John Roberts - Oracle of the Dead

Of course I was quite aware that if someone wanted to kill me, this was the perfect place for it. Some masked assassin could easily step up to me, slip a dagger between my ribs, and be off into the crowd safely. However, I was wearing my armor and Hermes stayed close behind me, his hand always on his sword hilt, his eyes constantly scanning the multitude.

“Way for the praetor!” someone shouted. I thought they meant me, but then there came a roar of laughter from the crowd. Julia and I made our way toward the noise and we saw the crowd part and a procession of dwarfs approached, marching with exaggerated self-importance. First came six “lictors” who, instead of fasces, carried sponge-tipped sticks, of the sort used in public latrines. Behind them strutted the “praetor,” a potbellied dwarf swathed in a purple-bordered toga and wearing a mask that was an unmistakable caricature of my own face, my long, Metellan nose drawn out to an absurd length. Just in case anyone was unsure who was being mocked, he had an oversized arrow protruding from his chest.

“Now, dear,” Julia said, “hold your temper. It’s all in fun.”

“Of course,” I said. “Have you noticed who’s behind him?” The praetor was followed by a dwarf woman dressed in patrician white, her hair almost obscured by a huge, gilt laurel wreath, her mask bearing Julia’s features, twisted into an expression of utter shrewishness.

“This is intolerable!” Julia hissed.

“Way for the proconsul!” shouted the same voice. Now the crowd parted and another procession came through. This time there were twelve dwarfish, obscenely equipped “lictors,” preceding yet another dwarf, this one wearing a helmet and armor that almost reached his ankles. At his side hung a sword at least five feet long, its scabbard dragging along the ground behind him.

As the two processions met, the praetor’s lictors lowered their latrine wipes, just as real lictors lower their fasces when they meet those of a superior magistrate.

“Hail all-powerful, wonderful, godlike General Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus!” shouted the “praetor.”

“Greetings, Praetor Peregrinus Metellus, pursuer of evildoers, smiter of the wicked, target practice for archers, friend of the winesellers, and enemy of sobriety.”

“And to you, glorious Pompey,” cried the “praetor,” “before whom recruits now flee as once your enemies did.”

They went on in this vein for some time, bestowing fulsome compliments that were actually insults. At times it was hard to hear their act, so loud was the crowd’s laughter. Seeing Pompey thus mocked took a bit of the sting out of being on the receiving end of the ridicule. Obviously, on this day, the people had license to lampoon anyone.

Throughout the day we saw more such ridiculous acts, featuring prominent locals, Caesar himself, and even a whole “Senate” made up of dwarfs, albinos, giants, and malformed persons of all sorts, debating all kinds of absurd issues such as war with India, economizing on the navy by building ships without nails, flying to the moon, and so forth. Every debate ended with the “Senate” awarding itself more lands, more money, or more power. This last was probably closer to the truth than most people there imagined.

We watched a troupe of Spanish dancers perform the famously salacious dances of that land, and attended a comedy by Aristophanes that was positively decorous compared with everything else that was going on. As evening drew on, the revelry only increased in its frantic pace, and Julia decreed that we must leave before the temptation to join in got the better of me. Reluctantly I agreed, and we made our way to the city gate, often having to step over unconscious and even unclothed bodies. Someday, I vowed, I’d contrive a way to come down to this festival without Julia.

“You’ve skipped a day at the gymnasium,” Hermes reminded me cheerfully as we began our journey homeward. “Tomorrow you’ll have to work twice as hard.”

“Thank you for reminding me,” I told him.

Back at the villa, Julia said: “We have to make some decisions. As much as I love this place, we can’t stay here much longer. You’ve recovered from your wound and soon you’ll have to take your court somewhere, whether Sicily or somewhere else.”

“I know I can’t dawdle much longer,” I said, “but I hate to leave without catching whoever killed the priests and the girl at the temple, and, incidentally, the one who shot me with an arrow.”

“It’s awful to contemplate, but people get away with terrible crimes all the time. You may just have to admit that you’ve lost this one, swallow your pride, and go.”

“If I do that, you know what my political enemies back in Rome will say. They’ll say Metellus ran because he was frightened. That sort of thing can damage a political career.”

“They’ll lie about you anyway, you know that. Let them say what they want.”

“Still,” I groused, “they’re going to make the most of it. Shot from ambush by an archer! It’s disgraceful. Even Achilles suffered loss of honor when he was killed by an arrow shot by a coward.”

“Are you serious? Does that actually bother you? It’s too juvenile even for you!”

“I know. I just said it to annoy you. I’ll give it a few more days. If I haven’t found them in another four or five days, we’re off to Sicily. I’ll go ahead and send letters to the major towns and tell them I’ll be holding court in Sicily soon.”

This seemed to mollify Julia. Truthfully, I was not so certain. To me it seemed that the contending factions of the day were closing in on me like a great pair of blacksmith’s tongs. I had not the luxury of remaining neutral. They would force me to choose sides in spite of myself. It was my great misfortune that the Republic came to such a pass just in the year when I was a praetor, wielding imperium and therefore a man to court, or to kill, as the case might be. Before, I had not been sufficiently important to merit the attention of the great men of the day. Should I survive my year, I might be inconsequential again. It would be some time before I should be given my propraetorian province to govern.

Perhaps I was deceiving myself. My family was one of the great ones, and I had at last achieved a standing and dignity that made me a power in that family. That made it difficult to maintain a pose of neutrality.

Still, one thing kept me focused on this corner of Campania, shutting out the distractions of a world about to plunge into war and chaos. I had to find out who had committed all these seemingly meaningless murders. It was just my nature.

At the end of the evening I went to bed, exhausted. When I woke in the morning, I thought I had the key to solving the riddle.

I awoke knowing that something had come to me in the night. I know that I dream almost every night, but I rarely remember the dreams. They seem clear when I wake, but if I try to remember them in detail, they fade before me like a ground mist clearing in the morning sun. A few especially vivid ones stay in my mind, particularly those that seem to be sent by the gods. This one was not like that, but it was nonetheless compelling. Something, some voice or some sort of silent compulsion, was telling me that I had missed something, that there was a glaring factor that I had ignored or had not followed up on.

There is a certain dream that I have repeatedly, and sometimes remember. It has a number of variations. It always involves my trying to get somewhere, or trying to find someone, and always being frustrated. I recall one dream in which I wanted to go to the second floor of the Tabularium in Rome to look up something. I would climb the usual outside stair, but in some fashion it would not take me to the second floor, but instead I found myself on the third. I then took the internal stairway, but it bypassed the second floor and deposited me on the ground floor again. I stepped outside the building and I could see the second floor, but somehow I just could not get there.