Oracle of the Dead

4

"What?” I shouted. “Who’s left to kill? The whole staff of priests are gamboling happily amid the Elysian Fields already!”

“Calm down, dear,” Julia admonished. “With all you ate and drank last night you’re liable to bring on a seizure.”

It was early morning, never the best hour for me. Hermes had come in to wake me more than an hour before my accustomed time. It was still dark enough to need lamps. I threw on a toga, ignoring Julia’s demands to wait for her. I knew she would take far too long to get dressed and made up. Preceded by torchbearers, we made our way up to the temple. In what had become the market area, I could see the embers of some campfires still burning, though most of the visitors were fast asleep. A steward met us at the entrance to the temple grounds. He looked distressed, and understandably so. Temples of Apollo were supposed to be serene places and this one was anything but.

He led us to the stable area, where horses and asses shifted quietly in the cool morning. There on the straw lay the body, and the torchbearers lowered their flames so that we could see, but it was scarcely necessary in the growing dawn light.

It was the slave girl, Hypatia. I closed my eyes for a moment. Such a beautiful child.

“Well,” Hermes said, “at least this time there’s no mystery about how she died.”

Indeed, she had been stabbed just beneath the sternum. It was an expert’s blow, sure to kill quickly with one thrust slanting upward into the heart. Hermes parted her gown to view the wound.

“It was done with a broad-bladed dagger or a short sword, maybe a soldier’s pugio.”

“I wish Asklepiodes were here,” I said, not for the first time.

“He probably couldn’t tell you much. This looks pretty straightforward.”

I spoke to the steward. “When was she found?”

“Less than an hour ago, Praetor. The boy who cares for the animals is always here before first light. I am afraid he tripped over her. He came running to me and I sent word to you at once.”

“Commendable. Besides the boy, how many people have been trampling around here since she was found?”

“Just ourselves, sir.”

“Hermes, go get my lictors and have them guard this area. We’ll make a thorough search at full light.”

He was back in a few minutes, and Julia arrived as well, looking grim when she saw the body. “That poor girl,” she said. “She was afraid to speak out and she had reason to be, it seems.”

“I blame myself for this,” I told her. “I should have taken her into custody. I said right in front of everybody that I might be questioning her further. Clearly somebody did not want her to talk.”

“Do you think she saw more than she told you?”

“Probably not, but sometimes it is best not to take chances. Whoever is behind this decided to eliminate a possible problem. They didn’t see fit to employ arcane murder methods this time.”

“Why at the stables?” Julia mused. “What was she doing out here in the middle of the night?”

“I’ve been pondering that myself. Perhaps she was frightened enough to try to escape and she came down here to steal a mount. But it can be no coincidence that the murderer was here waiting for her.”

“She must have been summoned here by someone she thought she had reason to trust.”

“If so, she was mistaken in that belief. In fact, it causes me to wonder about her depth of involvement in this matter.”

“You think she might have been an accomplice?” Julia said.

“It wouldn’t be the first time someone suborned a slave to spy on a master. Nor would it be the first time an accomplice was eliminated in just this fashion.”

With full light we went over the scene. As is common with stables, the ground in front, where the body lay, was a mash of trampled mud and straw. Footprints, both human and animal, were so plentiful that they told us nothing. I examined the ground closely for any foreign matter, but there was nothing. Just the beautiful girl, whose eyes stared up at nothing, expressing nothing, not even the reproach I deserved.

“Well, my dear,” I said, “I don’t think we’re going to learn anything here.”

“Don’t be so sure, my love,” Julia said. To my horror, she further opened the unfortunate girl’s gown and felt her breasts, then her belly. Apparently satisfied, she straightened. “This girl is-was, I should say, pregnant. About three months along.”

Her words did not shock me at all, but her actions did. Romans do not at all mind turning live bodies into dead ones. We do it all the time. However, we have a ritual revulsion for touching dead bodies before the proper rites have been performed. Death contaminates, and the purificatory lustrum must be performed before the body can be handled. And here was Julia, the very personification of patrician rectitude, touching the body of a murdered slave.

