Snip. Snip-snip.
Boom! Boom-boom-boom….
Which wasn’t thunder. Or hell’s occasional indigestion in the lower levels.
It was coming from the front of the villa, out on the street.
Or across the street, where Decentral Park’s graceful trees concealed a multitude of hell’s own problems.
It was worth wondering. Especially when it came again.
Artillery.
Damn it, it sounded for all the world…
Damn, damn, damn. He heard the yelling as a misshapen thing the size of a six-year-old child bounded over the yard’s back fence, from beside the driveway and raced past him to the sound of howling pursuit.
Imp. Niccolo had only seen a few in all his stint in hell, and this one was fast … encumbered as he was with a greasy paper bag from Hellzacre BarBQ.
A noisy black-pants mass was coming down the drive, across the gravel, and didn’t bother with the gate: they came over the fence, waving AK-47's and Tokarevs and screaming at the top of their lungs. Niccolo backed up, dropping the shears – and the basket of rose clippings, which rolled across the rose garden aisle, scattering thorny bits across the path of first the barefoot imp and then the barefoot Cong.
Coals of fire rained down, the imp’s doing, a veritable hail as the imp vaulted the back gate and splashed off across the flooded lawn. Howls of indignation went up from the Cong, and a volley of shots rang out and stitched across the grey flood – no damage to the imp.
The Cong went right over the fence and splashed after him, firing and howling, and leaving behind a confetti of rose debris and curls of white from the smoldering coals, where falling raindrops hissed and sent up steam, commingled with burning lawn.
The roses obliged with an instant spurt of green leaves and soft sprigs.
Hell’s roses were, if anything, tenacious, especially if abused. Sprigs grew from every angle, pale green and vigorous.
“Dannazione!” Niccolo cried. And it was a good bet when the Cong gave up tracking the imp they’d be back, right across the same route to Decentral Park. “Dannazione!” He snatched up the shears and the empty basket, and began gathering up the clippings that now were scattered all the way to the back gate.
It thundered overhead. A spate of rain followed. And a third “Dannazione!” from Niccolo, whose fingers were bleeding from the thorns, and whose shirt and doublet were getting damp. A particularly chill gust sent him back toward the portico, with the intention of heading for the basement and rousting Dante Alighieri out of his library hunt, with threats of murder.
A car pulled up in the drive. Caesar and Cleopatra were back from a very essential quest, and that, momentarily, outranked thoughts of revenge. Niccolo set the basket and shears on a plinth and wiped his bleeding hands, standing by for a courteous little bow as the two came hurrying in out of the rain – Cleo in a smart cloche hat with a feather that was showing drops of rain, a trim little black skirt and smartly-seamed black nylons, Julius in a MacArthur jacket and a Red Sox cap.
“Where’s Augustus?” Julius asked.
“In his office, I believe, signore – anxious for news. Which one hopes is good.”
“Moderately,” Julius said. A Viet Cong shell boomed out, flew overhead, and burst somewhere beyond the garden gate. “Is the Cardinal at odds with the Cong?”
“An imp came through, signore. One believes it came from the Park.”
“There’s some sort of a tower in the Park, that wasn’t there this morning. A metal tower, straight up, like an antenna.”
“One has no idea,” Niccolo said. He hadn’t. He’d been working in the garden since breakfast. “I have not seen it.”
“Taller than any obelisk!” Cleo said. “A metal eyesore! And an imp! In this neighborhood!”
“One has no idea, signora. One has been preparing the garden. Or one was –” Niccolo cast a reluctant eye to the roses, lush and undisciplined, and sprouting shoots from every knot and branch of the tree roses. “– until the imp.” Another shell went over. Another explosion. “May we hope for Cicero, signori?”
“Hope is the word for it,” Julius said and headed off, Cleo close beside, snugging her purse under her arm. “I have to talk to Augustus. The wretch is wanting an apology.”
*
“Pro di immortales!” was Augustus’ predictable reaction, on the other side of the desk. “I didn’t kill him!”
“He is what he is,” Julius said with a shrug. “He is what he always was. I got along with him. Mostly. He’s an old Republican, he’s a vain old man … death didn’t youthen him a bit. We want something from him. He’s named a price. He wants an apology in the Hell’s Tribune, and he’ll take it once the case is settled. You just have to put out a little press release, ‘Old Feud Settled, Augustus Denounces Former Ally,’ that sort of thing. He’s willing to wait.”
