Saturnalia

4

Cato woke me far too early and Cassandra brought in my breakfast tray. My two aged house slaves were intrusive and officious as usual, but they were always good for a few days of cheerful service immediately after one of my returns from foreign parts. After that they would revert to their customary cranky selves.

“Are my clients outside?” I asked.

“No, they’ve not yet got word you’re back in town, Master,” Cato said. “You should send your boy to summon them.”

“Absolutely not!” I said. “I don’t want them calling on me in the mornings. The longer they’re in the dark, the better.” I took the napkin off the tray, revealing hot bread, sliced fruit, boiled eggs, and a pot of honey. Breakfast was one of those degenerate, un-Roman practices to which I was addicted.

Fed and dressed, Hermes in tow, I went to a corner barber to be shaved and have my hair trimmed. It had grown a little shaggy around the ears during my voyage and long ride. Besides being necessary, there was no better place to hear the gossip of the streets.

“Welcome back to Rome, Senator,” said the barber, one Bassus, who was shaving the head of a burly butcher. The other men waiting their turn welcomed me back effusively. I was popular in my neighborhood, and in those days even patrician senators were expected to mix with the citizenry, especially in the mornings.

“It’s good to breathe Roman air again,” I said, taking an ostentatious breath through my nostrils. It smelled foul, as it usually did in Rome. “Is the district still Milo’s?”

“Solidly,” said the butcher, running a hand over his newly smooth scalp. It gleamed with oil. “Next year will be rough, but the year after’s ours.” The others agreed heartily.

“How is that?” I asked.

“Because Milo’s standing for the tribuneship next year,” said Bassus.

“Milo a tribune!” I said.

“He swears if Clodius can hold the office, so can he,” chuckled a fat banker. The gold ring of an equites winked from his hand. “And why not? If that little ex-patrician rat can be elected tribune, why not an honest, upstanding rogue like Milo?”

Milo and Clodius ran the two most powerful gangs in Rome at the time. But Clodius was from an ancient, noble family that, like mine, regarded the higher offices as theirs by birthright. Milo was a nobody from nowhere. He had been elected quaestor and was now a senator, which was difficult enough to picture. But tribune? I would have to call on him.

Actually, I had a number of calls to make. If I was going to conduct an investigation, I would have to learn how much support and help I had available to me in the City. Men of importance spent much of their time away from Rome. I also needed to learn how my enemies were disposed.

“How is Clodius behaving these days?” I asked, taking my seat on the barber’s stool.

“Almost respectably, for him,” said the banker. “He’s so happy with the prospect of taking up his office in a few weeks that he just preens and struts around, and his men don’t fight with Milo’s unless they happen to bump into one another in an alley. Both of next year’s consuls are his sympathizers, too. I hear Cicero’s already packing.”

“Who are the consuls?” I asked. “Someone told me in a letter, but I’ve forgotten.”

“Easy ones to forget,” Bassus said. “Calpurnius Piso and Aulus Gabinius. Clodius promised them fat provinces after their year in office. They’ll do as he wants.” Next year was sounding more and more like a good one to be away from Rome.

“Clodius isn’t going to have a tribuneship,” I said. “It sounds something more like a reign.”

“We got Ninnius Quadratus in as tribune,” the butcher said. “He hates Clodius. Terentius Culleo won as well, and he’s supposed to be a friend of Cicero. But they won’t be able to do much. Clodius’s gang rules the streets in most districts and they have the Via Sacra, and that means the Forum.” Everyone agreed that this gave Clodius an unfair and nearly unbeatable advantage.

If this all seems confusing, it is because Rome had two sorts of politics in those days. The great men like Caesar and Pompey and Crassus wanted to rule the whole world, and this meant they had to spend much of their time away from Rome. But Rome was where the elections were held that determined everyone’s status and future. Many communities had Roman citizenship; but if they wanted to take part in the elections, they had to journey all the way to Rome in order to vote. Thus, voting power remained a virtual monopoly of the City populace.

Hence, men like Clodius and Milo. These contended for control of the City alone. Each of the great men needed representatives to influence the elections, by force if need be, and watch out for their interests while they were away. The politics of the gangs and the City districts each controlled were as complicated as those of the Senate and the Empire. The gangs of Clodius and Milo were by no means the only ones, merely the most powerful and numerous. There were dozens of others, and these operated within a complex web of shifting alliances.

