Down These Strange Streets

by George R. R. Martin; Gardner Dozois

  The Martialis is a harvest festival and signifies the close of the agricultural year. A good time to ask the favor of a snake goddess to protect the granaries from mice. It made sense. I told the litter slaves to carry us to the grain market, and they complied with sour looks. Litter slaves always think that every direction is uphill.

  We passed by the great plaza of the grain merchants with its spectacular statue of Apollo and turned down a tiny side street. Other than a small fountain at its entrance, there was nothing to distinguish it from Rome’s thousands of other little streets.

  “How did you know of this place?” I asked Julia.

  “My grandmother brought me here when I was a little girl. It was when Caesar departed for Syria. Aurelia believed that the entire Orient is carpeted with venomous serpents and she came here to sacrifice for his protection.”

  “She was a pious woman,” I agreed. “When I was with Caesar in Gaul, she used to write him long letters detailing the sacrifices she had provided to protect him from enemies, from drowning, from accident, from scurrilous gossip and slander, and on and on. Caesar said she was single-handedly supporting all the animal sellers and priests in Rome.”

  “That’s an exaggeration,” Julia protested.

  “Not by much. I used to read those letters to him. He complained that he was ruining his vision with all the writing he did, so he had none to spare for his mother’s letters. She had incredibly tiny handwriting. Lavish though she was with sacrifices, she was stingy with paper, and crowded as much as she could onto a single sheet. To this day, it pains my eyes to think about those letters.”

  “You never run out of things to complain about,” she observed.

  “I’ve lived a tragic life,” I told her as the litter slaves set us down, gasping and puffing abundantly, despite the paltriness of the effort they had expended.

  The shrine was at the very end of the street, which in turn wasn’t much more than an alley between two grain warehouses. The few doors of the flanking buildings looked as if they hadn’t been opened in years. The door to the shrine was flanked by low-relief pilasters wound with sculpted snakes. The paint was faded and flaking away. The door itself stood open. In the usual fashion of Italian temples and shrines, the portico sat atop a dozen or so narrow, steep steps.

  “It looked better than this when I came here with Aurelia,” Julia said.

  “We all looked better thirty years ago,” I told her. I was about to step inside when Hermes placed a hand on my arm and turned to Julia.

  “What’s on the other side of this door?” he asked. I knew I was getting old. This was an elementary precaution I should have taken without conscious thought. When I was younger and my wits sharper, I would have sent Hermes through first.

  “I didn’t go inside,” she said. “I stayed out here with some slave women while Grandmother went in. I don’t know if there was a priest inside or if she just made her sacrifice and came back out.”

  Blood sacrifices are usually made on an altar before a temple, not inside. But there was no altar before the entrance. Sometimes food offerings were left at the feet of the deity’s image, incense burned, that sort of thing. “Is anyone here?” I shouted. There was silence from within. I looked at Hermes and jerked my head toward the doorway. He put a hand on the hilt of the sword he wore concealed beneath his clothes and strode through the doorway. Hearing no sounds of violence, I followed. Something about that open door bothered me. Thieves would not hesitate to rob the sanctuary of a foreign goddess.

  Inside it was very quiet and smelled as temples usually smell—of many years of incense and the smoke of lamps, torches, and candles. No fires were burning at this time, but there were other scents beneath that of the smoke and incense. Julia’s shadow fell across the doorway.

  “Don’t come in yet!” I urged her. “Do you smell that?”

  “Something’s dead in here,” Hermes noted.

  “And I smell cedar,” Julia said.

  “Right, “I said. “There’s a snake in here somewhere and if it’s one of those damned swamp adders, we have a problem. Julia, what sort of sacrifice did Aurelia bring that day?”

  I could hear the frown in her voice. “It was a long time ago. She had a small cage or basket of some sort.”

  “She was bringing mice,” I said. “That’s how you sacrifice to Angitia. You feed her snake. It should have a pit or crypt of some sort here, like the one in the big temple at Lake Fucinus. The sacred snake got out of that one. This one may have as well.”

  “Something’s dead,” Hermes persisted. “Maybe it’s a dead snake.”

