For the last year or more, Caecilia had been Virgo Maxima, the head of the college. Though seldom seen, she had prestige and privileges equal to those of any princess of other nations. She alone of all the vestals had the right to visit alone with a man. All others were required to have at least one chaperone. A vestal who was found to be unchaste suffered a uniquely horrible punishment: She was placed in a tiny, underground cell with a little food and water, after which the cell was covered with earth.
Their temple may have been small, but their house, the Atrium Vestae, was the most splendid palace in Rome. It lay near the temple and like all Roman residences had a facade as plain as a warehouse, whitewashed plaster over brick. The interior was far different.
A slave girl admitted me at the door—for obvious reasons, all the slaves were female—and rushed off to tell the Virgo Maxima that an official had called. The interior was entirely sheathed in pristine white marble. Skylights illuminated wall frescoes depicting the complex rites of the goddess. Everywhere the emphasis was on beauty and simplicity, richness without ostentation. It was as if a fine Tuscan villa had been transported to Rome and enlarged to palace size. I might add that it was and remains the only such palace in Rome. Good taste has never been a prominent Roman virtue.
“Decius, how good to see you.” I turned to see my aunt coming through a side door. She was about fifty, but a life free of worldly cares and ehildbearing had left her looking many years younger. Her face was unlined and preternatu-rally serene.
“I am most honored that you receive me, Reverend Lady,” I said, bowing.
"Oh, let’s have none of that. You may be a public official, but you are still my great-nephew.”
“You have a great many of those, Aunt,” I said, smiling.
“We are a numerous family, it is true, but I get to see so few of them, especially the males. Most especially the young males. If you only knew how your female relatives come here to gossip, though. Now come with me and tell me everything.”
To my amazement, she took my hand and all but dragged me to a small visiting room furnished with comfortable chairs and its own fire burning in a central brazier. From a woman of such great dignity I had expected the sort of hieratic behavior one sees the vestals displaying at the great festivals, when they seem to be statues of the goddesses come to life. Instead she was behaving—I could think of no better way to put it—like an aunt.
Before we could come to the business at hand, I had to bring her up to date on my own doings, my sisters’ marriages, my father’s career and so forth. My mother had died some years before, or I might have been there all day. A slave brought us little cakes and watered wine.
“Now,” she said when she was sated with family gossip, “your letter mentioned sensitive matters of state. We vestals have been committed to the service of the state since before the Republic existed. The earliest vestals were the daughters of the kings. You may be sure that I will always do what is correct for the state.” She said this simply and sincerely, a great relief from the patriotic platitudes mouthed by most of my contemporaries.
“Ten days ago,” I began, “certain state papers were brought here for safekeeping. Those papers involve a Senate investigation of a man who was murdered. The murder occurred during the night, and the papers were brought here before first light that morning, before I was even notified by the vigiles of the killing. That evidence is being deliberately withheld from me.”
She looked very confused. “I took charge of those documents myself, but except for the hour I saw no irregularity. Of course, it is commonly wills that are deposited here, but other official documents are sometimes kept by us as well: treaties and the like. But this is a sacred trust.”
“Perhaps I should explain.” I began to tell her of the many events of the past few days. I had not gone halfway through them when she said something that surprised me greatly, although it should not have.
“It’s that man Pompey, isn’t it?” I nodded, dumbfounded, and she continued. “I knew his mother, a dreadful woman. And his father, Strabo. Did you know that Strabo was killed by lightning?”
“I had heard.”
She nodded as if this were tremendously relevant, and perhaps it was. I proceeded with my narration, a list of murders and corruptions that could have stolen the light from the brightest day. By the end of the tale it seemed only fitting that it was now dark outside.
She sat silent for a while, then: “Pompey. And those awful Claudians. How can an ancient patrician family keep producing madmen and traitors generation after generation?” She shook her head. “Now, Decius, you’ve told me what you have seen and experienced. Tell me where you suspect all this is leading.” I had been expecting to find a rather naive old lady, and had seldom been more mistaken in my expectations.
"I hesitate to tell you, but because of what I am going to ask you to do—” She shut me off with an angry gesture.
“I am no fool! You are going to ask for a look at those papers. If you expect me to commit a serious breach of trust, for which I will have to endure a lengthy ritual purification, you had better show me that the danger to the state warrants it!”
Obviously, I was going to have to be frank. “I believe that Pompey and Crassus are sending Publius Claudius to Asia to suborn Lucullus’s troops. It’s a nasty business, but Lucullus can look out for himself. The rest is far worse. I think they are making an arrangement with the pirates to attack Lucullus’s supply ships, perhaps even his troop transports.”
I could see the shock spread over her face, and for a moment I felt guilty. Old Roman that she was, she had to perceive this as a direct assault by traitors against loyal soldiers of Rome. She probably did not understand that it had been a generation or more since the legions had held their first loyalty toward Rome. Their allegiance was to their generals, usually in direct proportion to the loot those generals provided them with. To Pompey and Crassus, and to most Romans, they were not attacking the Republic’s loyal soldiers; they were attacking Lucullus’s property.
