The Year of Confusion s-13

by John Maddox Roberts

  “I think that Caesar is very ill,” I told her, “and that he is no longer quite sane. It hasn’t yet affected his intellect, or his clarity of thought. Those are as outstanding as ever, but it has altered his”-I grasped for a word, for an expression of an unfamiliar concept-“his perception of reality. He no longer recognizes a boundary between what Caesar wants and what is permissible, or even possible.”

  I gathered my thoughts, tried to place things in order, the way Callista would have organized one of her philosophical tracts. “This is something we’ve seen coming, but we’ve all been so in awe of Caesar that we haven’t wanted to recognize it. We are reluctant to believe he has the same weaknesses as any other mortal. A few days ago he tongue-lashed a foreign envoy as you would an insolent slave, in front of the whole Senate. He’s planning a major foreign war without having quite finished the last one. He plans to completely rebuild Rome to his own liking without any really clear idea what to do with the Rome that is already here. He is bringing long-haired barbarians into the Senate without even Romanizing them first! All right, that last one could actually improve the tone of the place, but you get the idea. He isn’t rational anymore, but he can carry it off because he seems so rational.

  “Now he wants to be pharaoh, with Cleopatra’s aid”-I looked at Callista-“and that is why I think you shouldn’t go back to Alexandria. He wants to conquer Parthia but Egypt is the real prize in this game. Alexandria got badly damaged the last time he was there. It could be far worse this time.”

  “He is right,” Julia acknowledged. “Stay at our villa. Or if you must leave Italy, go to Athens. You could teach there.”

  “I deeply appreciate your concern,” Callista said, “but I belong in Alexandria. If that is where the world is to end, then that is precisely where I should be.” She smiled. “Besides, they don’t let women teach in Athens. There hasn’t been any new thought in Athens since Aristotle. Ah, here we are.”

  We had arrived at Cleopatra’s, and a greater contrast to Callista’s house would be hard to imagine. Legions of slaves helped us from our litters as if we were a visitation of cripples. Golden cups brimming with rare vintages were pressed into our hands. Lest we grow bored between litter and doorway, jugglers and tumblers performed for us, bears and baboons danced, people in white robes strummed upon lyres and sang. Atop the wall, a line of near-naked men and women walked on their hands, tossing balls to one another and catching them with their feet in a bewildering yet seemingly orderly fashion. Julia and some of the other women gathered together, apparently for mutual protection and made their way inside.

  “This is more like it!” Antonius proclaimed. “I thought listening to those astronomers would turn me to stone.”

  “You were listening?” Lepidus said coldly, but the prospect of a really degenerate party had put Antonius in such a good mood that he ignored the sour-faced Master of Horse. Brutus and Cassius were huddled together and Sallustius looked like a man about to reap a great harvest of drunken gossip. We passed inside where, though it was not quite dark, things had reached a truly demented stage. Antonius grinned. “I’m going to have to get to know Cleopatra better.”

  As intrigued as I was by the lively goings-on, I knew better than to participate too fully with Julia present somewhere. Besides, I was hungry. With Hermes in tow I went in search of dinner, keeping a wary eye out for homicidal pygmies. We went past a pond full of crocodiles. People tried to tempt the awful beasts with fish and other delicacies, but the scaly monsters remained torpid. Another pool was full of hippos that splashed guests with water and noxious fluids. Signs in several languages warned that hippos are far more ill-tempered than they look. Cheetahs wandered freely. I hoped our hostess didn’t have lions in her menagerie.

  It wasn’t difficult to find something to eat. The main problem was locating something small enough to get into my mouth. There were tables laden with entire roast animals, many of them exotic African species. I found a skewer of small grilled birds rolled in honey and sesame seeds, and I began to pick them off one at a time.

  “Look at these oysters,” Hermes said, lifting a plate of them. “There’s a pearl in every one of them. Do they come that way naturally?”

  “I don’t think so. You can eat the oysters, but keep the pearls.”

  “Keep them where?” he said, downing an oyster.

  “Tie them up in a corner of your toga. You have enough material there to hold the loot of Tigranocerta.”

  “I know,” he said, downing another. “This thing is hot.”

