SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead

by John Maddox Roberts

  From there I went to the opposite wall of the chamber, where the water ran out. Hermes was examining the bottom, feeling every inch of it carefully, with his feet. “Absolutely smooth,” he reported. “No rocks, no sand, nothing—wait.” He stooped, ducked under the water, and came up a moment later with something. “Felt it with my foot,” he said, handing the thing to me. It was a bone pin about as long as my hand, the sort women use to dress their hair.

  “Let’s keep searching the bottom,” I said, and commenced to feeling with my soles. In a short time we came up with a bronze stylus for writing on wax tablets, a necklace of blue Egyptian beads with the clasp broken, and a woman’s sandal, but nothing more.

  “What do we make of this?” Hermes said. “Offerings?”

  “It’s an impoverished god who’d accept such trash as sacrifices,” I said. “Petitioners have to wade into the water to get their prophecy. Maybe this stuff just got dropped and lost in the water over the years.”

  I waded on, still feeling with my feet, until I was almost at the far wall and the current around my feet and calves began to quicken. I turned to the men who were searching the chamber. “Anything yet?”

  “Nothing, Praetor,” said one man who stood on another’s shoulders to search the ceiling. “Not even one of those vent holes in this room. It’s probably why the mist stays here.”

  “Well,” I said, feeling my way closer to the outlet, “you just keep on . . . Awwk!” Something that felt like a giant hand grabbed my ankles and jerked me beneath the water. I was almost to the wall and I grabbed at it, my hands scrabbling at the rough rock, nails scraping and splintering against it as I was dragged into the outlet fissure, feeling my legs scrape against the side. I was drowning and I knew that this was definitely not the way I wanted to die, unable to breathe in the utter darkness of a subterranean tunnel.

  I was losing what little purchase I had on the rough stone, knowing I was lost forever, when strong hands seized my wrists and pulled hard, almost disjointing my shoulders, so powerful was the current that was trying to drag me the other way. Then other hands grasped me and tugged and I was free of the fearful current. My head broke water and I coughed and sputtered and they carried me from the water and sat me on the stone floor.

  After a few minutes I got my breathing under control and my lungs cleared of water and, best of all, my heart stopped hammering like a mad blacksmith pounding hot iron which, incidentally, is what my chest felt like.

  “What happened?” Hermes wanted to know. He’d just saved my life, but then, that was his job. His expression was decidedly odd and I took that to mean he was relieved that I was alive, but there was something more to it. He looked amused. I looked around at the other men and they were all trying to hide smiles, unsuccessfully. One began to chuckle, then they all chuckled, then roared with laughter.

  “Let me in on the joke,” I said in my deadliest voice.

  “P-Praetor,” said one when he could talk. “If you could have heard the sound you made just before you went under!”

  “And the look on your face!” said another. Then they were all off laughing again.

  “I can only regret,” I said, “that I didn’t drown and make your mirth complete.” This set them rolling on the floor. Hermes, too. True, they had saved my life, but there is such a thing as carrying gratitude too far. I waited until they returned to sanity. I needed the time anyway, to get my breath under control.

  “What did happen?” Hermes asked at length.

  “Something I should have anticipated. I’m no aqueduct engineer, but I know a little about how water moves. The tunnel where the water comes in is almost man-height and just as wide. Where it goes out is a tunnel not one-fourth as large. Yet the level of the water here in the cave stays the same. How can that be?”

  “The same amount flows out as flows in?” Hermes hazarded.

  “Precisely. And how does it do that?”

  He thought for a moment. “It has to flow out a lot faster than it flows in.”

  “That is right. Just as when a river flows through a narrow canyon. At the spot it enters, the water speeds up and foams and rapids form. Same here. The current is strong coming in, and it has terrible force going out. I should have been more cautious. So you found nothing else?”

  “Nothing, Praetor,” reported one of the men.

  “Very well. Let’s get out of this place.”

  Hermes and I resumed our clothes and we began the trudge back to the surface. “Do you think we’ve learned anything?” he asked. “Other than to watch out for fast water?”

  “I think we have. It may not be apparent just yet, but we know more of that cave than we knew before, and when we know a little more, these things may fall into place.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “At least we’re through wandering underground.”

  “No, we are not,” I told him. “Now we’re going to do the same thing with the other tunnel.” Hermes groaned. So did the others. Now it was my turn to smile. Laugh at me, would they? We’d see about that.

  At least the priests of the Temple of Apollo were all dead and didn’t try to hinder us. I got a good close look at the trapdoor first. There were what appeared to be bloodstains on its underside. I thought about this for a while, then I realized what I was looking at.

  “Hermes, you remember when we found the bodies of the priests and their hands and forearms were battered?”

  “Yes, we figured they’d been defending themselves from their attackers.”

  “We were wrong. They were bashing their fists against this stone, trying to get out after it had been shut behind them.”

  He thought about the implications of this. “Then we’re back to the possibility that there was just a single killer. Let them suffocate down there, then dispose of the bodies afterward at your leisure.”

  “That is how I see it. I suspect there was more than one, but it was certainly an easier task than it appeared at first.”

