Render Unto Caesar

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “And did you want to protect him?”

  She shrugged. “Mostly I wanted to protect you. But yes. I did.”

  He thought of the enmity to Rome she had shown so clearly right from the start: I knew you were not Roman, and I knew your enemies were. He thought of his dream in the Mamertine Prison. “Why?” he asked quietly.

  She was silent, then said slowly, “When Statilius Taurus commanded the enemy, he was fierce and brutal, but so were many of our own people. He was also brave and honorable, and we respected him. He was replaced, though. First we fought against the emperor and Marcus Agrippa, and then, when they had defeated us, the peace was given to the charge of a man called Publius Carisius. A butcher, a man who loved only gold. It was only then that we understood that the Romans were not like us at all, that to many of them honor matters not at all.

  “There are worse men than Statilius Taurus. He believes in the right of Romans to rule the world, but he also believes in duty and discipline and fairness. If he had been left in command, and Carisius had stayed in Rome…” She trailed off, then resumed. “For such a long time, I hated all Romans. But that was in my own country, when I met only enemies. Once I was here in Rome, even in the arenas, I met some who were kind to me, some whom I respected, some whom I liked. And Rome rules the world. What will become of the world, if we allow those Romans who are honorable to be murdered by those who are like Rufus and Pollio?”

  “The empire isn’t going to fall,” he suggested, “so our only option is to support those parts of it that make it something we can endure?”

  “Yes,” she agreed, relaxing. “That is how it is.”

  He thought of all that she had suffered, and was moved by a respect bordering on awe that she could say that—that she could move beyond the suffering and hatred and plan for a better future. He kissed her. “We are agreed, then.”

  The doctor bustled up, looking indignant. “They tell me that the general has given orders that you’re both to have a litter over to some place on the Via Tusculana this evening,” he said accusingly.

  “Yes,” agreed Hermogenes. “Is that a problem?”

  “Yes!” declared the young man, drawing himself up. “Your, um, concubine took a serious wound, and has lost a great deal of blood. I have stitched the cut, but it has barely begun to knit. I would strongly advise against moving her for another two days at the very least.”

  “Thank you,” Hermogenes replied at once. “We will take no risks with my concubine’s life, and she will not leave here until you say it is safe for her to travel.”

  “Huh!” said Maerica in contempt, while the doctor blinked in surprise at the ease of his victory.

  “I myself,” Hermogenes went on, “have several important errands to run tomorrow. Would the hospital be able to find me a sedan chair in the morning?”

  Maerica pressed his hand.

  “Certainly!” agreed the doctor. “You mean to stay with her tonight, then? Very wise: your own head injury needs watching. I will tell the orderlies to make up a bed for you at this end of the ward. Um. Though I do think it’s good that you stay here a little longer, we don’t actually have any orders about it, so can I ask if you can, um…”

  “One of my errands will be to the bank,” Hermogenes told him. “I am happy to pay.”

  In the morning he reclaimed his own tunic, which an orderly had washed, collected his letters of credit, and limped out to the sedan chair. The bearers—two burly local men who’d been hauled off the street by the praetorian guard, and who obviously expected that they would receive no payment for their work—greeted him with scowls, and carried him into the city in sullen silence. It turned out to be a couple of miles.

  He went to the bank first. When he announced himself to the clerk at the counting table, the man dropped his pen and stared in horror.

  “Do not concern yourself,” he said sourly. “The praetorians arrested me the day before yesterday, and neither they nor Publius Vedius Pollio is interested in me today.”

  The clerk stammered, blinked, and went off to consult his superior. The superior appeared wreathed in smiles, and kept Hermogenes waiting for a long time while—he was quite certain—someone ran down to the prefecture to check that nobody was still interested. Eventually, however, the letters of credit were accepted, and he withdrew spending money to the amount of fifty denarii, which was as much as he could fit in his purse. He advised the bank that he would want more in a few days.

