“I don’t understand, dominus. Why all this subterfuge?”
“Ah, Tranio!” Crassus exclaimed. “Always a welcome intrusion.”
The wine steward entered with two assistants, the first of whom handed each of us large, double-handled silver cup. “I have a nose not only for the best vintages,” Tranio said, “but for where in the house they are most needed.” The second assistant approached and filled a third of each cup with water, and finally Tranio himself, cradling the amphora as if it were a baby, completed the ceremony. He waited, a barely restrained puppy, while dominus drank. Crassus knew his steward well enough to feign a heart attack of joy before dismissing the man. Even when the wine was mediocre, the praise might yet be effusive, for their was nothing more glum than a pouting Tranio.
When the steward had left, humming contentedly, dominus asked to be reminded where we were in our conversation. “Why not throw your support to the optimates?” I said. “They have had their man for months. Domitius has promised to recall Caesar if elected and strip him of his army and provinces. Isn’t that what we want? Why aren’t we supporting him for consul?”
“I cannot break with Caesar; my preparations are not complete. Caesar could return from Gaul and easily stir up a majority of senators to retake control of the senate. Or worse, if he thinks our alliance is broken and that he cannot rely on my influence, he might come back not as a politician, but as a general at the head of his army. He wants Parthia, but Gaul has not yet been subdued. I must give him no reason to abandon the West. Let him keep his focus on the Moreni and the Menapii while I take the initiative to deprive him of the East. The only way to accomplish this is to feign amity between the three of us until Pompeius and I are consuls.”
“Then what is holding the optimates back? If your names have not been taken, why does not Lentulus simply call the election without you? The year will soon be over and he will have to lay down the fasces.”
“Precisely. Alexander, I don’t think you’re spending enough time at the baths.” Crassus’ grin was vexing.
“Dominus?”
“Lentulus plans to call for elections before the month is out. His intentions must be frustrated. Do you know the baths of Numa?”
“A small balnea that caters to mixed bathing. A disreputable establishment.”
“The tribune Gaius Cato is a regular patron.”
“So are thieves and whores.”
“We will not debate the man’s morality, but rather applaud how he chooses to interpret it.”
Understanding dawned and I said, “The tribune of the plebs may veto any call for elections.”
“It is his habit to take the waters daily at the seventh hour. Meet him there,” Crassus said, extracting a scroll that protruded from the pile of senatorial wool on the floor, “and give him this. Discreetly. He’ll know you by your plaque.”
I took the proffered papyrus, wound about its thin spool of polished ebony and tried to imagine how many zeroes were cavorting with one another beneath its seal on the letter of credit. “Surrender it into tribune Cato’s hands alone,” Crassus said. “Take Betto and Malchus with you.”
“Malchus!” Hanno cried.
“That’s right, Malchus,” I said.
“I like Malchus.”
“I know you do.”
“Not Betto. He makes me confused. He talks too fast.”
“That’s enough now. Let dominus and me finish our conversation. Afterward, we’ll go to the kitchen and find some grapes.”
“Green or red?”
“Hannibal!” Crassus snapped.
Hanno dropped his head, pulled the brush from his belt and drew it over and over again through the tail of his hair. Two large wet circles appeared on the tiles at his feet. “Excuse me, dominus,” I said. I padded naked to the wall where the boy stood.
“Father Jupiter defend me!” Crassus cried.
Hanno threw his arms about me as I comforted him, assuring him that dominus meant no harm. I looked back to where Crassus stewed. “I’m certain lady Tertulla would be grateful if you apologized.”
Dominus’ eyes narrowed. “Apologies, Hannibal,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have shouted.”
I stepped aside, holding Hanno’s claw of a hand. “That’s all right, Father Jupiter,” he sniffed. “I forgive you.”
“Now, just a …”
“There now, feeling better, aren’t we?” I said, stifling a laugh. “You wait here, Hannibal, while Father Jupiter and I finish talking, then we’ll go to the kitchen as promised. There’s a good fellow.”
I sat down smiling.
“You are never to call me that, do you hear?” Crassus said under his breath.
“One can see how the boy might be confused.”
“Never,” Crassus hissed. “And you are never to speak of it.”
“By the Vestals, I swear,” I said, still working at ironing the grin from my face. “Where were we?”
“About to bribe the tribune of the plebs to forestall the elections.”
“Yes. We will continue,” Crassus said, “to thwart Lentulus as often as we must till his term expires.”
“And then an interrex? But who?”
Crassus nodded. “Who knows? A man who will put our case before the comitia with more enthusiasm than our diligent but misguided consuls.”
“The interregnum can last no more than five days. How long can this persist?”
“Until we find an interrex who sees things our way, but I should think that by the end of Januarius, the people will have had enough of the upheaval this regrettable ploy is bound to ignite, and will rise up to plead for a return to normalcy. I ask you, who in this city is more a bastion of normalcy than I?”
Abruptly, Crassus’ bearing relaxed into almost childish excitement. “Now, prepare yourself for the best news of all: Publius returns within a week!”
“Dominus!”
“Arrange for a banquet during the festival of Jupiter. A perfect occasion for a celebration.”