  “We can always hope.” My eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom. I moved my feet very carefully. Even a torpid and inoffensive snake will whip around and bite if something touches it unexpectedly. The shrine was little more than a long, narrow room. At its far end was a statue of a benevolentlooking woman, her shoulders draped with snakes, more snakes wound about her feet. The statue was slightly smaller than life size. Smaller than life size for a mortal woman, anyway. You never know about goddesses.

  “The smell is coming from there,” Hermes said, pointing toward a gaping square opening in the floor before the statue. With great trepidation, I made my way to the edge of this ominous aperture. It was perhaps ten feet on a side, its rim slightly raised. The gloom made its bottom all but totally obscure. I could make out some sort of shapeless mass on its floor, five or six feet down.

  “Hermes,” I said, “go fetch torches. Be careful. That snake could be anywhere.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Hermes said with great sincerity. He edged his way back to the doorway, shuffling his feet as if he could shoo the swamp adder away. Once he was at the door, I heard the patter of his sandals as he ran to find us some sort of illumination.

  “What’s down there?” Julia said.

  “We’re about to find out. I didn’t want you to come in. That snake could be anywhere.”

  “The priest said there was a ramp leading down to the sacred serpent’s crypt,” she pointed out. “I don’t see any such ramp here. The sides look quite sheer.”

  “What has that to do with anything?” I said, exasperated. “I didn’t want you to come in! Is that too much to ask?”

  “Yes, it is,” she said. Well, she was a Caesar.

  Hermes returned with commendable alacrity, accompanied by a pair of linkboys. These juvenile torchbearers usually slept through the day in order to spend their nights illuminating the way of citizens through Rome’s benighted streets. Hermes didn’t caution them to watch out for the snake. Any snake biting a linkboy wasn’t biting him, I suppose.

  “This is better,” Julia said. With a bit of light, the little shrine was much more cheerful. The walls were covered with old, smoke-smudged frescoes of scenes from, I presumed, the myths of Angitia and her fellow Marsian deities. Needless to say, snakes featured prominently.

  I gestured to the boys. “Come over here. Hold your torches over this pit and be very, very careful.”

  Mystified, they did as I ordered. When their light flooded the pit one of the boys gasped and would have dropped his torch had I not grasped his hand. “Steady. It’s just a dead man. You’ve seen plenty of those.”

  “Not like that one!” said the other boy, a bit older. Roman street boys were a hard lot to shock, but I was forced to acknowledge that this was a bit more than the usual alley corpse.

  Julia turned away and gagged, and she was as unflappable as the rest of her family. When she had her composure back, she asked, “Is that the priest who came to you about the snake?”

  “The yellow toga and headband are the same,” I said. “Otherwise it’s hard to tell.”

  “I think of saffron as more of an orange than a yellow,” she replied, now fully in control of herself.

  The dead man who lay on the carpet of cedar bark and shavings was bloated and almost purple. His skin was covered with giant blisters like fistsized, semitransparent bubbles. Yet the unmistakable sce
nt of death was rather faint.

  “Hasn’t been dead long, though he’s looking rather poorly,” I remarked.

  “Should I fetch Asklepiodes?” Hermes asked, understandably eager to be away.

  “I think not,” I said. “His specialty is wounds and death caused by weapons. Poisons and venoms are not in his realm of expertise.”

  “Poplicola, then?” he said, hopefully.

  “He’d just try to sell Julia another snake. Let’s review what we have here. A priest of Angitia came from the Marsian country to ask me to find his snake. Today, in the shrine of Angitia, we find a priest of Angitia, possibly the same man, dead from what looks like the bite of a serpent that fully lives up to its reputation.” I pondered a moment. “Correct that: We have a corpse in the clothing of a priest of Angitia. It could be almost anybody.”

  “You’re very tiresome when you get this way, dear,” Julia reminded me.

  “We are in a holy shrine,” I said, “dealing with a goddess and sacred snakes. This is a religious matter. Hermes, go find Caesar and ask him if he would be so good as to come here on a matter of some urgency. Tell him I require his expertise as pontifex maximus. He is probably in the Domus Publica.”

