SPQR V: Saturnalia

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Are you Furia?”

  “I am.” Her accent was that of Tuscia, the land just across the Tiber. These latter-day Etruscans enjoy a great reputation as magicians.

  “I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger and I …”

  “If you’re one of the aedile’s assistants, I’ve paid my fees.” By this she meant her bribe.

  “For a fortune-teller your powers of anticipation are not great. I have nothing to do with the aediles.”

  “Oh, good. I’ve had quite enough of them for this year. Bad enough having to look forward to the next lot.” She was a handsome, big-boned woman with straight features and the very slightly tilted eyes common to those of Etruscan descent. Her dark brown hair was pinned up beneath her headgear. “So what may I do for you? When folk of your class want to consult with me, they usually send their slaves.”

  “Do they? Well, there are some things I prefer to do for myself. Things concerning certain, shall we say, very private matters.”

  “Very wise. I don’t suppose you need medicinal herbs. I’ll wager you consult with a Greek physician to treat your ills.” She looked down her high-bridged nose as she said it, to show her contempt for such newfangled foreign practices.

  “I enjoy excellent health at the moment.”

  “An aphrodisiac, then? I have some excellent medicines to restore virility.”

  “I’m afraid not; and before you suggest it, I do not require an abortifacient.”

  She shrugged. “Then you’ve about exhausted my store.” Her attitude was strange. Vendors usually press their wares upon you whether you want them or not. This one seemed almost disdainful.

  “Suppose I found myself plunged into deepest despair?”

  “Try a skilled whore and a jug of wine. That should fix you up nicely. Improve your outlook no end.”

  I was almost beginning to like her. “But this is a melancholy beyond bearing. I must end it.”

  “Try the river.”

  “That would be ungentlemanly. You get all bloated and fish nibble at you.”

  “You look like you’ve spent some time with the legions. Fall on your sword. You can’t get nobler than that.” She was amused, but she also seemed angry.

  “I want an easy and painless way out of my troubles. Is that so difficult to procure?”

  “Senator, your talk may be good for making the flowers grow, but that’s all. What is it you’re after?”

  “I want to know why you are so reluctant to sell me a perfectly legal means of suicide.”

  She stood, unwinding gracefully from her cross-legged seat without using her hands. She was taller than I had expected. Standing in her bare feet she was able to look me straight in the eyes. Her own were green and startlingly direct. She stepped very close, within a few inches of me. As a trained rhetorician, I knew that she was making use of her great physical presence to intimidate me. It worked.

  “Senator, go away. Words like ‘legal’ may have some sort of meaning in the Senate, but not among us.” Her breath smelled sweetly of cloves.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’ll not end up like Harmodia, and neither will anyone else in this market. Try as you will, nobody will sell you what you want.”

  “Who is Harmodia? And why this sudden coyness concerning poison?” But I was already talking to her back. She stepped delicately to her mat and pirouetted as gracefully as a dancer, then settled on it as gently as a cloud. I couldn’t do that without my knees popping like sticks in a fire.

  “The subject is closed, Senator. Now leave. Unless you want your fortune told?” Now she showed a hint of a smile. I wondered if she were badgering me.

  “Why not?”

  “Then come sit here.” She gestured to the mat before her as graciously as a queen offering a seat to the Roman ambassador. I sank onto the reeds, trying not to make too awkward a job of it. We were almost knee to knee. She reached behind her and brought out a wide oval tray of very ancient design, made of hammered bronze with hundreds of curious little figures chased on its surface. I knew the work to be Etruscan. She balanced it across our knees and picked up a bronze bowl with a lid and handed it to me. Then she took off the lid.

  “Shake this thirteen times, circling to the left, then pour it onto the tray.”

