We find a bench on the river bank far from the route of Charon’s boat. The crowd in the arena roars and stomps its feet, a signal that another gladiator is down.
“All civilized people should hate these games,” she says.
“This is why we love them,” I say.
“Your sarcasm doesn’t negate the truth of it.”
“You can’t get rid of the mob.”
“Yes you can. Send them home.”
“But they have no home. Many are immigrants from other countries, here for opportunities that don’t exist. Some are farmers from the provinces whose land was taken away and awarded to retired soldiers.”
“Then get rid of your soldiers.”
“We wouldn’t exist.”
“Yes we would, as before, a small city-nation, with our ideals preserved.”
“And how many times have we been invaded since our beginnings? Ask your father.”
A sudden roar from the arena saves her from responding. The crowd chants, “He’s had it! He’s had it!” Then we hear a collective expression of awe, a giant breath drawn in. Within moments a trumpet peals and the crowd cheers in approval.
“Can the old ideals replace the satisfaction you hear expressed?”
With a small handkerchief, Cornelia wipes the light blue cosmetic from her eyes. “I’m not a city girl. They should do away with cities, and I don’t think we’ve been ‘chosen’ as a people to do anything but live together. When my father saw how tall I grew he tried to train me with the javelin, but I bent the tip around and broke the shaft. I hate this place and all its killing. I hate the crowds and the thieves and the prostitutes with their armor of cheap, brass jewelry. I hate the circus and the narrow streets and the foreigners with their pet snakes. I like our farm in Praeneste. I like cattle and sheep and wool and wheat. I like to fish and ride horses. I like being alone with the wind in grownup fields. That’s who I am.”
“You’re made for a family.”
“And you?”
I have no answer except that I’m made for everything and anything, a thought better kept to myself. A barge on the river momentarily distracts me. Its deck is stacked with ebony logs, and the Romans and Africans on board are making animated conversation.
“You’d like to be there,” she says, indicating the barge. “You’d like to be a man of the world.”
“I’m going to be.” Looking at her now, at the blue trace around her eyes—probably the first cosmetic she’s ever used, no doubt applied by a calculating mother. But centered on those light smears of blue are two clear eyes, of a lighter blue, and as clear as the eyes of a prescient bird.
“And what does that mean, ‘I’m going to be’?”
“With respect to us?”
“Yes, with respect to our family, if there’s to be one.” She says that defensively, and then turns her eyes to me. This is a naked challenge, and she waits for me to reciprocate, all the while gripping the sides of the bench until the veins in her hands bulge out. Her gesture is so strong and open that I need to resist the urge to kneel down and clasp her knees, to kiss those strong veins on the backs of her hands. For a moment the pressure rises to my throat then plunges down to the center of my body. She’s looking at the river. More barges are coming up, many loaded with grain. Thinking that I’m unwilling to respond, she whispers derisively, “There’s more food for your mob.”
“We need to decide,” I say.
The hairs on her long, muscular arms glow in the afternoon sun. She takes a deep breath, and I can see why her father would give her a javelin, for she has an athlete’s body, tall, and strong. She fixes on the next barge coming upriver, whose oarsmen pull to the beat of the rhythm-keeper’s kettle drum.
“But you’ll betray me,” she says. “I know your reputation.”
“Based on rumor.”
“I have a choice,” she says. “I could refuse, and probably get away with it.”
“Do you want to refuse?”
“I think you know what I want.”
“But I want you to tell me. I want the words.”
“You’ll get them,” she says, holding out her hand. “When you get everything else.”
“You’re saucy too.”
“I can be.”
Holding hands, we enter the stadium. The air is both sweet and heavy, redolent of blood and overripe fruit. A gauze canopy pulled over the grandstands creates an intimate atmosphere. The intermission show is on. Down in the arena two novice gladiators battle with wooden swords while a squad of wrestlers fights a free-for-all. The crowd stamps its feet for the real show.
Cinna sits under an awning with his back to the arena, talking and laughing with his aides. His curly hair hides the laurel crown which he wears slightly forward.
We present ourselves and he takes both our hands and smiles with his top row of teeth. The effect is an unexpected sincerity, even an innocence.
“Now tell me, what have you two been doing?”
“Keeping away from these disgusting games,” says Cornelia, in a voice loud enough to turn heads. But Cinna’s belly-shaking laughter eases the moment. His large bulk gives a first impression of strength gone soft, yet there’s a calculation to his pleasantry, as if he’d spent his life putting people at ease.
“Let’s have your report, young ones. Can you get along with each other?”
To my surprise Cornelia clasps my hand and holds it up. Cinna takes both our hands in his.
“You won’t be sorry,” he says, “Either one of you.”
Cutter returns from another Miletus trip. Now he comes into the hut, and waves his finger as if scolding a little boy. “We know even more now, Lord. Your adventures with King Nicomedes in Bythinia? Is this true?”
“Is what true?”
“This!” He waves a finger in a sign of shame. “What kind of behavior is that for a soldier of the great city? And when we found you, so far north of Rhodes, were you perhaps revisiting the old king?”
“Nicomedes is dead.”
