Lucretia threw off the covers, awoken but disoriented by the sudden intrusion.
“Domina!” the girl breathed apologetically.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lucretia shouted. “Get out! Get out!”
The girl scurried away without another word.
“Gaius Verres?” Lucretia spat.
“Apologies, lady Lucretia,” Verres said, not sounding at all apologetic. “I did not know you were here.”
“I must have dozed off as the silicernium fluttered into embers. I was not expecting to be awoken by your… nocturnal predations.”
“I am no predator. I cannot steal something that does not even possess itself. Slaves are there for the taking.”
“For their master, not for any passing citizen.”
“I am a hospes here.”
“Obligations extend both ways.”
Verres shrugged.
“Timarchides cares not.”
“He will if you cost him extra coin. The servants here are on loan. Damages have to be paid for.”
“Your directness is most becoming. I spoke of the joy a man feels in reminding a slave of who is dominus.”
“Find a resting place for your cock somewhere in town. Neapolis has plenty of brothels. The House of the Winged Cock is but a few steps from our gate.”
“Brothels are for slaves and laborers. Uglies and beggars. I would not eat at the same table as a street sweeper. And I would not fuck the same hole as him either.”
“But, where…?”
“If not in the bedchambers of a gracious host, then there is no lack of serving wenches and weaver girls who will take a day’s pay for an hour’s work. Every woman has her price, Lucretia.”
“Every woman?”
“Well, not every woman, of course.”
“I should think not!”
“After all, there are many ladies who would not dream of accepting any payment for something in which they take such pleasure.”
“You are speaking to a Roman lady.”
“And we all know the proclivities of the Roman ladies, do we not?”
“I am sure I do not know what you mean.”
“Do not be so coy with me, Lucretia. You are a beautiful woman. I am sure you have desires.”
“For the attentions of my husband and the respect of his friends.”
“Is that all, Lucretia. Is that really all…?”
“It certainly is.”
“Your blushes tell me otherwise. Who is he, I wonder? A childhood sweetheart, sweet memories never forgotten? A true love abandoned when you agreed to a proposal of marriage from the lofty House of Batiatus? No… nothing like that, I am sure.”
“Nothing like that.”
“But perhaps it is something wilder you seek? I wonder what it must be like for the lanista’s wife living each day with a balcony view of the strongest, the most dangerous men in the Republic. Are your eyes drawn to them, Lucretia? Do you look down on your husband’s warriors and imagine what it would be like to take one inside you?”
“The very thought of it,” Lucretia sputtered.
“Of imagining? Yes, for you have done more than imagine, have you not? What female would not sample the delights she owned? I am sure there is not a woman in Rome who hasn’t wondered what it would be like to summon her kitchen slave or gardener to her on a warm summer’s night. To order him to stand, unmoving before her. To whisper in his ear that subsequent events should be a secret shared only between the two of them, on pain of torture.
“I only tease. I am a rude old man and your blushes are so beautiful I cannot help but encourage them. Forgive me, I beg you! Forgive Gaius Verres and his drunken talk of such indiscretions. I am certain you are as pure as your namesake.”
“Cicero! My congratulations for the entertainments,” Batiatus said, breezily. “I have never seen orators in full flow before! Most illuminating.”
Cicero stared half-heartedly back at the lanista, and shrugged.
“I claim victory in the battle of words with Verres when it concerns matters theoretical and hypothetical,” he sighed. “In my daily labors, I am thwarted at every turn.”
Batiatus patted his arm in an attempt at reassurance.
“Let me ask you about a gladiatorial matter,” Cicero said, “If I may?”
Batiatus grinned expansively.
“I surely lack your rhetorical tongue. But when it comes to the arena, I may speak of what I know.”
“The woman of the Getae.”
“Ah yes, a natural,” Batiatus said. “Her frame is small, but she has a truly murderous intent. Her pleasure in killing warms the soul.”
“She will not be the last, I am sure.”
“She lives for it. But her survival thus far seems but an accident. She cares not for her own life.”
“I spoke with her in her cell. She is a spitting cat. Full of fire and vigour, but not prophecy. And while she has had better fortune than a cat, even cats meet their end in time.”
“Are you surprised? These prophecies are doggerel. The priests are artful swindlers. Who cares what nursery rhymes are in the Sibylline Books if they are only found to be true after the event? The Getae woman’s rantings are of no importance to you, to me, to any noble citizen.”
“She has no ‘ranting,’ as you put it. She is lucid. Angry, but not… prophetic. But Pelorus would not have lied to me. There must be some way to unlock her sight of futures and posterities.”
“The oracles of the east surely do not spring from their beds spouting prophecies. They are induced, their site aided by elixers and opiates.”
Cicero patted Batiatus on the arm.
“You are too kind, Batiatus. But I fear that my time is limited.”
“Perhaps not, good Cicero. There a matter I wish to discuss with you.”
“What possible help can you offer in this situation, good Batiatus?”
“I can claim ownership of the Getae witch.”
“She is not for sale.”
“That is of no import, if I proved her rightful owner. I wish to engage your services.”
