by Talbot Mundy
“The senate. Those flies are the senate — not sitting — too hot for them, more ways than one, and the Forum too noisy, not counting the danger of riots. Villas in the country are more dignified. Only a small committee of the senate holding meetings behind locked doors in the temple of Castor and Pollux. There’s the committee — probably inaccessible, but said to be plotting against Pompey, whom they hate nearly as much as they hate Caesar and with equal cause.
“Cato — praetor and a member of the senatorial committee. If we could see the committee Cato would be there, and he’s the only man in Rome who dares to challenge Pompey openly; but the rest of them hate Cato because he rebukes them for corruption. Cato intends to enforce the law as long as he’s praetor and he’ll be venomously angry because Pompey has compelled him to release Helene.
“I have made one mistake after another, Orwic! I believe two-thirds of Pompey’s enmity this morning is accounted for by his having been told by the Vestals to procure Helene’s liberty. He can’t refuse. Their influence is much too artfully directed. They could turn all Rome against him. Probably he hates the thought of having to ask a favor of Cato, who will certainly hold out for terms. Cato can’t be bribed, but he’s a politician, always looking for the lesser evil; he would compromise, but like an undefeated swordsman.
“Pompey — he’s that big fly — half out of his wits with worry. A good soldier and a rotten politician, drunk with renown — no doubt wishing he had not encouraged Crassus to go to Asia, since now he must stand alone against Caesar. More than likely Pompey is encouraging Caesar to invade Britain, hoping he may meet defeat. Pompey has a notion that by keeping my men he can force some information out of me, and if I could guess what he wants to know I might out-maneuver him; otherwise he will have them killed in the arena. He loathes the mob, and despises butchery, but he knows his influence is waning, so he will do almost anything for popularity. Spectacles — spectacles — doles of corn — anything; they say his agents scour the earth for wild beasts for the arena. Zeuxis undoubtedly told him of the pearls I brought from Britain. Pompey thinks too highly of himself to try to steal them, but he wouldn’t hesitate to let Cato take them in the name of the Roman law. He very likely traded you and me to Cato for Helene! Now do you see what an error I made? Do you begin to understand the danger?
“Conops — nothing simpler than to catch Conops. Zeuxis has betrayed him. What then? My ship comes to Ostia and Sigurdsen drops anchor in the Tiber-mouth. Pompey has authority to order out as many triremes as he wishes; there are always two or three available. They’ll either blockade Sigurdsen or force him to run if he’s lucky. If they do blockade him, he will soon run short of food and water.”
“Run for it!” said Orwic. “You must leave your men in Pompey’s hands and hurry to Ostia.”
“I will die first!” Tros answered, shaking the oaken table. “I expect my men to die for me. Shall I do less for them? Nay! What is duty for the man is obligation for the master! As the head rots, so the fish stinks! Orwic—”
Suddenly his amber eyes appeared to stare at an horizon. Parted lips showed set teeth and his fingers gripped the table edge.
“No cause is lost while there remains a weapon and a man to use it! I might go to Cicero. He corresponds with Caesar. He has influence, and he is Cato’s friend; but Cicero is in Pompeii, which is far off, and they say he is worried with debts and doubt. If Zeuxis told the truth — he often tells it when it costs him nothing — Cicero is planning to defend Rabirius for Caesar’s sake; if he will plead that rascal’s cause before the judges he should not balk at protecting us!”
“Make haste then. Let us go to Cicero,” said Orwic.
“No. He is a lawyer. I dread the law’s delay. Nor will I cool my heels at the temple of Castor and Pollux until some senator comes out from the committee room to find out whether I will bribe him heavily enough to make it worth his while to promise what he never will perform! Nor do I dare to return to Cato; Pompey will have told him I am Caesar’s man, and I was with him only yesterday attempting to persuade him to turn on Caesar! He will think Caesar sent me to tempt him, meaning to denounce him if he fell into the trap — intriguing against Roman arms!