All of this was greatly aided by the fact that Rome was not so much a single city, like Athens, as it was a cluster of villages within a single continuous wall. In very remote times, it really had been seven separate villages atop seven distinct hills. As the villages gained population, they grew down the sides of the hills until they merged. The Forum back then was their common pasture and marketplace. This is why the ancient and revered hut of Romulus is not near the Forum, nor even on the Capitol, as one would think. Rather it stands amid several other sacred sites at the foot of the Palatine near the cattle market. That is probably all there was to Rome when he founded it.

The result is that Romans identify themselves as much with their districts, or ancestral villages, as they do with the City. Only outside of Rome do they really think of themselves as Romans. My neighbors were Suburans, who took pride in their famously noisy, raucous district where, they contended, all the toughest Romans were bred. They looked down upon the Via Sacrans, who thought they were holier than anyone else because they dwelled along the old triumphal route. The two districts had a famous traditional street fight at the ritual of the October Horse. And they were only two districts among many.

These things, plus the fact that Rome had no police, made gang control of the streets possible, and I would have had it no other way. It is all gone now. The First Citizen gives us peace, security, and stability; and most people these days seem happy to have them at long last. But in accepting them, we gave up most of what made us Romans.

It didn’t occur to me at the time. I was concerned mainly with getting through the next few weeks alive and trying to decide where to wait out the next year. I loved Alexandria, but people there wanted to kill me. Gaul was to be avoided at all costs. It was full of Gauls, and now there would be Germans and Caesar fighting them. There was fighting in Macedonia as well. I had spent too much time in Spain and was bored with the place. There were always the family’s rural estates, but I detested farming as much as I did the military life. Perhaps I could get posted with Cicero’s brother in Syria. It sounded like an interesting place, if the Parthians would just keep quiet. It would bear thinking about.

I rubbed my smooth-shaven jaw, detecting the usual stubble along the jagged scar left by an Iberian spear years before. It has defeated the efforts of barbers ever since.

“Hermes,” I said, “I have an errand for you.”

He looked around uneasily. “You don’t intend to go wandering around alone, do you? Here in the Subura’s fine, but nowhere else. Get Milo to lend you some of his gladiators as a guard.”

“I’m touched by your concern, but if my neighbors are right I should be safe enough in daylight. Clodius is being a jovial man of the people again. I want you to run to the house of Lucius Caesar and find out if the Lady Julia Minor is home. Her last letter was from Cyprus months ago. If she’s here, I want to call on her.”

Hermes set off at the slow amble that was his usual pace except when heading for a dice game, a gladiator fight, the races, or a meeting with some unlucky family’s pretty young housemaid.

Julia was Julius Caesar’s niece and my betrothed. Since all marriages among the great families were political, they were waiting for the political atmosphere to be correct before setting a date for the wedding. It was pure accident and a matter of no concern to my family or hers that she was the one lady I truly wanted to marry. The Metelli wanted a link with the Julii and we were to provide it. I am not sure whether these arranged marriages did any good or not. Creticus had married his daughter off to the younger Marcus Crassus, and they were deliriously happy. Caesar’s daughter married Pompey, and they seem to have gotten on well enough until she died in childbirth. Celer married Clodia for the sake of a temporary alliance with the Claudians, and I was there to find out whether she had decided to divorce him with drastic finality.

I was in the dark about one matter, and I decided to rectify it before proceeding further. I turned my steps west toward the river and began the long walk to the Transtiber district.

I found Asklepiodes in his spacious surgery in the ludus of Statilius Taurus. His intelligent face broke into a smile when he saw me come in. His hair and beard were a little grayer than when I had last seen him in Alexandria, but otherwise he was unchanged. He was directing a slave, who was rubbing liniment into the shoulder of a massive Numidian.

“Rejoice!” he said, taking my hand. “I hadn’t heard of any recent, interesting murders in Rome. What brings you home so suddenly?”

“The usual,” I said. “Just not recent.”

“You must tell me all about it.” He dismissed the slave and the injured gladiator. “Wrenched shoulder,” he commented. “I keep telling Statilius that training with double-weight shields causes more injuries than can be justified by any good that they may do, but it is traditional and he will not listen.”

I took a seat by his window. The clatter of arms drifted musically up from the exercise yard below.

“It is upon the mysteries of your profession that I wish to consult you,” I told him.

“But of course. How may I help?”

“What do you know of poisons?”

“Enough to know that I am forbidden by oath to prescribe them.”

