Render Unto Caesar (41 page)

The blows stopped suddenly in a whirl of white linen, and Ajax flung himself off and into a roll. Hermogenes got his right elbow underneath himself—the left one didn't seem to be working—and tried to sit up. The white linen cloak was half on top of him, half trailing in the gutter, and Maerica was standing over him, a knife in her left hand. Its blade was red, and she had her right arm pressed against her side. The right side of her tunic was covered with blood.

“Cantabra,” said Ajax, getting to his feet. “I knew we'd end up fighting.”

“Go away,” she ordered. She was out of breath and her voice was rough with pain.

“Can't,” he said, grinning. “The boss wants your boyfriend. He's worth more alive, but I suppose now I'll have to kill him.” He edged round to the right, trying to get on her injured side.

“Whatever Pollio is paying,” Hermogenes panted, “I'll double, if you go away.”

No one paid any attention. Ajax continued to edge to the right, and Maerica turned, keeping her face toward him. Hermogenes picked up the discarded cloak and looked about for something to use as a weapon.

Ajax attacked in a sudden, flowing dash, not to the right but to the left, strength to strength, knife hand whipping up and across, free hand splayed. There was a slithering squeal of knife on knife; Maerica grunted in pain. The retiarius flowed backward again—until Hermogenes whipped the cloak around his legs, and he tripped.

Maerica moved while the other was still falling, stepping forward with that savage deliberation she had used in the Subura. She did not bend over or use her knife: instead she kicked, not at the groin, for once, but at the ribs. Ajax gasped as the breath was knocked out of him. He rolled away, but Maerica went after him, faster now, kicking again, and again, and again, keeping him on the defensive and giving him no chance to regain his feet. He rolled into the side of a building and tried to get to his knees, and she aimed a high, smashing kick at his head. He fell, and she slammed a heel down into his face. He jerked, screaming, his back arching with pain, both hands flying instinctively to his eyes. She paused a moment, then dropped to her knees beside him and cut his throat.

Hermogenes staggered to his feet and stumbled over to her. She looked up at him, her face white under the fiery hair, her eyes scarcely human. Her right elbow was still pressed against her side, and the patch of blood had dyed half her tunic red. “Maerica!” he whispered, dropping to his knees beside her. “You're hurt, you're hurt!”

The inhuman look went out of her eyes. She let go of the knife, turned away from her opponent's body, and folded forward into his arms.

“My darling girl!” he said, not sure now even what language he was speaking. “You're hurt … let me see.…” He pulled her over onto a clear space of pavement, pulled off his Scythopolitan linen cloak and put it under her head, and moved her right arm, trying to see the wound. There was too much blood. He looked around desperately, saw the knife she'd used to kill Ajax, and went to pick it up.

“Are you Marcus Aelius Hermogenes?” asked a new voice. He looked up dazedly and saw a party of soldiers in strip armor standing squarely in the road that led to the bank.

“Yes. My concubine is hurt,” he said, and went back to her. She seemed now to be only half-conscious, but her eyes fastened on him. “I have to stop the bleeding. Help me.”

“You're under arrest,” said the soldier.

He ignored the man. He needed bandages. There was the other cloak. He went to fetch it—and found one of the soldiers grabbing his arm.

“You must come with us,” said the soldier, frowning as he took away the knife.

“My concubine is hurt,” he said incredulously. “She's bleeding badly. She needs help.”

The soldier gave her a contemptuous glance. “We don't have any orders about the whore.”

Hermogenes hit him.

It was a bad mistake, and he cursed himself for it afterward. The soldier hit him back, and so did the soldier's friends. They kicked his feet out from under him, forced him down onto the pavement, and tied his hands behind his back. Then they hauled him back to his feet and told him to march. He screamed at them to see to Maerica, and they slapped him. He tried to break free, and something struck the side of his head, hard. Everything went dark.

