Search the Seven Hills

by Barbara Hambly

  The battle was humiliatingly short. Somehow he was abruptly on the ground, Tullia’s screams ringing in his ears. Beyond the litter and the milling bodies he could see her white limbs flashing in the tangle of her gown, brown greedy hands holding her, lifting her off her feet. He sought to rise and a boot thudded brutally into his ribs. His sight blurred, and he tasted mud and wetness and the welling sourness of vomit in his throat. As the world reeled into darkness, he heard the screams muffled, and the clattering welter of fleeing feet.

  By sheer force of will he heaved himself half-upright, in time to collide with another young man—the slave who had passed them earlier and had come leaping out of nowhere to run to the rescue. They tangled and fell, the slave cursing him in British. There were other voices, shouts ringing off the high walls, a flicker of white and struggling movement in the mouth of an alley. The slave writhed free of Marcus’ entangling toga and was off after them again, to catch them before they were lost in the maze of lanes downhill. Marcus tried to follow, tripping again, fighting a dizzy blackness that clutched at the edges of his mind. He reached the black canyon of the narrow lane at a staggering run, hearing something falling and, in the impenetrable shadows before him, the clatter of footsteps and a horrible smothered squealing. Without pausing for thought, he plunged after the sound. Something white and blurred danced elusively among the twisting alleyways.

  Then his feet were hooked from beneath him, and he hit the pavement again, the stones of the wall beside him ripping at his flailing hands. A body lying half under his feet twisted to a sitting position, and he had a brief vision of the dark angular face of the slave as powerful hands caught his shoulders and slammed him unconscious against the wall.

  The goddess Persephone had been raped by Pluto, lord of the underworld.

  It had all happened in the ancient days of the gods, he knew; and Timoleon, the Greek philosopher at whose feet he had studied these last three years, had explained to him once that the myth was, in fact, an allegory of the union of the elements in a single godhead.

  But through the gold fog that seemed to surround him, he thought for a time that he lay in the grasses of an ancient Greek meadow, the scent of flowers thick in his throat. He saw the coming of the death-god, the girl taken by surprise; saw the white struggling body in the reeds beside the stream, and the brown hands of that inexorable assailant gripping at the girl’s clenched, protesting thighs. He struggled toward them, trying to call out, but his body felt heavy, as though he were half-asleep or very, very drunk. He saw the girl’s mouth part in a scream, stretching wider and wider; and turning, looked into the horror-stricken eyes of Demeter, Persephone’s goddess mother.

  Through the foggy blurring of his senses he thought he heard the philosopher Timoleon’s voice as he lectured. “What we have here is not the disgraceful behavior of God toward God—for how can there be violence of one element of the Godhead toward another?—but an allegorical figure of life and death as united emanations of the One. Earth, and the commonplaces of human affairs, are here represented by the goddess Demeter, whom we may take to understand... ” The voice seemed to fade, to change into other voices. Marcus thought groggily, No, it isn’t that! No measure—no godhead. Only the rape of innocence, blind and random injustice, the thrashing pale reeds whitening to a froth of torn white silk, the bronze lilies tangling in the helpless girl’s hair. All the philosophy in the world will never reconcile me to that.

  “My dear boy... ” Something shockingly cold against the side of his head made him flinch, and blinking, he saw Pluto’s face melt into the square, anxious countenance of Priscus Quindarvis as the big man bent over him, a dripping rag in his hand. “Are you all right?”

  The bright haze of the dream blurred the features, and the lights stabbed at his eyes, so that he twisted his head aside to escape burning.

  “It’s the lamp,” said another voice—Nicanor, he identified it, Varus’ Greek physician slave. The dazzling glare shifted.

  Somewhere a woman was screaming, a moaning animal noise of grief. His eyes opened suddenly, he said, “Demeter... ” Then, as consciousness devoured the last fragments of the vision, “Lady Aurelia!” He tried to get up and sank back with a nauseated groan.

