Search the Seven Hills

by Barbara Hambly

  Dark-muzzled as though they had been drinking wine, the lions circled them. The ammonia reek of their urine, the dusty fetor of their pelts, and the rankness of carrion filled the air of the pit. Marcus could feel his own blood hammering in his veins, life and terror burning in him as he edged his way across the rank deep weeds to the shorter grass near the pavilion; saw how the lions were already prowling back to the dying glow of the spent lamp oil. Dorcas and Tullia had got to their feet but were standing perfectly still against the wall; only the glint of their eyes moved in the growing dark. A shift in the night wind rippled in their garments, outlining their bodies where the cloth stuck to them with sweat.

  Dorcas said, “I knew you’d come. Did you torch the villa?”

  “You’re going to give me a worse reputation than I have already,” murmured Sixtus, holding out his hand for them. A lioness crouched to spring; Marcus took a step toward her, thrusting with the torch, and the circle of cats broke a little, snarling and flashing their stained dripping teeth. The girls came slowly, their eyes wide with fear but untouched by panic, barefoot and smooth as dancers in the sparse stony grass.

  They moved from the wall, and like sharks around a slave galley, the lions moved with them. Marcus swung the torch and the circle widened again; he felt his every nerve strained to the cracking point, conscious of each movement in that dense hunting darkness. They picked their way over the stones, the girls pressing close to his back, Sixtus moving behind with his sword. Every now and then the lions would prowl too near, and he would slash at them with the fire; to his keyed nerves the world narrowed to the tiny ring of amber light, the black dark just beyond it, the touch of a small cold hand every now and then on his shoulder, the hungry hate of the gleaming eyes, and the thick panting breath in the darkness.

  And thus he didn’t see Priscus Quindarvis until it was far too late.

  Tullia gasped “Marc!” at the same instant he thought he heard a wasp buzz close by his ear—only wasps do not fly at midnight. He felt her stumble against him, clutching at the slippery silk of his fringed sleeve, and turning saw the red gash on her arm and, beyond her, Sixtus crumpling slowly to his knees. Tullia cried out, and from the darkness the lions closed in. With a desperate yell of fury he lashed about him with the torch, blindly concentrating on one thing at a time, and when he looked up, the makeshift rope lay like a heap of old clothes at the bottom of the cliff, directly below where Quindarvis stood.

  He had a bow in one hand, the arrows lying on the ground at his feet. Sweat plastered his white tunic of mourning to his heavy body, and his face gleamed in the light from the pavilion, sticky with unguents from the funeral banquet. His mouth was a taut black line of anger, not a personal hate, but the enraged frustration of a businessman whose plans have been thwarted by malign fate.

  He said, “You stupid meddling boy.”

  Behind him Marcus heard Sixtus whisper, “Get away from me. Get under the cliff, he can’t hit you from there.” Glancing back he saw the old man propped on one arm, the arrow standing in his right shoulder and blood running down the shaft to drip from the saturated feathers to the grass. The lions were growling, scenting the blood, and Marcus stepped back to stand over him, slashing at them with the torch. They backed, but not nearly as far as before; they were hungry, and the blood drew them.

  Marcus turned to yell, “You’ll never get away with this!”

  The praetor didn’t even bother to reply. He stooped to pick up another arrow, his cynical eyes hard and angry, choosing his victim. It occurred to Marcus that he knew his plans were shattered beyond repair. Instead of running, he had stayed to take his revenge.

  He was nocking the arrow as he straightened. Marcus wondered if he would shoot him first or the girls. The torchlight against the darkness made them all splendid targets, and at this range he could hardly miss.

  Then a voice screeched like a wildcat from the darkness, “DEATH TO THE BEAST OF A THOUSAND NAMES!” and Ignatius—small, vicious, and wholly unexpected—slammed into Quindarvis’ back like a bolt from a catapult, swinging hard little balls of fists and screaming apocalyptic curses. Balanced on the very edge of the precipice Quindarvis staggered, tottered, his hands clinging to the bow and his mouth opening in horrified shock. Dirt crumbled under his sandals; the arrows showered down around him like falling twigs while the little saint screeched with vindictive triumph on the pit’s edge.