Batiatus beckoned Cicero toward the inner rooms of the house. Cicero followed, indulgently, a cup of wine forgotten in his hand as they strolled toward the shrine of the household gods.
“Verres’s case seems solid,” Cicero said. “It seems but a formality for him to present Timarchides to the magistrate tomorrow and sign over what remains of the estate of Pelorus.”
“But what if I have examined Verres’s armor and found gap?”
“A fenestra.”
“Indeed, I have a window. A window for us both!”
“My policy is always to be available to petitions,” Cicero said. “But I cannot promise anything unless the facts of the case warrant my involvement.”
“In truth,” Batiatus said, “it is a relatively simple matter. Pelorus has died absent a will. He has no heirs, no family.”
They reached the shrine of the Pelorus household gods. The lamps sputtered in the near darkness over a sparse tableau. A figurine of Nemesis spread threatening wings across the table. Mercury, too, frozen in time as if in mid-run; Diana, the huntress, her statuette’s bow bent as if ready to release an arrow, although it lacked any string.
“You are sure of this?” Cicero asked.
“I am certain.”
Batiatus gestured at the altar, where the figurines of violent gods stood. There were no ancestral tablets among them; no representations of parents or cousins, children or friends. The altar in the house of Pelorus had only representations of the gods themselves, and no place for man.
“I see,” Cicero said. “He was alone.”
“Pelorus and I have been associates since childhood.”
“How so?”
“Ever since my father bought him-”
“Wait. Pelorus was a slave?”
“For some time, yes. He was freed by my father. He saved him from roadside brigands, and in a moment of uncharacteristic charity my father promi
sed him whatever he desired. Naturally, he asked for his freedom, and it was granted with deep reluctance. And thenceforth, my father refused to have slaves as his bodyguards, lest similar happenstance place the same burden upon his goodwill and purse.”
Batiatus pointed at the only other object in the shrine-the wooden sword that hung on the wall.
“The proof yet lies there,” he said.
Cicero plucked the sword from its hooks and squinted in the dark at the crude words etched in its side. The abbreviations were drastic, largely hacked down to clusters of two and three letters, but the meaning was clear. Pelorus, a gladiator of Capua, freed for valor, with the blessings of his master Titus Lentulus Batiatus, and in thanks to the gods.
“From where did he come?” Cicero asked.
“The slave market. Purchased as a boy to be my companion, and sometime guardian. His family were Cimbri from the far north, captured in the campaigns of Gaius Marius.”
“Well, Batiatus, I fear that you will be disappointed. None but a Roman citizen can write a will.”
“That is surely not the case,” Batiatus said, seating himself with a smug sigh upon the altar itself. “What about that king of Asia who left his entire kingdom to the Republic?”
“The state can make exceptions where it suits it. But for private individuals, the matter still stands.”
“But we are all Roman citizens now. The franchise has been extended over all the Latins. You may have been born a Roman citizen, Cicero, but even humble Capuans such as myself are now admitted to the ranks. Pelorus, too.”
Cicero leaned his haunches on the altar next to Batiatus. He smiled to himself in appreciation of a new and dangerous loophole.
“Batiatus, my friend,” he breathed, “you are entirely correct. Yet another problem to occupy the lawyers of the Republic for decades to come.”
“So if Pelorus can claim to be a citizen of Rome, what consequence to his estate, if he is left without heir?”
“His citizenship is less of an issue than his status as a freedman.”
“And as freedman who departs this life absent a will, his estate becomes property of his former owner?”
“Indeed. His owner being your late father, who himself leaves his estate to you, Batiatus. I can see why this interests you so. You have identified a window of immense size.”
“You will take my case?”
“There is a case?”
Batiatus leaned in as close as seemed proper.
“Verres is self-appointed,” he said. “He makes claim to be familiae emptor.”
“The ‘buyer of the family,’ meaning he has charge of disbursing the estate as Pelorus would have wished it?”
“Well, what the fuck would Verres know of Pelorus’s wishes? What gives him the right to make decision, absent guidance?”
“Your points have validation, good Batiatus,” Cicero said. “What is Verres’s claim?”
“That as he died Pelorus willed him to dispense his fortune, largely to the freedman Timarchides.”
“So?”
“The evidence of such an intent is strangely absent.”
“Pelorus intended differently?”
“I do not imagine Pelorus had any intentions at all, one way or another.”
“Why?”
“I was well acquainted with the man. Such a man as he lived for the moment. Pelorus lived a life both safe and secure-or so he thought. He had no enemies. He had wealthy friends. He did not expect to depart life at such early age!”
Something clattered in the corridor outside. The men looked up but saw nothing in the moonlight.
“I sense a Thracian’s disapproval,” Medea said, scratching her head. Her chains rattled in the dark.
“It is your life,” Spartacus said from the neighboring cell.
“It is not my life,” Medea replied. “It ceased to be my life when Roman legionaries fell upon the Getae and captured me.”
“The story is familiar,” Spartacus said.
“With variants, I am sure,” she said. “I never yet saw Asia, but from the road as I was marched to Bithynian slave markets. Sold to the Syrians. Acquired by agents of Pelorus, with his strange predilection for sorcerous women. And thence to Italia.”
