Render Unto Caesar

by Gillian Bradshaw

  He wondered how much he’d decided to do any of this, anyway. Certainly he had known that he was taking a risk, but almost until the moment he’d left Pollio’s house he had believed that he would win in the end. He wondered if he would have made the same choice, given what he knew now.

  He remembered Myrrhine as a baby in his arms; remembered her toddling to the door shrieking “Daddy! Daddy!” when he came home; remembered her sobbing against his chest at her mother’s funeral; remembered her clinging to him as he said good-bye. He wished he had a lamp, and a table, and ink and papyrus to write to her at once.

  * * *

  He slept badly, waking before dawn and lying on the couch for a long time, scratching at the fleabites and waiting for the morning. At last the darkness became a little less black, and there came the sounds of people getting up in the neighboring apartments. Voices sounded in the street outside as the households of the neighborhood went to fetch water and start the day. He rose, washed his face and hands with water from the amphora, then sat down to examine the bindings on his foot, still working mostly by touch. The ankle was finally beginning to feel usable again, and he unwrapped it, took off the last splint and began wrapping the joint with the linen bandage alone, looping it across his instep so it wouldn’t slip.

  Cantabra came in, shadowy in the gray predawn. She watched him a moment in silence, then said quietly, “I am sorry. Last night I said things to you that a hired attendant should never say to her employer.”

  “You have suffered terribly,” he replied, tactfully watching the bandage instead of her. “I can understand how it must grieve you that while you finally have a chance to escape to a better life, that chance depends upon a man who may already have thrown it away.” He tied the bandage.

  “I do not want you to die,” she said, in a low voice, almost frightened. “Yesterday, when you insisted that you would go out, for no reason, just to have a bath—I felt so angry with you. It has been a long time since I cared that much about a man’s life. I want you to live, and I want to go to Alexandria with you and get away from this terrible city. Thank you for asking me.”

  He felt suddenly and shockingly happy. “Well, then,” he said, smiling at her. “I will do my best to stay alive, and take you there.”

  She seemed to relax at that. She smiled back at him, her teeth white in the dimness. “If you agree to do your best to stay alive … may I say another thing? You should not go to your bank. You say that Pollio will have men out asking for news of you in barbershops; won’t he have sent them to the banks? I don’t know much about banks, but it seems to me that the letters you have can’t work at all of them, so he would not have many to watch.”

  He hesitated. “You are right about that,” he admitted, “but I need coin. I think probably he has not done anything about them yet, and that it will still be safe if I go early this morning.”

  “‘Probably’!” she protested. “I don’t like ‘probably.’ I have coin, more than enough for the next few days. You do not need to take the risk!”

  “I gave you that coin for saving my life,” he told her unhappily. “I hate to borrow it back.”

  “Huh! You are a moneylender; you should not mind borrowing.”

  “Most of my money is in ships, not loans,” he said, and sighed. “But—well, I admit, I don’t like ‘probably’ either, and if you do honestly urge this, I accept, and thank you for it.”

  “Good!” she exclaimed, and smiled again. “Good. I have been thinking, too, about what we should do, how we should approach Taurus. If you write him a letter, then it will go through his office and his secretaries, and there will be delays, and perhaps your enemies will find out. What you must do is see him when he goes to visit the school. He goes there most mornings. I can get the Savage to introduce you.”

  “The Savage?” he asked, with misgiving.

  “Gaius Naevius Saevus,” she explained: the cognomen, saevus, or savage, was unheard-of, and he wondered if it was a true nickname. “The lanista in charge of the gladiatorial school. He knows me, and I will ask him to introduce you to Taurus.”

  “What is a lanista?”

  “A man in charge of a gladiatorial school!” she said impatiently. “The Savage is hard and merciless, but he likes me because I helped him get his job. He will introduce you to Taurus, and you will find a clever way to convince Taurus that you are telling the truth about Rufus. Then we will be safe.”