“Sophistry,” I said. “You use them all the time in your medicines.”

“True, the line is a fine one. Many beneficial medicines, in excessive quantities, can kill. A drug that slows the heart can stop the heart. But I presume that your interest is in those poisons favored for homicide?”

“Exactly. My family wants me to look into the death of Metellus Celer.”

“I suspected as much. Like everyone else, I have heard the rumors. An important man, married to a notorious woman, a sudden, unexpected death, ergo, poisoning.”

“I must snoop,” I said. “I must ask questions. But what am I looking for?”

Asklepiodes sat and pondered. “First, you must discern the symptoms. Were there convulsions? Did the victim foam at the mouth? Did he complain of stomach pains or chills? Did he vomit ejecta of unusual form or color? Was there a bloody flux of the bowels?”

“That sounds simple enough,” I said.

“It is perhaps the only simple part. You must realize that, when the subject is poisoning, there is far more superstition than learning involved.”

“I know,” I admitted. “Here in Italy the whole subject is associated with witches more than with physicians or apothecaries.”

“As you say. Few poisons act with terrible swiftness, few are lethal in minute quantities, few can be administered undetected. In fact, some are given in very small quantities over a very long time. Their effect is cumulative. Thus the victim may appear to have died of a lengthy illness.”

“You are saying that poisoning is a job for experts.”

He nodded. “Or for a murderer with access to expert advice. There are always a few professionals in the field, and they are never without practice. Remember, many approach poisoners for purposes of suicide. Among those not under the oath of my profession, this is a quasilegitimate practice. Neither gods nor civil authorities forbid suicide.”

“How do real poisoners get their victims to take the stuff?” I asked him.

“The most common fashion, one you are familiar with since it has been tried upon you without success, is orally. This is almost always accomplished through food or drink as the transmitting agent, although it is not unheard of for poison to be disguised as genuine medicine. The difficulty with oral transmission is that most poisons have powerful, unpleasant flavors.”

“That’s where disguising it as medicine would help,” I commented. “Most medicines taste awful.”

“Very true. Most poisons take the form of liquids or powders. They may be mixed with drink or sprinkled over food. A few occur in the form of gums or pastes and a very few can be burned to give off a poisonous smoke.”

“Say you so? That’s a new one on me. I knew the smoke of hemp and opium are intoxicating; I didn’t know there were lethal smokes.”

“Poisoning by inhalation is perhaps the rarest sort and it is usually accidental, not deliberate. Artisans who work with mercury, especially where it is used for extracting gold from ore, sometimes inhale poisonous fumes. There are places where poisonous fumes occur naturally, as in the vicinity of volcanoes, and certain swamps are notorious for the phenomenon.”

“Not likely to be used for murder then?”

“It would be difficult. Poisons may also be administered rectally. It presents difficulties, but the amatory preferences of some persons could render intimate companions access to that area. The poisons may be the same as those taken orally, although of necessity their administration must be somewhat more forceful.”

“I would think so.” Well, nothing was beyond Clodia.

“Poisons may also enter the body through an open wound. Poisoned daggers and other weapons are not uncommon. In fact, in the Greek language the very word for poison, toxon, comes from a word meaning ‘of the bow,’ owing to the once common practice of poisoning arrows. It must be admitted, though, that often soldiers think they have been wounded with poisoned arrows when in fact the wounds have merely become infected.”

“Soldiers are a credulous lot,” I said.

“Poison may also be absorbed through the skin. Added to one’s bathing or massage, oil would be a subtle means of administration. And some authorities believe that those unfortunate workers in mercury are subject to absorbing poisons through the skin, as well as inhaling deadly vapors.”

“A hazardous trade,” I observed.

“As is yours.” He stroked his neatly trimmed beard. “In speaking of poisons, one must not neglect the possibility of animal vectors.”

“I suppose one shouldn’t,” I admitted. “What do you mean?”

“The occasional poisonous serpent found in a victim’s bed may not always have wandered there by chance. And some persons are especially sensitive to bee and wasp stings. A hornet’s nest tossed into the window of such a person is an effective means of disposal. And at least one pharaoh is said to have died when a rival filled the royal chamber pot with scorpions.”

I winced at that one. “There are more ways of poisoning someone than I thought.”

“There are few subjects upon which so much ingenuity has been lavished as murder. This should present you with a unique challenge.”