  “Are you all right?” asked Quindarvis again, daubing worriedly at his face with a rag, and Nicanor demanded brusquely, “How in the name of Apollo would he know if he’s all right? Lie still, Professor.” It was an old nickname that dated back to his bookish schooldays; even Tullia’s father’s slaves used it. He supposed it was better than what the other philosophy students at the Basilica Ulpias sometimes called him—Silenus, after the Greek god of drunken poltroonery, a pun on his family name of Silanus. The physician’s light swift fingers turned back his eyelids, then felt at the cords of his neck. Gradually his senses cleared. The softness of the dream’s grasses turned to rocks beneath his smarting ribs, though rolling his head painfully to one side, he saw that he was actually lying on one of the dining-room couches in Varus’ house. Someone seemed to have filled the sockets of his eyes with sand; his mouth tasted as though it had been carefully stuffed with Egyptian cotton.

  A night breeze wafted the scent of honeysuckle through the open archways from the central court. A single bronze standing-lamp threw titan shadows over the marble pilasters that lined the painted walls. In the courtyard a fountain murmured; there was a muted bustling, a distant blur of frightened voices, and from far off, the rattling din of cart traffic from the stew of sound that was Rome. Lady Aurelia’s sobs were a distant, broken jarring in the night.

  “You’ll do,” grunted the physician, “though Asclepius only knows how.”

  Quindarvis swung around, his dark cynical eyes brooding in the lamplight. “Wretched, dirty, filthy beasts... How’re the other ones?”

  “I’ve already sent the bearers home—they were Tiridates’ men... ”

  “Why in the name of the gods didn’t she have her own slaves to carry her chair?”

  Nicanor shrugged impatiently. “The bearers who took her over there came back this afternoon—one of them had a fever or something... That damn Syrian has so many slaves he could easily spare a couple. No harm done, they were only stunned.”

  “What about the man who was supposed to be with her?” continued the senator in an outraged voice. “The man should be put to death, and if he was mine he would be.”

  “She sent him away,” protested Marcus feebly.

  “He shouldn’t have left.” Quindarvis came pacing back to his couch, despite his square chunky build and puffy, unhealthy skin, giving the impression of latent power, like an overweight tiger. On one thick hand a massy gold signet flashed like a mirror. “Great gods, man, we’re not talking about a pilfered winecup! How’s the other man, the slave?” he added.

  “I’ll live,” said a younger man’s voice. Limping steps halted up to the side of the couch, and Marcus found himself looking up into the dark face he had seen just before the wall came rushing up to smash him over the head. “Young master,” said the slave, who couldn’t have been much older than Marcus’ twenty-two years, “I beg you to forgive me for—for tripping you. I thought you were the last of those scum. Indeed I did.”

  In spite of the brand on his cheek and the simple dark tunic of a rich man’s slave, there was pride in him—a barbarian, thought Marcus, taken young in war. He remembered how he’d dashed to Tullia’s rescue, charging up the alleyway after her kidnappers, and to judge by the smear of crusted blood down the side of that angular face, he had doubtless been felled by an ambush the minute he’d turned the comer. But in spite of that he’d come up fighting. Which would cost him his life, Marcus realized, if he was charged with all but bashing the brains out of a Roman citizen.

  He blinked stupidly for a moment and nodded, though the effort brought a blinding pain to his neck. “It’s all right,” he managed to say. “I—I’m glad you were so ready to fight, even for a total stranger. To go against them unarmed.”

  No
slave was ever armed.

  The young man shrugged. “They only had clubs.”

  Marcus managed to touch the tender swelling at the back of his head. “So I learned.” The quick, silent gratitude that flickered in those dark eyes embarrassed him, so he turned to Quindarvis and asked, “Did they catch them?”

  The praetor was silent for a long time. Lady Aurelia’s cries had faded to a muffled undercurrent of sound. Among the grotesque looming shadows of the room it seemed that the only noise was the hissing of the oil in the lamps. After a moment he said, “Naturally, there’s a hue and cry throughout the Quirinal Hill. All the men in the household are out—we’ve sent to the watch—it’s early yet to hear.” Those little black stone eyes slid to the young slave. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Churaldin,” he returned quietly. “My master is Claudius Sixtus Julianus.”

