SPQR I: The Kings Gambit

by John Maddox Roberts

  “I am sure I do not know,” I told her. She handed me one of the small goblets.

  “This is the rarest wine of Cos. It dates from the Consulate of Aemilius Paullus and Terentius Varro, and it would be a crime to water it.” I accepted the goblet from her hand and sipped at it. Ordinarily, we regard drinking unmixed wine as barbarous, but we make an exception for exceptionally rare wines, drunk in small quantities. It was indeed rich, so full-flavored that even a small sip filled the senses with the ancient grapes of sunny Cos. It had a strange, bitter undertaste. At the time, I thought that it might be from the evil that cursed the year of its making. Paullus and Varro had been the Consuls whose army had met Hannibal at Cannae. The wily Carthaginian had chosen to fight on a day when the incompetent Varro was in command, and the Roman army had been all but annihilated by the much smaller mercenary force commanded by Hannibal, the most brilliant general who ever lived. It was the blackest day in Rome’s history, and there were still some Romans who would touch nothing made during that Consulate.

  “I am rather glad it has fallen out this way, Decius,” Claudia told me, “in spite of our misunderstanding. Isn’t this much better than meeting in a house full of overfed and drunken politicians?”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “You are the first man I have invited to my little refuge from the sordid world.” This, at least, I was happy to hear.

  “I trust that you will remain discreet,” I said.

  “As long as it suits me,” she said. “No longer than that.”

  “Yet I urge you to be cautious. Periods of license are always followed by periods of reaction, when the Senate and People reassert their virtue by persecuting those who were not discreet in their debaucheries. The Censors love to publicly condemn highborn men and women who have lived too loosely.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, bitterness in her voice. “Especially women. Women who live to please themselves disgrace their husbands, don’t they? Men don’t dishonor their wives. Well, Decius, let me adopt the sibylline mantle and show you the future. Someday, my brother Publius will be the greatest man in Rome. No man, whatever his office, will dare to condemn me to my face then, and I care not at all for what is said behind my back.”

  Truthfully, in that moment she resembled a sibyl. The exaggerated cosmetics she wore made her face a hiero-phantic mask, but I hoped that this was a mere effect of the light. The prospect of Publius Claudius wielding real power in Rome was horrifying in the extreme.

  She relaxed from the rigid pose. “But we are being too serious. I did not invite you here to argue. I will make a bargain with you: If you will refrain from passing judgment on my chosen means of relaxation, I will not bore you with predictions of my own or my brother’s future prominence.”

  “Agreed,” I said, Indeed, it seemed a fine idea. My mind had entered an odd state, free-floating and detached, in that degree of preternatural receptiveness which the more lurid Epicurean philosophers agree is the best for indulging in pleasure, without the distractions of everyday life or the fears of future consequences. “Let us carve this night from the fabric of our lives and hold it separate forever.”

  “I could not have put it better. Chrysis, perform for us.”

  I had all but forgotten the girl, and was a bit surprised to see her sitting on a cushion, sipping from a goblet, as if she were an equal. This was yet another indication of her uncertain status. She rose and went into one of the other chambers, to return holding a coiled rope. One end of this she affixed to a bronze ring set into one wall of the room. She stretched it across the room and fastened it to another ring in the wall opposite. It was not taut, about four feet from the floor. It was only about the thickness of a man’s smallest finger.

  “Chrysis has so many talents,” Claudia whispered, leaning close so that our shoulders touched. “She has been a professional tumbler, among other things.” What other things? I thought. But then my attention was taken once more by Chrysis. Her hand went to her shoulder and her dress fell to pool around her bare feet. She stood dressed only in the briefest of loincloths and her body was almost that of an adolescent boy. Only her large nipples and the rondure of her buttocks attested to her sex. I found this androgyny strangely stirring. It was especially strange since I had the utterly feminine Claudia so near me. I decided that it was an effect of the rare wine, and I sipped more of it.

