SPQR I: The Kings Gambit

by John Maddox Roberts

  At times of such desperation, such urgency of immediate action, all things take on an air of unreality. Time has a new meaning. As the man before me fell, I was whirled around by his collapsing body and saw coming up behind me a faint, diffuse glow, like the marsh-light that flickers over swamps to lure unwary travelers. In that moment, I think I truly believed that there was a ghost after us. But whose? There had been so many new-made lately.

  Beside me there were multiple thuds and grunts as Milo took care of his own attacker. Then two more were on us and I reached out, grasped cloth and pulled it toward me, thinking that this was a tunic and I was dragging another man within reach of my dagger. Instead, I jerked a cloak from a lantern held by a man who gripped a sword in his other hand. Another stood crouched next to him, and behind them I could just glimpse a third hanging back. That meant five in all. So much for Milo’s superior hearing.

  I immediately attacked the lantern-holder, assuming that it would make him a bit more awkward, but he dropped the lantern and came for me. The lantern continued to cast its flickering illumination from the street, making the brutal, violent scene truly eerie and unreal. The sword was real enough as it came for me, though. I dodged aside but bumped into somebody, either Milo or his opponent, and saved myself from gutting only by sucking in my stomach as the weapon lanced inward. Even so, I felt its edge slice my flesh in passing. With my dagger I cut at his forearm, stepping in as I did so, catching his jaw with a neat left cross. I felt the jawbone crack under the caestus, but for good measure I ran my dagger through his body as he fell. It is never good to assume that a wounded man is through fighting.

  When he was down I whirled to see Milo wrestling his own second opponent to the street. The fifth person was nowhere to be seen.

  “Bring the lantern,” Milo said. I picked it up by its carrying-ring, carefully so as not to snuff out the light. I opened its gate and with the point of my dagger teased the wick up from its oil reservoir until it was burning brightly, and walked to where Milo held his man in an armlock with one foot on his chest. The handle of a sica protruded from the fellow’s chest. Apparently, Milo had stabbed him with his own weapon. The other three seemed to be dead. Weapons littered the street: a short sica and a long sica and even a gladius. The sword was smaller than those used by the legions: wasp-waisted with a long, tapering point like an oversized dagger. It was the type used by Roman soldiers a century before and still used in the amphitheater. I recognized none of the men. Rome was full of such gang-members and they were of little account.

  The one Milo had down was of the usual type: a burly cretin whose age was difficult to judge through the map of scars that made up his face. He bore the caestus scars of a pugilist rather than the sword marks of a gladiator, and men of superior intelligence seldom took up the profession of pugilist.

  “I think this fellow has some things to tell us, sir,” Milo said, giving the arm a twist and getting a groan in return.

  “Excellent,” I answered. I squatted beside the man, holding the lantern high. He hadn’t long to live and so I had to ask my question quickly. “Who hired you?”

  “Claudius,” he groaned as Milo continued the pressure. “He said that you’d be wearing a yellow scarf around your neck.”

  I touched the scarf ruefully. I had been talking of disguise, forgetting that I was wearing the conspicuous thing when Claudius had seen me the day before.

  “Who was your eyes tonight, pig?” Milo demanded. “Who guided you through these streets and kept us in sight?”

  “A boy.” He seemed disinclined to say more, so Milo encouraged him to greater eloquence. “Ahh! It was a foreign boy, eastern. Had an Oriental accent. Said he’d know our man by sight. Went back and forth all day between the river and the Ostian gate. Came to join us when the gate shut for the night, got to the dock just as you did, says there’s our man. Led us through the street and around in front of you like it was daylight. Eyes in his toes, that boy has.” These last words were spoken in a whispering mumble and Milo released his arm.

  “Well, that’s all we’ll get from this one. What now, sir?”

  “Leave them for the vigiles. I’ll make a full report of it all when I get this case wrapped up. It would just be a waste of time now. Let’s go to my house.”

  Now that we had a lamp, we made it to my doorway without difficulty.

  “I’ll leave you here now, sir,” Milo said as Cato opened the door.

