Eventually, Sulla must have tired of staring at his bloodstained hands, for there was one nineteen year-old member of the populares who none could believe the new master of Rome would ever let slip through his sticky fingers. Recently married to Calpurnia, the daughter of Cinna himself, he was near the top of the proscription lists. This friend of Marius fled to the countryside while his supporters and family petitioned clemency. Sulla was somehow swayed and lifted the sentence of death, but only upon condition that the lad divorce the daughter of his hated enemy. In an act some would call reckless, others insane, the insolent, headstrong rebel refused. The gods clearly had grand plans for this impudent Julius Caesar, for only they could have stayed Sulla’s outstretched hand of clemency from returning to its more accustomed role as wielder of the executioner’s blade. He relented, but warned those that had lobbied for clemency: “in this one Caesar, you will find many a Marius.” History would prove that it was Sulla, not Marius, that Caesar would eventually emulate, and unlike Sulla, Caesar would not tire of the role of dictator.
Rome, then, had settled into an uneasy peace. Not so the house of Crassus. Up from its chthonic bonds beneath the Palatine, Hades was about to break, and it was a damned soul once named Alexandros who had already unlocked the Gates.
***
If Nestor had had any faith at all in his master, it never would have happened. Crassus would not dream of willingly causing harm to the man who had sustained him those many months in hiding while Marius and Cinna hunted for him. But Nestor left our dominus no choice. It was hot on the Kalends of Quintilis. All the doors had been opened, the curtains pulled back and a dozen fan-bearers rented from Boaz. Sabina had taken Livia to town to restock her rapidly dwindling supply of herbs and ointments. I had just finished the afternoon’s last class in Latin grammar. The inside door to the front garden was open; so too the door to the street which I normally left bolted to discourage prying eyes and dampen street noise. Today the need for cross-ventilation bested privacy.
I looked up at the lesson wall, sweating like a Thracian wrestler. The layers of whitewash cried out for a good scraping and a fresh coat of paint, but it was just too damn hot. Happy with my procrastination, I had grabbed my bag of scrolls from the teaching table and taken two steps toward the street-side door in order to shut it when two men stepped through the opening into the schoolroom.
“Salve,” I said. “If you’re looking for the front entrance, it’s the gate just after the next door down the street.” I am pitifully unworldly, for one look at these two and anyone else would have known they would never come a-calling on any establishment other than a brothel, a tavern or a barn.
“Tall and skinny,” one said to the other.
“Must be the one,” said the other. “What’s your name, then?” They stepped closer and I took a step back. It is laughable how good manners so often interfere with my survival. My sluggish instincts had finally flashed a warning, but rather than run from the room screaming for help, I hesitated. What if my apprehension was unfounded? How rude it would be for me to flee. Decorum demanded that I give them the benefit of the doubt.
“Alexandros,” I said, swallowing. “Whom do you seek?”
“What, not Alexander?” The two looked puzzled and stopped their slow advance.
“You a teacher?” asked the second ruffian in a veritable lightening bolt of inspiration. My parents taught me never to lie. I nodded, my knuckles white on the edge of the table.
They looked at each other and said simultaneously, “Close enough.” Each drew an iron dagger from his belt, and my wits finally connected with my mouth and I cried out for help. I couldn’t take my eyes off the knives, so rather than turning to run I backed up, immediately tripping over one of the low benches. I landed up against the wall right next to the inside doorway, the air knocked out of my lungs, the overturned bench up against my feet. As I gasped for breath they advanced, the taller one tossing the knife between his left hand and his right, back and forth. The two men stepped over the bench at the same time.
I kicked out with both feet. The shorter one, the one on my left, tripped and slammed head first into the wall. He cursed and rolled away out of my line of sight, but the other one was lighter on his feet. He hopped neatly over the skidding bench and crouched by my side. The few teeth in his smile were not many shades lighter than his knife blade.
He gave me no time to plead for my life or even cry out. He was smiling, but he knew what he was about; do the job and leave. The other man called out, quite unnecessarily, “Do him, Quintus, and let’s fly.”
