John Roberts - The Year of Confusion

It wasn’t difficult to find something to eat. The main problem was locating something small enough to get into my mouth. There were tables laden with entire roast animals, many of them exotic African species. I found a skewer of small grilled birds rolled in honey and sesame seeds, and I began to pick them off one at a time.

“Look at these oysters,” Hermes said, lifting a plate of them. “There’s a pearl in every one of them. Do they come that way naturally?”

“I don’t think so. You can eat the oysters, but keep the pearls.”

“Keep them where?” he said, downing an oyster.

“Tie them up in a corner of your toga. You have enough material there to hold the loot of Tigranocerta.”

“I know,” he said, downing another. “This thing is hot.”

I finished the spit and looked for something else. The laboriously exotic items like flamingo tongues and camel’s toes were tedious and often disgusting, but I found enough items fit for human consumption to stave off starvation. Hermes handed me a platter of small pastries stuffed with chopped ham and goat cheese and spinach. They were resting on oak leaves made of hammered gold, which I kept. Soon I was ready to see what was going on this night.

“Caesar is here,” Hermes said, jerking his chin toward a fur-draped platform where the dictator sat on a huge chair. Unlike his usual curule chair this one had a towering back, against which Caesar lay heavily, an elbow on the arm of the chair, laurel-crowned head propped on a fist. There was an identical chair beside his but Cleopatra was nowhere to be seen. People of some distinction approached him, bowing and cringing.

“They aren’t kissing the hem of his cloak,” I remarked, “but I can tell that they want to.”

“Not so loud,” Hermes said.

“Why?” I snapped. “He’s just another politician.”

“That’s not true and you know it. Be on your best behavior or Cleopatra will throw us to those crocodiles over there.”

“That should liven them up,” I grumped, but resolved to be more discreet. Damned if I was going to approach Caesar like a supplicant, though. We wandered through the numerous rooms of the sprawling villa and in each of them something was going on to suit every taste. In one room Spanish dancers from Gades performed their famously lascivious routines. In another an actor with a fabulous voice declaimed hymns by Agathon. In a small courtyard Gauls in checkered trousers fenced with their long swords and narrow shields. In a long hall pantomimes performed the tragedy of Adonis in eerie silence.

Finally, I found Cleopatra standing among the women I had arrived with, including Julia and Callista. They were laughing and chattering like a pack of Subura housewives loitering around the corner fountain. I was about to join them when I saw coming toward me a strange pair of mismatched guests, one huge, the other slight. It was Balbus and Asklepiodes, both of them grinning like loons and both obviously half drunk.

“We’ve figured it out!” Balbus cried, turning heads all over the courtyard.

“We know how he did it!” Asklepiodes chimed in.

This was the last thing I had expected to hear at this event, but welcome news nonetheless. “How?”

“You remember I told you I would pray to my household gods?” Balbus said. “Well, I’ve done that every night and last night I had a dream, and in my dream I saw Hercules chasing Hippolyta all over an Arcadian landscape. Looked Arcadian to me, anyway. Never been there personally. When I woke I somehow knew that this had something to do with our problem.” He was talking loud enough to draw attention and all sorts of people were drifting toward us. I was so eager to know where this was leading that I did not admonish him.

“So,” Asklepiodes said, “today Senator Balbus came to me and told me of his dream. I knew instantly that our problem was solved.” He smiled with insufferable smugness.

“Well!” I said, ready to tear my thinning hair out. Even Cleopatra was coming our way.

“Do you remember why Hercules was sent after Hippolyta?” Balbus asked.

“He wasn’t after her,” I said. “As one of his labors he was sent to fetch her girdle, which I always thought was a rather transparent metaphor for something indecent.”

“And in art,” Asklepiodes said, “how is the girdle of Hippolyta depicted? As a sash!”

“This meaning?” I said.

“Let me demonstrate.” He looked around. “Queen Cleopatra, do you have a slave I can borrow? A young male, by preference. Marvelous party, by the way.”

“Certainly.” She snapped her fingers and a sturdy young fellow stepped to her side. “Please don’t kill him. He’s an excellent bodyguard.” She looked at me. “He’s no replacement for poor Appolodorus, but who would be?” Appolodorus, her bodyguard since childhood and the finest swordsman I had ever known, had died of a commonplace fever some years before.

“Observe,” Asklepiodes said. “Young man, turn away from me.” He took a long scarf from within his tunic and in an instant whipped it around the slave’s neck. “You see how I grip both ends and have crossed my wrists?” The slave’s face darkened and his eyes began to bulge. Asklepiodes, small though he was, had hands like steel, as I knew to my sorrow. He had demonstrated his homicidal skills on me more than once.

“Now, see how, when I twist thus, the knuckles of my hands press against his spinal column from opposite sides, two above, two below, just as we saw the marks on the dead men.” He jerked his hands violently and the slave’s eyes all but popped from their sockets. “With just a bit more pressure, I could break his neck easily.” Abruptly he released one end of the scarf and the slave dropped to his hands and knees, gasping and retching. People made noises of wonder and dismay. “The wide scarf immobilizes the neck and provides leverage to bring the full strength of the hands and arms against the victim’s spine, but it leaves no ligature mark as a cord would.”

“It occurred to me,” Balbus said, “that you could save a second or two by tying a weight into one end of the scarf. Then instead of having to lower it over your victim’s head, you could just whip it around from behind.”

“A weight,” I mused, things whirring and clicking inside my head, “something like this?” I felt around in the purse tucked inside my tunic and came out with the massive brass coin.

“That would do nicely,” Asklepiodes said.

“It did,” I told him. To my astonishment, Callista snatched the coin from my hand and stared at it wonderingly.

“Where is it from?” She turned it over.

“India,” I told her.

She closed her eyes. “Senator, please forgive my stupidity. This is the lettering I was trying to remember. I saw it in some books in my father’s library when I was a child. They were written on palm leaves and they were from India.”

“And this is the sort of writing you saw on Ashthuva’s charts?” I thought about the Indian astronomer, Gupta. I remembered how he stood over Polasser’s body, his long hair streaming, his turban unwound.

I turned to Hermes. “‘The easterner, the star man’! Domitius wasn’t talking about Polasser, he was talking about Gupta!” But Hermes wasn’t listening. He made a strangled sound and bolted through the crowd, pushing people aside right and left. His toga slowed him but he was making very good speed anyway.

“Must need to puke,” Balbus said.

“No,” I told him, “I think he just saw somebody he knew and wants to renew the acquaintance. I think he saw Domitius.”

“Not Ahenobarbus?” Balbus said. “Is it Domitius the banker?”

“No, this is another Domitius, a very fleet-footed one. We’ll see if he can run through a villa as fast as he can cross-country. Queen Cleopatra, the man Hermes is chasing is a spy planted in your house by some very evil people.”