  “I won’t forget your service,” I told him. “You were a great deal more than a guide on this little journey.”

  “Just keep me in mind when you’re an important magistrate,” he said, then he left. I thought at the time he meant that he was likely to end up before me in court, but young Milo had higher ambitions than that.

  I ignored Cato’s scandalized protestations about my late hours and dubious companions as I went to my bedroom. I told him to bring me something to eat and a basin and clean towels. Grumbling, he did as ordered. When he delivered what I had asked for, I bade him be off to his bed and closed the door behind him.

  I stripped off my tunic and by lamplight examined the cut I had taken in the scuffle. It looked fairly trivial, but it stung when I washed it with wine as best I could, then bandaged it with a folded towel and strips cut from my tunic and tied around my waist. I would have Asklepiodes examine it in the morning.

  Drained by the journey and the events in the street, I sat on my bed and forced unwanted food into my empty stomach. I had dealt wounds in battle, but this sort of close-in fighting was something new to me. I decided that it was the aftermath of the sudden, unexpected violence that made me feel dull and melancholy. The men had wished to kill me and they had been the lowest scum imaginable.

  Also, I was unhappy that the boy had been so close and once again had escaped me. Only he could lead me to the amulet that had been taken from this very room. With this thought, I looked to make sure that the ornamental bronze bars I had commissioned were in good order. For what it was worth, they seemed to be. I was beginning to believe that the creature was supernatural, though, and that no mere barrier would be proof against him and his strangling cord.

  Wincing at the pain, I lay back on my bed and closed my eyes. I had learned much, and yet it was still not enough. Thus ended another day.

  9

  THE NEXT DAY I COMPOSED A LETter. It was something I had been pondering since I had seen the palanquin carrying one of the vestals a few days before. I had toyed with the idea, then discarded it. Now I picked it up again. What I was contemplating was not merely extralegal, it was sacrilegious. However, I now believed that the good of the state was at stake. Also, my life had been threatened, and that gives one a different perspective on man’s relationship to the gods.

  “Reverend Aunt,” I began. “From your obscure nephew Decius Caecilius Metellus, greeting. I would esteem it the greatest personal favor if you would allow me to call upon you at your earliest convenience. My reasons for wishing to visit with you are twofold: First, I have for far too long neglected my familial obligation toward you, and because of a certain sensitive matter of state which I believe you may be able to help me with, if you would be so kind. If it is at all possible, please send your reply by this messenger.” I rolled the papyrus into a scroll and sealed it with wax. On the outside I wrote: “For the eyes of the Reverend Lady Caecilia Metelli.”

  I gave the scroll to a slave boy borrowed from a neighbor and told him to deliver it to the House of the Vestals and wait there for a reply. The boy scampered off, doubtless wondering what sort of reward he would earn. It was customary to tip generously when you employed somebody else’s slave.

  The captain of the vigiles had reported the four bodies found in the street that morning, but I was able to delay looking into it since, first, it looked like any other gang killing and, second, I could claim that the murder of Paulus took precedence. The deaths of four more thugs would not reach the Senate even as a rumor and I would only need to find out their identities a
nd scratch their names off the grain dole, if any of them were citizens. In all likelihood, no one would come forward to identify them and in three days the bodies would be taken to the mass burial pits and would be forgotten.

  As soon as the early part of the day’s business was transacted, I excused myself and went to the Ludus Statilius to call upon Asklepiodes. He was surprised to see me again so soon.

  “What?” he said. “Surely there has not been another exotic murder for me to analyze, has there?”

  “No, but there almost was. However, the victim is up and walking around this morning, and has come to you for treatment. Are your slaves discreet?”

  "Come in,” he said, concerned, standing aside as I entered the chamber in which he had nearly throttled me two days before.

  “You are the most interesting person I have encountered since coming to Rome,” Asklepiodes said. I sat on a stool and dragged my tunic over my head. He stripped off my amateur attempt at wound-dressing and called for one of his slaves. The man came in and Asklepiodes gave him instructions in some language I did not recognize, then he returned to his examination of my wound. “I have lived in some uncivilized places, but I have never known a public official to be assaulted quite so frequently.”