  “I hope you are right,” he told her, and considered her proposal. She was right that it would be better to contact Taurus quickly and quietly through an introduction, rather than by sending him a letter which someone might report. He just wished he didn’t have to contact the man at all. He wondered again how she felt about trying to save the life of someone she had every reason to hate.

  That she urged this must mean she had good reason. “Very well,” he said, and sighed again.

  “Good,” she said again, and nodded in satisfaction. “We should go soon. Taurus usually visits early.”

  He stared at her in dismay. A part of himself gave a silent cry of No, please, not yet! “I want to write a letter to my daughter first,” he managed at last.

  She blinked at that. “Perhaps we can buy some things for you to write with on the way,” she suggested. “Then you can write it and … how do you send a letter so far?”

  “Titus Fiducius used a courier service,” he told her. “Otherwise, one finds a ship that’s going there.”

  “We will buy you some things to write with on the way to the school,” she repeated. “Then you will write the letter, and give it to me, and I will give it to your friend.”

  He swallowed, and surrendered with a nod. “Very well. We’ll go now.” He looked her up and down, and added, “You should wear the cloak I lent you last night.”

  She was surprised. “It is hot. I do not need a cloak.”

  “You should, nonetheless, wear one. It looks more respectable. If I had gone to the bank, the first thing I would have bought with the money would have been a good plain cloak for you—and a new tunic, and a new pair of sandals.”

  She scowled. “That would have been expensive.”

  “Worth it, I assure you. If my hired attendant is dressed like a domestic slave, what does that say about me? Come! We are going to visit this school where you were a slave. Do you want them to know how you have struggled since you were discharged?”

  She thought a moment, then grinned. “I wish I had the new tunic.”

  She went into her room and came out a moment later with the cloak, still crumpled from being slept on, once again hung around her shoulders like a shawl. He shook his head, and came over to take it away from her. “That isn’t how you wear it!”

  “I know how to wear a cloak!” she told him indignantly. “We do have them in Cantabria.”

  “I bet you pin them. This is a himation, and it is meant to be draped.” He shook out the cloak, then gave it back and stood facing her. “Put it at your back, the way you had it before, only with the left corner even with your left shoulder, and the rest hanging off your right side. Now take that left corner straight across your shoulder, and tuck it in well under your left arm. Use your arm to hold it there, against your side. Now…” He caught the right corner of the cloak, drew the top edge up it so that it covered her head like a hood, held it out a moment to her right to adjust the length, then drew it over her right shoulder and tossed it back over the left. “See? It is weighted so that it drapes.”

  She blinked at him from under the hood, her bright hair hidden, the heavy folds of linen suddenly transforming her into a Greek. The urge to lean forward and kiss her was so strong that he almost obeyed it; only the memory of her antagonist curled up on the cobblestones stopped him.

  “I can’t move my arms!” she protested, flailing her right elbow against the folds.

  “You can pull it up on the left now, to free your hand,” he told her. “And work your right arm until the folds make a sling, then slip
your hand out the top.”

  “Huh!” she said, working at it. The hood fell back, and she stopped, frowning at him suspiciously. “You put it under your right arm.”

  “Men can wear it that way on informal occasions,” he told her. “Women wear it the way you have it.”

  She worked her right arm vigorously until it was completely free of the folds. The draperies, disturbed, sagged crookedly. He considered pulling them straight again, then gave up. She was not a Greek, would not become one however much he draped her cloak for her. He should be glad that at least the cloak looked better draped askew than it had as a shawl. He took up his own cloak, shook it thoroughly to get rid of the fleas, draped it as neatly as he could, and they set out.

