John Roberts - The Sacrilege

I shifted uncomfortably. "They are said to be Etruscan in origin, like the games themselves."

"That is correct. In reality, he is the Etruscan death-demon, Charun, who claims the dead for the deity of the underworld, whom you call Pluto and we call Hades. Well, in Tuscia, he does not simply touch the corpse. He stands over the head and smashes the brow with his hammer."

"And these men came from Pompey's camp, you say?"

"That is an unhealthy and unseasonal sweat I see shining upon your forehead," he observed.

"As long as you see no hammer mark there, I am satisfied," I said. I took a long drink from my wine cup and he refilled it. Then I took a long drink from that one. "Something else falls into place," I said. "Murders with an Etruscan stamp, just when Pompey has a collection of Etruscan priests outside the walls. And Crassus told me that Pompey has lent some of them to Clodius."

"Ah! Pompey and Clodius. An unsavory pairing. What might all this portend?"

I told him what I knew, and he nodded sagely as he listened. He had that trick of nodding sagely when he had not the slightest idea what you were talking about. It was a faculty I, too, learned in time. When I described Caesar's dispersal of the crowd before my door and our subsequent discussion in my house, he interrupted me.

"Just a moment. Caesar said that the goddess Libitina is the ancestress of his house? I have gone to hear him orate many times, and he has often named the goddess Aphrodite as his ancestress."

"Venus," I corrected him. "Yes, he's taken to doing that a lot lately. That's because you practically have to go back to the time of the gods to find a Julian who ever amounted to anything. But our Venus is a more complex goddess than your Aphrodite. Libitina is our goddess of death and funerals, but she is also a goddess of fields and vineyards and of voluptuous pleasures, in which aspect she becomes the dual goddess Venus Libitina. Thus Caesar can call either of them his ancestress without contradiction."

"Religion is a thing of marvel," Asklepiodes said.

I spun the rest of the tale, not gloating over my acuity but rather telling of my perplexity. When I had finished, he refilled our cups and we thought in silence for a while.

"So this investigation of yours, which was to seek out the guilt of Clodius, now involves Pompey and Caesar?"

"And Crassus," I said. "Let's not forget him. If the other two are involved, so is he."

"What if the purpose of their plotting is to destroy Crassus?"

"That's involvement, isn't it?" I demanded.

"Excellent point," he conceded.

I rose hastily. "I thank you. I see someone down there I should speak with."

Asklepiodes followed my gaze and saw the young man who had just entered the exercise yard. "A handsome youth! And what striking coloring, almost like a German."

"Fairness like that is extremely rare among Romans."

I told him. "It's common only in a single patrician family, the gens Cornelia."

"I forgive your hasty leave-taking. I might be so precipitous myself to greet a youth so comely." He was, after all, a Greek.

The young man looked up when I approached him. His eyes were like Egyptian lapis. "I don't believe we've met since we were children, but I saw you yesterday in Pompey's camp. I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger. Are you not Faustus Cornelius Sulla?"

He smiled. "I am. I believe we rode together in the Trojan Game when we were boys."

"I remember. I fell off my horse." Faustus was a small, almost delicate-looking man, but I knew that was deceptive. He had made a name for himself as a soldier in Pompey's service, and had even won the corona muralis for being first over the wall at Jerusalem when Pompey had taken that ever-troublesome city.

"Are you here concerning Pompey's upcoming munera?" I asked him.

"Yes, and to begin arrangements for my own. My father enjoined a munera upon me in his will. Since I've been old enough to celebrate them, I've been away from Rome. This is the first time I've had a chance to discharge the obligation, and I mean to get it out of the way before I'm sent off to another war someplace." He was another of those men who had chosen foreign soldiering as a career and considered domestic civil service an onerous duty. I was precisely the opposite. My Greek friend had mistaken him for a youth because of his exquisite, almost feminine Cornelian features. Actually, he was no more than a year younger than I.

"I understand Pompey is adding an Etruscan element to his munera ," I said. Faustus had been watching the fighters practice, but now he glanced toward me sharply.

"What do you mean by that?"

"A friend saw some of his Etruscan priests here yesterday."

"They are just soothsayers," he said quickly. "They'll have nothing to do with the fights. They said they could ensure a better show by rejecting unlucky swordsmen."

"It seems to me," I said, "that some of them will have to be unlucky, or it won't be much of a show."

"I don't think that's what they meant," Faustus said.

We were interrupted when Statilius Taurus himself arrived to take charge of his distinguished visitor. I took my leave of them and retrieved Hermes.

"Who's that?" the boy said, jerking his chin toward Faustus.

"Faustus Cornelius Sulla, only living son of the Dictator," I informed him.

"Oh," Hermes said, disappointed. Doubtless he would have preferred some illustrious criminal. Well, there were plenty of those to go around, too. I decided to call on one of them.

It took some asking, but I finally tracked Milo down in a massive warehouse near the river. His guard at the door let me pass the instant he recognized me. I was one of perhaps five or six men who had access to Titus Annius Milo at any hour of the day or night.

Inside the warehouse, the scene was not greatly different from the one I had left at the ludus. Milo was drilling his men in some of the finer points of street-brawling. He had shed toga and dignity, and stood in his tunic while men circled him warily with clubs and knives. Hermes gasped when a man darted in and swung a club at Milo's head. Milo didn't duck the weapon like any ordinary man. He caught it instead and it made a noisy clack hitting his palm. I think Milo could have caught a sword that way. His years at the oar had given him palms as hard as the brazen shield of Achilles, and somehow they stayed that way all his life. His other hand grasped the front of the man's tunic and with a fierce wrench sent him careening into another who was approaching with a knife. Both men collapsed in a heap. Milo never carried a weapon and never needed one.

"That was good," he said. "Let's try another."

"No fair, Chief," said a gap-toothed Gaul. "The rest of us can't catch weapons like that."

"Then I'll teach you something you can use," Milo said, grinning. "Line up in two teams, facing one another." The men did so. "Now, the idea is, you just defend yourself against the man directly in front of you, but keep aware of the man fighting your comrade on the right or left. The moment he leaves himself open, turn and get him. You'll usually have your chance when he attacks the man before him. Move quickly. He won't see you coming, and the man you're engaged with won't be expecting the move. Come back to guard instantly, and he won't be able to take advantage of it. Now let's see you try it."

The two groups went at it with relish, and Hermes cheered every smack of wood against flesh. These men were inveterate brawlers and they actually enjoyed the exercise. Ever since the Gracchi, mob violence had been a common fact of Roman political life. With his usual cold-blooded realism, Milo was polishing his men's technique the way Caesar or Cicero would polish a speech. When he was satisfied with their performance, he came over to me.