  “You were among my attackers,” I said, wincing at the pain in my flank.

  “Purely an educational exercise. But this fellow”—he poked the cut with a finger, drawing another grunt of pain— “clearly intended to take your life. This was inflicted by a gladius or a rather large, straight dagger with some curvature to the edge. You note the slight nicking here at the beginning of the cut? That is where the point first pierced the flesh before commencing its incision.”

  “I know what sort of weapon it was,” I said with some impatience. “I saw it myself, along with the thug who wielded it. It was an arena gladius.”

  “Just as I thought,” Asklepiodes said triumphantly.

  “I rejoice that, once again, your judgment is vindicated. Now, what may be done about this wound, which I feel this morning may be more serious than it felt last night, when I was exhausted and the light was uncertain?”

  “Oh, there is little cause for concern, unless mortification sets in, in which case you will almost surely die. However, that seems unlikely since you are young and strong and the wound is a clean one. If there is no swelling and suppuration in the next few days, all should be well.”

  “That is comforting,” I told him. The slave reentered carrying a tray of instruments and a basin of steaming water. He set it by the stool where I sat and the physician gave him further instructions. He left once more.

  “What language is that?” I asked Asklepiodes as he began to scrub industriously at the cut. He used a sponge dipped in the steaming liquid, which was not only hot but full of astringent herbs. It burned like a hot iron laid against my side. I strove to remember the Stoic forbearance of my ancestors. I tried to take courage from the story of Mucius Scaevola, who had shown his contempt for mere pain by holding his hand in a fire until it was burned off.

  “Egyptian,” the Greek said, as if he were not inflicting pain in which a court torturer might have taken pride. “I practiced for some years in Alexandria. Of course, they speak Greek there, like all civilized people, but the people from farther south, from Memphis and Thebes and Ptolomais, still speak the ancient tongue. They also make the best slaves and servants in the world. So I studied the language in order to learn the medical secrets of the ancient Egyptians and in the process I bought some slaves to assist me. I have made certain that they have not learned Greek or Latin; thus they serve me well and keep my secrets.”

  “Very good,” I said, when the pain had receded enough for me to speak. “I would appreciate it if you would not mention to anyone that you have treated me for this wound.”

  “You may have total confidence in my discretion.” He tried to maintain his bland mask of professional dignity, but soon his curiosity got the better of him. He was, after all, a Greek. “So this was not, shall we say, a casual assault by a common footpad?”

  “My attackers could scarcely have been more common,” I said.

  “Attackers! There was more than one?”

  “Four,” I said, rolling up my eyes as I saw him pick up a bit of thin split sinew and a curved needle.

  “This is Homeric!” he said, fitting the needle to a small pair of ornate bronze pliers. All his instruments were decorated with silver inlay in the form of swirling acanthus leaves. I have often wondered whether the elaborate decoration common to surgical instruments is to distract us from the dreadful uses to which they are put.

  “Actually,” I admitted, “I was not alone. But I did for two of them.” The childish boasting helped me bear the pain of stitching. After all, having thus touted my valor, I could scarcely object to the mere repeated piercing of my flesh by a needle, having sinew drawn through the piercings and the stitches drawn tight, as if my flesh were so much tent-cloth.

  “Was this attack politically motivated?” he asked.

  “I can hardly believe otherwise,” I said.

  “The politics of modern Rome resemble those of Athens a few centuries ago. The Pisistratids, Harmodius and Aris-togiton and so forth. It wasn’t always Pericles and his lot.”

  “You’re the first Greek I’ve met who admits that Greece isn’t always the home of all perfection.”

  “We are still superior to everyone else,” he said, his eyes twinkling. The slave reentered, this time bearing a bowl that gave off a foul-smelling steam.

  “This poultice will help the wound to heal without infection,” Asklepiodes said. He spooned some of the loathsome slop onto a gauze pad and slapped it onto my side. Swiftly and with great skill the slave wound bandages around my body, binding the poultice tightly in place yet allowing me to breathe without great difficulty.