“Ah, yes!” He comes up close. He’s so short that the balding crown of his head is even with my chest. Oily, individual hairs poke out from his sun-scorched scalp. He paces in front of my desk now, twisting one finger into his beard. His wandering eye takes in my surroundings, the books and parchments, the neatly folded clothing, the orderly arrangements of cosmetics and medicines, a copper tub for my bath which I demanded they unload from the trader before they fired it.
“I sense a frailty here, Lord. You’ve seen battle at the Mytilene siege, yes, but we don’t know the conditions. Often the wealthy don’t receive hard duty. Such awards like the civic crown can be … arranged, let’s say. And these books and papers, these writings! And your fits and fevers! Your money lenders told me about those too. They say you’re prone to fevers, and may even have the falling sickness, the sacred disease! We can’t have you die before the money arrives. And if you have a fit? An episode? This would bring us bad luck. Are you comfortable, Lord? Do you have what you need?”
“Not yet.”
“What’s missing?”
“Justice.”
“I don’t understand, Lord. This is a simple agreement.”
“My money for my life, I know. But that’s not justice.”
“So young, so young,” he clucks. “Are you going to seek justice when this is done?”
“Why not?”
“Punish us? Capture us?”
He leans over the table, washing me in his breath of rotten meat and fermented wine. The heel of his good hand smudges the ink on one of my papers and I stare at the hand until he pulls it away.
“We have our law.”
“Your law!” he whispers incredulously.
“You know our law.”
He tries to fix me with a stern, penetrating look, but his little black eyes begin to move, side to side, up and down, as if their musculature has been disconnected. Then he smiles.
“Do you think you’re special? There are tens of thou
sands like you, born into the assumption of privilege. You say what you’ve been trained to say, not what you mean.”
“But you’re thinking now, aren’t you?”
“I’m thinking that I know your law, yes.”
“Then you know the penalty.”
“I’m familiar with the penalty, as you see it.”
“For piracy.”
“We’re not pirates, Lord. We constitute the Navy of King Mithridates, whose lands you’ve taken by force.”
“The butcher king has ceded Asia.”
“Forget all that, and think of this: there are two parts to any law, what is written, and what can be enforced. Stick to your medicines, young man, and to your books and papers. You’ll live longer.”
I close my eyes and bring up Servilia. She is my medicine, my uncorrupt city. She is this beating heart, and she somehow rationalizes the collective din of the city, the hammers and cart wheels and shod hoofs, the sly fishmongers, the snake charmer’s flute, the mix of voices in Latin, Gallic, coarse Numidian, musical Greek, Cilician, Syrian, image-sounds like the soft beating of drums. Servilia enters me the way vapors from the underworld enter the body of a priestess, through every pore and orifice.
I travel to Servilia’s in a litter borne by four strong men, with six more armed with clubs to protect me front and rear. They bear me through the narrow, twisted lanes, through the blue smoke of cooking meat, through the odors of old fish, vinegar, and boiling spices.
I part the curtain of my litter and look out. Thieves lurk in the porticoes. In the open windows whores are pretending to masturbate. Idlers gather on every street corner, looking for an opportunity. These are lean, unshaven men, the mob we feed and entertain. Generations ago they were good men, farmers, soldiers, even skilled tradesmen. But they were displaced, their land taken, their trades rendered useless by cheap goods from our new territories. These idlers are victims of a confused, corrupt state.
From the streets of the Aventine Hill I look down on torch-lit barges plowing the Tiber, bringing goods from every corner of the known world: cotton, glass, mountains of grain, giant amphorae full of spices, lions and leopards in bamboo cages, oranges from North Africa, giant prawns from the Bay of Neapolis, iron bars from Mediolanum. The world feeds us through the blood line of this river. Up here the din of trade is dampened, like soft, rhythmic music. The sound is Servilia’s face, for she embodies all I see. The sound is her cunning tongue in my ear, tickling in its whisper: Not before you change the face of the earth.
She steps into the light. A smile flickers. Her lips are as thin as knives. Is this widow old enough to be my mother? She’ll never tell me her age. Her husband Brutus, a Popular who raised an army against his enemies, was defeated and executed—at Pompey’s command. All this is behind her eyes, the wisdom of pain and the anger of revenge behind eyes the color of rust, like the cliffs of Cutter’s island, eyes hardened with purpose, which look into me, through me, and measure me against her husband.
She says, “Sulla’s back in Italy, with his army,” then turns away.
I follow her into a dark space and she stops, turns, and fits herself into me as if this is already a habit.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
Is she mine so quickly? Is she protecting me so readily? We touch along the length of our bodies and my arms suddenly feel as if they have nothing to do.
“Why should I do anything?”
“Because Cinna is your father-in-law and Marius your uncle.”
“They expect nothing from me.”
“Sulla doesn’t think that way. Do you think this arranged priesthood will save you?”
“I don’t care what he thinks,” I say, my arms now around her waist, pulling her in. She fits even closer.
“You will care.”
Stroking her arms, the back of her neck, one finger along the knife edge of her lips. She bites it gently.
“Do you like that? Do you like to be bitten?”
