Metrobius, draped in a voluminous towel, joined me on the balcony. 'Lucius Licinius must have been a popular man,' I said.
He snorted. 'Don't imagine they've all come just to see poor Lucius go up in smoke. No, all these wealthy merchants and landowners and vacationing nobility are here for quite a different reason. They want to impress you-know-who.' He glanced over his shoulder toward the heated pool, where the slave Apollonius was helping an old man emerge from the water. 'I had to push and shove all through the house to get here. The atrium is already so crowded I could hardly cross it. I haven't seen so much black in one place since Sulla died over in Puteoli. Though I noticed,' he said, wrinkling his nose, 'that most of the visitors were giving the corpse a wide berth.' He laughed softly. 'And they're already whispering jokes; usually that doesn't start until after the ceremony, when the eating begins.'
'Jokes?'
'You know — stepping up to the bier, peering into the corpse's mouth, then sighing, "The coin is still there! Imagine that, with Crassus in the house!" And don't you dare repeat that to Crassus,' he quickly added. 'Or at least don't tell him that you heard it from me.' He stepped away with a dry smile. Apparently he had forgotten that he had told me the same joke the day before.
I peered over the balcony again, wondering how I would ever manage to discover what had been dumped off the pier with so many vessels moored there. Many of the rowers were still in their boats, or loitered about the boathouse, waiting for their masters to return.
Eventually I found Eco, who had disappeared into one of the cubicles for a cool bath to follow his hot one. We dressed in the sombre black garments that had been laid out for us that morning. The slave Apollonius assisted us with the various tucks and folds. His bearing was grave, as suited the occasion, but his eyes were a clear and dazzling blue, unclouded by the fear that haunted the eyes of the other slaves. Was it possible that Mummius had somehow kept him from knowing what the next day might bring? More likely, I thought, Mummius had secredy assured him that he himself would be spared. Did he know that Mummius had failed to sway Crassus?
As he dressed me, I took the opportunity to study him more closely. That he was beautiful was obvious at a glance, and yet the closer and longer I looked the more beautiful he seemed. His perfection was almost unreal, like the famous Discus Thrower of Myron come to life; as he moved, the shifting planes of light across his face highlighted a succession of cameos, each more striking than the last. Where many youths of his age have a stumbling gait, he moved like an athlete or a dancer, without any trace of artifice. His hands were nimble, infusing every movement with an innate and unassuming grace. When he stood close to me, I felt the heat of his hands and smelled the warm sweetness of his breath.
There are rare moments when one senses not the surface of other men and women, but the very life force which animates their being, and by extension all life. I have glimpsed it in moments of passion with Bethesda, and on a few other occasions, in the presence of men or women in great extremity, in the throes of orgasm or close to death or otherwise reduced by crisis to their very essence. It is a frightening and an awesome thing to see beyond the veils of the flesh into the soul. Somehow the force of life in Apollonius was so great that it rent through those veils, or else suffused them with the perfect physical embodiment of itself. It was hard to look at him and imagine that something so alive, so perfect could ever grow old and die, much less be snuffed out in an instant merely for the aggrandizement of a politician's career.
I suddenly felt a great pity for Marcus Mummius. On the journey from Rome, aboard the Fury, I had callously remarked that he had no poetry in his soul. I had spoken rashly and in ignorance. Mummius had touched the face of Eros and been stricken; no wonder he was so desperate to save the boy from a senseless death at the hands of Crassus.
Little by little the guests emptied the house and lined the road that led away from the villa. Those who had been closest to Gelina or Lucius congregated in the courtyard to become part of the procession. The Designator, a small wizened man whom Crassus had hired and brought over from Puteoli, set about arranging the participants in their places. Eco and I, having no place in the procession, walked on ahead to find a sunny spot on the crowded tree-lined road.
