A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven (9 page)

“Help
dominus
,” I told Hanno. He leapt from his post at the wall, but Crassus shook his head.

“Tend to your master,” he said, winking at me. I hated it when he did that, too. “He looks wet.”

Somehow, within a day, everyone in the
familia
had heard about Hanno and Father Jupiter. It is inexplicable how fast confidential news such as this manages to travel.

Chapter
V

56 BCE   Fall, Rome

Year of the consulship of

Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus

“You used to be skinny,” I said to legionary Drusus Malchus as we walked down the Clivus Victoriae off the Palatine. Malchus was stuffing the remains of a meat pie into his mouth.

His voice was pleasantly irritating, like a stroll over crushed gravel. “You used to be handsome,” he said, “but you don’t hear me casting insults at you, do you?” He licked each of his fingers, one at a time.

“We just did,” said Flavius Betto. Far shorter than either Malchus or myself, legionary Betto took almost two strides to our one to keep his place between us. His pace was additionally hampered by his struggle to keep his short sword hidden behind his cloak.

A third guard, Minucius Valens, dressed like the rest of us in inconspicuous tunic and cloak, prodded Betto from behind. “Move smartly, Betto. The girls are waiting.”

“May I assist you, Flavius?” I asked, trying to be helpful.

“I’ve got it,” he said, yanking his baldric across his shoulder.

“That’s why Betto can’t get laid without reaching for a few coins,” Valens said. “Under the coverlet, his girlfriends keep asking the same thing.” He sang in high-pitched mimicry of an annoyed woman, “‘May I assist you, Flavius.’ He never could figure out where to put it! Maybe you’ll have better luck with your
gladius
, but it looks like the only thing you’ll penetrate with that sword is your scabbard!” Valens, a stocky man no taller than Betto, but thick of arms, chest and wit, thought his jest hilarious.

“You’ve missed your calling, Minucius,” Betto replied calmly. “With the amount of pigeon shit coming out of your mouth, you’d have made a superb
ornatrix
, bleaching the hair of dainty ladies.” Valens stopped laughing, and the rest of us did our best not to start.

“Gentlemen,” I said, looking pointedly at Minucius Valens. “There will be no time for fraternization. We make the delivery to the tribune and return as quickly as possible.”

I did not know Valens well; he had been among Crassus' guards for a year at least, but there were just so many servants in
dominus’
employ, it was impossible to know everyone on a personal level. Not so Drusus Quintilius Malchus and Flavius Salvius Betto. I had known these two estimable characters ever since coming to the house of Crassus.

Malchus’ calm and sage counsel had seen me through many a difficult night in my first frightened and perturbed days in servitude. He poured home-grown cold reason on my overheated despair:  a slave I was, but in Rome, there were slaves, and then there were the slaves of Crassus. I should make offerings, he had said, to whatever gods or goddesses who watched over me that I had washed up on this patrician’s shore. From the look of me when first I was brought to the auction block, I would not have lasted a week had I been sold to one of the big farms, or the mines, or any one of a thousand crueler masters. I was one of the lucky ones, he had said, and I had better learn to be content with my lot.

It was true, Malchus had been lean and lanky in those frantic days, just like me, but after a year living the softer life of a guard at the Crassus residence, the man who had helped acclimate me to my fate had been thoroughly consumed by his consumption. I had never seen anyone so in love with food. Because of his height, he could not be called ‘fat,’ but the man had become
big
. To those that called him ‘friend,’ and there were many, he was known as Malchus the Mighty. But he was gentle and kind, and his calm was almost impossible to penetrate.

Then there was wiry, fretful Betto. He, unlike Malchus, was democratic in pothering
equally over every matter, whether large or small. But he was fierce and loyal, and once, not long after my arrival as a newly-minted slave, he had saved my life. The two friends had joined up with Crassus to help Sulla defeat Marius. They were rarely out of each other’s sight. This, though they were almost constantly in disagreement. Betto was river to Malchus’ riverbed. They gave each other form and direction; one without the other would make the world a little less tolerable.

•••

Romans are always at war with somebody. The one that eventually brought Malchus and Betto into the welcoming arms of Marcus Crassus and my grateful company was known as The War of the Allies. Slaughter, when given a name, sounds so much more palatable, digestible. No bloodstained, breathless participant, I can assure you, ever stopped to consider what sobriquet history might bestow upon the present melee while he was in the thick of it.

This particular conflagration had been smoldering for decades, breaking out just a few years before I was taken from Greece. Most of the Italian states
, who for centuries had been Roman allies, were of the opinion that Rome had begun to cheat them out of their share of the spoils of war. It had. Because of a handful of Roman laws, the Italian states surmised that their land was methodically and legally being taken from the innocent multitude and redistributed to the wealthy and avaricious. It was. And after all they had done to assist in the growth of Rome’s power and influence, the Latin allies felt they were deserving, at long last, of Roman citizenship. They were.

And so, being thus thwarted and abused, after a time they went to war against the teat that had fed them and then been discourteously withdrawn.
They lost. Before the fighting had ended, in an effort to dilute the rebellious Italians’ grievances, the senate passed a law granting citizenship to all former allies who had not raised arms against Rome. This occurred when Malchus and Betto were in their late teens. With more exuberance than forethought, the two friends who had grown up together on the same Perusian street, celebrated by breaking into a wine shop. Consequently, they were ‘encouraged’ by the local garrison to join its ranks. Due to the ongoing rebellion the hurdles of their both being underage and of Betto’s need for thick-soled sandals to meet the height requirement were amiably removed.

