Leaving a portion of the men on the higher level the centurion took the rest—now only about a dozen strong—down below. The galleries here were exactly the same: low, narrow, damp, and stinking, broken here and there by transverse passages that in their turn led to farther tunnels. By the wavering yellow gleam of the torch Marcus could see the arched doorways marked with signs—a fish, or sometimes a cross—and once, down a branching passage that led away into Stygian darkness, he thought he smelled water and stone.
“Look,” whispered Arrius, pausing in the doorway of a square burial chamber and holding the torch aloft. Against one wall lay folded blankets, a cheap wooden bowl, and a jar of water. He stepped inside as Marcus and some of the others crowded around the door, then unstoppered the flask and drank. He came out again and said, “Fresh.”
“Sir!” called out one of the soldiers in a hushed voice. Arrius hurried to where he stood, in a doorway farther down the black narrow hall.
A kind of a chapel had been made from one of the burial chambers. More than anything else Marcus was reminded of a Mithraeum, the underground chapels where the followers of the Persian god were supposed to meet. But instead of the carved Slayer of the Bull, the wall above the altar simply bore a crudely chalked cross. The altar itself was simple stone, stained dark with blood or wine, bearing nothing but a cheap clay lamp of the kind that, filled full, will burn for about four hours in summer, or five in winter.
The lamp was just guttering itself out.
On the floor in front of the altar someone had written in charcoal:
And the Lord shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.
Hands on swordbelt, the centurion regarded this inscription for a long and silent moment. Then he sighed, “All right, boys, we might as well go on home. Looks like Papa knew we were coming.”
XI
These lunatics [Christians] believe that they are immortal and will live forever, so they do not fear death, and willingly accept arrest. Deluded by their original lawgiver, they believe that they are all brothers once they have wickedly denied the Greek gods and worshiped that crucified Sophist....
Lucian
“MOTHER OF GOD, Queen of Heaven, you who wander through many sacred groves and are propitiated with many different rites...” Pure and flutelike, the voices lifted in a fading wail. Like ribbons of gauze the smoke that curled from the altar wreathed the serene face of the image of the Holy Mother and her Child, seated between her pillars in the massive darkness of the shrine. “You whose womanly light illumines the walls of every city, whose misty radiance nurses the happy seeds beneath the soil, you who control the wandering course of the sun and the very power of his rays...”
Like a shaken string of golden coins the sistrums tinkled in the shadows of the heavy columns. From a window high in the roof a single bar of sunlight turned the floating smoke to a cloud of powdered diamonds and caught gold glints in the unbound hair of the woman who lay prone before the high black basalt slab of the altar, her white robe spread about her like a shroud.
Deeper, stronger, the male voice of the tonsured priest rose against the sweet counterpoint of the chorus. “Mother of Sorrows, Mystical Queen, you understand the griefs of women. I beseech you, by whatever name, in whatever aspect, with whatever ceremonies you deign to be invoked, have mercy on this woman, you who yourself have known sorrow. You who created heaven and earth, law and justice, you who are all that has been, all that is, all that shall be.”
From the darkness of the door of the inner shrine, Marcus saw the woman stir, but then she lay still again, her fragile white hands pressed to the black marble of the floor. Turned toward him he could see the sole of one small foot, scratched and still slightly bleeding. She had walked all the way to the Temple of Isis from the Quirinal Hill, she who had never gone more than a hundred feet except by litter in her life.
The chanting of the choir lifted again, words and music winding like smoke among the heavy columns of the shadowed hall. Where the sun touched the statue, jewels flashed in the marble ears.
Perhaps in some cases hope can be greater than knowledge, thought Marcus. At least she’s spared the horrors that knowledge has brought me. The knowledge that tonight is Midsummer Eve. The knowledge that there isn’t a thing I can do, there isn’t a thing Arrius can do, that none of us knows a thing except that they have her somewhere, and that there’s a sacrifice of some kind set for tonight. And unless we can follow Tiridates tonight when he leaves his house—unless we can track them to their place of worship—when Varus returns his rage will sweep Rome like a destructive fire, and consume the guilty and the innocent alike.