  I finished the spit and looked for something else. The laboriously exotic items like flamingo tongues and camel’s toes were tedious and often disgusting, but I found enough items fit for human consumption to stave off starvation. Hermes handed me a platter of small pastries stuffed with chopped ham and goat cheese and spinach. They were resting on oak leaves made of hammered gold, which I kept. Soon I was ready to see what was going on this night.

  “Caesar is here,” Hermes said, jerking his chin toward a fur-draped platform where the dictator sat on a huge chair. Unlike his usual curule chair this one had a towering back, against which Caesar lay heavily, an elbow on the arm of the chair, laurel-crowned head propped on a fist. There was an identical chair beside his but Cleopatra was nowhere to be seen. People of some distinction approached him, bowing and cringing.

  “They aren’t kissing the hem of his cloak,” I remarked, “but I can tell that they want to.”

  “Not so loud,” Hermes said.

  “Why?” I snapped. “He’s just another politician.”

  “That’s not true and you know it. Be on your best behavior or Cleopatra will throw us to those crocodiles over there.”

  “That should liven them up,” I grumped, but resolved to be more discreet. Damned if I was going to approach Caesar like a supplicant, though. We wandered through the numerous rooms of the sprawling villa and in each of them something was going on to suit every taste. In one room Spanish dancers from Gades performed their famously lascivious routines. In another an actor with a fabulous voice declaimed hymns by Agathon. In a small courtyard Gauls in checkered trousers fenced with their long swords and narrow shields. In a long hall pantomimes performed the tragedy of Adonis in eerie silence.

  Finally, I found Cleopatra standing among the women I had arrived with, including Julia and Callista. They were laughing and chattering like a pack of Subura housewives loitering around the corner fountain. I was about to join them when I saw coming toward me a strange pair of mismatched guests, one huge, the other slight. It was Balbus and Asklepiodes, both of them grinning like loons and both obviously half drunk.

  “We’ve figured it out!” Balbus cried, turning heads all over the courtyard.

  “We know how he did it!” Asklepiodes chimed in.

  This was the last thing I had expected to hear at this event, but welcome news nonetheless. “How?”

  “You remember I told you I would pray to my household gods?” Balbus said. “Well, I’ve done that every night and last night I had a dream, and in my dream I saw Hercules chasing Hippolyta all over an Arcadian landscape. Looked Arcadian to me, anyway. Never been there personally. When I woke I somehow knew that this had something to do with our problem.” He was talking loud enough to draw attention and all sorts of people were drifting toward us. I was so eager to know where this was leading that I did not admonish him.

  “So,” Asklepiodes said, “today Senator Balbus came to me and told me of his dream. I knew instantly that our problem was solved.” He smiled with insufferable smugness.

  “Well!” I said, ready to tear my thinning hair out. Even Cleopatra was coming our way.

  “Do you remember why Hercules was sent after Hippolyta?” Balbus asked.

  “He wasn’t after her,” I said. “As one of his labors he was sent to fetch her girdle, which I always thought was a rather transparent metaphor for something indecent.”

  “And in art,” Asklepiodes said, “how is the girdle
of Hippolyta depicted? As a sash!”

  “This meaning?” I said.

  “Let me demonstrate.” He looked around. “Queen Cleopatra, do you have a slave I can borrow? A young male, by preference. Marvelous party, by the way.”

  “Certainly.” She snapped her fingers and a sturdy young fellow stepped to her side. “Please don’t kill him. He’s an excellent bodyguard.” She looked at me. “He’s no replacement for poor Appolodorus, but who would be?” Appolodorus, her bodyguard since childhood and the finest swordsman I had ever known, had died of a commonplace fever some years before.

  “Observe,” Asklepiodes said. “Young man, turn away from me.” He took a long scarf from within his tunic and in an instant whipped it around the slave’s neck. “You see how I grip both ends and have crossed my wrists?” The slave’s face darkened and his eyes began to bulge. Asklepiodes, small though he was, had hands like steel, as I knew to my sorrow. He had demonstrated his homicidal skills on me more than once.