  With an adroit leap, Chrysis sprang onto the rope and crouched with her knees deeply bent, her arms spread for balance. Slowly, she straightened until she was standing, one foot poised delicately before the other. Then she began to bend backward, her hair falling to touch the rope as her spine bent like a full-drawn bow. Her hands touched the rope and her pelvis arched upward like, it seemed to me, that of a woman offering herself to a god. The image, bizarre as it was, seemed pleasing at the time.

  Her feet kicked free of the rope and she was standing on her hands. Slowly, she raised her head and bent her spine until the soles of her feet rested against the back of her head. Then, impossibly, her feet slid past her ears and continued downward until her toes dangled an inch or two above the rope. Her body was now bent backward into a near-circle. I could scarcely believe that a human spine could be so flexible.

  “She can play the double flute in that position,” Claudia whispered. “She can play a harp with her toes and shoot a bow with her feet.”

  “A many-talented girl,” I murmured. Unbidden through my mind went lascivious images of other possibilities of which such a body might be capable. Claudia could read my expression.

  “Perhaps later we can have her demonstrate the talents she never uses for public performances.”

  I turned to her, managing to shake off a bit of Chrysis’s spell. “I am not interested in her,” I lied. “I am only interested in you.”

  She leaned even closer. “Why be so quick to dispose of one of us?”

  I was not certain of her meaning, but then my mind was playing tricks, disoriented by wine, the unexpected surroundings and the seemingly impossible things Chrysis was doing. One can watch a single improbability without losing equilibrium. Several, either simultaneously or in succession, unsettle the brain.

  Chrysis performed a backward somersault from the rope and launched into a series of back handsprings, each time touching the floor so lightly that even these violent exertions were accomplished in the eerie silence that seemed to accompany all her movements. Then she stood before us, her legs spread wide, bending backward until her face appeared between her knees, as if she had been beheaded and now gripped her head between her legs like a ball. Her hands grasped her ankles. Slowly, her head turned and her tongue snaked out to slide upward along her thigh. Her head twisted intricately and she straightened, but now a long strip of white dangled from her mouth. Somehow, she had unknotted her loincloth with her teeth and stripped it off as she whipped her spine back into a more normal position. Now she stood before us dressed only in a fine sheen of sweat. There could be no doubt of her gender now, her smooth-shaven pubis gleaming before us like a pearl. She spat out the loincloth and smiled proudly as she bowed.

  I applauded vigorously, the sound of my hands clapping seeming to come from far away. Claudia applauded as well; then she leaned closer and my arms went around her as her lips spread against mine. Our tongues met as our hands explored one another; then she drew back with a look of consternation.

  “What’s this?” I couldn’t guess what she meant; then her hands rummaged in my tunic and came out with the dagger and the caestus. For no good reason, I collapsed into laughter.

  “Dangerous place, Rome,” I gasped. “Especially at night.”

  She seemed to find this absurdly funny as well, and she tossed the weapons into a corner before she came back into my arms. Our breathing grew ragged and our movements became more urgent. I felt intimately involved yet detached at the same time, and some of the things happening did not seem quite real. When I reached to the shoulder-clasps of her dress, my hands were as clu
msy as if they were half-frozen, yet the dress fell away from her shoulders anyway. Another moment, I was dressed only in a loincloth, yet I had no memory of removing my tunic. Gaps began to appear in events, while other things had a clarity such as one ordinarily experiences only when taking part in a unique event, such as an initiation into one of the great Mysteries.

  I remember Claudia standing before me naked in the lamplight. Like those of many highborn ladies of that time, her body had been plucked of every hair below the scalp and her skin smoothed by rubbing with pumice. She looked almost like a Greek statue of a goddess, yet I could see every individual pore in her flesh. Slowly she turned and she became my Artemis sculpted by Praxit-eles.

  Other things were not so clear. Sometime in the night, I felt Claudia’s flesh with my palms, but realized that there were too many hands on me. I opened my eyes to see Chrysis lying with us in the welter of cushions, a smile of malignant sensuality on her foxlike features. By that time I was too far gone to protest anything. I had lost all rational faculties and became a being of pure sensation.