And against that knowledge, the consolation of philosophy was poor remedy indeed. Better, he thought, for Aurelia Pollia to come here and lay her griefs in the hands of Isis. If it did no more to find her daughter than philosophy had, at least she would have the comfort of knowing that whatever happened, whether Tullia was recovered or not, Isis would sustain them all.
Could it be that the same goal is reached, he wondered, through emotionalistic drivel as through rational philosophy? Was it enough to know that the gods, as Arrius had said of that strange old aristocrat in his vine-choked hermitage on the Quirinal Hill, knew more about the situation than you did, and would not fail you?
“Marcus,” whispered a woman’s voice.
He turned, to see his mother standing at his side.
For a moment he was so shocked he could find nothing to say. She was veiled and looked every inch a Roman matron, as her husband insisted that she should. Her blue wool dress bore the stripe of a woman who has done her duty to state and family by bearing three or more children; she wore the massive gold jewelry befitting a lady of her rank. She could not have looked more out of place in that solemn locus of Egyptian worship if she’d come in the saffron toga of a whore.
Then he whispered, “Thank the gods you’ve come,” and hugged her, in spite of the shocked gaze of a passing priestess. “Father doesn’t know?”
She shook her head, her eyes sick with trepidation. “That’s why I came here,” she whispered back. “I hired a chair.”
He grinned shakily. “That sounds like you were going out to meet a lover. You’ll get a terrible reputation if that one gets around.”
And as he’d hoped, it brought a quick smile to her eyes. But it faded just as quickly. “Do you know, I’d almost believe he’d rather it was a lover than the wife of a political foe of his? As though poor Aurelia ever knew the first thing about politics.”
She looked unhappily down at her hands, twisting in the fine indigo folds of her veil. Marcus took her gently by the shoulders, and she looked up into his eyes again, almost on level with her own. She sighed, as if ashamed of the tears that tracked down her faded cheek. “I suppose it could be worse,” she murmured. “He could flaunt girl friends and pretty dancing-boys all over town, like Porcius Craessius does, or be sottish and spendthrift like so many others. But this—this petty day-to-day viciousness, this spying on me...”
“Leave him,” said Marcus quietly. “You’re not married to him strict form; he doesn’t have the legal right to keep you as a slave.”
She shook her head in despair. “Where would I go?” she asked. “Your grandfather Pollius married me to him in the first place because he wanted me out of his house. The dowry was barely respectable then and certainly nothing that could be lived on now. I’m certain none of my stepbrothers would take me in.” She sighed and put her hand on his arm; they walked together down the narrow corridor, to the massive doors opening out into the shadows of the temple porch. “It is how it is, Marc,” she said softly. “I’ve known it for a long time.”
They stood together for a time in the blue shade of the porch, a pillared concession to the proprieties of Roman taste built onto a structure that had come straight out of the Valley of the Kings. The statues that sheltered there were in the smooth heavy style of Egypt, the goddess’s homeland: sphinxes of rose-col
ored porphyry, Osiris and the dog-headed Anubis in black basalt, graven with long columns of hieroglyphics. From the porch a stairway led down to an aisle of more sphinxes and black granite obelisks, leading through the gardens of the temple grounds. Beyond stretched the Field of Mars, with its gardens, its trees, its columned porches and fashionable shops, strollers taking the air along the covered arcades, nurses herding little gaggles of children at play. Though it was still early morning the day promised hot, and in the windless air the noise of the Forum, the riverside markets, the packed hot streets and crowded tenements of downtown hung like the buzzing drone of a hornet-hive. In the bright hot sunlight the seven hills of Rome loomed to the south and east. Even at a distance of a half mile or so, Marcus could imagine that he smelled the stink of the streets.
Somewhere out there, thought Marcus despairingly. They have her somewhere there, and tonight is Midsummer Eve. Sunlight beat into the east-facing porch; he felt the sweat running down his arms and back under the heavy wool of the toga. Every informer Arrius knows is out there, poking, prying, searching... Mother Isis, just this once, bless informers in their chosen task...
