Roman Dusk: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain (Saint-Germain series Book 19)

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  From the corridor came “Yes, Master,” and the sound of sandaled feet going toward the rear of the house.

  “Your slaves will talk,” Melidulci murmured, now sounding overwhelmed with fatigue.

  “I will take care of that once I have tended to you,” he assured her, and stroked her hair, his hand light as a gauze veil. “Do not fret, Melidulci.”

  She wiped her eyes with her palla. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to stop crying. I think I’ve finally finished, and then—”

  “There is no error in tears. Melidulci,” he told her; his next words carried their own echo, “I only wish I had my own to shed.”

  Text of a letter from Septimus Desiderius Vulpius, presently in Brundisium, to Ragoczy Germainus Sanct-Franciscus in Roma, carried by private messenger.

  To the most excellent foreigner, the highly acclaimed Ragoczy Germainus Sanct-Franciscus at the house of the Widow Clemens near the Temple of Hercules, the affectionate greeting of Septimus Desiderius Vulpius, now on the last leg of his journey back from Pergamum:

  As you suggested, I took the time to bathe in the White Fountains of Pergamum, and must tell you that they are all you claimed they would be. The stones are like snow on a river, but all is warm and pleasant. The keepers of those fountains have achieved a fine facility, with their terraces framing the baths in the springs, and their many excellent attendants. The general setting for the baths in regard to the town is also quite handsome; I spent several afternoons there, recovering from the heat of the day, and meeting men from many parts of the eastern Empire who, like me, repaired there to pass the heat of the day taking their ease.

  On my travels, I was able to spend part of a day with the Syrian spice dealer you mentioned to me, and through him, I have made arrangements to import spices from Hind, to be exchanged at the Stone Tower for nut oils and bison hides from Gaul. Little as my father would approve my increased participation in trade, he would be proud to see our fortunes thus bolstered, which would not have been possible without your help.

  Which brings me to the purpose of this letter: I would like to show my appreciation to you for all you have done for me and my family—and my gens. This is to be more than a convivium: I propose to have a true banquet in your honor, with jugglers and erotic dancers to entertain. If you have a choice for a partner of your own, I will gladly do what I can to fulfill it—woman, man, girl, boy, or even goat, one, two, or three of them, I suppose, if such is to your liking. I know you will not dine with us, but you can still take your pleasure in our company. Consider what you would like and let me know upon my return. Reticent you may be, but surely you will not attempt austerity at Saturnalia?

  In regard to such matters, I have bought three slaves during my travels, all three most expert in amorous skills; if you would be interested in one of them, I would be pleased to make a gift to you, either one of the women, or the youth, as a show of my regard for all you have done for me and my family. They are all three comely, well-mannered, and talented in their ways. Without a wife to tend to you, you must long for the talents of slaves like these, and the women of the lupanar can be costly. Tell me you will consider my offer, and I will think myself most fortunate to be able to express my gratitude to you.

  As you must know, the fighting in Syria is worse, and there are rumors that we must look to another leader there. Severus Macrinus may have gone too far when he cut the pay of the Legions; what soldier will want to defend the Empire with insufficient weaponry and an empty belly? The Legions must be paid. Few Caesars have failed to do that with impunity, and Severus Macrinus is not popular enough to assume good opinion will carry him: he needs silver for his troops, and the support of the Senate, which I am told is wavering, if he is to continue to wear the purple. I mention this in case you should have business in Syria you may want to shift before matters get more out of hand. After all you have done for me and mine, it is time I did something worthy for you and yours.

  Look for me in four or five days, in the company of Pius Verus Lucillius, who has been in Salonae for three years and is eager to see the Tibrus and the Seven Hills again. His household will follow in two or three weeks, and so he will be staying with me until they arrive. We would be delighted to have you call upon us, should that fall in with your plans. Verus is a solid man, of good character, and not given to recklessness, except in the matter of chariot races.