“What do you think?”
“You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re young and eager, that’s all. No, you’re more than that. You’re special, if you survive. If you listen to me.”
So I wait, sitting on Cutter’s beach and working my heels into the sand as if I could propel myself into the air and out of the world. The sky brightens, but the sun is somewhere behind it all, feeble and obscure. My power changes with it. Five thousand gold coins would sink that smack, and contemplating this, I’m feverish. Curio has taken my letter to the governor demanding that he pay the ransom. For failure to protect its citizens, the state should bear the cost. The chance for that is slim, thus the following:
—Letter to Crassus: I greet the city’s greatest property owner. It will please you to learn, O Moneybags, O Landlord to Ten Thousand, that I have been taken by a wonderful band of pirates. They call themselves soldiers of Sertorius, and hold me on an island somewhere off Miletus. Their leader puts on quite a show, which I can detail later, if you’re willing to pay for the telling. Meanwhile, if this letter reaches you through my man, please siphon some of that rent money in my direction. After all, if I were to die, you’d lose even more. This story when done will earn your undying envy. Your friend and debtor….
I lie down in the hut, wrapping the blanket around my face to shut out Secondini’s face and the cries of the oarsmen. Time and Money, Crime and Retribution. I’ll be tested soon, and Crassus will envy me. I repeat this until sleep comes.
They burn or sink the ships they capture, but on occasion, like hunters, they return with game over their shoulders. This time they’re towing a Cretan trireme with the oars on its starboard side broken off and dangling loose. They must have sideswiped it. It’s a fancy ship, fitted with a bronze prow piece cast into a bull’s head with silver eyes and a blunted nose for ramming. It belonged to the Cilician coastal police—who should have been protecting me—and from what I can gather from the excited talk of the men, was taken when the smoke from a victim ship attracted it to a rescue it couldn’t effect.
They drag it onto the beach with mules, prop it level, then examine the hull, pointing to the features of its construction. Others climb aboard and start throwing down anything of value left by the vanquished, whose only other legacy is the blood smeared on the deck and railings, which the pirates wash off with bladders of sea water.
When this work is done Cutter comes to me and bows low, showing me his balding, mottled scalp. He signals to his men that the show is about to begin.
“Lord, is everything to your liking? Has the fever gone? Do our humble accommodations suffice?”
“No, nothing suffices.”
“Pardon, Lord, we’re simple men.”
“That’s clear.”
He comes closer, walking a circle around me. Then, as if advertising my talents to a circus crowd, he says to the men, “Queen Nicomedes here is coming back when this is over! He says he’ll hunt us down!”
In rough unison, his men feign fright, bowing low and begging me for mercy.
“He’ll punish us under his law!”
“To the last man.”
His mood changes instantly. In the same way that his eyes can abruptly lose their ability to focus, he suddenly scowls and waves his finger as if I’ve done something childish and shameful. He points to the trireme.
“Do you see that ship? It’s a sign of our power. It thought to chase us down, but we turned and fought, even though we could have outrun it. This tells you that our federation rules the sea, and rightfully.”
“That question is yet to be settled.”
He waves one finger as if I’m a child who spoke a naughty word. In a whisper he says, “Before taking this government ship we went to Miletus. This is where we gather our intelligence.” Then he steps back for all to hear. “We speak to everyone, especially the merchants and money lenders from your city. We mention your name. And do you know what? You’re well known! The good life! The bribes and politic dinners! Your wife safely in
the country while you dabble in the city! The plots and plans to power! Everyone knows your history now, Lord. They even told me about that little business in Bythinia. You and King Nicomedes! His infamous night visit to the golden room! And you tell me you were on your way to Rhodes to learn public speaking when we came across your ship heading for Mytilene and points north? No matter, anything is possible with you people, anything!”
To their laughter and Cutter’s final threat—“We know more than you think!”—I return to the hut.
That night I hear drunken voices outside.
“He’s in there, asleep!”
“Let’s spread his legs and poke him.”
“Lord! Are you there?”
“Lord, after you return, will you show us mercy?”
Fat Lip drives them off. I go outside to thank him. His name is Hytaspes, and his upper lip is notched and bulbous on one side from a sword cut. The wound has immobilized some muscle so that when he speaks, only one side of his mouth moves. He acknowledges my thanks with an exaggerated bow, then winks and touches his index finger to one earlobe—the sign for homosexual.
The money lenders who fill Cutter’s ears with gossip constitute the second wave of our invasions. They follow the army and carry all the rumors from home. One of them is that King Nicomedes of Bithynia and I were lovers.
When the king promised his warships for the Mytilene siege, I was chosen to collect the fleet because my reputation as a “literary” officer would sit well. Nicomedes met me at the port, took me through each of his vessels, and gave me an ambassador’s dinner complete with poetry recitations.
I was later shown to a spacious room with three walls of polished gold plate, and a fourth open to the air. A small, warm water fountain flowed cleverly into a marble bathtub—towels, oils, and perfumes ready to hand—and after a bath I lay in bed listening to the ships creaking in the harbor below.
Cutter's Island Page 3