 

He came halfway back to his senses to find himself being carried down a street. His head hurt abominably and he felt very sick. He retched feebly, and his captors unceremoniously dumped him onto the pavement and stood around him while he vomited into the gutter. His arms were still bound, and his left shoulder ached fiercely, so that the spasms were agony. When he'd finished, they hauled him to his feet and forced him onward, holding him by the arms and half dragging him to a stumbling walk. He felt too faint and ill even to notice where he was. They went up some steps into a building and stopped; he promptly lay down and curled up. He was aware of people talking angrily above his head, but he could not summon the concentration to understand them. At one point someone asked him if he was Marcus Aelius Hermogenes, the Alexandrian, and he said yes.

After a little while, two men hauled him back to his feet and dragged him along a corridor and down a staircase. It was dark, cool after the sunny June day outside. Someone unlocked a door, and the men who had hold of him pulled him through and put him down on the floor. He lay there, watching dazedly as they went out again and locked the door behind them.

At once the room became even darker. The floor was cold. He suddenly remembered Maerica lying on the Vicus Tuscus, her tunic red with blood, her dazed, half-conscious eyes focusing on him. He tried to get up, but this caused a wave of so much pain and dizziness that he had to lie still again. He felt cautiously at his head where it hurt, and discovered a wet and sticky lump on his skull just above his right ear. He realized that at some point someone must have untied his hands, and he felt pleased with himself for understanding so much. Moving very carefully, he looked around himself. He was alone in a small, dimly lit room, lying on a rough stone floor. The only light came through a barred window in the room's single door, and it was faint and gray.

He tried to get up again, more cautiously this time, and made it to his feet. He staggered to the door and beat on it feebly. Nothing happened. He searched for a handle: there wasn't one. He tried to shout, but the effort hurt his head, and he clung to the edge of the window, feeling sick and giddy.

He was in a prison, he realized: he'd been arrested and taken to a prison. Where was Maerica? Had they just left her lying in the street?

He began to curse them, then cursed himself. How
stupid,
how criminally
stupid,
to have hit a Roman soldier! He should have offered the guardsmen
money,
immortal gods! If he'd said, “A hundred denarii to the man who helps her!” they would've fallen over themselves to see to her wound, but no, he hadn't had the presence of mind, he'd struck out with his fists, and they'd clubbed him and left her lying in the street to bleed to death.

He thought of her dying alone on the streets of Rome. He slid down the door and began to weep. The grief began like a tiny hole in his soul, then suddenly swelled so that he felt he couldn't endure it, and he howled with it, despite the pain in his head.

The light from the window in the door suddenly dimmed, and a voice demanded, “What's the matter with you?”

He struggled to swallow another howl of anguish. He could not afford to be stupid again. He didn't know how long it had taken for them to bring him here, or how long it took a woman to bleed to death: it might be that he could still correct his mistake. “Please,” he gasped, getting up on his knees again. “My concubine was hurt, and she needs help, urgently. I am a rich man, I will pay a hundred denarii to anyone who goes to help her.”

There was a silence, and then the voice at the door asked, “What concubine?”

“Her name's Maerica. She was with me when I was arrested. I'm sorry I hit the soldier, I only wanted to help her. She's hurt, she was bleeding, and they left her lying there. I have money; I will pay anyone who helps her. Please. It's urgent.”

“Nothing to do with me,” said the voice.

“No, please!” Hermogenes pushed himself back onto his feet and found himself looking out the barred window at a stubbled, hawk-nosed face in a helmet. “Please, if you
send
someone to help her, I will pay you, too! I am a rich man, I can afford it. They left her on the Vicus Tuscus, near the Bank of Gabinius. She was hurt, I only wanted to bandage her wound, otherwise I would have come when they asked me, and I wouldn't have hit anyone!”

“You're saying the praetorian guards wounded your concubine?” demanded the jailer indignantly.

“No, no, no!” he protested, struggling to keep control of himself and not make another criminal mistake. “Not the praetorians. It was Pollio's men. We were attacked by Pollio's men before the guard arrived. Please, won't you send someone to help her? She is a good and noble woman, she doesn't deserve to die like that! I will pay anything you like!”