  “Do you think Caesar will be able to help?” Julia said when Hermes had dashed off.

  “Probably not, but I want him to see this. It’s not every day we see a murder as unique as this one in Rome.”

  “Murder? Surely this was an accident.”

  “Then where is the snake?” I asked her. “It didn’t crawl out of there unaided after biting the unfortunate priest or whoever he was.” I looked around me. Between the small torches and my eyes adjusting to the gloom, I could see tolerably well. It was quite a small space, only a single room with no access save the narrow doorway. The floor was completely bare and the walls featureless except for some faded paintings that depicted what I presumed to be scenes from the cult of Angitia. I was unfamiliar with the myths but there was a woman resembling the statue, a bull, and a great many snakes.

  “It could be under the body,” Julia pointed out. “Poplicola said the bull sometimes falls on the snake.”

  “Foretelling disaster,” I noted. “I wonder if being crushed by a falling priest is a similarly dire omen. And if so, is it just for the Marsi or for anyone in the vicinity?”

  We were but a short distance from the Domus Publica in the Forum, so it was not long before we heard the tramp of twenty-four lictors preceding the Dictator in great pomp. We went to the doorway and saw that the great man had indeed arrived, followed by a mob of gawking Forum layabouts (some of them my fellow senators). Crowds always followed Caesar around in those days, just to see if anything should happen, I suppose. He wore his pontifical regalia along with his usual gilded laurel wreath and triumphator’s robe. Hermes stood behind Caesar, but the man to his right caused Julia to gasp.

  “It’s Pompaedius!” she whispered. “He’s alive!”

  I was not entirely surprised. “I am sorry to have interrupted your day, Caesar, but matters here require your presence.”

  “Nonsense, Decius Caecilius,” Caesar said jovially. “You always find the most bizarre murders for our entertainment. What is it this time?”

  “If you will come inside, Caesar and Pompaedius, but please, no others. It is already quite cramped enough.”

  Caesar entered. “And how is my favorite niece today?” he said to Julia, as always the soul of courtesy.

  “A bit upset, I’m afraid. The dead priest is in the most deplorable condition.”

  “Priest?” Caesar said, leaning over the pit. The linkboys gaped at the Dictator’s splendor. They were certainly getting an eyeful that day.

  “Well, we think he was a priest,” Julia said. “He’s in the robes of Angitia’s priesthood, anyhow. In fact, we thought it was Lucius Pompaedius here. I see now that we were mistaken.”

  Caesar straightened. “May I know the meaning of this?”

  “It is precisely that meaning that I have been trying to ascertain,” I told him. “Perhaps your client Pompaedius can enlighten us.”

  “This man has died from the bite of a swamp adder,” the priest said. “That much is clear. It must have been he who purloined the sacred serpent. You all bear witness to how the goddess has punished him for the sacrilege.”

  “And his identity?” I asked.

  “Just some imposter,” Pompaedius said. “All the priests of Angitia wear the saffron toga, but only I, the high priest, am entitled to this.” He touched the yellow fillet encircling his brow.

  “I see.” Caesar turned to me. “Decius, as you should know, in my office of pontifex maximus I pronounce judgment on all matters pertaining to the state religion. Bring me a problem involving Jupiter, Juno, Saturn, Mars, and I can sort it out for you. Quirinus and Janus fall within my realm of authority. I do not pronounce on matters concerning foreign deities. For that, one usually consults with the quinquidecemviri and they in turn consult the Sybilline Books. Typically, this is done when the fate of the state is involved, and I fail to see such a matter here.” Caesar could lay on the sarcasm when he wanted to.

  “Actually, Caesar, I am afraid that I stooped to a subterfuge,” I admitted. “Your presence here is required in your capacity as the supreme magistrate.”

  Caesar looked annoyed and began to reply when Julia said, “Everyone be very still.”

  “Eh?” I said with my usual quick wit.

  Very slowly Julia raised her arm and pointed toward the statue’s feet. “One of those snakes is alive.”

  “By Jupiter, so it is,” I said, eyeing the slowly wriggling form with horrified fascination. “The light in here is too uncertain to determine coloration, but I am willing to hazard a guess that this is a swamp adder.”