  It felt wonderful to have money in his purse again. It was the power to reward, to induce, to provide, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it. Even though he knew very well that he still looked a disreputable wreck, it made him feel rich and respectable again, and he paid the hospital’s chair bearers and tipped them generously as soon as he came out. The men at once became all smiles, and when he dismissed them, protested that they were happy to carry him about for the rest of the day. He refused them politely, with thanks. It still seemed better to ensure that no official could question them and know where he went next.

  The basement of the Temple of Mercury was locked, but an inquiry at the main temple produced the young priest, who greeted Hermogenes with relief, mingled with anxiety about the accusation of theft, and horror at all the bandages and bruises. Hermogenes assured him that there was no cause for concern—indeed, he had had a quarrel with the notorious Vedius Pollio, but the prefect of the city had intervened, and now the matter was resolved. So was the disagreement with Tarius Rufus, and he hoped to be able to call his business in Rome successfully complete within a few days.

  “So you want to take back that letter?” asked the priest, with relief.

  “I am almost entirely certain that I will want to take it back,” he replied, “but … I don’t know, I have a certain superstitious fear that if I do so before the business is safely into harbor, something will go wrong. Could I leave it with you for just ten more days?”

  The priest was not entirely happy with this, but he agreed. Hermogenes soothed him with a gift of money to buy incense, and accompanied him down to the basement to offer it, together with a prayer of thanks.

  He’d made the suggestion largely to pacify the religious young man, but in the shrine itself he found his heart suddenly swelling with gratitude—not so much to the goddess in her curtained-off alcove as to Fate, or the world, or the mysterious god of the philosophers—and yet Isis seemed as good a focus for the emotion as anything. Against all the odds, he had survived the fight. More than that, he’d won. The triumph he hadn’t felt the day before suddenly ran into his heart like water into a dry irrigation ditch at the flooding of the Nile. He’d survived; he’d won; he’d found a woman whom he loved! “‘I broke down the government of tyrants,’” sang the priest, raising his voice fervently in the familiar chant of Isis.

  “I made an end to murders.

  I made the Right stronger than gold and silver.

  I ordained that the Truth should be thought good.”

  Hermogenes found that he could not sing. He choked on the words, struggling with himself, then sat down and wept.

  The priest finished the hymn and smiled at his congregation of one. “Great is the goddess,” he said warmly.

  “Great is Isis,” Hermogenes agreed weakly.

  * * *

  After that, there was nothing else to do but head back up the Via Tusculana to the house of Titus Fiducius Crispus. Hermogenes walked the last few blocks slowly. It was late in the morning now, and the day was hot. His head ached, and his knee, even his ankle was becoming sore again. As he approached the house, he increasingly felt that he wanted to turn around, go off to some inn or bathhouse, and rest for a while before going back to the hospital.

  He stopped outside the door, trying to reason with himself. He had behaved badly on his last visit, true. He had brought all sorts of trouble down on the household, true—twenty of Pollio’s thugs, from what the prefect had said, with threats of fire and violence, on top of all the upheaval f
rom Rufus and his barbarians. There was every reason to believe, though, that the household would welcome him with relief, that Titus would exclaim “My dear Hermogenes!” and clasp his hand, that Menestor would be overjoyed.…

  Dealing with Menestor would be awkward, true. That wasn’t the reason, though, that he was standing here in the street in the hot sun staring at the door, unwilling to knock. No: for a handful of days he had been free, unconstrained by dignity, nobody’s master, and he had liked it. Despite the danger and the hardship, despite even the fleas, he had liked it.

  More than that, he had changed. He remembered Maerica’s dream of the mountain. He felt now that all his life he had been pretending that there was no pinnacle of rock in his heart, that the pleasant slopes were all there was to him—that he was, as Titus had put it, Philemon’s faultless son, who respected his father and always managed his business wisely and never got into any trouble. He knew differently now. He doubted whether the sheer cliffs he had discovered inside himself were creditable, but he could no longer pretend that they weren’t there, and to take that knowledge back into his old life—it would be hard.

