by David Drake
And if things didn’t work out in her favor this time …
Hedia smiled. It’s time that the Underworld had a real queen.
* * *
CORYLUS WAS A FREQUENT visitor to Saxa’s town house in Carce. The household staff knew him well.
Normally Corylus came in company with his friend Varus, though occasionally he used the excellent gymnasium and had no dealings with the family unless Varus—or less often and less comfortably Alphena—chose to join him. Senator Saxa had probably approved the arrangement, just as he would have approved any request his son made, but it wasn’t a matter of great concern to him.
Corylus hadn’t visited this beach house before, however, and Varus wasn’t expecting him. The doorman was a tall Thracian who spoke Latin better than the Germans whom Agrippinus, the majordomo in Carce, purchased for that duty.
The Thracian looked at Corylus in his plain—dusty and somewhat sweat-stained by now—tunic. “Lord Varus is not at home to your like, sirrah,” he said. The tone would have gotten him kicked where he’d feel it if Pulto had been present: a slave didn’t speak that way to the son of Prefect Cispius.
Fortunately, Manetho, an understeward from the Carce establishment, was in the entrance hall and had started toward the doorway as soon as he heard Corylus’ voice. Manetho burst into the guard kiosk and shrieked, “You barbarian! Was your mother a sow! This is His Young Lordship’s closest friend and you would send him out into the street?”
The doorman’s expression went from supercilious toward the underdressed stranger to fury at a fellow servant—and then to uncertainty. His face finally settled into cringing fear as he took in the plump Egyptian understeward’s words.
“Who hired such an untrained buffoon?” Manetho said, capping his rant.
Corylus smiled faintly. Now he understood what that was all about.
Publius Cispius Corylus was a friend of the family and particularly of Varus, so he had expected that any member of the Carce establishment would vouch for him at least to the degree of sending a message to Varus saying that a man of that name, claiming to be a friend, was at the door. He hadn’t expected this sort of violent endorsement, though.
But if Manetho thought he should have been appointed chief steward here on the Bay or if the Carce establishment and the local establishment were mutually hostile already, the outburst made sense. It wasn’t about Corylus, except to the degree that Lord Varus’ friend made a useful club with which to pound a rival.
“Please forgive these clowns, Master Corylus,” Manetho said, bowing—which he never would have done to a mere knight had they been back in Carce. “I’ve sent a messenger to alert Lord Varus, who is in his apartments. I’ll take you to him now.”
“You have no duties in this house save for those I choose to give you,” said a tall man whose austere face contrasted with his tunics of green layered over red, both trimmed with gold embroidery.
“Look here, Balbinus—,” said Manetho.
Three additional servants formed in front of the Egyptian and forced him back without actually pushing him. Corylus felt a degree of sympathy for the fellow, but he’d clearly overplayed his hand. He thought about the human need to create rivals out of fellows. It was no different in the army, except perhaps that there deadly weapons were readily to hand.
Balbinus bowed, though not as deeply as Manetho had, and said, “If you’ll please come with me, Master Corylus, I’ll take you to Lord Varus. I’ve informed him of your arrival.”
“Publius,” said Varus, walking toward him around the pool in the center of the reception hall. “I’m very glad to see you. My suite is on the second floor here. It’s supposed to catch the evening breezes better.”
He wore a very fine silk tunic and sandals with gilded straps. Corylus had caught Varus dressing for dinner, but at least he hadn’t wrapped himself in his toga yet.
“I came across a literary puzzle,” Corylus said, lifting the scrap of paper to call attention to it. “I realize the timing isn’t good, but I’d like to discuss it with you now.”
“Yes, of course,” Varus said, turning to the staircase concealed by a wall frescoed with a scene of Bellerophon on the back of Pegasus. “There’s no library here, but my room should be literary enough to suit our purposes.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the top of the stairs and added, “I have my own loggia, so we’ll sit there since you prefer the outdoors. The light will be better anyway.”
