The Forest House (49 page)

The weather held fair, but even so it seemed a weary journey. The further south they traveled the drier the country became - to Gaius's northern eyes a desert, though the officers at the posting houses laughed to hear him say so and traded stories of Egypt and Palestine, where the desert sands scoured monuments older than Rome. He found himself wishing that like Caesar he could while away the time by writing his memoirs, but even if he waited forty years to do so, he doubted anyone would be interested in reading them.

Even Julia's chatter would have been welcome, though these days all she seemed able to talk about was the children. But children were what he had married her for, he reminded himself; children, and social standing. And so far everything had gone more or less to plan. Only, as he passed through the endless miles of slave-farmed estates in Gaul, Gaius found himself wondering if this pursuit of rank and position was really worth it. And then they would come to the next inn, or the next villa belonging to one of Licinius's friends. In the arms of whatever pretty slave girl they sent to warm his bed he could forget both Julia and Eilan, and in the morning he would tell himself that it was only his fatigue that had been speaking, or perhaps a natural anxiety about how he would do in Rome.

Once he reached Rome, it began to rain, heavily and continuously, as if making up for lost time. The kinsman of Licinius with whom he was staying was hospitable enough, but Gaius very quickly became tired of jokes about bringing his British weather with him. And it was not even true, really, for in Britannia there was an honest chill to the rain, but Rome was not so much cold as plagued by a pervasive and pestilent damp. Forever after, Gaius's memories of that time were linked to the alkaline smell of damp plaster and the reek of wet wool.

Rome was mud and smoky skies; the rank smell of the Tiber and the exotically spiced cooking fires of a hundred different nationalities. Rome was white marble and gilding and heady perfumes; the blare of trumpets and the shrieking of market-women and the eternal, sub-aural hum of more people, speaking more languages than Gaius had ever imagined existed, crammed together on seven hills whose contours had long ago disappeared beneath this encrustation of humanity. Rome was the pulsing heart of the world.

"And this is your first visit to Rome?" The lady to whom Gaius was talking favored him with a laugh that tinkled like the silver bangles she wore. Exquisitely curled women and elegantly draped men crowded the atrium of Licinius's cousin, who was giving the party, and conversation hummed like bees in an orchard.

"So what do you think of the Mistress of Nations, diadem of the Empire?" her painted eyelids drooped
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coquettishly. This was another question Gaius had heard so often he had been forced to memorize an answer.

"I think the splendor of the city far eclipsed by the beauty that adorns it," he said gallantly. He would have said "might," and "power," if he had been talking to a man.

This earned him another burst of tinkling; then his host rescued him and bore him away to the peristyle, where toga-clad men were grouped like figures on a piece of statuary. He joined them with some relief.

Even among the men, there were dangers, but at least he understood them. Roman women produced in him something of the same paralysis he had felt when he first met Julia.

But she was straightforward by comparison to the ladies he was meeting now. One or two of them had invited him to bed, but a lively sense of self-preservation had kept him free of such entrapments. Rome attracted the best of everything, and if he needed a woman, there were courtesans who demanded nothing of him but his money, and whose arts could banish anxiety, for a little while.

Moving in Roman society was like leading a cavalry charge across icy ground - exhilarating while it lasted, but you never knew when some treacherous bit would bring you down. Gaius wondered if Julia could have held her own in that company. And as for Eilan -it was like trying to imagine a wild antelope, or perhaps a wildcat, among a herd of high-bred racing mares to picture her here: both were beautiful, but different orders of being entirely.

"I understand that you served under Agricola in Caledonia . . ."

Gaius blinked, realizing that one of the older men was talking to him. He caught the flicker of a broad purple stripe on the tunic and straightened as if he were facing a superior officer, racking his brains to remember the man's name. Most of his host's friends were from the equestrian class; he had done well to get a senator here.

"Yes, sir, I had that honor. I had hoped to call upon him here in Rome."