  “Now, see how, when I twist thus, the knuckles of my hands press against his spinal column from opposite sides, two above, two below, just as we saw the marks on the dead men.” He jerked his hands violently and the slave’s eyes all but popped from their sockets. “With just a bit more pressure, I could break his neck easily.” Abruptly he released one end of the scarf and the slave dropped to his hands and knees, gasping and retching. People made noises of wonder and dismay. “The wide scarf immobilizes the neck and provides leverage to bring the full strength of the hands and arms against the victim’s spine, but it leaves no ligature mark as a cord would.”

  “It occurred to me,” Balbus said, “that you could save a second or two by tying a weight into one end of the scarf. Then instead of having to lower it over your victim’s head, you could just whip it around from behind.”

  “A weight,” I mused, things whirring and clicking inside my head, “something like this?” I felt around in the purse tucked inside my tunic and came out with the massive brass coin.

  “That would do nicely,” Asklepiodes said.

  “It did,” I told him. To my astonishment, Callista snatched the coin from my hand and stared at it wonderingly.

  “Where is it from?” She turned it over.

  “India,” I told her.

  She closed her eyes. “Senator, please forgive my stupidity. This is the lettering I was trying to remember. I saw it in some books in my father’s library when I was a child. They were written on palm leaves and they were from India.”

  “And this is the sort of writing you saw on Ashthuva’s charts?” I thought about the Indian astronomer, Gupta. I remembered how he stood over Polasser’s body, his long hair streaming, his turban unwound.

  I turned to Hermes. “‘The easterner, the star man’! Domitius wasn’t talking about Polasser, he was talking about Gupta!” But Hermes wasn’t listening. He made a strangled sound and bolted through the crowd, pushing people aside right and left. His toga slowed him but he was making very good speed anyway.

  “Must need to puke,” Balbus said.

  “No,” I told him, “I think he just saw somebody he knew and wants to renew the acquaintance. I think he saw Domitius.”

  “Not Ahenobarbus?” Balbus said. “Is it Domitius the banker?”

  “No, this is another Domitius, a very fleet-footed one. We’ll see if he can run through a villa as fast as he can cross-country. Queen Cleopatra, the man Hermes is chasing is a spy planted in your house by some very evil people.”

  “I would very much like to know what this is all about,” said that monarch. A moment later there came a tremendous commotion from another part of the villa, with roaring and splashing that boded very ill for someone. Hermes returned, drenched and looking disgusted.

  “We won’t be getting any answers from Domitius,” he said. “I almost had him, but he slipped on some wet pavement and fell into the hippo pool. They had rare sport with him for a few seconds. I don’t think there are any pieces left worth burning.”

  “I think we have most of the answers we need anyway,” I said.

  “What is happening?” The voice was quiet but unmistakable.

  “Caius Julius,” I said, “I am about to give you the man who killed Demadus and Polasser. He’s here in the villa somewhere. He is the Indian astronomer, Gupta, and I believe he is the most highly skilled assassin I have ever encountered. He certainly has the deadliest turban in Rome. He also has an accomplice. She lives just up the hill from here, near the old fort.”

  “Ashthuva?” Julia said.

  “Oh, hello, niece,” Caesar said absently. “Your husband seems to be turning in results for me in his usual eccentric fashion. I’ve seen him at his work before, but it has never involved strangled slaves and rampaging hippos before.” Then he amended, “I do remember an occasion with stampeding elephants, though.”

  While we spoke Cleopatra was barking orders in what I realized was Macedonian Greek, her native tongue. Soon hard-looking armed men were swarming all over the place. Caesar looked unsteady and Cleopatra became suddenly solicitous and tried to lead him off, but he insisted on staying until the guard captain returned with the news that Gupta was nowhere to be found and nobody reported seeing him leave.

  “I know where he’s gone, and it’s not far,” I told Caesar. “Let’s not have any mob scenes. I’ll take Hermes and Senator Balbus and a couple of your lictors if you’ll permit me, and we’ll arrest them.”

  “This man is deadly,” Cleopatra protested, “and for all we know the woman is too. Take my whole guard.”

  “We don’t need foreign soldiers,” Balbus said, taking a sword from a guardsman. “Armed Roman men are an entirely different proposition from unsuspecting astronomers.”

