Search the Seven Hills (6 page)

He raised his head, his heart a sounding hollow of misery within him. Over the roofs that shut in the square he could see the towering walls of the Flavian Amphitheater, high even from the hilltop beside them, and glittering like sugar in the sun. Through a break in the buildings where a wide street ran down the hill, he could see the forest of columns that marked the various forums, the glint of the gilt roof of the Vesta temple, the smoke that rose from the multicolored pillars of red and green Egyptian porphyry on the porch of the temple of Avenging Mars. Far off he could discern the marble woods around the newest imperial forum, flanked by its libraries, its temples, its deep-cut curves graven into the bones of the shouldering mass of the Quirinal Hill itself, and above and behind it all, rising like a solemn finger, clean as a sword blade in the sun, the emperor’s column with its lacework of embroidered stone.

Timoleon’s hand rested lightly upon his arm. “I’m sorry,” said the philosopher gently. Then he, too, was gone, moving down the steps of the baths, erect and aloof from the troubles of a filthy world.

For a time Marcus only stood, staring sightlessly before him.
Why not accept it?
he asked himself.
There’s nothing you can do. Even if you were to rescue her, she’d still he betrothed to someone far richer than you, someone who hasn’t been cast out by his own family.

Arrius said you’d hear from him. Shouldn’t that be enough?

School your heart to accept what must be.

But the consolation of philosophy was ashes in his mouth.

He moved slowly down the steps, exhausted and lightheaded, wondering what he would say to Lady Aurelia Pollia. Maybe Felix was right, and he could give her only his presence, to wait at her side until Arrius brought them news.

The centurion’s words returned to him, that it might be a slave within Varus’ own household. How could he ever tell her that?

Who?
he wondered. The sleek Syrian doorkeepers? The boy who carved game birds at the feasts and, as far as Marcus knew, didn’t do much else? One of the secretaries? Varus’ personal barber? Nicanor? Which one of them had relayed the information, through such swift channels as only slaves can know, that Tullia Varia would be coming home at such and such a time?

Which of them was a Christian?

And abruptly, bitterness over the evils of the world vanished in the sudden thought:
Churaldin might know.

If he were a slave himself, he might have picked up information, rumors of other slaves.

If he’s a slave he might be a Christian himself.

Not if he ran to her rescue, he wouldn’t be.

Wild elation went through him, and desperate hope. A slave’s testimony was useless in a court of law, of course, but he might be able to give them some kind of lead...

There was neither despair nor the quietude of philosophy in his heart as he hastened across the square, dodged past the affronted priests at the tail end of the procession, stumbled over the flapping ends of his own toga in his haste, and hurried on down the hill.

Churaldin had said that his master’s name was C. Sixtus Julianus, and that his house lay somewhere close to that of Consul Tullius Varus. On his way through the crowded lanes north of the Forum, Marcus tried to remember such a person, or at least hearing mention of the name. Back in the days when he, Felix, and Tullia had run wild like a pack of ill-assorted wood-sprites through the aristocratic upper slopes of the Quirinal Hill, he had been familiar with the names of the owners of all the big houses there, and the name was unknown to him. But as he passed the sidewalk booth of an astrologer, gaudy with painted signs and bronze amulets, and heard the crier there advertising cut-rate horoscopes and conversations with the dead, he remembered Quindarvis’ words, “I thought he was dead.”

And it occurred to him that Sixtus Julianus was probably the owner of the haunted house.

As children they’d often scrambled up adjacent trees to get a look down into the overgrown jungles of its gardens. Once they’d seen a slave moving about, but that was all. Nevertheless the run-down walls had exerted a kind of fascination on them all. Tullia, who had followed the brothers in and out of scrapes with a stubborn courage remarkable in so young a girl, had surmised that the owner of the house was a sorcerer who kidnapped children and made magic with their bones: this despite the utter dearth of evidence of anything of the kind. In spite of his more adult awareness that the master was a retired general turned scholar, Marcus had still thought of the place, when he remembered it at all, as a kind of haunted house whose ghost had not yet died, and it was with an illogical feeling of trepidation that he knocked at those bronze-bound doors.