“No. Cato has probably undertaken to condemn my men to the arena, and will do the same for you and me if we attract his notice! That is just the sort of trick that Pompey would turn on the honest old fool — persuade him that my men are criminals, encourage him to have them butchered; then, supposing that the men are really Caesar’s, letting Caesar know Cato is to blame for it, thus aggravating, he will think, the hatred Caesar has for Cato. Do you see it? Pompey would get credit from the mob for showing eight-and-thirty victims of a new sort in the amphitheater. Cato would get the blame. And Caesar, so Pompey would think, by trying to avenge the insult, would drive Cato to join Pompey’s party. Quite a number of important people might follow Cato when the crisis comes. Rome’s politics are like hot quicksilver.”
“You appear to me to know too much,” said Orwic. “In my own land I have found the politics bewildering, and they are simpler. How can you, who are not a Roman, pick the right thread and pursue it through the snarl?”
Tros paused.
“Men are born with certain qualities,” he said, reestimating Orwic — reappraising him; and there returned into his eyes that far-horizon look. “For instance, you were born with an ability to manage horses, which is something I could never do.”
He mulled that over in his mind a minute. Then:
“Because I know ships and I understand the sea, it is a mean ship that will not sail faster under my hand than another’s. Is it so with horses? Will a good horse, or a good team gallop for you faster than for me?”
“Undoubtedly,” said Orwic. “What has that to do with it?”
“This — that I think the gods expect each of us to play his own part. There is a part that the Vestal Virgins play best, and there are other parts for you, and me, and for Helene — and even Zeuxis. It is not alone the great ones of the earth who — Let us leave this place! I saw a man who might be an informer hurry out and look too shrewdly at us as he passed the door.”
He doffed his forehead-band and folded up his cloak, but even so he was too masterful a figure to escape the notice of the crowd. Men followed him and Orwic through the winding streets, accosting them in any fragment of a foreign tongue they knew. Thieves tried to rob them; half a dozen times Tros had to use his fist to save his cloak, until at last he struck one slippery Sicilian and sent him sprawling in the kennel.
Instantly a cry went up that a barbarian had struck a Roman citizen! Three narrow lanes disgorged a swarm of loiterers whose life, endured in vermin- ridden tenements, was never raised out of its shabbiness except to see men slain splendidly in the arena. Rome’s mob could rise as swiftly as the reeking dust, amuse itself a minute with a man’s life, laugh, and disappear as casually as the knackers of the slaughter-yards returning home to dinner.
Orwic drew his dagger and the two stood back-to-back, Tros making no haste to display his weapon; through the corner of his mouth he growled:
“Don’t stab unless you must! Stand firm, look gallant and expect some favor from the gods!”
Then:
“Citizens!” he roared, attempting to adopt the vulgar idiom that politicians used when cozening the crowd for votes. “One rattle of the dice yet! Hold!”
“Aye! Hold hard!” said a voice he recognized, and the Etruscan — he who was night-watchman for the goldsmith’s in the Forum — elbowed his way forward, grinning. The whole crowd knew him; he appeared to have authority of some kind; they obeyed the motion of his hand and half a dozen men leaned back against the swarm behind them, vehemently resisting the efforts of others to get to the front.
“Porsenna! Let us hear Porsenna!”
The Etruscan smiled with the familiar, ingratiating, confident good humor of a popular comedian, long used to waiting for the crowd to quiet down before he loosed his jests. But when the yellin
g had died down enough for one voice to be audible, he wasted no time on amusing them. He threatened.
“It will be a good show in the Circus Maximus, but perhaps you would rather riot now than get free tickets; I am on my way to get the tickets. What will Pompey’s secretary say, if I should have to tell him you have injured two of the best performers? How many tickets then for the people in my streets? Home with you!”
He gazed about him, memorizing faces, or pretending to, and if he had been a praetor he could hardly have received more prompt obedience. With jests, and here and there a grumble, they implored him to remember them and melted away up side-streets, not more than a dozen lingering in doorways to assuage their curiosity. Porsenna grinned at Tros.