“You don’t care where you are,” Corylus said, voicing a sudden realization about his friend. “So long as you have a book.”
Varus laughed as he led the way into his own suite. The walls were rich yellow with cartouches painted to look like alcoves holding statues. “True enough,” he said. “Though I’m trying to become a better-balanced man and therefore a true philosopher.”
Servants stood at attention within the suite; they bowed as the young master and his friend passed through. Corylus counted eight. Enough to fill a squad tent, though they wouldn’t be much use if the Germans came across the border.
They probably weren’t much use here, either, even when the family was in residence. Varus didn’t care about food and luxuries—save for books. He could have lived on army rations as easily as a soldier who grew up on a farm in the hills, though he drank a great deal less wine than that soldier.
The loggia had masonry benches to either side, protected by a sturdy roof that supported part of the open-air dining area. The location wasn’t private, but it was as close to private as a house full of servants could be; and the light was good.
Varus sat, gesturing Corylus to the place beside him. Servants started to crowd onto the loggia. Varus looked up, frowned, and said, “I will not need you. Scillio, see to it that I’m left alone.”
A servant whom Corylus recognized from the town house, one of the copyists, immediately said, “Out! Out! The master is in the process of creation!”
Corylus looked at his friend, trying to control his surprise. Varus smiled wanly and said, “Even when I was writing poetry, I didn’t deserve that kind of effusion.”
He held out his hand. “Let me see this literary puzzle, if you will.”
Corylus gave him the palimpsest. He said, “A man brought it to me in a bar near the harbor. He said it was scratch paper used by his uncle, Vergil. I recognized the line from the Aeneid.”
Varus read it, then looked at Corylus and said, “It’s not quite the Aeneid. This says ‘my brethren.’ The poem—the completed poem—reads ‘my lads.’”
He turned the document at ninety degrees and tilted it to catch the sun at a raking angle. He was reading the original message, which had been rubbed off with pumice to allow the sheet to be reused.
“I noticed that it was very good quality papyrus,” Corylus said. “The edges were smoothed and painted red with henna.”
Varus chuckled and lowered the document. “Yes,” he said. “If we’re to believe that this sheet—”
He wiggled it; Corylus took it from his fingers and examined the original himself.
“—really came from Vergil’s study, then I would guess that a senator with literary pretensions sent Vergil his epic, hoping that the great man would approve of his efforts. The great man made the same decision I would have, unless I decided to wrap fish in the sheets instead.”
“‘Then Hannibal, raving like a demon, leaped the wall into the midst of the defenders,’” Corylus read, then set the palimpsest on the bench between them. “Yes, it’s pretty bad, all right.”
“If anything,” Varus said, his tone losing some of its cheerfulness, “it’s worse than my own verse was. Which is not a thing I say lightly.”
“The man said his name was Lucinus,” Corylus said. He was changing the subject, but he was changing it back to the real purpose of his visit. “He gave me the page because he wouldn’t be permitted to see you. He said you are a magician who can help him defeat the danger which threatens the whole world.”
&nb
sp; “I’m not a magician,” Varus muttered with a grimace.
The servants who had retreated from the loggia were still more or less within hearing, but there was little chance that any of them were listening to the master and his friend. A high-level literary discussion was possibly the most boring subject on earth to most people. Certainly to most of the servants who catered to a nobleman’s grooming.
“All I’m telling you is what this Lucinus told me,” Corylus said. “But I’ve seen you send demons back to the fires they sprang from. That may not make you a magician, but you’re certainly someone I’d want to have close by if I thought I might be facing demons again.”
Varus’ laugh was wistful rather than bitter, but it sounded as though it might turn bitter very easily. He said, “I don’t know what I am. Other than that—”
He met Corylus’ eyes.
“—I’m not a poet.” He pursed his lips in thought, then said, “What do you think, Publius?”
“I think that Lucinus looks as though he’s about fifty, but Vergil died fifty years ago,” Corylus said, marshaling the facts as he—as both of them—had been taught to do by Pandareus. “He should be older, even if he was quite young when he became his uncle’s apprentice. Apart from that, though—”
He touched the palimpsest.