In the harsh light of late afternoon, the house was no longer mysterious. It simply had the dilapidated air of a place whose owner no longer concerns himself with keeping up any semblance of a position in society. Yet to have a house at all, instead of spacious apartments on the bottom floor of a multiple-family dwelling, argued considerable wealth; certainly to have a house in this quiet tree-grown quarter did.

When the door was finally answered, it was by a breathless, chubby slave who had obviously run all the way from the kitchen, and Marcus’ first impression was confirmed. The place was run by a skeleton staff. He asked, “Is this the house of Sixtus Julianus? Is he in?”

“Of course,” smiled the scullion, wiping a hand on his apron. “He’s always in.” And he bowed him into the vestibule. “Not been out of these doors in five years—the crazy old coot,” he added affectionately. “Can I tell him who’s here?”

“Uh—C. Marcus Silanus. He doesn’t know me. But if he isn’t busy...”

“Oh, he’s always busy,” said the slave cheerfully, as they emerged into a shadowy atrium whose only light was that which fell through the skylight above the pool and whose floor of old, yellowing marble was thick with dust and scattered with brown leaves. “But take a seat. I’ll tell him you’re here.” And, still wiping his hands on his tunic hem, he trotted off between the slender decorative pillars and down a hall, leaving Marcus alone in the semi-darkness under the ancient, knowing, haughty eyes of the sculptured Egyptian cat in the wall niche.

After a few moments the man returned, puffing and out of breath. He led Marcus down the hallway, past priceless frescoes faded by time, out into the green still jungle-riot of overgrown willows and uncut vines, where the fountain trickled through bulbous cankers of moss and the lichened bricks of the few paths still visible were being relentlessly thrust apart by the weeds. The colonnade around the garden was so badly choked with vines that only a small entrance remained. Through green filtered light he led him down a kind of tunnel of stone and leaves, to a sheltered bay that had once been a workshop looking out into the garden. Marcus had the curious impression that he had wandered into a hill cave, inhabited by a scholarly hermit and stocked with scrolls and tablets and curiosities, strange stones, and a globe of the stars.

Sixtus Julianus rose as Marcus was ushered in. For all the apparent frailness of his build, Marcus’ first impression of him was of a kind of latent toughness, coupled with a kingly dignity. He was an aristocrat of the most ancient traditions of a long-vanished republic, clean as bleached bone, his plain tunic the color of raw wool and his short-clipped hair and beard fine as silk and whiter than sunlit snow. The burning demons of sun and wind, sand and enemy steel had carved his face; from the webwork of lines, blue eyes regarded him, fierce and pure and serene as the desert sky. His hands, resting among the scholarly confusion of the table, were heavy and powerful, the white-furred forearms crisscrossed by old pale scars.
A soldier’s hands,
thought Marcus,
like those of the centurion Arrius.

He said, “Please be seated,” in a voice deep and rich as bronze. Someone brought up a chair, and turning, Marcus met Churaldin’s eyes.

The slave asked, “Is it about the girl?”

Marcus nodded.

Churaldin turned to his master. “Sir, this is the man whom I—tripped—in pursuit of the kidnappers last night. Are you well?”

“No thanks to you,” grinned Marcus wryly.

“Have they found her?” asked Sixtus, reseating himself and clearing aside part of the welter of scrolls that lay between them.

Marcus shook his head. “Not yet.” He fished in his purse. “But they found this.” And he laid the silver amulet of the fish on the table between them like a coin. “It was picked up from the mud near the litter. I must have torn it loose from the neck of one of the attackers in the struggle.”

The old man picked it up carefully, and turned it over in his fingers. His eyes met Marcus’. “Do you know what this is?”

“Yes,” said Marcus quietly. “Yes, I do. We have to rescue her, and rescue her quickly. I need Churaldin’s help to do that. I—I came here to ask your permission to speak with him.”

Sixtus nodded and rose to go. Churaldin, who had also seated himself at the other side of the table, glanced up and met his eyes, and Marcus saw, with a curious sense of shock, the trust and understanding between the young slave and the ancient master. “Will you stay, sir?”

“If you don’t object, Marcus Silanus,” said the old man. Marcus quickly shook his head. Sixtus moved back to his chair, steadying himself on the edge of the table, and Marcus saw then that he was lame. “Now, how can my wild Briton be of help to you?”

