John Roberts - The Year of Confusion

“I’m afraid so. Everything else they’ve been able to swallow, albeit with poor grace: the triumphal regalia, the ivory staff, the wreath-they’re all the things we allow a triumphing general, although only for a day. But the trappings of royalty? That’s different. The day he shows up in the Senate wearing a diadem there will be a revolt.”

“Do you think he’ll go that far?”

“I fear that the day isn’t far off,” I assured her.

One of Julia’s slaves came in. “There is a messenger outside. He says he bears a missive for my mistress from Callista of Alexandria.”

My eyebrows went up. “What might this portend?”

“I can think of a very easy way to find out,” Julia said. “Send him in.”

The messenger was dressed in the tradition of his guild in a white tunic that exposed one shoulder, brimmed red hat with the silver wings of Mercury attached, sandals with similar wings, and a wing-topped wand twined with serpents. He handed Julia a rolled and sealed letter. I tipped him and told him to wait in the atrium in case she should wish to return a reply. Julia unrolled the thing and read it for an unconscionably long time.

“Well,” I fretted, my patience at an end, “what is it?”

“Don’t rush me, dear, you know I don’t like that.”

So I snapped my fingers at a slave and the well-trained man instantly refilled my cup. It was, as I recall, an excellent Massic.

“It begins with the usual pleasantries. She calls me her sister and says that I have not called upon her in far too long, that she has missed my company dreadfully, yet she doesn’t overdo these formalities the way so many women do. She is a woman of the most exquisite taste.”

“I daresay,” I muttered.

“She invites us to a salon to be held the evening after tomorrow and apologizes for the short notice.”

“Aha!” I said, my ears pricking up finally.

“Aha what?”

“Just aha. Do go on.”

“She says that some astronomers of her acquaintance will be attending.”

“This sounds promising. Perhaps she’s found out something for us.”

“But here is the most interesting part. She says that at sundown, the whole group will go to a small banquet at Cleopatra’s villa.”

“Interesting, indeed. What is the woman up to?”

Julia smiled. “I just can’t wait to find out.”

The next morning I woke up realizing what I had missed the previous evening. That messenger with his Mercury garb. I should have thought of it much sooner, but I was finding that, as I got older, some mental processes seemed to be slowing down. The baleful influence of a hostile god, no doubt.

I sent for Hermes, and he arrived while I was about my morning ablutions.

“Hermes, we’re going to the headquarters of the messenger’s guild this morning.” I thrust my face into the bowl of cold water and blew like a beached whale for a while. I straightened and groped for a towel, which Hermes thrust into my hand. The cobwebs and smoke seemed to clear from my head as I dried my face.

“I should have thought of it myself,” Hermes said.

“My thought exactly. What more logical than that our fleet-footed fugitive should work as a messenger? He can keep in training and get paid for it in the bargain.”

“But the guild members are mostly slaves,” he pointed out. “He could be working as a messenger at one of the great houses instead of at the public service.”

“That’s likely,” I said, knowing that men like Cicero carried on huge correspondence and employed full-time messengers. Businessmen sometimes had scores. “But it’s a place to start and there has to be network of information among the community of messengers. It’s not that large a group of men, even in Rome.”

After a few bites of oil-dipped bread we were out the door just as the sun was clearing the roofs of the lowest buildings. Then we turned our steps, as on most mornings, toward the Forum. The headquarters of the messenger’s guild was located near the Curia, since they got a great deal of business from the senators.

It was a modest building, the carving above its portal proclaiming it to be, logically enough, the Brotherhood of Mercury. There was a rather fine statue of that deity out front, and a number of members lounged about on the steps. Ordinarily, a great many more occupied the tavern just across the narrow street, but it was all but empty at this early hour. We climbed the short flight of steps and passed within.

As a guild whose only stock in trade was its membership, the place needed no elaborate facilities or warehousing space. There was a single, spacious room, its walls decorated with tasteful frescoes, a fine marble desk in its center. In the rear wall was a doorway leading to what appeared to be a smaller room lined with honeycomb shelves for record-keeping. That was all. A substantial man rose from behind the desk.

“Welcome, Senator Metellus!” he said. “How may I help you? I am Scintillius, duumvir of the Honorable Guild of Mercury at Rome.” Actually, the word “substantial” is a weak one to describe the duumvir of the guild. He was grossly corpulent and wheezed as he rose. If he had ever been a messenger himself, those days were long behind him.

“Ah, my friend Scintillus!” I said as if I wanted his vote. “Well met! This morning I find myself in need of your services. That is to say, I am trying to locate a man who might be a member of your guild.”

“Eh?” He looked a bit hesitant. “I mean, I shall be most happy to help you and the noble Senate any way I may.” He sweated slightly but that might have just been all that fat. “I do hope there is no, ah, irregularity involved?”

“None at all, none at all!” I assured him heartily.

“The senator is looking for a man who may be going by the name of Caius Domitius,” Hermes rapped out. “We think he works here.” This was a routine we had worked out long before. I was all hearty geniality, and he came across as threatening. Sometimes if you keep people off-balance you learn things you might not otherwise.

“I see. Caius Domitius, you say? I can’t say that I know all of the messengers by name, but with two names he must be a citizen so that narrows it, and we have records, of course. Why did you say you wanted him?”

“We didn’t say,” Hermes told him forcefully. “Records, you say?”

“Yes, yes,” he gestured toward the door behind him. “Right back here. Records of our purchases and discharges, payrolls, important commissions and so forth.”

“Show us!” Hermes barked.

The man whirled and now it was time to do my bit. I took him by the arm. “This fellow should be distinctive. He’s a great cross-country runner, surely an asset to your magnificent, ancient, and very honorable establishment. Such a man as you might use to run messages to country estates, or even hire out to the legions for wartime service. Why, when I was in Gaul with Caesar a few years ago we had a company of men hired from this very guild for routine communications between far-spread cohorts, all those daily missives that don’t call for a detached cavalryman, you know.” While I babbled on thus we entered the smaller room which was jammed full of cabinets, the nests of cubbies stacked to the ceiling.

“As you see, Senator, we keep very careful records.”

I could see nothing of the sort, but I hoped they were in better order than those at the public archive. “So I see. A splendid facility indeed. And among these heaps of scrolls do you have the employment record of our Caius Domitius?”

“I truly hope so, Senator. As you can see these records go back many, many years, but I presume that the man you seek will have been employed here, if indeed he was, in rather more recent times?”