The knife was in Quintus’s right hand; he must have been left-handed for he flipped it across his chest one last time to wield the blade where it was most comfortable. While it was still in mid-air, a half-eaten apple sailed threw the open doorway and hit him hard in the face. Close behind it came a blur of Betto and obscenities. The dagger clattered to the floor as our legionary flew at the bigger man. They crashed to the ground then scrambled away from each other, but the assassin had somehow come up wielding his knife. Circling round the room till they were side by side again came his partner, his own weapon drawn.
The two intruders had lost all interest in me and were focused on the one man in the room who might foil their escape. Their mission had failed; the door to the street held their only salvation. Everyone in the room knew it. The two men faced off against Betto.
“You’re a young wisp of a soldier, ain’t you,” the taller one asked. “But we’re a generous pair, we are, and not too proud to admit we’ve come to the wrong house. Stand aside, let us pass and you’ll be bothered no more by us.”
“Wrong house, came to the wrong house,” Flavius Betto mumbled. “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT YOU CAME TO THE WRONG HOUSE!” he screamed. Everyone jumped. The intruders took a step back. Then, as if to himself, in little more than a whisper, Betto said, “I knew I should have taken the roasted corn. I took the apple, and now Ceres spites me for my choice. Typical.”
“What are you on about?” the man called Quintus asked cautiously. The two assassins took a step away from each other. Betto answered by sidestepping to his right, moving between the killers and their only means of escape.
“My lunch, you thick-skulled clodpate. You interrupted my lunch.”
“Now, now. No need for insults.”
“Yes. Yes, there is need for that and more. But enough talk.” Betto drew his puglio. His eyes were wild and bulging. “Put your knives on the ground, and follow them with your asses. Alexander, get to the house. Raise the alarm.”
I couldn’t do it. It was the right thing to do: what use was I in a fight? But I couldn’t leave him. Two against one; what if I returned to find Betto dead on my schoolroom floor, murdered because I had abandoned him even as he fought to save me? I scrambled on all floors, not to freedom but to the teaching wall behind my table. The pigskin of white paint lay where I had left it, full and unused. Bless my laziness, I thought as I grabbed the neck and tried its weight. Gods, it was heavy.
The tall one, the one with a bit of apple still clinging to his cheek said, “Very brave, ain’t he, Lucas? Doesn’t even draw his sword. Now why do you suppose he ain’t even drawing his sword?” They were moving further apart, flanking Betto left and right.
“Because my aim is much better with this.” I heard a grunt, but by the time I looked toward the sound, the one called Quintus was down, Betto’s knife sunk hilt-deep in his chest. While my protector was throwing his weapon, I saw the remaining assassin toss his own dagger in the air to grab it by the blade; he was bending his arm back to throw. I rose as the knife was released, knocking the legionary aside, holding my shield of pigskin before me. The knife sliced into the heavy sack right where Betto’s neck had been half an instant before.
***
“You should have seen him,” Betto said. “He was a man possessed.” Crassus was home from the senate and had assembled the stunned household outside the front of the house. Tertulla had insisted, not wanting t
o get any paint on the mosaic floor of the atrium. The surviving assassin was trussed and harmless, most of his face and chest splattered white. Malchus had drawn his gladius; the blade against the assassin’s spine impressed upon him the need for stillness. “After the sack stopped this villain’s blade,” Betto continued like a proud father, “the teacher bellowed like a bull and came right at that poor bugger, swinging his pigskin like he was at the Olympics. The bag must’ve weighed sixty pounds! He spun round on one foot and that sack whistled through the air. It clopped the bastard right in the head, as anyone can plainly see.”
I remembered none of this: the assassins came into the schoolroom, Betto’s apple hit one of them, and the next thing I recalled was Crassus asking if I was all right, here outside the house. I do not know how I came to be standing here, though Betto and Malchus assured me they were with me, their new hero, every step of the way.
