The Gods Help Those

by Albert A. Bell

  A dozen servants filed past us. Then came Regulus himself, in a large litter borne by eight Nubian behemoths, clad only in loincloths and wearing silver collars and bracelets on their wrists and ankles, instead of the iron ones that slaves usually wear. They were followed by another dozen as a rear guard. Regulus never misses a chance to show off his wealth—and his lack of taste. His slaves dress more fancily than most people in Rome below the noble class.

  The Nubians’ overseer walked just in front of them, directing them with a short staff, since Regulus had had their eardrums punctured to deafen them and insure his privacy. The four in front had the poles supporting the litter on their shoulders while the four in back had their arms straight down to keep the poles just above their knees. Even with that arrangement, the litter tilted forward. The poor fellows were having great difficulty with the weight of their burden—both the litter and its occupant—and the slippery road leading down the hill.

  Someone inside the litter gave the order to halt. The overseer’s staff went straight down, bringing the litter to a stop. Regulus poked his head out of the curtains on the side closer to me and my little entourage, huddled up against the wall of a house. His dyed, thinning hair was slicked down with a perfumed unguent that I could smell even over the stench of the garbage and waste in the street, which smells so much worse when it’s wet. I’d been fortunate enough not to have seen him in a while, and his round face seemed puffier than I remembered, his eyes even beadier.

  “Well, neighbor Pliny,” he chortled, “what brings you out on a day like this?”

  “Business at one of my warehouses on the river.” I didn’t ask where he was going because I didn’t care and didn’t want to prolong the conversation.

  “I’m on my way down to the river as well,” Regulus said. “Perhaps I’ll see you there.” A woman’s bare arm and hand emerged from inside the litter and played with one of Regulus’ ears. “You know, Gaius Pliny,” Regulus said, “you really should follow your uncle’s example and use a litter.” As he kissed the woman’s hand and drew his head back inside the curtain, he gave me one of his oiliest smiles. “Well, have a pleasant walk.”

  On a day like this I could almost agree with Regulus. My uncle—and adoptive father—had always had himself carried in a litter instead of walking. He was a heavy man, as is Regulus, and had difficulty breathing. He made good use of his travel time by having a scribe read to him or take notes as my uncle dictated. Regulus finds other ways to pass the time. Like Livia and me, he and his wife, Sempronia, have a marriage in name only, but Sempronia flaunts her affairs as brazenly as Regulus does his. To her credit, Sempronia has given him a son, and it almost certainly is his, since Sempronia prefers the company of other women and the child already has a reputation as a despicable brat. Sempronia, at least, is a striking woman and, I’m sure, capable of arousing any partner. I wish I could say as much for Livia, on either count.

  “It would be a shame if his bearers slipped,” Aurora said as we resumed walking.

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Tacitus said. “And you know it. The sight of Regulus tumbling down the hill—just imagining it makes me want to laugh.”

  Aurora looked him right in the eye. “I was thinking of his servants, my lord. They might be injured, and I’m sure they would be severely punished for something that was no fault of theirs. By the gods, those poor Nubians have already been mutilated.”

  “Yes, of course, you’re right.” Tacitus bowed his head slightly. “Regulus’ treatment of his servants borders on the barbaric.”

  “He crossed that boundary a long time ago, my lord. Just ask Gaius Pliny’s friend Lorcis.” The audacity that Aurora has cultivated with me now extends to Tacitus.

  All Tacitus could do was nod. He knew the story of the former slave of Regulus, a flute player, who had suffered abuse at his hands and those of his wife. She and a previous owner had been my uncle’s guests at Misenum when Vesuvius erupted. In return for her bravery on that occasion I had been able to play a small part in helping her gain her freedom and enjoy a better life on a small farm north of Rome.

  We fell silent, concentrating on placing our feet securely on the slippery stones. The Esquiline isn’t a particularly steep hill, but the rain had turned the ever-present muck in the street into a perilous, stinking slime.

  “I think I’ll just throw these sandals away when I get home,” Tacitus muttered, “and I’m not sure my feet will ever really be clean again.” He groused a bit more, then let out a loud oath as his feet went out from under him and he slid several paces. Aurora and I helped him up, barely keeping our own balance against his weight.

  “Damn!” he said. “Now I’ll have to throw away this tunic as well.”

  “But you were right, my lord,” Aurora said. “It was funny.”

  When we reached the site of my warehouse I was disappointed to see Regulus’ litter sitting in the street behind the building next to mine, or the ruins of mine, to be precise. My warehouse shared a wall with that building on one side. I’d had no idea it belonged to him. On the other side a narrow alley ran between my building and the next one, giving access to the Tiber. The centurion would not let us go around to what had been the front of my building.

  “It’s too dangerous, sir,” he said. “The water’s still washing away the ground. Your dock and about half the building have fallen into the river.” His size and the scar across his chin made it unlikely that anyone would argue with him.

  So there would be no chance of rebuilding on this site. The Tiber had washed away one hundred and fifty thousand sesterces along with the lives of six people.

  “Where did you find the people who were in there?”

  He pointed to the door opening off the street. “They were in the rear, just inside this door, sir.”