“What’s wrong, Marc dear?”
He shook his head, not willing to tell her what was afoot that night. He gestured back through the temple doors. “It’s only that she doesn’t deserve this.”
His mother sighed. “Poor Aurelia. She may not be much of an intellectual, but she’s one of the kindest people I have ever known. Even as a girl, when it is so much more fun to be cruel.” She smiled sadly at him and stroked back the uncombed curls from his brow. “It’s good that you’re so concerned for her.”
“If the gods are kind,” said Marcus slowly, “she’s going to be my mother-in-law.”
She was silent for a moment, hiding her hope under downcast eyelids, as she had learned to, living with Silanus. “Your father can forbid it, you know,” she murmured. “And he would, too, in spite of the scandal. Even leaving out that Chambares Tiridates is supposed to be still very set on the match, do you think you could persuade Tullius Varus to consent to a marriage that will have to be paraded through the law courts first, and may very well have the children declared bastards after?”
“Tiridates,” said Marcus through his teeth, “isn’t likely to be in any position to interfere. And as for Father, after tackling the entire Christian cult to get her back, I’m certainly not going to let the threat of a lawsuit stop me. If he tries to exercise his legal rights as a father over me...” Marcus took a deep breath. “If her father consents, Tullia and I may end up leaving Rome for a time.”
Patricia Pollia Cato studied him for a moment, her light brows drawn together, as if wondering about this new young man. She said, “You’ve changed a great deal, haven’t you, Professor?”
He shook his head, and smiled. “Not so much.”
“Your father kept saying that you’d outgrow philosophy and return to being a sober and worthy son like Caius—poor Caius! But you’ll never come back to the fold now, will you?”
He sighed. “I don’t think I’ve outgrown philosophy so much as realized that I haven’t grown into it yet. I can’t—I can’t think too much ahead now, Mother, in fact I can’t think farther ahead than tonight, but when this is over...”
“My poor darling,” she whispered, “none of us can. When Varus comes back to Rome and can put a proper search in order, they’ll find her.”
God help us, thought Marcus in despair. By then it will be too late.
He stood aside when Aurelia Pollia emerged from the great temple doors, watching as she embraced the tall lanky woman who through childhood had been her closest friend. She had aged terribly in four days, her face thin and ravaged far more than the absence of cosmetics could account for, her hair hanging like a penitent’s in a loose mane around her thin shoulders. She was built like her daughter, small and slender; she seemed a girl against her friend’s bony height. It was clear she had never expected to see Patricia again—a logical assumption, thought Marcus bitterly, recalling the hideous quarrels his parents had had over his mother’s friendship with his father’s senatorial foe. Aurelia Pollia held to her friend and wept bitterly, like a thin little waif in her sleeveless white linen gown. He saw that his mother wept, too.
A shadow fell over him. “Well,” said a cynical, well-modulated voice at his elbow, “so Caius Silanus Senior has healed his political breaches with the prefect after all.”
Marcus replied, through taut lips, “Hardly, Praetor Quindarvis. I should appreciate it if none of this got back to him.”
Those dark little eyes rested speculatively upon him, as though asking the reason for the coldness in his voice. But he only said, “Sits the wind in that quarter, then? Your mother was raised in Cornelius Pollius’ household, wasn’t she?” He turned his gaze back, watching the two women standing beside the granite sphinx, clasping each other’s hands. “Your mother has a great deal of courage. Lady Aurelia needs a woman friend she can trust.”
Remembering the obscene blonde goddess who had shared Quindarvis’ supper-couch the night before last, Marcus only replied, “Yes, she does.”
“I’ve stayed with her as much as I’m able, between the Senate and the games.” He folded his thick strong arms; he had clearly come from the Senate house, for he was dressed in his formal toga, its purple borders dark as wine in the banded shadows of the porch. The scent of his perfume could not quite overlay the smell of his body, sour as a man’s is when he has drunk too much the night before. “By Jupiter I’m glad the games are over. They went quite well—extremely well-received. The beast-fight between the Persians and the hyenas was a connoisseur’s delight. But this—this ghastly business...” He shook his head angrily, his face darkening at the thought. “For all that centurion says, anxiety has hung over my head like the sword of Damocles.”