At length we heard the strains of mournful music. The sound grew louder as the procession came into view. The musicians led the way, blowing on horns and flutes and shaking bronze rattles. In Rome, deference to public opinion and the ancient Law of the Twelve Tables might have restricted the number of musicians to ten, but Crassus had hired at least twice that number. Clearly, he meant to impress.
Next came the hired mourners, a coterie of women who walked with a shuffling gait, wore their hair undressed and chanted a refrain that paraphrased the playwright Naevius's famous epitaph: 'If the death of any mortal saddens hearts immortal, the gods above must this man's death bemoan…'They stared straight ahead, oblivious of the crowd; they shivered and wept until great torrents of tears streamed down their cheeks.
There was a small gap in the procession, just long enough for the plaintive song of the mourners to recede before the buffoons and mummers arrived. Eco brightened at their approach, but I inwardly groaned; there is nothing quite so embarrassing as a funeral procession marred by incompetent clowns. These, however, were quite good; even at the end of the holiday season, there is no lack of first-rate entertainers on the Cup, and the Designator had hired the best. While some of them resorted to crude but effective slapstick, drawing polite laughter from the crowd, there was one among them with a stirring voice who recited snatches of tragic poetry. Most of the standard passages used in funeral processions are familiar to me, but these words were from some fresh and unfamiliar poet of the Epicurean school:
What has death to frighten man,
If souls can die as bodies can?
When mortal frame shall be disbanded,
This lump of flesh from life unhanded,
From grief and pain we shall be free-
We shall not feel, for we shall not be.
But suppose that after meeting Fate
The soul still feels in its divided state.
What's that to us? For we are only we
While body and soul in one frame agree.
And if our atoms should revolve by chance
And our cast-off matter rejoin the dance,
What gain to us would all this bring?
This new-made man would be a new-made thing.
We, dead and gone, would play no part
In all the pleasures, nor feel the smart
Which to that new man shall accrue
Whom of our matter Time moulds anew.
Take heart then, listen and hear.
What is there left in death to fear?
After the pause of life has come between,
All's just the same had we never been.
The reciter was abruptly interrupted by one of the buffoons, who shook a finger in his face. 'What a lot of nonsense. My body, my soul, my body, my soul,' the buffoon parroted, rocking his head back and forth. 'What a lot of Epicurean nonsense! I had an Epicurean philosopher in my house once, but I kicked him out. Give me a dull-as-dishwater Stoic like that clown Dionysius any day!'
There were some warm chuckles of recognition among the crowd. I gathered this must be the Arch Mime, employed by the Designator to present a fond parody of the deceased.
'And don't think for an instant that I'll pay you even half a copper for such pathetic poetry, either,' he went on, still wagging his finger, 'nor for any of this so-called entertainment. I expect true value for my money, do you understand? True value! Money doesn't fall from the sky, you know, at least not into my hands! Into the hands of my cousin Crassus, maybe, but not mine!'
He abruptly pursed his lips and turned on his heel, clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace.
I overheard the man next to me whisper: 'He's got Licinius down to perfection!'
'Uncanny!' the man's wife agr
eed.
'But don't think that just because I won't pay you it's because I can't pay you,' piped the Arch Mime. 'I could! I would! Only I owe debts to seven shops in Puteoli and six in Neapolis and five in Surrentum and four in Pompeii and three in Misenum and two in Herculaneum' — the Arch Mime gasped and took a deep breath — 'plus a long-standing debt to a little grandmother who sells apples by the side of the road right here in Baiae! Once I have them all paid off, come back and try another poem, you Epicurean fool, and perhaps I'll sing another tune.'
'Another tune-' hooted the man beside me.
'Sing another tune!' said his wife, nodding and laughing appreciatively. Apparently the Arch Mime had delivered one of Lucius Licinius's pet phrases.
'Oh, I know,' he went on, crossing his arms petulantly, 'you all think I'm made of money because I live like a king, but it just isn't so. At least not yet.' He bobbed his eyebrows up and down. 'But just you wait, because I do have a plan. Oh, yes, a plan, a plan. A plan for making more money than you Baian big boys could swallow with a serving spoon. A plan, a plan. Make way for the man with a plan!' he bleated, breaking character and running to catch up with the other buffoons.