  “Were they all men?”

  “Four men and two women, sir.”

  “Were there any children with them?” Aurora asked. It was a question I would never have thought to raise.

  The captain eyed her, obviously uncertain how to address her. Her simple dress and hairstyle and her lack of jewelry marked her as of the lower class, but he couldn’t figure why she was out with me and standing so close to me. Finally he erred on the side of caution and said, “None that we’ve found…my lady.”

  “Where are the bodies now?” I asked.

  “Right where we found them, sir. We checked to see if any of them were still alive, then we sent for you right away. I didn’t know if you knew they were here.”

  “I certainly did not. I assume they’re just homeless wretches trying to get out of the rain.”

  “I would have thought that about five of them, sir, and wouldn’t have bothered you, but the other one is wearing an equestrian stripe on his tunic, just like yours.”

  II

  The empty warehouse had measured thirty paces in length and twenty across before the river began gnawing away at it. Normally it stood above the river by the height of a man; today the distance was about half of that. One side of the building was occupied by shelves and bins for storage of goods that needed to be up off the ground, even though the floor was paved with tufa stones. The other side was bare, to allow for storage of oversized items or goods that could be safely stacked. The dock, now on its way downriver, had been large enough to accommodate two ships at a time.

  “What a disaster!” Tacitus said as we stepped through the rear door. Beams lay across one another amid stones from the walls that had been pulled down by the beams.

  “My examination of the bodies is going to have to be cursory,” I said, as the building creaked around us and the rain splattered us where the roof was gone.

  “Why do you have to examine them at all?” Tacitus asked, and the centurion added his voice, urging me to get out.

  “I need some sense of what happened and who these people were, in case I might ultimately face some liability for their deaths.” I also knew what the guards were going to do with the bodies as soon as I would
let them.

  “We can be done more quickly,” I said to Tacitus and Aurora, “if you’ll help me. Look for anything that might tell us who they are or where they came from.”

  The centurion and his men had removed the beams that had fallen and killed the victims. Three men and two women were huddled together. I thought four of them were in their twenties, around my age. One man appeared to be older, perhaps approaching thirty. Except for one of the women, they appeared to be in reasonably good health. Their teeth were present and solid. They had had enough to eat. Their clothing was adequate and not patched or frayed. I would have guessed that they were a local family of shopkeepers, except that the three men and one woman had an Eastern look to them, while the other woman gave every indication of being Roman or Greek.

  One man had his arms around one of the women. “Could they be husband and wife?” Aurora asked.

  “Or lovers,” I said. “Have you seen any sign of slave bracelets or manacles?”

  Neither Tacitus nor Aurora had seen anything of that sort, nor did the victims’ hands show signs of hard labor, though they were somewhat discolored.

  “They might have worked with dyes,” Tacitus suggested.

  “This man has a long scar on one arm,” Aurora said, holding the limb up for me to see. “A knife wound, I think, and poorly healed.”

  The centurion stepped forward, his face betraying even more puzzlement now at Aurora’s role. “Sir, may my men and I be of any help?”

  I waved him back. “My friends and I know what to look for. You and your men would just confuse things.” In the last few years I’ve had occasion to investigate several scenes where crimes have been committed, so I know that the more people who trample on the area, the less information I can glean, and a half dozen or so of the vigiles had already been in here.

  While Tacitus and Aurora continued to examine the other five, I turned my attention to the man with the stripe on his tunic. He was apart from the rest, half-sitting close to the wall. The injuries on his face and head from the collapse of the building did not appear as severe as the other five. In fact, there was no blood around the injuries. The most peculiar thing was that his lips had been sewn together and his bloated mouth seemed to be filled with something hard. Almost as strange was the fact that the stripe on his tunic had been slashed so that it hung in ribbons.

  I tried to move him to lay him down and found that his body was not rigid. He had been dead long enough for the death stiffness to pass. He fell over on his stomach. My attention immediately went to a large bloody spot on the back of his tunic.

  “Look at this.” I motioned for Tacitus and Aurora to join me. We raised the tunic above his waist. Aurora has long since lost the squeamishness most women would display at the sight.

  “He’s been stabbed,” she said. “Twice, from the look of it, and they’re not fresh wounds.”

  “His body is no longer stiff,” I said. “He’s been dead longer than any of the rest of them.” In his copious unpublished notebooks my uncle had recorded his observations about what happens to bodies after death. Based on what he learned from dead slaves and dead soldiers under his command, he concluded that after a few hours the body begins to stiffen. After a day or so it relaxes again. “Unlike the others, he was dead before the building collapsed. That’s why there’s no blood where the beams hit him.”

  Tacitus wrinkled his nose. “You mean the rest of them sat here with a dead man in front of them?”

  “Possibly, for a day or more.”

  “Do you think one of them killed him?” He looked over his shoulder at the rest of the bodies.

  “At this point I can’t answer that.”

  Aurora shook her head. “It’s possible that they ducked in here and found him like this.”

  “If you came in here and saw him,” Tacitus said, “would you stay?”

