them, and not only reclaimed the ransom money but took the pirates' hoard as well, claiming it as the spoils of battle. When the local governor hesitated over deciding the pirates' fate, trying to think of some legal loophole whereby he could claim the booty for his treasury, Caesar took it upon himself to tend to the pirates' punishment. Many times while he was their captive he boasted that he would see them crucified, and they had laughed, thinking the threat was mere boyish bravado-but in the end it was Caesar who laughed, when he saw them nailed naked upon crosses. 'Let men learn to take me at my word,' he said."

I shivered, despite the heat of the bath. "You heard this in the Forum, Lucius?"

"Yes, it's on everyone's lips. Caesar is on his way back to Rome, and the story of his exploits precedes him."

"Just the sort of moral tale that Romans love to hear!" I grunted. "No doubt the ambitious young patrician plans a career in politics. This is the very thing to build up his reputation with the voters."

"Well, Caesar needs something to recover his dignity, after having given it up to King Nicomedes," said Lucius with a leer.

"Yes, in the eyes of the mob, nothing enhances a Roman's dignity like having another man nailed to a cross," I said glumly.

"And nothing more diminishes his dignity than being nailed himself, even if by a king," observed Lucius.

"This water grows too hot; it makes me irritable. I think I could use the services of your masseur now, Lucius Claudius."

The tale of Caesar and the pirates proved to be immensely popular. Over the next few months, as spring wanned to summer, I heard it repeated by many tongues in many variations, in taverns and on street corners, by philosophers in the Forum and by acrobats outside the Circus Maximus. It was a clear example of how terribly out of hand the problem of piracy had gotten, men said, nodding gravely, but what really impressed them was the idea of a brash young patrician charming a crew of bloodthirsty pirates with his haughtiness and in the end inflicting upon them the full measure of Roman justice.

It was on a sweltering midsummer day in the month of Sextilis that I was called to the home of a patrician named Quintus Fabius.

The house was situated on the Aventine Hill. The structure looked at once ancient and immaculately kept-a sign that its owners had prospered there for many generations. The foyer was lined with scores of wax effigies of the household ancestors, the Fabu go all the way back to the founding of the Republic.

I was shown to a room off the central courtyard, where my hosts awaited me. Quintus Fabius was a man of middle age with a stern jaw and graying temples. His wife, Valeria, was a strikingly beautiful woman with hazel hair and blue eyes. They sat in backless chairs, each attended by a slave with a fan. A chair was brought in for me, along with a slave to fan me.

Usually, I find that the higher a client ranks on the social scale, the longer he takes to explain his business. Quintus Fabius lost no time, however, in producing a document. "What do you make of it?" he said, as yet another slave conveyed the scrap of papyrus to my hands.

"You can read, can't you?" asked Valeria, her tone more anxious than insulting.

"Oh, yes-if I go slowly," I said, thinking to buy more time to study the letter (for a letter it was) and to figure out what the couple wanted from me. The papyrus was water-stained and torn at the edges and had been folded several times, rather than rolled. The handwriting was childish but strong, with gratuitous flourishes on some of the letters.

BY NOW MY FRIENDS MUST HAVE TOLD YOU OF MY ABDUCTION. IT WAS FOOLISH OF ME TO GO OFF SWIMMING BY MYSELF-FORGIVE ME! I KNOW THAT YOU MUST BE STRICKEN WITH FEAR AND GRIEF, BUT DO NOT FRET OVERMUCH; I HAVE LOST ONLY A LITTLE WEIGHT AND MY CAPTORS ARE NOT TOO CRUEL.

I WRITE TO CONVEY THEIR DEMANDS. THEY SAY YOU MUST GIVE THEM 100,000 SESTERCES. THIS IS TO BE DELIVERED TO A MAN IN OSTIA ON THE MORNING OF THE IDES OF SEXTILIS, AT A TAVERN CALLED THE FLYING FISH. HAVE YOUR AGENT WEAR A RED TUNIC.