  The lions swung, snarling, toward the sudden movement as the praetor hit the long grass at the base of the cliff. But Quindarvis had a speed and a kind of hard grasping strength that Marcus had hardly credited him with. He flung himself to his feet in a long rolling dive and launched himself at Marcus in a flying tackle, his hands grabbing for the torch. The impact of his body threw them both backward; Marcus felt knees jab into his broken ribs, a powerful grip wrenching and twisting at the wood in his hands, and he held to it with the blind certainty that to let go would be death indeed. His mouth was full of sand and rocks and long dry grass. He rolled, clinging to the grappling body, smelling the sweat and dirt and smoke mixed with musk and cinnamon perfume, hearing the lions roaring in anger and confusion all around them. His hand was slammed down, beating on some rocks. His fingers opened, empty.

  Quindarvis tried to free himself in a flopping dive and Marcus clinched his arms around that hard thick body in a death-grip. Past the man’s thick wet shoulder he could see the torch lying in a patch of stony sand, smothered and flickering its last. Dorcas caught at it, her tense pointed face blanched even in the warm light; touched the last of the fire to the raked bundle of dried weeds she held in her hand.

  The light exploded into the faces of the lions. They sprang back like startled cats as she waded toward them, swinging the knot of fire. Marcus had a blurred vision of Tullia tearing at the weeds, winding them in a ripped piece of her dress as Dorcas had done, to protect her hand. Then Quindarvis’ weight rolled across him, and he was shoved brutally aside.

  The big man was gasping, his hard face clotted with fury under the sticky mess of perfumed dust. He glanced quickly around, as if gauging his flight, knowing there was none. The torn weeds burned with a hot clear light, but they burned fast; those in Dorcas’ hand were already dimming, where she stood with her feet braced over Sixtus’ body in the bloodstained grass.

  Marcus whispered, “You stinking coward.”

  Quindarvis seemed hardly to have heard. His eyes were still traveling around the dark wall, the locked pavilion, seeking an escape. Marcus realized that he himself was as incidental to the man’s scheme as the Christians, or Tullia, or her mother’s hideous grief had been. Like the little dancing-girls at the banquet, they’d been part of the background; like so many thrushes, killed and plucked to make a pleasant meal. The man’s whole-souled self-centeredness had made no distinction between them at all.

  “You murdering bastard!” he shrieked, more to get his attention than anything else, to get him to look, just once, at one of them as a human being instead of as a step toward the goal.

  But the praetor’s glance held only irritation, as though a lobster had nipped his fingers from the pot. “You don’t know anything about it, boy,” he muttered, and swung around as Dorcas slashed with her improvised torch at the nearest of the advancing cats.

  Like the blade of a sword, light touched them, a gold slit pouring through the door at the pavilion’s base. The darkness opened, like the gates of heaven; framed within the doors Marcus glimpsed Telesphorus’ bald shining head, the burnished gleam of the armor Alexandros wore, the crowding shapes of the rest of the Children of Light. With only a single guard left they must have forced the pavilion doors in silence.

  Later, when he thought about it, Marcus thought Quindarvis should have known better. But whether he had got drunk at the funeral banquet of his colleague Silanus, or whether he had grown careless with despair, or whether from where they all crouched in the sparse wiry bloodstained grass, among the closing lions and the dying fire, it had looked to be a b
etter gamble—Quindarvis made a run for the door.

  Judah Symmachus told him afterward that they could hear him shrieking as far away as the villa, even over the noise of the fire.

  XIX

  One should not believe in conspiracies until they have attained their goal.

  Domitian, emperor of Rome

  “MAD?” FELIX CRITICALLY INSPECTED a sliver of lobster held delicately between two fingers, then popped it into his mouth. “B’Castor, I’d be half-mad, too, if I’d had a villa that cost as much as his did, and came back to find the whole thing in flames. D’you know what that place must have cost him?”

  “Close to ten million sesterces,” replied Arrius equably, “at a conservative estimate. But of course, he didn’t pay for it all.”

  “Didn’t he, by Jove? Who did?”

