SPQR V: Saturnalia

by John Maddox Roberts

  Three men rushed us from the shadows of the portico fronting the iron factory. This drew our attention to the left. A moment later two more came in from behind a statue of Hercules strangling the Nemean lion that stood on the right side of the street. All of them had bare steel in their hands, and I hoped Milo’s boys were as good as he’d said they were.

  I had my dagger in my right hand and my caestus on my left before they got to us, and I whirled to face the two coming in from behind the statue, trusting the gladiators to protect my back. I heard howls and crunching impacts behind me as I assaulted a man in a dark tunic, who held a wicked, sinuously curved dagger. He seemed surprised that I was taking the offensive and hesitated for a fatal instant, giving me the chance to cut his forearm and smash his jaw with two quick moves of the dagger and caestus. The knife fell one way and the daggerman went another and I made a half-turn to face his companion, but that worthy was already crumpling. Castor stood behind him, watching him fall with a look of deep, sensual gratification.

  All five of the attackers were on the pavement in the abandoned poses of unconsciousness. Weapons littered the street and a good many drunks were already gathering to gape. Castor and Aurius seemed to be unhurt and were accepting graciously the compliments of a few witnesses.

  “Are any of them dead?” I asked.

  “We tried not to kill them,” Castor said. “It’s unlawful even to execute a criminal during Saturnalia. We’re law-abiding men, Senator.”

  “I can see that. Do you recognize any of them?” We rolled over any who needed such treatment and ignored their groans. The one whose jaw I had smashed would be doing no talking for a few days and three of the others would be lucky to survive the head blows they had taken.

  “This one’s called Leo,” Aurius said, picking up the fifth man by the front of his tunic. “He trained at the school of Juventius in Luca. They all did, from the look of them.” He gestured toward the others. “See how their topknots are tied with black ribbon? They do that in Luca.”

  “This was most impressive,” I said. “Clubs against steel and outnumbered.”

  Castor snorted. “We appreciate the thought, sir, but these scum were hardly worth our trouble. Those northern schools don’t train ’em as hard as the Roman and Campanian ludi. When there’s no munera in the offing they come down to Rome. A lot of second-rate politicians hire them as bodyguards because they work so cheap.”

  “Milo makes us drill hard with the sticks, Senator,” Aurius said. “He says they’re as good as a sword in a street fight and they’re legal inside the City.” He whirled his with a snap of the wrist and something flew off it to strike a nearby wall with a moist splat.

  “Speaking of which,” Castor said, “if I was you I’d get that blade and those bronze knuckles out of sight, Senator. This may be the Subura, but you never know when you’ll run into some stickler for the fine points of law.”

  “Good idea,” I said, stashing my weapons inside my tunic. “Can our friend Leo speak?”

  “Let’s find out.” Aurius hauled the man over to a quenching bath that stood just outside one of the furnace rooms of the iron works. He plunged Leo’s head beneath the dirty water and held it there for a while, but the man didn’t struggle. When he pulled him out, Leo muttered a few words in a rhythmic manner. I realized that he was singing something in a northern dialect.

  “Afraid I tapped him a bit too hard, Senator,” Aurius said, dropping the man in a heap next to the trough. “Poor old Leo won’t be talking sense for a few days. Maybe never, if he starts to rattle.”

  “Ah, well,” I said, “it would have been nice to know who hired them, but one can’t have everything. I’ll just have to be satisfied with getting home in one piece.”

  We walked away from the scene of the little battle, and behind us the reeling celebrants were already stepping over the bodies as if they were just others who had imbibed too deeply. Even as I glanced back, boys darted in and confiscated the dropped weapons. Nothing of any value stays on the ground long in the Subura.

  When we came to my gate I turned to thank the men and send them on their way, but they pushed past me and went in.

  “Let us check out your house, Senator,” Castor said. “They could have men hiding here in case you got past the others or took another way home.”

