Render Unto Caesar

by Gillian Bradshaw

  She handed him his crutch, her teeth gleaming in the darkness. “That was useful,” she remarked. “Thank you.” She caught up the end of the rope and threw it back over the wall. It would, he knew, become almost invisible as soon as it was on the ground, and no one was likely to notice it until morning. He tugged at the trailing edge of his cloak, then caught it as it fell on top of him. Cantabra was already moving away down the road, so he followed with the cloak bundled in his arms together with the crutch.

  They walked down the Esquiline through an unbroken silence. Hermogenes found himself listening almost desperately for cries and the sound of people running behind them, but there was nothing. They might have been the only human beings awake and about in all the city.

  When they approached the main road, the silence ebbed. Torches half a block away shone from an oxcart that was rumbling in to the city markets, and in an insula across the road a baby was crying. Hermogenes stopped on the corner, stunned at the ordinariness of it all. They had escaped; they really had escaped!

  He looked vaguely at the bundle in his arms, then set down the crutch and put on the cloak, draping it neatly over his left shoulder and under his right arm, the way he would wear it for a casual occasion. He tugged the ends straight and picked up the crutch again.

  Cantabra had stopped as well, and was waiting patiently, a tall thin shadow in the darkness.

  “We need to go to my friend’s house,” he told her. “It should be safe if we go now. I hope that Rufus called off his watch after meeting me at Pollio’s house, and probably Pollio won’t set one up until tomorrow, after he knows that we’ve gone.”

  She nodded. “We will stay there? Or will we just collect money and leave again?”

  “We will collect money and leave.”

  She nodded again, in a satisfied way. “Can you walk that far?”

  He looked down at his bandaged ankle. “I think so. It might be better, though, if I didn’t try. Perhaps we could ride on a cart.”

  They caught up with the oxcart ahead of them without difficulty. It was carrying vegetables to market, along with baskets of eggs and a few live chickens. The driver and his two assistants were suspicious at first—strangers on the edge of the Subura were potentially dangerous—but apparently decided that a woman and a man with a crutch and a bandaged foot were unlikely to be dangerous. It was agreed that they could ride on the tail of the cart for small change. They rumbled and jolted slowly down the Via Labicana and into the Julian Forum, where the cart stopped and the two passengers got off.

  It was about midnight, but there were plenty of people about—carters, mostly, making deliveries, with some early market vendors setting up stalls. The two fugitives picked their way through them and onto the Sacra Via.

  It was still a long walk to the Via Tusculana, and Hermogenes’ foot was aching badly by the time they drew near the house. He did not protest when Cantabra told him to wait in a shadowed alley mouth while she went ahead to check that there was indeed no watch on the house. He leaned against the wall of an insula, propped his foot up on the crutch, and stared up at the clouded sky. In a nearby apartment a couple were having a drunken argument. A child woke, and began to cry. Another cart rumbled past along the main road, taking a load of timber to supply the workshops of Rome.

  Cantabra came back and told him the way was clear, and he nodded and limped the last block with the aid of the crutch.

  There were no torches in the dolphin holders tonight, and he had a momentary nightmare as he faced the iron-studded door: what if there was nothing behind the door but rubble and the dead?

  He told himself that that sort of blatant destruction of a well-known businessman would be too dangerously arrogant even for Rufus, and knocked on the door.

  There was no answer. He considered knocking more loudly, then decided that he did not want to advertise his visit to the whole street, and went over to knock on the window of the lodge instead. When there was still no response he shoved the end of his crutch up behind the shutters and wriggled it about.

  After about half a minute, somebody grabbed it, and then the window opened and the masklike face of Kyon looked out. At once the mask creased. “Sir!” cried Kyon breathlessly. “You’re back!”

  “Yes. Let us in, please! Quietly!”

  Kyon ran to fling open the door, and Hermogenes limped through and stopped in the entranceway, trying to put his thoughts in order. A dim form came to the door of the lodge, and then Tertia’s voice, soft with relief, said, “Oh, sir, you’re back!”

  Kyon’s family must share the lodge with him at night. “Yes,” he agreed again. “But I dare not stay long. Kyon, will you tell Titus that I am here?”

