The Triumph of Caesar (4 page)

Calpurnia had told me I would find a slave posted in the tiny vestibule. He was there partly for the security of the tenants but also to make sure they didn't start cooking fires in their rooms or carry on any business that was too dangerous or too illegal. I encountered an unshaven young man so scruffily dressed that he might have been a beggar who had wandered in off the street, but the suspicious look he gave me was definitely that of a watchman.

"You must be Agapios," I said. "My name is Gordianus. Your mistress sent me." For proof I showed him a bit of sealing wax into which Calpurnia had pressed her signet ring. For a symbol she used the profile of King Numa, with his flowing beard and priest's mantle. The Calpurnii could trace their descent from Calpus; he was one of the four sons of pious King Numa, who lived more than hundred years ago and was the founder of many religious rites and priesthoods.

He bowed obsequiously. "What can I do for you, citizen?"

"You can show me to the room where Hieronymus of Massilia lived."

The young slave caught my use of the past tense and shot me a curious look, but he said nothing. He turned and motioned for me to follow him up the stairs.

Usually the choicest apartments in such tenements are located in the middle floors, high enough to escape the noise and odors of the street but not so high that climbing the stairs becomes an onerous challenge, or jumping from a window in case of fire means certain death. I had expected to find Hieronymus's apartment on the second floor up, or perhaps the third, but the sprightly watchman bounded up one flight of stairs after another. I found myself huffing and puffing and called to him to slow down, but he had disappeared from sight.

I followed at my own pace and eventually caught up with him on a landing. He was miming boredom by examining his cuticles.

"Hieronymus lived all the way up here?" I said. "I should have thought—"

"Not on this floor. One more flight up."

"What!"

"You have to take this final flight of steps, over here."

Why had Hieronymus left my home for such a place? This tenement was not as squalid as some, but was it really an improvement on the comfortable quarters I had provided for him?

The last flight of stairs delivered us not, as before, to a landing with dark hallways leading to numerous apartments but to a single door with an open skylight above. Under the bright sunshine, the watchman produced an iron key and opened the door.

The room was sparsely furnished, but the rugs and chairs were of good quality. The space was brightly lit by unshuttered windows on either side. A doorway appeared to lead to another room. Another doorway opened onto a terrace that entirely encircled the apartment. I stepped outside.

"A rooftop apartment?" I said.

"The only one. The tenant had it all to himself."

Hieronymus had done well for himself, after all. The space and seclusion would have suited him, and the vista would have reminded him of his pampered days in Massilia. This was one of the tallest buildings in the Subura, and the view was virtually unimpeded in all directions. Beyond the Forum there was an excellent view of the Capitoline Hill with its crown of magnificent temples and monumental statues.

I leaned forward, peered over the parapet, and felt a bit dizzy, gazing down at the tiny figures in the street below.

"How well did you know him?" I said.

"The tenant? Not at all. He kept to himself."

We stepped back into the apartment. "Did he have visitors?"

"Never. You speak of him in the past tense. Is the tenant—?"

"You can go now, Agapios. Leave the key with me, so that I can lock the door as I leave. In fact, I'll keep the key."

"But tenants always leave their key with me when they go out. I don't have another."

"Good."

"But the mistress—"

"I have authority from Calpurnia. I showed you the seal."

"So you did," said the slave, cocking an eyebrow. "All very mysterious!" He paused in the doorway and turned back. "You know, for a graybeard who can barely manage the stairs, you're not bad looking." He skipped lithely down the steps and vanished.

I stood, confounded for a moment. It had been quite some time since a young slave of either gender had flirted with me. I blinked and caught my reflection in the polished square of copper hung on the wall beside the doorway. Hieronymus must have used it for checking his appearance before leaving his rooms. The full lips set into a frown, the knitted brow, the flattened nose (a boxer's nose, Bethesda called it) all projected a stern countenance. The silver-streaked hair and beard were kept short and neatly trimmed; that was my daughter, Diana's, doing. There was perhaps a certain gentleness about the eyes, a suggestion of the callow youth I once had been, a lifetime ago.

