SPQR III: the sacrilege (20 page)

I averted my eyes as the silent slaves brought in horsehair sutures, wickedly curved needles and ornate bronze pliers.

"I was confused. I had a vision on the way here, and the last thing I saw was a lady of my acquaintance named Julia."

"She must be exceptional, since you seem to prefer her company to mine despite your manifest need for my attentions. What sort of vision? I am not especially skilled in the interpretation of dreams, but I know of some skilled practitioners not far from here."

"It wasn't a real dream, but a sort of waking vision. I was aware of what was going on around me while it happened." I spoke mainly to take my mind off his activities. I am not among those person who believe that all their dreams are of great significance, and wish to tell you all about them, at great length. I rarely remember them, those I do remember are usually duller than my waking life, and such visions as the gods have given me have usually come to me under just such circumstances as these: wounds, blood loss or severe blows to the head.

I related my vision to Asklepiodes, and he sat facing me with chin in hand, murmuring occasional wise noises. When I had finished, he resumed his horrid labors.

"The appearance of persons with whom you have recently been involved is not at all unusual, even in the common or nonportentous dream," he said. "But the appearance of a mythical beast is always of the highest significance. Does Cerberus have a significance among you that he does not have among Greeks?"

"None that I know of," I said. "He is the watchdog of Pluto, who keeps the dead from leaving the underworld or the living from entering."

"Pluto, then: How does he differ from Hades?"

"Well, besides being lord of the dead, he is also the god of wealth."

"He is so among us, too, and by the same name, Pluto. That may be from confusion with Plutus, the son of Demeter, who is also a personification of wealth. But then, this may be because the name of both is derived from the very word for 'wealth,' which is--" He broke off when I squealed almost as Clodius had recently. In his pedantic reverie, he had dug a needle in too deep. "Oh, please forgive me."

"You're enjoying this," I said.

"I always enjoy learned discourse," he said, deliberately obtuse. "But it may be that wealth is behind all this."

"It usually is, when men plot villainy," I said. "But I think it may be more significant that Cerberus has three heads. One body, three heads; that is important."

"You saw the heads of Pompey and Crassus, enemies you have come up against in the past. But the third was unclear?"

"Unclear, and the greatest of the three. How can that be? Who could be greater than Pompey and Crassus?" This, truly, seemed an impossibility.

"I don't suppose it could be Clodius? You are rather obsessive about him."

I almost laughed, but I knew how it would pull at the stitches. "No, not Clodius. He is a flunky and a criminal, nothing more."

"Then what of the boy Appius Claudius Nero? What was he trying to give to you, and why did the three-part beast crush him?"

"That," I said, "I would give a great deal to know."

Chapter XI

I woke up and immediately wished I hadn't. Not only were my wounds screaming at me, but the night before, I had sought to promote sleep by draining a good-sized pitcher of cheap wine. I was now suffering the effects of both.

"Serves you right," Hermes said. "Leaving me there like that, holding your toga while you ran like a mountain goat up those stairs."

"You should have seen me on the flats," I croaked. "Faster than a racehorse then. Silverwing on his best day couldn't have touched me."

"Those men might have killed me!" he said indignantly. Slaves like Hermes take things so seriously.

"Why would they have done that?" I said. "It was me they were after. I'm just glad that none of them thought to snatch my toga and you didn't think to sell it."

"You certainly have a low opinion of me!" he huffed.

"Yes, I know I'm probably wronging you, but just now I am not a friend to humanity. I feel like going out and upending a chamberpot all over a Vestal." I got some breakfast in me and felt a tiny bit better. My morning calls went by in a fog, and I was about to leave for Celer's when a new man arrived. It was the gap-toothed Gaul I had seen at the warehouse with Milo.

"The chief wants to see you at the baths, Senator," the man said without preamble.

"The baths? At this hour?" I said.

"He doesn't keep most people's hours," the Gaul said.

When I thought of it, a long, hot soak sounded like a good idea. I told Hermes to get my bath things and followed the Gaul through the streets. Celer was a busy man and probably wouldn't even notice that I was absent. The bathhouse we went to was a modest one, but it adjoined the building that served as Milo's home and headquarters.

Leaving Hermes to watch my belongings, I followed the Gaul into a steam room, where Milo sat with a group of his cronies. He looked up and grinned when I walked in.

"It's true!" he crowed. "All Rome says you fought a pitched battle with Clodius and his men and ended up right in front of Octavius while he was holding court!" He laughed his huge, infectious laugh. I would have joined in, but it would have hurt too much.

"Come back from the army without a scratch," Milo went on, "then cut to ribbons in the streets of Rome! What irony!"

"Oh," I said, sitting down stiffly, "one expects the occasional scar when in service to Senate and People." Indeed, in this company it was easy to be modest about a few little scars. Some of the men were arena veterans with more scar tissue than skin showing when they were stripped. One of them leaned forward and studied my shoulder.

"Neat bit of stitching there. Asklepiodes, eh?" I confirmed that he was correct.

"Seems unmanly to me, all this Greek seamstress work," said another veteran. He gestured to a hideous trough of puckered flesh that slanted from his right shoulder to his left hip. "A red-hot searing-iron, that's the way to stop a cut bleeding. Atlas gave me this one, a left-handed Samnite."

"Got to watch out for those lefties," said a companion.

Milo turned to me, and the others turned away from him. They were a well-drilled band, and we might as well have been alone.

"How did it go with Fausta?" he asked bluntly.

"Extremely well," I assured him. "I conversed with her for some time, and she seems most sympathetic to your suit. She is bored with the men of her own class, as well she might be, and finds you exciting and interesting. I think that if you call on her, she will welcome you most warmly."

"Very good," he said.

"Always glad to be of service," I told him.

"And I'll be of service to you as well. I've passed the word that any assault against you by any of Clodius's men earns instant death. My people will watch out for you in the streets. As long as you stay in plain view, that is. When you go sneaking around, as you have a habit of doing, I can't guarantee your safety."

"I can take care of myself," I said, slightly miffed.

He leaned close. "Are those teeth marks on your face? I thought you fancied yourself a swordsman, not a
bestiarius
."

"I do appreciate your help, Titus. My real problem now is that I am at a loss to understand what is going on. With each new bit of evidence that comes my way, I think I have the key that will make all else fit, but it never does."

"Bring me up to date," Milo said. I told him of the various oddments of information I had picked up. He raised an eyebrow slightly when I spoke of Julia, and frowned when I mentioned Fausta's words.

"I do not like the idea that she is involved," he said ominously. Keeping the sundry women out of the matter was getting difficult.

"Oddly, I think that both she and Julia are speaking the truth. How this can be so I can't say yet."

"Then here is another bit of information for you to exercise upon: The day after the sacrilege, Crassus posted surety for all of Caesar's greatest debts. He is free to leave Rome now. All that keeps him here now is Pompey's upcoming triumph."

"This is significant," I said. "But why should he hang around for the triumph, other than that it is sure to be a fine show? I would think that the only triumph that could interest Caesar would be his own, and the very prospect of that is laughable."

"That's another little question for you to ponder, isn't it?"

"How does this happen, Titus?" I said, a little of my long-held disgust coming to the surface. "Here in Rome we've built the only viable Republic in history, and now it's falling to the shadowy machinations of shadowy men like these. I mean, it all worked so well. We had the popular assemblies, the Centuriate Assembly, the Senate and the Consuls. No kings. We could have the occasional Dictator when the times called for one, but only on a time-limited basis, the power to be handed back to Senate and People as soon as the emergency was over. Now it's all falling to military adventurers like Pompey, plutocrats like Crassus and demagogues like Clodius. Why?"

He stretched and leaned his head back against his folded arms. "Because the times have changed irrevocably, Decius. What you describe is a system that was perfect for a little city-state that had recently thrown off its foreign kings. It even worked well enough for a rather powerful city-state that dominated much of Italy. But the city-state days are over. Rome governs an empire that extends from the Pillars of Hercules to Asia. Spain, large chunks of Gaul, Greece, the islands, most of the southern Mediterranean lands: Africa, Numidia, Carthage, Mauretania. And what governs all this? The Senate!" He loosed his huge laugh again.

"The greatest governing body known to man," I said with great dignity. I was, after all, a new-minted Senator myself.

"Nonsense," Milo said without rancor. "They are, for the most part, a pack of time-serving nobodies. They've won office because their forefathers won the same offices. Decius, these men have been handed an empire to govern, and what is their qualification? That their great-great-great-grandfathers were wealthy farmers! At least these schemers you detest have worked and fought and, yes, schemed to get what they want."

"Can Rome be handed over to the likes of Clodius?" I said.

"No, but not for constitutional reasons. I plan to kill him first. But you, what is your protection from him? Besides my friendship, I mean."

"There are still plenty of people in Rome who have no use for his sort of demagoguery. My neighbors in the Subura will keep his men from my door."

"Forgive me, Decius, but you hold their esteem as much by your colorful, brawling habits as by your Republican rectitude. How long do you think you will keep their loyalty if Clodius should succeed in transferring to the plebs and gets elected tribune, as surely he will? He promises every Roman citizen a perpetual grain dole. That is a powerful inducement, my friend."

"It is not worthy of a free people," I said grudgingly, knowing that I sounded like my father.

"They may be free in the technical sense, but they're poor, and that's a sort of slavery. The day of the freeholder is past, Decius, and it won't come back. They've become a mob, and politically they will act like a mob."

"And you intend to control Rome as a mob leader," I said. I wasn't asking a question.

"Better me than Clodius."

"I won't argue that." There seemed to be no more to say on the subject. I studied the austere but tasteful bathhouse. "This is convenient, having a place like this so handy."

"I own it," Milo reported. "I own the whole block now, and all the buildings on the facing streets."

"That's better than convenient," I commended, "it's tactically sound."

"I try to look ahead. When you're through soaking here, why don't you let my masseur work you over?" He pointed to a low doorway. "The table room's through there."

I winced at the very thought. "The last thing I want is someone pounding my body."

"Try him anyway," Milo said. "Handling wounded men is his specialty."

Mile could be a hard man to refuse, so I tried his masseur. To my amazement, the man was exactly what I needed. He was a huge Cretan, and in his way his knowledge was as profound as that of Asklepiodes. His powerful hands were brutal where the flesh was merely bruised and contused, gentle where I was cut. By the time he was finished, I actually felt not far from normal. My muscles and joints flexed with their usual ease, and only the areas around my wounds were painfully tight. I was almost ready to take on another fight, as long as it was not too strenuous.

There was still a question left unanswered but answerable, and I went to resolve it. The walk from Milo's citadel to the Aventine let me loosen my newly massaged muscles, and I was pleasantly winded at the end of the brief climb.

I stood on the steps of the lovely Temple of Ceres. It overlooked the open end of the Circus Maximus and commanded one of Rome's more breathtaking views, and Rome is a city of numerous splendid views. Aside from its religious function, serving the all-important goddess of grain, the temple was the ancient headquarters of the aediles. It was the special province of the plebeian aediles, since they were the judges of the grain market, but the curule aediles, though higher ranking, also had their offices here.

There was a great, rushing deal of coming and going as I climbed the steps, for the early plowing and planting ceremonies were about to commence. Wellborn Roman women were everywhere in evidence, since this was overwhelmingly a woman's temple. Children by the hundreds, dressed in spotless white tunics, were practicing their roles in the upcoming ceremonies. Despite my deadly serious mission, I paused to watch the little ones as they solemnly went through the intricacies of their part in the devotions to the goddess.

Despite Milo's cynical words, which I knew in my heart to be substantially true, I still felt myself to be at the heart of Roman life at such times and such places. Seeing these ladies and their children preparing for the ancient rites so innocently and with such perfect benevolence, I found it hard to believe that men of evil intent were using the equally ancient and honorable institutions of the Senate and the legions to bring about their own selfish gains.

In the warren of basements and outbuildings, I located the cramped quarters of the curule aediles. In a room full of tablets, old papyruses, decayed money-sacks and rancid rushlights, I found the aedile Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. He glanced up from his pile of tiresome ledgers when I entered, and hastily rose and took my arm.