  Until such time as I hail you myself, I extend my most sincere dedication to you and your friendship,

  Septimus Desiderius Vulpius

  at Brundisium on the 14th day of August in the 971st Year of the City

  6

  Throughout Roma the statues of Pomona and Ceres were adorned with fresh-picked apples and new-mown stalks of wheat; in their forum, farmers displayed their crops and harvests for the crowds of Romans who came to buy on this early day in September when the air was made golden with angled sunshine on hanging dust, and the clamor of the vendors crying their goods could almost be heard over the babble of shoppers bargaining with farmers. Sedan chairs and bigae carried the most ostentatious of the honestiora through the mass of those who had come to buy, but for the most part, humiliora and honestiora alike went on foot, many carrying sacks and baskets for their purchases.

  “There are Games tomorrow,” said Vulpius to Sanct-Franciscus, who, in a short riding dalmatica of black linen over femoria of laced deerskin, walked on Vulpius’ left: to his right was Pius Verus Lucillius, all splendid in a tan-and-green-striped long dalmatica of Egyptian cotton embroidered with Roman eagles. The three men looked up at the two stories of shops and stalls that enclosed the Forum Agricolarum. “Do you think any of those will be open when there is fighting in the Flavian Circus?”

  “There will be some,” said Sanct-Franciscus. “Not everyone ventures to the Games.”

  “I gather you do not,” said Lucillius, his animated features revealing his lively curiosity. “A foreigner like you, I should think you would want to indulge in all Roman entertainments.” His remark was intended to get a rise out of Sanct-Franciscus, and he was mildly disappointed when it failed to do so.

  “No; I am not attracted by the spectacle. I have been in Roma long enough to have sampled most of its delights, and I have found that the Games pall quickly.” Sanct-Franciscus shrugged slightly, thinking back to the reign of Vespasianus, when he had been thrown to the crocodiles as part of an aquatic venation. “No doubt a failing of mine.”

  “It is certainly a sign of your foreignness,” said Lucillius. “I don’t think any Roman would despise this display—except those unctuous Christians.” He flung up his hands for emphasis. “Coming to the amphitheaters and standing with their arms raised toward the sky, singing their verses, and calling upon those who want to be diverted to join them in worship. No wonder they’re being banned from so many places. And saying that their gods are the only true gods! No Jupiter, no Mars, no Mercury! No Venus, no Diana, no Minerva! No Pomona or Ceres, for that matter,” he said, nodding toward a pair of statues surrounded by the bounty of orchard and field. “Where would Roma be if we all thought like that?”

  “Lucillius doesn’t approve of Christians,” said Vulpius unnecessarily.

  “And what sensible man would approve them, I should like to know?” Lucillius inquired energetically as he shoved his way past a pair of slaves loading sacks of apples onto a restive mule. “If you have so few gods as the Christians, what do you do when those few fail you? They said that their gods are powerful enough for that, but what if that isn’t so? Foolish and bigoted, that’s what they are. Let them stay in their tunnels and caves, and leave decent men and women alone.”

  “They certainly would not approve of your sheltering a prostitute,” said Vulpius to Sanct-Franciscus, hoping to change the subject.

  Lucillius’ eyes lit up with amusement. “You? How did this come about?” he asked incredulously. “No, they would not approve in any way. Why should you have to shelter her? What prostitute needs shelter, but a dishonest one? Sh
e is preying on your good nature, mark my words. There’s a Guard for the lupanar as there is for the city, and that should suffice—”

  “There is a Guard, but she tells me it was the Guard who set upon her,” said Sanct-Franciscus, his demeanor serious.

  “They would not,” Vulpius declared staunchly. “They are paid to keep the women safe. Everyone knows that. The peace of the lupanar is not to be breached—and by the Guard? Absurd. That they should so forget themse—” He stopped, unable to go on.

  “Indeed,” said Sanct-Franciscus. “I am concerned that a greater problem than this incident may be behind this attack.”

  Lucillius thought for a long moment. “This may be an alarming thing, if she is telling the truth. Are you satisfied that she is—truthful?”

