Early in the afternoon the steward Socrates turned up, with another strong young male slave. “My master believed you might want a bath,” he informed Hermogenes. “Xanthos and Pyrrhus can carry you to the bathhouse.”
The thought of a long hot bath was actually very appealing, but the reference to Socrates’ master wanting him to have one put him instantly on guard. “Perhaps later,” he said, smiling. “I was just about to have a nap.”
There was a momentary silence. The new slave, Xanthos, shifted his feet uncomfortably and glanced anxiously at Socrates.
“The master wants the bathhouse for some other guests later,” Socrates told him smoothly. “Please come now, sir. The doctor recommended bathing as good for your injuries, and now is the time that would be convenient for the staff.”
He met the steward’s eyes, and had no more doubts: Pollio had given orders that he be delivered to the bathhouse. A meeting? Very likely. With whom, though, and why?
“Very well,” he said, trying to hide his queasy apprehension. “I do not wish to inconvenience any of the staff, after you have all been so … attentive. Do you happen to know where my bodyguard is?”
The steward showed a hint of what Hermogenes suspected was real amusement. “You want the gladiatrix to attend you in the bath?”
“No!” he snapped, more sharply than he’d intended. “I don’t want her to come back here and think that I’ve been kidnapped. She is new to the work, and trying very hard to prove her worth. She might do something stupid.”
“Nestor will stay here to tell her where you are,” Socrates conceded. He snapped his fingers, and Xanthos and Pyrrhus helped the guest to the chair which had been used the day before, and carried him from the room.
Pollio’s private bathhouse occupied a whole wing, descending the slope of the Esquiline in steps. It was, as Hermogenes expected, enormous and sumptuous—hot plunge room, cold plunge, steam room, swimming pool, all lavishly decorated with frescos and polished stone. It was also, to his surprise, empty. He and the slaves undressed, and he allowed Xanthos and Pyrrhus to help him first to the hot plunge, then to the cold, and then to the steam room. He was lying on the bench between the two slaves, allowing the heat to soak the aches out of his muscles, when he heard the sound of voices just outside the door. He grabbed his crutch and sat up, steeling himself.
The first man through the door was Tarius Rufus.
They recognized one another at once. Rufus looked less intimidating naked than he had in consular purple: a heavy, hairy body, with a pronounced paunch. He was still wearing all his rings, though, and Hermogenes braced himself against the bench and held the crutch in front of himself like a shield. Rufus, however, stared for a long moment in shock and evident horror, then whirled and shrieked to the man behind him, “Oh, Jupiter, the Egyptian’s here!”
The man behind shoved forward to see; he was, as Hermogenes had expected, Tarius Macedo, looking thin and hard as a dagger—more formidable than when clothed, in contrast to his patron. He stared wildly and exclaimed, “It’s not possible! He’s still at the moneylender’s!”
“Don’t be stupid!” bellowed the consul. “It’s him. Gods and goddesses, what do we do now? I can’t kill Titus, but you know what’ll happen if we try to sell!”
“I’ll strangle Gunthar!” muttered Macedo, and strode rapidly into the steam room.
Pollio’s two slaves were both on their feet, and Pyrrhus stepped quickly in front of Hermogenes. Macedo halted, glaring. Hermogenes had noticed that both the slaves who’d accompanied him were young, strong, and athletic looking. He’d assumed that they’d been chosen for their decorative appearance, but he suddenly doubted it.
“Ah, my dear Hermogenes!” exclaimed Pollio, waddling into the room behind his guests—a grotesque figure, with his swollen feet and hands and shriveled torso. He had another two sturdy slaves behind him. “I hope you are enjoying the steam bath? Lucius, I believe you’ve met my other guest, Marcus Aelius Hermogenes? He was injured the other day by robbers in the Subura, and was very fortunate to escape with his life.”
Rufus had turned nearly purple and seemed unable to speak. Pollio waddled over and sat down on the bench beside Hermogenes. “I didn’t know you had so many bruises,” he remarked. He squeezed his guest’s shoulder, gazing at the black blotches that marked his torso with avid admiration. “What a pity they didn’t catch your attackers!”
