The sun was lowering in the west, casting a red haze over the rooftops, but Rome was still very much awake, especially on the bustling Subura Way. The notorious street took us into the beating heart of the city, not to the place where its temples and palaces are proudly gathered, but into the district of butcher shops and brothels and gambling dens. The smells of the city assaulted my nostrils — horse dung and furnace smoke, raw fish and perfume, a whiff of urine from a public privy mingling with the aroma of freshly baked bread. In a single block I saw more faces than I had seen all year in the countryside. I saw bodies that were old, fat, young, supple, clothed in costly tunics and gowns, or in rags, or almost naked. Women leaned out of the upper-storey windows of cheap tenements and gossiped with one another across the street. little boys played trigon in an open square, standing in a triangle and tossing their leather ball back and forth. An Ethiop in a red gown, her skin the colour of lustrous ebony, gathered water at ' the public fountain.
The fountain caught my eye. It was the chief ornament of the neighbourhood it served, with a trough below for horses and a spout above for people. The spout was made of marble, carved in the likeness of a kneeling dryad pouring water from an urn. The fountain had been there since I was a boy. More times than I could possibly count I had put my lips below the spout to get a cool drink of water, had filled my wineskin from it, had watered my horses from the trough.
Nothing on earth could be more mundane, yet the fountain, and not just the fountain but everything around me, seemed at once familiar and strange. I had left Rome for good, I thought, and now I was back, and there was no denying that no matter how far afield I strayed or how long I stayed away, it would always be home.
I looked back at the cart. Diana was exhausted. She lay curled up against her mother, fast asleep despite the bumpy ride. Bethesda held one of her small hands and stroked her hair. She felt my gaze, looked up and smiled back at me. I knew in that moment that we shared the same sensation of homecoming, but she was less afraid to feel it, and less afraid to show it. The city was our city, no matter how much I might deny it or how deeply I might bury myself in the countryside. I breathed in deeply and smelled the Subura; I opened my eyes wide and tried to see everything before me at once. I turned and saw that Meto was looking at me oddly, the way I must so often look at him when I see him staring at the world around him in wide-eyed amazement. There is no place in the world like Rome.
We arrived at my old house on the Esquiline Hill dirty, hungry, and exhausted. The fading daylight had turned from red to hazy blue. The lamps in the house had already been lit. We were later than I had expected to be, but Eco, knowing the chaotic state of the roads into the city, told me he was surprised to see us so soon.
‘You must have come by the Flaminian Way,' he said, clapping his hands to summon slaves to help with the unpacking. I nodded. 'A good thing,' he said. 'The bridges down by the Aurelian Way are said to be a complete nightmare. They say there are wagons with skeletons at the reins.'
'With skeleton oxen to pull them?'
Eco laughed and nodded. 'That's the joke they're telling down in the Subura.'
'So very typical of the Subura,' I said dryly. The macabre sense of humour was familiar yet strange, like the city itself, like the house in which I found myself. My house it had been for many years, and before that my father's. Here was the atrium and the garden where I had played host to so many callers over the years, and where I had first met my dear old friend, Lucius Claudius, when he came to consult me after seeing a dead man walking about in the Subura.
"The garden looks very well kept,' I said, with a slight catch in my throat.
'Yes, Menenia oversees the gardening herself. She's fond of growing things.'
'The walls have a new coat of wash. I see you replaced those loose tiles along the roof and straightened the hinges on the front door. Even the fountain seems to be working.'
Eco smiled and shrugged. 'I wanted everything to be just right for Meto's special day. Ah, here's Menenia now.'
My daughter-in-law approached with lowered eyes, greeting me with all the deference due a Roman patriarch. She had been quite a catch for Eco, considering his humble origins and the antiquity of her family name. He had picked a dark-haired beauty with olive skin, like Bethesda, which I think pleased his adoptive mother, whether she showed it or not.
