Render Unto Caesar

by Gillian Bradshaw

  She dropped her gaze and lowered her head against his shoulder. “I’m frightened,” she whispered. “Everything is too good. That means something terrible will happen.”

  “Don’t say that,” he whispered back, stroking her hair. “Or I won’t have the nerve to go through with it.”

  “We don’t have any choice,” she said miserably, then, more resolutely: “Taurus is honest. He promised to reward you.”

  “If you believe him, I will trust you,” he told her.

  They made love one more time, urgently, then got up. Hermogenes washed as well as he could with cold water from the amphora, and changed into his carefully preserved clean tunic. He put on his cloak, taking time to get the drape exact. When he’d finished with it, he helped Maerica with hers. She put the pen case with the letters of credit in her belt, and they set off.

  It was still only the second hour of a bright, sunny day, and the streets were busy. They walked slowly up the Clivus Argentarius—Hermogenes found with relief that he barely limped at all—and past the Tabularium into the forum. They checked the time there on the public sundial in front of the Senate building, and paused to buy some sesame rolls for breakfast. He showed Maerica the milestone Hyakinthos had shown him a lifetime before, with the distances to the great cities of the empire—Alexandria and Antioch, Carthage and Cyrene. She named a handful of Iberian cities, but he could find only one of them: Tarraco. “The port,” she said, nodding. “The ship which took me to Rome sailed from there.” She touched the inscribed name, then touched the lettering for Alexandria and smiled.

  The morning seemed to have stuck on the second hour, so they sat down on the steps of the Basilica Aemilia to eat their sesame rolls and watch the crowds. Hermogenes considered looking for a shipping agent who could take charge of Myrrhine’s letter, then decided against it: with luck, that letter would never be sent.

  They watched the crowds for a little while longer. Then a great party in togas arrived for a law case at the basilica, and they rose and got out of the way. When they recrossed the forum to the sundial in front of the Senate House, the shadow of its gnomon pointed exactly at the boundary between the second and third hours. They both looked at it, then at one another.

  “It’s time,” Hermogenes declared. He straightened his cloak and set off.

  The Bank of Gabinius was on the Vicus Tuscus, south of the forum at the foot of the Palatine. Hermogenes had made a note of its location while on the tour of the city with Hyakinthos, because his letters of credit were addressed to its managers: it had long been established in Egypt. They walked past the side of the Temple of Castor and emerged on the narrow shopping street, paused to check directions, then walked on.

  They were still a hundred paces from the bank when Pollio’s men stepped out of a cookshop behind them.

  Hermogenes’ first warning was when Maerica abruptly halted and spun round; what she had heard or sensed, he did not know. By that stage, however, the three men were only a dozen paces away—three tall, lean figures in the dark red tunics favored by Pollio’s guards, without their swords, but carrying long knives gleaming in their hands. One of them was the retiarius Ajax, who had been so very eager to fight. The crowds around them were already starting to shy away in alarm from the swift, menacing advance.

  Maerica seized the back of her own cloak and dragged it loose in a whirl of white linen, meanwhile thrusting Hermogenes behind her with a jab of the elbow. “Run!” she ordered him.

  For a bare instant he hesitated, unwilling to leave her. Reason reminded him sharply that it was him they were after: if he ran he would, at the least, draw some of them off, and at best, find Taurus’s men and help. He turned on his heel and ran. He had gone only a few strides, however, when something struck his legs and he fell, sprawling heavily onto the paving stones. Behind him people were yelling, and ahead of him someone had started to scream. His legs were tangled in something, and as he kicked to free them he found that the something was a net—a small round net, weighted in the corners: the retius that gave the retiarii their name. He finally shook it loose and got a knee under himself, but someone ran up from behind him and grabbed a handful of cloak and his arm. He kicked wildly at the man’s legs, missed, and then the other was leaning over him and holding a knife at his throat. It was the gladiator, Ajax.

  “Get up!” Ajax ordered in a low voice.