“How did you manage to pry The Bane of Aquitania away from Caesar?”
“The legions are preparing to take up winter quarters; the great general can spare my son, surely. What?”
My incredulity was showing. “Dominus, Caesar would never release his most celebrated lieutenant for a family reunion, no matter how well-deserved. The tribes of Gaul are as yet unsubdued.”
“As are the people of this city.”
So that was it. “I see. And how many will be in Publius’ party?”
“A goodly number. Caesar writes that he rides at the head of twelve cohorts, something more than five thousand legionaries.”
“Something more than five thousand votes, if I take your meaning.”
“Bright as ever, bright as ever,” he said. As he rose from his chair, Crassus tousled my hair. I hated it when he did that. “Don’t tell domina,” he said, bending to scoop up the folds of his toga, carrying it in both arms like a pile of laundry. “She could do well with a surprise such as this.”
“Help dominus,” I told Hanno. He leapt from his post at the wall, but Crassus shook his head.
“Tend to your master,” he said, winking at me. I hated it when he did that, too. “He looks wet.”
Somehow, within a day, everyone in the familia had heard about Hanno and Father Jupiter. It is inexplicable how fast confidential news such as this manages to travel.
Chapter V
56 BCE Fall, Rome
Year of the consulship of
Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus
“You used to be skinny,” I said to legionary Drusus Malchus as we walked down the Clivus Victoriae off the Palatine. Malchus was stuffing the remains of a meat pie into his mouth.
His voice was pleasantly irritating, like a stroll over crushed gravel. “You used to be handsome,” he said, “but you don’t hear me casting insults at you, do you?” He licked each of his fingers, one at a time.
“We just did,” sai
d Flavius Betto. Far shorter than either Malchus or myself, legionary Betto took almost two strides to our one to keep his place between us. His pace was additionally hampered by his struggle to keep his short sword hidden behind his cloak.
A third guard, Minucius Valens, dressed like the rest of us in inconspicuous tunic and cloak, prodded Betto from behind. “Move smartly, Betto. The girls are waiting.”
“May I assist you, Flavius?” I asked, trying to be helpful.
“I’ve got it,” he said, yanking his baldric across his shoulder.
“That’s why Betto can’t get laid without reaching for a few coins,” Valens said. “Under the coverlet, his girlfriends keep asking the same thing.” He sang in high-pitched mimicry of an annoyed woman, “‘May I assist you, Flavius.’ He never could figure out where to put it! Maybe you’ll have better luck with your gladius, but it looks like the only thing you’ll penetrate with that sword is your scabbard!” Valens, a stocky man no taller than Betto, but thick of arms, chest and wit, thought his jest hilarious.
“You’ve missed your calling, Minucius,” Betto replied calmly. “With the amount of pigeon shit coming out of your mouth, you’d have made a superb ornatrix, bleaching the hair of dainty ladies.” Valens stopped laughing, and the rest of us did our best not to start.
“Gentlemen,” I said, looking pointedly at Minucius Valens. “There will be no time for fraternization. We make the delivery to the tribune and return as quickly as possible.”
I did not know Valens well; he had been among Crassus' guards for a year at least, but there were just so many servants in dominus’ employ, it was impossible to know everyone on a personal level. Not so Drusus Quintilius Malchus and Flavius Salvius Betto. I had known these two estimable characters ever since coming to the house of Crassus.
Malchus’ calm and sage counsel had seen me through many a difficult night in my first frightened and perturbed days in servitude. He poured home-grown cold reason on my overheated despair: a slave I was, but in Rome, there were slaves, and then there were the slaves of Crassus. I should make offerings, he had said, to whatever gods or goddesses who watched over me that I had washed up on this patrician’s shore. From the look of me when first I was brought to the auction block, I would not have lasted a week had I been sold to one of the big farms, or the mines, or any one of a thousand crueler masters. I was one of the lucky ones, he had said, and I had better learn to be content with my lot.
It was true, Malchus had been lean and lanky in those frantic days, just like me, but after a year living the softer life of a guard at the Crassus residence, the man who had helped acclimate me to my fate had been thoroughly consumed by his consumption. I had never seen anyone so in love with food. Because of his height, he could not be called ‘fat,’ but the man had become big. To those that called him ‘friend,’ and there were many, he was known as Malchus the Mighty. But he was gentle and kind, and his calm was almost impossible to penetrate.
Then there was wiry, fretful Betto. He, unlike Malchus, was democratic in pothering equally over every matter, whether large or small. But he was fierce and loyal, and once, not long after my arrival as a newly-minted slave, he had saved my life. The two friends had joined up with Crassus to help Sulla defeat Marius. They were rarely out of each other’s sight. This, though they were almost constantly in disagreement. Betto was river to Malchus’ riverbed. They gave each other form and direction; one without the other would make the world a little less tolerable.
•••
Romans are always at war with somebody. The one that eventually brought Malchus and Betto into the welcoming arms of Marcus Crassus and my grateful company was known as The War of the Allies. Slaughter, when given a name, sounds so much more palatable, digestible. No bloodstained, breathless participant, I can assure you, ever stopped to consider what sobriquet history might bestow upon the present melee while he was in the thick of it.