  Kyon shot off into the house, so quickly that he even forgot to close the door. Cantabra shut it for him, and bolted it firmly.

  Another shape came to the door of the lodge, and Hyakinthos exclaimed delightedly, “Sir! We were afraid.” Erotion’s voice could be heard from behind him, demanding to know if it was the nice Greek. “Yes!” Hyakinthos snarled at her impatiently, then went on, “Rufus’s barbarians went away this afternoon, and we were afraid it meant he’d caught you!”

  “No,” Hermogenes said. “My foot hurts. I need to sit down.”

  He blundered through into the atrium and slumped onto the bench. Tertia darted past into the dining room and returned with a lamp.

  There was a sound of voices from further inside the house, and then Titus Fiducius Crispus came running in, dressed only in a hastily snatched cloak. With him, however, came Menestor, tousled with sleep and dressed in nothing at all. Hermogenes sat up straight, gaping in shock. For the first time he registered that Hyakinthos had been sleeping with his family instead of his master. Menestor dropped to his knees beside him and seized his hand, his face radiant with relief and joy.

  “My dear Hermogenes—” Titus began warmly.

  “What is this!” Hermogenes roared furiously, waving an arm at his unclothed secretary.

  Titus’s face fell. “He s-said you w-wouldn’t m-mind.”

  “I asked you to look after him! I told you I wanted to free him! How could you possibly think that meant you could just take him the minute I left the house?”

  “Sir!” protested Menestor, understanding the emotion, if not the Latin words, “Sir, no, please, we didn’t mean it!” He was almost in tears.

  His master looked at him in confusion, and Menestor looked back directly and reached out to touch his chest nervously. “Oh, please, sir, please understand! I didn’t … I didn’t know what to do when you didn’t come back. When the guards disappeared this afternoon, we thought … I was afraid … Titus Fiducius was very kind to me. He said he was sure you’d come back, but he swore he’d do everything he possibly could to find you. He sent a letter to Pollio’s house, and he said that if he didn’t get a response, he’d even write to Rufus. I was grateful and I was so anxious and I … and it’s true, I told him you wouldn’t mind. I’m sorry, sir!”

  Hermogenes stared at him in disbelief, and Menestor dropped his eyes and said bitterly, “It’s not as though you ever wanted me yourself.”

  He had absolutely no idea what to say, and he simply stared at the slave in shock.

  “What has happened?” Cantabra asked sharply, in Latin.

  “He … nothing,” Hermogenes managed at last. “Nothing. I … thought Titus had forced himself on my secretary, but I misunderstood.” He made himself look at Titus, who was twisting the edge of his cloak in both hands like a nervous little girl.

  “I am sorry I shouted,” he made himself say. “I misunderstood.”

  “That’s q-quite…” stammered Titus. “That’s … I do understand, I would’ve … that is, I understand.”

  “I need to tell you what has happened,” he went on, trying to gather his wits again.

  “Do you want to come into the dining room and have some wine?” offered Titus.

  They went into the dining room. More people were coming in from the ba
ck of the house—Stentor, Gallus, three or four of the other slaves, all relieved to see their master’s guest back in one piece for a change. Someone ran to fetch wine.

  “Menestor,” Hermogenes ordered, “go get some clothes on.”

  Menestor looked down at himself as though only just realizing that he’d run out of the bedroom naked. He blushed and left in a hurry.

  “I truly, truly didn’t mean to,” said Titus humbly. “It just … happened.”

  Hermogenes sighed and rubbed at his face. “Yes. Well, I need to explain what has happened to me. Will you listen?”

  Titus sat down on one of his red-upholstered couches and clasped his hands together attentively.

  Hermogenes made the explanation rapidly—Pollio’s blackmail of Rufus, the meeting that afternoon in the bathhouse, his suspicion that his own life formed part of the bargain; his escape. “I don’t dare stay here,” he finished. “Even if I could justify putting your household in danger—which I cannot!—it would not be safe for me to stay in the first place they’ll look for me. I must go somewhere else. I need to get my letters of credit, though—and I think I should draw up some kind of document giving Menestor his freedom.”