Hermogenes set the foot of the crutch on the floor and pushed himself to his feet. He felt no more able to speak than Rufus, so he inclined his head politely to his host and limped toward the door. His two guards followed him, keeping between him and the visitors. Rufus, however, did not move away from the door, and Hermogenes was forced to stop.
“What are you doing here?” the consul demanded in choked voice. He spoke in Greek, though everything else had been in Latin. Hermogenes suddenly suspected that the other man didn’t realize that he spoke Latin. All their dealings had been in Greek. That “I can’t kill Titus!” had been something he wasn’t expected to understand.
“I came here to ask Publius Vedius Pollio if he wished to buy a debt,” Hermogenes told him evenly, in Greek. “He has yet to decide whether he wants to do so. I neither know nor care about anything else that may be involved.”
“You foul, greedy, moneylending parasite!” roared the consul.
Hermogenes stood where he was, trembling with a rage he had not expected. “I practice a useful trade honestly,” he said fiercely. “You are the one who abused your power as governor of Cyprus to force an honest businessman to lend you more than he could afford, and who defaulted when you could have repaid him easily. When I asked you for what you unquestionably owe, you tried to have me killed. Foul, greedy parasite? That’s a very good description of you, Consul.”
Rufus swung at him. The slaves had been braced for it, however: Xanthos blocked the blow with his forearm, while Pyrrhus grabbed Hermogenes round the waist and half dragged, and half carried him out, shoving Rufus aside. Pollio laughed and clapped his hands.
Back in the changing room, Pyrrhus deposited the guest in the chair, which was still standing where they’d left it on arrival, and began hauling their clothing and sandals from the storage niches. Xanthos came out from the steam room, his forearm bruised red and a ring scrape along his bare shoulder. From behind him came the sound of Pollio’s voice, high and gleeful, and an angry reply. Xanthos glanced back and spat, then looked at Hermogenes in the chair and Pyrrhus with his armful of clothing. Hermogenes could see him wonder how to move everything at once.
“Give me the clothes,” he said. “We can get dressed outside.”
Xanthos said nothing, merely nodded, and Pyrrhus piled the clothing into his lap. They fled the bathhouse and hurried out into the long colonnade which led back to the main part of the house. A passing gardener looked at them curiously: two stark naked slaves carrying a naked visitor up the hill in a chair piled with clothes. Xanthos and Pyrrhus went about twenty paces, then seemed to decide that it was far enough, and set the chair down.
“Thank you,” Hermogenes told Xanthos, handing the slave his tunic. “And I am sorry. I knew he is prone to violence, and I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Xanthos looked surprised. “The master said we were to keep you safe,” he replied. He examined the scrape on his shoulder, rubbed the blood off with his hand, then pulled on the tunic.
“If you can stand up, sir,” Pyrrhus said respectfully, “I’ll help you with your clothes.”
Hermogenes stood up, balancing with one knee against the seat of the chair, and let the slave help him. He was still belting his tunic when Cantabra came down the colonnade at a run, her face flushed and her tunic hitched up above her knees. She stopped abruptly when she saw him, and dropped the folds of cloth. Pyrrhus began donning his own clothing hurriedly, his embarrassment at being seen naked by a strange woman the first normal human feeling he’d shown.
“Where have you been?” Hermogenes asked his bodygua
rd angrily.
“I heard that your enemy is here,” she replied breathlessly.
“Yes. I just met him.” The rage shook him again. Pollio had sprung him on Rufus like the worst sort of practical joke: open the steam room door, and whoops! here’s the man you tried to kill, somewhat battered, as you see, but still alive to cause you trouble!
He suddenly wondered if his own death was likely to figure in any bargain Pollio made with Rufus: Do as I ask, and I will get the documents from the Alexandrian and hand him over to you.
“What is the matter?” asked Cantabra quickly.
