The Tribune's Curse (28 page)

“Did any of you attend these Games?” I asked as I went over a huge bill for animal fodder for such exotic beasts as lions, bears, zebras, even ostriches.

“Most of us went to the races,” Demetrius said. “Some watched the plays. As slaves we couldn’t attend the
munera
and the animal fights.”

“That’s a law seldom observed,” I noted. Women weren’t supposed to attend them, either. That didn’t stop them from going.

“It was enforced this time,” Demetrius said. “So many people came in from the countryside to see them that everyone had to get entry passes months in advance and show proof of citizenship.”

“I suppose it makes sense,” I said. “If the whole purpose of an aedile’s
munera
is to win votes, why waste them on people who can’t vote in the first place?”

While we were going over the accounts, the aedile Paetus showed up.

“Back again, Metellus? What’s all this?” I told him, and he pulled up a bench. “I’ll give you a hand. Do you plan to prosecute him next year for the Sardinians? It’ll make your reputation if you can pull it off.” He picked up a tablet with an elaborate seal and opened it, then let out a low whistle. “Rather generous contribution
from Ptolemy, here. The old drunk was really spreading the money around that year. I wish I’d been in a position to have some come my way.”

“Let me see!” I snatched it from him. “Hah! Two talents toward the expenses of his Games, as a loving token from the king of Egypt, Friend and Ally of Rome.”

“Nothing illegal about it,” Paetus reminded me. “He put it in the public record.”

“But it’s evidence. Anyway, while I’m sure Scaurus deserves flogging and exile, he’s not really the one I’m after. Keep looking,” I told the others.

Paetus shook his head. “What shows that man put on. The first hippos ever seen in Rome. Do you have any idea of the expense involved in bringing hippos to Rome? Took a whole ship converted into a big fish tank for each beast. Crocodiles, too. First ever shown in public.

“Crocodiles, eh?” I said. Today, everyone was dropping these little tidbits in my lap. “You don’t get hippos and crocodiles from Gaul, now, do you?”

“No, but his timing was right,” Paetus went on. “That year and the next, if you were a man of influence and there was any favor old Ptolemy could do for you, it was done. The Alexandrians kicked him out, but he could get anything he wanted from his upriver estates: gazelles, lions, leopards, elephants. All he wanted was your vote and your influence. If he hadn’t been so strapped for ready cash, he would have bought the whole Senate. Lucky for Aemilius Scaurus he was able to tap Ptolemy that first year, when he still had some of his treasure.”

By midafternoon we had reduced the heap of documentation to enough scrolls and tablets to fill a bushel basket. I borrowed a temple slave to carry the basket, and with the slave following me I went to the Grain Office to make my report.

T
HE LICTOR RAPPED ON THE
door with the butt of his
fasces
, and when the doorkeeper opened it, we went inside without waiting for permission. The hairless, eunuch majordomo came into the atrium, all indignation, but I cut him off before he could speak a word.

“Get Lisas!” I barked. Squawking and wringing his hands, the eunuch hustled off. Minutes later, Lisas appeared.

“Why, Senator Metellus! and Praetor Milo! What an unexpected pleasure!” He was trying hard, but even his skills could not hide the deathly gray of his face. It was not entirely attributable to his progressive diseases, either. “What brings you—”

I brushed past him. “We will speak with you presently.” With Milo and his lictors behind me, I went out into one of the side courtyards. At the crocodile pond I surveyed the torpid animals, which didn’t seem to have moved since I had last seen them, the night the supposed body of Ateius Capito was discovered. I walked around the periphery until I found the animal Julia had pointed to that night. It still had the bit of gold wire wrapped around a fang in its upper jaw. “Here’s the one,” I said.

Milo took off his purple-bordered toga and tossed it to a lictor. Then he fearlessly vaulted the railing into the ankle-deep water on the border of the pool.

“Praetor!” Lisas squawked, beside himself with anxiety. “Those are wild creatures! They will—”

Milo ignored him. He clamped one hand over the creature’s muzzle and wrapped his other arm around its body just behind its front legs. Then, with no more effort than most men would display in lifting a large dog, he hauled it upright. The monster thrashed a bit, but the cool November weather seemed to have sapped its energy.

Milo hauled the thing over to the edge of the pool, and I
reached out for the golden glint. I managed to get the wire between my fingernails and slowly worked it loose from the tooth. When it came out, I saw that a tuft of purple-and-black threads was twisted into the end of the wire that had been in the animal’s mouth. With a surge of his whole body, Milo flung the great beast into the water, and it disappeared beneath the water with a lazy wave of its tail.

Lisas did not try to bluster as Milo climbed out and resumed his toga. “Let’s go back inside,” I said.

In the great audience room Lisas sat. “How may we resolve this?” he said wearily.

“My fat old friend,” I said sadly. “You had better speak swiftly and to our great satisfaction, if you value your life.”

“Oh,” he said, almost managing a smile, “I don’t value my life very highly these days.” He sighed deeply, almost buried his face in his hands, then stiffened his spine and sat upright. “But I must still serve my king. What would you have of me?”

“The men you hide in this villa,” Milo said, “Ateius and Silvius. They must go back with me to Rome to stand trial.”

“My friends,” Lisas said, “this is an embassy. By treaty, I am not bound to surrender anyone to you. This is Egypt.”

“Matters have moved beyond the stage of public embarrassment, Lisas,” I told him. “You have been in collusion with Ateius Capito for at least three years, from the time he agreed to become King Ptolemy’s agent in Rome.” Lisas said nothing, and I went on. “On behalf of Aemilius Scaurus, he approached Ptolemy for bribe money, found out just how much money Ptolemy had to spread around, and let it be known that he would be Ptolemy’s servant, for a price. What did Ptolemy buy him with? A villa near Alexandria? A big estate in the Delta with hundreds of peasants to work it for him?” Still, Lisas said nothing.

