John Roberts - The Sacrilege

"Here, at least," Cato proclaimed, "Pompey hasn't let his men get too slack, even though he's had to employ those Cretan hirelings."

"He doesn't have much choice," I said. "Romans are swordsmen and spearmen, not archers."

"Did you see those idle louts as we entered the camp?" Cato all but hissed. "I cannot believe that those were Roman soldiers. I have heard of how slack his legions are, but I never guessed the extent of their indiscipline."

"All the more reason," I said, "that we should prevent him from ever getting command of Roman soldiers again."

Cato nodded. "You are right. In the future, I shall apply myself to blocking his attempts at further military commands." He mused for a while. "And those foreign soothsayers! What he did was an affront to the gods of our ancestors! I suppose it's what you might expect from a man whose father was killed by lightning." I did not argue with this.

As I walked back toward the camp entrance I passed the praetorium and heard voices speaking in a strange language. I thought it probably the conversation of Asiatic slaves and was about to pass on when some half-forgotten familiarity in the sound of the language stopped me. Slowly, I stepped nearer the great tent.

Just within one of the entrances I saw the soothsayers huddled. Theirs was the voices I had heard. I suppose I must have heard Etruscan spoken before, probably in the form of prayers or chants. It was a dying language, but was still spoken in some of the more remote parts of Tuscia. One of the men looked up and caught sight of me. He said something and they all fell silent and glared at me.

I had no idea why they thought I was eavesdropping on their conversation, since nobody on Earth except Etruscans could understand their incomprehensible gibberish. Ill-mannered foreigners. If Pompey was cultivating such as these, he was welcome to them.

With a few other Senators as companions, I walked back to the city. None of them were Pompey's supporters, so I was not constrained in my speech. Everyone agreed that Pompey's arrogance had grown intolerable. Nobody, however, had any good propositions as to what to do about it. After listening to a number of futile suggestions, I decided that our best course was probably that put forth by Cicero: Let time, the absence of promising wars and Pompey's own political ineptitude bring him down.

I had one major apprehension about this policy, though. I feared that Pompey's downfall would probably come about because he would be replaced by men more unscrupulous than he.

It was barely midafternoon when I reached the Forum. There were several hours left before sunset, when I would meet Julia at the Temple of Castor. I wondered what she might have discovered, but that was not the foremost thing on my mind. I was more excited just to be meeting Julia again. Too many women had inserted themselves into my life in recent days: Clodia, Fulvia, even Purpurea. In the company of these mysterious and dangerous women, Julia seemed positively wholesome, even if she was Caesar's niece.

The Forum is always a good place to idle, so I idled. I talked to friends and acquaintances, and got braced by more publicani than I had known to exist. Most of these were angling for public contracts out in the provinces, because virtually all the builders in Rome were going to be engaged for the next couple of years on Pompey's new theater. Not only was the theater itself to be immense, but it was to be but the centerpiece of a veritable minor forum out on the Campus Martius. It would have galleries and gardens, a new voting-compound for the popular assemblies and a Senate house. It seemed that there was a sort of public-works rivalry between Pompey and Lucullus, and the city was doing well out of it. Lucullus, though, gave better parties.

As I ambled around the periphery of the Forum, I came upon one of those crowds that assemble wherever something ghastly has happened. With a sinking heart, I went to investigate. I could already see that they were gathered before a booth, one decorated with fortuneteller's symbols. I pushed my way through the gawkers and into the booth. Inside I found a man in a purple-bordered toga dictating to a pair of secretaries who stood with styluses and wax tablets poised.

All three were gazing down at the body of Purpurea, which was decorated with the now-familiar wounds on throat and brow. Her face was stretched into a mask of terror as exaggerated as those worn on the stage. Unlike the other victims, she had known what was coming.

"Good day, Senator," said the man in the toga praetexta. He was perhaps forty years old, with a serious face and reddish hair. "I am Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, curule aedile. This woman was murdered sometime this morning. Did you know her, or were you just curious to see what the fuss was about?"

I told him my name and enough of my lineage to let him know who I was. "I have questioned her in recent days concerning an investigation I am engaged upon."

"Under whose auspices?" he asked sharply.

"Metellus Celer," I said.

"He has no authority, but we both know he'll be one of next year's Consuls, and I'll be out of office then, so I won't dispute his right to appoint you."

"How was she discovered?" I asked.

"Several people entered this booth this morning but left thinking she was not here. A man who keeps a sausage-stand nearby came in to see if she had any garlic among her herbs, and he saw her foot sticking out from behind a pile of baskets. Whoever killed her covered the body."

"Is anything known about her?" I asked.

"Nothing but her name and occupation," Domitius said.

"I don't suppose she had a license to practice her trade here?"

"How could she?" he said. "It's illegal." He caught my reproving look. "All right, I know it's our duty to expel them from the Forums and markets, but the office of aedile was assigned when Rome was about one-tenth the size it is now. We have to test weights and measures, guard against usury and counterfeiting, put on the public games, keep all the public works in repair, clean and pave the streets-" He threw up his hands. "I could devote my whole year just to inspecting the wineshops and whorehouses, another of our duties, and never get to all of them!"

"The burdens of office are great," I agreed. "Any idea whether she was freeborn? If she was a freedwoman her former master may want to claim the body for burial."

"I intend to find out. One of my secretaries will go from here to the Archives."

"When you find out, could you send me word? I didn't get to finish questioning her, and there is a great deal I would like to know. I would esteem it a great personal favor."

He had been bored with the onerousness of office, but this brightened him. This meant he would be able to call on me for a favor someday, and that was not a small thing when the parties had names like Domitius and Metellus.

"I shall be most glad to, Senator."

"Thank you. My house is in the Subura. Your messenger can ask anyone there where to find me." I took my leave and went outside. I checked to make sure that my caestus was handy and my dagger was loose in its sheath. The way things were progressing, it couldn't be long before the man with the knife and the hammer came for me.

The Temple of Castor is the most beautiful in Rome. It had been built over four hundred years before, in gratitude for our victory at Lake Regillus. Actually, its full name was the Temple of Castor and Pollux, but nobody bothers with poor old Pollux, who, like Remus, is the forgotten brother of the Twins.

I found Julia standing atop the steps, between two of the tall, slender columns. She wore a belted gown of pale saffron and a shawl of darker yellow. Her only jewelry was a string of gold and amber beads. She was as different from Clodia as it was possible for a woman to be, and that was the highest praise I could think of. She smiled as I came up the steps toward her. She had wonderful teeth.