  “I, um, had one drawn up this morning,” Titus said hesitantly. “Because you’d said you wanted to free him, and I thought, if I had one drawn up—”

  “Thank you,” Hermogenes interrupted. “I will sign it.”

  Menestor came back in, clothed.

  “But I thought,” Titus went on, looking sick with apprehension, “I thought maybe you would sell him to me, and then I could free him. Oh, please, please, my dear friend, let me do that!”

  “Why?” Hermogenes demanded bluntly.

  Titus went red. “Because then he’d be Fiducius Menestor instead of Aelius Menestor, and my freedman, not yours.”

  Hermogenes stared at him a moment, then turned to his slave. “Menestor,” he said, in Greek, “Titus asks me to sell you to him, so that when you are free you will bear his name, not mine. What do you want?”

  Menestor reddened and looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”

  “You must make up your mind quickly,” Hermogenes told him sharply. “I have to leave again very soon, and I want your freedom established before I go. I should not have left before without settling the matter.”

  Menestor’s head jerked up. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know yet. I will have to hide, for a few days at least. Understand this: going home is no longer an option. I think now they would send people after me. I still hope that I can find a way out, but I am by no means confident of it.” It was the first time he’d admitted it, and he was surprised at how steady his voice was.

  “Take me with you!” exclaimed Menestor, gazing at him desperately. “Please, sir! I won’t ask you to give up and I won’t complain. I don’t even want my freedom. I just want to be with you. I can’t stand it, staying here, not knowing where you are or what’s happening to you. Please, sir!”

  Hermogenes shook his head in bewilderment. He’d always been supposed an observant man. How had he failed to notice this? “Menestor, you may think yourself in love with me—”

  “Think?” cried Menestor in anguish. “Oh, gods, I’ve been in love with you for years!”

  Hermogenes held up his hand. “Child, you are old enough to know better! I am never going to love you, and if you come with me, you will be no help but a hindrance. I know you are loyal and intelligent, but you don’t speak Latin. I would have to provide for you, and explain you, and interpret for you, and in the end, perhaps, watch you die for me—pointlessly. No: I will not take you with me. Accept your freedom and stay here, for now, at least. I will give you money for your fare back to Alexandria before I leave tonight, so that if I don’t survive, and if you still wish it, you can go home. Discuss it, if you like, with Titus Fiducius. I am going to fetch the things I need.”

  He limped off toward the Nile Rooms.

  Cantabra followed him. “What was all that?” she asked.

  He snorted. He felt, despite the desperation of his situation, a sense of profound shock. He thought of Menestor sharing a room and a bath with him, Menestor helping him dress in the morning, Menestor tenderly washing the blood off his shoulder. The awareness of what Menestor must have been feeling through all that filled him with a mixture of pity and revulsion. He remembered the longing in the young man’s voice in response to his own question as to whether Menestor would be willing to sleep with his master in exchange for his freedom. It hadn’t been, as he’d thought then, a longing for freedom, but for something that Menestor had already known he would never obtain. “The boy thinks he is love with me,” he told the barbarian in disgust.

  There was a silence. They reached the Nile Rooms, and he fumbled in the darkness for the lamplighter. “I heard Greeks were like that,” Cantabra said.

  “What does being Greek have to do with it?” he asked in bewilderment. “Don’t Cantabrians ever sleep with boys?”

  “No,” she replied at once. “If they did we would kill them.”

  “Zeus!” he said, shocked again. He found the lamplighter, lit it, then lit the lamps on the lighthouse stand. The tawdry Egyptian decor formed around them, full of mysterious shadows.

  “I don’t think it is particularly Greek,” he said, going to the trunk. “Most of us like women, and there are plenty of Romans who like boys. My friend Titus, for one, and Vedius Pollio, for another.”

  “I saw how he kept touching you.”

  “I think that was only to provoke me.”

  “It was disgusting.”

  He looked at her in surprise. She stood in the doorway, her arms crossed and her face grim. He shrugged. “Yes. Agreed. Should I have allowed myself to be provoked, when it was what he wanted?”