He shook his head glumly: nothing he could discuss in front of Pyrrhus and Xanthos. “My foot hurts,” he said instead. “We should go back to my rooms.” He sat down in the chair again.
Back in the room, he sat silent, trying to puzzle it out.
Pollio was trying to blackmail Rufus into killing someone called Titus: that much was clear. Who, though, was Titus?
There were far too many possibilities; the Roman male population only had about half a dozen first names among them. Obviously Rufus’s Titus wasn’t Titus Fiducius Crispus, the first who’d leaped to his own mind. Pollio wouldn’t need any help to kill a minor businessman. It had to be a rich and powerful Titus, someone Pollio couldn’t get to without the consul’s help.
It wasn’t the emperor, whose first name had been Gaius when he was young, and was now officially Imperator. It had never made any sense that Pollio would want to harm the emperor, anyway. He owed everything to the fact that he had been useful to Augustus during his rise. A new emperor would lack the old one’s tolerance of a creature who had served him well. Still, it was a relief. Anyone suspected of involvement in treason could be tortured, and the estate of anyone convicted of the offense was confiscated.
So who was Titus? The emperor’s deputy and designated successor was a Marcus—Agrippa. Pollio’s superior and rival in the imperial circle had been a Gaius—Maecenas—and he was now out of favor anyway, unless rumor lied. Who else was there? And what benefit did Pollio expect from his death?
He suspected that this plan, whatever it was, aimed at restoring Pollio to the imperial favor he had enjoyed before the incident of the crystal cups. Now that he thought about that story, it seemed less straightforward than it had when he first heard it. The emperor had known Pollio for years: he must have heard about the lampreys long before he came to dinner that night. That smashing of crystal suddenly seemed to hold a calculated message: I no longer need you, and I will no longer tolerate you. Pollio was a man from the humblest of backgrounds—the son of a freed slave!—who’d risen to power and enormous wealth through his service to Augustus. Without the emperor’s friendship, what was he? He must find his fall from favor frightening as well as humiliating. He must long to get back into the charmed circle, to do something to show the emperor that he was still a necessary man.
Kill Titus. He did not know enough about court politics. Nobody did, apart from the players themselves. All the world ever heard was rumors, and the official proclamations in which there was never any trace of ambition or jealousy, greed or hatred or pride.
He was not sure, anyway, that he really cared who Titus was or how the struggle between Rufus and Pollio turned out. If he could be certain that the consul would be forced to pay his debt in some form, and that he himself would get some benefit from it, he would take his money and go home. He found that he no longer believed, though, that anyone was going to allow him to do that.
Was he himself important enough for his life be part of the price for “killing Titus”? Would Rufus really insist on getting him, as well as the documents? The consul was a violent man, arrogant and easily moved to hatred, but he must hate many people, and he couldn’t go around killing all of them.
With a sinking of the heart he decided that yes, he probably was important enough. His appearance in Rome, and his stubborn insistence on his rights, had caused the consul’s current crisis, and his very existence was an accusation. Rufus would want him permanently silenced. And Pollio, he was quite certain, wouldn’t hesitate to oblige if it got him what he wanted.
They still needed the documents and his letter. He shivered. If this suspicion hadn’t occurred to him, he would have fetched them from the record office and the priest the moment Pollio agreed to buy the debt.
Of course, he didn’t know that Pollio planned to give him to Rufus. The idea was mere suspicion. Perhaps the consul would even resist the blackmail, and the whole matter would come to court. He didn’t expect it, though—and he knew that he was not going to risk giving those documents to Pollio. The more he saw of the man, the less he trusted him. He needed to make plans to escape. He needed to speak to Cantabra—privately.
He looked up, and saw the barbarian woman sitting quietly on the floor in a corner of the room, frowning over one of her much-mended sandals. Pyrrhus and Nestor were perched on stools in the other corner, playing in silence a game that involved trying to match each other’s gestures. Xanthos had gone back to whatever other duties he had been given.
