John Roberts - Under Vesuvius

"You can't do that!" Silva cried. "You need a decree of the Senate for such a thing. Besides, it will ruin business."

"He can do it," Cicero informed him. "He has the authority to declare martial law under his own imperium until the Senate has reached a decision. General Pompey will back him up. Pompey wants no disturbances in Campania right now."

Everybody knew what he meant. The Senate was disturbed by Caesar's defiance and was turning to Pompey as a savior. Pompey's greatest strength was in southern Campania and points south on the peninsula, all the way to Messina. Here he would raise his legions if need be. He wanted things orderly here.

The white-robed chief priest of the city came forward. "Praetor, before you can enter the walls, you must be purified of this blood and so must your men."

"Delicate lot, aren't you?" I sneered. "In Rome, we bathe in the stuff."

"Decius," Cicero said in a low, warning voice.

"Very well," I said. "I will not offend your guardian gods."

"I will see to the arrangements," the priest said.

"Then go, all of you," I ordered. The crowd, stunned by the turn of events, began to straggle back to Baiae.

Rutilia, again in her golden wig, did not get back into her litter. Instead, she approached me. "Decius Caecilius," she said when she stood before me, "allow me to tell you that you look very good dressed in blood." Then she turned and went back to her litter.

"Cicero," I said, "do you think Roman women will ever be like that?"

"Decius," he said, "haven't you noticed? They already are."

By the time we reached the city gate the priest had made his preparations and we went through the ceremony of being washed in purified water, fumigated with incense, passed between two flames, and dressed in new clothing. Thus cleansed of blood, we entered the city. A spacious town house owned by a friend of Cicero's was being prepared for us, and while we waited I demanded to be taken to view the body.

The duumviri conducted us to a long, low building behind the Temple of Venus Libitina. As at Rome, the goddess in this aspect was the patroness of the funeral trade and a conductor of the shades of the dead to the underworld. Chambers for receiving the dead opened off a portico that ran the length of the building. We were taken to the last chamber. Inside were three or four bodies.

"This is where we take the bodies of slaves, paupers, and foreigners who have no patrons or hospites," explained the chief undertaker. "Those usually are sailors who happen to die while in port. If no one claims the body by the second day, they are taken to the burial pits outside town."

Rome had such a facility, though of course much larger. It was something of a scandal that elderly slaves were often cast out of the house to die in the streets and go unclaimed, so their masters could be spared the trouble and expense of decent burial. At least Baiae had few paupers and, it seemed, few skinflint slave owners.

The body lay on a tablelike stone bier, about waist height to me, covered by a sheet to keep away the flies. At my nod a slave drew back the sheet. Charmian lay stiff and pale, bold-eyed no more. She looked thinner than when I had last seen her, as if she had been drained. There were bruises and weals and whip stripes all over her naked body. Her neck was bruised, but whether from the beating or strangulation I could not tell.

"We wondered about this one," said the undertaker. "As you can see, she had recently been severely beaten. That's probably why she ran."

"I want to see her back," I said. The gloved and masked attendants turned her on her side. In her death rigor she moved like a wooden statue. Her back was savaged worse than her front, but I saw no stab wounds. There had been no crushing blow to the back of the skull. I signaled them to let her rest.

"Have you any idea when she died?" I asked the undertaker.

"I think it must have been yesterday evening sometime. The rigor is consistent with that time. Also, if she'd been dead longer, there would be signs; the beginning of decomposition, bites from scavengers, and so forth."

"Had you any idea who she was?"

"Someone said she looked like a slave from the Temple of Apollo, body servant to the girl who was murdered," the undertaker went on. "I sent a messenger to the priest, but we've received no answer yet."

"I'll be responsible for her," I said. "I will pay for her funeral and burial."

"Funeral?" the man said.

"You heard me. She will receive the rites and be decently cremated and interred."

"As you wish, Praetor."

The officials behind me remained stony faced, undoubtedly convinced that I was mad. But they recoiled in horror when I bent close to the poor girl and sniffed. I have the usual dislike of dead bodies, but some things must be done.

"The praetor is gathering evidence," Hermes told them in a voice that told them to keep quiet.

She smelled very faintly of horse. Had she been hiding in a stable? Yet I saw no bits of straw or hayseed in her hair. There was another smell, even fainter but unmistakable: the fragrance called Zoroaster's Rapture. I straightened.

"Has the body been bathed?" I asked.

"No, this is just how she was found," the undertaker explained. "Since she is to have a funeral, we will of course prepare her properly."

"Do so." I turned to the officials. "I want to know where she was found and the circumstances."

Silva gestured, and a man in gaudy military garb came to the front. I recognized him as the officer of the city guard.

"Just after first light this morning," he reported, "I was notified that a young woman's body had been discovered at the municipal laundry. I-"

"Take me there," I said, cutting him off. I wanted to hear the rest of his tale on the site.

In a mass, we walked from the precincts of the temple and through the city and out one of the side gates. This took no more than a few minutes, Baiae being the small town that it was.

"I must say, Praetor," Norbanus said, "that you are making a great fuss over a dead runaway."

"Is everyone here really as obtuse as they pretend," I asked, "or is this some act put on for my benefit?" I glared around, but nobody said anything. "Gorgo, daughter of Diocles the priest, was murdered. Now her slave girl has likewise been murdered. The two are connected. Investigating this unfortunate slave girl's death is as important as investigating Gorgo's."

I might as well have been speaking to them in Parthian. When people are accustomed to thinking in terms of rank, status, hierarchy, and so forth, it is difficult if not impossible for them to think any other way. I had learned long since that my mental fluidity was a rare thing in a highborn Roman. In any sort of Roman, for that matter.

The municipal laundry lay just outside the gate. Although it was just a place where wives and family servants could come to do the household laundry, like everything else in Baiae it was a thing of beauty. A low hillside had been terraced and a stream diverted to descend what appeared to be a great, marble stairway. Here a number of women were at work, beating the wet clothes and bedding with wooden paddles, laughing and gossiping the whole time. On a sunny slope just downhill, bronze drying racks awaited the clean cloth.

There were many places to sit and rest amid the soothing sound of flowing water. Huge, mature plane trees provided abundant shade. Protective herms lined the watercourse, and at the top of the marble stair a benevolent, reclining water god watched over all. It was the sort of scene pastoral poets like to sing about: nature with all its dangerous aspects banished, nature tamed and made orderly.

"Where was she found?" I asked.

The guard captain strode to a spot next to the watercourse, beneath a plane tree. It was a grassy little nook, the sort of place where a family might come for a picnic. "She was laid out here," he said.