'A plan,' the man next to me murmured.
'Just as Lucius was always saying,' smiled his wife. 'Always going to get rich — tomorrow!' She sighed. 'Only this happened instead. The will of the gods-'
'-and the ways of Fortune,' the man concluded.
I remembered Sergius Orata's hints of shady dealings. A disquieting suspicion began to form in my head, then unravelled and vanished with the arrival of the waxen masks.
Lucius's branch of the Licinii family had not been without its distinguished ancestors. Their lifelike images in wax, normally displayed within his foyer, were now paraded before his funeral bier, worn by persons especially hired for the task by the Designator and dressed in the authentic costumes of the offices they had held in service to the state. Such a presentation is part of the funeral procession of every Roman noble. The masked actors walk solemnly, slowly, turning their heads from side to side so that all may see their expressionless faces, looking like the dead come to life. Thus, even in death do the noble distinguish themselves from the ignoble, the 'known' from the 'unknown', proudly flaunting their lineage to those of us in the crowd who have no ancestors, only parents and forgotten forebears.
Next came Lucius Licinius himself, reposed upon his ivory couch and framed by freshly cut blossoms and boughs, redolent with powerful perfumes that could not quite conceal the scent of putrefaction. Crassus was foremost among the bearers, his face set in a stern, impassive stare.
The family followed. Not many Licinii of Lucius's branch had survived the civil wars, and most of them were of an older generation. Gelina led the group, attended by Metrobius. I have often seen women in funeral processions on the streets of Rome who stagger in a paroxysm of grief, tearing their cheeks in defiance of the laws of the Twelve Tables, but Gelina did not weep. She moved in a stupor, staring at her feet.
Conspicuously absent from the procession were the slaves of the dead man's household.
After the family passed, the onlookers who lined the road closed in behind them and joined the retinue. At length we came to an open spot beside the road, where a break in the trees afforded a glimpse of the bay. Nearby stood a stone sepulchre as tall as a man. It was newly built; the slabs were smooth and unweathered, and the earth surrounding it was worn by footsteps and dusted with chiselled stone. There was only one decoration, a simple bas-relief of a horse's head, the ancient symbol of death and departure.
In the centre of the clearing, a funeral pyre had been erected of dried wood piled in the form of a square altar. Normally the ivory couch bearing the corpse might have been tilted against it, as such couches are tilted against the Rostra in the Forum at Rome, so that the spectators may look upon the dead man while the oration is delivered, but Lucius's corpse was placed directly upon the pyre, out of sight, no doubt in deference to the disfiguring wound on his head.
Slaves came forward with folding chairs for the family. As the crowd setded, Marcus Crassus stepped in front of the pyre. A hush fell over the gathering. Overhead a sea gull screamed. A slight breeze stirred the treetops. Crassus began his speech; in his voice there was no hint of the indecision and uncertainty he had shown to me the night before. His was a trained orator's voice, skilled at all the techniques of volume, tonality, and rhythm. He began in a quiet, deferential tone that gradually grew more forceful.
'Gelina, devoted wife of my beloved cousin Lucius Licinius; family members, who have come from places far and near; shades of his ancestors, represented here by their cherished images; friends and members of his household, acquaintances and people of Baiae and all the nearby towns of Campania and the Cup: we have come to entomb Lucius Licinius.
'What a simple thing that seems: a man has died, and so we consume his body with flames and entomb his ashes. It is a common event. Even the fact that he died by violence does not distinguish it; nowadays, such violence has become commonplace. Certainly, in our family, there has been so much grief and loss imposed by violence that we have become brittle and numb to the vagaries of Fortune.