“—such evidence as we have suggests that he’s telling the truth. This is precisely the sort of draft that Vergil might have made. There can’t be many other people who would have had access to scrap papyrus of such quality.”
“No,” agreed Varus with the same wan smile as before. “I burned all my manuscripts. I didn’t want to inflict my verse even on dead mullets.”
His face sharpened suddenly to that of the most learned pupil in the class of Pandareus of Athens. “We know that there is some danger approaching the Republic, since I have prophesied as much.”
He smiled; Corylus smiled back. They both remembered just how accurate Varus’ previous quotations from the Sibylline Books had been.
“It therefore follows that Lucinus’ warning is trustworthy. That doesn’t prove that he, or that he and I together, can overcome the danger, but there seems very little reason not to discuss the matter with him. Given that the alternative is that we allow the world to be destroyed without making an effort to avoid that result.”
A servant standing near the arch to the loggia cleared his throat loudly. Corylus placed a hand on his friend’s arm, then nodded toward the entrance.
Saxa diffidently stepped onto the loggia but hesitated there. He wore his toga and was otherwise groomed for dinner.
“Ah, Master Corylus!” he said, blinking. “Ah, you’re very welcome. In fact, would you care to join us for dinner? I’m sure that Quintus Macsturnas would be glad to add a place for a man of your accomplishments. Ah, and I’m sure that Balbinus can find you a toga.”
Could Balbinus find a toga with the two narrow stripes of a knight? Corylus wondered. But given Saxa’s wealth, it was just possible that he could. Indeed, it was possible that the chief steward had sent out for suitable dinner clothing as soon as the unexpected visitor arrived with such a flurry.
“No thank you, Your Lordship,” Corylus said, bowing. “I’ll be dining tonight with my father. I don’t see him very often since I’ve been studying under Master Pandareus and, well, we have a lot to catch up on.”
On an impulse, he offered that palimpsest to Saxa. “Your son and I were discussing a variant reading of the first book of the Aeneid, Your Lordship. Or rather, Lord Varus was explaining the variation to me.”
“Really?” Saxa said with delight. He bent to look at the document but did not touch it. “Really, this is marvelous! Are you sure that you can’t—”
He brought himself up short. “But what am I doing?” he said in horror. “Trying to corrupt a son who is carrying out his filial duty according to the traditions of the people of Carce! Pray forgive me. Ah! Unless your father would perhaps care to join us also?”
“He’ll be flattered at the invitation,” Corylus said. “But not tonight, I fear. I’ll be going off now.”
He wasn’t wholly certain that Cispius would be flattered. He treated all members of the nobility with the deference due their rank, but he had served under too many noble incompetents to be impressed simply because a man was a senator.
On the other hand, Alphenus Saxa had proved himself unexpectedly worthy of respect during the past difficult months. Courage was a virtue that made up for most things in the mind of a soldier. Varus’ father had in his dithering way proved himself as brave as Horatius holding the Tiber Bridge.
“Well, I understand that, of course,” Saxa said, which, from his puzzled tone, was unlikely. “I’ll be in the office until, ah.…”
“Master Corylus?” Varus said. “I want to discuss one more aspect of that text, if you will. And Father, I’ll join you downstairs in just a moment. All I need to do is put my toga on.”
As Saxa turned, Corylus said in an undertone, “I’ll pick you up in a cart at dawn if that’s all right. I think just the two of us and a driver who knows the way. I won’t tell Father much, but he can find me the cart and a driver who knows where this Lucinus lives on the Nola Road.”
“Yes, that seems right,” Varus said. “We don’t want to make a production of this, at least not until we know more.”
Corylus quirked a grin at his friend. “Lucinus didn’t say I should come,” he said. “But I intend to come anyway.”
“If you didn’t, I would ask you to come,” Varus said with a similar grin. “And if it’s appropriate, thank your father for his help.”