  What, then? Go off on his own with Maerica, be nobody’s master, a wild, undignified … financier?

  He had to smile at the thought. The only trade he knew was the one he’d been brought up with, and he liked it. He liked what money could do—the way it allowed things to happen: timber cut, ships built, towns raised on the edges of desert, cities thriving on an exchange of coin. He liked the thrill of making judgments—this risk is worth taking; that one is not—liked the sharp edge of dealing with the people. No, he had a business to go back to.

  And a house, and a daughter. He would just have to accept becoming dignified and pleasant again. He knocked on the door.

  Kyon opened the window in the lodge, yelled, and shut it again. A moment later the bolt slid back, and the doorkeeper rushed out into the street. “Oh, sir!” he cried, grabbing Hermogenes’ hand. “Sir! You’re safe!”

  “Yes,” Hermogenes told him with a smile. “And I think it is over now, Kyon. I know I said that before, but I think this time it’s true. May I come in?”

  It happened very much as he’d imagined it: Titus did indeed exclaim “My dear Hermogenes!” and Menestor wept for joy. He smiled, thanked them, apologized, accepted a cup of watered wine and one of the red-upholstered couches. He provided a simplified explanation of what had happened, and passed on Taurus’s strictures about gossip. He spoke in Greek, so as to avoid spreading the information around the household.

  “And you think this time he’ll pay and that will be the end of it?” Titus asked anxiously.

  Hermogenes remembered Rufus weeping into his hands. “Yes,” he agreed. “I think this time he’ll pay—though I count on nothing until I get the money.”

  “Well, I thank all the gods!” the Roman exclaimed, with feeling. “This business has been … oh, I would say it’s been dreadful, but then some of it has been the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me.” He beamed at Menestor, who looked down modestly.

  Then he frowned, “And when you’ve got the money, you’ll go back to Alexandria?”

  “As soon as Maerica’s well enough to travel.”

  Titus cast another anxious look at Menestor, but the boy was frowning at Hermogenes. “Maerica?” he repeated. She had not featured much in the explanation, which had dealt almost exclusively with the Romans.

  “Cantabra,” Hermogenes informed him. “It’s her real name. One thing I didn’t mention was that some of Pollio’s men tried to kill me, and she was wounded defending me. She’s in the military hospital at the Colina Gate now, and I’m going back there to stay with her tonight, but I’ll bring her here as soon as the doctor says it’s safe for her to come.”

  “I’m, um, glad she’s served you so well,” Titus said politely. “Um—what about when you leave for Alexandria? About the woman, I mean.”

  “She’ll come with me,” Hermogenes said firmly. “As my concubine.”

  Menestor flushed red and gave him a wounded look. Titus just looked horrified. “That creature?” he asked. “That creature and you? But she’s … she’s…”

  “Titus, I beg you, do not say it!”

  Titus stopped, blinking.

  “Please do not criticize her,” Hermogenes told him, “or try to tell me that she is only after my money. It isn’t true, and if you say it I will become angry—and I don’t want to become angry with you, not after all your generosity, and the courage and resolution with which you’ve supported me. I am deeply in love with this woman, Titus, quite apart from the fact that she has saved my life three times. When I thought she was dead, I felt as though my soul was running out of me. Please, not a word against her!”

  Titus opened his mouth, closed it, then spread his hands helplessly. “Well, then,” he said. “Well, then.”

  Menestor got up and left the room.

  Titus watched him leave, then turned back to Hermogenes, suddenly hopeful. “Maybe he’ll want to stay here now!” he exclaimed breathlessly.

  “It’s possible,” Hermogenes agreed, not knowing whether to be amused or dismayed.

  “Oh, I pray he does! He is such a wonderful young man—sensitive, intelligent, honest, beautiful … oh, gods, how I love him! I don’t understand how you can not love him. He adores you.”

  Hermogenes shrugged. “Titus, when you were growing up, people must have tried to interest you in girls. You’ve complained that they still press you to find a wife. You’ve never married, despite all they could say, because you don’t like women. Well, I’m afraid I don’t like boys—not that way, anyway.”