  The retiarius was still holding his left arm, twisted in his cloak behind his back, and he jerked on it to emphasize the order. Hermogenes got up slowly, glancing around frantically for some source of help. He saw only shoppers and shopkeepers moving desperately away. Ajax hauled on his arm to turn him around—then stopped.

  Maerica was fighting the other two, an unarmed woman against two men with knives, and she held them at bay with nothing more than a cloak. She had wrapped the heavy linen three or four times around her right arm and she let the rest of it trail, whirling and flaring in her opponents’ faces as she dodged and turned, parrying their lunges with her frail protection of cloth.

  One of her opponents glanced impatiently away from her and saw that his comrade had secured their quarry. He gave a yell of relief.

  It was a mistake. Maerica had not admitted any distraction, and as soon as her opponent’s attention faltered, she attacked. The linen cloak flew over the knife-man’s head, and her foot came up in her favorite kick. The man screamed and slashed blindly; Maerica kicked him again, and he shrieked and crumpled. She left him to fall and threw herself into a roll across the paving stones, dodging the other assailant’s lunge. He ran after her, and she kicked again, hooking his leg out from under him while she was still flat on her back. He twisted as he fell, stabbing at her.

  Hermogenes felt the knife slip a little from his own throat and seized his chance. He made a grab for the gladiator’s wrist, trying, at the same time to get a foot around his ankle and trip him—a wrestling throw, half remembered from school. It didn’t work against a trained opponent: Ajax swore and sidestepped, but his knife hand had been wrenched aside. He began twisting his captive’s imprisoned left arm. Hermogenes bent over double, trying to escape the pain, but kept hold of the other’s wrist, struggling madly to keep the knife away from his throat. Ajax began shaking him by the twisted arm. Hermogenes craned his neck and managed to bite the other’s knife hand. Ajax swore and threw him forward violently; he tried to catch himself as he fell, but the gladiator was instantly on top of him again, kneeling on his back and buffeting him about the head, cursing him.

  The blows stopped suddenly in a whirl of white linen, and Ajax flung himself off and into a roll. Hermogenes got his right elbow underneath himself—the left one didn’t seem to be working—and tried to sit up. The white linen cloak was half on top of him, half trailing in the gutter, and Maerica was standing over him, a knife in her left hand. Its blade was red, and she had her right arm pressed against her side. The right side of her tunic was covered with blood.

  “Cantabra,” said Ajax, getting to his feet. “I knew we’d end up fighting.”

  “Go away,” she ordered. She was out of breath and her voice was rough with pain.

  “Can’t,” he said, grinning. “The boss wants your boyfriend. He’s worth more alive, but I suppose now I’ll have to kill him.” He edged round to the right, trying to get on her injured side.

  “Whatever Pollio is paying,” Hermogenes panted, “I’ll double, if you go away.”

  No one paid any attention. Ajax continued to edge to the right, and Maerica turned, keeping her face toward him. Hermogenes picked up the discarded cloak and looked about for something to use as a weapon.

  Ajax attacked in a sudden, flowing dash, not to the right but to the left, strength to strength, knife hand whipping up and across, free hand splayed. There was a slithering squeal of knife on knife; Maerica grunted in pain. The retiarius flowed backward again—until Hermogenes whipped the cloak around his legs, and he tripped.

  Maerica moved while the other was still falling, stepping
forward with that savage deliberation she had used in the Subura. She did not bend over or use her knife: instead she kicked, not at the groin, for once, but at the ribs. Ajax gasped as the breath was knocked out of him. He rolled away, but Maerica went after him, faster now, kicking again, and again, and again, keeping him on the defensive and giving him no chance to regain his feet. He rolled into the side of a building and tried to get to his knees, and she aimed a high, smashing kick at his head. He fell, and she slammed a heel down into his face. He jerked, screaming, his back arching with pain, both hands flying instinctively to his eyes. She paused a moment, then dropped to her knees beside him and cut his throat.