  She uncrossed her arms and came forward to kneel next to the trunk beside him. “You don’t sleep with boys, do you?” she asked anxiously.

  He felt like hitting someone—her, Titus, Menestor. Pollio, he thought yearningly, or Rufus. “No,” he snapped. “I do not, and at the moment I feel that I never want Menestor near me again. Satisfied?”

  She looked away.

  “The poor young man is seventeen, honest, intelligent, and wretched. I am his master, and he loves me. I brought him here, to this city where he cannot speak the language, took him into dangers he could not cope with for a cause in which he did not believe, then left him in this house with a fat Roman who had fallen in love with him. He looked for comfort, and now feels he betrayed me. He will have the choice between going home on his own to a ruined house, or staying here with Titus Fiducius. He has been utterly devoted to me, and I have treated him shamefully—and now I don’t want him near me. Would your people consider that proper conduct?”

  “I am sorry,” she said in a whisper. “I had no business saying anything.”

  He grunted and unlocked the trunk.

  The strongbox contained only another twenty denarii in coin. He put that in his purse, then collected the letters of credit. He rolled them up in a clean tunic. His good cloak was sitting folded on the edge of the desk: he put the tunic on top of it, then rolled up the whole bundle and secured it with a spare belt. He was about to stand up when he noticed the pen case with Cantabra’s money in the corner of the trunk. He fished it out and handed it to her in silence, then closed and locked the trunk. He blew out the lamps and left the room.

  Back in the dining room, Titus and Menestor were standing together next to a table on which lay some sheets of papyrus. Titus seemed to be pleading with Menestor, who was shaking his head. They both stopped when Hermogenes limped in.

  “Have you made up your mind?” Hermogenes asked the slave.

  “Yes, sir,” replied Menestor in a low voice. “I want you to free me.”

  Hermogenes nodded. “Very well. Menestor, I am sorry. You have deserved better of me than you’ve received. I wish we could do this properly, with the ceremony it deserves, and not in this harsh
haste, but I must leave at once. Is this the document?”

  “Oh, please!” gasped Titus, coming over. “Please, won’t you sell him to me? I’d give you any sum you ask, and I swear I’d free him myself later. Please?”

  Hermogenes paused, staring in surprise. Titus blinked back, his round face pale, his jowls trembling, a man in the grip of an overpowering emotion. For once a “lovely boy” had accepted his advances willingly, and he was altogether smitten.

  “I’m sorry,” Hermogenes told his friend, in Latin, so that Menestor would not understand, “I swore I would give him his freedom, and you know that he is cruelly distressed. How can you ask me to refuse him this, since he wants it?”

  “B-but I love him!” stammered Titus. “And if he isn’t my slave, and isn’t my freedman—well, he’s going to leave me, isn’t he? Nobody ever loves me. You don’t know how lucky you are, to have people love you the way they do.”

  It was, Hermogenes reminded himself, the middle of the night—and from the smell on his breath, Titus had been drinking some of the wine his slaves had brought. He sighed in exasperation and put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Titus, he slept with you of his own free will and choice, because you were kind to him. If you continue your kindness, perhaps he will love you. He has a generous and affectionate nature, as do you.”

  “He won’t,” sobbed Titus, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Nobody ever does.”

  “I have no time for this!” Hermogenes exclaimed impatiently. “How can you expect anyone to love you if you never give them the freedom to choose you? You can’t refuse them that, and then complain!” He picked up the document from the table. It was a bill of sale. He picked up the one underneath it: the manumission. He read it through, saw that it was in order, found pen, ink, and wax, and signed and sealed it.

  “Will you witness it?” he asked Titus, offering him pen and document.

  Titus wiped his nose again, took the pen, and signed his own name as witness.

  Hermogenes handed the manumission document to Menestor, then tipped out his purse. “I’m sorry, this is all I have with me,” he said, giving it to the young man. “It should pay your way to Alexandria if you travel on deck, or if you find work on the ship. You could inquire if any captains or pursers need a secretary. I will try to arrange to have the full fare sent to you when I can get coin, but I do not know whether I will be able to. Titus.” He turned to the businessman.