  “Come back in three days and I will change the dressing,” the Greek said.

  “How am I going to attend the baths this way?” I asked.

  “There are some things even the finest physician cannot answer for you. However, you are a young man of great ingenuity and I am sure you will devise a solution.”

  “As always, Master Asklepiodes, I thank you. Look for a liberal proof of my gratitude this coming Saturnalia.” He looked most pleased. Although lawyers and physicians were forbidden to charge fees, they could accept presents.

  “I shall sacrifice to my patron god and pray that you live until Saturnalia. May your next month not go like your last week.”

  He ushered me out. He was none too subtle in reminding me that Saturnalia was less than a month away, and perhaps hinting that I should put this generous gift in my will. I was too poor for anything lavish, and as I walked home I pondered upon what I might send him. I decided that a physician who was willing to perform what was in effect the work of a mere surgeon was eccentric, so I would give him an eccentric gift.

  The slave boy was waiting in my atrium when I reached home. He handed me a small roll of papyrus and I broke the seal. The message inside was brief and simple: “Dearest Nephew: It has been far too long. Come to the visiting-room of the House of the Vestals at about the twelfth hour. Aunt Caecilia.” It was, I estimated, somewhere around the end of the ninth hour. Since the winter hours were shorter than those of summer, the twelfth was not all that far away.

  She probably meant the twelfth hour as told by the great sundial of Catania in the Forum. Messala had brought it as loot from Sicily almost two hundred years before and it was the pride of the city for a long time. Unfortunately, it was calibrated for Sicily, which is far to the south of Rome, and gives an inaccurate reading of the time. The vestals were incredibly old-fashioned and probably ignored the much more modern sundial and water clock of Philippus and Scipio Nasica, which were not even one hundred years old. I decided I would just estimate the time, like everyone else. She had said “at about the twelfth hour.” Neither sundial works in cloudy weather, and even the water clock was erratic in winter
.

  I gave the boy a denarius and he was properly awestruck by my munificence. He could add it to his peculium, with which he might someday purchase his freedom, but far more likely he would use it to bribe the cook for delicacies or wager on the next Games with his fellow slaves.

  I decided to go to the Forum. It was the time usually devoted to the baths, but I could not attend the baths bandaged as I was. Rome in winter is like a great, sleepy animal that spends most of the season dozing in its den. The markets are less raucous, the clamor of the builders is quieter, the hammering of the metalworkers more muffled. People even walk more slowly. We Italians need the warmth of the sun to stir us to our customary level of frenetic, if oftentimes unproductive, activity.

  In the Forum I lazed among the crowd, exchanging greetings, hearing petitions from dissatisfied residents of my district, most of whom believed, incorrectly, that any public official had the ear of every other, so that I was constantly referring them to the proper authorities.

  The Aunt Caecilia whom I was about to visit was one of my many aunts named Caecilia, since women are not given cognomens, thus causing much confusion. This one was known in the family as Caecilia the Vestal, a formidably prestigious lady. She was a sister of the Quintus Caecilius Me-tellus under whom I had served in Spain, who had been one of our more illustrious generals until Sertorius got the better of him and Pompey, the boy wonder, had arrived to reap all the glory.

  As I made my way toward the House of the Vestals, I contemplated upon how to approach her. A woman raised from girlhood within the confines of the vestals’ quarters could not be expected to be worldly regarding matters of Roman political life. Chaste and archaic in her attitudes, she would believe and behave as a noble lady descended from a long line of Roman heroes. This shows how inexperienced in the ways of women I was at that age.

  The Temple of Vesta was located in the heart of the Forum, and had stood on that spot since the founding of the city, almost seven hundred years before. It was round, in the ancient Italian fashion, because our ancestors had lived in round huts. One of our finest festivals was also the simplest, when, on the kalends of March, all the fires in the Roman community were extinguished and, at first light of the new year (the kalends of March being the ancient new year), the vestals kindled a new fire with wood friction. From this fire, which they would tend ceaselessly for the rest of the year, all the other fires were relighted.