  “Your father, for one,” replied the centurion, holding out his cup for Alexandras to pour the wine. “And your brother Caius, and myself, and every other person in this city who’s ever paid taxes. You were right, Marcus. Old Symmachus started on the audit today. If word of that had got back to the emperor, I’d be surprised if our friend would have come out of it with his head.”

  “He would not have.” Varus moved slightly on his couch, the gems of his rings flashing in the dappled light that came through the wall of vines. In that handsome face his dark eyes were brooding and angry. “His Highness may be a soldier, with a soldier’s tastes and crudities, but he is hardly a barrack-room emperor. He has striven to make Rome as clean, as upright, and as honorable under his rule as it was in the days of the ancient republic.”

  “I pray Isis he will succeed,” murmured his wife, and lifted her cup in a small gesture of libation, which her husband ignored. She glanced sideways at her daughter, who sat, as all good Roman daughters should, at her parents’ feet. Her thin face glowed, and she added softly, “For I know truly now that Isis answers prayers.”

  “By Jove I hope she’ll answer that one,” twittered Felix. “Don’t think I could stand another night like that one. Let’s have the mustard, O frater mine.”

  “You acquitted yourself like a soldier,” smiled Sixtus, reclining on his couch at the head of the table. He reached stiffly for his winecup, and Dorcas, who sat at his feet, handed it to him. “Tell me, just out of curiosity. How did you contrive to delay Quindarvis’ arrival at the villa? You gave us the time we needed; had he arrived any sooner it could have been extremely embarrassing for us.”

  “Maybe I should leave,” offered Arrius, making as if to rise. “I’m not sure I ought to know this.”

  “No, no! Perfectly decent—well, classical, anyhow. Fact is, it’s just about the only thing I remember out of my schooling. Some Greek or other used it to fox a chariot race. You pull the linchpin out of the wheel and stick a wax one in the hole instead. Works just fine till you get going, then slam! You’re on the pavement. Not surprised he was annoyed. Dashed dirty trick. If you whittle it down a bit a candle works just fine. Pass the mustard, Professor.”

  “He was an evil man,” said Aurelia Pollia quietly, “and I cannot say that I’m sorry that he came to the end he did.”

  “It was merciful,” said Varus dryly, “compared to what it would have been.”

  “What is hard to believe,” she continued, running the embroidered edge of her shawl through small fragile fingers, “is that he knew. I don’t understand someone like that, who comforted me, all that first night and all the next day, who cared for me, who stayed with me at a time when I was so distracted I think I would have lost my mind.”

  “I suspect,” said Sixtus quietly, “that he stayed with you chiefly to make sure that you did not start asking yourself questions, such as, with the whole route from the Aventine to the Quirinal Hill to choose from, why did they decide to kidnap her on her very doorstep? And why would a man spend the day before the games he was sponsoring—the day when all the business of them has to be settled—loitering around the house of an absent patron, as Nicanor tells me he had from the eighth hour onward.”

  There was a long pause. Then Lady Aurelia said, “I feel very badly about Nicanor. He was so good, and so helpful to me that night; and then to do that to him.”

  “Well, y’know, slaves have to expect that kind of thing,” reasoned Felix brightly. “I mean, if they get on the wrong side of the law...” He glanced hastily around at Churaldin, who with a perfectly impassive face under the whiteness of a bandage was bringing in a basket of dates. “Well, there’s slaves and slaves, of course.” He wriggled in embarrassment. “Dash it, Professor, if you won’t pass me the mustard on the third time of asking...”

  Marcus and Tullia hastily surfaced from drowning in each other’s eyes and looked around, startled, at reality. “Uh—oh, yes.” Marcus handed him the salt. Felix rolled his eyes heavenward in disgust.

  Varus said, “I will make it up to Nicanor. Fate did him a terrible injustice, and he met it with great courage. A man deserves his freedom for that.” He glanced across at Marcus. “Who was the woman?”

  Marcus hesitated, then said, “A slave of Porcius Craessius’. Her name is Hypatia.”

  The prefect nodded. “I will speak to him in the morning.” He looked down the table at his daughter, who was blushingly attending to her untouched food. “And what would Quindarvis have done,” he asked quietly, “had not you and these mysterious friends of yours intervened, Sixtus?”