Crassus stilled any further chatter with a raised hand. He addressed the captive. “I do not know what chain of events has brought you into my home,” he said in a calm voice, a disinterested voice. “You may have been a good man cursed by ill luck or lived your entire life outside the law. I do not know and I cannot care. Whatever choices pushed your life along its unfortunate path, they are of no consequence now, for your actions have reduced my choice to one. There are many ways a man may die - look at me - and here I have some leeway. Answer truthfully and I will give you a death you do not deserve, one reserved for men of honor. Lie to me and before we speak of death again we will speak of pain. And so I ask you, who hired you?”
“I never saw him,” Lucas said, working to control his fear. His eyes scanned the people encircling him. “He’s not in this lot, I can tell you.”
Suddenly, Tessa turned sharply in her chair, causing one of the daisies she always wore in her pinned up braids to fall to the table. “Where’s Nestor?” she asked.
A second later, his stern voice a thin skin unable to hide the stab of betrayal, Crassus asked, “And where is Pío?”
Cook, still flushed and breathing heavily from his run through the house from the kitchen, raised his hand. “He left early this morning, dominus. Didn’t say why. Said he’d be home before dark.”
Before Crassus dismissed us, he instructed Malchus to execute the assassin and arrange to have his body and that of his partner thrown in the Tiber. There was neither ice nor heat in his voice, no hint that these sounds strung together in a certain order meant a man would die. It was the first time I saw the unbending steel at my master’s core.
“Dominus, Malchus said, “shall we keep this one alive till Pío returns? Just in case?”
“No. Give him a quick death. I was foolish to think this poisonous cake would only have one layer. Whoever hired these men put more than one face between the coin and the knife. Send word to Boaz. I want Nestor found.”
True to his word, shortly before supper the Spaniard passed through the gates. He appeared genuinely stunned to be met by drawn swords and a quick escorted march to Crassus. Pío earnestly claimed he’d been to the temple of the Vestals to pray for his family as he had every month since he’d arrived in Rome. Crassus accepted the alibi, but without joy.
Nestor was gone, yet remained: in the sullen bark of our master’s sharpened tongue, in the despair and sorrow that hung like weights from poor Pío’s eyes, in the shame bore by the rest of us, knowing we served in the house of an apostate. The big Spaniard became lethargic, despondent, and the house sank into dark waters; we moved sluggishly, unable to talk to one another, afraid to meet the eye of either Pío or our master. Everyone knew that Crassus would not let the matter rest; his reputation had been sullied. Nestor, property of M. Licinius Crassus, by running away had in effect, stolen himself from his master. Boaz’s men were searching throughout the city, and they knew where and how to look: each carried an image of the fugitive and a purse heavy enough to animate the most reluctant tongue. The law of furtum hastened the inevitable: to conceal a runaway was the same as theft, and theft could result in flogging or worse: consignment to the aggrieved with freedom forfeit.
Three days after Nestor’s disappearance, young Marcus and I were sitting on the rim of the peristyle’s fountain, building papyrus boats to see whose design would stay afloat the longest. A shadow came across the sun and I looked up, shading my eyes to see Pío looming over me. His huge hands cradled a bunch of flowers, which I assumed he was going to arrange at the shrine of the house gods in the atrium. Yet his demeanor struck me more like a mourner making a gravesite offering. He stood there, immobile yet tense, a bear sniffing out prey. His eyes rested on me like dead coals, staring down at me; no, not at me, through me. Spray from the fountain blew our way and Marcus laughed. I almost hushed him, as if to warn him of imminent danger. Pío glanced his way, then turned and walked away, allowing me to exhale.
Marcus tugged at my tunic; my eyes were drawn back to the boy, but not my attention. Why would Nestor want me dead? I could understand why Pío might help him flee, but was that where his involvement ended? Nestor did not seem the type to cultivate connections of such a base nature. The house was in a state of dreadful disruption, and at its vortex the fact that I was still alive. I did not understand, nor could I connect the logical points. Unhappily, I was about to be tutored, for it was only a moment or two before the sun was eclipsed a second time. Pío was still holding the flowers, but their stems looked crushed in his unwitting stranglehold. His stare was now direct and purposeful.