  Next we examined the tunnel, and I left a man to guard the trap with drawn sword to make sure that it stayed open. I had no desire to emulate the example of the late priests. The tunnel told us nothing at all. The smooth-dressed stone would have revealed any irregularities immediately and there were none.

  The chamber below was no better. It looked no different than it had before, except for the absence of corpses. As before, the air quickly grew close from our profusion of torches and lamps and our own exhalations.

  “Greeks are supposed to know everything,” Hermes said. “Why didn’t they think to provide ventilation, when those Aborigines thousands of years ago did?”

  It was a good question. “Maybe,” I said, “they didn’t think it would be needed. A small number of men don’t require a lot of air if they’re only going to be down here a short time, and with the trap above open, it isn’t too bad.”

  “I was wondering about that,” Hermes said. “There’s enough air coming up from the hole there to keep us breathing here. Why did the priests suffocate so easily?”

  “I can’t say I know much about the properties of air,” I admitted, “any more than I do about those of water. But it seems to me that the air rises from the water tunnel and is sucked up the passageway. Maybe when the trap is shut, the flow of air stops.” Something struck me.

  “That’s how Eugaeon ended up in the water! He was leaning down into the hole to get what air was left, lost consciousness, and fell in to resurface so fortuitously in front of us!”

  “Why not the others?” Hermes asked.

  “He was the ranking man and the others let him have the water hole. Or maybe they were all up the shaft, pounding their fists against the stone. They probably suffocated even faster up there.”

  I had the men lower torches into the well and stuck my head down there, like the late Eugaeon. What I could see looked like natural tunnel. I was tempted to have the men lower me into it, but somehow I had had enough adventuring in water for that day. I came back up.

 
“I wonder how we can measure the distance to the other chamber?” I mused. I sat down and tried to think like an engineer.

  “We could tie something that floats to a piece of rope,” Hermes suggested. “Tie a knot every cubit. Toss it in, and when it comes out the other side, count the cubits.”

  I nodded. “That makes sense. How would you know when it came out the other side?”

  He thought a while longer, as did I. “Have a man in the other chamber. As soon as it comes out, he grabs it and gives a tug. Then you know not to pay out any more line.”

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll make an engineer yet. Tomorrow I want you to do exactly that.”

  “What will you be doing?” he asked.

  “Sleeping, I hope.”

  8

  JULIA WAS NOT HAPPY WITH MY FORAY into the underworld, but she was not as angry as I had feared.

  “It was not wise to flout the customs of the Oracle and treat an ancient holy site like some Subura tenement. Iola is right to be furious and she will definitely have you charged with sacrilege when you step down from office.” Of course I was immune from prosecution while I held office, but I was everybody’s fair game as soon as I should step down.

  “Now, Julia, don’t we already know that this shrine is fraudulent? It looks like they’ve been using it for years to fleece the public, murdering some of them.”

  “We don’t know anything. We have strong reason to suspect that at least some of the staff of the temple, at some time or other, have been using the Oracle for profit, and that murder may be involved. That doesn’t make the site itself any less holy.”

  “Well, Hecate’s a pretty poor goddess if she allows such goingson in her own precincts. She’s supposed to be fearsome. Why doesn’t she sic her black bitches on the miscreants? They’re the ones committing sacrilege, not I.”

  Despite my clearly sarcastic tone, Julia seemed to give this some serious thought. “The gods are not always swift to punish. They are immortal, time means little to them. They are content to bide their time and devise a fitting punishment. You recall a few years ago when Crassus took advantage of his position as one of the quinqidecemviri and falsified a prophecy in the Sibylline Books? Nothing happened to him at the time, but after he went to Syria, he met a catastrophe such as has befallen few Romans.”

  “That’s pretty rough on the part of the gods,” I said, “killing tens of thousands of Roman legionaries, plus thousands more foreign auxilia, just to punish one foolish old man.”

  “Immortality gives the gods a strange sense of proportion. Nevertheless, they won’t be mocked or taken advantage of.”

  “Hecate is from Thrace. Do you think she even knows what is going on in Italy?”

  “Honestly, Decius, you have the strangest ideas of what the gods are like, as if they were just oversized mortals with long lives and somewhat augmented powers. It’s a concept suitable for primitives and ignorant peasants, not for an educated Roman of the ruling class.”

  “We can’t all be philosophers,” I said. My mind was not really on our conversation. I had a great many thoughts spinning around, looking for something to give direction to all I had learned. Murders and tunnels and ventilation slots in the ceiling and miniature arrows and rivalries going back centuries and a great general preparing for civil war and a subterranean river with a vicious current and a score of other things that made no sense but I was sure would, if I could just fit them together in the proper order, perhaps together with a few other missing pieces.

  “Decius?” Julia was saying.

  “Eh?” I answered brightly.

  “You might as well be in Cappadocia,” she said disgustedly. “I was just talking about Pompey.”

  “You were? I must have nodded off. Long day, you know.”

  “You were just ignoring me. I was just saying that having Pompey in these parts is changing the social scene. You are not the ranking Roman official now. Pompey’s been consul twice and now he’s proconsul with extraordinary powers in Italy—what are you chuckling about?”

