John Roberts - The River God

“The big slave. He was hiding behind the door. There was plenty of space there and no window in the wall on the courtyard side where someone might see what was going on inside.”

“I’ve taught you well, Hermes!” I commended him. Sometimes the boy was almost worth what he ate, drank, and stole. “Lucilius must have been attacked and stabbed as soon as the door was shut. Then the big slave and the girl would have left the room separately, after an interval. With all the comings and goings in a place like that, who would notice?”

“That’s why they went to work there a few days before the killing!” Hermes said, getting excited. “They needed to be there long enough so nobody would notice them, and they needed to pick a good room to carry it out. They settled on one way on the top fioor, with plenty of room behind the door and no window in the front wall! The big man went up there earlier; so if anyone knocked, he’d yell that the room was occupied.”

“You’re learning to think like a criminal, Hermes, but I suppose it must come naturally to you. Now I am wondering who the man in the hooded cloak might have been and why Lucilius went up to that room with Galatea.”

“The man in the hood was probably Folius,” Hermes said. “The girl and the big slave were his property. And as for going upstairs with Galatea, I know why I’d have been going up there with her.”

“No doubt. But you shouldn’t always jump at the easiest answer. There are too many people involved in this.”

“What, then?”

“I was thinking about Lucilius’s dying words.” Ahead of us I could see the torches burning along the parapets of the Sublician Bridge. Beneath them people were still watching the ominous rise of the river.

“You mean ‘?lthy dog?’ What-oh, I see what you mean.”

The boy still had much to learn. It had just occurred to him what had occurred to me the moment Asklepiodes had said it. The Greek physician, whose ear for Latin was not as perfect as he liked to think, had heard the gritted, dying words of Lucilius incorrectly.

He hadn’t been saying canis . He had been saying Caninus.

"Wait,” I said as Hermes was about to set his foot on the bridge.

He turned. “What?”

“Go upriver. We’re going to cross at the Cestian Bridge.”

“We’re going to the Island?”

“Well, I suppose we could jump into the river instead, but ordinarily if you cross the Cestian, you end up at the Island.” The long, puzzling, fatiguing day had reduced me to second-rate sarcasm.

“Whatever you say.” He turned left and preceded me along the embankment, which on this side of the river was well above the waterline. As Ogulnius had told me, the current was far slower and less destructive here on the inner curve of the river bend than on the opposite bank. I do not know why this should be, but perhaps it is rather like the way the hub of a chariot seems to be turning rather slowly, while the rim, which is still part of the same wheel, is turning furiously. I decided I would have to ask a philosopher about this sometime.

Whatever the reason, the water that fiowed by below us was almost tranquil, while that in the center of the stream had grown turbulent. Light from the moon and the torches on the bridges revealed a good deal of wrack from the fiooding upstream. I saw no full-grown trees, but there was a fair amount of brush and what appeared to be drowned animals. Once, we saw a straw hut, such as shepherds use, fioat by, bottom up, like some bizarre boat.

You would have expected a great deal of noise to accompany such a spectacle, but that was not the case. Father Tiber worked to accomplish his mysterious purpose rather quietly. There was a mild, pleasant murmur of rushing water at the points of the breakwaters that protected the upstream sides of the bridges and an occasional scrape as a fioating log struck a bridge or embankment; otherwise, it was almost as quiet as a normal night.

It took us only a few minutes to walk the distance between the Sublician and Aemilian bridges, the whole way passing sightseers and fishermen who were still dragging their boats to safety. Ordinarily, the bulk of the population went to bed as soon as it was dark, but not on this night.

Past the Aemilian, the river took a sharp turn leftward, to the west. Here the two branches of the Tiber rejoined after splitting around the Island. It was a somewhat longer walk to the Cestian Bridge, which joined the Island to the west bank as the new Fabrician joined it to the eastern one. This stretch was lonelier, with little but open fields to our left, since that area had yet to be developed. Farmers still kept market gardens there.

The Island devoted to the God of Healing rode like an oversized ship in the middle of the fiood, and that is not just a fanciful simile. The gigantic retaining walls and breakwaters at the ends of its elliptical length were constructed in the shape of a galley, with the prow facing upstream. With the Tiber now foaming over its huge, marble ram, it gave the incredible impression of speeding away from us.

The uncanny sight seemed to fill Hermes with superstitious dread. “Should we go over there?”

“It’s just an illusion,” I assured him, a little unsettled myself. “That island’s not going anywhere. It was right in that spot before Romulus showed up, without all the fancy stonework, of course. If it were really moving, it would be tugging at the bridges, wouldn’t it?” I slapped a parapet, almost as much to reassure myself as him. “See? Perfectly solid. Now, come on.”

“I didn’t really think it was moving,” he muttered under his breath.

As we climbed the steps of the temple, I admired the fires blazing in the new, bronze braziers before the doors. I could tell from the brightness of the fiames and the thin smoke that they were burning high-quality wood. Even as we passed by, an elderly slave tossed a split log into one of them, sending a column of glittering sparks skyward.

Inside the temple, the statue of the benign god Aesculapius stood vigil over a small crowd of sufferers. Most of them lay on pallets spread on the fioor, although a few wealthy patients had brought proper beds with them and were attended by slaves. Others, unable to sleep, sat on their blankets, hunched into knots of abject misery. All these unfortunates would sleep before the god in hope that he would send them dreams indicating a cure for their ailments. The priests were expected to be expert in interpreting these dreams.

I found the high priest, Gavius, in consultation with some of the others before the statue. All wore their full vestments, as if for a nighttime ceremony. Aesculapius was a god associated with both the upper world through his father, Apollo, and with the lower through his tutelary serpent, so he was accorded both daytime and nighttime services and both white and black animals were sacrificed to him, usually cocks. All over the walls were hung models, usually clay, of hands, feet, eyes, and various other members and organs. These were dedicated to the god in thanks for cures to the represented parts. Every few years all this clutter had to be cleared out, and the offerings were cast into a special, sanctified pit.

“Aedile!” Gavius said, when he saw me. “We hardly expected to see you here at this hour.” He was a very dignified old man, whose obscure but patrician family had supplied priests for the temple since its founding. Even before Aesculapius arrived in Italy, they had been priests of an earlier healing god. “We were just consulting about what measures to take should the river rise high enough to swamp the Island.”

“Has that ever happened before?” I asked him.

“No, but who are we to tell Father Tiber how high he may rise?”