Render Unto Caesar (40 page)

To his astonishment and horror she burst into tears. He exclaimed helplessly and incautiously put an arm around her shoulders. For once there was no recoil, and she flung herself into his arms, sobbing loudly. He kissed her and murmured endearments in Greek, and slowly she calmed down.

“I'm sorry,” she managed at last. “Oh, dear heart. I never thought anyone would
love
me again.”

“I already told you I love you!”

She shrugged, warm in his arms. “Yes, but that was in bed.”

“Am I supposed to feel less loving when I'm in bed with you?”

She looked into his eyes a moment, then kissed him. “No, you're supposed to feel less loving once you get up.”

“Well, as it happens, I don't. My dear life, in all truth, people won't despise you as much as you fear they will. We
can
make you a place in Alexandria. We will simply have to work at it.”

“You said I should
run a business
?” she asked disbelievingly.

He thought about that. “Yes,” he concluded. “It will be important for you to have some property in your own name, first because a woman who owns property is immediately much more respectable than a woman who doesn't, and second because I do not want you to be dependent on my heirs if anything should happen to me.”

“But—
run a business
?”

He shrugged. “I could buy you a farm, if you prefer. The trouble with that, though, is that I don't know anything about farming. I could help you with a business.”

“I don't know anything about
business
! In Cantabria we barely even used
money
!”

“Well—what about leatherworking? You seem to know something about that, and not many Egyptians do.”

“I can mend my shoes, but nobody would pay me to mend theirs!”

“I was never for a moment suggesting that you should set up as a cobbler! No—can you tell whether a hide is cured well or badly, and whether it will be useful for shoes or stitching or something finer?”

“Yes, but—”

“So, there you are! You know more about it than most people in Alexandria. Leather isn't made much in Egypt, and what is made tends to be inferior stuff. I know, because most of the ship captains I deal with refuse to use Egyptian leather on their vessels. One man I know swears by Iberian; another prefers Numidian. Somebody who knew about leather, who could pick the best hides and sell them on to the most appropriate users, who could deal with the captains—somebody like that could make a lot of money. I could set you up in it, get you a good scribe, introduce you to people. You could make it a success.”

She was silent a moment. Then she laughed weakly. “Och, oh, what you mean is that someone like
you
could make lots of money!”

He held her more tightly. “No.
I
don't know enough about leather.” He was beginning, however, to warm to the idea he'd thrown out at random, and he went on, “With your knowledge of leather, though, and my business contacts, this really could be a very profitable venture.”

She looked at his face earnestly. “Do your laws
allow
women to run their own businesses?”

He sighed. “It's customary for a woman to have a male guardian to represent her in law. There are plenty of women, though, who run their own affairs and just get a brother or a patron to sign for them. We'll have to get legal recognition for me to sign for you—or, if you prefer, you can employ somebody else.”

She was silent.

“You don't have to do it if you don't want to,” he told her, though he found that he was liking the idea more and more. “You could pick a different business. Or a farm, if you prefer.”

“And you don't think your friends will be even more disgusted to see you giving so much away to … to me?”

He shrugged. “If you were a
man
who had saved my life, and I set you up in business or bought you a farm as a reward, everybody would simply accept it. Yes, they'd say it was generous, but they'd also believe it was appropriate. Because you're a woman, they will raise their eyebrows—at first, anyway. But I don't think it will be as bad as you fear—and if we can make a success of a partnership, everyone will say how very wise I was to take up with you. Money, I fear, is the chief god of the Alexandrians.”

She was silent, playing with his face.

“Do you really not even
use
money in Cantabria?”

She laid a finger on his lips. “You talk too much, and you question everything.”

“Of course: I'm Greek.”

“I don't want you to talk now.”

He began to smile: the crisis was over. “What do you want me to do instead?”

The rest of the day passed in the same intoxicated haze that had engulfed the previous afternoon. At dusk they moved the mattress from the bed onto the floor, as a compromise between floor and bed, and fell asleep in each other's arms.

He woke at dawn, instantly aware of where he was and who was beside him, but aware, too, of what was to happen that day, as though it were a toothache. Maerica was already awake, lying motionless with her head inches from his own, watching him with wide quiet eyes. When their eyes met, she whispered, “I dreamed of the mountains last night.”

He stretched. “Is that a good omen or a bad one?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. It is a long time since I dreamed about home, that is all. I think I know why I dreamed it now, though.”

“And?”

“You are like the mountain I dreamed about.”

He laughed. “It take it this is a
small
mountain.”

She smiled, but shook her head. “It was near home, and we called it the Vulture, because of its shape. The lower slopes are good pasture. They are open, and covered with flowers. There are pure streams, many of them, all good sweet water, and the grass is thick and rich. It is a very beautiful place. Everyone would take sheep and cattle up there in the summer, and it would feed and support them.”

“And this reminded you of me? I am flattered.”

“I am not finished. That was only the lower slopes. The heart of the mountain is a pinnacle of rock, sheer and strong and too steep even for goats. Only the kings of the air, the great birds go there—the vultures we called griffons, for their size, and the breakers of bones, the lammergeiers and the eagles. In my dream, though, I had wings, and I flew up the cliff face, and I turned on the air and saw how all those pleasant pastures were held up by the stone, and when I woke I knew that really I had been dreaming about you. Because people meet you, and they think you are kind and gentle, such a pleasant man, and they don't see that underneath it there is stone. I don't mean that you pretend, because you
like
to be pleasant to people, and maybe the Vulture
liked
to support our flocks—but it was a mountain, not fields that could be worked with a plough.” She laid her palm against his chest. “If you love me, I think it is because I am the only woman who has gone above the slopes, and met you on the steep places, there, in your heart, where there was only stone and snow and silence.”

He found that he was holding his breath, and he let it out slowly, then made himself breathe again. “That's very poetic,” he managed. Inside he cowered at the frightened sense that, whether or not he was like a mountain, she had certainly reached some part of himself which no one before her had ever touched, and which was very much harder and colder than the self with which he was familiar. It was the part of himself which had insisted on the attempt to humble a Roman consul, even if it cost not just his own life but the ruin of everyone he loved. Stone and snow, yes, and the sheer cliffs of his pride. It felt—strange—to have someone else there. It felt as though she had suddenly acted out some secret dream which he had never divulged to anyone, both achingly sweet and frighteningly private.

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.