John Roberts - Saturnalia

“A friend of mine, also a Greek physician but an honest one, told me that the deadliest weapon in Rome today is the spoken word.”

“Then your friend is a wise man. Some things are best not spoken of.”

“Tell me, Furia,” I said, “about your cult. …”

“My religion!” she corrected vehemently. “Your spying was a profanation, and you should have died for it.”

“That,” I said, “is something that has me puzzled. While I abhor your rites, I recognize that yours is an ancient religion and one native to Italy.”

“It is that. My foremothers practiced our rituals long before you Romans arrived. Even you adopted them before you began to imitate the Greeks from the south. You Romans call human sacrifice evil, yet you allow men to fight to the death in your funeral games.”

“That is different,” I told her. “It is for another purpose, and the men aren’t always killed. You must understand the distinction between …”

“I spit on your distinctions! On the eve of the Feast of Saturnus you saw us sacrifice a slave. In the old days, before your censors made it a criminal offence, the sacrifice was a free volunteer. In times of terrible crisis, a prince of our people would willingly pour his blood into the mundus for the good of the people. What are your slaughters of bulls and rams and boars to a sacrifice like that?”

“Be that as it may, venerable and hallowed as your religion is, why do you allow the likes of those patrician women to attend? You must know that they come only for the excitement, for the decadent thrill of doing something forbidden. I know that you practice your sacrifice as a holy rite pleasing to your gods. Why then do you allow your religion to be defiled by a foreign people who enjoy it as something evil?”

“Isn’t it obvious, Senator?” She smiled knowingly. “They are our protection. I observed before that you bring no officers to arrest me and throw me into prison. Is it not exactly because of those loathsome ladies? They are most highly placed. This, too, is an ancient tradition, Roman. You have your King of Fools on Saturnalia. These women play the same role, although we don’t tell them that. And being women, their presence does not pollute our rites, as yours did.”

“There were other men there,” I said. “At least one of them was a Roman.”

“There were no men there save yourself, Senator. There were masked creatures somewhat manlike in shape to make the music and stand watch over our solemnities.”

“Who was the masked Roman who volunteered to kill me, Furia? I knew his voice. He was not one of your strigae, and he was not one of your people.”

“He is one of us nonetheless. It was he who avenged Harmodia.”

Glimmerings of light began to sift through the gloom that enshrouded this tangled, demon-ridden affair.

“It was he who killed Ariston?”

“He did. He said he’d do it the Roman way and sacrifice him to the river god.”

That gave me pause. “You mean he was thrown from the Sublician Bridge?” I had assumed that he had been crossing the Fabrician to the island where many of the physicians of Rome had their living quarters.

“Yes, that was the one. Why should I give him to you? He may be a Roman, but he avenged our sister.”

I leaned close. “I don’t think he did, Furia. I think he is the one who hired Ariston to poison Celer. I furthermore think that he killed Harmodia himself to cover up his tracks. Ariston was a coward who liked to use poison and keep his own hands clean. Your Roman enjoys spilling blood. He killed Harmodia, then he killed Ariston to destroy the last link between himself and the poisoning, and in doing it he further ingratiated himself with you. He is a clever man, Furia, cleverer than you and almost as clever as I. I am going to find him and I will see justice done, if I have to mete it out myself.”

She regarded me for a long time with cool, steady eyes. “Even if I believed you, I could not reveal his name. I am bound by sacred oath and cannot reveal an initiate to an outsider even if one of them sins against the gods.”

I knew better than to try to break that sort of determination. I stood. “Good day to you, then, striga. I think that I will know my man before the sun sets. I can feel it now just as you read my future in my palm and my blood.”

“A moment, Senator.”

I waited.

“It was the blood of both of us. Tell me one thing: Since I first saw you, you have been as grim and determined as a hound on a scent. You were that way when you came in here just a little while ago, although I could tell that you were in fear of me as well. But now you are angry. Why is that?”

I examined my feelings for a few seconds. “I was determined to find out who killed Celer because he was a member of my family and a citizen. But Romans of my class have been murdering each other for centuries, and sometimes it is as if we’ve asked to be killed. Anger in such cases is as futile as anger against an enemy soldier who kills from duty and habit. Also, I wanted to make sure that a woman was not accused unjustly, although she has plenty of blood on her hands and her brother is my deadly enemy.” I paused, thinking of the thing that stirred anger within me.

“Your masked drum beater, this Roman swine, killed a worthless man. But he did it in mockery of one of our most ancient rituals, the sacrifice of the Ides of May, when the sacred argei, the puppets of straw, are cast from the Sublician Bridge into the Tiber. Politics is one thing; sacrilege is another.”

She turned and rummaged through one of her baskets. “Roman, you are no friend of mine or my people. But I think you are a good man, and those are rare in Rome. And your gods watch over you; this I saw when you were here before. Take this.” She held something out to me. It was a thin disk of bronze, pierced at one edge and hanging from a leather thong. I took it and examined it in the dim light. On one side was writing in a language I had never seen before. On the other was a stylized eye surrounded by lines like rays.

“It will protect you and help you spy out evil.”

I took it and placed it around my neck. “Thank you, Furia.”

“Now forget about us. Some day you may be a high magistrate and may feel you should try to wipe us out. It has been tried before, many, many times. It is useless. You will never be able to find our mundus again, I promise you, scour the Vatican as you will. It was the gods who led you there in the first place for their own reasons, but their purpose has been accomplished. Go now. I have called off my dogs; they’ll not bother you again.” She lowered her gaze and her face was hidden by the stiff, black brim of her hat. I turned and walked out.

It was well past noon as I walked back from the Campus Martius and through the Porta Flumentata into the City. For the first time since returning to Rome I felt confident. I felt that luck was with me and maybe even the gods. Maybe Furia’s eye amulet was helping as well. I felt that, in some inexplicable way, I saw everything more clearly, not just their appearance, but their hidden meaning.

As I crossed the cattle market I glanced up and to my right and saw the beautiful Temple of Ceres low on the slope of the Aventine, glowing as by an inner light and looming, in some fashion, larger than was normal. I stood as one struck by a vision, jaw gaping, causing passersby to stare and point.

I knew what I had overlooked, what Julia and I had been discussing no more than two hours before. Had the investigation been a simple one, it would never have escaped me. It had been all those witches and their horrible rites and the presence of outlandish patricians and all the other anomalies that had cluttered up the case that caused me to overlook it. Or maybe Julia was right and I was sometimes dense.