Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

The consul abruptly looked out at the crowd, furious to hear his name shouted at him so rudely. Caelius, who had so far kept a sardonic smirk on his face, appeared to lose his temper in the same instant. The two commenced shouting at each other. Whatever they said was drowned out by the swelling roar of mingled yells and laughter from the crowd, but it was easy enough to imagine. Isauricus was telling Caelius that he had no legal authority to set up a tribunal in the first place, and that by interfering with a fellow magistrate in the commission of his duties he was coming very close to treason. Caelius was probably resorting to more personal insults; I could easily imagine him calling Isauricus a finger puppet with the hand of Caesar up his back side.

Whatever Caelius said to Isauricus, it must have cut to the quick. The consul, overcome by a burst of fury, abruptly picked up Caelius's chair of state and lifted it over his head. It looked as if he intended to strike Caelius with it, and even headstrong Caelius quailed a bit, stepping back and raising his arms to protect himself. Instead, Isauricus slammed the chair down in front of him and seized the fasces from the nearest lictor. He extracted the ax from the bundled rods and raised it above his head.

The crowd let out a collective gasp. Davus, unable to see because he still held me aloft, cried, "What is it, Father-in-Law? What's going on?"

"By Hercules," I said, "I think we're about to see a murder!"

Sunlight glinted on the upraised ax. The crowd fell silent except for a few scattered screams. My blood ran cold. The mob had rioted for days and had burned down the Senate House after Clodius was killed on the Appian Way. Now Caelius had taken up Clodius's mantle as champion of the downtrodden. What would they do if they saw him murdered in cold blood by the consul of Rome right before their eyes?

Caelius staggered back, his mouth open in shock, his face as white as a Vestal's stola.

Isauricus brought down the ax-not on Caelius, but on Caelius's chair of state. With a great crash, the seat was shattered. Isauricus raised the ax and brought it down again. There was another crash, and bits of wood went flying in all directions.

For a brief instant a look of relief crossed Caelius's face. Only a moment before he had been staring into the mouth of Hades. Just as quickly, relief was replaced by utter outrage. In a heartbeat his face turned from bloodless white to deepest red. He cried out and rushed toward Isauricus, oblivious of the ax the consul wielded.

At once, lictors swarmed onto the tribunal, unsheathing their axes and interposing themselves between the two magistrates. A moment later, to defend Caelius, men from the crowd jumped onto the tribunal. Isauricus and Caelius were separated, and Caelius was pulled from the tribunal into the crowd. His supporters wanted to protect him, but it seemed to me they were subjecting him to the risk of being trampled to death.

"Enough, Davus!" I said. "I've seen enough. Set me down! We almost got caught in the last riot, and I don't want to make that mistake again."

But it was too late. A vortex of humanity swirled all around us. Men screamed, shouted, laughed. Faces flashed before me: some jubilant, some angry, some terrified. The crowd spun me about until I grew dizzy. I looked for Davus but saw him nowhere. Hieronymus, too, had vanished, along with all the familiar chin-waggers. I gazed about, disoriented and confused, unable to spot a familiar landmark. I saw only a blur of strange faces and, beyond them, a confusion of walls and buildings. The crush of bodies squeezed the breath out of me, lifted me off my feet, carried me along against my will. I saw spots before my eyes-

And then, out of nowhere, incongruous amid so much ugly chaos, I saw the face of the woman called Cassandra. In her eyes I saw no panic, but quite the opposite-a deep serenity, oblivious of the madness around us. Was that a sign of madness, to appear so calm amid such insanity?

I lost consciousness.

When I came to my senses, another face confronted me. For a moment I was confused because he looked so much like Cassandra-the same golden hair, the same blue eyes, the same incongruity of a young, handsome face burned by the sun, smudged with dirt, and surrounded by unkempt hair.

I gave a start and uttered a cry. The young man looming over me gave a start in response and grunted. A figure standing behind him stepped into view. It was Cassandra.

"Don't frighten him, Rupa. He's had a shock."

I rose on my elbows. I was lying on a threadbare pallet in a tiny room with a dirt floor. The only light came from a narrow window set high in one wall, and from the doorway, where a ragged cloth that served as a curtain was pulled back to show a shadowy hallway beyond. From the hallway came a smell compounded of boiled cabbage, urine, and unwashed humanity. From the window came the sounds of a couple arguing, a baby crying, and a dog barking. There was also a peculiar, persistent, not entirely unpleasant sound of metal clinking and clanging against metal somewhere in the distance.

I had been inside enough such buildings over the years to know exactly the sort of place in which I found myself. It was one of the ruder tenements in the city, probably located somewhere in the Subura, where the most wretched of Rome's citizens live tightly packed into close quarters, at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords and each other.

The young man called Rupa looked at me not unkindly, then rose from the pallet and stood. He was a big fellow-as big as Davus, which meant he was big enough to have carried me from the Forum to the Subura over his back. That must have been what happened, for there was no injury to my tunic or my flesh to indicate I had been dragged.

Cassandra stepped forward. "I suppose you'll want to know where you are," she said.

"In the Subura, I imagine. Not far from the Street of Copper Pots."

She raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were unconscious while Rupa carried you here."

"I was. I don't remember a thing since I fainted in the Forum. But I know the smell of an apartment in a Subura tenement, and I suspect that persistent clanking from outside is the sound of copper pots hung up for sale striking against one another. The sound they make is slightly different from the sound made by vessels of iron or brass or bronze. Given the angle of the light from that window and the distance of the sound, I'd say that we're about two blocks to the north of the Street of Copper Pots. Since we're on the ground floor of the tenement-"

"How do you know that?'

"Because the floor is of made of packed dirt. Yet there's a tiny bit of blue sky visible through that window, above the roof of the yellow building next door; therefore, the yellow building can't be more than two stories tall. Rather short for a tenement in the Subura. I think I know the one. Are we in the red building next to it, the one where there's always a barking dog chained next to the entry?"

"Exactly!" She smiled. "And I was thinking you'd wake up and be completely disoriented, like a…"

"Like an old man who lost consciousness merely from being spun about a bit? No, my wits are back, or at least such wits as I have left."

She smiled. "I like you," she said, without showing the least awareness of how such a smile and such words, coming from such a beautiful young woman, could suddenly light up the whole world for a man.

Rupa wrinkled his brow and made a signal to her with one hand.

"Rupa says he likes you, too." Her smile wavered. "You see, Rupa is-"

"Mute? Yes, I gathered that. For many years my elder son, Eco, was unable to speak-" I caught myself. Since I had disowned Meto at Massilia, I no longer had an elder and a younger son. Eco was my only son. And Meto-for me, Meto no longer existed…