  About three blocks into the Campus Martius they found a booth belonging to a scribe who wrote letters and drew up documents for the illiterate. They stopped, and after convincing the scribe that he could write his own letters, but was willing to pay the full charge for just the papyrus and ink, Hermogenes was supplied and allowed to sit down in the booth. He gazed at the blank page for a long moment, aware of Cantabra standing over him impatiently, and of the way the light was brightening in the street outside. The long letters of explanation and defense which he had composed in the course of the night now seemed shrill, deluded, pointless. He sharpened the pen, dipped it in the ink, and wrote hurriedly:

  MARCUS AELIUS HERMOGENES GREETS HIS BELOVED DAUGHTER, AELIA MYRRHINE.

  My darling, things have not gone as I planned. My attempt to collect the debt from Rufus has brought me into opposition to two very powerful men who have schemes I knew nothing about, but to whom I have now become a threat. I do not know whether I will be able to survive. If I die, please believe always that I loved you, and that I never intended to abandon you. The money for your dowry should be safe: choose a man who will make you happy. My dearest, I am so sorry I will not see you grow up. I pray that the gods favor you in all things, and grant you health and a long life.

  He could think of nothing to add. He rolled the letter up, wrote the address on the back, and borrowed cord and wax from the scribe to seal it.

  “Is it done?” Cantabra asked.

  He nodded. Slowly and reluctantly he handed her the letter, and she tucked it under her cloak into the pen case, which also held her money and his letters of credit. He thanked the scribe, and they set off.

  The gladiatorial school was a very large building. Constructed solidly of brick, its sheer, windowless walls frowned four-square down on the streets of a small city block. Cantabra led him along two sides of the square to reach the single entrance.

  The door was plated with iron, and the barbarian woman stood staring at it for a long minute. Her face was expressionless, but something about her stance proclaimed her loathing of the place. He remembered how she had said that she had been willing to starve rather than return here, and he wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to, that he would go instead to Maecenas. The words were on his tongue when she knocked.

  The doorkeeper opened the window of his lodge almost at once, and gazed out suspiciously, his face reduced to a red blur and some eyes behind a grill. “What d’you want?” he demanded.

  “I want to see the Savage, Pimp,” Cantabra told him.

  The eyes blinked, and the red blur split with a grin. “Cantabra! You coming back to us?”

  “No,” she replied flatly. “I just want to see the Savage.”

  “He’ll want to see you,” said the doorkeeper with a confident leer, and closed his window.

  “His name isn’t really Pimp, is it?” Hermogenes asked in an appalled whisper.

  She shrugged. “It’s what everybody calls him.”

  The door opened, and Pimp, a large, fat, red-faced man with a wooden leg, stood aside with an elaborate bow. When Cantabra had gone through, however, he flung out an arm to bar Hermogenes. “What’s he?” he demanded of the barbarian.

  “My employer,” she replied. “He wants to speak to the Savage. He’s why I’ve come.”

  The doorkeeper regarded Hermogenes with unfriendly eyes. The man’s face was deformed from old breaks in the bone, marked with scars, and the whites of the eye were red, covered with a tracery of small blood vessels damaged by a lifetime of fighting. “What d’you want with the Savage?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Are you his secretary?” Hermogenes asked mildly. “Should I have applied to you for an appointment?”

  The doorkeeper frowned, sensing mockery, but unable to grasp where it lay. “You’re Greek!” he said accusingly.

  “This is true,” he replied politely. “Does it mean I’m not allowed in?”

  “Here, what’d you hire Cantabra for, Greek? She don’t even let nobody fuck her!”

  “I hired her as a bodyguard after she saved me from some robbers in the Subura. May I pass, please? Or should Cantabra go to the Savage and explain that you will not let me in?”

  The doorkeeper stood aside quickly, and Hermogenes limped past him. Cantabra at once set off along a narrow, tunnellike passageway into the heart of the school.

  That heart appeared to be an exercise yard enclosed by the brick framework of the building and spread with sand. About twenty men were jogging about it in armor while another ten or so sparred with one another in the center, using wooden swords. Fifteen more, guards supplied with clubs and whips, lounged in the sun against the far wall. The joggers at first merely eyed the visitors curiously, without pausing. Then suddenly one of the men stopped, staring, and shouted, “It’s Cantabra!”

