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by Gillespie, Donna

  Before dawn, men of the City Cohorts lined the procession’s sacred route. This was to commence at the Triumphal Gate, a massive free-standing arch within the vast, grassy grounds of the Campus Martius. Then the procession would wend its way about the city, progressing down the broad Via Lata, around the course of the Flaminian Circus, then about the Palatine and on past the Colosseum and the house of the Vestals, until it halted before the steps of the Temple of Jupiter, where Domitian would preside over a great sacrifice of one hundred and twenty white oxen. Everyone, from rag sellers to patricians, rose before first light to battle for space. They massed on the rooftops and the steps of temples; they crowded into the windows of the upper stories of tenements and onto the makeshift tiers of seats erected in the Old Forum. Those whose quarters had rooms with windows or balconies that overlooked the processional way sold their fellow citizens the right to enter their homes and watch.

  As the October sun gilded the city’s jumbled red-tiled roofs and began its steady climb, parasols of all colors bloomed throughout the throng. Along the route, vendors set up stands and began their melodious cries, selling melons, figs, sausages, meat pies, hard-boiled eggs, and for drinking, fermented quince juice, vinegar-water and cheap wines sweetened with lead. Others set up shop selling votive statues of the city’s patron gods and small commemorative equestrian statues of the Emperor. All the people that fed on crowds—jugglers, acrobats, snake charmers, Etruscan fortunetellers—appeared spontaneously wherever they could find space. Prostitutes set up flimsy stalls that provided little more than a blanket hung in the doorway for privacy and settled in place before them, awaiting customers. So many citizens were arrayed in white in honor of the victory that it would have appeared to a hawk wheeling above as though northern snow had come to the city for a day.

  This was a spectacle that had not been witnessed in Rome since early in the reign of Vespasian, when his son Titus had entered the city in triumph after the fall of Jerusalem. For all the eight centuries since the founding of Rome, the right to enter the city in triumph had been the highest honor the Senate could confer upon a conquering general. The glory of it had hardly lessened in these latter days, even though the game was no longer open to any contender—now the supreme honor was awarded only to the Emperor or members of his immediate family. The procession’s origins stretched back into the mythic haze of the most ancient days. Some maintained that in those shadowy times this grim parade was the ritual last ride of the god Mars in the guise of a mortal man, journeying to bloody sacrifice in a chariot drawn by four white horses. Even to the present day, by long custom, the triumphant general’s face was painted red, a practice learned men could only explain if he did indeed once embody Mars, the Red God, on his way to die for the fertility of the land. The earliest processions were modest affairs, carried out with an air of melancholy necessity, as sacramental rites meant to propitiate the gods for crimes committed in war. But as Rome conquered vaster territories, as not just neighboring city-states but whole kingdoms fell before her, the processions evolved into a meticulously planned theatrical display, in which the captured wealth of nations was flaunted before the world. Rome never completely forgot its beginnings as a small, beleaguered city-state constantly threatened with extinction; the sight of hordes of prisoners of war herded before the triumphal chariot offered a primitive reassurance, a promise that now their city could live in safety forever and Roman rule would never end. The city’s excitement was always touched with solemnity, for this was the one time when war, normally so comfortably distant from the capitol city, revealed to the populace a small measure of its reality and horror. It was a time when the humblest baker could feel he sat upon Olympus, gazing down upon a subdued and obedient world.

  Silence came to the crowd thronged about the Triumphal Gate as the third hour of morning approached. Twenty-four trumpeters arrayed in scarlet and white passed beneath the massive, ornately carved Gate and halted. Thousands of heads turned to them; the hum of the multitude died as if at a signal. Then the trumpeters assaulted the silence with a fanfare that was at once pompous and barbarous. Many felt their souls seize up in reverential wonder before this brassy assertion of the everlasting power of their state.

  The trumpeters then began the march. Directly behind them came the Senators and magistrates, moving with funereal slowness. The crowd stirred and grew restless as all strained to see. Most wanted only to view the captives, the wild Chattian warriors of whom they had heard fantastic tales. They did not expect this procession to have impressive heaps of spoil—this enemy had no wealth to match that shown off after the sack of Jerusalem in Titus’ day. Germania was remote enough to most to be counted a place of fantasy; they had heard tales that the captives were so terrifying of aspect that women would fall in a faint at the sight of them. Everywhere there was excited speculation about them—at what hour would they pass? Would their chains safely secure them? Would the warriors be seven feet tall with manes of flaxen hair? Several battle-maids were said to be among them, an added curiosity that made the tribe seem more barbarous still. The war had caused blond tresses to be in fashion; great numbers of the women in the crowd had bleached their hair for the occasion, using goat fat and ashes of beechwood. Others wore flaxen wigs fashioned from the tresses of their fair-haired slaves.

  On the night before the procession, the Chattian captives had been put in heavy chains, shackled in rows of ten abreast. They were given no food, little water, and allowed no rest to render them more tractable as they were assembled on the Campus Martius.

  Of the journey to the Triumphal Gate, Auriane remembered only the brutal glare of the sun, the stifling heat, the nip of dust in the throat, and the weight of the ponderous chains. Their feet were left bare; hers were cut and bleeding before the captives even finished this first miserable leg of the journey. A guard rode up and down the line, snapping a whip. She and Sunia were chained together in the rear of the long file of captives; battle-maids were but a small joke for the people. Coniaric, nobly tall, and the massively muscled Thorgild were what they flocked to see; she knew they were chained in the first ranks of this shameful regiment.

  They treated her as a beast and, mercifully, she became a one, allowing herself no reflection, but one fear crept in nevertheless—how much debasement can be borne before the spirit shrivels and no longer supports the body?

  Junilla watched the procession from the cool colonnade of the great-house of her sometimes friend, sometimes enemy, the aristocratic Sabina, wife of one of the more loyal and plodding members of the Senate. They reclined among bright silk cushions on couches carved into the shape of swans, inlaid with lapis and mother-of-pearl. Sabina’s house offered an unfettered view of the Via Lata. Junilla was garbed in filmy cascades of white silk to match the swans; egret feathers and strings of pearls were woven into her shining edifice of hair. She sat with studied grace, her long, slim throat spangled with emeralds. Since dawn they had been sipping watered Chian wine cooled with snow.

  Junilla was saying in a sleepy drawl, “…and so I was forced to pay two hundred thousand for a horse.” Her eyes, normally dark, glinting jewels, today were hazed and harmless as a well-fed cat’s. She turned over with the languid, undulating motion of a ship rolling on a swell in a calm sea and looked irritably at Sabina.

  Her friend lay deep in the cushions as if she were weighted by stones, her dark hair matted to a damp forehead, one fleshy arm half concealing a wine-flushed face. Sabina tolerated Junilla because she was the best source of scurrilous gossip in the city. Junilla’s bond to Sabina was flexible and somewhat frayed, and always dependent upon circumstance. Lately they were allies because they shared a common enemy, Marcus Julianus. Sabina loathed him because he was responsible for bringing her husband before the magistrates on a charge of abusing the slaves on one of his estates. And Junilla’s malice toward him had, through the years, hardened into avenging passion—all the influence, prestige and renown he was enjoying now he should be sharing with her. Junill
a was drawn to Sabina’s meticulously maintained cloak of respectability; publicly at least, Sabina played convincingly the role of upright matron, welcome in any aristocratic house. While this social solidity fascinated Junilla, at the same time it brought out in her an uncontrollable desire to nip away at it.

  “Sabina, are you listening to me?” She is disgustingly drunk, Junilla thought, reaching out slyly and moving Sabina’s wine cup out of her friend’s reach. “It’s the very horse, mind you,” Junilla went on, her eyes easing shut, “that belonged to that Amazon they brought back with the captives. I did it, my dear, because I found out quite by accident who the other bidder was—an agent of none other than our own dearest Marcus Julianus, may a dozen hungry Harpies rip out his vitals. And it was quite obvious my curiosity frightened his agent off. Now why do you suppose that a man who has as much interest in racing as you do in sleeping with your husband was willing to spend a fortune on one horse?”

  “You are amusing as a case of scabies, Junilla,” Sabina replied, her face muffled in cushions. “Wake me when those lovely, savage man-beasts come by.”

  “This is why you never learn anything interesting that passes in this city. If you had a little more curiosity that elusive husband of yours would not get away with so much. He’d be about more, and when you get an itch you wouldn’t be forced to couple with those cold stone satyrs in your garden.”

  “Junilla!”

  “Sabina dearest, I’m only trying to keep you awake. Listen to me. I have an amusing suspicion about my former beloved husband, he who has the temerity to count me not good enough for him. Just what does he intend to do with the beast? Tutor it in philosophy? I can’t abide not knowing. If he tells me what he wants it for, I may even sell the nag to him, for triple what I paid, of course. Sabina, what are you thinking of? It’s clear you’re not listening.”

  “Lots of things. Their heaving chests…their broad shoulders…their lean, muscular legs…”

  “Do you have anything else on what is left of your mind?”

  Sabina narrowed her eyes, a warning to Junilla that she overstepped even the greater bounds she allowed her friend when she was drunk. But Junilla did not notice.

  “Imagine poor dear Marcus’ anger when he found out who got the horse he wanted so terribly badly. I’m going to chase this mystery down to the end, Sabina, like hounds at the hunt. It might be just my fancy, but I smell some connection between him and that Amazon. Things have been so boring of late—it’s the curse of the times when we’re saddled with an Emperor who has no sense of humor. I miss Nero. Think of it—our cultured Councillor, paragon of virtuous conduct, legal advisor to the Virtuous Bore himself, panting after a she-beast who squats on straw to tear animals apart and eat them raw. It could be the most amusing scandal since…since—”

  “—since the time a certain noblewoman was hauled before the magistrates,” Sabina interrupted, raising her head with effort and narrowing her normally soft, tolerant blue eyes, “to answer for that pretty lad she plucked off a back street and took home to be depetaled slowly—only to learn he was the unattended son of the sitting Consul.”

  The haze cleared quickly from Junilla’s eyes. “Sabina, if you ever mention that again, we are no longer friends.” Junilla turned from her and sank into smoking silence.

  Below them the triumphal procession moved on with the infinite patience of an incoming tide, continuing down the Via Lata. Two dozen sacred flute blowers followed the parade of magistrates, adding the chill, airy sound of double flutes to the continuous purring roar of the throng. They were followed by public slaves prodding the one hundred and twenty white oxen bound for sacrifice. The tips of their horns were gilded and garlands were laid upon their heads; their red-braided fillets gently swayed. Behind the oxen came the twelve assistant priests who would carry out the sacrifice, bearing poleaxes and knives.

  After them came a train of wagons drawn by plumed black Thessalian horses; in them were heaped the spoils of the Chattian war. In the first ten wagons were the captured arms of the warriors slain in the final assault—shields splashed with bright, barbarous color, spears with fire-hardened ends, exotically made longswords heavily encrusted with gems. Then came wagons heaped with treasure—fine horse trappings, ceremonial drinking horns, great embossed silver cauldrons and cups, and all manner of ornaments of amber, gold and jet. Some murmured admiringly that they had not known the tribe possessed such wealth. Others insisted the wagons were not piled so high as they seemed; heaped-up blankets were concealed beneath, then covered over with plunder. This tale spread slowly near the gate where the crowd was thickest with the veterans of the war, then more quickly as it moved into the inner districts of the city where the poorer people were closely massed. The crowd was bored with the spoil long before it had all passed. How much longer, they muttered, before we are shown the captives?

  But next they were given a parade of creatures native to the north. Three aurochs were exhibited, each hobbled and blindfolded within its own wagon and held securely by two public slaves. Then came an elk, also hobbled and secured, an ibex, and a dozen wild Tarpan horses. And finally, a caged mountain cat, the creature that was the spirit-animal of the conquered tribe.

  This exhibit was followed by twenty red-liveried slaves bearing a great map painted on wood, showing the extent of the territory that had been annexed to Rome. It illustrated the new frontier line—in some places the old frontier was pushed back more than a hundred miles—but few in the throng were impressed. “One hundred miles of wasteland,” a well-known tavern-keeper was heard to proclaim. “With no cities and no wealth. With what we paid for this in taxes, we could have captured India.”

  Then from this same tavern keeper’s roof where women of the Prostitutes’ Guild were gathered, there came the cry, “They come!” A wealthy brothel-keeper, a woman of proud bearing called Matidia, was first to catch sight of the captives. “Have you ever seen such human beasts,” she exclaimed. The prostitutes nearly pushed each other off the roof in their eagerness to see.

  When all the captives had passed beneath the Triumphal Gate and the last rank came into view, one of Matidia’s women cried—“There she is. There is the woman!”

  “So calm and brave—I pity her,” another of Matidia’s women exclaimed.

  “She is not blond,” remarked a third, as if this were some shameful affliction.

  “She’s no need to dye her hair to your taste,” Matidia said, squinting beneath her yellow parasol. “If I could just get a lock of it, I could match that hue on my own head….”

  The whole of the crowd became more alive; all pushed to get a closer look. The cry, “The captives come!” was quickly carried into the depths of the city.

  On the colonnade of her great house, Sabina sat straight up. “What is to be done with them?” she breathlessly asked Junilla, her softly modeled face flushed deep rose as she got her first view of the regally tall Chattian warriors. “They’re not to be destroyed, I hope?”

  “After a fashion, I suppose. For certain they’ll fight in the celebration games.”

  “Junilla, you’ve an uncanny influence over the Virtuous Bore. Do you think you could induce him to sell me one of those fine ones in front, under a false name?”

  The captives numbered five thousand; in rank upon rank they came, moving with the fitful steps of prodded animals. After the strident colors of the first part of the procession, the prisoners in their rags seemed dull as brown wrens beside peacocks. Most kept their eyes cast down, feeling very much the shame; others looked about them, dazed and unseeing, while still others outstretched their arms in gestures of begging mercy of their conquerors. The captives provoked open hostility in some, and in others, an obscure relief, for the sight of them brought up fears normally submerged—nestled in the heart of every citizen was a buried terror of being in their place.

  Auriane, in the last rank, walked with her hair wild and loose, her head held up not in defiance but in an attitude of carefully maintained p
ride, her gaze levelly ahead. From the first, the sight of her caught at the hearts of the poor and disadvantaged among the throng, and particularly the women. Of all this sorrowful company she appeared the most undaunted.

  Sunia kept her gaze locked to the ground. For all she knew or cared, she and Auriane might as well have been alone; about them swarmed some earthly Underworld peopled with a sea of obscenely grinning demons. Sunia had tried in past days to persuade Auriane to tell her what had passed in the garden of the Roman King, but Auriane seemed not ready to speak of it. Sunia had seen a shift in her temperament, however. Before, Auriane had been a wearied woman bearing up well, one whose hopes were nearly played out. And now, that weary part of her had become more like an adventurer, eager if still fearful as she faced a new life. Often Sunia found her smiling a smile akin to that of a woman when first handed her child after a birth. Well, that was reasonable, Sunia supposed; Auriane had told her that she’d learned Avenahar still lived. Sunia stole a look at Auriane as she walked beside her now in chains. That strength was a nagging mystery. She walks to death and degradation, Sunia thought, as though she were a bride going to her groom.

  When the line of captives turned from the Via Lata, moving on to the Flaminian Circus, Auriane sensed a shift in the mood of the crowd—it became more derisive and hostile. Once she heard a voice exclaim: “What is this? What does he take us for?” And farther on she heard a man bellow— “Look there, in the last rank. Is this some jest?” Auriane was perplexed, but certain that the captives were somehow being mocked.

  Among the prostitutes on the tavern keeper’s rooftop, beyond Auriane’s hearing, Matidia cried out: “Well, I should know a blond wig when I see one. That man in the middle ranks…Bona Dea, if that’s not a wig I’m the chief Vestal.” Rivulets of laughter and comment moved swiftly through the throng.