The open sky above the garden quickly darkened to a deep blue pierced by stars that twinkled like bits of frost. Tables and couches were brought into the open air, and the slaves served a hearty meal fit for weary travellers, though we were almost too tired to eat it. Before the sky had turned from deep blue to black, everyone was abed except Eco and me.
Once we were alone he asked me a few questions about Nemo and about Catilina's visit. I answered him wearily, and once he learned that the situation seemed to have come to a harmless if not very satisfactory conclusion, he did not press me with questions. He did inform me that the latest word on the elections was that they would be held on the day after the morrow — in other words, on the day after Meto's toga ceremony, while we would still be in Rome.
'Ah, well,' I sighed, 'it can't be helped. Rome on an election day! We shall certainly get a full taste of the big city.'
He showed me to my old room, where Bethesda was already asleep, and which he and Menenia had vacated for our visit. Meto and Diana were sleeping in the room next door. Where Eco himself was going to sleep and how he had juggled his household slaves to make room for mine I was much too tired to try to figure out. I lay down beside Bethesda, who sighed in her sleep and shifted her hips to accommodate me, and I fell asleep as my head touched the pillow and my lips pressed against her scented hair.
A strange sobbing woke me.
I woke in slow, fitful stages, as men of my age do when drawn from the black sleep of utter weariness. For a moment I didn't know where I was — a strange thing to experience in a house where I had lived most of my life. The furniture had been moved about, that was the problem, and the bed was different.
The sobbing that woke me came from the room next door.
I thought of Diana. The image of her finding the beheaded corpse of Nemo sprang into my mind, and I was awake all at once, conscious but still disoriented. My heart raced, but my limbs lagged behind. I stood up, banged my elbow against the wall, and cursed King Numa.
But it was not Diana who sobbed — the noise was not high-pitched or childlike enough. Nor was it exactly sobbing, but a kind of rhythmic, choking cry that came through clenched teeth and tighdy pressed hps, the sort of frightened whimper made by someone in a nightmare.
I walked into the hallway. The sound ceased for a moment, then I heard it again through the thin curtain draped across the doorway to the room shared by Meto and Diana. A lamp set into the wall still burned with a low flame — placed there by thoughtful Eco, I was sure; he knew his father would have to rise in the night and pass water and might trip or bump his knee. I took the lamp, pulled aside the curtain, and stepped into the tiny room.
Diana was sitting up in her little sleeping couch, her back against the wall, blinking the sleep from her eyes as if she had just woken up. She pulled the thick coveriet up to her neck and looked at Meto with grave concern. 'Papa, what's wrong with him?'
I looked down at Meto, who rocked back and forth on his bed. His coverlet was all twisted and tangled; his hands had become trapped in the cloth. His forehead was beaded with sweat, and his jaw was tightly clenched. Behind his shut lids his eyes seemed to twitch and dart about. He began to whimper again.
Once before I had seen him this way, not long after I had taken him into my household and before I had manumitted him and made him my son.
'Papa?' said Diana again, her voice very small. 'Is Meto—'
'He's all right,' I said softly. 'He's only dreaming. It must be a very bad dream, but that's all it is. You mustn't worry. Here, I'll take care of him. Why don't you go sleep with your mother tonight?'
The suggestion pleased
her immensely. She gathered up her coverlet, draping it around her like a grown woman's stola, and hopped out of her bed. She stopped so that I could give her a kiss and then hurried to the door.
‘You're sure he's all right, Papa?'
'Yes,' I said, and Diana, her expression still grave but not frightened, hurried off to join her mother.
I stood over Meto, watching his tormented face by the lamplight, uncertain whether I should wake him. Suddenly he gave a start and opened his eyes.
He sucked in a ragged breath. He reached to cover his face, but his hands were caught in the twisted cloth. For a moment he panicked, whimpering as if he still dreamed and jerking wildly at the coverlet so that he only became more entangled. I put down the lamp and gripped his arms to stop his thrashing. After a moment he relaxed, and together we extricated his hands.
He reached up to his face, then pulled his hands away, blinking in confusion at the sweat that glittered on his fingertips.
