SPQR III: the sacrilege (16 page)

Who else might have been in that house on the night of the rites? And for what purpose? The fact that they had gone to such extremes to keep their doings secret, and were murdering people to cover themselves, meant that whatever it was was very, very bad indeed. And what could Capito have had to do with it?

I reached my house without any attempts being made on my life.

Chapter X

The next morning I found that Hermes was mostly recovered from his malady, pale but upright and rubbing his belly from time to time.

"Can't guess what it might have been," he said. He had a furtively guilty look but he usually looked that way, so I could not tell whether that signified anything. "Maybe an enemy put a curse on me," he said.

"More likely you broke into my wine closet and drained a jug or two," I said. "I'll look into it later."

I greeted my clients, and in the midst of it a man arrived with a note. I recognized the fellow as one of Asklepiodes's slaves.

Please come visit me at your earliest opportunity
, it read. Below the message was the whimsical seal the Greek used: a sword and caduceus. This looked promising. Perhaps he had discovered something.

We all trooped to Celer's house, and at the first opportunity I took him aside.

"Have you determined anything?" he asked.

"Just a great deal of confusion," I said. "But I must ask you something. A few days ago I spoke to Caesar in this house. He said that he had come to ask you for a night's lodgings while he was banned from his own roof."

"So he did."

"Was he here all night?" I asked.

"Well, no. About midnight he went out. He said that he had to go take the omens. He was wearing his
trabea
and carried his crooked staff. Why? Is this significant?"

"It may be," I said. "Did you see him after that?"

"Yes. He came in shortly after I got up. He said he'd been up on the Quirinal, but that the night had been too cloudy for decent omen-taking. Why?"

"Oh," I said, trying to sound casual, "I am just trying to account for everybody's location that night. It all happened at his house."

"Stick to Clodius, my boy. Don't go trifling with Caius Julius."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said. I did not tell him that I suspected more powerful men than Caius Julius were involved.

I dismissed my clients and told Hermes to follow me. We walked back through the Subura and trudged up the Quirinal to the ancient Colline Gate. Like all the gates, it was a holy place and had seen many battles. Hannibal is supposed to have heaved a spear over it as a gesture of defiance, and just twenty-one years before Sulla had smashed the Samnite supporters of the younger Marius outside the gate, a battle the Romans had watched from atop the walls as at an amphitheater. After the rigors of the previous years, I am told that it was something of a relief seeing blood shed
outside
the walls.

Since Rome had no military or police within the walls, the guardianship of the gates was parceled out among various guilds, brotherhoods and temples. The Colline Gate was the responsibility of the
collegium
of the nearby Temple of Quirinus. These were the Quirinal
Salii
, who danced each October before all the most important shrines of the city. The young patricians did not pull night guard themselves, of course, but their servants did.

In the temple I went to the wardroom, where the gate guards stayed. Then I requested to be shown the tablet of the night when the rites had been profaned. The slave who kept the wardroom rummaged among the tablets while I looked over the small facility. There was no one else there. The gates were only watched at night.

"Here you are, sir," the slave said. I looked at the scratchings on the wax. Several freight wagons had entered the city during the night. All had left the same way before first light. There was no record of the
Pontifex Maximus
going out to take the omens. I asked the slave if he knew anything about it.

"The augurs are always supposed to check here at the temple before they go out the gate after dark, sir. The pontifex Spinther came here about ten days ago, with his striped robe and
lituus
. None since then." I thanked him and left.

"Why are you asking these questions?" Hermes asked me as we descended the hill. "Is it something to do with the patrician who tried to poison you and ended up dead instead?"

"I don't know, but I suspect that it is all connected. Why do you want to know?"

Hermes shrugged. "If you get killed, I'll just get passed on to somebody who's not as agreeable."

"I am touched. Yes, there's something very strange going on. Somebody tried to murder me, and Capito was murdered on the same night. The next night the rites of Bona Dea were profaned in Caesar's house. Caesar told Celer that he was going out to look for omens on the Quirinal that night, but he didn't. The boy who tried to poison me was murdered. The woman I suspect of selling him the poison was murdered. The boy was staying with Clodius, my worst enemy. The murdered woman was with Clodius when he sneaked into Caesar's house dressed as a woman. Doesn't it strike you that there is some common thread running through all this?"

Hermes shrugged. "Free people are mostly crazy. Noble ones are the worst."

"Stay a slave," I advised him. "That way your problems will always be simple."

We crossed the city and went over the bridge to the Island, then over the other bridge to the Trans-Tiber.

"Where are we going now?" Hermes asked.

"The
ludus
of Statilius Taurus, to visit a friend."

He brightened at that. "The gladiator school? You must know everybody!" He was always impressed with my familiarity with the lowest strata of Roman life.