  The old scholar glanced at Tullia, his brows drawn down in concern, and she met his eyes calmly and turned to look at her father.

  She said quietly, “I knew from the first they planned to kill me. Plotina made them stop talking about it in front of me. They—they hadn’t done so to torment me, I don’t think; it was just as if I were a lamb or something. I was nothing to them. I think that was more frightening than anything else.”

  Her mother, who had been reclining beside Varus, sat up and clasped her hands, her face suddenly wrung with compassion. Tullia gave her a bright, close-lipped smile, denying that the horrors had any aftermath of nightmares or fears. Varus was enough of a Roman to look down his nose disapprovingly at the display of emotion, and his wife quickly returned to her position on the couch. Tullia gave her a sideways glance of understanding connivance and pinched her ankle to let her know she understood.

  “It’s an apt comparison,” said Sixtus after a moment. “He thought no more of you as a person, my child, than he thought of those poor devils he purchased from the courts to fling to the bears at his games. In a way it was staged like the games, a deliberately planned crescendo of pathos and horror. Had we not been on his heels, he might have waited a day or two after your father returned to the city to let public sentiment and your father’s horror and anxiety work itself to a fever pitch, secure in the knowledge that no matter how many Christians or supposed Christians were questioned, none of them would have the slightest idea where you were. Then I suspect your body would have been found under dramatic circumstances. The deaths of Judah Symmachus and his father, who was the real target of this murder attempt, would pass virtually unnoticed in the ensuing slaughter.”

  The deep mellow voice ceased; there was silence, as Varus looked down into the darkness of his wine. “It is my shame,” he said quietly, “that you are right.”

  “It is an easy matter,” returned the former imperial governor, “to get at a man through his child.”

  “As Quindarvis knew,” the prefect replied. “And since I had thrown those poor silly Christians to the beasts without any more thought than he showed, it made the accusation all the easier to believe.”

  There was an embarrassed pause in the conversation following this remark, as Dorcas, who had sat in almost unnoticed silence, glanced up suddenly and met his eyes. The prefect reddened. But she only said softly, “At least you acted out of your own conviction and the law, rather than for personal gain.”

  “No,” said Varus softly, looking down at his hands, smooth and unworked around the chased gold rim of the cup. “After thi
s long, I really cannot say what my motives were. But I suspect that the fact that I was sponsoring games affected my judgment.” And he raised his head, staring down the hastily averted gazes of astonishment from his wife and child. “If there is divine justice,” he continued stiffly, as an old man does when he uses muscles long inactive, “I can only say that I am thankful that I received less than my deserving.”

  The silence that followed this admission was so painful that out of sheer tact Sixtus stepped gracefully in and changed the subject by asking, “By the way, prefect, what will be done with Plotina? She was in this thing up to the neck, of course.”

  “Will they kill her?” asked Tullia unhappily. “It wasn’t that she was kind to me—she wasn’t—but she did keep the men from abusing me. I’m sure it was simply to keep there from being any uproar, but I owe her that.”

  “If it were not for Plotina,” added Dorcas, “the man Lucius would undoubtedly have killed me when he found me outside Tullia’s room in the brothel.” She glanced across at Arrius, her brows drawn together in concern.

  Varus said dryly, “I don’t think we need worry about Madam Plotina. Too many people will be interested in keeping her from trial. I expect she’ll merely find herself invited to leave Rome and never return.”

  Sixtus remarked, “There are worse fates,” and drained his cup. “And with Quindarvis dead, I doubt that any of this is going to come to trial—or, indeed, to public notice—at all. And in a town like Rome,” he added in a kindlier voice, as Tullia’s cheeks flushed a bright vermilion, “you’ll find that there is so much gossip that one scandal very quickly chases another. In a year very few people will know, or care, where you were.”

  Stealthily, Aurelia Pollia reached to grip her daughter’s hand. “What surprises me,” she said, with a timid glance, as though for permission, at her husband, “is that they would dare to keep her in town at all. Wasn’t it terribly dangerous?”