  “Poor Menestor,” said Titus, but he did not look sorry. He cleared his throat. “If … if Menestor does decide that he doesn’t want to return to Alexandria, you’ll need a valet, won’t you?”

  “I suppose I could manage without,” Hermogenes replied warily.

  “No, no, you couldn’t do that, a gentleman of your quality! What I’m trying to say is, my last boy … well, it’s difficult for him here now, and he seems to admire you, so if you wanted him…”

  “You’re offering to sell me Hyakinthos?”

  “Give him to you, if you want him.”

  He looked at Titus’s anxious face, and again felt torn between amusement and contempt. It was clear enough that Titus was the one who found it difficult to have his previous lover underfoot—and perhaps he felt that if Hyakinthos went, it became even less likely that Menestor would.

  Then he suddenly wondered if he wasn’t being unfair again. Perhaps this eagerness to send Hyakinthos away was meant primarily as a message for Menestor: I want no one but you. Perhaps it was meant for Hyakinthos: I am sorry I hurt you; I will give you to the master you prefer. Perhaps it was even meant for Hermogenes himself: I am going to try now to notice when my people are unhappy, and do something about it.

  “I would be ashamed to allow you to give him to me, after all your generosity,” he said. “But I might well buy him from you. He’s a good boy, and it would be useful to have a slave who can speak Latin. Let me speak to him about it first. It’s a long way to Alexandria, and I don’t want to take him if it’s going to make him desperately unhappy.”

  “No, of course not,” said Titus hastily.

  There was a moment of uncertain silence, and then Titus said, “I was very surprised to see you turn up without even a cloak.”

  “My good one was stolen by the praetorian guards,” Hermogenes replied.

  “No!”

  “Yes. I mentioned it to Taurus—”

  “You did what?” exclaimed Titus, aghast.

  “They’re his men. If they’re stealing, he ought to know about it. However, I’m not sure I really even want that cloak back. Every time I’ve worn it of late somebody’s hit me or threatened me or tried to kill me. Maybe it’s superstition, maybe it’s just bad memories, but I don’t think I’d want to wear the thing again even if I did get it back. I’ll buy a new
one.” He shrugged, smiling. “After all, I should have half a million sestertii to spend, and Nikomachos’s debts won’t take more than a third of it, now that his creditors have eaten his estate and had a few bites of mine.”

  “Oh, my dear friend!” exclaimed Titus, laughing. “Don’t tell that to the syndicates, or you’ll be mobbed!”

  “We will have to consider some investments together before I go,” Hermogenes said, smiling. “We haven’t done any business with each other this trip, and I would like to have more dealings with you, if you can still endure me.”

  Titus went pink. “I … would like to have more dealings with you. I’ve always admired you so much. Your father as well, of course, but … I always felt he planned how to create an effect, while you hardly even seem to notice it. When you were in school, you must have been the boy who wins all the prizes, the one who’s effortlessly good at everything. When you come into a room, suddenly everyone’s paying attention; when you’re in a syndicate, you’re the one everyone listens to. I’ve never been … that is, at school I was the fat boy everyone made fun of, and now I’m a silly fat man, and everyone thinks I’m a fool.…”

  “I don’t,” said Hermogenes, touched. “You’ve always been a shrewd businessman and a sensible one. You do yourself an injustice, Titus.”

  Titus smiled. “I told Stentor what you said,” he confided. “That my household really wants to please me, but I don’t let them know how to do it. He agreed with you. He was very enthusiastic, in fact.”

  “He is devoted to you,” Hermogenes told him.

  Titus nodded. “Maybe you’re right,” he murmured. “Maybe people would choose to like me more often, if I gave them the choice.” He looked at Hermogenes, more confidently now. “Did I hear you say you plan to go back to this military hospital tonight?”

  “Yes. The doctor there advised me that my concubine should not be moved until tomorrow at the earliest, and I don’t like to leave her there alone.”