John Roberts - The River God

“Yes, I have been wishing to speak with you, Aemilius Scaurus,” I said. “I-”

“Please, Aedile, we have little time for pleasantries, I fear to say. Come with me for just a moment; I have something to show you.” He turned and walked into the corridor through which we had followed the actor-playwright Syrus only the morning before. I followed the fat back before me, one hand on the hilt of my dagger, while Hermes followed after me, walking backward most of the way to keep an eye on the entrance we had just used.

We came out onto the balcony area that overlooked the river, and my stomach took a turn as I saw that we stood on what appeared to be a sinking ship. The river had risen right up to the level of the fioor on which we stood. Back on the City side of the theater the water was still; but here, in the most acute curve of the river bend, Father Tiber was turbulent, and the balcony vibrated like a plucked lyre string. It was very nearly as upsetting a sight and situation as I had ever experienced.

Scaurus turned, smiled, and leaned easily upon the railing. “You see, Aedile? I fear that holding your Games here will be out of the question. I am going to have to condemn this building and pull it down, as so many old-fashioned senators have demanded I do anyway. A pity, it was the finest Rome has ever seen. No help for it now, though, don’t you agree?”

So he was going to make it a test of nerve, leaning there as if he were standing by the pool in his own house, trusting his patrician aplomb to overwhelm my plebeian effrontery. Well, I had been in tight spots he had never dreamed of. None quite like this one, though.

“Now,” he went on, “of course I shall refund the money you paid out to rent the theater for the year, and I agree I really should pay you a little extra for your inconvenience.” He pretended to count on his fingers, then looked upward as if he were adding up figures in his head. “Shall we say, ten times what you paid?”

“Good try, Scaurus,” I told him, “but we’re a little past the bribery stage now. And the statue was a clever move, but it won’t work, either.”

“Isn’t it exquisite?” he said, a salacious note slurring his words, like a man describing his favorite sexual practice. “I have many more of them, and you may have your pick. I agree, art is so much more dignified than mere money.”

“Forget it, Scaurus,” I said, my words almost drowned out by another groan from the tortured building. I turned slightly and saw that the Sublician Bridge was packed with people now; and upriver, a little farther away, I could see a similar crowd on the Aemilian. Father Tiber was giving them a real spectacle today.

“Don’t play the virtuous servant of the people with me, Metellus!” Scaurus snapped, dropping the jovial act. “You need what I have to offer! I know what your office is costing you! I will cover all your debts if you will simply cooperate with me. Many of your friends are not too proud to ask the same favor from Pompey or Crassus or Caesar.”

“That isn’t what I want, Scaurus,” I said.

“Then what do you want?” he cried, honestly exasperated and mystified.

“I want your head mounted on a pole on the rostra next to the head of Valerius Messala Niger. The rest of your gang can be hanged or crucified or given to the bulls and bears for all I care, but a pair of patricians like you and Messala deserve to have your heads exposed in the Forum for the public to ridicule.” For a man of his family, such a fate was infinitely worse than any manner of death, no matter how painful.

“For what?” he asked. “For violating some antiquated laws? For violating some building codes? Half the Senate does worse by far!”

“Half the Senate aren’t involved in putting up insulae that collapse and kill hundreds of people at once.”

“I was not responsible for the collapse of the house of Folius!” he said. “The filthy rogue may have cut some corners in building it, but he intended to live in it, you idiot! Do you think he’d build a house just so that it would fall down on his head?”

As near as I could read him, he meant it. “Even if that’s true, there have been a dozen others in the last three or four years, with more than two thousand dead. I’ll tie your name to every one of them and prove Messala’s connivance as well.”

“Well, then,” he said, recovering his equanimity, “that’s something for a jury to decide, isn’t it? I’ve had juries find in my favor before; it isn’t difficult.”

The building gave another groan and lurch. “You’re forgetting the murder of Lucilius.”

He shrugged. “Senators are murdered all the time. These are rough days, Metellus, you know that. The man was knifed in a whorehouse. He didn’t even die brawling with his enemies in the Forum. Anyone who could testify about his death is dead now, anyway.”

“You admit you knew about the big slave and the girl, Galatea?”

He shook his head, chuckling. “Metellus, you know perfectly well that I am admitting nothing at all. I know that the swine and his sow died in the collapse of their house. I sold the brute to Folius three or four years ago. The bitch wanted a bodyguard and Antaeus was a wrestler from one of my estates in Bruttium. I think the girl was from their town house in Bovillae. About a month ago the wrestler came to me and begged me to buy him and the girl. I had no use for him so I sent him away, and that is the last I saw of him. So you see, whatever happened was the doing of Lucius Folius.”

I was beginning to see what had happened in that insula . It was a bit of a disappointment, but I still had plenty of evidence against Scaurus.

“No matter. You and Messala can try to throw all the guilt on Folius, who was nothing more than a middleman for the two of you; but everyone will know the truth whatever verdict the jury returns. At the very least, you’ll be expelled from the Senate, stripped of your patrician status, all your wealth forfeit to the treasury, and, best of all, every poor man in Rome will be longing to kill you on sight. Even if you run, you’ll end your days in poverty in some wretched barbarian town wishing you’d died when you had the chance.”

He sighed. “You are quite sure that we can’t come to an agreement then?”

“Forget it,” I said, turning. “Best to be out of here anyway. I don’t want to die in another of your death-trap buildings.”

“I am afraid that will be unavoidable,” he said. At that, the men who had been waiting on the balcony above us came scrambling down the steps, knives in their hands.

Well, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been expecting it. We stood between two of the stairways and they had us neatly boxed in, two men to each stair. I already had my dagger in one fist and my caestus on the other, and I’d decided to kill Scaurus before dealing with the others. I’d shown him all the forbearance I was going to that day.

He hadn’t been expecting me to move so quickly, and he let out a squawk, jumping back as I lunged, moving very fast for a bulky man. I would have had him then, but the building gave a sickening lurch and I stumbled sideways, only scoring a long scratch on his chest and shoulder. He twisted away and ran past the two men behind him. They had to pause to let him by, and this gave me a moment to recover my guard.

Hermes was already dealing with the first man on his side. Because the passage was narrow, they could only attack one at a time, a piece of luck we really didn’t deserve. The man had a long, straight dagger, and he came in low. Hermes slung my old toga off his shoulder and it unfurled, enwrapping him like the net of a retiarius . He stepped in and his stick lanced out like a shortened trident and the muffied man folded around it, the wind blasting from his lungs. Hermes grasped the man around the waist and straightened, sending him fiying over his shoulder to hit the river with a great splash. It was done as prettily as any fight you are likely to see in the arena, but I shouldn’t have let it distract me.