  The bowl contained a multitude of tiny objects and I did as I was bidden, rotating the bowl violently in leftward circles thirteen times. Then I upended it and the things inside tumbled out. There were stones and feathers and a great many tiny bones; the reedlike bones of birds and the knucklebones of sheep. I recognized the skulls of a hawk and a serpent, and the yellow fang of a lion old enough to have been killed by Hercules. She studied these, muttering under her breath in a language I did not recognize. The light coming in over the door curtain seemed to dim, and a cold breeze touched me.

  “You are rooted to Rome, but you spend much time away,” she said. “Your woman is high-placed.”

  “What other sort of woman would I have?” I said, disappointed. “And what senator doesn’t spend half his time away from Rome?”

  Furia smiled slyly. “She is higher than you. And there is something about her that you fear.” This took me aback. Julia was patrician. But fear her? Then I remembered what there was about Julia that I feared; I feared her uncle, Julius Caesar.

  “Go on.”

  “Oh, you want a special fortune told?” Now her smile was openly malicious. She gathered up her things and replaced them in the pot and covered them. Then she put away the tray. “Very well. But remember that you requested this.”

  Now she settled herself and her face went blank, hieratic, like the face of an Asian priestess.

  “Give me something to hold that is yours. Have you something that has belonged to you for a long time?”

  All I had with me were my clothes, a small purse, my sandals, and the dagger I usually hid in my tunic when I went out during uncertain times. I took out the dagger.

  “Will this do?”

  Her eyes glowed eerily. “Perfectly. I won’t have to use a knife of my own.” That sounded ominous. She took the dagger and held it for a moment.

  “You’ve killed with this.”

  “Only to preserve my own life,” I said.

  “You needn’t justify yourself to me. I don’t care if you murdered your wife with it. Give me your right hand.”

  I held it out. She took it and gazed into my palm for a long time and then, before I could pull it back, she slashed the tip of the blade across the fleshy pad at the base of the thumb. The blade was so sharp that I felt no pain, just a thrum like a plucked lyre string that went all through my body. I made to jerk my hand away.

  “Be still!” she hissed, and it was as if I was rooted to the spot. I had lost all power of motion. Swiftly, she drew the blade across her own palm, then she gripped our two hands together, with the hilt of my dagger between them. The bone grip grew slick with blood.

  I was almost beyond astonishment, but she further amazed me. She raised her free hand to the neck of her gown and jerked it down, baring her left breast. It was larger than I would have expected, even on so Junoesque a woman, full and slightly pendulous. In the dimness the white of her flesh was almost luminous against the black fabric. She drew my hand toward her, and held both hands and dagger against the warm softness of her breast.

  For a moment I thought, half-crazily, This beats gutting a sacrificial pig any day! Then she began to speak, in a rapid monotone, running her words together so that they were difficult to follow as her brilliant green eyes lost focus.

  “You are a man who draws death like a lodestone draws iron. You are Pluto’s favorite, his hunting dog to chase down the guilty, a male harpy to rend the flesh of the damned and blight their days, as yours will be blighted.” She released my hand, almost throwing it back at me. As I fumbled the dagger back into its sheath, she contemplated the spiderweb of our mingled blood that nearly covered her breast, as if she read some significance in the pattern. A h
eavy drop gathered on the bulbous nub of her nipple, mine or hers, who could tell?

  “All your life will be the death of what you love,” she said.

  Unnerved as I seldom had been in my life, I scrambled to my feet. This was no mere fortune-telling saga. This was a genuine striga.

  “Woman, have you cast a spell on me?” I demanded, unashamed at my shaking voice.

  “I have what I need. Good day to you, Senator.”

  I fumbled beneath my toga, trying to extract some coins from my purse. Finally, I cast the whole thing before her. She did not pick it up, but looked at me with her mocking smile.

  “Come back any time, Senator.”

  I stumbled toward the curtain, but even as I grasped it she spoke.

  “One more thing, Senator Metellus.”

  I turned. “What is it, witch?”

  “You will live for a long, long time. And you will wish that you had died young.”

  I staggered out of the booth into a day that was no longer wholesome. All the long way home, passersby avoided me as one who carried some deadly contagion.