  At that they all stopped, though some of them seemed merely confused, and the men sparring in the center of the yard turned to stare. A stout unarmored man, who appeared to have been supervising the sparring, hurried over, grinning widely. He wore a dirty tunic and was carrying a heavy whip.

  “Why, Cantabra, darling!” he purred. “You’ve come back to us!” His eyes raked her Alexandrian cloak, and his lip curled. “What are you doing got up like a Greek whore?” He lifted one of the sagging folds of her cloak with the end of his whip.

  She tugged it away again, frowning. “I’ve come back because my new employer needs to talk to Taurus, Savage,” she said evenly.

  The Savage looked at the new employer: Hermogenes could see him taking in the expensive Greek cloak, the bruises, the bandaged foot. He bore the inspection for a couple of breaths, then said smoothly, “Greetings. I am Marcus Aelius Hermogenes of Alexandria. What my bodyguard says is true: I urgently need to speak to Titus Statilius Taurus, prefect of the city. Cantabra assures me that you would be able to introduce us, if you are Gaius Naevius Saevus, and I do beg that you do so.”

  The Savage’s eyes narrowed, becoming dark slits in his slablike face. “What do you want to speak to Taurus about, Greek?”

  “A matter of great importance to him,” Hermogenes replied. “I am not able to discuss it further. My bodyguard knows of it, and believes it to be something which the prefect would wish to know.”

  The Savage turned back to Cantabra. “What are you doing with him?” he demanded. He sounded both angry and disgusted.

  She shrugged. “He was being robbed; I helped him; he hired me. What he says is true, Savage. He accidentally came across a plot the old bull will want to know about. He didn’t want to come here, but I told him he should. I thought it would be safer this way than if he went through the city offices.”

  The man called the Savage regarded her a long minute, eyes still narrowed, tapping his whip against his calf. Then he glanced around at the runners and the fighters, all of whom had paused to watch. He flicked the whip at the two men nearest him, crack! crack! and they retreated hastily, rubbing a knee and a neck. “Get back to it!” snarled the Savage, and flicked the whip at a third man who had already begun running again and just happened to be passing.

  “The old bull should be arriving any minute,” the Savage told Cantabra. Something about the way he said it made the word taurus, bull, a nickname rather than a formal cognomen.
“I’ll tell him you want to see him. It’d better be something he wants to hear, bitch.” He studied her a moment longer, than bared his teeth in what was probably meant to be a smile. “So you’re not reenlisting?”

  “No,” she said flatly. “I told you I would sooner starve.”

  “You said you’d sooner starve than be fucked, too,” replied the Savage. “But…” He used the whip to indicate Hermogenes.

  “Roman,” said Hermogenes coolly, “I can afford the very best courtesans. I do not need to sleep with my bodyguards.”

  The Savage gave him the slit-eyed look again. He reached out with the end of his whip again, and touched the Scythopolitan linen cloak.

  The familiarity was, Hermogenes recognized irritably, an implicit threat: I am a big, tough, strong man and I could beat you bloody if I wanted to. He responded with a look of disdain and an implicit threat of his own. “You may well admire it,” he remarked, easing the cloak away from the whip. “I imagine it would cost more than a year’s worth of the wages your sort get.” I am wealthy and powerful, and I could buy more trouble than you could possible survive.

  The Savage understood perfectly. His face darkened. “Rich bastard!” he muttered. He looked back at Cantabra. “The old bull better want to hear him, bitch, that’s all I can say. Go wait over there, out of the way—unless you’re sparring?”

  “No,” she replied, and strode over to the place near the gatehouse he had indicated.

  There was nowhere to sit, so they leaned against the brick wall and watched the runners jog past and the men in the center cut and thrust, encouraged occasionally by the Savage’s whip. After a little while, the men in the center were sent to join the runners, and ten runners replaced them.

  “There are no women,” Hermogenes remarked, after a silence.