“Contingent,” Cleo said demurely, from the corner chair by the potted palm. “Contingent on settling.”
Augustus glowered. He’d died old, of a dish Livia had served him, but lately he’d gotten younger, lost the chins, and now his ears stuck out. Maybe, Julius reflected, it was the combination of young Marcus Brutus and Cleopatra’s boy Caesarion in the household, that had Augustus, First Citizen of Rome, suddenly looking thirtyish, with a prominent Adam’s apple: Augustus, his nephew, was a posthumous adoption of his – born simply Octavius, a two-name man, a commoner; adoption by a patrician Julian had made him Caius Iulius Caesar Octavianus, and the Senate, doing all it could to bolster the man who’d steadied the ship of state on course, had tacked on the Augustus bit.
Good administrator, his namesake. Good kid. Thank the gods he’d stuck that adoption in his will, even if it upset Cleopatra, whose Caesarion had not been Roman enough, and Marcus Brutus, who hadn’t been legitimate enough.
It had really disappointed Marcus Antonius, magister equitum, who in the way of Roman adoptions, had had every right to think his old mentor might have adopted him. Do Antonius credit – he had had his hands on the will, had gotten that nasty surprise, and still, in the haze of an honest grief and in fear for his own life, had added two and two and figured first, Octavius could cast legitimacy on the government and second, that a boy like Octavius could be handled.
Right, on the first count.
Wrong, on the second. Octavius, once turned Octavianus, couldn’t be handled.
Cleo had gotten clear of Rome before she caught hell. Antonius had stayed and tried to take Octavian’s share of power. Really wrong.
Antonius had had his enemies’ list. He’d had Cicero killed. And cousin Lucius. Among others. And he’d tried the old gambit of establishing an authority outside Rome, off in the east. That never had worked. Neither had alcohol.
In the end – he’d killed Brutus and he’d gotten on the bad side of Caesarion. Neither of the boys had liked him. And truth be known, he’d fallen on Julius’ bad side long before the Ides of March business … so much so Julius just wasn’t damned sure he hadn’t been involved.
He couldn’t ask Brutus. Who didn’t remember the event. And Caesarion hadn’t been there.
But, damn, he wondered. Ask him which he felt better about, Cicero or Antonius, and the unlikely answer was Cicero.
He’d said as much, talking the old warhorse into taking the boys’ part against Tiberius.
“I’ll give him his statement,” Augustus said, a muscle jumping in his jaw. And in English. “Damn him.”
“Damn Tiberius,” Julius muttered, “first.”
“When is he coming?” Augustus asked, and looked ceilingward as something screamed overhead. “What are they doing out there?”
“The Cong are out of the Park. On Richelieu’s lawn.”
“With the Audit going on,” Augustus muttered. “We do not need the attention, uncle. We do not need it.”
“He should be here within the hour. He refused the car. One believes, however, he is actually taking a taxi.”
“Marvelous,” Augustu
s said. “Talk sense to the boys. They’ll listen to you.”
*
That was an optimistic estimate.
“Let me talk to him,” Julius said, delivering a kiss to Cleopatra’s cheek.
“Don’t hit him,” Cleo said.
“I won’t hit him,” Julius said, took a deep breath, and resolved not to, no matter the provocation.
There was a science to handling the boys – it relied mostly on talking to Brutus and letting Brutus talk to Caesarion. Long hair, grease, and leather jackets had become the vogue … since Caesarion had turned up. Rabbit’s-foot key chains, and the plaint that they needed a car.
Not this decade, they didn’t.
Especially not with Erra and the Seven downtown.
Loud rock-and-roll resounded from the pool room – had been a part of the library. Had been. Now it housed two teen rebels who had a round-the-clock guard on their whereabouts – quietly, politely, but there.
Julius passed the legionary guard – on loan from a lower tier of hell – and quietly nudged the door open. Inside it sounded like the Gauls in head-on attack. The teens who lived in this lower hell called it music … and played it at full volume.
Julius walked past the infernal device and switched it off.
Stunning silence. And two teenagers going on twenty and too damned old for stunts like Caesarion had pulled.