  “Somebody kill that thing,” Caesar said with distaste in his voice. He never did like snakes.

  “Caesar, you cannot!” Pompaedius protested. “That is the sacred Serpent of Angitia!”

  “That does present us with a problem,” Caesar said. “I wouldn’t want my Marsian troops to hold me responsible for killing their holy snake.”

  “Please, there is no danger,” Pompaedius said complacently. With great solemnity he walked around the pit and stood a pace from the statue, to which he bowed and muttered something while holding his hands forth, palms down. This told me that Angitia was worshipped as an underworld deity. I was getting quite an education in religious matters that day.

  His devotions completed, Pompaedius turned his attention to the snake. He extended his arms toward it and began wiggling his fingers rhythmically, edging closer with tiny steps. The snake stared at his hands and seemed enthralled. I watched with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. It always makes me uncomfortable to see someone performing magic.

  Very slowly, the fingers of his right hand slowed and then stopped their wriggling. His left continued the spell-casting. Then he moved his right hand gradually toward the snake’s head until it was behind the flaring base of the wedge-shaped skull. Julia gasped when he grasped the thing by the neck. At least I’m pretty sure it was Julia. I don’t think it was me.

  Pompaedius straightened. The snake, which was indeed a huge, fat specimen, tried to wrap itself around him, but he somehow arranged it in graceful loops draped from his shoulders with a terminal coil around his waist. He cooed into the place where a snake doesn’t have an ear and the thing seemed to relax.

  “And I thought draping a toga properly was an exacting task,” I observed.

  “You see?” Pompaedius said, ignoring me. “All is well. Divine justice has been served. I will take the sacred serpent back to her home by the lake, and the luck of the Marsi will be restored.”

  “With quite a bit of prestige accruing to you,” I observed.

  “Well,” he said modestly, “it will certainly do me no harm. I must thank you, Senator, for locating her so conscientiously. I am in your debt, as are all the Marsi. And to you, Caesar—”

  “Caesar,
” I said, “I wish to arrest this man.”

  “What!” cried Pompaedius. “What is this outrage?”

  “This man is the imposter. That’s Lucius Pompaedius in the pit there.” Caesar looked at the repulsive corpse bemusedly.

  “But I am Lucius Pompaedius!”

  “So you are,” I agreed.

  “Decius Caecilius,” Caesar said, “philosophical paradoxes have never been your style. Can you not speak plainly?”

  I took Caesar’s letter from the place in my toga where I stash things and unrolled it. “Caesar, yesterday when this man came to me I was struck by his name.”

  “Pompaedius?” the priest said. “My ancestor was indeed a leader of the uprising against Rome, but we have been loyal citizens for many years, and loyal supporters of Caesar as well.”

  “Not your family name, but the appended name, Pollux.”

  His eyes shifted ever so briefly toward the doorway. “The dioscuri are patrons of Rome, and my parents gave me the name in token of our loyalty.”

  “Commendable,” I said. “But it is also customary to name twin boys Castor and Pollux. Pollux is always given to the senior twin, as Pollux was the immortal brother of the two, fathered by Zeus upon Leda, with Castor fathered by Tyndareus and therefore mortal.”

  “That’s one version of the myth,” Caesar said. “There are others.” Sometimes Caesar strayed into pedantry.

  “I do not speak of the myth but of the naming custom. The dead man down there is Lucius Pompaedius Pollux, firstborn of the twins. This man who has assumed that name is Lucius Pompaedius Castor.”

  “But why?” Julia wanted to know.

  “He said it when he called on me yesterday,” I told her. “Power. Prestige. He planned to return to Marruvium as a veritable triumphator. By now his priests have spread the word that the sacred serpent has been stolen, and the whole Marsian countryside will be in a fine lather over it. He will return on horseback with the snake draped over him like Caesar’s purple robe and take his brother’s place, no doubt with a bloodcurdling story about how his jealous brother Castor tried to betray the Marsi by stealing their snake, only to have Angitia, aided no doubt by himself, strike the criminal down for his sacrilege.”