  Hermogenes staggered to his feet and stumbled over to her. She looked up at him, her face white under the fiery hair, her eyes scarcely human. Her right elbow was still pressed against her side, and the patch of blood had dyed half her tunic red. “Maerica!” he whispered, dropping to his knees beside her. “You’re hurt, you’re hurt!”

  The inhuman look went out of her eyes. She let go of the knife, turned away from her opponent’s body, and folded forward into his arms.

  “My darling girl!” he said, not sure now even what language he was speaking. “You’re hurt … let me see.…” He pulled her over onto a clear space of pavement, pulled off his Scythopolitan linen cloak and put it under her head, and moved her right arm, trying to see the wound. There was too much blood. He looked around desperately, saw the knife she’d used to kill Ajax, and went to pick it up.

  “Are you Marcus Aelius Hermogenes?” asked a new voice. He looked up dazedly and saw a party of soldiers in strip armor standing squarely in the road that led to the bank.

  “Yes. My concubine is hurt,” he said, and went back to her. She seemed now to be only half-conscious, but her eyes fastened on him. “I have to stop the bleeding. Help me.”

  “You’re under arrest,” said the soldier.

  He ignored the man. He needed bandages. There was the other cloak. He went to fetch it—and found one of the soldiers grabbing his arm.

  “You must come with us,” said the soldier, frowning as he took away the knife.

  “My concubine is hurt,” he said incredulously. “She’s bleeding badly. She needs help.”

  The soldier gave her a contemptuous glance. “We don’t have any orders about the whore.”

  Hermogenes hit him.

  It was a bad mistake, and he cursed himself for it afterward. The soldier hit him back, and so did the soldier’s friends. They kicked his feet out from under him, forced him down onto the pavement, and tied his hands behind his back. Then they hauled him back to his feet and told him to march. He screamed at them to see to Maerica, and they slapped him. He tried to break free, and something struck the side of his head, hard. Everything went dark.

  He came halfway back to his senses to find himself being carried down a street. His head hurt abominably and he felt very sick. He retched feebly, and his captors unceremoniously dumped him onto the pavement and stood around him while he vomited into the gutter. His arms were still bound, and his left shoulder ached fiercely, so that the spasms were agony. When he’d finished, they hauled him to his feet and forced him onward, holding him by the arms and half dragging him to a stumbling walk. He felt too faint and ill even to notice where he was. They went up some steps into a building and stopped; he promptly lay down and curled up. He was aware of people talking angrily above his head, but he could not summon the concentration to understand them. At one point someone asked him if he was Marcus Aelius Hermogenes, the Alexandrian, and he said yes.

  After a little while, two men hauled him back to his feet and dragged him along a corridor and down a staircase. It was dark, cool after the sunny June day outside. Someone unlocked a door, and the men who had hold of him pulled him through and put him down on the floor. He lay there, watching dazedly as they went out again and locked the door behind them.

  At once the room became even darker. The floor was cold. He suddenly remembered Maerica lying on the Vicus Tuscus, her tunic red with blood, her dazed, half-conscious eyes focusing on him. He tried to get up, but this caused a wave of so much pain and dizziness that he had to lie still again. He felt cautiously at his head where it hurt, and discovered a wet and sticky lump on his skull just above his right ear. He realized that at some point someone must have untied his hands, and he felt pleased with himself for understanding so much. Moving very carefully, he looked around himself. He was alone in a small, dimly lit room, lying on a rough stone floor. The only light came through a barred window in the room’s single door, and it was faint and gray.

  He tried to get up again, more cautiously this time, and made it to his feet. He staggered to the door and beat on it feebly. Nothing happened. He searched for a handle: there wasn’t one. He tried to shout, but the effort hurt his head, and he clung to the edge of the window, feeling sick and giddy.

  He was in a prison, he realized: he’d been arrested and taken to a prison. Where was Maerica? Had they just left her lying in the street?

