Betto, who had picked up the pace once he got sight of the crowd, said, “We need elections. If we had consuls by now, we’d have order. The gods hate anarchy. I hate anarchy—it interferes with my peace of mind.”
“Everything interferes with your peace of mind,” Malchus said.
Moments later, even before we had crossed over to the Sacra Via, three ravens flew overhead, one following the other. “Did you see that?!” Betto cried. “Pray the augurs were looking elsewhere. As bad omens go, that one excels, mark me.”
“Just do your job,” Malchus said, his face set.
We headed northeast toward the Esquiline and before long turned on to the Vicus Sandaliarius. The street was choked with commerce, the smell of leather and men who balanced piles of hides on their shoulders—deer and cattle and pig. The tanning workrooms and smithies were open to the street, but other stretches kept their secrets behind unmarked doors and blank walls littered with graffiti. Shopkeepers were cranking down their awnings; those directly across from each other almost touched above the worn paving stones, concealing those beneath in yellow shade.
We were making our way through the throng when I felt a sharp tug at my neck. I looked back just in time to see Valens deliberately trip a poor fellow heading in the opposite direction. The man scrambled to his feet with dagger in hand. That was unmannerly, I thought. Perhaps it was an accident; in any case Valens should apologize. The thin, unwashed creature crouched in a fighting stance, looking for his assailant. To my surprise, a second man joined him, also armed, the hole where his left eye had been drawing as much of my attention as his knife. Street traffic recoiled in an arc around them, but Valens stepped into the open space. All at once, it became eerily quiet. Good, Valens will say his obligatories and we can be on our way. The one-eyed man spoke first. “Go about your business, now, there’s a good fellow.”
“I am about my business,” Valens said. “That’s a fine purse you’ve got strung about your neck.”
“Move off,” the first man threatened, “or we’ll stripe you good and all.”
Valens ignored him and pointed to the second man. “What’s that there? Why it looks like a bulge in your tunic. A purse-shaped bulge, or I’ll kiss Laverna’s chalk-white ass. Seems like one’d be enough for any honest man.”
“We’re done talkin’,” said the one-eyed man. The two of them moved toward Valens, who casually reached inside his cloak and withdrew his gladius. Three eyes widened. Before One-eye and his friend could even contemplate a change in tactics, Valens was bracketed by Betto and Malchus, each with swords drawn.
“Now,” Valens said, pointing with the bright tip of his weapon, “put your toothpicks away and hand it over.” One-eye glowered at his partner, muttering “idiot” to his partner as he reached inside his tunic and tossed over my purse. Before I could stop myself, I foolishly put my hand to my neck to feel for the pouch I already knew was no longer there. I truly am a lackwit.
“Wait a minute,” Malchus said. “This one’s no good; the strap is cut.”
Betto said, “So it is! Lucky for us that one looks serviceable enough. Hang it here.” Betto waggled his blade just below One-eye’s chin. The pilferer removed his own bag and with infinite reluctance draped it over the sword. This time the look he gave the other cutpurse was genuinely lethal. “There’s a good lad,” Betto said. “But we’re not thieves, you know. We’ll just take what’s owed us.” With that he sheathed his sword, opened the thief’s purse and dumped its contents on the street. We melted back into the crowd; people began moving again, but continued to give the two men kneeling in the street a wide berth.
“Atriensis,” Malchus said as we moved off, “with respect, never walk down a street like this without first tucking your valuables down the front of your tunic.”
“If I were him,” Valens said, “I wouldn’t walk down these streets at all, not without a few good men to guard him.”
Betto shook his head and rolled his eyes. “You mean like us?”
“Leave him be, Flavius,” Malchus said. “You were behind Alexander, too, and I didn’t see you stop them.”
“Thank you all, gentlemen,” I said, ending the conversation. I took both pouches, one full, one empty, and did as the big legionary advised, first tucking one inside the other. There were no other incidents on the street, and not long thereafter we came upon a door above which hung an oversized, iron strigil. We filed inside, but just before the door closed behind me, I thought I heard distant shouts rising above the general noise of the city.