“I’ve got you a lawyer,” he said. “We’re going to try to settle with the old goat.”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Caesarion said, pool cue in hand. He turned and made his shot. His half-brother just glowered.
“Nothing’s our fault,” Brutus said.
“I wouldn’t care if you drowned the old sod,” Julius said. “What I do care about – isn’t for you to know. Figure it out. Let me explain, however, that if you get sued, and if you have to testify downtown – they’ll slice off parts of you until they’re satisfied. Ask Niccolo how it is to wind up on Slab One. He’ll give you a description. But then – downtown – they might not kill you. They might just leave you in viable pieces. Will I be sorry? Probably. But you’ll be a lot sorrier.”
Caesarion had stopped the pool shots, and looked at him about as level-on as Caesarion ever had. Thinking. That was an improvement.
“Dying’s a bitch,” Julius said. “But there’s far worse. You don’t want to attract attention until these prehistoric types are out of town. So stay here – And,” he added, since he had the undivided attention of both of them, almost unprecedented, “Cicero was born a prig, he practiced at it, and he died one. But he is good with the establishment. And it’s my earnest hope he’ll come up with a way to avoid your going to court, which you really don’t need right now – because if the old goat doesn’t settle, you’ll be arrested, you’ll be presumed guilty until proven innocent, and we haven’t got a way to prove you’re innocent. So let us get you out of this, and then you can go back to being whatever you like.”
He flipped the switch on the music again, and walked out.
*
“He’s bluffing,” Caesarion said.
Brutus shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on. We’re supposed to shake in our boots. Big deal.”
“I don’t want to go downtown,” Brutus said. “I really don’t want that kind of trouble. They don’t care, brother. They beyond don’t care, downtown.”
Caesarion didn’t say anything for a few beats. Then he shrugged, parked the pool cue against his hip, flipped a comb out of his pocket and swiped it through his hair. “Let the old man sweat it,” Caesarion said. “Not our problem.”
Brutus cast a look at the door, thinking that it was their problem. Julius would bluff. Julius was good at it. But there was no percentage in thinking he was doing it right now. In point of fact, Julius had told him how it was – how soft it was being a Roman in hell, compared, for instance, to the types with more specific afterlives. And how they had all the freedom they wanted, so long as they didn’t rock the status quo … and get the whole lot of them assigned to one of the nether levels.
Hell did have other levels. Sargon swore to them. Hatshepsut said this was the best place, and told him about space and planets and how he could have tech if he could believe in it. Julius stopped with World War II, but he was working on Korea. Sargon was taking advice from Hatshepsut, who was the best of all of them at believing.
Himself, he believed in here, real hard. He had fallen off a horse on his way back from the south of Italy, and he was here, and Julius treated him like a son, which was what he had wanted.
Until Caesarion showed up, who was Cleopatra’s and Caesar’s son, and who blamed Augustus for his being dead, and his mother for just about everything. Augustus said he’d been a fool to come back to Egypt, that he’d listened to bad advice, and Caesarion had said that he had had a safe conduct, and there it went: Caesarion ended up stalking out and refusing to listen and now Caesarion was having a private war against the rest of the house, including Julius.
Which was how they’d ended up in Tiberius’ villa, and in trouble.
He didn’t want get into a lawsuit and go downtown. And he didn’t want to come near Tiberius’ villa again. ‘The old goat,’ Julius called him.
Old goat didn’t begin to cover what the old man was. Every inch of the place done up in erotica. Even the door handles. And at the heart of it, like a spider, a fat-bellied, spindly-limbed, decaying and syphilitic old man with designs on anything, male or female, that came within his reach.
Hell no, he wasn’t getting into a lawsuit with that old lecher.
Question was – how good was this lawyer Julius had gotten and what in hell could they buy the old lecher off with if they could get him to drop the lawsuit?
Caesarion nudged him with a pool cue.
“Your shot.”
*
Band-aids. Sticking plasters. Rose scratches. And this time a determination to get Dante out of the library, hand him a basket and a pair of shears and get the job done. Machiavelli was in no mood to temporize. If the roses didn’t get trimmed, Augustus was going to be upset, and an upset Augustus was not going to deal well with Cicero, who was already on the outs with practically everybody.
He headed down the stairs to the library – and met Dante coming up, with an armload of books of various ages.
“Dante, my friend. I need help.”
“No time, no time.”