“A good thing for you that the man who shares a bed with me is sick this morning! I had nowhere to sleep. And besides, it is true, this is the day I must distribute tickets. I get no pay for it, but people who want tickets have a way of keeping on the easy side of me, which makes life tolerable. We Etruscans love our bellies, and I assure you there isn’t a house in all these streets where I can’t get a good meal for the asking — that is to say, if they have anything, which isn’t always. But there’s always somewhere to turn for food or drink; I’ve noticed it never happens that they all starve on the same day. But have you found your men? No? Well, I’ll find them for you. Only you must bear in mind I’m only a night-watchman and distributor of tickets, so you mustn’t expect me to do more than show you where they are. I wouldn’t have helped you just now if you hadn’t given me a lot of money last night. You’re a rich man and a stranger, and it always pays to go to a little trouble for folk who have generous tendencies. We Etruscans have a name for being sharp customers, but that’s not true; we merely like the soft jobs and the good things and exert ourselves to get them. Let us come this way. Does it seem to you you owe me anything for that little service I did you just now?”
“Show me my men and I’ll pay you handsomely,” Tros answered.
The Etruscan led on through a maze of streets until they reached the valley below the Palatine, where an enormous wooden structure nearly filled the space between surrounding houses. The high walls were covered with electioneering notices in colored paint, and there was a constant pandemonium from cages, underground, where most of the wild animals were kept in darkness until needed for the public execution of Rome’s criminals. There was a stench from an enormous heap of mixed manure that slaves were carrying away in baskets to be dumped outside the city, and the air was full of dust, besides, from heaps of rubbish being showered into carts.
There was a great gate at the end that faced the river Tiber, suitably adorned with horses’ heads, weapons, shields and crudely fashioned lions, but the public entrances were all along both sides, and at the farther end were stables built of stone, beneath which were the cells in which most of the prisoners were kept who had been sentenced and awaited death in the arena. In the open space at the end there were spearmen, but not many and they did not seem to expect to be called upon for action, merely staring with indifference at Tros and Orwic as Porsenna led them toward a wooden office at the rear, where there was a small crowd of men, not one of whom seemed satisfied.
“They grumble, they grumble, they grumble!” Porsenna remarked. “But if there were enough tickets for every one in Rome, what profit would there be in being a distributor? Would anybody think it worth his while to curry favor with us? Some folk don’t know an advantage when they see it. Watch them struggle for the allotments! Good sweat and excitement gone to waste! If there is one thing in all Rome that is honestly apportioned it’s the circus tickets, region by region. There are so many for each important politician — so many for the giver of the games — and the rest are divided equally to us distributors. Now watch me.”
He thrust two fingers in his mouth and whistled, then threw up his hand to catch the attention of a man at the office window. The man recognized him, nodded and tossed a bundle of tickets on to a shelf.
“There. That’s the way to manage it. Now I can get mine when the crowding’s over. All that costs me is two tickets; and since I’ll know where they are I can do a favor to some one in one of my streets by telling him where he can buy them. Now come this way.”
Farther to the rear, behind the stables, in between two rows of racing chariots that stood with poles up-ended, was a stone arch with a barred iron gate providing access to steps made of enormous blocks of stone that led down steeply into gloom. A fetid prison-smell came through the opening, and at a corner, where the steps turned, there was one lamp flickering. A spearman, with a great key at his waist, stood by the gate and sullenly ignored the pleas of half-a-dozen women, one of whom, on her knees, had torn her clothing and was beating her naked breasts.
He recognized Porsenna instantly and drove his spear-butt at the woman to get her out of the way.
“No!” he said. “No! Get away from here! If you want to see your husband, get a permit from the praetor’s office. Otherwise, get sentenced, too, to the arena; then they’ll let you die with him! You wish to visit the dungeons?” he asked, grinning at Porsenna. “You and two friends? I would let you pass in free.”