“There was one service Ptolemy needed more than any other. He wanted to prevent Crassus from getting the Syrian command. When Ptolemy was here in Rome, Crassus publicly humiliated him
by coming up with that patently fake reading of the Sibylline Books. He knew that Crassus was greedy beyond all other Romans. Ptolemy could deal with Pompey; he could deal with Caesar. He could not and would not deal with Crassus.”

Still Lisas held his silence.

“But even the most heroic efforts of Ateius Capito and his confederates were in vain. However many votes he could buy with Ptolemy’s money, Crassus could buy more. If Ptolemy hadn’t had to pay Gabinius so much to put him back on the throne, maybe he could have managed it, but that was not to be. I must admit, though, that the curse was an amazingly clever device. It robbed Crassus of whatever Roman support he had left. And who knows? It might even be a perfectly good curse. If anything ever got the gods’ attention, that ceremony did.”

Lisas sighed deeply once more. “It seemed so fitting. Crassus thwarted His Majesty with a false reading of the prophetic books, and His Majesty revenged himself with the curse of a suborned tribune.”

“Was it Ateius’s idea?” Milo asked him.

Lisas nodded. “He was very enthusiastic about it. He had always wanted to produce a truly potent curse, and now he would have the—the resources to do it.”

“Because he knew that Ariston of Cumae was corruptible. He knew because Crassus himself had bought the man to advise him on his fraudulent reading of the Sibylline Books. With Ptolemy back in power in Alexandria, he had the money to buy a really unique curse from Ariston, one that contained the ultimate name of power.”

There was a commotion at the door, and twelve lictors came into the audience chamber. Behind them came Pompey.

“Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Consul of Rome,” Lisas said, wearily. “How you honor me.”

P
OMPEY LOOKED AT
M
ILO AND
me. We both nodded, and I held up the bit of gold wire with its colorful threads. He turned to Lisas. “Produce them, Egyptian.”

“This is Egyptian territory, Consul,” Lisas said. “Greatly as I esteem you, and the Senate and People of Rome, I must insist that the treaty obligations pertaining between our nations be observed.”

“Lisas,” Pompey said, “I have lost patience with King Ptolemy. Rome has lost patience. Do you know what I am going to do if you do not produce those men, Lisas? Now, I know you are familiar with the Temple of Bellona, out on the Campus Martius near my theater. The Senate always meets there to deal with foreign ambassadors.”

“I have been there many times, Consul,” Lisas affirmed.

“Excellent. Are you aware of the special priesthood called the
fetiales?
In the old days, they used to accompany the army to the enemy’s border and hurl a spear dedicated to Mars into enemy land to declare war before the gods. That was practical when our enemies were no more than a day or two from here, but now they are too far away. Instead, there is a patch of bare earth before the temple, with a column in the middle of it. That patch is designated enemy territory, and when we go to war, a
fetial
hurls a spear of Mars into it.”

“I am familiar with your custom,” Lisas said.

“Good. Because tomorrow I am going to go to the Temple of Bellona and declare that patch of land to be Egypt. A
fetial
will hurl a spear of Mars into it. I will demand that the Senate declare war on Egypt, and it will do it. The tribunes will get the Assemblies to vote me the command, and I will go collect Ptolemy’s head. After that I may put one of his children on the throne, or I may not. If I want to, I will make Decius Metellus here pharaoh.
I will be able to do anything I feel like doing because I will be absolute master of Egypt. Do you understand me, Egyptian?” This last sentence was roared out in Pompey’s parade-ground voice, a phenomenon dangerous to any delicate objects in the vicinity.

Lisas wilted, the last defiance gone from him. He spoke to the majordomo, and the man beckoned to Milo’s lictors. They passed into the rear of the estate.

“That’s better,” Pompey said. “Perhaps something may still be worked out. Ptolemy has offended us greatly, both with the massacre of the Alexandrians and with this unprecedented tampering with the internal administration of Rome. But we are long accustomed to dealing with degenerate drunks, and forgiveness follows repentance. And reparations, of course.”

“I wish only to serve my king,” Lisas said.

Minutes later the lictors returned holding two men by the scruff of the neck. With the efficiency of long practice, they cast them down to sprawl on the polished, marble floor at our feet.

“You’ve furnished us with some extraordinary entertainment, Ateius Capito,” Pompey said. “What have you to say for yourself?”

Ateius struggled to his knees. Silvius remained prone, despairing. Ateius glared at us madly. “I say that I am in an embassy and may not be touched!”

“Lisas has seen fit to waive that ambassadorial privilege,” Pompey told him.

Ateius whirled on Lisas. “You Egyptian pig!”

“Such language,” I said, “to address a man who has stood by you faithfully, until we brought pressure against his king.”

“You still may not touch me!” he shouted. “I am a Tribune of the People, and my person is inviolable by ancient law.”

“Ateius,” I said, “by the same ancient law that grants the Tribunes of the People their inviolability, they are forbidden to be absent from Rome for as long as a single day. You have forfeited your office and all its privileges.” I saw with some satisfaction the
curtain of fear descend over him as the mad defiance left his eyes. “You were unlucky in the time of year,” I said. “In summer you could have ridden to the coast and caught a ship for Egypt. You were hiding out here until the sailing weather got better, weren’t you?” I shook my head. “You should have chanced it anyway.”