  “Many a man’s been killed in his home because he thought he was safe after he locked the door,” Aurius affirmed. This seemed like eminently sensible advice so I waited while they went through the house room by room, explored the roof, and even looked over the walls into the yards and rooftops of the adjoining buildings. When they were satisfied, I bade them good-bye and tipped them a few denarii. I really needn’t have. It was probably the most fun they’d had that holiday.

  There was no sign of my slaves. Hermes I could understand, but I wondered what two as old as Cato and Cassandra could find to do so late. Once again I washed the blood off my weapons and dried them; then I threw off my tunic and collapsed into my bed and was asleep before I closed my eyes.

  It had been another long day.

  11

  ROME AWOKE TO THE GREAT, collective hangover of the day after Saturnalia. All over the city hundreds of thousands of bleary eyes opened, the merciless light of morning pierced through them, and a vast groan ascended unto Olympus. Patrician and plebeian, slave and freedman, citizen and foreigner, all were afflicted and were half certain that Pluto had them by the ankle and was dragging them toward the yawning abyss; and, on the whole, they viewed the oblivion of the trans-Stygian world as not such a bad prospect after all. Even Stoic philosophers were retching into the chamberpot that morning.

  But not me. I felt fine. For once I had been moderate in my intake and what little I had imbibed I had sweated out in my flight through the city the night before. For the first time since leaving Rhodes I’d had a decent night’s sleep. I awoke clear-eyed, clear-headed, and ravenously hungry. The sun was high and it flooded through my window as though Phoebus Apollo were especially pleased with me.

  “Hermes!” I bellowed. “Cato! Get up, you lazy rogues! The world is back to normal now!”

  I got up and went into the little sitting room I use for an office. I threw open the latticed shutters and breathed in the clear air and listened to the songs of the birds and did all those things that I ordinarily despise. As a rule, morning is not my favorite time of day. I heard a slow shuffling behind me and Cato pushed the curtain aside.

  “What do you want?” he asked grumpily. I’d seen livelier looking mummies in Egypt.

  “Bring me some breakfast,” I ordered. “Where’s Hermes?”

  “No sense calling for that wretch. He won’t be finished vomiting until noon. Those young ones don’t have the head or the stomach for proper celebrating.” He shuffled off chuckling, then moaning.

  I unwrapped my bandaged hand and was pleased to see that the cut was almost healed. Everything seemed to be going well that morning. I took out one of my better tunics and my best pair of black, senatorial sandals. To these I added my second-best toga, since I was likely to be calling on some official people that day.

  Cato brought in bread, cheese, and sliced fruit, and as I fueled myself for the day ahead I planned out my itinerary. In a city as sprawling as Rome, geography is the most important consideration. The idea is to avoid backtracking and, above all, climbing the same hill twice. In a city as hilly as Rome, this last is difficult. I dipped a piece of bread in garlic-flavored olive oil and thought about it.

  I decided to try Asklepiodes first. He would be in the Transtiber, and I could stop at the Temple of Ceres on the way back into the City. Besides, as a man of moderate habits the Greek was unlikely to be in a homicidal mood this morning. I called for hot water and went through the unfamiliar act of shaving myself. It would not be a good day to entrust myself to the shaky hand of a public barber.

  Dressed and freshly, if inexpertly, shaved, I went out into the uncommonly subdued streets of the City. Rome seemed to be h
alf-deserted and looked as if it had been defeated in a major war. It was something of a miracle that no destructive fires had started during the uproarious celebrations. Everywhere people lay like the corpses of slain defenders, only snoring much more loudly. Discarded masks, chaplets, and wreaths littered the streets and public buildings.

  On a hunch I took the Fabrician Bridge to Tiber Island. On a good many mornings Asklepiodes was to be found in the Temple of Aesculapius, and if he was there I would be spared the walk to the ludus where he had his surgery. The splendid bridge had been built four years earlier by the tribune Fabricius, who never did anything else, but who ensured the immortality of his name with this gift to the city. Relative immortality, anyway. I suppose in a hundred years another bridge will stand there bearing another politician’s name, and poor old Fabricius will be forgotten. For once, the beggars who ordinarily throng all the bridges of Rome were absent, sleeping it off with the rest.