“This is beyond belief,” Caecilia said. “Or it would be if it were anyone but Pompey.” Pompey had, after all, replaced her brother, a thing worse than defeat for a proud general. She looked at me sharply in the dim light. “And you, Decius? You live with this sort of evil every day. Why do you risk your career, your very life, for a general you have never met?”
"It isn’t Lucullus,” I said. “He seems to be a superior general. For all I know, his soldiers are bandits as bad as any in Pompey’s army, and most of them are probably foreigners to boot. But these people have committed three murders in my district. And I rather liked Paulus.”
“And is that all?” she asked.
I thought. Was it just my wounded sense of justice and a random liking for a man I had scarcely known? “No. I don’t want to see more than two hundred of Paulus’s slaves hanging on crosses outside the city walls.”
That seemed to satisfy something in her. “Wait here.” She rose from her chair and left the room. After a few minutes, a slave girl came in and lighted the lamps. Then Caecilia returned with a small wooden box, which she placed on a table before me. “I will be back in an hour.” She left the room again.
My fingers trembled slightly as I opened the box, breaking the wax seal of the Senate with its embossed letters: SPQR. Inside were three small scrolls of superior papyrus. Each bore the names of the Consuls of the year, the Senator who had been in charge of the investigation, and the scribe. The scribe in each case had been different, and none of them was employed by the Senate. Probably they were the personal scribes of the Senators. Two of the Senators were well-known adherents of Pompey and had served in his legions. They were nonentities who had earned their purple stripes by serving as quaestors and would never be praetors without Pompey’s patronage. The investigations went back four years, only the most recent having taken place during the Consulate of Pompey and Crassus. I took the earliest scroll and untied its string.
It was ba
ld and brief. The investigator was Senator Marcus Marius. I knew him slightly. He was a distant relative of the great Gaius Marius, and like him had only two names because the gens Marii did not use cognomens. It stated that the Senator had been told by a quaestor that Paramedes of Antioch, an alien resident in the city, had been visited by several foreign persons who were under surveillance as suspicious characters. Paramedes was known to be an agent for the pirates, but these foreigners were in the entourage of the visiting ambassador from Pontus. The Senator’s investigation (a wretchedly perfunctory proceeding) had determined that Paramedes was most probably an agent and spy for King Mithridates of Pontus. As a piece of investigation, it ranked with what an ordinary citizen says about the weather when he steps out of the baths and looks at the clouds.
The second scroll was of considerably greater interest. The investigator was difficult to make out because of a slip of the scribe’s pen, botching the nomen in a great smear of ink. Luckily, the praenomen was readable—Mamercus. This meant that it had to be the Senator Mamercus Aemilius Capita, because only the gens Aemilii used the praenomen Mamercus. This report related that the Senator had been directed by none other than the Urban Praetor of that year, Marcus Licinius Crassus, to make contact with Paramedes of Antioch. This was, in fact, not an investigation at all. Crassus wanted to question the man personally, at his quarters near Messina. Capito was acting merely as an errand boy to bring Paramedes to Crassus.
In those long-ago days of the Republic, the highest magistrates, Consuls and praetors, were all holders of the im-perium, the ancient military power of kings, and any of them could take an army into the field. Spartacus had defeated the consular army under Gellius and Clodianus. Crassus, who had served under Sulla, had been chosen as the next commander to keep Spartacus occupied while word was sent to Spain to bring back Pompey and his veteran legions.
Capito reported that he had located Paramedes and had delivered him, as directed, to Crassus’s camp. This much was of interest, but the next part was even better. The day after delivering Paramedes to Crassus, Capito had ridden a short distance up the coast, escorting Paramedes to a small fishing village. There, the Asiatic-Greek had taken a boat, returning the next day with a very young envoy from the pirate fleet, at that time in the straits of Messina dickering with Spartacus for passage to freedom. No name was mentioned, but the description fitted Tigranes the Younger.
Capito returned both men to Crassus’s praetorium, but did not attend the meeting which followed. Several hours later he escorted the young pirate envoy back to the fishing village and saw him off on his boat. There the report ended.
I was severely disappointed. Thus far, I had nothing that I did not already know or surmise. The conspirators must have panicked and sequestered anything in the Senate records with the name Paramedes on it. Was it for this that I had made my great-aunt commit sacrilege? I took up the third scroll.
The names of Pompey and Crassus were written on this one, Pompey’s complete with his self-chosen cognomen: “Magnus.” It was typical of the man’s gall that he named himself “the Great,” although he later claimed that it was Sulla who had thus hailed him, and that a name granted by a Dictator was legal. To crown it all, he passed the name on to his male heirs in perpetuity, but they never amounted to anything.