  Marcus had never heard the name before, but the praetor, who made it his business to stand among the fashionable and the great, looked at him with renewed interest. “Really?” His manner perceptibly warmed. “I thought he was dead.”

  “No, sir,” replied Churaldin, with the manner of a well-behaved mastiff under an unwanted caress.

  “Well,” said the senator, “he’ll doubtless be worrying for you, boy. Some of the prefect’s men will go with you... ”

  “It isn’t necessary, it’s only a little way farther up the hill.”

  “Well, if we find you in the morning eaten by the pigs in the street, don’t blame me,” granted Nicanor, returning to the group beside Marcus’ couch. “Here, I’ll show you the door... ”

  Quindarvis followed them as far as the curtained doorway that led into the hall; Marcus could hear the murmur of their voices there for a time. He stared up at the ceiling, where the three shadows clumped like harpies awaiting their prey, remembering how on the hot afternoons of other years he and Tullia and his younger brother had played chase and leapfrog over these very couches. The linen couch cushions had been white then instead of red, he recalled, but the dark polished surface of the ebony table was the same, the oiled claret-red gleam of the lion’s-foot couch legs, the frescoed frieze of horsemen around the wall. He remembered the priceless vase that had used to stand in the niche between the lampstands, that Tullia’s father had beaten her for breaking.

  The Tyrian curtains fell shut behind Nicanor and the departing slave. Quindarvis turned back toward the couch, his head bent in thought, his thin, ungiving mouth drawn into a single hard black line. He had something in his hand. “Did you see the men who did it, Marcus?” he asked abruptly, standing over the couch again.

  Marcus blinked up at him for a moment. “Yes, one of them. A—a sort of brown man, Cretan, or Carthaginian... ”

  Quindarvis held out something in his fingers, small and flame shaped, that caught the light like a slip of mercury. Gropingly Marcus held out his hand for it; it was scarcely longer than the joint of his thumb.

  It was a stylized fish, flat-cast in pure silver. A hole near the head showed where a chain had passed through. It was smooth and polished and bore little nicks and marks of wear. Turning it over he saw the initials inscribed on the back.

  ICTHYS

  “What is it?” he asked stupidly.

  “I picked it up from the mud,” said Quindarvis slowly.

  “It must have been torn loose from the neck of the man you struggled with.” He paused, the tiny muscles jumping suddenly in his thick jaw. “It’s a Christian medal.”

  “Christian?” whispered Marcus, and the horror was like the touch of cold fever on his bones.

  “I’m afraid it’s they who’ve taken her.”

  II

  Details of the initiation of neophytes [into the Christian church] are as revolting as they are notorious. An infant, cased in dough to deceive the unsuspecting, is placed beside the person to be initiated. The novice is thereupon induced to inflict what seem to be harmless blows upon the dough, and unintentionally the infant is killed... the blood—oh, horrible—they lap up greedily; the limbs they tear to pieces eagerly, and over the victim they make league and covenant, and by complicity in guilt pledge themselves to mutual silence... . Their form of feasting is notorious;... they gather at a banquet, with all their children, sisters, and mothers, people of either sex and every age. There, after full feasting, when the blood is heated and drink has inflamed the passions of incestuous lust... the tale-telling light is upset and extinguished, and in the shameless dark, lustful embraces are indiscriminately exchanged.

  Fronto (quoted by Minucius Felix)

  “WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Christians?”

  Morning had come, after a night of hideous dreams. Clothed in a borrowed tunic, Marcus sat before a little table set up in the garden, unable to touch the thinned wine and white bread before him. Across the table Priscus Quindarvis was talking with a man named Arrius, a centurion in the Praetorian Guard.

  When Quindarvis didn’t answer, Marcus ventured, “They’re a sect of the Jews, aren’t they? Who caused the great fire? Wasn’t there some kind of general arrest of Christians about three years ago?”

  “About that,” grunted Arrius, and those shrewd greenish-hazel eyes narrowed in the dappled light. “It was hardly a general arrest. On the whole the Christians keep pretty quiet, and the emperor’s been fairly tolerant of them.”