  The morning was unseasonably warm and children crowded the bridge’s abutments and supports, diving into the chilly water, screaming in delight, or more sedately fishing with long poles. While their elders slept off the excesses of the night before, the children of Rome had an extra holiday, free from supervision.

  I paused in the middle of the bridge and savored the sight. To the east and south the City bulked behind its ancient walls, the gleaming temples atop the hills lending it the semblance of the home of the gods. The play of the children below me made the scene as idyllic as something from a pastoral poem. How deceptive it all was. But I could remember playing here myself as a child on the day after Saturnalia. The bridge was wooden then, but otherwise things were unchanged. There in the water had been the real holiday, when noble and common and slave and free and foreigner were all the same. We had yet to acquire the hard and bitter perspectives of adulthood.

  Or maybe I was idealizing the memory. Children have their own cruelties to go with their own terrors. I continued my walk, knowing I was not made to be a poet.

  The Temple of Aesculapius had the serenity possible only to a temple that is built upon an island. The majestic, dignified temple towered above the curiously ship-shaped walls that enclosed the long and tapering island, complete with ram and rudder, all of stone. The plantings of the temple grounds were among the finest to be seen anywhere in or near the City. The cedars, imported all the way from the Levant, were especially stately.

  I arrived just as the priests and staff were finishing a morning ceremony that included the sacrifice of the traditional cock. The ceremony was in the Greek fashion and was conducted entirely in Greek, in the dialect of Epidaurus, whence the god had come to Rome. I spotted Asklepiodes among those attending and waited until the ritual was over.

  “Ah, Decius,” he said, when I caught his eye, “I suppose you are in need of a morning-after remedy?”

  “Not at all,” I said proudly.

  “At last you learn moderation. That stay on Rhodes must have done you some good.”

  “All the gods forbid it. No, I was just too busy last night to indulge. I came to speak with you about my investigation.”

  “Wonderful. It was beginning to look like a boring day. Come with me.” We went outside and found a bench beneath one of the cypresses. Asklepiodes brushed a few leaves from it and we sat. “Now tell me all about it.”

  I gave him Clodia’s description of the symptoms Celer had evinced prior to his demise, and he listened attentively.

  “This tells me very little, I fear. I wish I could confer with Ariston of Lycia, but as you may have heard he is unavailable.”

  “All too true. I had hoped to question him closely. Not only about the events surrounding Celer’s death but whether he had been treating him for any other condition. Clodia wouldn’t necessarily know.”

  “They were not close?”

  “It would be fair to say that.”

  “I had little liking for Ariston. He was over fond of money and may have strayed from the strict Hippocratic path in his pursuit of it.”

  “I have my suspicions of the man as well.” I told him of Harmodia’s murder and its uneasy propinquity to the supposed drowning of Ariston. “Did you happen to examine his body after it was found?”

  “No. I attended his funeral, but there was no suspicion of foul play so we all assumed it to be an ordinary drowning. He had an injury on the side of his head, but it was assumed that he had fallen over the parapet and struck his head on one of the bridge supports before landing in the water. It was after a banquet, and if he had imbibed too much, such a fate is hardly a matter for suspicion.”

  “He was our family physician, but I don’t think I ever saw him. He probably attended my mother in her final illness, but I was in Spain at the time.”

  “You would have remembered him if you had seen him. He was a striking man, very tall and thin. He smiled more often than necessary to show off his expensive Egyptian dental work.”

  My spine sang like a plucked bowstring. “Egyptian dental work?”

  “Yes. Right here”—he pulled down his lower lip with one finger—”he had two false teeth bound in with gold wire. Excellent work, I might add. There is no one in Rome skilled in that craft. You have to go to Egypt, and Ariston was always fond of reminding people that he had lectured at the Museum of Alexandria. As,” he added complacently, “have I.”