“I must confess, old friend, that for the first time I approach an investigation in a spirit nearing despair. If the woman has acted with even the minimum of competence, murder will be all but impossible to prove. And I know that Clodia is more than competent when it comes to murder.”

“A veritable Medea. Suspected of incest with her brother, too, I hear. And a great beauty to cap it all. A fit subject for poets and tragedians.” He had a Greek’s appreciation of such things.

“Catullus used to think so. I heard he finally got over his infatuation and found some other vicious slut to follow around like a puppy.”

“He has become much more of a sophisticate,” Asklepiodes said. “You remember him as a wide-eyed boy, just come to Rome and smitten by Clodia’s wiles. You were not immune to them yourself, if I recall correctly.”

The memory pained me. “And now I’m supposed to find evidence against her that probably doesn’t exist. She will laugh at me.”

“Many men have endured worse from her. You may come to me for treatment.”

“You have a medicine for humiliation? You should be rich as Crassus.”

“I have some excellent Cyprian wine. It produces the mildest of hangovers.”

I stood. “I may take you up on it.” I scanned the walls of the surgery. Asklepiodes had samples of nearly every weapon in the world. Each had attached a scroll describing the wounds it produced. “I wish everyone would use honest weapons like these,” I lamented.

“What a simple place the world would be,” Asklepiodes sighed. “We should then live in a golden age. As it is, the choice of weapons is broad. Even the subtlest poisons are crude compared to the weapon of choice favored in Rome today.”

“Which is?”

“The spoken word. I try to stay aloof from Roman politics, but you are a noisy lot.”

“We learned it from you Greeks,” I pointed out. “Pericles and Demosthenes and all that wordy pack.”

“You should have chosen the Spartans to emulate rather than the Athenians. They were stupid louts, but they had a soldierly appreciation of brevity in oratory. Anyway, I do not refer to your distinguished rhetoricians like Cicero and Hortensius Hortalus. Rather, I speak of the rabble-rousers.”

“Caesar and Clodius?”

“There are many others. I will not presume to address your own realm of expertise, but you would do well to inform yourself of their activities. I fear civil war is in the offing.”

“That’s a bit extreme. We haven’t had one in more than twenty years. A little rioting now and then does no great harm. It clears the air and drains off excess resentments.”

“A most Roman attitude. But this time it will not be aggrieved allies and municipia. It will be class against class.”

“Nothing new about that either. It’s been going on since the Gracchi. Probably earlier. It’s in our nature.”

“I wish you joy of it, then. Please feel free to consult me at any time.”

I thanked him and left. Actually, I was not as sanguine as I pretended with Asklepiodes, but I was reluctant to bare my fears about the Roman social ills with a foreigner, even if he was a friend. And if war between the classes was coming, the rabble-rousers among the commons were by no means solely to blame. My own family shared a good deal of the responsibility.

I was born an aristocrat, but I had few illusions about my peers. We had brought endless ills upon ourselves and upon Rome and its empire through our own stupid intransigence. The extreme end of the aristocratic party resisted any improvement in the lot of the common Roman with the thoughtless, reflexive hostility of a dog guarding its dinner.

I pondered upon these things as I made my way back into the City proper. Rome had long since expanded beyond the walls marked out by Romulus with his plow. The Port of Rome, an extramural riverside district, had leapt the river to form the new suburb of the Transtiber. Huge building projects were in progress out on the Field of Mars, where once the citizens had formed up every year to enroll in their legions and vote upon important matters. They still went there to vote, although few bothered to serve with the legions anymore.

Before long, I thought, there would be more of Rome outside the walls than within. And where was all this excess population coming from? Certainly not from an increasing birth rate. In fact, many old families were dying out from lack of interest. The fertility of the Caecilii Metelli was a distinct exception.

No, Rome was filling up with peasants from the countryside and freed slaves. The peasants, once the backbone of the community, had been forced to sell their lands, bankrupted by huge, inefficient plantations worked by cheap slave labor, another ill my class had visited upon the Republic. And the slaves were themselves the loot of our endless foreign wars. The unfortunates who ended up on the plantations or in the mines were worked to death, but many were used for less arduous service in Rome, and few of them remained slaves for life. Instead, they were manumitted; and within a generation, two at the most, their descendants had full rights of citizenship.