'You were having a nightmare,' I said softly.
'I was in Sicily,' he said in a hoarse whisper.
'I thought so. You had a dream like that once before, long ago.'
'Did I? But I never think about Sicily. I hardly even remember the time I spent there. Why should I dream about it, especially now?' He sat up and blinked at the sweat that trickled into this eyes.
'I don't know. Here, use the coverlet to dry your forehead.'
'Look, the whole pillow is wet! I'm so thirsty…'
I looked about and glimpsed the dull gleam of a copper ewer and a cup on a small table by the door. I poured a cup of water and put it in Meto's hand. He drank it down in a single draft.
'Oh, Papa, it was horrible. Each of my hands was bound up in rags, just as the farmer used to do when he made me stand in the orchard to scare away the crows. He bundled my hands so I couldn't pick the fruit. The day was hot as an oven. The earth was so parched and broken that it was like a field of bricks — I kept stumbling and felling and skinning my knees. My lips were blistered from the sun. Sweat ran into my eyes, and I couldn't wipe it away. I was so thirsty, but I couldn't leave the field to get water or the farmer would beat me. I ran to the well anyway, but I couldn't pull up the bucket. I kept dropping it because my hands were all bound up and clumsy. And then the crows came — thousands of them. They swept over the orchard like horrible, shrill locusts until every tree was stripped bare. I knew the master would beat me. He would beat me until I died.'
Meto shuddered. He stared raptly at the dancing flame of the lamp. 'And then I was no longer in the field. I was back in Baiae. Not in the villa but in the arena that Crassus built especially to put his slaves to death. It was like being in a well, hemmed in by high walls all around with the sun beating on us. The sand was dick with blood. The mob leaned over the rail and jeered down at us. Their races were hideous, all twisted with hate — and then the crows again! Thousands of crows, so many that the sky was black with them. They swarmed over everything. They beat their wings in my face and pecked at my eyes, and I tried to scare them away but I couldn't even lift my hands — oh, Papa!'
I poured more water. Meto put the cup to his lips and drank greedily.
'It was only a dream, Meto’ 'But so real—'
'You're in Rome, not Sicily, not Baiae. You're in our house, surrounded by your family—'
'Oh, Papa, do I really have a family?' 'Of course you do!'
'No. This is the dream This is what can't be real. I was born a slave, and that never changes.'
'That's a lie, Meto. You are my son, just as surely as if you had my blood in your veins. You're free, just as free as if you had been born a Roman. Tomorrow you become a man, and after tomorrow you must never look back. Do you understand me?'
'But in my dream, Crassus, and the farmer in Sicily—'
'Those men owned you once, but that was long ago. They have no power over you now, and never will again.'
Meto stared blankly at the wall and bit his lip. A tear spilled down his cheek. A good, stem Roman father would have slapped the tear away, shaken him until his teeth rattled, and then made him go stand in the courtyard and keep watch all night, to face up to his fears and beat them down, and the more miserable the lesson the better. But I have never claimed to be a good father by Roman standards. I embraced him for a long moment, pressing him hard against me until I felt him shudder and relax. I squeezed him tightly, knowing it was the last time I could ever hug him like a boy.
I offered to leave him the lamp, but he said he did not need it. I stepped into the hallway and let the curtain drop, then walked restlessly about the courtyard. It was not long until I heard the quiet sound of his snoring — the dream as much as the long day had worn him out.
Diana was with Bethesda, and the bed was not large enough for all three of us, so I returned to the garden and reclined on one of the dining couches. I watched the constellations swirl slowly, slowly across the sky, until my lids grew too heavy to stay open and Morpheus caught me in his gentle snare.
XVI
The day of Meto's majority dawned bright and clear. In the garden I was up at daybreak, with the first blush of sunlight on my face and all around me the sounds of the early-rising slaves going about their chores.