  “It might depend on how desperate I was to find some shelter,” I said. “And they could have come in here just before the building collapsed. Think how dark it must have been. They might not even have noticed him.”

  “Their clothing and hair aren’t wet,” Aurora said. “They’ve been in here for a while, at least as long as that man has been dead.”

  I glanced at her with admiration at her deductive skills. “I certainly can’t dispute that possibility. Did either of you see a knife?” They both indicated that they hadn’t. “I wish we had the time to do a thorough search.”

  The building creaked again. “Sirs,” the centurion said, “we’ve got to get on with our business so we can get out of here.”

  “Well, go then,” Tacitus said. “We’ll be out in a moment.”

  “He’s going to throw the bodies into the Tiber,” I said to Aurora. I turned to the centurion. “Isn’t that what you’ve been ordered to do?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s the only way to keep down decay from rotting corpses. That could spread disease, you know. And the rats would have a feast, and then there would be more of them.” He looked apologetic. “We’ve no way to burn them in all this rain.”

  “But Ostia is downstream,” Aurora said.

  “Then they’ll be Ostia’s problem, not ours, won’t they, my lady? The river’s high enough and the current’s strong enough that they should just wash on out to sea.”

  “Unless they get caught on something,” Aurora said.

  “My lady, I’ve got my orders. All I can do is follow them.” The centurion motioned for his men to remove the bodies.

  The Tiber has long been the disposal method for masses of dead bodies in Rome. When Tiberius put down Sejanus’ conspiracy, Sejanus and over three hundred of his followers were executed and dumped into the river. But I needed to know what had happened to the man with the stripe on his tunic and his lips sewn shut. I stood in front of him. “I want this man taken back to my house.”

  “Then your fellas will have to carry him, sir. I can’t spare any men.”

  The centurion supervised as his men picked up the first two bodies—the man and woman who were embracing—and carried them to the edge of the river, the new edge which the current was still scooping out. “Careful, lads,” the centurion said. “The ground’s none too steady here.”

  They returned to pick up another man and the other woman. As they touched her, the woman’s arm moved.

  “Wait!” I cried. “She’s alive.”

  “Well, barely,” the centurion said.

  “She is alive. Put her back by the door. I’ll take her to my house.”

  The centurion turned to his men grudgingly. “You heard his lordship.”

  The woman turned her head slightly. “Look there,” I said. “She is definitely alive.”

  “I doubt she will be by the time you get her home,” the centurion said. “Do you have enough men to carry two bodies?”

  That was what I was considering, but I couldn’t see any alternative. I needed to examine the body of the dead man to see if I could determine who he was. If the woman could be revived enough to talk, she might help me understand what had happened in my warehouse.

  I was watching two of my servants remove the man with the stripe when I realized I had lost sight of Aurora. Looking around, I saw her working her way through fallen beams and debris toward the front of the building.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” I called. “Get back here.”

  She looked at me over her shoulder. “Don’t you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” All I could hear was the rushing of the river and the pelting of the rain.

  “A sound,” she said. “A little cry.”

  “Probably just some trapped animal,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “But I heard—” She dropped to her knees and crawled a little farther, wriggling under a beam. Lifting a few blankets that were lying in a pile, she looked under them. “My lord, it’s a baby! I can almost reach him.”

  The building made ominous noises and another beam crashed to the floor.

  “Get back
here, now!” I called to her.

  “But it’s a baby. We can’t leave him.” The upper half of her body disappeared under the blankets. When she re-emerged and stood up, she was cradling a naked infant in her arms.

  “Get out of there!” I yelled. The centurion gestured vehemently.

  Aurora had taken two steps toward me when the ground was washed out from under her and, like a performer in the arena dropping through a trapdoor in the floor of the amphitheatre, she and the baby plunged into the Tiber.

  “Grab a rope!” I yelled at Tacitus as I scrambled over fallen beams and stones from the collapsing walls. I scraped my leg—badly, I suspected—but I couldn’t worry about it. “Go to the warehouse next door, downstream.”

  “What are you—”

  I didn’t hear the rest of what he said as I shed my cloak and jumped into the river, feet first. Aurora and I used to swim together when we were children—nude until we were nine, then in our tunics, at our mothers’ insistence. We learned that dropping straight down into the water can trap a bubble of air under the tunic and help a person stay afloat for a few moments. We used to make a game of it, but never in a current like this.

  Shaking my head to get the water out of my eyes, I saw Aurora a short distance ahead of me, clinging to something that had gotten lodged against the bank of the river. The current carried me to her. The body of the woman whom the guards had thrown into the river had struck a beam that fell into the water. Aurora was clinging to the corpse and trying to keep the baby’s head above the water. I clutched the beam beside them with one arm and held Aurora with the other. “You’re going to be all right,” I assured her.

  Given the strength of the current, I wasn’t nearly as confident as I tried to sound.

  “Gaius Pliny!” Tacitus called from above us. I saw his face peering over the edge of the riverbank. “Where are you?”

  I yelled and let go of Aurora long enough to wave. Tacitus spotted me and lowered the rope. But the current caught it and drew it away from me. “Try again! Drop it farther upstream and closer to the bank!”