Mind you, I did not doubt for a second that her judgment was correct. Few women knew more about pregnancy than Julia, since the subject was her passion. She suffered from the Julians’ famous infertility and she had been to every midwife, medium, and quack physician in Rome to find a cure. Still, as many years as we tried, she had achieved pregnancy rarely, carried a child to term only twice, and these infants had not survived their first four months. I accepted this as the gods’ will where it came to the Julians, as opposed to my own family, whose fertility was little less than pestilential. In our circles, where you cannot produce heirs, you adopt. But Julia resisted this expedient, still hoping to produce an heir of good Julian-Caecilian stock.

“What of it?” I asked, when I got over my shock. “Girl slaves get pregnant all the time, and a beauty like this one must have had more opportunity than most. Julia, you’ve contaminated yourself! We’ll have to summon a priest and perform a lustrum.”

“Don’t be an idiot!” she snapped. “Touching the dead can’t contaminate anyone. The gods aren’t that petty.”

I was astonished. This was the first time I had ever heard Julia speak against ritual law. Of course, I never truly credited all that primitive mumbo-jumbo myself, but I had never seen any point in taking chances. Moreover, I had always thought that old, patrician families like the Julians were even more tradition-bound than mine. But Julia had become something of a freethinker. She had been consulting with Alexandrian philosophers.

“All right, I grant your point. What difference does it make that this poor child was pregnant?”

“We can’t know, but it’s something we didn’t know before. As you’ve so often intoned to me in such portentous tones, my love, ‘every fact, however innocuous it may seem at the moment, may have a crucial bearing upon the case.’ ”

“Yes, I did say that, didn’t I? I think it was that lecture I delivered in the Basilica Julia just after that business with the flood and Scaurus’s death.”

“Maybe you just practiced on me,” she said, with that tired patience she sometimes showed when she judged me an especial idiot. “But we have here a temple whose staff are expected to be renowned for chastity. This girl’s condition coincides with the mass murder of its priesthood. Might there not be some connection?”

“Well, I suppose so,” I said, still having trouble dealing with the fact that Julia had just handled a corpse with her bare hands. “But what might that connection be?”

“That’s your field, dear,” she said, turning away. “As for me, I will concentrate upon the staff of the Oracle, and the women of the district.” She left a warning unspoken: I had better be circumspect about the women of the district. I had learned to heed Julia’s warnings in such matters.

So I summoned young Sextus Vespillo. He appeared with commendable dispatch, and turned pale when he saw the girl’s corpse. He was old enough not to be dismayed by the occasional corpse, but he clearly had been fond of the girl. I gave him a moment to regain his composure.

“I heard there had been another killing,” he said, when his color returned. “I didn’t know who it was.”

“It’s time you told me how you encountered this girl and how she came to reveal the hidden tunnel to you.” We walked from the stables and turned our steps toward the temple. I had no urgent business there but it was more pleasant than the crime scene.

“We’d been combing the district for the priests and using the temple as our base of operations, as you instructed. Hermes often left me behind here because he says I’m a wretched horseman and would just slow the rest down. Actually, I’m quite good at-”

I raised a hand to silence him. “That is of no account. Let it suffice that you remained behind here at the temple instead of riding off with the rest. What then?” We had come to the space before the temple where I had set up my headquarters.

“I, ah, that is, I was-sitting over there-” he gestured idly toward the low dais, hoping that I would not grasp the implication. Not much chance of that.

“Were you sitting in my curule chair?” I shouted, drawing many curious stares from the idlers all about. I have not mentioned that the impromptu market had by now swollen to the size of a modest town, so we were well supplied with such persons.

“Forgive me, Praetor, but it seemed harmless enough, with you and your lictors absent-”

“And just the thing to impress pretty serving girls with your importance as the close associate of a Roman magistrate, eh? I will remind you that that chair is a part of the regalia of imperium, and no one who has not had imperium bestowed by the Senate is permitted to use it.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, gaze downcast. “I am sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

“If it does, I’ll have you before me on charges of sacrilege or maiestas or some other charge that carries gruesome penalties, which I will proceed to inflict.”

“But you only try cases that involve foreigners!” he protested.

