Other Alexander, The (10 page)

Marcus tugged at my tunic; my eyes were drawn back to the boy, but not my attention. Why would Nestor want me dead? I could understand why Pío might help him flee, but was that where his involvement ended? Nestor did not seem the type to cultivate connections of such a base nature. The house was in a state of dreadful disruption, and at its vortex the fact that I was still alive. I did not understand, nor could I connect the logical points. Unhappily, I was about to be tutored, for it was only a moment or two before the sun was eclipsed a second time. Pío was still holding the flowers, but their stems looked crushed in his unwitting stranglehold. His stare was now direct and purposeful.

“Why you make change? You hate us? You make jealous?” I started to protest, but there was no room here for dialog. “You are like carpenter ...” Pío dropped to a knee-cracking squat and I flinched, but his attention was on the boy, not me. “Marcus, you be good boy and find mother.”

I had a wild impulse to beg the five year-old to stay, and was absurdly relieved when Marcus protested. “Go now,” Pío insisted. He smiled and handed the boy several flowers. The trade was struck and off Marcus ran, leaving a trail of pulled petals.

Pío remained squatting. He turned to me, the look of affection for Crassus’ son transformed. “I see you, I think of carpenter who fuck my mother,” he said. “You not fuck, but you come to my house. You do not belong here. Like him. After he come to my house, all bad.” The animation left his face as he rose; he lumbered off toward the
lararium
to make his offering. Those flowers would be dead come morning.

It suddenly occurred to me that my consternation, which was palpable, was not rooted in fear, though by any standard it should have been. What struck me like a blow from a fist as I sat swirling my fingers in the fountain’s waters, the sun polishing cabochons from each drop of spray, what pierced me like one of Sulla’s arrows was the realization of the extent to which I had become accustomed to living in the house of Marcus Crassus. Though I would not have thought it possible, there were good people here. The days were not onerous and the nights, though lonely, were at least peaceful. I was finding my place, and the last thing I wanted was change. To what god could I pray to stop the sun and send it spinning backwards? Let Nestor be surly and Pío romantic, let knives not fly and halcyon days return. Had I faith, I would bend my knee to Kronos, god of time, a barbarous Titan who had devoured his own children. I would do this, and fervently, too, for more miraculous than any myth of creation, I had begun to feel at home.

Chapter XIII

80 BCE   -   Summer, Rome             

Year of the consulship of

Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius

It was never proven whether or not Pío had helped his friend escape, but the look on his face when Boaz’s men dragged Nestor back in chains six days later condemned him as surely as any confession. Even so, Crassus was loath to punish his
atriensis
, though as paterfamilias he could do so on a whim, with or without proof. Crassus was not a capricious man; his steps were thoughtful and measured. Still, he must have been asking himself how long could a man’s past loyalty balance the scales against his present transgressions?

Malchus and Betto told me what had transpired when they met in the small guardhouse at the front of the estate on the far side of the gates, opposite the schoolroom and clinic. The men who found Nestor had not been kind. The lumps on the runaway’s face ranged in hue from eggplant to urine. He floated between our world and a better one, in and out of consciousness. Crassus allowed Pío to revive him with sips of watered wine laced with
sambucus
and cinnamon, but would not permit his bonds to be undone so that he could hold the cup himself.

Present were
dominus
, Pío and Nestor, with Betto and Malchus close by, hands on pommels. Betto confessed he had fretted through the entire meeting, afraid that should Pío become enraged, he and Malchus would prove to be a man or two short in the effort to subdue him.

When Nestor was more or less himself, Crassus began the interview with a single word. “Why?”

Nestor sat straighter and winced with the effort. “We were doing fine without him,” he said, jerking his chin toward the house. “We didn’t need him mucking everything up.” Pío held the cup to his lips, but Nestor turned his head away. “We had a system; it was working.
Dominus
, if you’d been here, if you’d spent more time at home, I mean I know you are an important man, but still, you would have seen it.” 

“You have shamed this house. Your crime is a capital offense. By all rights I should plant a cross in the front yard and nail you to it.” No one doubted the senator’s resolve; words now needed to be chosen very carefully.

“Mercy,
dominus
.” This was not Nestor, but Pío, who actually had tears in his eyes.

Nestor continued to speak as the aggrieved party. “This school,” he continued, the pitch of his voice rising, “he devised it to be rid of me. I could see it, I could see what was happening. He knew you wouldn’t need me, that you’d send me away. I’d be off to the mines.” He looked up at his companion, his face suddenly soft and sad. “And Pío. Pío would be alone again.”

Crassus stood considering, twice about to speak and once holding his tongue. “This interview is over. I shall ask no more questions regarding the attempt on Alexander’s life, for I fear to hear the answers and what they will demand of me.

