John Roberts - Oracle of the Dead

Her eyebrows went up. “Well, that’s blunt enough! It’s what I always suspected, though. My father wasn’t born a slave. His parents sold him when there was a famine here. He never held it against them. They had a lot of children, and by selling a couple of them, they could save the rest from starving. He never thought it made him better than the other slaves, either. Being a slave is a matter of luck, not breeding or the favor of the gods. Some are born slaves, some get made slaves, some stay free all their lives. He worked hard for his master, learned how to handle money, and made a fortune for him in property.”

“Commercial properties, were they not?” I asked.

She nodded. “That’s right. His master was interested in farmland, because that’s what the highborn consider respectable. My father pointed out that squeezing rents from peasants was a lot of trouble and there’d be years when you couldn’t get any money out of them at all, because the crops would fail. Buy shops and factories, my father said. Merchants always have money, and if they go broke, you can evict them and rent the place to another merchant. They’re always clamoring for properties they can use. It made the old boy a fortune, and he freed my father and staked him to a good bit of investment money. As you can see”-she made a wide gesture, taking in our surroundings-“he did well out of it.”

“So he did.” I belched politely. “Now, if it is convenient to you, I would like to see your mundus .”

“That old place?” she said, astonished. “Whatever for? Like I said, it’s just a hole in the ground.”

“Nonetheless, I am a collector of odd places, and Campania seems to be full of them. Please indulge me.”

“Your wish is my dearest pleasure,” she said cheerfully, clapping her hands. Moments later the litter reappeared in the atrium and we tottered, full of food and wine, toward it, with slaves at each elbow just in case we should need assistance. Poor Vespillo had said almost nothing throughout the minor banquet. This was partly because he was young and unsophisticated but mostly because he could make nothing of either Porcia or me. He thought I showed a very unpraetorlike lack of gravitas in consorting with the hospitable but lowly Porcia, and a freedman’s daughter who was richer than his own family was an unsettling prospect for a naive boy brought up on his mother’s tales of the nobility of his ancestors and their natural right to rule. Age and experience would disillusion him, but that was in the future.

The slaves packed us into the litter, along with a great basin of crushed ice in which a large pitcher of wine cooled. This would have been a wonder in Rome, but I had seen the artificial caves where Campanians kept ice and snow, carted down from the mountains in winter, to cool their drinks all summer long.

“You think of everything,” I said, holding out my cup to be filled by a rather beautiful Arab girl, who happened to be some sort of dwarf. Her tiny size made her an ideal attendant for a litter, taking up little space and burdening the bearers much less than a normal-sized human.

“Wouldn’t want you to go thirsty,” Porcia said, accepting another golden beaker herself. She offered it to Vespillo, but he shook his head, already nodding. The boy had little capacity. He needed training. I resolved to undertake this myself. My attendants had to be able to keep up with me if they were to be of any use.

Our progress took us through the abundant orchards and past a broad vineyard that would soon be ready for harvest. Slaves were readying the great trampling vats where the workers would caper like satyrs and nymphs to the music of flutes, stained purple to their thighs as they extracted the gift of Bacchus. That was always my favorite time of year on an estate, where I could watch other people working from a place of comfort and ease.

The bearers took us along a road paved with smooth-cut white stone, lined with watchful herms that were draped with fresh garlands, their phalli standing at attention as if in salute. The fields were cultivated, but the many small prominences had been allowed to grow wild and were topped by small forests.

“You allow plenty of wildland,” I said to Porcia. “I like that. So many slave-worked plantations are overcultivated to increase profits. It ruins the land, in time.”

“I’m not a farmer, I’m a businesswoman. This place pays for itself, and it supports me and my chattel. I don’t ask more than that and I’d rather watch the deer and foxes than see people sweating all day long. I also like to hunt from time to time. Learned it from my father. He was a keen hunter.”

“Would that all people were so sensible.”

Eventually we came to a little swale, deep-shaded by trees and shrubs, where stood the circular ruins of what had once been a peasant’s hut.

“This is as far as we can get by litter,” Porcia announced, as we were set down. “From here, we march like legionaries.” I prodded Vespillo to wakefulness and we alighted. Swaying only slightly, Porcia led us past the ruins and into the little valley. It was pleasantly cool in the shade and from time to time I sipped from my chilled wine. Slaves followed behind with the pitcher and its basin of ice.

We came upon a small altar in the form of a stubby pillar with a carved serpent spiraling around it; the usual shrine to the genius loci. Someone had placed on it cakes, a wooden cup of wine, and, oddly, a few small arrows.

“Did you leave those?” I asked, pointing to the altar.

“No, I hardly ever come here. The local folk keep up their traditions, though. These are probably offerings to someone nobody five miles away ever heard of.”

“What do the arrows signify?” Vespillo wanted to know.

“I’ve no idea. Maybe some hunter wanting to find game here.”

We ventured farther into the valley, which I now saw was actually a cleft in almost solid stone, perhaps left over from some upheaval of the earth such as might be wrought by the nearby volcano. Over the ages, the stone had acquired a covering of soil and from this soil sprang the dense growth and twining vines that shaded us. Everywhere, though, crags of solid stone thrust upward through the growth like the snaggled teeth of some long-dead dragon.

“It’s over here somewhere,” Porcia said, poking about in the undergrowth. “Ah, here it is.”

We went to stand beside her. She stood on the brink of a broad, circular well, perhaps three yards in diameter. It merited better than her description of it as a hole in the ground. The rim was of finely cut stone, unornamented but bearing the remains of what was once a fine polish. Careful of my clothes, I knelt on the rim stone and leaned over. A few feet down, the cut stone ended and the well was carved into solid rock. The walls were smooth and the bottom was lost in obscurity.

“I think it’s just an old well,” Porcia said. “It must’ve gone dry and was abandoned.”

“Awfully wide for a well,” Vespillo said.

“A sacred well gets more attention than the ordinary sort,” I pointed out. “We have more than one in Rome as elaborate as this one.” I looked about and found a black stone streaked with green the size of my fist. I dropped it in and a few moments later was rewarded with a solid thunk .

“See?” Porcia said. “It’s dry.”

“So it would seem. Did the old peasant’s callers claim any extraordinary results arising from their visits here?”

“Not that I ever heard of. It’s a mundus, not an oracle. I think they just left offerings and prayers and good wishes for their dead.”

I was vaguely disappointed and unsatisfied, and I wondered, as we passed the little altar on the way back to our litter, why people had left arrows there.