“A petty legal quibble. I can have you executed and when I step down from office your relatives can try to prosecute me. They won’t be successful because my family is more important than yours. It won’t do you any good anyway, because you’ll be dead.”

“But-”

“All right, so there you were, lounging feloniously in my curule chair. What happened next? Did you order wine from my private stock?”

“Nothing of the sort. A few people approached me, mostly with questions about your investigation-”

“What sort of questions?” I kept interrupting him because it is an excellent trial lawyer’s tactic. It keeps people off-balance and in such a state they frequently say things they would not if given time to think and frame their statements.

“What you would expect. Had you made any progress, were the missing priests found, and so forth. Some wanted to accuse their neighbors or enemies.”

“Were any of those credible?”

He shook his head. “Clearly deranged or just petty troublemakers.”

“Did anyone have political questions, questions not concerning the case?” This concerned me because, with the countryside so full of Pompey’s adherents, some of them surely would be sounding me out. My family had not yet picked a side in the upcoming showdown between Pompey and Caesar. I was of two minds myself. No, I was of three or four minds, and none of them had a satisfactory answer for me.

“That lady from Stabiae, Sabinilla, she came by. Asked the usual questions and then wanted to know if you were in the confidence of your wife’s uncle, Caesar. She acted as if that made you fascinating.”

“It would, to some people. Anyone else?”

“A man called Drusianus badgered me, acting rather drunk. He hinted that he’s the spokesman for Pompey’s veterans in the area. He said you’d better settle this matter quickly or there will be trouble.”

“He said that, eh? I had the impression that Pompey’s men aren’t very numerous in the region, but there may be more than I thought.”

“Or he may be some local bully trying to pretend he’s a power in the district.”

“Most likely,” I concurred. Still, the prospect of trouble from that quarter made me uneasy. “Now, at what point did you go after the girl?’

“I didn’t go after her!” he said indignantly.

“Yes, far beneath your dignity, I’m sure. How, then, did the two of you happen to occupy the same space at the same time?”

“It was just past noon. The girl came from the temple and asked if I would like some refreshment-”

“Refreshment,” I said tonelessly.

“Well, I thought she meant some lunch or wine, something like that. I followed her into the temple.”

“A temple being, of course, the sort of place where an impromptu luncheon is always likely to be laid out.”

“All right, I wasn’t really all that eager to ask questions.”

“That’s more like it. So you followed that shapely backside into the interior of a dark and deserted temple. A very promising prospect, I admit. After all, the word ‘refreshment’ is subject to generous interpretation. What next, if I may make so indelicate an inquiry?”

“Nothing that’s very indelicate to tell about, I’m afraid.” He looked downcast like any other unsuccessful would-be swain. “She got-ah-very friendly and pulled me behind a pillar and while I was preparing to-”

“Do something indelicate?” I prodded.

“Very indelicate,” he said, perking up at the thought of his intention. “But then she pulled back and stared at the statue of the god, as if she feared his disapproval.”

“I don’t see why,” I said. “Old Apollo was as randy as the rest of the male gods, always chasing mortal women and getting them turned into plants, like Daphne.”

“My very thought. In fact, I was making exactly that objection, only using the example of Castalia, the girl of Delphi, who got turned into a fountain.”

“Yes, and some yielded to his advances,” I said. “Back in the days when a mortal woman had a chance to bed a truly exalted lover, he sowed the world with little bastard demigods. So, how did the girl respond to this eloquent line of reasoning?”

“She said that it was not my ardency that upset her, but the memory of the last time she had stood upon that spot, when she had witnessed something that disturbed her.”

“And that was the incident of which she informed us.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, at least you have hope for the effectiveness of your masculine charms. Take me to the spot where you stood during your abortive tryst.”

He indicated the pillar and we stepped behind it. “It was just about this time of day, wasn’t it?” He concurred that it was.

The interior of the temple was dim, as is always the case with temples, which have doorways but no windows. I could just barely make out the statue of the god. The pedestal below his feet was even more obscure. What, I thought, must it have looked like at night, when the only illumination was the flickering light of the torches?

“She claimed that she went no closer than this spot, did she not?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Yet somehow she saw clearly the bit of carving, among such a profusion of floral stonework, that is the concealed latch to the trapdoor.”