“Pío, you have served me well, but what would you have of me? There must be payment, and it must be public. This is my will:  nine days hence you and this entire household will escort Nestor to the forum. There his crimes will be announced and
you
will mete out his sentence. You will bind him with a collar like the dog he is; upon its iron face you will have inscribed the words, ‘PROPERTY OF M. LICINIUS CRASSUS. RETURN AND BE REWARDED.’

“After the collar is affixed, across his forehead you will brand him
fugitivus
with the letters FVG so that all may know his shame.”

“No,
dominus
, no!” Pío cried. Crassus was unmoved.

“I know your part in this, Pío. Let your punishment be the administration of his. And consider yourselves fortunate that when that day is past you will both yet draw breath.”

•••

Pío never had to carry out Nestor’s awful sentence. I don’t think he could have done it in any case, such was his feeling for the little Greek. It was the day before punishment was to be exacted. We were taking the midday meal at our place in the kitchen. Everyone was present except Sabina, whose patients were especially numerous that morning; Nestor, confined to our room with the aid of a leather collar bolted to the wall by a sturdy chain; and Betto, on guard duty.

Two days earlier Crassus had escorted Tertulla and the children to Lavinium. Sabina had been released from Tertulla’s service to allow her to tend to her practice. Ostensibly, the purpose of the trip was a visit to her parents, whom Tertulla had not seen for almost a year. A fortuitous lapse; the bolt that came closer to the mark was that the family was not immune from the pall shrouding the household. They were due back tonight, in time for the spectacle the following day.

Livia was last to table, the exuberant frenzy of her thirteen years oblivious to our sour mood and thankfully ignorant of its cause. I put my hand on hers as she sat next to me to quell her delightfully irritating whistling. When she asked why everyone was so grumpy I answered by grabbing a few figs and passing her the bowl. She wrinkled her nose at them, shoved them to Ludovicus the handyman, and instead reached for the hard boiled eggs with one hand and the grapes with the other. Today her red hair was piled high and tied with multi-color ribbons. The back of her neck, long and pale, revealed a fine down of softest incarnadine gold. I realized I was staring and hastily reached for the bowl of figs, perhaps taking one or two more than was decorous. I do so love their gritty texture, their subtle, complex flavor.

Pío moved a few grapes around his plate with his finger. His expression was unnerving:  grim, determined, his lips pressed together, holding back whatever was bottled up inside. The only one who spoke was Livia, and we answered her with as few syllables as possible. Everyone ate hastily, happy to return to their chores. Malchus and I were the last to rise. As I stood, I became aware of a rushing in my ears. My heart knocked against my chest like a deranged woodpecker. Suddenly I felt as if I could drink the Middle Sea. I grabbed the pitcher of
lora
, sloshing it into my cup and consuming it with graceless haste. I went to pour another, but my fingers had gone numb. Malchus stared at me open-mouthed and said I’d better have a lie-down. I told him that was an excellent suggestion and stumbled off to my room, wondering how my voice had managed to emanate from some distant place outside my body, tinny and remote.

Nestor lay on his back, his arms folded behind his head. “What are you doing here? You’ll get the lash,” he said hopefully. “I’ll tell, see if I won’t.” I ignored him and collapsed onto my own bed. Breathing was no longer an activity my body did without my participation:  if I didn’t consciously inhale and exhale, I felt as if I’d stop altogether. The paralysis was moving up my arm. Nestor kept up a steady, nattering invective. I ignored him until it dawned on me that his babbling brook of complaints sounded like no language I had ever heard. I turned my head to look at him:  he stared back at me with unmoving lips. Be afraid, I told myself, but I did not have the energy. Call for help, I chided, but weariness lay on my chest like a stone. It was so much easier to simply lie still and look at the ceiling. The ceiling. It had come alive:  fawns and nymphs cavorted and contorted in a slippery, slithering dance of copulation that was repulsively riveting. I supposed I’d been poisoned, but unless someone found me, there was no way I could summon help on my own.

Someone did find me. Pío was in the room, which was irritatingly vexing because, I am ashamed to admit, his bulk was blocking my view of the ceiling. He sat on my pallet, making room for himself by shoving me against the wall with a swing of his hips. I moved my head one way, then the other, seeking a better view of what lay beyond the mass of him. I beg not to be faulted, for my faculties were functioning well short of normal. That mortal danger had just made itself comfortable on my bed did not occur to me. Nestor, it became obvious, was also ignorant of Pío’s intent.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a language I understood. I think it was Greek.

“Hush, sweet man. We go soon. I make justice first.”

