John Roberts - Oracle of the Dead

The chamber below was no better. It looked no different than it had before, except for the absence of corpses. As before, the air quickly grew close from our profusion of torches and lamps and our own exhalations.

“Greeks are supposed to know everything,” Hermes said. “Why didn’t they think to provide ventilation, when those Aborigines thousands of years ago did?”

It was a good question. “Maybe,” I said, “they didn’t think it would be needed. A small number of men don’t require a lot of air if they’re only going to be down here a short time, and with the trap above open, it isn’t too bad.”

“I was wondering about that,” Hermes said. “There’s enough air coming up from the hole there to keep us breathing here. Why did the priests suffocate so easily?”

“I can’t say I know much about the properties of air,” I admitted, “any more than I do about those of water. But it seems to me that the air rises from the water tunnel and is sucked up the passageway. Maybe when the trap is shut, the flow of air stops.” Something struck me.

“That’s how Eugaeon ended up in the water! He was leaning down into the hole to get what air was left, lost consciousness, and fell in to resurface so fortuitously in front of us!”

“Why not the others?” Hermes asked.

“He was the ranking man and the others let him have the water hole. Or maybe they were all up the shaft, pounding their fists against the stone. They probably suffocated even faster up there.”

I had the men lower torches into the well and stuck my head down there, like the late Eugaeon. What I could see looked like natural tunnel. I was tempted to have the men lower me into it, but somehow I had had enough adventuring in water for that day. I came back up.

“I wonder how we can measure the distance to the other chamber?” I mused. I sat down and tried to think like an engineer.

“We could tie something that floats to a piece of rope,” Hermes suggested. “Tie a knot every cubit. Toss it in, and when it comes out the other side, count the cubits.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. How would you know when it came out the other side?”

He thought a while longer, as did I. “Have a man in the other chamber. As soon as it comes out, he grabs it and gives a tug. Then you know not to pay out any more line.”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll make an engineer yet. Tomorrow I want you to do exactly that.”

“What will you be doing?” he asked.

“Sleeping, I hope.”

Julia was not happy with my foray into the underworld, but she was not as angry as I had feared.

“It was not wise to flout the customs of the Oracle and treat an ancient holy site like some Subura tenement. Iola is right to be furious and she will definitely have you charged with sacrilege when you step down from office.” Of course I was immune from prosecution while I held office, but I was everybody’s fair game as soon as I should step down.

“Now, Julia, don’t we already know that this shrine is fraudulent? It looks like they’ve been using it for years to fleece the public, murdering some of them.”

“We don’t know anything. We have strong reason to suspect that at least some of the staff of the temple, at some time or other, have been using the Oracle for profit, and that murder may be involved. That doesn’t make the site itself any less holy.”

“Well, Hecate’s a pretty poor goddess if she allows such goingson in her own precincts. She’s supposed to be fearsome. Why doesn’t she sic her black bitches on the miscreants? They’re the ones committing sacrilege, not I.”

Despite my clearly sarcastic tone, Julia seemed to give this some serious thought. “The gods are not always swift to punish. They are immortal, time means little to them. They are content to bide their time and devise a fitting punishment. You recall a few years ago when Crassus took advantage of his position as one of the quinqidecemviri and falsified a prophecy in the Sibylline Books? Nothing happened to him at the time, but after he went to Syria, he met a catastrophe such as has befallen few Romans.”

“That’s pretty rough on the part of the gods,” I said, “killing tens of thousands of Roman legionaries, plus thousands more foreign auxilia, just to punish one foolish old man.”

“Immortality gives the gods a strange sense of proportion. Nevertheless, they won’t be mocked or taken advantage of.”

“Hecate is from Thrace. Do you think she even knows what is going on in Italy?”

“Honestly, Decius, you have the strangest ideas of what the gods are like, as if they were just oversized mortals with long lives and somewhat augmented powers. It’s a concept suitable for primitives and ignorant peasants, not for an educated Roman of the ruling class.”

“We can’t all be philosophers,” I said. My mind was not really on our conversation. I had a great many thoughts spinning around, looking for something to give direction to all I had learned. Murders and tunnels and ventilation slots in the ceiling and miniature arrows and rivalries going back centuries and a great general preparing for civil war and a subterranean river with a vicious current and a score of other things that made no sense but I was sure would, if I could just fit them together in the proper order, perhaps together with a few other missing pieces.

“Decius?” Julia was saying.

“Eh?” I answered brightly.

“You might as well be in Cappadocia,” she said disgustedly. “I was just talking about Pompey.”

“You were? I must have nodded off. Long day, you know.”

“You were just ignoring me. I was just saying that having Pompey in these parts is changing the social scene. You are not the ranking Roman official now. Pompey’s been consul twice and now he’s proconsul with extraordinary powers in Italy-what are you chuckling about?”

“Sabinilla. I’ll bet she’s cursing herself for throwing that fantastic party for my benefit and wishing she’d saved it for Pompey. What’s she going to do now to entertain him? She’d need months to put together another evening like that one.”

Even Julia had to smile at that. “The poor woman. She must be pulling out her hair and throwing things and screaming fit to raise the dead.”

“Assuming she has any hair to pull. I’ve seen nothing but her wigs.”

We were taking our ease on a small terrace jutting from the base of the Temple of Apollo. Julia had fretted over my near drowning for perhaps three breaths and then had begun to berate me for my many lapses of judgment. I had expected far worse. The night was cool and pleasant, the noise from the encamped crowd no more than a distant murmur punctuated by an occasional tune played on a flute. We had just enjoyed a rare private dinner and now a pair of slave girls kept the air moving and the flies off us with huge ostrich-feather fans Julia had conjured from somewhere. There are worse ways to while away an evening.

“Do you know what surprises me?” I said.

“What is that?”

“That, so far, nobody has tried to kill me outright. With serious crimes under investigation, crimes that merit the death penalty, you’d think somebody would have had a go at me by now. They usually do.”

She shut her eyes. “Don’t talk like that. It tempts the gods. Just saying it makes it more likely to happen.”

“Now you’re being superstitious,” I chided.

“Isn’t everyone?” she said.

The next morning I was looking forward to my favorite activity, which is to have nothing to do at all. It was a day on which official business was forbidden, so no court. I was at a loss where to look next in my investigation, so no investigating. Hermes and a few of the other men had gone off to try the experiment with the rope, and there is nothing I like better than to delegate the work to someone else. I was back out on that terrace, enjoying the morning sun and about to open a letter from Rome when I heard pelting hoofbeats. I looked up and saw what had to be a messenger hurrying up the road from the south. I was certain that my perfect day was at an end before it had a chance to begin.