'And yet the presence of so many of you here today is proof that the death of Lucius Licinius was no small thing, just as his life was no small thing. He had many dealings with many men, and who among you can say that he was ever less than honest? He was a Roman, and an embodiment of Roman virtues. He was a fine husband. That the gods had not blessed his marriage with offspring — that he leaves behind no son to carry on his name and blood, to revere him as he revered his ancestors — that is one of the accomplishments left unfulfilled by the untimely and bitter tragedy of his death.
'With no son to look after his grieving widow or to avenge his senseless murder, those duties have fallen to another, to a man tied to Lucius by bonds of blood and long years of mutual respect. Those duties fall to me.
'Word has already spread among you concerning the manner in which Lucius met his death. Have no doubt that he faced it bravely. He was not a man to flinch in the face of any adversary. Perhaps his only fault was that he placed his trust in those who did not deserve it — but what man can foresee the moment when a trusty blade long used will suddenly break, or a loyal dog will turn vicious without warning?
'The fate of Lucius Licinius is far from unique. Indeed, in some ways he is the paradigm of the good citizen, and of the state itself, for does not Rome suddenly find herself imperilled by a whole nation of trusted mastiffs gone mad with a lust for blood and thievery? Lucius was another victim of that pestilence which threatens to overturn the order of nature, to wipe out tradition and honour, to pervert the normal intercourse of affairs between men.
'That pestilence has a name. I will not whisper it, for I do not fear it: Spartacus. That pestilence entered even into the household of Lucius Licinius; it dissolved the bonds of obligation and loyalty; it twisted the hands of slaves against their master. What happened in his house cannot be forgotten or forgiven. The shade of Lucius Licinius is restless; it hovers near us even now, strengthened by the shades of his ancestors, who all together clamour that we, the living, must set this wickedness aright.'
I looked about me, at the faces of the funeral guests. They watched Crassus with mingled admiration and sorrow, open to whatever pronouncement he was preparing. I felt a pang of dread.
'There are those who might say that Lucius Licinius was beyond all doubt a good man, but not a great one, that he did not rise in his lifetime to high office, did not accomplish wondrous things. That is the tragic truth, I fear; he was slain before his prime, and his life was smaller than it should have been. But his death was not a small death. If there can be a great death, then the death of Lucius was that — something terrible, awful, profoundly wrong, an offence to god and man alike. Such a death demands more than sorrow and pity, more than words of praise or vows of vengeance. It demands that we all take action, if not as the vessels of vengeance,
then as its witnesses.'
Crassus lifted his arm. On either side of him the Designator and one of his men set about igniting their torches, which burst into flame.
'Long ago our ancestors founded the tradition of holding gladiatorial contests in honour of the dead. Normally this glorious tradition is reserved for the death of the great and powerful, but I think that the gods will not begrudge our paying honour to the shade of Lucius Licinius with a day of games. These will begin tomorrow upon the plain beside Lake Lucrinus. There are those who whimper that we should suspend the use of gladiators, saying that Spartacus was a gladiator and that no slave should bear arms so long as Spartacus runs loose. But I say it is better to honour the traditions of our ancestors than to fear a slave. I say also that the occasions of these games will give us not only the opportunity to pay our last respects to the shade of Lucius Licinius, but to begin the task of avenging his death.'
Crassus stepped aside. He took one of the torches and touched it to the pyre, while opposite him the Designator did the same. The dry wood ignited and crackled, shooting up tongues of flame and fingers of grey smoke.
In time the pyre would be consumed. The embers would be soaked with wine, and the bones and ashes of Lucius Licinius would be gathered up by Crassus and Gelina, who would sprinkle them with perfumes and place them in an alabaster urn. A priest would purify the crowd, moving among them and sprinkling them with water from an olive branch. The remains of Lucius would be sealed into his sepulchre, and together the crowd would murmur, 'Farewell, farewell, farewell…'
But I left before these things were done. I was not purified; I did not say farewell. Instead I slipped quietly away and returned to the house, taking Eco with me. So little time remained before the slaughter would begin.
XVII
Arms of Nemesis rsr-2 Page 20