At the school I left him in the training yard, gaping at the netmen as they went through their drills and practice fights. For some reason the netmen had caught the fancy of the slaves and lowest classes. Probably because sword and shield were the honorable weapons of citizens. Like many boys his age, he probably thought of gaining fame as a gladiator. He was too inexperienced to realize that it was just a delayed death sentence. Luckily, he was old enough to understand the whip and the cross.

Asklepiodes greeted me and insisted on going through the usual amenities with wine and cakes before he would enlighten me. Eventually, we sat by a wide window and looked down upon the men practicing below.

"Since we last spoke," he said, "I have been flogging my brain to remember where I had seen that hammer wound. Yesterday I was sitting here, idly watching the men at practice, when I saw some new men arrive. They were to have direction of the
munera
Pompey will give after his triumph. Some were old champions paid enormously to come out of retirement to grace the games, but among them were some Etruscan priests. Have you ever seen the fights as they are conducted in the more traditional areas of Tuscia?"

My scalp prickled. "No, I have not."

He beamed with satisfaction. "Well, the sight of these Etruscans reminded me. Some years ago, I accompanied a troupe to some funeral games near Tarquinia. There I witnessed something I had not seen before. Now, in the
munera
, what happens after a defeated man has received the death-blow, before the
Libitinarii
come to drag the body away?"

"The Charon touches the corpse with his hammer to claim it for the death-goddess, Libitina," I said.

"Exactly. Have you ever wondered where he got his attributes? The long nose and the pointed ears, the boots and the hammer? These are not the attributes of the ferryman of the Styx who bears the same name."

I shifted uncomfortably. "They are said to be Etruscan in origin, like the games themselves."

"That is correct. In reality, he is the Etruscan death-demon, Charun, who claims the dead for the deity of the underworld, whom you call Pluto and we call Hades. Well, in Tuscia, he does not simply touch the corpse. He stands over the head and smashes the brow with his hammer."

"And these men came from Pompey's camp, you say?"

"That is an unhealthy and unseasonal sweat I see shining upon your forehead," he observed.

"As long as you see no hammer mark there, I am satisfied," I said. I took a long drink from my wine cup and he refilled it. Then I took a long drink from that one. "Something else falls into place," I said. "Murders with an Etruscan stamp, just when Pompey has a collection of Etruscan priests outside the walls. And Crassus told me that Pompey has lent some of them to Clodius."

"Ah! Pompey and Clodius. An unsavory pairing. What might all this portend?"

I told him what I knew, and he nodded sagely as he listened. He had that trick of nodding sagely when he had not the slightest idea what you were talking about. It was a faculty I, too, learned in time. When I described Caesar's dispersal of the crowd before my door and our subsequent discussion in my house, he interrupted me.

"Just a moment. Caesar said that the goddess Libitina is the ancestress of his house? I have gone to hear him orate many times, and he has often named the goddess Aphrodite as his ancestress."

"Venus," I corrected him. "Yes, he's taken to doing that a lot lately. That's because you practically have to go back to the time of the gods to find a Julian who ever amounted to anything. But our Venus is a more complex goddess than your Aphrodite. Libitina is our goddess of death and funerals, but she is also a goddess of fields and vineyards and of voluptuous pleasures, in which aspect she becomes the dual goddess Venus Libitina. Thus Caesar can call either of them his ancestress without contradiction."

"Religion is a thing of marvel," Asklepiodes said.

I spun the rest of the tale, not gloating over my acuity but rather telling of my perplexity. When I had finished, he refilled our cups and we thought in silence for a while.

"So this investigation of yours, which was to seek out the guilt of Clodius, now involves Pompey and Caesar?"

"And Crassus," I said. "Let's not forget him. If the other two are involved, so is he."

"What if the purpose of their plotting is to destroy Crassus?"

"That's involvement, isn't it?" I demanded.

"Excellent point," he conceded.

I rose hastily. "I thank you. I see someone down there I should speak with."

Asklepiodes followed my gaze and saw the young man who had just entered the exercise yard. "A handsome youth! And what striking coloring, almost like a German."

"Fairness like that is extremely rare among Romans."

I told him. "It's common only in a single patrician family, the
gens
Cornelia."

"I forgive your hasty leave-taking. I might be so precipitous myself to greet a youth so comely." He was, after all, a Greek.

The young man looked up when I approached him. His eyes were like Egyptian lapis. "I don't believe we've met since we were children, but I saw you yesterday in Pompey's camp. I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger. Are you not Faustus Cornelius Sulla?"

He smiled. "I am. I believe we rode together in the Trojan Game when we were boys."

"I remember. I fell off my horse." Faustus was a small, almost delicate-looking man, but I knew that was deceptive. He had made a name for himself as a soldier in Pompey's service, and had even won the
corona muralis
for being first over the wall at Jerusalem when Pompey had taken that ever-troublesome city.

"Are you here concerning Pompey's upcoming
munera
?" I asked him.