In a street near the cattle market I saw a pompous, self-important senator parading with his troop of clients behind him. Actually, some of them were in front, clearing the way for the great man. There must have been a hundred of them, and that was one reason for the proliferation of slave manumissions. One way to show off your importance was to be seen with a large clientela, and freed slaves automatically became your clients, bound by ties of duty and attendance. Really rich men had thousands. To top it all, I happened to know that that senator (he shall remain nameless; his sensitive descendants are very powerful these days) was himself the grandson of a freed slave.

I wander. I do that a great deal. In my youth I detested all the old bores who were forever lamenting the degeneracy of the times and the low estate to which the Republic had fallen. Now that I am old, I rather enjoy it.

In the cattle market itself I walked among the pens and cages and was very careful where I stepped. The air was redolent of the massed livestock and raucous with their bleats, bellows, cackles, and other noises. Despite its name, the Forum Boarium sold very few cattle except those intended for sacrifice. There was plenty of other animal life, though, from asses to sacrificial doves. You could buy them alive or a piece at a time, already butchered.

Besides the butchers, farmers, and livestock vendors, there were many other sorts of vendors’ stalls. But I was not looking for something to buy. In the Forum, I had noticed that the fortune-tellers’ stalls were gone, undoubtedly driven out by the censors or the aediles. This happened every few years, but they always drifted back. They had to be set up someplace and the cattle market was a good place to look, but I saw none.

Then I saw a man haranguing a goat vendor. The speaker wore a senator’s tunic like mine, but his toga was plain. He held out his hand and the vendor sullenly handed over a number of coins. Collecting fines in the market meant this must be one of the plebeian aediles. The curule aediles wore a toga with a purple stripe.

“Pardon me, Aedile,” I said, walking up behind him.

He turned, his eyes automatically going to the purple stripe on my tunic. “Yes, Senator? How may I …” Then, at the same instant, we recognized one another. “Decius Caecilius! When did you get back?” He stuck out his hand and I took it, managing not to grit my teeth. It was Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, a man I detested.

“Just yesterday. Your rank suits you, Lucius. You’ve lost weight.”

He made a face. “Wretched office. I never have time to eat, and I spend my days crawling all over buildings looking for violations of the construction codes. It keeps me in shape. Ruinously expensive, too, since the sums contributed by the state were laid down about three hundred years ago and prices have gone up since. We have to make up the difference out of our own purses. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that the year’s almost over.” Then he laughed jovially. He really did not understand how much I disliked him. “When will you stand for aedile, Decius?”

“In about five years, if I live that long. That’s when I meet the age qualification.”

“Start borrowing for it now,” he advised. “What brings you to the cattle market? I’d never come here if the job didn’t call for it.”

“I was wondering where the fortune-tellers had got to. They’re not in the Forum, and I don’t see them here either.” I felt a tug at the hem of my toga and looked down. A kid was nibbling on it. I jerked it away from the little beast and determined that no serious damage had been done. The kid looked disappointed and went to join its nanny.

“We ran them out of the City back at the first of the year,” Bestia said. “You know what a passion for order Caesar has. As consul and pontifex maximus he made it our first order of business to drive them outside the gates. They can’t even come into the city to shop without a permit from one of the aediles.”

“Where are they now?” I asked.

“They’ve pitched their tents out on the Campus Martius by the Circus Flaminius. I thought you were one of those people who don’t believe in omens. What do you want with a fortune-teller?”

“It always pays to be careful,” I told him. Bestia was one man with whom I definitely did not wish to discuss an investigation.

“Well, that’s where you’ll find them. Come on, admit it: You’ve got some well-born lady pregnant and you need to arrange for an abortion.”

“You’ve guessed it. Caesar’s wife.”

He hooted. “And she’s supposed to be above suspicion!” After four years Romans still found Caesar’s incredibly pompous and hypocritical pronouncement hilarious. We were laughing less and less at Caesar though.

I thanked him and left. Bestia had been neck deep in Catilina’s crackpot conspiracy and had almost certainly been involved in murder. He’d gotten away clean, though, because he’d been acting as Pompey’s spy within the movement. There was little use in striking a pose of moral superiority. It was all but impossible to accomplish anything in Roman public life without having to deal with odious men like Bestia. He wasn’t even among the worst of them.

It was a long walk out to the Circus Flaminius, but who minds walking after days at sea and on horseback? I left the City proper through the Porta Carmentalis near the southern base of the Capitol. This is the spot where the Servian Wall has two gates within a few paces of each other, but only one of them could be used because the other was opened only for triumphal processions.