  The night dissolved into a phantasmagoria of tangled limbs, sweaty cushions, guttering light from untrimmed lamps, bitter-tasting wine. I touched and tasted and thrust and I lost all ability to discern where my own body left off and another began. My world became a place of thighs and breasts, of mouths and tongues and fingers that stroked and penetrated in endless combinations. I would be buried in one woman with the other’s thighs gripping the sides of my head and I could not tell which was which. There are libertines who esteem this sort of omnisexual activity to be the most gratifying possible, but I found this occasion not merely confusing but difficult to remember afterward. Since experiences one does not remember might as well not have happened, I have never made a regular practice of such entertainments.

  I woke with a ringing head and that much-esteemed gray light of the Roman dawn streaming through the small, high windows onto my upturned face. With loins inert and stomach heaving, I struggled to my feet and fought to keep a precarious balance. My fair companions of the previous night were gone. Standing there, naked, sick and disgusted, I felt thoroughly used. But to what purpose?

  I rummaged around the large room, finding my clothes in the oddest places. My weapons were still in the corner where Claudia had tossed them. I tucked them beneath my girdle and looked to see if I had forgotten anything. My memories of the night before were so unclear that I did not remember whether I had been in any of the other rooms, so I decided to explore them just in case.

  One room was a tiny, dark kitchen. The stove looked as if it had never been used, although there was charcoal in the storage niche beneath it. Claudia probably had food brought in when she used the place. Next to the kitchen so as to share the same water pipes was a small bathroom, with a lion-footed bronze tub, also looking unused.

  There were two small bedrooms, one for Claudia and one for Chrysis, I guessed, although neither contained any personal objects. The last room was a storeroom containing a disassembled litter. I closed the door and turned away, when something about the litter tickled my recently malfunctioning memory. I turned back and opened the door again.

  The light was quite dim, since storerooms never have windows, and the windows of the other rooms of the apartment were very small, as is customary with windows opening onto the street. There is no real need to put out a welcome sign for housebreakers. I went back into the larger room and examined the smoky lamps until I found one with a wick still smoldering. With the point of my dagger I teased the twist of tow from its bath of perfumed oil, blowing on it gently until a tiny flame sprang into life. When the flame was well established I carried the lamp back into the storeroom.

  The litter was like a thousand others in Rome: a light framework of olive wood with a woven leather bottom like the suspension of a bed. There were leather loops in the sides for the carrying-poles to pass through and spindly rods forming a frame from which to drape the hangings. It was the hangings that interested me. They had probably been wetted by rain on their last outing, because someone had spread them over drying-rods. I pulled a fold close to the lamp and studied it. It was colorfully embroidered with silk thread in a design of twining, flowering vines and stylized birds. This was the Parthian fashion, and I knew where I had seen such a palanquin before. It had been when I left the house of Sergius Paulus and was engaged in conversation by the priest of the little Temple of Mercury. A litter very like this one had left Paulus’s house, bearing a veiled person.

  I replaced the hanging and the lamp and left the house. Up the street, a barber was setting up his stool and basin, laying out his tools on a folding table. I rubbed a palm over my bristled face and decided it was time for a shave.

  In my younger days, most men in public life made a point of being shaved by street barbers like any ordinary citizen. This morning, though, I had a better reason than usual for seeking out one of these humble businessmen. Barbers are, notoriously, the best-informed gossips in the city. Most of them disdain any such luxurious frippery as a shop, and carry out their trade right on the public thoroughfare from which point of vantage they shave half the citizenry while observing the other half.

  “A shave, good sir?” the man asked as I staggered up to him. “Please be seated,” he said, as grandly as if he were offering the Consul’s place to an honored guest. I sat on the stool and braced myself for the ordeal to come. Along with early rising, old Romans professed to find great virtue in enduring the dull razors of the public barbers.