“This is the sort of thing you’re so famous for, isn’t it?” Vespillo said. “Examining scenes and circumstances and picking away at the-the inconsistencies?”

“It’s a simple and logical process,” I said. “People lie and sometimes they trip themselves up. Unfortunately, I am not now able to interrogate the girl about this improbability. I suspect that this is the reason for her murder.”

We left the temple and I saw a woman on the dais, her ample bottom perched on the arm of my curule chair, which seemed to have become a public convenience on these days when court was not in session. Catching sight of us, she smiled and waved. It was Porcia, the wealthy freedman’s daughter.

“Praetor!” she yelled, turning heads for acres around. “And if it isn’t the handsome young Vespillo! Do you have any plans for lunch?”

I drew closer so I wouldn’t have to shout. “As a matter of fact, we are entirely at loose ends.”

“Then you must come to my house and have a bite. It’s quite nearby.”

“Vespillo here yielded to just such an invitation, and bad things can come of it.”

“If I hadn’t, you’d still be looking for those dead priests,” he objected.

“You are right, so we must accept this invitation. Lead on.”

She led us to a huge litter that stood near a fountain, the bearers squatting by the poles, taking advantage of the cool spray. We climbed in and were hoisted. The bearers set off through the motley, alternately festive and sullen crowd.

Her house lay only a mile from the temple complex, a great, sprawling villa surrounded by orchards and lovingly sculpted formal gardens. We were carried up the steps of the main house and through its extra high and wide doorway and set down in a huge atrium graced with a number of family portrait busts. They all had the look of Italian peasants and no attempt had been made to ape aristocratic practices like a formal chest full of spurious ancestral death masks. I had known social climbers to haunt estate auctions and snap up a whole family tree of spurious ancestors to dignify the atrium.

“Welcome to the Villa of the Mundus. It’s what my father named the place.”

“You have a mundus here?” I said. “Is there anyplace in Campania that isn’t in direct contact with the underworld?”

She laughed raucously. “It’s just a hole in the ground! An old peasant who used to own a piece of this land claimed that people could get in touch with their dead by leaving offerings in his mundus. As you’ve figured out by now, people in this area will believe just about anything. He salted away a lot of denarii before he croaked. He usually charged a denarius per offering, but he was a shrewd judge of what people could afford and he had a sliding scale. He’d accept a copper as if he thought that was all he could get out of you.”

“A man of enterprise,” I said. “An example of the drive and initiative that have made Italy great among the nations of the world. He should be an inspiration to us all.”

Again, the great, hooting laugh. “Praetor, you are priceless! Come, you must be famished. I’ve had something laid out by the pool.”

“Nothing too lavish, I hope,” I said, hoping just the opposite. “After all, you might not have found me in time for lunch.”

“Oh, I always have a bit laid out just in case I bring someone home from town. I usually do.” We entered a wide, colonnaded courtyard with a central pool.

“I can see why you have many takers,” I said, eyeing the long tables stacked with every imaginable delicacy and endless pitchers of wine. Half-naked Egyptian girls wafted huge ostrich-feather fans to keep the flies away. We took couches, and Asian slaves not only took our sandals but washed our feet in the Eastern fashion, finishing by rubbing them with aromatic oils.

We were handed tall beakers of solid gold filled with a wonderful vintage I recognized as Coan. Vespillo, no veteran, sipped his and made a face. I tried mine and raised my eyebrows, glancing at Porcia.

She grinned. “I noticed at Duronius’s dinner that you don’t favor too much water in your wine. My own idea of the proper proportion is no water at all.”

“I can see that we are going to get along famously,” I commended, downing half of it in a gulp.

Since this was an informal lunch, not a dinner or formal banquet, there was nothing resembling the customary progression of courses starting with eggs and finishing with fruit. Instead, the slaves brought us a succession of small, bite-sized snacks, each very different from the others and all delicious: small skewers of venison wrapped in bacon and broiled over coals; whole squab, each about two bites; ground duck mixed with pine nuts and rolled in grape leaves; squares of melon wrapped in parchment-thin slices of ham cured in the northern fashion; little squid deep-fried in a thin crust; bits of bread toasted with cheese on top and sprinkled with capers; and other things I no longer remember. It was all delicious and, lavish though it was, it was without the vulgarity we commonly associate with rich freedmen. There were no ridiculously rare tidbits or ostentatious servings or grotesque ingredients or preparations. It was all rather simple food, superbly prepared and presented.