I watched a trickle of sweat run down my forehead onto my nose. All the heat of the building rose to these rooms, which were baked by the sun as well. I grunted and wiped the sweat away, then shrugged at the figure in the mirror and set about exploring Hieronymus's lair.

I walked from room to room and searched the usual places. I lifted the rugs. I checked the chairs for false bottoms and rapped on the legs to see if they might be hollow. I rummaged though the trunk that contained his clothing. There were a few cups and jars and other containers; they held only wine or olive oil for the lamps. I examined the narrow bed, the straw mattress, the coverlets and the cushions. He kept his valuables in a little box under the bed. I found some coins and a few trinkets, but not much else of value.

Hieronymus had kept a small collection of books. The rolled-up scrolls were neatly inserted into a tall pigeonhole case against one wall. Most of the scrolls were identified by little tags with titles and volume numbers written on them: Eirenaios's
History of Massilia,
Fabius Pictor's
History of Rome,
the
Epigrams
of Appius Claudius the Blind, and so on. Perusing the bookcase from top to bottom, I came upon a whole row of scrolls that had come from my own library, including a rare copy of Manius Calpurnius's
Life of King Numa
. Cicero had given it to me many years ago. I couldn't remember ever lending it to Hieronymus. When he vacated my house, he must have borrowed it—if "borrow" was the correct word.

Feeling a bit peeved, I pulled the scroll from its pigeonhole and unrolled it, wanting to check its condition. The scroll was intact, but several loose pieces of parchment had been rolled up inside it. I removed these extraneous pages and saw that they were covered with writing in Hieronymus's hand. I had only to scan a few lines to realize that I had found what appeared to be a private journal, kept hidden inside the scroll of
Numa
.

I felt a sudden chill. I sensed a presence in the room and slowly turned around, almost certain I would see the lemur of Hieronymus standing behind me.

I saw no one. I was alone.

Still, I felt an uncanny sensation of being watched, and in my head I seemed to hear Hieronymus's voice: "How predictable you are, Gordianus! You saw your precious copy of
Numa
and felt compelled to check at once that I hadn't damaged it—you did exactly as I intended! You found my private notes, intended for my eyes only, while I lived. But now that I'm dead, I wanted you to find my journal, Gordianus, tucked inside your precious
Numa
. . ."

I shuddered and put the pieces of parchment aside.

I looked through all the other scrolls, but found no more hidden documents. There was one scroll, however, that piqued my curiosity. It was quite different from anything else in the bookcase. It was not a work of history or poetry or drama. It was not even a book, properly speaking, but a collection of odd-sized pieces of parchment stitched together. The various documents did have a common theme: astronomy, if I could judge the enigmatic notations and drawings rightly. The movements of the sun, moon and stars, and the symbols used to represent them, were not things I knew much about. Hieronymus's taste in reading had not run to the scientific, yet these notations appeared to have been made by his own hand.

I gathered up the scrolls which had belonged to me. I decided to leave the other scrolls, for the time being, except the astronomical miscellany, which I wanted to study further. I added that scroll to the others I was taking, along with Hieronymus's private journal.

I stepped outside the apartment and locked the door behind me.

III

"You went to that woman's house,
alone
?" Bethesda greeted me in the vestibule with her hands on her hips. "You should have taken Rupa with you for protection. Or at least the two troublemakers, if only to get them out of my hair." She referred to our two young slaves, the brothers Mopsus and Androcles, who were not quite boys anymore but not yet men, either.

"Protection? I hardly needed any. People say the city is quite safe now, with Caesar back in residence and his officers in charge, and with half the citizenry dead or in exile. Caesar himself is said to go strolling about the city with no bodyguard at all."

"Because Venus protects him. But what goddess looks after you?" Bethesda scowled at me. "You're an old man now. Old men make tempting targets for cutthroats and thieves."

"Not as old as that! Why just today, a young slave engaged in a rather obvious and completely unsolicited flirtation with me. Said that I—"

"She probably wanted something from you."