  “Had a rough night, eh?” he said, winking and nudging my shoulder. “Shaved many a young gentleman after such a night, I have. You won’t be the first, sir, never fear.” He stropped his razor on a palm as horny as Milo’s. “Now, unlike some, sir, I know what it’s like being shaved with a hangover. Like having your skin stripped by the executioner, ain’t it, sir?” He chuckled. “Well, rest assured that I do better than that. The secret’s in mixing curdled ass’s milk with your oil. Leaves your skin smooth as a baby’s bottom.” So saying, he began to anoint my face with this potion. Every barber had his secret recipe, and this one had an odd yet not unpleasant smell.

  “Tell me,” I said as he began his ministrations, “how long has that insula been there?” I pointed at the one where Claudia had her apartment. Now I could see that it was only four stories high, not large by the standards of the time.

  “Why, that one was built only last year.” He began to scrape at my beard. Whether it was the sharpness of his razor or the efficacy of his lotion, it was almost as smooth as being shaved by my father’s tonsores, a Syrian slave of legendary skill. “The old place on that site burned, sir. It was a most fearsome fire and had the whole neighborhood in an uproar. Luckily the vigiles were nearby, though most of the time they’re useless. We got the water pipes up out of the street and had the fire doused before it could spread. Building was a loss, though.”

  “Who built the new one, do you know?” I asked as he scraped his blade down my neck.

  “Some freedman. One of the big, rich ones, so they say. What’s his name? Let’s see, now.” He began to shave the back of my neck. “They say the bugger’s almost as rich as Consul Crassus, and owns as much property in the city.”

  I didn’t want to put ideas in the fellow’s head, but I had to know whether my suspicion was right. “I think I know the one you mean. He has the same nomen as that old Consul, doesn’t he? I mean the one who was Varro’s colleague when Hannibal met the army at Cannae?”

  The barber spat on the cobbles. “Curse the day. But aye, you’re right. The fellow’s name is Paulus. Sergius Pau-lus, that’s it. Richest freedman in Rome, they say, and that’s saying something. Owns half the city, including that insula there. Damn shame when freedmen are so rich and a common citizen has to work all day to make a living.”

  “With the legions, were you?” I asked absently. I knew the type.

  “Fifteen years with General Sulla,” he said proudly. “So what if we didn’t g
et the land we were promised? They were good years. I can see you’re no stranger to the Eagles, either. That’s a fine scar you’ve got there, sir, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  I rubbed the scar. The man had done a neat job of shaving around it. “Spain. With General Metellus. Not the big fights with Sertorius, but the mountain fighting with his Catalan guerrillas.”

  The barber whistled. “Rough fighting, that. We had some like it in Numidia. There, sir, how’s that?” He held out a bronze mirror and I admired myself in reflection. The man had done a very creditable job, considering the material he had been presented with.

  “Splendid,” I assured him. “Tell me, that insula—do you know anything about the people who live in it?”

  The barber finally decided that I was a little peculiar in my interest in that building. “Well, sir …”

  “I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, of the Commission of Twenty-Six,” I told him. “There have been complaints of irregularities in the construction and leasing of that insula, and I would like to know what the neighboring citizens think of it.”

  “Oh. In that case, sir, we know little. This fellow Sergius Paulus has leased the ground floors to some grand people and the uppers to tradesmen and such. Pretty fair digs, I hear, but they’re new. In a few years it’ll be a slum like most.”

  “I daresay. Do you know anything about a lady who owns one of the ground-floor apartments? She sometimes comes and goes in a rich litter carried by Numidians.”

  The barber shrugged. “You must mean the one who’s had the decorators in these last few months. Never seen her myself, but there’s some that says she keeps late hours. Never heard of any Numidians, though. Some said she was carried by Egyptians. Others say it’s black Nubians.”

  So Claudia was leasing her bearers rather than using family slaves. There were agencies in the city that did such leasing, but it would be futile to check with them. In all probability, she borrowed litter bearers from friends as well. I would learn little by determining her means of locomotion in any case. I could ask the slaves where they had taken her, but in all likelihood, they would not remember. Why should they? And, practically, what would be the use? Slaves could testify in court only under torture, and nobody believed them anyway.