“Cantabra,” he said, and forced a smile as she looked up. “You told me that at the gladiatorial school they know a kind of massage which is good for muscle injuries. May I try it? I think I knocked my foot against something during that unwelcome meeting, and now my whole leg hurts.” Understand me, he pleaded silently with his eyes; don’t suspect me of wanting to seduce you, and take offense.
She put the sandal down and gave him a hard blue stare. “If you like,” she said. “I need some oil.” She glanced at the two slaves. “Lamp oil will do, if it’s clean.”
“Pyrrhus will fetch some massage oil,” Nestor told her. Pyrrhus at once stood up and went off to do so.
Cantabra shrugged, but went over to the sleeping cubicle, and drew back the curtain. “You should lie down,” she told her employer. “Let me see the leg.”
He got up quickly, hobbled into the cubicle, and lay down on the bed on his back. She knelt down on the floor beside him and ran a hand fastidiously down his right leg below the knee. “The muscles are in knots,” she told him. “Turn over on your stomach.”
He did so. Pyrrhus came back with a flask of oil, and Cantabra poured some on her hands and set to work kneading the back of Hermogenes’ calf. Her fingers were very strong, and the muscles were sore. He made a noise of protest.
“It will help,” she told him severely, then glanced up at the two slaves, both watching from the doorway.
Hermogenes dismissed them with a wave. “Go back to your amusement.”
They went back into the dressing room, drawing the curtain. Cantabra paused to put more oil on her hands, and as she did so, lowered her mouth to his ear and whispered, “They are still listening.”
He closed his eyes a moment in relief.
“I used to do this to my fellows in the hall,” Cantabra went on, in a normal tone of voice, “to some of them, that is. It is good for muscle strains. You should eat ashes, too.”
“Eat ashes?”
“The ashes of beef bone. It is good for injuries. The barley broth the doctor is giving you is good, too, but I don’t think he should have given you so strong a purgative.” She moved her head near his so he could whisper to her.
“I want to get out of here as soon as possible,” he whispered, and said, in a normal tone, “It was certainly very powerful.”
Her face didn’t change. “I have found a place to cross the garden wall,” she whispered back. “Also, I have stolen and concealed a rope.” In the normal tone: “It was more powerful than it needed to be.”
He closed his eyes again, so deeply relieved that he feared he might break down. So that was what she’d been doing that morning! It was more than he had hoped for, much more. He had given no instructions, but she had anticipated, considered the possibilities, acted. He supposed that was the difference between a free employee and a slave. It might well be the difference between death and escape. “Thank you,” he whispered.
Cantabra smiled widely. “That was only a small infection,” she said dismissively. “In the school we would not do anything about one like that, except keep it clean.” Whispering again: “I do not know what we do about the slaves. I do not think I can overcome both of them silently, and if there is any sound, there are many, many others who will hear it, and come.”
He whispered, “I’d prefer it if we could avoid hurting them,” and added, “Gladiators are much tougher than businessmen—Let me think.”
“You are not so soft,” Cantabra told him, and pinched a muscle in his calf. He yelped. “Your legs have muscles like a runner.”
“It’s true I used win races at school,” he told her. “Until Demodokos’s son Aristarchos grew taller than me, that is. Then he won them all. Now all the exercise I get is playing ball games with my slaves and trudging about the city to business meetings—and now I can’t even do that.”
“Will your foot bear you?” whispered Cantabra.
“It must,” he replied grimly.
There was a brief silence, during which they both realized that the massage would have to go on a bit longer if it were to look natural, and that they had said as much as they wanted to risk in the hearing of the eavesdroppers.
“What happened when you met Tarius Rufus?” Cantabra asked.
He began to tell her, at first just to reassure the listeners, then, as the account progressed, because the ridiculousness of it struck him, and it satisfied him to reduce his own terror and rage to a scene from a farce. When he reached the point where Pyrrhus had picked him up and carried him bodily from the room, Cantabra laughed. She had a loud, hooting, thoroughly uncivilized laugh, and it made him grin.
Render Unto Caesar Page 18