FROM THEIR ACCENTS AND THEIR BRUTISH MANNER I SUSPECT THESE PIRATES ARE CILICIANS. IT MAY BE THAT SOME OF THEM CAN READ (THOUGH I DOUBT IT), SO I CANNOT BE COMPLETELY FRANK, BUT KNOW THAT I AM IN NO GREATER DISCOMFORT THAN MIGHT BE EXPECTED.

While I pondered the note, from the corner of my eye I saw that Quintus Fabius was drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. His wife anxiously fidgeted and tapped her long fingernails against her lips.

"I suppose," I finally said, "that you would like me to go ransom the boy."

"Oh, yes!" said Valeria, leaning forward and fixing me with a fretful gaze.

"He's not a boy," said Quintus Fabius, his voice surprisingly harsh. "He's seventeen. He put on his manly toga over a year ago."

"But you will accept the job?" said Valeria.

I pretended to study the letter. "Why not send someone from your own household? A trusted secretary, perhaps?"

Quintus Fabius scrutinized me. "I'm told that you're rather clever. You find things out."

"It hardly requires someone clever to deliver a ransom."

"Who knows what unexpected contingencies may arise? I'm told that I can trust your judgment__and your discretion."

"Poor Spurius!" said Valeria, her voice breaking. "You've read his letter. You must see how badly he's being treated."

"He makes light of his tribulations," I said.

"He would! If you knew my son, how cheerful he is by nature, you'd realize just how desperate his situation must be for him to even mention his suffering. If he says he's lost a little weight, he must be half starved. What can such men be feeding him-fish heads and moldy bread? If he says these monsters are 'not too cruel,' imagine how cruel they must be! When I think of his ordeal-oh, I can hardly bear it!" She stifled a sob.

"Where was he kidnapped, and when?"

"It happened last month," said Quintus Fabius.

"Twenty-two days ago," said Valeria with a sniffle. "Twenty-two endless days and nights!"

"He was down at Baiae with some of his friends," explained Quintus Fabius. "We have a summer villa above the beach, and a town house across the bay at Neapolis. Spurius and his friends took a little skiff and went sailing among the fishing boats. The day was hot. Spurius decided to take a swim. His friends stayed on the boat."

"Spurius is a strong swimmer," said Valeria, her pride steadying the tremor in her voice.

Quintus Fabius shrugged. "My son is better at swimming than at most things. While his friends watched, he made a circuit, swimming from one fishing boat to another. His friends saw him talking and laughing with the fishermen."

"Spurius is very outgoing," his mother explained.

"He swam farther and farther away," Quintus Fabius continued, "until his friends lost sight of him for a while and began to worry. Then one of them saw Spurius on board what they had all thought to be a fishing vessel, though it was larger than the rest. It took them a moment to realize that the vessel had set sail and was departing. The boys tried to follow in the skiff, but none of them has any real skill at sailing. Before they knew it, the boat had disappeared, and Spurius with it. Eventually the boys returned to the villa at Baiae. They all thought that Spurius would turn up sooner or later, but he never did. Days passed without a word."

"Imagine our worry!" said Valeria. "We sent frantic messages to our foreman at the villa. He made inquiries of fishermen all around the bay, trying to find anyone who could explain what had happened and identify the men who had sailed off with Spurius, but his investigations led nowhere."

Quintus Fabius sneered. "The fishermen around Neapolis- well, if you've ever been down there you know the sort. Descendants of old Greek colonists who've never given up their Greek ways. Some of them don't even speak Latin! As for their personal habits and vices, the less said the better. Such people can hardly be expected to cooperate with finding a young Roman patrician abducted by pirates."

"On the contrary," I said, "I should think that fishermen would be the natural enemies of pirates, whatever their personal prejudices against the patrician class."

"However that may be, my man down in Baiae was unable to discover anything," said Quintus Fabius. "We had no definite knowledge of what had become of Spurius until we received his letter a few days ago."