  He began to curse them, then cursed himself. How stupid, how criminally stupid, to have hit a Roman soldier! He should have offered the guardsmen money, immortal gods! If he’d said, “A hundred denarii to the man who helps her!” they would’ve fallen over themselves to see to her wound, but no, he hadn’t had the presence of mind, he’d struck out with his fists, and they’d clubbed him and left her lying in the street to bleed to death.

  He thought of her dying alone on the streets of Rome. He slid down the door and began to weep. The grief began like a tiny hole in his soul, then suddenly swelled so that he felt he couldn’t endure it, and he howled with it, despite the pain in his head.

  The light from the window in the door suddenly dimmed, and a voice demanded, “What’s the matter with you?”

  He struggled to swallow another howl of anguish. He could not afford to be stupid again. He didn’t know how long it had taken for them to bring him here, or how long it took a woman to bleed to death: it might be that he could still correct his mistake. “Please,” he gasped, getting up on his knees again. “My concubine was hurt, and she needs help, urgently. I am a rich man, I will pay a hundred denarii to anyone who goes to help her.”

  There was a silence, and then the voice at the door asked, “What concubine?”

  “Her name’s Maerica. She was with me when I was arrested. I’m sorry I hit the soldier, I only wanted to help her. She’s hurt, she was bleeding, and they left her lying there. I have money; I will pay anyone who helps her. Please. It’s urgent.”

  “Nothing to do with me,” said the voice.

  “No, please!” Hermogenes pushed himself back onto his feet and found himself looking out the barred window at a stubbled, hawk-nosed face in a helmet. “Please, if you send someone to help her, I will pay you, too! I am a rich man, I can afford it. They left her on the Vicus Tuscus, near the Bank of Gabinius. She was hurt, I only wanted to bandage her wound, otherwise I would have come when they asked me, and I wouldn’t have hit anyone!”

  “You’re saying the praetorian guards wounded your concubine?” demanded the jailer indignantly.

  “No, no, no!” he protested, struggling to keep control of himself and not make another criminal mistake. “Not the praetorians. It was Pollio’s men. We were attacked by Pollio’s men before the guard arrived. Please, won’t you send someone to help her? She is a good and noble woman, she doesn’t deserve to die like that! I will pay anything you like!”

  “I don’t know anything about this,” said the guard warily.

  “Please. I’m not asking that you leave your post, only that you report the matter to your superior. Urgently. Statilius Taurus knows my concubine, he wouldn’t want her to bleed to death. He promised to reward me for saving his life—”

  “I don’t know anything about this!”

  “Yes, yes, I know! But we had an arrangement which went wrong, and he would be very displeased to know that she was hurt, and nobody helped her. Plea
se, please, just ask your superior! Tell him I am willing to pay a great deal of money if it keeps my concubine alive. Surely it’s not against the rules for you to speak to your superior, and ask him to send a doctor to the Vicus Tuscus?”

  “You say you have money?”

  He leaned against the door, breathing hard. “I can get it. I have letters of credit to the bank—had them, my concubine had them. Has them. I have a friend in Rome, too, Titus Fiducius Crispus, a wealthy businessman: he would lend me money if I asked it. I can get money. I am a rich man.”

  “Well,” said the guard, after a moment’s thought, “I’ll ask.”

  He went away. Hermogenes slumped down to the floor. His head hurt, and his left shoulder hurt, and his right knee, and he felt sick. He thought of Maerica lying on the paving stones, of the dazed way her blue eyes had fixed upon him. Oh, my darling, he thought wretchedly, I am so sorry I wasn’t wiser!

  He woke, shivering, and realized that he’d slept. He needed to use the latrine. He pulled himself to his knees and thumped on the door, then called a few times weakly. Presently there was a sound of footsteps, and he dragged himself to his feet and found another helmeted face in the window. It was a different face from last time.

  “What’s the matter?” demanded the guard.

  “I need the latrine,” he faltered.

  “Bucket in the corner,” said the guard, and turned away.