Not that it spoiled your supper-party much, thought Marcus. But he only asked, “And when will Varus be back?”
The big man blew his breath out in a sigh. “Four days, five days. As I said, I’m glad there’s someone Lady Aurelia can trust. These next weeks will be busy ones in the treasury. This is the time of year we have to settle down with all our mingy little clerks, bless their circumcised little souls, and get everything straight for the elections. It’s going to be worse than a circus until September. With this happening in the middle of it...” He shook his head again. “The thing is, we don’t know whom we can trust. You know they’ve arrested the physician Nicanor?”
“What?” gasped Marcus, the guilt like the prick of a dagger.
“Seems some Christian whore denounced him—I’d never have thought it. Still, slaves are master dissemblers. I’ve never met one who didn’t lie, given a chance. But betrayal of a man who was as good to him as my poor cousin Varus was...”
Marcus felt his stomach turn, as though he’d swallowed poisoned food. Tonight was Midsummer Eve—Arrius was calling in all his debts. But still... The shady cool of Varus’ atrium returned to him, the desperate anxiety in the Greek’s dark eyes. “...If he thought there was it’d be the rack for us all...” The darkness under the Capitoline Prison, a woman’s hysterical sobbing, naming anyone to save herself pain...
Quindarvis growled. “If I was that blamed centurion I’d have that boy Hylas strung out as well. He should never have left her...”
“She ordered him away, and she was within fifty feet of her own front door!” protested Marcus indignantly. “She wanted to talk to me in private.”
“Blast it, boy, don’t you know all good slaves are deaf? It didn’t save her, did it? We’ve suspected all along they had a Christian confederate in the household, haven’t we? How else would they have known just when to expect her to return?”
“But—” Enlightenment hit him. He gulped hastily, “I have to go. Excuse me...” He dashed to where his mother stood, caught her by the arms, and gave her and the startled Lady Aurelia quick kisses. He gathered up his toga and went clattering down the stairs, hearing t
he praetor’s gruff voice behind him mutter, “Zany philosopher.”
He headed for the Forum at a loping trot.
“So you see, he can’t know anything.” Flies hummed in the high corners of the cracked plaster ceiling. The small officers’ room of the prison, facing east across the Forum, was already blisteringly hot. Under his mail-shirt Arrius’ tunic was dark with blotches of sweat. “They didn’t need a confederate within the household at all. Not if Tiridates set the whole thing up.”
“For a philosopher you’re making a mighty big leap there, Professor,” growled the centurion, turning over the wax tablet he’d been writing on to continue on the back. The wax was dark and soft already with the heat. “Just because they didn’t need Nicanor to set up the ambush doesn’t mean he wasn’t in on it, and isn’t a Christian.”
“But that woman would have accused anyone! She was nowhere near right about Lady Aurelia’s maid!”
“No?” He glanced up from under jutting brows. “But it happens Nicanor wasn’t able to account for his whereabouts last night—when we raided the catacombs—or the night before, when the jail was broken. He’s refused to talk at all.”
Marcus stared. “But—he has to. I mean...”
Arrius said dryly, “Precisely.” He set the tablet aside and cracked his broken heavy knuckles. “So what about it, Professor? You want the hangman to have a few words with him this afternoon, or do you feel sure enough of his innocence to throw double or quits on tonight?”
In the hot heavy silence the noises from the Forum outside sounded very loud: the flutes of streetcorner dancers, the harsh cry of a Chaldean woman, hawking amulets against the evil eye. From the guardroom beyond the open door a soldier could be heard, cursing the poxy whoreson of a faggot charioteer who’d lost him his money on the races. Marcus thought of what Sixtus had said, that if Tiridates’ house had a passage out of the cellar, Arrius and his men could sit all night around it. Even though the men would be scattered, to pick up the Syrian if he emerged some distance from his house, they couldn’t cover the whole Aventine. He thought of the rack and of the physician’s stiff-necked, unpracticed pleas.
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