“What, no time! You left me with the rose garden, we had a damned imp, and now the roses are twice the mess.”
“One regrets, Niccolo, one regrets it entirely, but I have a chance – I have a chance, my friend. You know it’s a mistake that I’m here, a complete confusion of records. I have my justification – I have to file a petition!”
“Downtown? A petition with the Injustice Department? Dante, Dante, you are mad! You will not be filing petitions!”
“I have to tell them! I have to make them understand!” Dante began to push past him. He caught Dante’s sleeve, and books fell, thumping down the stairs.
“Dannazione, Niccolo!”
“You are not presenting any petition to the Audit! Not from this house!”
“You cannot stop me! No one has the right to stop me! I do not belong here! It’s a simple, stupid clerical error, and the Audit will fix it! Let go of me!”
They had acquired onlookers, at the top of the stairs. Hatshepsut, resplendent in a skin-tight catsuit, and stocky, bearded, barrel-chested Sargon, in a kilt.
“What’s the trouble?” Hatshepsut asked.
“This fool wants to file a petition with the Audit,” Niccolo shouted up, and took a firmer grip on Dante’s arm, propelling him up a step. “He wants a review of his case!”
“A review!” Hatshepsut said.
“These are heaven’s agents. They are my chance! It is all a mistake, a terrible mistake that assigned me here! You have no right to stop me!”
“They are not your heaven’s agents,” Sargon said. “They a
re from deep, deep places. They bring the Tiamat. They bring the Scorpions. You cannot deal with them, brother!”
“I have a right of appeal!”
Niccolo shoved him up the stairs and Dante fought him, batting at him and trying to set his feet: poor Dante, who had turned up in the villa with a computer and an obsessive belief that if he could reconstruct his great Commedia Divina from memory he could be forgiven, and reassigned to heaven, with his beloved Beatrice forever.
“If you appeal,” Hatshepsut said, “you can lose everything. Worse, you can draw attention to this entire household. Augustus will never permit you to go to the court.”
“He cannot stop me!” Dante cried, and shoved him, hard. Niccolo’s heel slipped off the step, backward. He fell against the wall and rail, and kept his grip on Dante, which brought Dante down, flailing and shouting, “No one can stop me! It’s my right, my right!”
Dante had led cavalry once. But muscle had gone, with age, with bookish pursuits, with obsession. There was nothing of that in the man, now, just a sense of injustice and betrayal.
“I can manage him,” Sargon declared, thumped downstairs with bandy-legged force, reached out and seized a fistful of Dante’s doublet, Dante flailing and cursing the while.
“He is hell’s iconic poet,” Hatshepsut said from above, “and if you are reassigned, son of the ibis, it will very likely be to the domicile of that Crowley person downtown, never to see your good friends again, let alone your Beatrice. If you go there, you will live in your hell, Dante Alighieri!”
“He should be so lucky,” Sargon said, as Niccolo unwound himself from Dante’s legs and hauled himself up against the banister. Sargon hauled Dante up, too, now that he was free of the tangle, seized him by the front of his collar and brought his own tanned, aquiline, curly-bearded face all but nose to nose with Dante’s pale, mince-mouthed, large-eyed countenance.
“Let me tell you, scribe, the thing you court. The Auditor is Plague. He is Injustice Incarnate. He kills the just and the unjust. He deals injustice. His helpers slay whoever they cast eyes on. He brings turmoil and pestilence. Go to him with your plaints about a lost love and he will track down that love and slay her before you. Where his eye falls, there follow boils and blindness. Where his breath goes, is fever. Where his steps fall, scorpions spring up. He brings the Tiamat, the great ocean dragon. He is here to audit hell, Dante Alighieri, to see if he can find fault in its misery! His handiwork is Overthrow, and if he can find the least chink in hell, he will rip its guts out and cast down every soul into older, deeper elements. The good Augustus, who is far too merciful, and a lover of the arts and of fine things, has given us place among the secrets under his roof, in a paradise which the Romans have made. The Romans have given you sacred hospitality, scribbler, have admitted you to their Elysian Fields, which they have managed to make exist – they have protected you, they have housed and fed you, and shielded you from such things as you have not imagined! This is a good place, Dante Alighieri, and you are a fool if you think we will allow your besotted dream of this chit in heaven to bring Overthrow into it!”
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