  Quindarvis looked up, his square, dissolute face clouded with rage. “And look where it’s got him,” he snorted. In contrast to Marcus’ crumpled and unshaven state, the praetor looked oiled and sleek, having availed himself of Varus’ private baths and barber. He did not look as though he had slept, but he was dressed in fresh clothing and smelled of balsam. “They should have stamped those lunatics out from the beginning.”

  The centurion cocked one long, curling, sun-bleached eyebrow at him. “You ever try to find a Christian? We thought we’d gathered in the lot three years ago. But you’ll still hear rumors of them from time to time. Marks chalked on walls. Hymns somebody hears as they walk down an alley at night in the Tiberside or the Subura districts. Sometimes you’ll hear of a child disappearing.”

  Marcus looked up with a jerk, his throat seeming to constrict. “It’s true, then? They eat babies?”

  The soldier frowned in thought. “I don’t know how true it is. A woman friend of my cousin’s had a neighbor whose little girl disappeared, and she claimed the Christians got her. But there are others who steal children for other reasons.” His eyes shifted to Quindarvis. “What do you know?”

  He took a sip of his wine, and his mouth tightened distastefully though the vintage was excellent. “Only what everyone knows. They’re scum, mostly, Jews and dirt-poor Greeks that somebody’s managed to delude into thinking their morbid superstitions and filthy rites will render them immortal. They abhor the empire as ritually unclean; they’ll work to destroy both it and the city of Rome in the hopes of winning Jehovah’s approval. That was the reason behind the fires, you know.”

  “You think they set the great fire, then?”

  “I didn’t think there was any question,” retorted Quindarvis. “Why would Nero have done such a thing? He was the emperor. His cousin Caligula had had islands made in the deepest part of the sea, cities built on boats stretched across the Bay of Naples. Why would he have had to resort to a subterfuge like burning the city to get ground for his building projects? He could simply have ordered the land cleared. No—the Christians set the fires and threw the blame on him to discredit him, and they evidently found enough people sufficiently discontented with their lot to believe them.”

  He glanced up irritably as Varus’ butler appeared in the garden, a Carthaginian Greek with smooth manners and in general an absolutely chilling demeanor. He looked haggard now, and more than a little frightened. Quindarvis listened to his murmured words and made an impatient gesture. “Send them away. I haven’t time to waste on a pack of good-for-nothing sponges who have nothing better to do man clutter up the prefect’s doorstep. Certainly Aurelia Pollia’
s in no fit case to see them. Damned clients,” he muttered, turning back as the butler bowed his way from the arbor. “What a price to pay for consequence! To support a bunch of second-rate sycophants who hang around your door hoping you’ll further their ambitions or at least invite them to dinner... ” He shook his head, like a bull goaded by flies.

  “But the Christians!” cried Marcus, horrified that anyone could be so calm in the face of such hideous events.

  “Christians!” spat Quindarvis, his eyes smoldering with fury. “You ask me what I know about Christians, centurion. Unfortunately I know too much. I know that they hold everything in contempt that’s good and decent. They hold their women in common; I gather sexual abominations of various sorts are a regular part of their rites. Their rituals include the sacrifice of children—babies, usually, but I’ve heard of cases of boys and girls up to the age of seventeen or eighteen being killed, their flesh eaten and their blood drunk.”

  Marcus whispered, “No!” and the centurion looked thoughtful, folding his brown, broken-knuckled, soldier’s hands on the sun-dappled marble. He was a medium-size, sinewy man who reminded Marcus of something braided out of leather, relaxed within the weight of his chain-mail shirt, the transverse crest of his helmet brushing the curling tendrils of the vines above his head. Like an animal, thought Marcus, a cold-blooded and bony-faced outsider to whom this anguish is only another problem to be solved, another body to be found.

  Marcus lowered his head to his hands, his eyes aching, his skull throbbing even with the diffuse green light beneath the grapevines. Quindarvis’ voice went on, “That isn’t the worst I’ve heard, either. I’m told the Christians raid tombs and eat the flesh of the corpses after burial. Maybe the emperor hasn’t been able to come up with confessions from them, but they’re murderers, centurion. Children mean no more to them than sacrificial doves.”