  “Quite so,” Caesar said, “and, Decius Caecilius, if you have to kill them, make sure you get the whole story first.”

  We left and the party continued behind us. Outside, Balbus took a deep breath of fresh air. “Decius Caecilius, this is outrageous fun! I am so glad I ran into you at the ludus a few days ago.”

  Hermes passed me my dagger and caestus. “Maybe a few guardsmen wouldn’t have been such a bad idea, though,” he said, “no sense taking chances.”

  “Cleopatra might have slipped them orders to kill our suspects. I haven’t cleared her from suspicion yet. It was her steward that hired Domitius. He didn’t just come up here and knock on the gate and ask for a job.”

  The two lictors, fasces shouldered, fell in behind us. We had been walking for a few minutes before I realized there were six of us, not five. I called a halt. “Who are you?” I asked the dark-swathed figure.

  Callista lowered her shawl. “I feel terrible for not recognizing that writing instantly. I may be able to help, and I really feel that I must witness the end of this.”

  “I can’t be responsible for your safety,” I told her.

  “Nor should you be. A philosopher is always responsible for his own life and his own death.”

  “Come along then,” I said, too tired to argue. One more to worry about. I hadn’t really cleared her of suspicion either.

  It was a beautiful night and silhouetted against the moon I could see the banner drooping from the high pole above the old fort. We hardly slowed when we reached the house. The door was bolted, but with a single coordinated kick Balbus and Hermes turned it to firewood and we passed on through. I told the lictors to stay at the door and let nobody out.

  “Gupta!” I yelled, “Ashthuva! Come with me to the praetor!” There was no answer. We proceeded room by room. We found them in the rear of the house, crouched over a chest, drawing out bags that clinked. It seemed a sordid activity for such an exotic pair, but I suppose some things are the same the world over.

  “I arrest you,” I said, “for the murder of the astronomers Demades and Polasser and suspicion of complicity in the death of Postumius.”

  Gupta smiled, his teeth startlingly white in his dark face. He uncoiled to his full height as smoothly and bonelessly
as a serpent.

  “You arrest me, Roman?” he said in his strange, singsong accent. “Do you arrest my sister, too?” The lady herself stood as well, her clothing somewhat disarrayed. Balbus made a strangled noise somewhere high in his nose. He was seeing her for the first time. I was having a hard time keeping my attention on Gupta myself. I hoped Hermes was keeping his head about him, but I doubted it.

  “Your sister, is she? You must be close. You killed three men for her on your sea-voyage here.”

  “You learned about that?” he said. “I had thought Romans were far too stupid to deduce such things.”

  “Don’t feel too bad,” I told him. “I’ve been known to underestimate barbarians in my time. Now, you have little life expectancy left to you, but I can promise you a quick, easy execution if you will answer my questions. I’ll clear it with the dictator. Otherwise you’ll answer those questions under torture and your death will be in no way easy.”

  He kept smiling. “Torture. You Romans know so little of torture. Come to India some day. I will show you what torture is really like.”

  “I’m afraid you are all through with India,” I told him. Ashthuva was fiddling with something at her waist. “What are you doing, woman?” she took her hands from her waist and in an instant her singular gown unwound and fell to the floor, leaving her as naked as a statue of Aphrodite and ten times as enticing. Balbus made another noise and so, I fear, did I. She was completely covered with intricate tattoos, and while I was stupidly studying these Gupta made his move.

  When I regained my senses somewhat, he was almost on me. No scarf this time. He had a long, curved dagger in his hand and he was moving as fast as any human being I had ever seen. He had quite sensibly chosen to attack me instead of Balbus or Hermes. I looked older and easier and, indeed, I was. I blocked his dagger hand with my cestus and thrust at him with my own dagger, but he snaked around it with an ease that was positively insulting. He cut again and I would have died then, but Balbus was on him and swift as the Indian was, Balbus was almost as fast and he was bull-strong to boot. He got both hands on the assassin’s arms and Hermes clouted him over the head with a small table. No sense taking any chances with this one. Seeing her brother down Ashthuva whirled and darted for a back door but found herself facing Callista, who had dropped her shawl there and stood as serenely as if she were about to address a gathering of academics.