This was no typical bathing establishment. In every balnea I had ever frequented, women’s and men’s facilities had always been separate. I am convinced this was more a function of prejudice than prudery: Roman men did not want their conversation or relaxation vexed by the intrusive and inconsequential interruptions of females. In this egalitarian establishment, however, it appeared that female presumptuousness was of a kind more easily welcomed by the ruling sex.
We stood in a small anteroom that led through another open doorway to the larger changing area. From somewhere beyond came music from a lyre and pipes. Also, sounds of laughter and play, from both sexes, could be heard not far off. “If Cato the Elder were not already in his grave these hundred years,” Betto said, “this would put him in it.”
“Why’s that?” Valens asked.
“Because he was such an insufferable prig he wouldn’t even allow his son into his own presence when he bathed.”
“It’s a miracle he ever had a son,” Valens said.
“Well spoken,” Betto allowed.
A bald old man, whose weathered face and arms perfectly matched the namesake of the street in which he worked, sat behind a small table. Behind him, a bored looking guard leaned against the red-painted wall. The baths manager looked up and scanned the four of us, his gaze finally coming to rest disconcertingly on me. He narrowed his eyes and rubbed his chin, considering. Could this look of disapproval be directed at me? I looked behind me, but there was no one else there. “Hmphh,” he said at last. “Four of you. That’ll be four sesterces.”
“What?” Betto objected, too loudly, as usual. “I’ve never paid more than a quarter of an as.” The guard pushed himself off the wall, no longer bored.
“That will be fine,” I said, placing the equivalent, a single silver denarius on the table.
“The baths of Numa are worth every as,” said the ancient balneator, who I believe meant to wink at us but was struck by a fit of coughing. When he recovered, he tapped the coin with an age-lined nail and said, “You’d better have brought more than this, though, unless all you want to do is bathe.”
“Actually,” I said, leaning over the table and lowering my voice, “I’m trying to locate a particular individual.”
Looking as if all his suspicions had just been confirmed, the balneator scooped the coin off the table and put it in his box. He scratched the stubble underneath his chin and said, “There’s no one here.”
“Really? No one?” said Betto. I held up my hand to keep his lips from raining further alienation down upon us.
The old man said, “No one with four big men looking for him.” He squinted at Betto. “Three, anyways.”
I reached into my purse and tossed an aureus on the table; we all listened to the lovely, dull clunk of its contact with the wood. It lay there silently, but each of us understood its secret language: “Look at me,” it sighed, “isn’t gold the most enchanting and wondrous of all colors?”
“First one of them I’ve seen all week,” said the balneator, leaving the coin where it had come to rest, but eyeing it greedily. “He’ll get lonely, he will.” I placed a second precisely on top of the first. Apparently, a bargain had been struck. The old man looked up with the gentle, querying interest of a librarian, and at the same time, without taking his eyes off mine, deftly swept the gold from the table and into his tunic, neatly circumventing the receipts box.
“Tribune Gaius Cato?” I said.
&nb
sp; “Try the calidarium. He’ll be the one with the most food at hand. Nipples the size of my fist. Go through the changing area, past the tepidarium and the massage rooms, then across the palaestra. Mind the large frigidarium; it’s empty for cleaning. The small one’s still available…though I don’t suppose that’s of any interest to you gentlemen. The calidarium is at the back, next to the toilets.”
We went through into the crowded changing room where I did my best to ignore a man and woman who appeared to be changing vigorously and simultaneously at close quarters. Slaves guarded the cubbyholes where patrons had stored their belongings; in fact, there appeared to be more attendants than bathers. We were just about to pass into the spacious tepidarium when I heard a laugh and stopped short. I told the others to go find the tribune and walked out through the colonnade onto the palaestra. The large courtyard was open to the sky, at one moment lit brilliantly by the early afternoon sun, thrown into shadow the next by passing clouds. To my right was the empty swimming pool; its painted concrete bottom was quite deep. To my left, half a dozen men were lifting dumbbells and several more were wrestling on the packed earth. At the far end of the courtyard, nearest the street entrance, two games of trigon were in progress, but it was the one being played by three bare-breasted women that drew my attention. I might not have noticed had it not been for a shaft of sunlight that momentarily illuminated one of the players. There was only one woman I knew with hair that shade of red.