This particular conflagration had been smoldering for decades, breaking out just a few years before I was taken from Greece. Most of the Italian states, who for centuries had been Roman allies, were of the opinion that Rome had begun to cheat them out of their share of the spoils of war. It had. Because of a handful of Roman laws, the Italian states surmised that their land was methodically and legally being taken from the innocent multitude and redistributed to the wealthy and avaricious. It was. And after all they had done to assist in the growth of Rome’s power and influence, the Latin allies felt they were deserving, at long last, of Roman citizenship. They were.
And so, being thus thwarted and abused, after a time they went to war against the teat that had fed them and then been discourteously withdrawn. They lost. Before the fighting had ended, in an effort to dilute the rebellious Italians’ grievances, the senate passed a law granting citizenship to all former allies who had not raised arms against Rome. This occurred when Malchus and Betto were in their late teens. With more exuberance than forethought, the two friends who had grown up together on the same Perusian street, celebrated by breaking into a wine shop. Consequently, they were ‘encouraged’ by the local garrison to join its ranks. Due to the ongoing rebellion the hurdles of their both being underage and of Betto’s need for thick-soled sandals to meet the height requirement were amiably removed.
Finding that they liked the life of a soldier well enough, they had joined dominus’ army as it rushed to Sulla’s aid to overthrow the tyrants Marius and Cinna, and had stayed on with him ever since. The only time the two soldiers shed their duty as part of the company that guarded the Crassus household was the year and half they had gone off with him to put down the slave rebellion lead by the gladiator, Spartacus.
There being no other viable option, and here I use ‘viable’ in the literal sense, i.e. capable of remaining alive, I took Malchus’ advice, and now, almost three decades after my capture, I strolled with my companions past estates, expensive shops and other wealthy pedestrians traveling the paving stones of the privileged. Citizens nodded politely to me, shopkeepers gave me a warm greeting as I passed; a fruit seller tossed me a plum and smiled. I was welcomed here and accepted—there goes Alexander, chief slave of Marcus Licinius Crassus. What a lucky fellow! It was a brisk, sunny morning, and I smiled as I put the plum in Malchus’ outstretched hand. It was good to be alive.
No, nothing sinister is about to happen; I truly was as thankful as a virgin chosen for the Vestals to be out and about, amongst friends and entrusted to dispatch a weighty charge. But then, being thankful implies the existence of a repository for this syrupy, effusive gratitude, and since my enslavement had cleansed me of any pretensions of belief in benevolent deities watching over me, I wondered to whom my respects ought to be paid. Unfortunately, the only name I could come up with was Crassus. He was as close to a god as I was likely ever to meet. Father Jupiter, indeed. To be a happy slave in a foreign land is to be as plagued with ironies as Hanno was infested with lice when we found him. One is a constant irritant that distracts your attention, fills you with frustration, nags at your enjoyment of any good thing, and if you have any self esteem at all, is a condition of constant humiliation and shame. And to be lice-ridden is a remarkably similar experience.
Oh. I must correct myself, and I do apologize. Something sinister is about to happen. More than one something, in point of fact.
Our route lay across the forum and then northeast. The first time I had seen its broad plazas framed by temples and civic buildings of brick and stone, my awe had been tempered by my exhaustion and malnutrition. Since then, every time my sandals trod upon its worn black stones, I harkened back to the day I had been dragged past the sight of the beating heart of Rome, thirty years earlier. At the time, my own heart was more beaten than beating, led behind the horse of a magnificent centurion to be presented as a multi-lingual gift from a grateful general, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, to his heroic legate Marcus Licinius Crassus. I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his ha
rvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on some distant, ruined field, defending the honor and the ever-expanding borders of the Republic? What we foreigners have failed to comprehend over the centuries is that the proud centurion would have found either fate equally satisfying. This is why Rome grows, and the rest of the world shrinks.
Chapter VI
56 BCE Fall, Rome
Year of the consulship of
Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus
If there was grumbling over my insistence that our mission remain strictly business, I could not hear it, for as we crossed the Nova Via at the southeastern border of the forum, a great tumult was occurring at the other end. The echoes of a man in a toga gesticulating on the rostra rolled down to us, held aloft by distant cheers from the crowd.
“What’s that about?” Betto asked with his usual anxiety.
“Keep moving,” I said. “It is either Clodius Pulcher or Annius Milo, riling up their respective mobs.”
“Are we safe?” Betto asked.
“Clodius feigns championship of the plebs, and Pompey has brought Milo up to oppose him, so either side should be content with men of Crassus.”
Betto said, “So this is a polite throng, is it? They’ll stop to ask us who we support before they club us to death. That’s comforting.”
Malchus said, “Within the hour it won’t be safe to be anywhere near the forum, no matter whose side you’re on.”
“Which is why we must make haste.” The narrow box I gripped felt suddenly heavy.
“What’s all the ruckus about, anyway?” Valens asked. “Clodius hates Milo because Milo is Pompey’s man, Milo hates Clodius because he forced Cicero into exile, and just about everybody but Milo hates Cicero. Politics is easy once you know who hates who.”
A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven Page 6