I looked at the letter again. "Your son calls the pirates Cilicians. That seems rather far-fetched to me."

"Why?" said Valeria. "Everyone says they're the most bloodthirsty people on earth. One hears about them making raids everywhere along the coasts, from Asia all the way to Africa and Spain."

"True, but here, on the coast of Italy? And in the waters around Baiae?"

"It's shocking news, I'll agree," said Quintus Fabius. "But what can you expect with the problem of piracy getting worse and worse while the Senate does nothing?"

I pursed my lips. "And doesn't it seem odd to you that these pirates want the ransom brought to Ostia, just down the Tiber from Rome? That's awfully close."

"Who cares about such details?" said Valeria, her voice breaking. "Who cares if we have to go all the way to the Pillars of Hercules, or just a few steps to the Forum? We must go wherever they wish, to get Spurius safely home."

I nodded. "What about the amount? The Ides is only two days away. A hundred thousand sesterces amounts to ten thousand gold pieces. Can you raise that sum?"

Quintus Fabius snorted. "The money is no problem. The amount is almost an insult. Though I have to wonder if the boy is worth even that price," he added under his breath.

Valeria glared at him. "I shall pretend that I never heard you say such a thing, Quintus. And in front of an outsider!" She glanced at me and quickly lowered her eyes.

Quintus Fabius ignored her. "Well, Gordianus, will you take the job?"

I stared at the letter, feeling uneasy. Quintus Fabius bridled at my hesitation. "If it's a matter of payment, I assure you I can be generous."

"Payment is always an issue," I acknowledged, though considering the yawning gulf in my household coffers and the mood of my creditors, I was in no position to decline. "Will I be acting alone?"

"Of course. Naturally, I intend to send along a company of armed men-"

I raised my hand. "Just as I feared. No, Quintus Fabius, absolutely not. If you entertain a fantasy of taking your son alive by using force, I urge you to forget it. For the boy's safety as well as my own, I cannot allow it."

"Gordianus, I will send armed men to Ostia."

"Very well, but they'll go without me."

He took a deep breath and stared at me balefully. "What would you have me do, then? After the ransom is paid and my son released, is there to be no force at hand with which to capture these pirates?"

"Is capturing them your intent?"

"It's one use for armed men."

I bit my lip and slowly shook my head.

"I was warned that you were a bargainer," he growled. "Very well, consider this: if you successfully arrange the release of my son, and afterward my men are able to retrieve the ransom, I shall reward you with one-twentieth of what they recover, over and above your fee."

The jangling of coins rang like sweet music in my imagination. I cleared my throat and calculated in my head. One-twentieth of a hundred thousand sesterces was five thousand sesterces, or five hundred gold pieces. I said the figure aloud to be sure there was no misunderstanding. Quintus Fabius slowly nodded.

Five hundred pieces of gold would pay my debts, repair the roof on my house, buy a new slave to be my bodyguard (a necessity I had gone without for too long), and give me something left over.

On the other hand, there was a bad smell about the whole affair.

In the end, for a generous fee plus the prospect of five hundred pieces of gold, I decided I could hold my nose.

Before I left the house, I asked if there was a picture of the kidnapped boy that I could see. Quintus Fabius withdrew, leaving me in his wife's charge. Valeria wiped her eyes and managed a weak smile as she showed me into another room.

"A woman artist named Iaia painted the family just last year, when we were down at Baiae on holiday." She smiled, obviously proud of the likenesses. The group portrait was done in encaustic wax on wood. Quintus Fabius stood on the left, looking stern. Valeria smiled sweetly on the right. Between them was a strikingly handsome hazel-haired young man with lively blue eyes who was unmistakably her son. The portrait stopped at his shoulders but showed that he was wearing a manly toga.

"The portrait was done to celebrate your son's coming of age?"

"Yes."

"Almost as beautiful as his mother," I said, stating the matter as fact, not flattery.

"People often remark at the resemblance."

"I suppose he might have a bit of his father about the mouth."