“Why you make change? You hate us? You make jealous?” I started to protest, but there was no room here for dialog. “You are like carpenter ...” Pío dropped to a knee-cracking squat and I flinched, but his attention was on the boy, not me. “Marcus, you be good boy and find mother.”
I had a wild impulse to beg the five year-old to stay, and was absurdly relieved when Marcus protested. “Go now,” Pío insisted. He smiled and handed the boy several flowers. The trade was struck and off Marcus ran, leaving a trail of pulled petals.
Pío remained squatting. He turned to me, the look of affection for Crassus’ son transformed. “I see you, I think of carpenter who fuck my mother,” he said. “You not fuck, but you come to my house. You do not belong here. Like him. After he come to my house, all bad.” The animation left his face as he rose; he lumbered off toward the lararium to make his offering. Those flowers would be dead come morning.
It suddenly occurred to me that my consternation, which was palpable, was not rooted in fear, though by any standard it should have been. What struck me like a blow from a fist as I sat swirling my fingers in the fountain’s waters, the sun polishing cabochons from each drop of spray, what pierced me like one of Sulla’s arrows was the realization of the extent to which I had become accustomed to living in the house of Marcus Crassus. Though I would not have thought it possible, there were good people here. The days were not onerous and the nights, though lonely, were at least peaceful. I was finding my place, and the last thing I wanted was change. To what god could I pray to stop the sun and send it spinning backwards? Let Nestor be surly and Pío romantic, let knives not fly and halcyon days return. Had I faith, I would bend my knee to Kronos, god of time, a barbarous Titan who had devoured his own children. I would do this, and fervently, too, for more miraculous than any myth of creation, I had begun to feel at home.
Chapter XIII
80 BCE - Summer, Rome
Year of the consulship of
Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius
It was never proven whether or not Pío had helped his friend escape, but the look on his face when Boaz’s men dragged Nestor back in chains six days later condemned him as surely as any confession. Even so, Crassus was loath to punish his atriensis, though as paterfamilias he could do so on a whim, with or without proof. Crassus was not a capricious man; his steps were thoughtful and measured. Still, he must have been asking himself how long could a man’s past loyalty balance the scales against his present transgr
essions?
Malchus and Betto told me what had transpired when they met in the small guardhouse at the front of the estate on the far side of the gates, opposite the schoolroom and clinic. The men who found Nestor had not been kind. The lumps on the runaway’s face ranged in hue from eggplant to urine. He floated between our world and a better one, in and out of consciousness. Crassus allowed Pío to revive him with sips of watered wine laced with sambucus and cinnamon, but would not permit his bonds to be undone so that he could hold the cup himself.
Present were dominus, Pío and Nestor, with Betto and Malchus close by, hands on pommels. Betto confessed he had fretted through the entire meeting, afraid that should Pío become enraged, he and Malchus would prove to be a man or two short in the effort to subdue him.
When Nestor was more or less himself, Crassus began the interview with a single word. “Why?”
Nestor sat straighter and winced with the effort. “We were doing fine without him,” he said, jerking his chin toward the house. “We didn’t need him mucking everything up.” Pío held the cup to his lips, but Nestor turned his head away. “We had a system; it was working. Dominus, if you’d been here, if you’d spent more time at home, I mean I know you are an important man, but still, you would have seen it.”
“You have shamed this house. Your crime is a capital offense. By all rights I should plant a cross in the front yard and nail you to it.” No one doubted the senator’s resolve; words now needed to be chosen very carefully.
“Mercy, dominus.” This was not Nestor, but Pío, who actually had tears in his eyes.
Nestor continued to speak as the aggrieved party. “This school,” he continued, the pitch of his voice rising, “he devised it to be rid of me. I could see it, I could see what was happening. He knew you wouldn’t need me, that you’d send me away. I’d be off to the mines.” He looked up at his companion, his face suddenly soft and sad. “And Pío. Pío would be alone again.”
The Bow of Heaven - Book I: The Other Alexander Page 10