“Yes,” said Corylus. “We’re going to need his help while we’re here.”
“We’re going to need it,” Varus said, “and it appears that the world will need it.”
They clasped arms. Corylus turned to go out, still holding the palimpsest. Four servants held a toga ready to wrap around His Lordship Gaius Alphenus Varus.
Behind Corylus, Varus mused, barely audibly, “I only hope that all we have and the world has will be enough.”
* * *
“WELCOME, VERY WELCOME, Lord Saxa!” Macsturnas cried as he met Varus and his father in the entrance hall. “And you, Lord Varus. Until your messenger arrived, I feared that the press of business had detained you and you wouldn’t be able to join us after all.”
“I was responsible for the delay, my lord,” Varus said, following his father and their host through the house as servants bowed or ducked out of the way—or both. “My friend Corylus arrived with what purports to be the draft of a portion of the Aeneid. I’ve summoned our teacher Pandareus of Athens here to the Bay to examine it.”
That was a minor falsehood: Alphena had summoned Pandareus, and the purpose of the consultation was only tangentially literary. Though if Pandareus knew of an example of Vergil’s handwriting that they could use for comparison—by the Holy Wisdom, if I have really touched a document written by Vergil himself!
“The Aeneid, you say,” Macsturnas said. “Would that be a poem, then?”
Saxa missed a step and stared at their host in horror. Varus caught him by the arm.
Before he could say something that might be taken as insulting—or even be meant as insulting, though Saxa was a truly gentle man—Varus laughed as cheerfully as he could manage and said, “That’s right, Your Lordship. I’m such a bookworm that I forget that not everybody shares my tastes.”
They entered the garden. A summer dining room was set in one of the back corners. Three men were already reclining on the U of masonry benches built out from the walls. The fourth side was open to allow servers to reach the table in the middle. One guest, placed on the left bench, wore a senatorial toga; the man on the cross bench was also in a toga, though his had the twin stripes of a knight.
On the right-hand bench was Paris. If the Etruscan priest had been invited to dinner with two senators besides the host, his connection with the aedile was unexpectedly close. Paris watched without ex
pression, but there was certainly no affection in his eyes when they rested on Varus.
Varus was feeling rather pleased with himself, though he knew a true philosopher should be above pride. Still, if one didn’t take some notice of good behavior, one would be unable to duplicate it.
He had prevented his father from launching into what would at best have been a lecture on Vergil and his importance to world literature. That would have been desperately boring to their host and presumably to the other guests of a man who had to guess even that the Aeneid was a poem.
Varus had grown from the recent crises. He would always have known that Saxa was making a mistake, but in past years Varus would merely have cringed in silent embarrassment. Being around Corylus—and Hedia and Alphena!—had shown him how to act in the fashion he knew was correct.
The guests had plates in front of them, still holding the remains of dormice in honey, though the serving platter had been removed from the small central table. They must have started the first course before our messenger arrived, Varus realized.
“Our colleague, Trebonius Haltus,” Macsturnas said, indicating the other senator. “He has a home in Baiae also. And my brother-in-law, Collinus Afer. And of course Paris, whom you’ve met.”
The walls behind the benches were painted with scenes of wild bulls running and leaping. The bulls were blue, though, causing Varus to wonder if they were religious art.
He had been daydreaming during the exchange of pleasantries. He realized this when he heard his father say, “And my son Varus greets you also, gentlemen.”
His skin suddenly hot—am I blushing?—Varus bowed to the company, which certainly wasn’t called for. “Your pardon, sirs,” he said. “I was lost in a literary problem.”
That was a very useful excuse. There were advantages to having everybody think you’re a cloth-headed intellectual. Which wasn’t far from the truth, he supposed.
“Lord Varus,” the aedile said, “would you take the head of the right bench, above Master Paris? Paris said he was looking forward to meeting you. I suppose you intellectuals will have a lot to discuss that would go right over the heads of us simple folk.”