She shook her head. "Spurius and my husband are not related by blood."

"No?"

"My first husband died in the civil war. When Quintus married me, he adopted Spurius and made him his heir."

"Spurius is his stepson, then. Axe there other children in the household?"

"Only Spurius. Quintus wanted more children, but it never happened." She shrugged uneasily. "But he loves Spurius as he would his own flesh, I'm sure of it, though he doesn't always show it. It's true they've had their differences, but what father and son don't? Always fighting about money! Spurius can be extravagant, I'll admit, and the Fabu are famous for stinginess. But the harsh words you heard my husband utter earlier-pay them no attention. This terrible ordeal has put us both on edge."

Valeria turned back to the portrait of her son and smiled sadly, her lips trembling. "My little Caesar!" she whispered.

"Caesar?"

"Oh, you know whom I mean-Marius's nephew, the one who was captured by pirates last winter and got away. Oh, Spurius loved hearing that story! Young Caesar became his idol. Whenever he saw him in the Forum he would come home all breathless and say, 'Mater, do you know whom I saw today?' I would laugh, knowing it could only be Caesar, to make him so excited." Her lips trembled. "And now, by some jest of the gods,

Spurius himself has been captured by pirates! So I call him my little Caesar, knowing how brave he must be, and I pray for the best."

I left the next day for Ostia, accompanied by the armed force which Quintus Fabius had hired and outfitted for the occasion. The band was made up of army veterans and freed gladiators, men with no prospects who were willing to kill or risk being killed for a modest wage. There were fifty of us in all, jammed together in a narrow boat sailing down the Tiber. The men took turns rowing, sang old army songs and bragged about their exploits on the battlefield or in the arena. If one were to believe all their boasting, taken together they had slaughtered the equivalent of several cities the size of Rome.

Their leader was an old Sullan centurion named Marcus, who had an ugly scar that ran from his right cheekbone down to his chin, cutting through both lips. Perhaps the old wound made it painful for him to speak; he could hardly have been more tight-lipped. When I tried to discover what sort of orders Quintus Fabius had given him, Marcus made it clear at once that I would learn no more and no less than he cared to tell me, which for the moment was nothing.

I was an outsider among these men. They looked away when I passed. Whenever I did manage to engage one of them in conversation, the man quickly found something more important to do and in short order I found myself talking to empty air.

But there was one among their number who took a liking to me. His name was Belbo. To some degree he was ostracized by the others as well, for he was not a free man but a slave owned by Quintus Fabius; he had been sent along to fill out the ranks on account of his great size and strength. A previous owner had trained him as a gladiator, but Quintus Fabius used him in his stables. The hair on Belbo's head was like straw, while the hair on his chin and chest was a mixture of red and yellow. He was by far the largest man in the company. The others joked that if he moved too quickly from one side of the boat to the other he was likely to capsize us.

I expected that nothing would come of questioning him, but soon discovered that Belbo knew more than I thought. He confirmed that young Spurius was not on the best of terms with his stepfather. "There's always been a grudge between them. The Mistress loves the boy, and the boy loves his mother, but the Master has a hard spot for Spurius. Which is odd, because the boy is actually more like his stepfather in most ways, even if he is adopted."

"Really? He looks just like his mother."

"Yes, and sounds and moves like her, too, but that's all a kind of mask, if you ask me, like warm sunlight sparkling on cold water. Underneath, he's as stern as the Master, and just as willful. Ask any of the slaves who've made the mistake of displeasing him."

"Perhaps that's the trouble between them," I suggested, "that they're too much alike, and vie for the attentions of the same woman."

We reached Ostia, where the boat was moored on a short pier that jutted into the Tiber. Farther down the riverfront, at the end of the docks, I could just glimpse the open sea. Gulls circled overhead. The smell of salt water scented the breeze. The strongest of the men unloaded the chests containing the ten thousand pieces of gold and loaded them into a wagon, which was wheeled into a warehouse on the docks. About half the men were sent to stand guard over it.