“The men we’re looking for are Christians,” began Marcus, looking from that haughty old man to the slave who sat at his side, proud and forbidding as a black hawk on his master’s fist. “The centurion Arrius—the centurion of the Praetorian Guard who’s in charge of finding the men who did it—believes they had a confederate in the household. He says the ambush couldn’t have been planned any other way.”

“Oh, it could have,” remarked Sixtus. “But I’ll admit that having a confederate in the household would be one of the easier ways of doing it, particularly if it is a large household.”

“Not overly large,” said Marcus. “Fifty or sixty slaves, I think. But I wondered if Churaldin had heard anything, any rumor, about one or more of them being Christians?” He turned to look at Churaldin and was surprised at the anger that flushed that dark angular face.

“You’re asking me, in effect, to turn informer,” said the slave, his voice harsh for all the quietness of his speech. “In spite of the fact that, as a citizen, you must know there’s only one way they have of examining slaves.”

Marcus felt his cheeks scald. “Well—I mean—that wasn’t exactly what I meant—”

“It was what you said,” he lashed at him. “What if one of them happens to be a Christian who knows nothing about it?”

“But in any case,” cut in Sixtus smoothly over the slave’s anger, “even if you did know anything, Churaldin, it would probably be better to let the authorities know than to have the Praetorian Guard embark upon a general hunt. But the question is academic, I believe. Had Churaldin been aware of any Christians in any of the households upon the Quirinal Hill, he would have told me. When you are a crippled old recluse such as I, it pays to know your surroundings.”

Churaldin was still regarding him with a smoldering resentment, and Marcus was philosopher enough to know that although no Roman citizen is ever obliged to apologize to a slave, he owed this man an apology.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I really didn’t mean...”

“Oh, I think you did,” said Sixtus, in a tone of great kindness. “Or at least, I don’t believe you thought much about what you meant. And it all comes under the heading of civic duty anyway.” He turned the amulet over in his blunt fingers, and experimentally nicked the soft silver of the tail with his fingernail. “And Churaldin, for all his other faults, isn’t one to screen criminals of that nature.”

At the mention of his other faults, the Briton looked up quickly, his eyes meeting his master’s in a flash of amused connivance, less master and slave than father and adopted son. But he only murmured, “No, sir,” in a humble voice, and turning to Marcus he said, “I shouldn’t have lost my temper. You’ve probably never witnessed a judicial examination in your life.”

“I’m far more certain,” continued the old man, to cover Marcus’ confusion, “that information could be gleaned from the chain that this hung on. It’s pure silver, you see. An expensive trinket for a slave.”

Marcus shook his head. “There was no chain found, sir.”

“Indeed?” One white eyebrow went up. “Interesting.” He turned the amulet over in his fingers again and angled it to the light. “But what is far more interesting is why the Christians would put themselves to the trouble of kidnapping the sixteen-year-old daughter of so formidable a father in the first place.”

Marcus swallowed, trying to keep his voice steady. “Sacrifice.”

The blue eyes looked into his, kind but very grave. “Children are cheap.”

“And revenge.”

“Ah.” He laid the amulet down. “But I thought that the Christians were opposed to violence in any form?”

“Are they?” asked Marcus, considerably startled.

“Of course.” The old man folded his hands among his papers. “That’s why they refuse to enter the legions. They have placed themselves in the hands of their god. They will not struggle against his will.”

“But I thought—I mean, I don’t know much about it, but I have heard stories of Christian soldiers, even Christian gladiators. And the man who kicked me sure didn’t have any scruples about violence.”

The bright blue eyes widened at him. “It would hardly be the first time that a man believes one thing and performs the opposite. Under stress, the most stoic Stoic has been known to curse Fate and even try to meddle with its outcome.”

The look the old man shot him was so knowing, and yet so teasing, that Marcus had to chuckle. “But I’ve been told I’m very young in my philosophy,” he apologized.

“I venture to say,” returned the old scholar, “that you are merely very young. For all his own philosophy Plato almost grieved himself to death over the murder of Socrates—thereby demonstrating that he placed far more importance on the event than did Socrates himself. But as for the Christians...”