"I believe that at present he is residing on the family estates in Gaul," the Senator said neutrally.

Marcellus Clodius Malleus, that was his name.

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"It is hard to imagine him resting." Gaius grinned. "I had supposed he would be putting the fear of the gods into the enemies of Rome somewhere on the frontiers or bringing the Pax Romana to one of the provinces."

"Indeed, one might think so." The Senator's manner warmed perceptibly. "But you might be wiser not to say so until you are sure of your company . . ."

Gaius stilled, thinking once more of icy ground, but Malleus continued to smile.

"There are many here in Rome who appreciate Agricola's qualities, qualities that appear ever more admirable each time we learn of some mishandled campaign by one of our other generals."

"Then why doesn't the Emperor employ him?" Gaius asked.

"Because victory for Roman arms is secondary to keeping the Emperor in power. The more people clamor for Agricola to be sent out as General, the more our "lord and god" suspects him. In another year he will be due for a major consular appointment, but as things are now, his friends must advise him not to accept it."

"I can see the problem," said Gaius thoughtfully. "Agricola is far too conscientious to fail deliberately, but if he does well, the Emperor will feel threatened by his success. Well, he will be remembered with honor in Britannia, whatever happens in Rome."

"Tacitus would be happy to hear you say that," said Malleus.

"Oh, do you know him? I served with him in Caledonia." The conversation moved into a general discussion of the northern campaign, which the Senator proved to have followed closely. It was only as the guests were being herded to the gardens for a display by some Bithynian dancing girls that the conversation became personal once more.

"I'm giving a small dinner party three weeks from now —" Malleus laid a friendly hand on Gaius's arm.

"Nothing elaborate, just a few men whom I think you will find interesting. Would you honor me by
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attending? Cornelius Tacitus has promised to be there."

From that day forward it seemed to Gaius that the superficial round of parties and entertainments that had begun to exasperate him took on a new dimension. It felt as if he were at last penetrating the veil with which Roman society protected itself against outsiders, and if it was only one segment of that society, and perhaps a dangerous one, even that was preferable to dying of boredom.

A few days later Licinius's cousin, whose agnomen was Corax, took Gaius with him to the Games in the new Coliseum that Domitian was building on the site where Nero's overwrought palace had once stood.

"There's a certain appropriateness in the location," Corax observed as they took their seats in the section reserved for the equestrians, "since Nero himself put on Games such as Rome had never seen before, especially when he was trying to convince everyone that that odd Jewish sect - you know, the Christians

-had caused the great fire."

"Did they?" Gaius was looking around him. They had arrived between fights, and slaves were replacing the bloodstained sand.

"You hardly need deliberate sabotage to start a fire in this city, my lad," his host said wryly. "Why do you think every district has a fire watch to which we all contribute so willingly? But this was a particularly bad one, and the Emperor needed a scapegoat to counter the rumors that he had started the blaze himself!"

Gaius turned to stare at him.

"New buildings, lad, new buildings!" Corax explained. "Nero fancied himself an architect, and the people who owned the property where the fire started wouldn't sell. The fire got out of hand, and the Emperor needed someone to blame. The Games were really quite horrid - no skill involved at all - just a lot of poor souls who died more like sheep than like men."

Gaius was suddenly glad he had not captured Cynric after all. Such a fighter would certainly have been sent here, and he did not deserve it, though surely he would have not been a sheep but rather a wolf or a bear.

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Trumpets blared and a shiver of expectation ran through the vast throng. Gaius felt his own heartbeat quicken and was reminded oddly of the moment before battle; it was the only time he had been in the presence of so many thousands, all nerving themselves up to make blood flow. But at least in war both sides were at equal risk. It was other men's blood these Romans were offering, not their own.

He had seen bear baitings at home, of course, as entertainment for the Legions. There was certainly a fascination in some of the pairings of wild beasts imported for the Games. A lion and a giraffe, for instance, or a wild boar and a panther. Corax told him that on one occasion a pregnant sow had been fighting and actually farrowed a piglet during her death throes. But the real focus of the afternoon was on the most dangerous of all animals — man.