  5

  BY MIDAFTERNOON I WAS OVER the worst of my fright and wondering what had happened. If, indeed, anything had happened at all. I was a little ashamed of myself, panicking like some bumpkin at the words of a peasant fortune-teller. And what had she said anyway? Just the sort of gibberish such frauds always used to dupe the credulous. Live a long, long time, would I? That was a safe enough prediction, since I certainly wouldn’t be able to confront her with it should it prove false.

  Then I remembered the dense, choking fumes in the first tent. Surely the woman Bella had been burning hemp and thorn apple and poppy gum to soften up her victims. I had been under the influence of these vision-inducing drugs when I sought out Furia. Thus did I comfort myself and salve my wounded pride.

  Hermes came in as I was bandaging my hand.

  “What happened?”

  “I cut myself shaving. What took you so long? Lucius Caesar’s house isn’t that far away.”

  “I got lost.” A patent lie, but I chose to ignore it. “Anyway, Julia’s at home and she sends you this.” He held out a folded papyrus, which I took.

  “Fetch me something to eat, then get my bath things together.” He went off to the kitchen. He came back a few minutes later with a tray of bread and cheese. I munched on this dry fare, washed down with heavily watered wine, while I read Julia’s hastily scrawled letter.

  Decius, it began, without any of the usual greetings and preliminaries, I rejoice to learn that you are in Rome, although this is not a good time for you to be in the city. I can only guess that your being here means trouble. Ah, my Julia, always the romantic. My father is with Octavius in Macedonia, but my grandmother is here, keeping close watch on me. I will find some pretext to meet with you soon. Stay out of trouble.

  Thus ended Julia’s letter. Well, it had been written rather hurriedly. I remembered that there was a marriage tie between the Caesars and Caius Octavius. As I finished my frugal luncheon, I tried to unravel the connection. His wife was Atia, and now I remembered that Atia was the daughter of Julia the sister of Caius and Lucius Caesar by a nonentity named Atius. This Octavius was the birth father of our present First Citizen, a fact of which we were blissfully unaware at the time, and that is the extent of the First Citizen’s connection with the Julians, although he likes to pretend that the blood of the whole clan fills his veins.

  From my house Hermes and I walked to a street near the Forum where one of my favorite bathhouses was situated. It was a fairly lavish establishment, although the baths of those days were nowhere near the size of the ones built recently by Agrippa and Maecenas, with their multiple thermae and exercise rooms, libraries, lecture halls, plantings, statuary, and mosaics. This one had a few decent sculptures looted from Corinth, skilled masseurs from Cyprus, and hot baths small enough for a dozen or so men to converse easily. Good conversation with one’s peers is half the pleasure of the baths, and it is difficult to be heard in the vast, echoing thermae of today, which will accommodate a hundred or more bathers at a time.

  The bathhouse I used was patronized mainly by senators and members of the equestrian order and was therefore a good place to pick up on the latest doings of the government. Leaving my clothes in the atrium under Hermes’s less than watchful eye, I went as quickly as possible through the cold plunge, then into the caldarium to soak luxuriously in the hot water. As I entered the dark, steamy room I was disappointed to see that there were only two others in the bath; men I did not know.

  I greeted them courteously and stepped into the deliciously hot water, then settled chin deep to soak. I had my back to the door and had been in place no more than a few minutes when my new companions looked up toward the entrance with alarm on their faces. I did not bother to look around as men filed in behind me and climbed into the bath, big, hard-faced men, covered with scars. They were arena bait of the worst sort. My two erstwhile companions hastily vacated their places. Soon six hulking brutes shared the water with me, and they left a space to my right. Another man lowered himself into that space, youngish, good-looking in a dissipated fashion, and decorated with only a few minor scars, some of which I had given him.

  “Welcome back to Rome, Decius,” he said.

  “Thank you, Clodius.” He had me cold. There was absolutely no way I could fight or escape, and it would be undignified to try. So much for my predicted long, long life.