  “I have no reason to doubt her,” said Sanct-Franciscus, keeping his tone light and steady.

  “But she is a woman of the lupanar, isn’t she? She may have reasons to want to avoid the place: an angry customer perhaps,” said Vulpius. “She knows her work is as much for a man’s pride as his bodily satisfaction. She has arts of deception that you have not recognized, perhaps. Most women whose work it is to please men learn how to prevaricate most convincingly.”

  A group of young men carrying wide, shallow baskets filled with all manner of nuts came shoving their way through the shoppers, bound for the corner of the Forum Agricolarum where the growers of nuts and berries had their stalls.

  “Had you seen her, and heard her, you would not doubt her,” said Sanct-Franciscus.

  “So say all men who have been well-pleasured,” said Lucillius chuckling.

  “There was no pleasure in her when she came to me, only hurt and dread; she had no strength for dissembling,” said Sanct-Franciscus, beginning to climb the stairs to the second level of shops on the north side of the forum; the shadow of the huge awning sheltering the flight cast him into welcome shadow, and he felt more alert and energetic than he had done in full daylight, though the soles of his ankle-height peri had been filled with his native earth but three days ago.

  “Artifice is what that was,” said Vulpius. “There are men who prefer their women weeping.”

  “But not with swollen eyes and broken lips,” said Sanct-Franciscus, driven to a sharp retort. “How is it that a Roman citizen would allow a prostitute to be so misused? It was not so a century ago.”

  “Perhaps not,” Vulpius allowed, seeing the smolder in his foreign friend’s dark eyes. “But the world is a very changed place from a century ago. Caesars—good and bad—held their titles for much longer than those we have now. There were no barbarians strong enough to stand against us: our Legions were triumphant from Britannia to Asia, from Africa to Germania. Now those same barbarians chip away at our borders, and drive back our Legions—in Germania, they—” He caught his lip between his teeth, as if worried that he might have compounded his lapse.

  “I do not come from Germania; you do not offend me with your remarks,” said Ragoczy Germainus Sanct-Franciscus; he was mounting the stairs ahead of Vulpius and had to look back over his shoulder to continue to be heard in the busy stairwell. “You know my home is in the Carpathian Mountains; I have told you so. Neither Germania Superior nor Inferior can claim my allegiance. Say what you will: you will not offend me or those of my blood.” Amid the tangle of people thronging the market, he caught sight of a pair of men wearing the belts of Praetorian servants; he had the uneasy sensation of having seen them before, and was trying to think where it was when a man in a great hurry came pelting down the stairs from the upper floor, shoving those ahead of him out of his way.

  “Thief! He’s a thief!” came the bellow from above.

  The fleeing man—a tall, lanky man in a long-sleeved Gaulish tunica who looked Iberian—had a stiffened arm held out before him, and, because he was of some height and strong, had been able to knock over more than a dozen shoppers; he was understandably alarmed when he battered into the moderately tall, powerful-bodied man in black, for Sanct-Franciscus did not fall, but instead reached out and took the thief by the shoulder, stopping his precipitate escape.

  “By the Twins!” exclaimed Vulpius, astonished and disconcerted.

  Other oaths erupted around them as the shopkeeper—a man in the clothing of Armenia—came bustling through the fallen men and women, excoriating the thief in three languages at once. He carried a slender cudgel, and he struck the thief on the upper chest hard enough to make a bone crack and the thief cry out. “You are the shrivel-dicked son of a degenerate night-hag and a mad dog!” He raised his weapon to strike again, only to have his wrist seized. “Let go of me!”

  “Not if you are going to beat him again,” said Sanct-Franciscus firmly, his grip on the thief tightening so that the man would not again attempt to escape. With one disputant in each hand, Sanct-Franciscus found himself in an awkward position trying to keep the two apart, and, after a brief moment of consideration, said conversationally, “Vulpius, would you mind fetching one or two of the Forum Guards? Tell them they’re needed to apprehend a thief. This man needs to be taken before the Prefect for the Fora.” Both the thief and the merchant protested this request, but Sanct-Franciscus remained unmoved.