“Livia?” I asked incredulously, walking briskly toward them.
“Ow!” she cried, distracted by me and hit hard by the ball thrown by the young lady to her left. She rubbed her right shoulder, realized who had called her name and exclaimed, “Alexander! What are you doing here?” Her arms crossed almost involuntarily, pressing against her breasts.
“Oh, Livvy, I am so sorry. Shall I count those three points? No, of course not. Why are you covering your…oh.” The girl who trotted up to see if “Livvy” was all right was no slave. A Roman woman could exude just as much of the aura of power and privilege as a Roman man, even one who looked to be no more than seventeen. This one’s dark brown hair was threaded with gold links to hold it aloft. Her nails and toes were painted and obviously pampered; around her throat she wore a fine necklace with a gold and lapis Egyptian ankh. The two attendants from the game ran up and wrapped both women in thin linen towels, which somehow made their practically naked state even more immodest.
The third player trotted by, heading for the anointing room. “I’ve got to go anyway,” she called. “Thanks for the game!”
“Hey! I want a rematch next week,” Livia’s new acquaintance called back, waving. Then she turned to me and in that same silken voice of authority said, “I am Caecilia Metella, but my friends call me Cornelia.”
“I recognize you, mistress. My master is well-acquainted with your father and holds him in high regard. However—”
“However?”
I was furious, but could not speak my mind before the daughter of senator Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica. A hundred reprimands came spilling to the very tip of my braced and trembling tongue. I do not know what goddess held it still, but to her I give silent thanks. It would have to be a goddess, would it not? Circumspection is rare in men. I could not drag Livia from this indecent establishment, so I opted for a less physical alternative and introduced myself to her friend.
“I know who you are,” Cornelia Metella said, “and I apologize for stealing your Livia away.” My Livia? Had Livia confided some intimate thing to this young lady, or was my imagination spiraling out of control yet again? “Tertulla is housebound by order of her husband, but I never miss my weekly game of trigon. I met Livia with my parents at one of Tully’s dinner parties a few months ago. Marcus Licinius and lady Tertulla brought the new Crassus medicus to drum up business for her practice, which was very liberal of them, but after the introductions, everyone pretty much ignored her because, you know, she’s a slave.” (Editor’s note: Tully was a nickname for Marcus Tullius Cicero)
“Everyone except you,” Livia said.
“It’s not your fault,” lady Cornelia said indignantly. “I find it ridiculous that people refuse to associate with someone simply because of an accident of birth. I have friends my own age who aren’t half as smart or nearly as talented. I’ve been having Tertulla set Livia free as often as possible this past month.”
“I do recall now domina mentioning something about forgiving your absences. At last, I meet the young lady in the flesh,” I said. The two women laughed, first one way, and then another after I said, “What, have I misspoken?”
“Alexander, you are hopeless,” Livia said.
“I persuaded your domina to allow Livia to fill in today. She is an exemplary companion and quite the experienced athlete.”
“And thanks to Alexander,” Livia said, “I shall now have a bruise to prove it.”
“It was stupid of me to interrupt, but seeing you in this place…”
“What do you mean,” lady Cornelia asked, “‘this place?’”
“Don’t mind him,” Livia said. “Alexander is a bit of a prude.”
“That’s so sweet.” Sweet. Just the sort of compliment every man lays awake nights hoping to hear.
“You needn’t worry,” lady Cornelia said with an impish smile. “It’s not like we were considering stealing any trade from the working girls. But occasionally, it is fun to watch, and to be watched. And don’t think I didn’t see, Livia.”
“See what?”
“That muscular beauty with the hairy chest in the game next to ours—he’s been eyeing you since we came onto the palaestra.”
“You are sadly mistaken, my lady.”