“Where you will die in the arena.”
“So be it.”
“Unless you cooperate with Cicero.”
“Fuck him.”
“Give him what he wants,” Spartacus said. “Give him what he wants, and you shall be taken from this place in his custody, taken to Rome as a seer and prophetess.”
“As a slave.”
“For now. But your life will be longer and more luxurious if you foretell portents of Rome’s future than if you sit in such a cell as this, and wait for the trumpets to call you to the sands.”
Outside, the moon peeked from behind rainclouds, allowing gentle, gray light to glow through the small window near the ceiling.
“See,” he said. “Luna agrees with me.”
“I am worth more to the Romans as their seer, than as their animal of the arena?” she mused.
“Truly,” Spartacus said, “you are worth more to the Romans alive than dead.”
“In which case,” she said, “I shall make sure that I die.”
Lucretia awoke, again. This time, there was a scratching at the window, a pawing at the shutters. Her eyes narrowed in annoyance as she snatched up a statuette as an impromptu weapon.
“Governor or not,” she breathed, “I will mark you for such insolence.”
“Governor…?” slurred the voice of Batiatus. “I am but the governor of your heart.”
Lucretia flung open the shutter, to find her husband attempting to climb through the window-a maneuvre that seemed to tax him more than it should.
“In Luna’s name,” Lucretia cried, “what are you doing?”
“I am coming to bed,” Batiatus mumbled.
“Through the window?”
“It was the swiftest means to reach you. As windows are, I have discovered, in matters legal or marital.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tonight I am going to fuck you. And tomorrow, we are going to fuck Verres!” He finally found purchase with his other leg, swinging himself over the ledge and into the bedroom, where he tumbled on the floor at Lucretia’s feet. She made no attempt to help him up.
“It delights me to see you so animated,” she said dryly, returning to the bed and climbing back beneath the coverlet.
“Indeed I am, Lucretia. Your husband has found a new course through the obstacles set up by Verres and Timarchides. A new chance, even, that you and I shall become the owners of the House of Pelorus. And Cicero himself engaged as my advocate!”
“I hope his success is greater with your case than his success in collecting prophecies,” Lucretia said. She turned over fitfully, only to discover the hand of Batiatus grabbing at her shoulder and traveling swiftly toward her breast.
“My cock rises!” Batiatus whispered in her ear, pressing the evidence into her back.
“Quintus,” she said smiling into the dark, “you find me not yet unlocked.”
Batiatus harrumphed with the apparent effort required.
“Well,” he said, realizing, “it is strange that you and I are in our bedchamber unaccompanied.”
“Absent our usual servants of the cubiculum,” Lucretia said, “we lose many modern utilities.”
“Here in Neapolis,” Batiatus said, rolling onto his back. “I shit and do not know the name of the man who hands me the sponge.”
“And can you fuck, Quintus?” Lucretia shifted to look at him. “Without some tight-mouthed Illyrian to tease your cock into readiness?”
“I am ready for anything!” Batiatus declared, his tunic tented with the evidence.
“As a Roman lady,” Lucretia said delicately, “I am not so swift to desire.”
“Well,” Batiatus said, looking about him in confusion. “I can… help…”
Lucret
ia smiled and draped her arms around him, pressing herself against him.
“Can you… help…?” she breathed in his ear.
His hand found the place where her legs met, sliding in between them, rubbing mechnically, joylessly for the merest moment. He then grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, pushing her roughly onto the bed.
“Quintus!” she protested. “Such things take preparation.”
“And there is nobody here to prepare you.”
“Remember when we were young, and we would prepare each other?” She smiled at him teasingly.
“I do,” he sighed. “But that is what slaves are for.”
“Then begin,” Lucretia said, her face turned away from him. “Or occupy yourself elsewhere until we are returned to our Capuan comforts.”
Verres dozed alone. He dreamed of quivering slave girls and fountains of wine. He dreamed of Sicilian riches and the plunder due a governor. The shutters to his room hung partly open to let in the night breeze, which blew unheeded through his hair.
“Verres!” came a stage whisper from the window.
Verres sat up, confused, and banished thoughts from his mind of the warm, wet and willing.
“Who is there?”
“Timarchides. I desire only to talk.”
“Can this not wait until the morning? It is but a time for wolves and whores, and guards with poor luck.”
“This cannot wait.”
“We have the magistrate tomorrow morning. You will be a man of means. Wait until then.”
“It concerns the magistrate,” Timarchides said. “We are undone.”
Rubbing his eyes, Verres climbed unsteadily to his feet, willing them to manoeuvre him to the window. He allowed his gaze to settle, with errant unsteadiness, on the face of Timarchides.
“What is it, then? Timarchides, you bring all the fretting of a wife, absent her amatory benefits.”
“The quaestor moves against us.”
“Whatever for?”
“In the name of Batiatus. He suspects us.”
“I care not if he suspects. What is in his arsenal?”
“Testimonies of slaves. The ingenuities of Cicero as lawyer. Those windows in our scheme that are as yet unshuttered.”
“Then it is time to shutter them.”
“And risk further investigation?”
Spartacus: Swords and Ashes Page 21