"Now we shall see some skill," said Corax as the mock combats finished and the first of the gladiators, hide and armor alike oiled and gleaming, stalked across the sand. "This kind of thing is what makes the Games worth seeing. Those fights in which they throw in untrained prisoners of war or criminals, even women and children, are simply a stupid slaughter. Here, for instance, we have a Samnite and a Retarius

-" He indicated the first gladiator, wearing greaves and a visored helmet crowned with a tuft of feathers and armed with a shortsword and big rectangular shield, and his more agile opponent, flourishing his net and trident.

Gaius, trained to judge fighting men, found his professional interest engaged. All around him bets were being placed with an intensity that almost matched that of the fighters. Corax kept up a running commentary, and it was not until the Samnite fighter was down with the net-man's trident at his throat that he realized that the man giving the thumb's down signal from the purple-hung box was the Emperor.

The trident thrust and the Samnite convulsed and then was still, his bright blood staining the sand. Gaius sat back, licking dry lips, his throat raw from cheering. He must have been intent indeed not to hear the trumpets announcing the entrance of the Emperor. From this distance he could see only a figure in a purple tunic, wrapped in a mantle that glittered with gold.

Later that night, as Corax's masseur pummeled him after his soak in the bath, Gaius realized that his whole body was a mass of aching muscles, which had been tensed against one another as he watched the Games. At the time he had not noticed.

But he felt also a great sense of release. Going to the Coliseum was indeed like being in a battle, like that moment when all existence is simplified into a single struggle, and you are carried beyond yourself and become one with a greater whole. For a moment, it seemed to him he understood why the Romans loved their Games with such a passion. However perverse and pointless it seemed, they were moved by the same force that had enabled the Legions to conquer half the world.

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The night of Malleus's party was cold and windy, but the streets were choked as usual with food sellers and barbers, men hawking pots and every other kind of street merchant, hoping for one more sale before darkness forced them all indoors. As Gaius's litter bearers forced their way towards the Aventine, it occurred to him that he had almost become used to the noise, as he had grown accustomed to the clatter of iron-shod cartwheels on cobblestones that made the night almost as noisy as the day.

But as they turned on to the main avenue he heard a new sound. The litter stopped, and he stuck his head through the curtains to see. A religious procession was making its way along the road; he glimpsed shaven-headed priests in white robes and women in veils. The women were wailing, their lamentations punctuated by the sibilance of shaking sistrums and the deep boom of a drum.

Despite the warmth of his toga Gaius found himself shivering, for the mourning touched something that deeply disturbed his urbane persona, and even the easy competence of the man he was at home.

Even without understanding its cause, he felt that anguish as his own. It was like the mourning in the Mithraeum when the bull is killed. Another group of priests went by, and then more women, their gliding gait reminding him of the priestesses at home, and then a litter on which he could see the black-veiled statue of a golden cow. For a few moments longer the drumming pounded in his ears; then the procession passed.

When Gaius finally got to it, the dinner party proved to be a gathering of the kind that he had come to feel represented the best in Roman society. The food was simple but well prepared, the company urbane and well informed. Gaius felt outclassed, but these were men from whom he could learn.

The topic that had been proposed was "pietas," the wine mixed half and half with water so that everyone remained focused enough to discuss it seriously.

"I suppose one question is whether there is more than one true religion," Gaius said when his turn to speak arrived. "Of course each people has its faith and should be allowed to keep it, but here in Rome you seem to worship more gods than I ever knew existed. Just tonight, for instance, I saw some kind of procession that sounded oriental, but most of those following it looked Roman."

"That must have been the Isia," observed Herennius Senecio, one of the more important of the guests.

"The followers of Isis celebrate her search for the dismembered body of Osiris at this time of year. When
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