“You know it’s true. And I told you not to call me that.” I don’t know which was worse, Livia’s blush or my inability to keep my head from whipping around to spy out this rival. Why can’t I realize my mistakes before I make them? As I returned my gaze to the young domina, the heat began to rise in my own cheeks. Lady Cornelia was beaming up at me with a look that said, ‘I know all your secrets.’ “Besides,” she said aloud, “the Numa is perfectly safe.”
“That’s just it, lady Cornelia. Today, the streets are not safe. I am on an urgent errand for my master, accompanied by several men-at-arms. I will see you both safely home.”
“Nonsense. My man waits in the changing room. Livia’s never had a massage, and I mean to treat her. After which, I shall keep her company while she does some shopping.”
“Go, Alexander. I’ve discovered an herbalist only a few streets away who carries waneb root. I promise, I will let you know the moment I am home safe and sound.”
I hated leaving her, but what could I do? If I had found her alone, I could have ordered her to come with us. But now, in the presence of the patrician’s daughter, I was powerless. I bid them farewell and walked toward the rear of the balnea, skirting the empty pool. I found my own escorts standing in the hallway just outside the calidarium. Betto saw me approach and said, “There you are. Say, was that—”
“No. It was not. Why aren’t you in the calidarium?”
“Two reasons,” Valens said as he and Malchus joined us. “One, it’s hot, and two, he’s not in there.”
Malchus asked, “Weren’t you just talking to—”
“No, he wasn’t,” Betto said imperiously.
Malchus shrugged. “The tribune is through the calidarium in the sweat room. But we didn’t go in.”
“It’s a small room. You can’t miss him.”
I ignored Valens attempt at a joke which I did not comprehend and said, “All right. I’ll be out in a minute. Flavius, you come with me.”
“Can’t we wait till he’s finished,” Betto whined.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but no, there’s no time. Drusus, can you see if there’s a back way out of here? And Valens, you wait for us right here. By right here, I mean nowhere near the massage rooms. Is that clear?”
“Can he talk to us like that?” Valens asked.
The Mighty Malchus said, “He can if I say he can. Do what he says. If there’s trouble, then I’m senior legionary in command. Is that clear?”
Betto said, “Better you than me.”
We separated, and Betto and I crossed the calidarium. It was both hot and humid in this domed room, about twenty-five feet in diameter, its circular walls painted deep blue below the midpoint, rusty red above. To the left, steam rose from a sunken soaking tub in which two women lounged and perspired, eyes closed, backs against the edge, arms stretched along the rim in watery crucifixion. A cold water fountain bubbled in the center of the room to refresh those who required respite from the fires warming both floor and walls. From the heat radiating up through my thin sandals, my feet knew we must be very near the furnace room. To the right, a semi-circle of wooden benches hugged the wall, offering the only non-heated surface. Taking refuge there were two older men deep in conversation and one young woman, curled up like a cat, naked and asleep at the far end. I averted my eyes from another young man who was disentangling himself from his bearded lover, only to be assaulted by the sight that lay directly ahead.
The view beyond the archway into the torch-lit, semi-circular apse that was the smaller laconicum, or sweat room, rooted my sandals to the floor and caused me to lay hold of the edge of the fountain with counterfeit insouciance. The tribune Gaius Cato sat, or rather sprawled in the dim, flickering light, his hairless, gelatinous form enveloping half the only bench in the room. He was the center of a living frieze, a lounging symmetry of debauchery. A young woman and a younger boy tended to the man’s sloping breasts (the balneator had not exaggerated), one on either side of his shining corpulence. Rivulets of perspiration, brave explorers, circumnavigated the hemisphere of his gut. A third woman, kneeling with her back to us, her head bobbing between his thighs, held his midsection at bay with a straining forearm. Food was heaped everywhere, but nowhere more than in the tribune’s own hands. They swung slowly, methodically between tables behind the bench to deposit their loads beyond the pink fish lips and into the waiting abyss beyond. Driblets and crumbs of excess fell from his mouth and down his body, a sleet of food and wine.
A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven Page 7