  “Sabinilla. I’ll bet she’s cursing herself for throwing that fantastic party for my benefit and wishing she’d saved it for Pompey. What’s she going to do now to entertain him? She’d need months to put together another evening like that one.”

  Even Julia had to smile at that. “The poor woman. She must be pulling out her hair and throwing things and screaming fit to raise the dead.”

  “Assuming she has any hair to pull. I’ve seen nothing but her wigs.”

  We were taking our ease on a small terrace jutting from the base of the Temple of Apollo. Julia had fretted over my near drowning for perhaps three breaths and then had begun to berate me for my many lapses of judgment. I had expected far worse. The night was cool and pleasant, the noise from the encamped crowd no more than a distant murmur punctuated by an occasional tune played on a flute. We had just enjoyed a rare private dinner and now a pair of slave girls kept the air moving and the flies off us with huge ostrich-feather fans Julia had conjured from somewhere. There are worse ways to while away an evening.

  “Do you know what surprises me?” I said.

  “What is that?”

  “That, so far, nobody has tried to kill me outright. With serious crimes under investigation, crimes that merit the death penalty, you’d think somebody would have had a go at me by now. They usually do.”

  She shut her eyes. “Don’t talk like that. It tempts the gods. Just saying it makes it more likely to happen.”

  “Now you’re being superstitious,” I chided.

  “Isn’t everyone?” she said.

  The next morning I was looking forward to my favorite activity, which is to have nothing to do at all. It was a day on which official business was forbidden, so no court. I was at a loss where to look next in my investigation, so no investigating. Hermes and a few of the other men had gone off to try the experiment with the rope, and there is nothing I like better than to delegate the work to someone else. I was back out on that terrace, enjoying the morning sun and about to open a letter from Rome when I heard pelting hoofbeats. I looked up and saw what had to be a messenger hurrying up the road from the south. I was certain that my perfect day was at an end before it had a chance to begin.

  Yet, I reflected, it might have been worse. A messenger hurrying like that from the north would have had me in a cold sweat. That would have meant bad news from Rome. A few moments later, the messenger was pounding up the stairs. “Praetor Metellus?” I admitted that I was he, and the man handed me a leather scroll tube. “From the duumvir Belasus of Pompeii.”

  I opened the tube and shook out the scroll it held. While I was reading it, Hermes returned with his wet, knotted rope. “Just under three cubits,” he reported. “Even closer than I’d thought. Of course, three cubits of solid stone is a lot of rock, but it’s no wonder the Hecate cult figured the Apollo people were up to something. They must have heard a lot of scrapes and clinking over the years. Stone carries sound.”

  “Another little piece,” I said.

  “What do you have there?”

  “A message from the duumvir of Pompeii. There has been a murder. The victim is a foreigner.”

  “Why is he writing you about it? You judge court cases involving foreigners. You don’t get involved in every murder where a foreigner is involved until it comes to court.”

  “He thought I would want to know about it because the dead man, a Syrian, had a case on the docket, to be tried when I should go down to Pompeii to hold court. It was to be the last town I was to visit before leaving Campania.”

  “And you were delaying it to stay in Campania as long as you could, eh?” Hermes said, grinning.

  “Of course.”

  “Are you going to go look into it?”

  “I might as well. It will put some distance between me and Pompey, anyway. Get some of the men together and get them mounted. I won’t be holding court so the lictors can stay here. This will be a flying visit, I don�
�t need any of my official regalia.” I went inside to tell Julia, who was predictably put out.

  “You just want to get away and have some fun,” she complained.

  “Anything wrong with that?”

  “It’s undignified. You can just send Hermes or one of the others.”

  “Then I wouldn’t get to have any fun. I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day.” I left before she could marshal an argument.

  Traveling on horseback and not slowed by a huge entourage and women carried in litters, we made Pompeii in a few hours. As always, the countryside was beautiful, the fine road lined with stately pines and excellent tombs.

  Pompeii was another of those Oscan towns, once a part of the Samnite League, that had chosen the wrong side in the Social War and was besieged by Sulla. When the war was over, a large group of legionaries had been settled there and it now had the status of colonia. Latin had replaced the former Oscan dialect, and the inhabitants were now Roman citizens, the only sensible thing to be.

  We approached the town from the northwest, but rather than enter through one of the northern gates, I swung around the city to the east and we rode along the wall until we reached the southeastern corner, where we came to a huge construction project. I had heard something of this and was curious to see it. It was a stone amphitheater, an architectural innovation pioneered in Campania. It was accomplished by, in essence, taking two ordinary theaters, getting rid of the stage, orchestra, scena, and so forth, and sticking them together face-to-face. The result was a huge oval of seats arranged in tiers, with an arena in the middle.

  It had been begun almost twenty years previously by two local moneybags named Valgus and Porcius as a gift to the town, and had been in use for much of that time, but so great a project takes time and the finishing touches were just being completed. As I have said, Campania is gladiator-mad and the Pompeiians were determined to have the very best venue possible for their munera. In this they had succeeded handsomely.