“I don't know anything about this,” said the guard warily.

“Please. I'm not asking that you leave your post, only that you report the matter to your superior. Urgently. Statilius Taurus
knows
my concubine, he wouldn't want her to bleed to death. He promised to reward me for saving his life—”

“I don't know anything about this!”

“Yes, yes, I
know
! But we had an arrangement which went wrong, and he would be very displeased to know that she was hurt, and nobody helped her. Please,
please,
just ask your superior! Tell him I am willing to pay a great deal of money if it keeps my concubine alive. Surely it's not against the rules for you to speak to your superior, and ask him to send a doctor to the Vicus Tuscus?”

“You say you have money?”

He leaned against the door, breathing hard. “I can get it. I have letters of credit to the bank—had them, my concubine had them. Has them. I have a friend in Rome, too, Titus Fiducius Crispus, a wealthy businessman: he would lend me money if I asked it. I can get money. I am a rich man.”

“Well,” said the guard, after a moment's thought, “I'll ask.”

He went away. Hermogenes slumped down to the floor. His head hurt, and his left shoulder hurt, and his right knee, and he felt sick. He thought of Maerica lying on the paving stones, of the dazed way her blue eyes had fixed upon him.
Oh, my darling,
he thought wretchedly,
I am so sorry I wasn't wiser!

He woke, shivering, and realized that he'd slept. He needed to use the latrine. He pulled himself to his knees and thumped on the door, then called a few times weakly. Presently there was a sound of footsteps, and he dragged himself to his feet and found another helmeted face in the window. It was a different face from last time.

“What's the matter?” demanded the guard.

“I need the latrine,” he faltered.

“Bucket in the corner,” said the guard, and turned away.

“Wait! Please!”

The face turned back, scowling.

“I asked the man who was here earlier to send someone to help my concubine,” he declared breathlessly. “I promised him money. He said he would ask. Do you … do you know what happened?”

“No,” replied the guard shortly, and turned away again.

“No, wait! Please! I would pay you, too.…”

But the man's footsteps retreated. He pressed his face against the bars of the window and saw the armored back retreating along a walkway of dark tufa stone that ringed a well covered by a grating. The guard turned right and disappeared.

He inspected his cell—rough brick, a tiny box—and found a dank and noisome corner containing an encrusted bucket, which he used as instructed. Then he curled up on the floor in the opposite corner, shivering. Maerica's face appeared again to his imagination, and he pressed his hands against his eyes. After a few minutes' struggle with the grief and the guilt, he gave up and began to weep.

After another long dark time, and with his head aching worse than ever, he went back to the dirty corner and vomited air and bile from an empty stomach. Then he returned to the clean corner and prayed to Isis and Serapis, and to Apollo and Asklepios, gods of healing, to help the woman he loved.

After another interminable silence a light appeared in the window of the door, making him realize that it had become completely dark. He sat up with a start, then winced at the pain in his head. The lock clicked, and the door opened. A guard came in with a jug and a loaf of bread on a tray; another man stood in the doorway behind him, holding up a lantern. The light showed the cell clearly for the first time: a bare cubicle with stained walls and a dirty tufa-stone floor. The first guard set the tray down on the floor and prepared to leave.

“Wait!” Hermogenes gasped. “Please, I've been asking about my concubine, who was injured—”

The guards went out, and the door closed. Hermogenes staggered up and over to the door as they locked it. “Please!” he begged. “She was hurt. Statilius Taurus knows her, he would want you to help. I have money, I can pay—”

“You have money in
there
?” asked the man with the lantern. He was different again from the two Hermogenes had seen earlier.

“No, but I have property, I have money in banks, I have friends here in Rome. I can pay for help.”

“He isn't Roman,” said the man who'd carried the tray. He sounded surprised.

“You get all sorts in here,” replied the man with the lantern. “Foreign kings, even.”

The man who'd held the tray peered through the bars at Hermogenes. “That one don't look like a king.”

“Don't know who he is,” replied the lantern bearer unconcernedly.