The reporting Senator was Quintus Hortensius Hortalus. I put the scroll down and drew a deep breath. Hortalus was my father’s patron and, by extension, my own. Disgrace and exile for him would mean severe consequences for us, even though we were in no way involved in this conspiracy. At least, I hoped that my father was not involved. I opened the scroll. I read it through quickly, like a man lancing an infected wound, wishing to get the pain over with quickly. This was not as easy as it might sound. Hortalus gave very florid speeches, in what was known as the Asiatic style. He wrote the same way. Even in a confidential report, he wrote as if he were holding spellbound a jury in one of his innumerable defenses of ex-governors charged with corruption. Such writing reads very strangely now, since Caesar’s bald and unor-namented yet elegant style revolutionized Latin prose. Between them, Caesar’s books and Cicero’s speeches utterly changed the language as it was taught in my youth. But Hortalus was extravagant even for those days. This report is worth setting down verbatim, as I remember it even after all these years, both for its content and to display Hortalus’s inimitable style.
In Duty to the Senate and People of Rome Conscript Fathers:
[Actually, this was to be seen by the Consuls alone.]
Between the kalends of November, when Jove chastens
mortal pride with thunder most terrifying, lightning most
deadly, and the commencement of the Plebeian Games,
which make gay the hearts of the populace in that seasonwhen first radiant Proserpine descends to the bed of her dread husband, Pluto, [The ink was barely dry on this one, I thought.] I, the Senator Quintus Hortensius Hor-talus, held converse with the royal youth Tigranes, from that land where first fall the rays of Helios, while gloom of night still lies upon the temple roofs of the city of Quirinus. [So the smarmy little bugger’s been in Rome since the first of November, eh? I thought.]
Our conversation touched upon the overweening pride of that military brigand, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, and of how that pride may be humbled. Lucullus and his mercenary bands, not content with the spoil of Asia, like the flesh-eating horses of Diomedes, have cast their rapacious eyes upon rich Pontus, and even unto splendid Armenia, seat of the youth’s royal father. The valiant Tigranes the Younger, who of choice has forsaken the luxury of a prince’s life to seek his fortune upon the wine-dark kingdom of Neptune, has offered the services of his adventurous and high-spirited companions, for the sons of Neptune may venture where the sons of Mars cannot. Under his direction, these bold descendants of Ulysses will harry the transports of Lucullus as they ply the foamy realm of the Earthshaker. In return for this, they are to be free of Roman interference for the space of two years. The prince himself wishes, as a friend of Rome, to be supported in his claim to the jeweled throne of Armenia, from which his father has debarred him. As he is grandson to Mithridates of Pontus through his mother, he will be most pleased to rule that land as subject-king when Roman arms have prevailed against the perfidious Oriental. [I’ll just bet he would be, I thought. All of the kingdom and none of the fighting.]
To all this proposal I listened with sympathetic ear, and it is my advice, which you may attend as did the Grecian chiefs to the advice of Nestor of old, that this plan be adopted. It seems a simple and efficient means of both subduing the unruly Lucullus and bringing Roman domination and civilizing influence to the benighted land of fire-worshipping barbarians. For, make no mistake, it shall be the seven-hilled city of Romulus that is supreme lord over all, regardless of which jeweled and scented pseudo-Greek lounges lethargically upon the garish and vulgar thrones of those nations.
As young Tigranes is not officially recognized in the city, and as such recognition would be an affront to his royal father, with whom we are not yet at war, he wears, as it were, the helmet of Pluto, which grants the wearer invisibility. He resides for now at the house of Paramedes of Antioch, whom you know. Should you wish to look with favor upon his proposal, I shall undertake to provide young Tigranes with a limited and unofficial debut in Rome, perhaps through a dinner party attended by a diverse company, drawn from all parties and persuasions.
It is desirable to remove Paramedes from these proceedings as soon as possible, for I know that he is playing a double game, in collusion with Mithridates. I have already made arrangements for this, which shall be executed as soon as I have your agreement and young Tigranes has removed to his new quarters. The person entrusted with this delicate mission is well-known to you, having carried out other such missions in the past.
I await your reply.
I rerolled the scroll, happy to see that my hands had stopped shaking. Gradually, things were falling into place. Paramedes had been murdered as soon
as Tigranes had moved to the house of Publius Claudius. It was probably Publius who had been entrusted with the murder, since he was a part of the conspiracy, had his own squad of thugs and simply liked that sort of activity. Something struck me as I closed the lid of the box: The light-footed, nimble-fingered, garrote-wielding foreign boy who was working so much mischief in Rome was probably in the entourage of the versatile Tigranes.
My aunt bade me farewell at the entrance. “Was I justified in letting you see documents entrusted to the goddess?”
“You may have saved Rome,” I assured her.
“Then I am satisfied.” As I was about to leave, she stopped me. “Tell me one thing.”
I turned back. “Yes?”
“That scarf. Is it the new fashion for men to wear them?”
“The very latest,” I assured her. “The military look. Our adventurous generals and their troops are all the rage these days. Soldiers wear them to spare their necks chafing from the armor.”
“Oh. I was wondering.”
I turned and went down the steps, into another dark Roman night.
10
THE NEXT DAY,AFTER MY MORNING duties were taken care of, I sought out expert legal advice. Hortalus was deemed the best lawyer in Rome, but with good reason I was reluctant to seek him out for this, so I looked for Marcus Tullius Cicero, who I was certain was not’ involved in the conspiracy. My search was made easier because one of the augurs had detected unfavorable omens the night before and had canceled public business for the day.
SPQR I: The Kings Gambit Page 17