Tros took the hint and dropped two coins into Porsenna’s palm, who cleverly hid one and gave the other to the spearman. The gate opened on oiled hinges and a wave of filthy air came through the opening as Tros and Orwic followed the Etruscan down the steps.
And now noise blended with the smell. Infernal mutterings suggestive of the restlessness of disembodied phantoms filled the atmosphere; the sound, the Stygian gloom and the disgusting stench were all one. On a stone floor in the midst of the great square columns that supported a low roof three men played at dice by candle-light and half a dozen others watched them. All wore daggers; there were spears beside them, leaned against the wall; each man had as well a heavy iron club with a short hook and a sharp spike at the end. The dice intensely interested them; they scarcely looked up — snapping fingers and adjuring Venus to reward them for the sacrifices they intended to bestow on her.
The murmuring came through heavy wooden doors, in each of which there was a bronze grille at about the level of a man’s face from the floor. All the doors were made fast by bars that fitted into sockets in the oaken posts. There appeared to be a perfect maze of cells, with narrow, almost pitch-dark corridors between them; and at the far end of the vault there was another set of stairs, of solid masonry, that evidently led to the arena or to some enclosure at one end of it. There was a charcoal brazier not far from where the men played dice and two clubs, similar to those the men had fastened to their wrists by thongs, were thrust into red-hot coal. A slave was blowing on it, and the red glow shone reflected in his face.
The slave spoke and one of the men removed a hot club from the fire, wrapping a wet cloth and then a leather guard around the handle. Two who had been watching the dice followed him. A fourth man lifted out a bar that locked a cell door, and the three went in, he who held the iron going last. The fourth man shut the door again, not locking it, and went back to the dice.
There was a great commotion in the cell — blows, oaths, scuffling, a screech — then one long yell of agony that seemed unending, as if the victim never drew a breath. The dice-players took no notice.
When the yell died to a sobbing groan the three came out again and one of them tossed the hot club to the slave who watched the char coal brazier. The fourth man left the dice and went and set the bar in place. It was his voice that made Tros’s blood run cold; he recognized it instantly. It was Nepos!
“Did you injure him?” asked Nepos.
“Not much. Just burned his fingers enough to teach him not to try any more digging. That’s the third time he’s tried to escape.”
Nepos returned to watch the dice. The men resembled phantoms in the gloom; the candle-light broke up the shadows, distorting forms and faces, but the voice of Nepos was unmistakable.
“Who comes?” he asked, shading his eyes as he glanc
ed at the three who were standing with backs to the entrance-steps, a puzzling light behind them.
“Porsenna — and two visitors,” said the Etruscan.
“Visitors? Have they a permit? Who — what have they come for?”
“This nobleman has lost his men. I tell him he will find them here, though much good that will do him!”
“Who is he?”
Nepos approached. He appeared to be not the same man who had entertained Tros in his house. His ferocity, all on the surface now, had changed the very outline of his face — or so it seemed.
“Tros?” he said. “Tros of Samothrace? Who sent you here? That rascal Zeuxis?”
“I have come to find my men,” Tros answered.
“Out! Get out of here!” said Nepos, flourishing his club at the Etruscan. Something in his tone of voice attracted the attention of the dice-players. They all came crowding behind Nepos.
“Well, I warned you I couldn’t do more than show you where your men are,” Porsenna remarked amiably. “You have heard him. He says I must go.”
He turned toward the stairs. Tros, fingering his dagger, made as if to follow him but Nepos gestured to the others, who immediately cut off Tros’s retreat and one man let Porsenna feel the point of his iron club as an inducement to go swiftly.
“You shall see your men,” said Nepos. “Come.”
He beckoned. If he was afraid of Tros he gave no sign of it although his keen eyes must have seen Tros’s right hand at his dagger. Orwic drew his own short weapon and whispered to Tros excitedly: