SPQR I: The Kings Gambit

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Who’s this?” said Milo from the doorway. The noise had drawn him.

  “This,” I said, looking down at my now-unconscious attacker, “is our strangler, our burglar, our ‘Asian boy.’ Her name is Chrysis and I daresay she’s the most multi-talented woman in Rome.”

  Milo chuckled. “Won’t the boys in the Subura be furious when they find out it was a woman doing so well!”

  “Sir,” said Burrus, “wasn’t it the Lady Claudia you were here to see?”

  I looked around but she was gone, naturally. I got shakily to my feet and picked up my dagger from where it lay. “Claudia, Claudia,” I whispered. “Such a ruthless player in the big game, and you didn’t have the presence of mind to stab me when the little slut gave you the chance.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Milo said.

  “Nothing. Milo, I don’t want that woman to escape before I get her to court. Just tying her up may not work.”

  “No problem,” he said. With one huge hand he grasped both her wrists; with the other, her ankles. He straightened and slung her across his shoulders like a goatherd carrying a strayed kid. “She won’t get away from me.”

  I rubbed my neck. I was alive only because she had not been prepared. She had used her long hair to strangle me, not her usual bowstring. She began to regain consciousness, trying to raise her head. I remembered that there was a formula I was supposed to employ.

  Clapping a hand on her shoulder, I intoned: “Chrysis, I arrest you. Come with me to the praetor.”

  The house was far too large to search for Claudia, and I had already stayed too long. “To the Forum,” I ordered.

  As we left, we could hear Publius’s mob bringing him home, so we took the opposite direction. Romans are accustomed to strange sights in their streets, but we drew our share of wide eyes and dropped jaws. I was noticeably disheveled and the cut in my side had opened, soaking not only my tunic but my toga with blood. My eyes were almost as red from the near-throttling. Behind me walked the grinning, towering young man who carried a wiry woman over his shoulders. Struggle as she might, she wasn’t about to escape from those hands. Before me strode Burrus, shoving people aside and bellowing, “Make way for the Commissioner De-cius Metellus!”

  We walked into the Forum, which was still recovering from the recent brawl. Spilled fruit and rattling teeth still lay on the pavement among splotches of blood and shattered vendors’ stalls. We were greeted by cheers and curses, showing that the citizenry were still divided in their affections toward me, although it seemed to me that the cheers predominated. We crossed the Forum and went straight up the steps of the Basilica Aemilia, followed by a growing crowd hard on our heels.

  There was a boisterous trial going on when we arrived, but the hubbub quickly died down and all eyes turned toward us. From his curule chair, my father glared at us, enraged.

  “What is this?” he shouted.

  I stepped forward, bloody toga and all. “Fa—Praetor, I bring the foreign woman Chrysis, resident in the house of Publius Claudius Pulcher, before this court. I charge her with the murder of Marcus Ager, formerly the gladiator Sinistrus, and that of Sergius Paulus, freedman.”

  Father stood, his face flaming. “If you don’t mind, Commissioner, I have another case before me just now. You yourself have already been charged with starting a riot!”

  “By whom?” I demanded. “The flunkies of Publius Claudius? Piss on them! This takes precedence.” My eloquence received warm applause. Roman jurisprudence in my youth was a rough and colorful business. “This bitch throttled Sinistrus and Paulus, and she just tried to do the same to me!” I tore off my scarf and displayed my luridly marked neck, exciting gasps of admiration.

  “I can scarcely wait to find out how that came about!” my father said.

  “She is an acrobat and contortionist,” I said, praying that nobody would ask how I knew of her extreme suppleness. “That is how she was able to insert herself, reptile-fashion, through Paulus’s bedroom window. The eunuch is innocent! Turn him loose!”

  One of the formerly contending lawyers who had been arguing before my father rose to the bait. “Do you mean to claim,” he yelled, “that this little Asiatic bint strangled a very large professional killer?”

  I grasped the breast of my toga with one hand and thrust the forefinger of the other skyward, just like Hortalus when he was making his crucial point. “At that time, she used a bowstring with a cunning Oriental slipknot. If you wish I will summon the physician Asklepiodes to demonstrate it, preferably on you.” This drew claps and whistles. I was providing far more entertainment than the property case they had been witnessing.

  “And furthermore,” I said, deciding to press my luck while the audience was sympathetic, “she is only a part of a much larger—”

  At that point, a hand descended on my shoulder from behind. I turned to see a lictor, fasces carried over his shoulder. “I arrest you, Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, for public riot. Come with me.” Other lictors grabbed my arms.

  As I was dragged away, I shouted over my shoulder, “Chain her to a wall by a neck-ring! Double-riveted! She’ll get out of anything else!”

  12

  THE MAMERTINE PRISON WAS NOT one of the show places of Rome. It was a cave below the Capitol. I spent two days there, alone, which shows how diligent Roman authorities were in apprehending criminals. The place was cold and cheerless, its only light coming through the iron grating of the overhead hole through which I had been lowered. At least, for the first time since the whole mess had started, I had time to sit and think, free from distractions and assaults.

  I spent much of this time cursing myself for being an idiot, especially where Claudia was concerned. The treacherous bitch had played me expertly, knowing a fool when she saw one. It had been the night in her hideaway, with the multitalented Chrysis, that had thoroughly befuddled my investigation. Aside from the confusion and general embarrassment, the fact that they had both been with me the night Sergius Paulus was killed distracted my suspicion. But the eunuch had said that the earliest light of dawn was visible when the cessation of his master’s snoring woke him. Chrysis had slipped away and killed him while I slept.

  I found myself wondering how the Consuls would handle this. Marius would simply have had me killed by his thugs. Sulla would have put my name on a proscription list, to be killed by the first citizen who found an opportunity to do so and claim a part of my estate. But the times were more settled now, and they would probably wish to go by constitutional forms. Since I had not committed a capital crime, perhaps a discreet poisoning might be in order.

  There was, of course, the possibility that Publius Claudius might die. Gratifying as the thought was, it would lay me open to a charge of murder. Unlike the magistrates, a mere commissioner had no immunity from prosecution. Freeborn men were rarely condemned to death for murder, especially if there was a brawl involved. Grown Roman men were supposed to be able to take care of themselves. If Publius couldn’t manage to kill me first in a perfectly open and straightforward brawl, he deserved little sympathy from a court.

  That would have been the case in normal times, at any rate. The only thing I had in my favor was that the Consuls were trying to maintain the pretense that these were normal times. I would most likely get off with banishment. To me, that seemed little better than a death sentence. I had always loathed being away from Rome. If I were to be banished, there was the prospect of an eventual return. Pompey and Crassus could easily fall out, or Hortalus might wish to curry extra favor with my family, or they might all die, which was not at all unlikely. Or, Lucullus might come home a trium-phator and get himself a Consulship, and remember that I had tried to do him a good turn. One should never trust the gratitude of powerful men, but at that time I was desperate to find any sort of happy outcome to my predicament.

  My jailer was a tongueless public slave who provided little company or diversion. I found myself wishing that some felon would be thrown down into the prison with me. Anything
was better than being alone with my thoughts. A streetwise thug might know what was going on in the city, whether there was any public sentiment in my favor.

  It had looked promising in the Forum and in the Basilica, but the Roman public is endlessly distractible. News of a defeat in the East or an earthquake at Messina would do it. If he wished to go to the expense, Crassus could suddenly remember a dead relative who had to be honored and declare a day of races in the Circus. That would cause the public to forget me entirely. At least the weather in recent days had been too cold and wet for racing. Besides, Pompey and Crassus were both Blues, and a victory for the Greens might be interpreted as a bad omen for them.

  Of course, it never occurred to me that I might simply be too unimportant for them to worry themselves about greatly. Long after dusk on the second day, I heard a voice hailing me from above.

  “Are you down there, idiot?”

  “I haven’t gone anyplace, Father,” I answered.

  “A rope is being dropped to you. Grab it and you will be pulled up.”

  It was black as the bowels of Cerberus, and I stumbled about on the straw for quite a while before I encountered the rope. I grasped one of the knots and tugged. Up I went like a water bucket as the rope creaked through its pulley. There was a hot wire of pain where my side had been cut but I was getting used to that. The room was illuminated by a small torch. By its light my father looked me over critically.

  “You could do with a bath and a shave,” he said.

  “Bathhouses and barbers are in short supply down there,” I pointed out.

  He was not impressed. “That’s unfortunate, because you are about to appear in the Curia.”

  That did not sound good. Late-night Senate meetings were rare, and they usually meant something dire. I straightened my bloody toga as well as I could and ran my fingers through my disheveled hair. We left the prison and began to walk toward the Curia, preceded by one of my father’s slave boys, carrying a torch.

  “You will be relieved to know that Publius Claudius is alive,” Father said.

  “Actually, the news rather saddens me. I trust he is at least seriously injured?”

  “Just a sore head and a few dashing scars for his face. What were you doing with a caestus anyway? That’s not a gentleman’s weapon.”

  “A sword would have been much better,” I agreed. “But a good citizen isn’t supposed to bear arms within the pomerium. The caestus is sporting equipment.” Perhaps I should explain that in those days the pomerium was still the ancient boundary marked out by Romulus when he plowed the circuit with a white bull and cow. Its boundaries are now a mile beyond those in all directions.

  "Hmm. You’ll be a lawyer yet.”

  “The woman, Chrysis,” I said urgently, “did she confess?”

  “Certainly she confessed. You don’t think I’d have bothered to haul you out of prison if you’d dragged an innocent woman into my court, do you?”

  “Wonderful!” I said. “And has Claudia been arrested?”

  “Eh? What Claudia are you talking about, boy? Pub-lius’s sister? What has she to do with this?”

  My heart sank as suddenly as it had soared. “But what did she—”

  My father silenced me with an impatient gesture. “Quit babbling. This is important and we have little time. I have used all my influence to get the charges against you dropped. I am convinced that you acted out of blundering stupidity instead of the outright villainy I might have expected. Young Cicero has told me that you went to him for advice on points of law. That is good, although our patron Hortalus knows more of the law than Cicero ever will, and is bound to give you legal advice without recompense.”

  “I didn’t want to bother him,” I said. Better to leave Hortalus out of this entirely until I knew where I stood. I was beginning to feel as if I were standing on thin air.

  “How you can get into so much trouble over a dead foreigner and a couple of murdered freedmen I cannot understand, but I am trying to get you released from your committee a few weeks early to precede me to Hither Spain as my legate. If you can stay out of Rome and out of trouble for a couple of years, all this may blow over and you can come home when I return to stand for the Consulship.”

  This was better than nothing—a temporary banishment instead of a permanent execution. I had fantasized about dragging all of them into court and charging them with treason. Now I saw that for just what it was—a fantasy. I would see justice, but I now admitted that it would take years, not just a few days of investigation followed by some flashy jurisprudence. Well, I was only beginning my career; years were among the very few things I had. If I could just live through this.

  We reached the Curia and went up the steps. Beneath the colonnade, we stopped.

  “I will wait for you here,” my father said. “Remember, your very life depends upon how you comport yourself in there.” He placed a hand on my shoulder, a rare gesture of affection from him. Roman fathers regard paternal affection rather the way most people regard loathsome, foreign diseases. “Be humble, talk small, swallow your pride. Legal formalities mean little to the men in there. They respect only power, and you have none. Such family influence as you have I have already exercised in your behalf. The men who control the Republic these days may be moved against only from a position of great strength and highest office. That takes a great deal of time and work. Now go, and for once in your life behave wisely.”

  I said nothing to this, merely nodding before I turned away from him to enter the Curia. I did not hear the usual murmur of subdued talk from the Senate chamber and wondered what was amiss. When I entered the chamber itself, I thought at first that some sort of elaborate prank was being played on me. It was empty.

  Then I saw that it was not quite empty. Two men sat on the lowest bench. A single, multi-wicked lamp illuminated them both. They were our two Consuls for the year that was almost over: Marcus Licinius Crassus and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. They seemed to be discussing some documents that lay on the bench between them. One looked up as I drew closer.

  “Ah, young Decius. Come join us.” That was Pompey.

  Crassus looked up and studied me with chilly blue eyes. “Now what are we to do with you, Decius?”

  “If you have charges,” I said, “the proper procedure would be to take me to court so that the case may be examined.”

  “You are living in the wrong generation for that, Decius,” Pompey said. “The courts are well enough for civil matters, but you have involved yourself with foreign affairs.”

  “It was my belief that foreign policy was the province of the Senate,” I said.

  “It still is,” Crassus said, “but the Senate votes as we direct now.”

  “If that’s true,” I rejoined, “then why do you operate in such secrecy?”

  “For some time now,” Crassus said heatedly, “your life has hung by a thread. You have pulled that thread apart one strand at a time. You are down to your last strand and it ill behooves you to tug very hard just now.”

  Pompey raised a hand in a calming gesture. “Decius,” he asked mildly, “just what do you think you have on us? Quite aside from the absurdity of a mere commissioner attacking not one but both Consuls, I fail to see that you are in possession of any evidence against anybody. Perhaps you could explain.”

  “Murders were committed in my district. I sought justice.”

  "And apprehended the perpetrator,” Crassus said. “Most commendable, and I congratulate you. The woman Chrysis made a full confession of her crimes, how she committed them and at whose behest.”

  “Then I wonder that Claudia Pulcher has not been taken into custody,” I said.

  Pompey expressed amazement as exaggerated as that on an actor’s mask. “Claudia? Surely you are under some delusion brought about by your detestation of the lady’s brother. Chrysis told us she acted under the orders of Prince Tigranes of Armenia, something about sorting out some pirate business, apparently.”

  “The prince, it seems, ha
s fled the city,” Crassus added.

  “I want to question her myself,” I said.

  “You are in no position to make demands,” Pompey said. “In any case, you are a bit late for that. The wench is dead. She was being kept in a cell in the old barracks down by the Campus Martius. Hanged herself with her own hair.”

  “I see,” I said. “Resourceful to the last.”

  “Wasn’t she?” Pompey agreed. “Unfortunate, but by then we had the whole story out of her. We made our report to the Senate this morning.”

  “I take it that you conducted the interrogation?” Both nodded. “And was there a praetor present?”

  “Certainly,” Pompey said. “All was done according to the law. Marcus Glabrio presided.”

  Glabrio was one of Pompey’s clients and a military subordinate when Pompey was commanding. “And who was the court torturer?” I asked, suspecting that I already knew the answer.

  “Marcus Volsinius,” Crassus said. “One of my old centurions, a most competent man.”

  "He’s certainly qualified by experience,” I said, “having supervised six thousand crucifixions.”

  “We wouldn’t employ an amateur,” Pompey said. “Anyway, the case is closed. The woman came to Rome from Delos in the household of Paramedes of Antioch. When Tigranes came into Rome incognito and resided in the house of Paramedes, he suborned her, first with the awe of his birth and rank, then with temptations of wealth. Apparently her talents were well-known among the pirate brotherhood and Tigranes was anxious to have them at his disposal. At any rate, when he went to live in the house of Publius Claudius, she went there with him.”

  “And why did he go to Claudius?” I asked, knowing that they were closing the doors on all of my investigations.

  “Decius, you shock me!” Pompey said. “He couldn’t very well murder a man while living under his roof. That would be immoral. Even a greasy Armenian princeling has more respect for the sacred laws of hospitality than that!”

  “He went to Claudius because I sent him there,” Cras-sus said, unexpectedly. “I knew the boy slightly from when I had to deal with the pirates during the Servile War. He came to me a while ago and asked if I knew of a suitable household where he might reside in Rome. Obviously, considering the delicate state of relations between the Republic and his father’s kingdom, he could not very well beg hospitality of a Consul and did not want his presence officially recognized. I knew that Publius had the run of the town house since his elder brother and sister were in the East. Lots of room in the house, and the Claudians always love to hobnob with royalty. Seemed perfectly innocent at the time.”