Finding that they liked the life of a soldier well enough, they had joined
dominus’
army as it rushed to Sulla’s aid to overthrow the tyrants Marius and Cinna, and had stayed on with him ever since. The only time the two soldiers shed their duty as part of the company that guarded the Crassus household was the year and half they had gone off with him to put down the slave rebellion lead by the gladiator, Spartacus.

There being no other viable option
, and here I use ‘viable’ in the literal sense, i.e. capable of remaining alive, I took Malchus’ advice, and now, almost three decades after my capture, I strolled with my companions past estates, expensive shops and other wealthy pedestrians traveling the paving stones of the privileged. Citizens nodded politely to me, shopkeepers gave me a warm greeting as I passed; a fruit seller tossed me a plum and smiled. I was welcomed here and accepted—there goes Alexander, chief slave of Marcus Licinius Crassus. What a lucky fellow! It was a brisk, sunny morning, and I smiled as I put the plum in Malchus’ outstretched hand. It was good to be alive.

No, nothing sinister is about to happen; I truly was as thankful as a virgin chosen for the Vestals to be
out and about, amongst friends and entrusted to dispatch a weighty charge. But then, being thankful implies the existence of a repository for this syrupy, effusive gratitude, and since my enslavement had cleansed me of any pretensions of belief in benevolent deities watching over me, I wondered to whom my respects ought to be paid. Unfortunately, the only name I could come up with was Crassus. He was as close to a god as I was likely ever to meet. Father Jupiter, indeed. To be a happy slave in a foreign land is to be as plagued with ironies as Hanno was infested with lice when we found him. One is a constant irritant that distracts your attention, fills you with frustration, nags at your enjoyment of any good thing, and if you have any self esteem at all, is a condition of constant humiliation and shame. And to be lice-ridden is a remarkably similar experience.

Oh. I must correct myself, and I do apologize. Something sinister
is
about to happen. More than one something, in point of fact.

Our route lay across the forum and then northeast. The first time I had seen its broad plazas framed by temples and civic buildings of brick and stone, my awe had been tempered by my exhaustion and malnutrition. Since then, every time my sandals trod upon its worn black stones, I harkened back to the day I had been dragged past the sight of the beating heart of Rome, thirty years earlier. At the time, my own heart was more beaten than beating, led behind the horse of a magnificent centurion to be presented as a multi-lingual gift from a grateful general
, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, to his heroic
legate
Marcus Licinius Crassus. I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his harvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on some distant, ruined field, defending the honor and the ever-expanding borders of the
Republic? What we foreigners have failed to comprehend over the centuries is that the proud centurion would have found either fate equally satisfying. This is why Rome grows, and the rest of the world shrinks.

Chapter
VI

56 BCE   Fall, Rome

Year of the consulship of

Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus

If there was grumbling over my insistence that our mission remain strictly business, I could not hear it, for as we crossed the Nova Via at the southeastern border of the forum, a great tumult was occurring at the other end. The echoes of a man in a toga gesticulating on the
rostra
rolled down to us, held aloft by distant cheers from the crowd.

“What’s that about?” Betto asked with his usual anxiety.

“Keep moving,” I said. “It is either Clodius Pulcher or Annius Milo, riling up their respective mobs.”

“Are we safe?” Betto asked.

“Clodius feigns championship of the plebs, and Pompey has brought Milo up to oppose him, so either side should be content with men of Crassus.”

Betto said, “So this is a polite throng, is it? They’ll stop to ask us who we support before they club us to death. That’s comforting.”

Malchus said, “Within the hour it won’t be safe to be anywhere near the forum, no matter whose side you’re on.”

“Which is why we must make haste.” The narrow box I gripped felt suddenly heavy.

“What’s all the ruckus about, anyway?” Valens asked. “Clodius hates Milo because Milo is Pompey’s man, Milo hates Clodius because he forced Cicero into exile, and just about everybody but Milo hates Cicero. Politics is easy once you know who hates who.”

Betto, who had picked up the pace once he got sight of the crowd, said, “We need elections. If we had consuls by now, we’d have order. The gods hate anarchy.
I
hate anarchy—it interferes with my peace of mind.”

“Everything interferes with your peace of mind,” Malchus said.

Moments later, even before we had crossed over to the Sacra Via, three ravens flew overhead, one following the other. “Did you see that?!” Betto cried. “Pray the augurs were looking elsewhere. As bad omens go, that one excels, mark me.”

“Just do your job,” Malchus said, his face set.

We headed northeast toward the Esquiline and before long turned on to the Vicus Sandaliarius. The street was choked with commerce, the smell of leather and men who balanced piles of hides on their shoulders—deer and cattle and pig. The tanning workrooms and smithies were open to the street, but other stretches kept their secrets behind unmarked doors and blank walls littered with graffiti. Shopkeepers were cranking down their awnings; those directly across from each other almost touched above the worn paving stones, concealing those beneath in yellow shade.

We were making our way through the throng when I felt a sharp tug at my neck. I looked back just in time to see Valens deliberately trip a poor fellow heading in the opposite direction. The man scrambled to his feet with dagger in hand.
That was unmannerly,
I thought.
Perhaps it was an accident; in any case Valens should apologize.
The thin, unwashed creature crouched in a fighting stance, looking for his assailant. To my surprise, a second man joined him, also armed, the hole where his left eye had been drawing as much of my attention as his knife. Street traffic recoiled in an arc around them, but Valens stepped into the open space. All at once, it became eerily quiet.
Good, Valens will say his obligatories and we can be on our way.
The one-eyed man spoke first. “Go about your business, now, there’s a good fellow.”