It had been more than ten years since we had celebrated Eco's toga day. That had been the year before the trials of the Vestals and the outbreak of Spartacus's slave revolt. My purse had been leaner then, and the provisions had been quite humble. Eco's toga day had been a respectable affair, but not the sort of thing to make the neighbours gossip with envy. Perhaps it was for this reason that Eco seemed determined to make sure that his younger brother enjoyed a sixteenth birthday that he would not soon forget.
It was unthinkable that the event should take place anywhere but Rome, and since Eco's house was the logical place, he had offered early in the year to organize the details. That role in itself would have been a sufficient gift for Eco to give his brother, I thought. Eco had worked out the expenses and had asked me for a sum which I thought generous but reasonable. I discovered only later that he had more than matched the sum himself.
The day began with the erection of a yellow canopy over the garden. Slaves trotted about on the roofs of the porticos, hoisting the edges of the canopy and pulling the corners tight to fit them onto hooks. Below, more slaves began assembling tables and covering them with cloths and setting dining couches all about. Many of the couches were quite exquisite, with finely carved legs and plush pillows of many colours; the best of the couches (as well as the best of the serving slaves) Eco had borrowed from some of his well-heeled clients. From the kitchen came the clanging of pots and the bustling sounds of slaves hard at work.
Our morning meal, however, consisted humbly enough of fresh figs and bread. I watched Meto as he hungrily bit into his handful of bread, and saw no evidence of the doubt and dismay that had visited him the night before. He seemed rested, quietly excited, and only a little nervous. Good, I thought; let nothing spoil this day.
After eating, the family departed for the baths. Two women slaves came along to attend to Bethesda and Menenia. The slave whose dudes included grooming and barbering Eco would also be joining us. On this day Meto would receive his first shave.
We did not travel on foot, for Eco had rented a team of three litters and litter bearers for the day. They were waiting for us at the foot of the little trail leading down from the house to the Subura Way. Diana squealed with delight when she saw the broad-shouldered slaves and the long, elegant Utters. Bethesda tried to hide her surprise behind a cosmopolitan moue. Menenia smiled knowingly. Meto blushed and looked almost embarrassed at being offered such a luxury.
'Eco,' I said under my breath, 'this must have cost—'
'Papa, it's only for one day! Besides, it's a special rate. I arranged it over a month ago. At the time the owner thought, of course, that on this date the elections would just be over and the out-of-towners would have already gone back to the countryside, leaving no one to hire h
is Utters. I got them for next to nothing.'
'Still—’
'Climb in! Here, you can share this one with Diana. I'll ride with Meto, and the women can ride together. The slaves will follow behind on foot.'
And so I took a ride through the streets of Rome with Diana on my lap. I would be a liar if I said that it was anything less than an absolute delight. Even at that early hour traffic was beginning to thicken, but what did it matter that we had to pause at every street corner, when everything we passed held such fascination for Diana? The smell of baking bread delighted her as much as the scents that wafted from me perfume seller's shop; she clapped her hands and laughed at a group of bleary-eyed rustics emerging from a brothel, finding them quite as absurd and amusing as a team of half-naked acrobats who had decided to practise their handstands and cartwheels in a little square off the Subura Way. She bestowed a smile and a friendly wave on two grey-haired slave women who smiled but did not wave back, too burdened with their morning shopping, and then she did the same to a pair of gaunt, unshaven brutes whom I knew to be paid assassins; the two looked rather chagrined and waved weakly back. All things were equal in Diana's eyes; everyone and everything was equally fascinating. That, I thought, is what it means to be a child and why we long for childhood in our dreams; later on we are forced to choose and discriminate at every turn. Being a man and a citizen and a grown-up meant, for example, having to choose at times between the likes of Catilina and Cicero — and what fun was that, compared to Diana's simple delight in looking and laughing and accepting without question each moment of being alive?
After a while we veered off the Subura Way and took a series of smaller streets that skirted the foot of the Oppian Hill and eventually intersected with the Sacred Way. Here we turned right and shortly came to a halt just outside the Forum, at the steps leading up to the Senian Baths.
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