In time I lay back, replete. “Campania is famed for its cuisine,” I said, “but I do not think I have eaten better since coming here, and I’ve been entertained in some of the finest houses.”

Porcia beamed. “I thought I’d read you right. People who want things like sow’s udders stuffed with Libyan mice and German bear stuffed with oysters just want you to think they’re sophisticated. I like to serve the things I enjoy eating myself and forget about impressing people.”

“Consider me impressed,” I said.

“It’s all pretty silly,” she said, “lowborn people like me trying to use their money to gain acceptance by aristocrats. It’s just not going to happen. I’ll always be a freedman’s daughter and I don’t pretend to be anything else.”

“A wise philosophy,” I said. “Speaking as an aristocrat myself, I can tell you that the advantages of high birth are greatly overrated. You get to hold high office, which can get you killed or prosecuted; you are qualified for the highest priesthoods, and I cannot imagine anything more boring than that. Worst of all, you have to spend a lot of time with your fellow aristocrats, most of whom are bores, insane, or congenital criminals. Be content with wealth and luxury. Those will get you all the respect and deference you could ask for, without all the other headaches.” Vespillo looked scandalized at my disloyalty toward my own class. Perhaps I exaggerated, but throughout my adult years I had been growing more and more embittered toward my class, the senatorial aristocracy, who in their self-seeking folly were dragging the Republic down to ruin and destroying much of Italy and the Roman world in the process.

Her eyebrows went up. “Well, that’s blunt enough! It’s what I always suspected, though. My father wasn’t born a slave. His parents sold him when there was a famine here. He never held it against them. They had a lot of children, and by selling a couple of them, they could save the rest from starving. He never thought it made him better than the other slaves, either. Being a slave is a matter of luck, not breeding or the favor of the gods. Some are born slaves, some get made slaves, some stay free all their lives. He worked hard for his master, learned how to handle money, and made a fortune for him in property.”

“Commercial properties, were they not?” I asked.

She nodded. “That’s right. His master was interested in farmland, because that’s what the highborn consider respectable. My father pointed out that squeezing rents from peasants was a lot of trouble and there’d be years when you couldn’t get any money out of them at all, because the crops would fail. Buy shops and factories, my father said. Merchants always have money, and if they go broke, you can evict them and rent the place to another merchant. They’re always clamoring for properties they can use. It made the old boy a fortune, and he freed my father and staked him to a good bit of investment money. As you can see”-she made a wide gesture, taking in our surroundings-“he did well out of it.”

“So he did.” I belched politely. “Now, if it is convenient to you, I would like to see your mundus.”

“That old place?” she said, astonished. “Whatever for? Like I said, it’s just a hole in the ground.”

“Nonetheless, I am a collector of odd places, and Campania seems to be full of them. Please indulge me.”

“Your wish is my dearest pleasure,” she said cheerfully, clapping her hands. Moments later the litter reappeared in the atrium and we tottered, full of food and wine, toward it, with slaves at each elbow just in case we should need assistance. Poor Vespillo had said almost nothing throughout the minor banquet. This was partly because he was young and unsophisticated but mostly because he could make nothing of either Porcia or me. He thought I showed a very unpraetorlike lack of gravitas in consorting with the hospitable but lowly Porcia, and a freedman’s daughter who was richer than his own family was an unsettling prospect for a naive boy brought up on his mother’s tales of the nobility of his ancestors and their natural right to rule. Age and experience would disillusion him, but that was in the future.

The slaves packed us into the litter, along with a great basin of crushed ice in which a large pitcher of wine cooled. This would have been a wonder in Rome, but I had seen the artificial caves where Campanians kept ice and snow, carted down from the mountains in winter, to cool their drinks all summer long.