  But I wasn’t listening. I silenced him with a raised hand and told him what I had learned from Ascylta, and he all but clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together with glee. Then, of course, he had to have the rest of the story out of me, and he chuckled with each horrible new revelation. Sometimes I wondered about Asklepiodes.

  “This is marvelous!” he proclaimed. “Not a mere sordid poisoning but an ancient cult of human sacrifice and filthy politics as well!”

  “Not to mention,” I pointed out stiffly, “what now looks like the involvement of the medical profession.”

  That soured his face. “Yes, well, that is rather scandalous. It is a greater straying from the path of Hippocrates than I ever suspected Ariston of undertaking.”

  “What about this poison, the one Ascylta called ‘the wife’s friend’?”

  “I have never heard of it, but there is no medical reason why it cannot exist. The presence of foxglove alone would make it potent.”

  “Did Ariston have assistants, students or others familiar with his practice?”

  “Assuredly. I usually saw him with a freedman named Narcissus. Ariston’s offices were near the Temple of Portunus. If Narcissus plans to assume Ariston’s practice, he may still be there.”

  “Will you accompany me?” I asked as I stood.

  “Decidedly.” He grinned. We left the island and walked back into the city through the Flumentana Gate. The district was not one of Rome’s better ones, despite the presence of some of Rome’s most ancient and beautiful temples. The dwellers there were involved mainly in the port trade: wharfage, warehousing, barge hauling, and so forth. More foreigners lived there than in any other district within the walls of Rome. Worst of all, the district was directly adjacent to the outlets of Rome’s two largest sewers, including the venerable cloaca maxima. The smell that morning was dreadful, although not as lethal as on a hot summer day.

  Ariston’s surgery was located on the upper floor of a two-story building that faced the Forum Boarium. The ground floor was a shop selling imported bronze furniture. The stairway was external, running up the side of the building to an open terrace surrounded on three sides by planter boxes full of ivy and other pleasant greenery. The railing of the stair and the corners of the parapet around the terrace were decorated with sculptured symbols of the medical profession: serpents, the caduceus, and so forth.

  We found Narcissus on the terrace, examining a patient in the bright light of morning. He looked up with surprise at out arrival.

  “Please, do not let us intrude,” Asklepiodes said.

  “Master Asklepiodes!” said Narcissus. “By no means. In fact, if you
would do me the courtesy, I would greatly appreciate a consultation.”

  “Of a certainty,” Asklepiodes said.

  “Good day, Senator … my apologies, but I feel that I should know you.” Narcissus was a handsome, serious-looking young man with dark hair and eyes. Around his brows he wore the narrow hair fillet of his profession, tied at back in an elaborate bow.

  “You have treated members of his family,” Asklepiodes said. “This is the senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.”

  “Ah! The facial features of the Metelli are indeed distinctive. Welcome, Senator Metellus. Are my services required by your family?”

  “I take it then that you’ve assumed the practice of the late Ariston?”

  “I have.”

  “No, I have some questions about your former patron and mentor. But please attend to your patient first.”

  Narcissus turned and clapped his hands. A hungover slave appeared from the penthouse that formed the fourth side of the terrace. “Bring a chair and refreshment for the senator,” the physician ordered.

  The man in the examining chair was a stout specimen in his thirties, whose head was a bit malformed on one side. He wore a somewhat sleepy, dazed expression.

  “This is Marcus Celsius,” Narcissus said. “He is a regular patient of mine. Last night, during the celebrations, he passed by a tenement where a party was being held on the roof. A tile was dislodged from the parapet and fell four stories, striking him on the head.”

  The slave brought me a chair and a cup of warmed wine, and I sat down to watch the proceedings with interest.

  “I see,” Asklepiodes said. “Was he carried here or did he walk?”

  “He walked and he can speak, although his words grow disjointed after a while.”