  “I thank you for securing this miscreant, honestiorus; you have done me a great service, but there is no need to summon the Forum Guard; the Watchmen will suffice, when I have recovered my property. This hardly requires their attention,” the Armenian merchant said, making an effort at courteous persuasion. “I will deal with him in my own way.”

  “Meaning you will smash his hands with your staff until all the bones are broken, and then you will turn him loose to starve; that stick of yours has lead in its cap,” said Sanct-Franciscus. “And what would that gain you?”

  “One less thief,” said the Armenian.

  “That may be, but then you will have a resentful beggar, and he will be much more dangerous than this thief ever could be.”

  “Sanct-Franciscus—” Lucillius attempted to admonish him, then saw the warning sign from Vulpius, and fell silent, moving aside so that Vulpius could go in search of a company of Urban Guard.

  The merchant glowered at the thief, rubbing the head of his weighted staff suggestively. “It would settle the matter, breaking his hands. As it is, he will be back again. You are only postponing the inevitable.”

  Hearing this, the thief gave one good twist in final attempt to get away; he let out a sharp cry as the ends of his damaged clavicle scraped together; Sanct-Franciscus’ hold on him was not diminished.

  “If you try again, you will only make it worse,” Sanct-Franciscus said, no anger or threat in his remark.

  The thief did not seem convinced. “They’ll send me to pull an oar. Smashed hands are better than a bench on a bireme.”

  “It is well that you should sweat for your thievery,” said the Armenian. “At least you would be doing useful work in a bireme.”

  Sanct-Franciscus said, “Lucillius, if you will, find out precisely what was taken so that the Guard need not spend time searching that out.” He cocked his head toward the Armenian. “If you will speak with this man you have accused in a sensible way, no doubt you will soon have everything settled.”

  “So you claim,” said the Armenian, clearly becoming annoyed.

  Lucillius climbed up to the shopkeeper, took him by the elbow and pulled him out of the flow of traffic. “The honestiorus is right. You should have such information ready for the Guard.”

  “He’ll lie,” said the thief, trying again to get away; his efforts ended on a single dismayed cry. “No; no. I know how merchants are—they inflate their losses and they demand that their allegations go unchallenged.” His voice roughened. “He’ll say I took more than I did, that it was more valuable than what it is, so that he can get more money in recompense for his losses, and so I will be given a harsher sentence.”

  The Armenian looked pugnacious. “Next you will say you took nothing, that I have accused you for no reason.”

>   “You have,” the thief began, then felt Sanct-Franciscus’ fingers tighten. “You have made what I have done worse than it is. I took three sandalwood boxes—little ones. That is all I took. They’re in my carry-sack.”

  “You have an accomplice,” said the Armenian loudly. “You handed the alabaster figures off to him before this man caught you.”

  “I don’t have an accomplice,” the thief insisted. “I am a solitary thief.” He tried to laugh and failed utterly.

  “He isn’t,” the Armenian insisted. “I saw him with a youth, shortly before he came in to make off with my goods. He gave that young man instructions, and the instructions were that his accomplice should receive the best of the stolen goods as he left my shop.”

  The thief sighed. “There was no young man helping me. I told a messenger where he could find Grodius, the pottery merchant. That’s all.”

  Lucillius patted the Armenian on the arm. “You will be better-believed if you stay with accounts that are easily confirmed. If he has your goods on him, confine your claims to what the Prefect of the Fora can see and appraise.”

  “Then I lose the best of my stock,” the Armenian wailed.

  “Stock you never had,” said the thief, and flinched as Sanct-Franciscus’ grip held him in place.

  There was a small crowd milling around them now, and questions were being shouted as the numbers of shoppers stopped on the stairs increased. Curiosity made the people press in, eager to hear what accusations would next be made.

  The thief suddenly shouted, “I smell smoke!”

  The people closing in around them stopped and turned, their attention diverted by fear. A few of them broke away from the crush and hurried toward other steps leading out of the covered shops.