  “Be at ease, Decius. I’m a tribune designate and I have a great many important things on my mind just now. You are the least of my concerns for the moment. Don’t cross me and you have nothing to worry about.”

  “I rejoice to hear it,” I said, meaning every word.

  “I won’t even hold your friendship for that mad dog Milo against you as long as you don’t ally yourself with him against me.”

  “I’m not looking for trouble, Clodius,” I said.

  “Excellent. We understand one another then.” He seemed marginally more sane than usual, not that this was saying much. “As a matter of fact”—he was oddly hesitant—“there is a way we might patch things up between us, start off clean, so to speak.”

  This was truly mystifying.

  “What do you mean?”

  “By now you know that my brother-in-law, your kinsman Metellus Celer, was poisoned?”

  “I know he is dead,” I said cautiously. “I have only heard rumors that he was poisoned.”

  “Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. You’re one of those philosophers of logic.”

  I let the insult pass. “I prefer solid evidence to hearsay,” I told him.

  “Well, rumor then has it that Celer was poisoned by his wife, my sister, Clodia. My enemies and the common herd are whispering behind my back that she is guilty, just because she flouts convention and champions my cause.”

  “The world is full of injustice,” I averred.

  “You’re supposed to be good at finding things out, Metellus. I want you to find out who killed Celer and clear Clodia’s name.”

  I was so stunned that I almost slid beneath the water. He took my hesitation for reluctance.

  “Do this and you can have anything of me you ask, and as tribune I can do a great deal for you: honors, appointments, whatever you want. I can push them through the Popular Assemblies almost without effort.”

  “I don’t require a bribe to find out the truth,” I said pompously. The temptation was powerful though, which may be why I was so haughty.

  He waved it aside. “Of course, of course. But I’m sure you wouldn’t object to a generous Saturnalia present, would you?” This was a common way to proffer a bribe.

  I shrugged. “Who could take offense at that?” I would like to believe that I only said this because I knew that I would never leave the room alive without agreeing to his proposal. Men have drowned in the baths before.

  “It is agreed then,” he stated with great finality. “Good. Begin at once. You will need to call upon Clodia
. She is having a dinner tonight. You are invited.”

  “This is all rather sudden,” I said.

  “I am busy and have little time. You won’t be in Rome long, will you, Decius?” The way he said it brooked little disagreement.

  “Only long enough to settle the matter of Celer’s death.”

  “Excellent, excellent. I don’t mean that we must resume our feud when this disagreeable matter is over, but to be frank the fewer friends Milo and Cicero have in the city during my tribuneship, the happier I’ll be.” He clapped me on my wet shoulder. “We’re men of the world, eh? We all know how politics work. Just because men disagree on certain matters doesn’t mean they can’t cooperate harmoniously on other matters of mutual interest.” Like all professional politicians, Clodius could turn on the charm when necessary.

  “It goes without saying,” I murmured.

  “Precisely.” He splashed water over his face and hair. “For instance, Cato and I loathe one another. But I have an extremely important post for him next year, one that I would entrust to none of my friends.”

  “Permit me to guess that it’s a position that will keep him away from Rome,” I said.

  He grinned. “No reason why I can’t accomplish two beneficial acts with one piece of legislation, is there?”

  “What’s the post?” I asked, genuinely interested. Everything Clodius did as tribune was likely to affect myself and my family in one way or another.

  “Our annexation of Cyprus is coming up. I’m going to give Cato an extraordinary position as quaestor pro praetore to oversee the transfer and render a full accounting to the Senate, his authority to last as long as he thinks fit to get the job done.”

  “He’s a good choice,” I admitted grudgingly. “The island is strategically important and rich. In the hands of most men that would be a license to loot the place and sow bad will among the natives for a generation to come. Cato is utterly incorruptible; not that it makes him any more likable. He’ll render an honest accounting.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “I take it you don’t intend any reconciliation with Cicero?