"As a matter of fact—"

"Promise me you won't stir from the house again without taking someone with you."

"Wife! Did we not survive the civil war and the darkest days of the chaos here in Rome? Did we not survive a terrible storm at sea, and a rocky landing in Egypt, and a separation of many months, and my own intention to drown myself in the Nile, when I mistakenly thought that you must have met such a fate? How can you suggest that no gods watch over me? I've always assumed that my life must be providing them with considerable amusement; how else can you explain the fact that I'm still alive?"

She was not impressed. "The gods may have been amused when you were Gordianus the Finder, always sticking your nose where it didn't belong, exposing so-called great men and women as conniving thieves and killers, daring the Fates to strike you down. But what have you done to amuse them lately? You sit at home, play with your grandchildren, and watch the garden grow. The gods have grown bored with you."

"Bethesda! Are you saying that
you
are bored with me?"

"Of course not. Quite the opposite. I hated it when you were always putting yourself in danger. It seems to me that now is the best time of our lives, when you've finally settled down and no longer have to work. You belong in the garden, playing with Aulus and looking after little Beth. Why do you think I became so upset when I found that you'd left the house to go visit that woman and taken no one with you for protection?"

Tears welled in her eyes. Since our return to Rome, it seemed to me that a change had come over her. What had become of the strangely aloof young slave girl I had taken as my concubine, then married? Where was the self-contained, autocratic matron of my household, who kept a cool exterior and never showed weakness?

I took Bethesda in my arms. She submitted to the embrace for a moment, then pulled away. She was as unused to being comforted as I was to comforting her.

"Very well," I said quietly. "In the future, I shall be more careful when I leave the house. Even though the house of 'that woman,' as you insist on calling her, is only a few steps away." I decided not to tell her about my excursion to the seedy, dangerous Subura.

"You'll be going back there, then?"

"To Calpurnia's house? Yes. She's asked for my help."

"Something dangerous enough to pique the gods' interest in you, no doubt?" said Bethesda tartly, having recovered from her tears. "Something to do with all those scrolls you've brought home with you?" She eyed the bag slung over my shoulder with the suspicion of those who have never learned to read.

"Yes. Actually . . . there's something I need to tell you. Something I need to tell everyone. Can you gather the family in the garden?"

They reacted more strongly to the news of Hieronymus's death than I had anticipated.

Bethesda wept—perhaps that
was
to be expected, given her new propensity for tears—but so did my daughter, Diana. At the age of twenty-four, she was quite the most beautiful young woman I had ever known (even allowing for a father's prejudice), and it pained me to see her loveliness marred by an outburst of weeping.

Davus, her hulking mass of a husband, held her in his brawny arms and wiped the mist from his own eyes. The last time I had seen him weep was when Bethesda and I arrived home unexpectedly from Egypt and found that everyone feared that we were dead. Poor Davus, thinking we might be lemures, first was scared half out of his wits—of which he had few enough to spare—then cried like a child.

Their five-year-old son, Aulus, was perhaps still too young to understand the cause of their grief on this occasion, but seeing his mother in tears he joined in with a piercing wail that set off an even more piercing cry from his little sister, Beth, who had recently learned to walk and tottered to his side.

My son Rupa was the newest addition to the family (by adoption, as anyone could tell by seeing the two of us side by side; he had the blue eyes, golden hair, and muscular frame of a handsome Sarmatian bloodline). Rupa had hardly known Hieronymus. Nonetheless, caught up in the family's grief, he opened his lips and, despite his muteness, let out a sound of despair as poignant as any line ever uttered by Roscius on the stage.

Even the young slaves, Mopsus and Androcles, who could usually be expected to exchange taunts at any sign of weakness, bowed their heads and joined hands. The brothers had been very fond of the Scapegoat.

"But, Papa," said Diana, fighting back her tears, "what was he doing in Calpurnia's employ? Something to do with Massilia? Hieronymus hardly had the personality to be a diplomat. Besides, he swore he would never go back there."