“You think of everything,” I said, holding out my cup to be filled by a rather beautiful Arab girl, who happened to be some sort of dwarf. Her tiny size made her an ideal attendant for a litter, taking up little space and burdening the bearers much less than a normal-sized human.

“Wouldn’t want you to go thirsty,” Porcia said, accepting another golden beaker herself. She offered it to Vespillo, but he shook his head, already nodding. The boy had little capacity. He needed training. I resolved to undertake this myself. My attendants had to be able to keep up with me if they were to be of any use.

Our progress took us through the abundant orchards and past a broad vineyard that would soon be ready for harvest. Slaves were readying the great trampling vats where the workers would caper like satyrs and nymphs to the music of flutes, stained purple to their thighs as they extracted the gift of Bacchus. That was always my favorite time of year on an estate, where I could watch other people working from a place of comfort and ease.

The bearers took us along a road paved with smooth-cut white stone, lined with watchful herms that were draped with fresh garlands, their phalli standing at attention as if in salute. The fields were cultivated, but the many small prominences had been allowed to grow wild and were topped by small forests.

“You allow plenty of wildland,” I said to Porcia. “I like that. So many slave-worked plantations are overcultivated to increase profits. It ruins the land, in time.”

“I’m not a farmer, I’m a businesswoman. This place pays for itself, and it supports me and my chattel. I don’t ask more than that and I’d rather watch the deer and foxes than see people sweating all day long. I also like to hunt from time to time. Learned it from my father. He was a keen hunter.”

“Would that all people were so sensible.”

Eventually we came to a little swale, deep-shaded by trees and shrubs, where stood the circular ruins of what had once been a peasant’s hut.

“This is as far as we can get by litter,” Porcia announced, as we were set down. “From here, we march like legionaries.” I prodded Vespillo to wakefulness and we alighted. Swaying only slightly, Porcia led us past the ruins and into the little valley. It was pleasantly cool in the shade and from time to time I sipped from my chilled wine. Slaves followed behind with the pitcher and its basin of ice.

We came upon a small altar in the form of a stubby pillar with a carved serpent spiraling around it; the usual shrine to the genius loci. Someone had placed on it cakes, a wooden cup of wine, and, oddly, a few small arrows.

“Did you leave those?” I asked, pointing to the altar.

“No, I hardly ever come here. The local folk keep up their traditions, though. These are probably offerings to someone nobody five miles away ever heard of.”

“What do the arrows signify?” Vespillo wanted to know.

“I’ve no idea. Maybe some hunter wanting to find game here.”

We ventured farther into the valley, which I now saw was actually a cleft in almost solid stone, perhaps left over from some upheaval of the earth such as might be wrought by the nearby volcano. Over the ages, the stone had acquired a covering of soil and from this soil sprang the dense growth and twining vines that shaded us. Everywhere, though, crags of solid stone thrust upward through the growth like the snaggled teeth of some long-dead dragon.

“It’s over here somewhere,” Porcia said, poking about in the undergrowth. “Ah, here it is.”

We went to stand beside her. She stood on the brink of a broad, circular well, perhaps three yards in diameter. It merited better than her description of it as a hole in the ground. The rim was of finely cut stone, unornamented but bearing the remains of what was once a fine polish. Careful of my clothes, I knelt on the rim stone and leaned over. A few feet down, the cut stone ended and the well was carved into solid rock. The walls were smooth and the bottom was lost in obscurity.

“I think it’s just an old well,” Porcia said. “It must’ve gone dry and was abandoned.”

“Awfully wide for a well,” Vespillo said.

“A sacred well gets more attention than the ordinary sort,” I pointed out. “We have more than one in Rome as elaborate as this one.” I looked about and found a black stone streaked with green the size of my fist. I dropped it in and a few moments later was rewarded with a solid thunk.

“See?” Porcia said. “It’s dry.”

“So it would seem. Did the old peasant’s callers claim any extraordinary results arising from their visits here?”

“Not that I ever heard of. It’s a mundus, not an oracle. I think they just left offerings and prayers and good wishes for their dead.”

I was vaguely disappointed and unsatisfied, and I wondered, as we passed the little altar on the way back to our litter, why people had left arrows there.