Now here is where the tale becomes a trifle cloudy. I remember the feel of Pío’s calloused hands, one pressing down on my chest, the other covering my nose and mouth. Struggling against him was useless, quite literally, because I could not feel my appendages, much less use them. I realized now, and not without a little sadness that I was about to die. Twenty-five, and still a virgin. The imminent end of one’s brief stay on this earth will bring clarity to the mind even while poison still works on the body. What a miserable thread the Fates had sewn for me; was I so undeserving of a full and productive life? Or was I just a random accident of happenstance from beginning to end. One thing was certain:  if these were indeed my last moments, Pío’s misshapen, straining countenance was the last image I wanted to take with me to Elysium. I closed my eyes, sending two tears down either cheek.

I felt a slight release of pressure against my face. Nestor was cursing and straining against his fetters. Here I need to rely on Sabina’s recounting of what transpired next, together with my own feathery impressions. As had been her wont ever since Livia had been returned to her, she had arrived with a fresh bouquet for my room, hardly expecting to encounter this murderous spectacle. The fresh flowers fell from her hands; screaming Pío’s name she demanded to know what he was doing. Frankly, I should have thought that was obvious. Pío returned to his work, ignoring her next assault:  pounding on his back and head with her fists. This he found as annoying as a gentle Aprilis mist, so she leapt upon his back, pulling at the arm attached to the hand affixed to my face.

My mind stretched thin, a taut, plucked string whose vibrations created a tone both pure and celestial. I was beginning to lose consciousness.

Pío’s right arm swung backward, knocking Sabina onto the floor against Nestor’s pallet. He strained to reach for her hair, grabbed a handful and pulled with all his might, and thus awoke an infuriated, incandescent healer. The tigress now reached behind her and clawed at Nestor’s arm till it bled. He cried out, released his grip and before he could scramble backwards found her straddling his chest, a scalpel pressing against his throat.

“Release him, Pío,” she screamed, “or I swear by the Seven Sisters I will cut so deep the arc of his blood will reach your thigh.”

Pío laughed, but he also took his hand away. The string snapped; the music fled; and rather curiously I found myself longing for the sound. I gasped, my lungs pumping like bellows, and without any conscious effort on my part. The effect of the drug was already fading.

“You not kill Nestor,” Pío said. He was right – Sabina would not kill an innocent man. I wanted to remind her that Nestor was not innocent. Perhaps another time.

A look of terrible realization came over her:  Pío was going to kill her if he could. Something inside him had been squeezed until it had ruptured like a burst appendix; the only antidote for this poison was for the
atriensis
to free Nestor or die in the attempt. She dug into the bag slung over her shoulder and withdrew a second scalpel, moved a safe distance from Nestor and prepared to grapple with her own dubious fate. His plan might have hatched successfully, she knew, but its one fatal flaw, discovery, had just smashed its fragile shell, thanks to her. Now there was only one hope for Pío and Nestor – leave no witnesses.

Pío had come to the same conclusion and went for the most immediate threat. Sabina screamed for help, expecting none, for this time of day none but the four of us would be found in the servants’ wing. There was little room to maneuver. She could not wait for him to strike first; if he caught her she was doomed. She leapt across the short space between them - desperation, fear and finally, a vision of Livia flooding her muscles with godlike strength. It burst from her body in a warrior’s cry and continued even when she realized she was going to survive. Pío caught her shoulder in his left hand and inched his thumb toward her throat. Before he could crush her windpipe, she struck with both scalpels. With the right, she stabbed up into the tendons of the wrist that held her, sawing till she felt something give. At the same time her left hand swept across his neck, severing the vein that bulged just beneath the surface. There was irony in the choice of her attack, but there was much more blood.

Pío stood up straight, as if listening to the sound of a more urgent call. Inside him, a clock began its inexorable count backward to zero, every diminishing moment marked by a surge of escaping of blood. Suddenly it was as if Sabina and I were no longer in the room. He shoved her aside; with his good hand, he ripped the chain from the wall. He picked Nestor up in his arms and said, “Push hand here. Hard.” Not waiting for Nestor’s horrified muscles to awake from their paralysis, he took his lover’s hand and pressed it to his wound. Blood bubbled between the little Greek’s fingers and poured down Pío’s side. Nestor was crying.

Sabina followed them, but it was impossible for me to rise. Pío carried Nestor through the house, out into the front gardens, gathering the rest of the astonished household as if he had walked through a spider web and everyone else was a captured fly attached by sticky ropes, unable to do ought but be dragged along. Betto and Malchus raced to him with swords drawn, but as they neared it became obvious their skills would not needed. With each step down the gentle slope between house and gate, Pío’s pace faltered. Blood trailed from his neck and wrist, painting erratic crimson lines on the white gravel. Nestor used both hands to staunch the flow but Pío’s neck was slippery and his jolting steps made the task impossible. Nestor begged for Pío to set him down, but the man from Hispania had his heart set on the iron gates. In the end that heart would betray him; with each ragged beat it pumped more of his life out onto the perfect landscape.