I wasn’t looking for any fortune-teller in particular, but I needed to test the atmosphere of a world that was almost entirely unknown to me: the strange underworld of the witches.

Italian witches came in three sorts that I knew about. There was the saga, or wise woman, who was usually a fortuneteller and learned in herb lore and occult matters. They were seldom perceived as malevolent and the authorities periodically drove them from the City only because they sometimes predicted political events and the deaths of important men. These predictions could easily come true, considering how superstitious the citizenry were, and how heavily Rome relied on rumors for information.

Next there was the striga, a true witch or sorceress. These women were known to cast spells, lay curses, and use the bodies of the dead for unclean rites. They were much feared and their activities were strictly forbidden by law.

Last of all was the venefica previously mentioned: the poisoner. I did not plan to go looking for one of those just yet. And, for obvious reasons, they did not publicly cry their wares like ordinary vendors.

The Campus Martius had once been the assembly and drill field for the City’s legions, but its open spaces were getting fewer as buildings encroached. Once the only really large structure there had been the Circus Flaminius, but everything was now dominated by the huge Theater of Pompey and its extensive complex, which included a meeting hall for the Senate. Since its completion, most Senate meetings had been held there. At least the place had enough room. Sulla had almost doubled the number of senators without building a correspondingly large Senate chamber. Now, twenty years later, despite deaths and purgings by the censors, there were still far too many to fit comfortably in the old Curia.

I saw the tents and booths immediately upon coming in sight of the Circus Flaminius. They were brightly colored and painted in fanciful designs with stars, serpents, and lunar crescents being favored motifs. They also seemed to be doing a brisk business, another sign of unsettled times. As in so many other matters, Rome had two distinct traditions in fortune-telling: the official and the popular.

On an official level, the state had augurs who were elected and who interpreted omens according to a strict table of significance, mostly concerned with birds, lightning, thunder, and other things of the air. They did not foretell the future, but rather, they received the will of the gods concerning a given subject at a particular time. This was a bit rarified for the common people, so from time to time the state resorted to the Etruscan haruspices, who interpreted the will of the gods by the robust technique of examining the entrails of sacrificial animals. Rarest of all were consultations of the Sibylline Books, which occurred only at times of calamity or extraordinary omens and were in the keeping of a college of fifteen distinguished men.

These were lofty personages, whose pronouncements were of general concern to the state and community. There were private augurs and haruspices who offered personal consultations and charged a fee for their services, but they were rather despised by officialdom. Hence the wise women, whom the common people consulted incessantly upon matters both important and trivial. Unlike the official omen readers, who made no pretence to special powers, the seeresses often claimed the ability to foresee the future. Like their betters, the commons never lacked for credulity, and the frequency of failed predictions never shook their faith in the efficacy of these prophetesses.

The first booth I came to was small and shabby, not that the rest would have been mistaken for praetoria. I passed inside and immediately began choking on the thick incense smoke. With smarting eyes I could just make out an aged crone seated pretentiously upon a short-legged bronze tripod, as if she were a genuine sibyl.

“What would you have of Bella?” she hissed. “Bella finds that which is hidden. Bella sees what is to come.” Her near-toothless mouth made the words come out a bit mushy, robbing them of their intended awe-inspiring effect.

“Actually, I was looking for someone skilled with herbs and medicines,” I told her.

“Six booths down on the left,” she said. “Beneath the circus arches. Ask for Furia.”

I thanked her and backed out. Before proceeding I stood taking deep breaths while facing the wind. When my eyes stopped tearing, I went in search of the one called Furia.

The crone’s talents obviously did not include a facility with numbers, because there were at least twelve booths between hers and the circus. I hoped for the sake of her clients that her gift of prophecy was greater than her arithmetic. From the tents I passed I heard rattling and fluting and the sounds of wailing chants. Some of these women claimed to be able to put customers in contact with dead relatives. I have never understood why these shades never seem to speak in a normal tone of voice but always resort to shrieking and moaning. Neither could I see the point of consulting them. My living relatives gave me enough trouble as it was.

The deep arcade at the base of any circus makes a near-ideal impromptu market, and those beneath the Flaminius had been curtained off, with further curtains providing interior partitions. Quite illegal, of course, but even a small bribe will work wonders. With a bit of asking and poking about, I soon located the booth of Furia.

Luckily, she did not favor incense. The hanging that covered the arch was embroidered with vines and leaves, mushrooms, and winged phalli. The interior was dim but I could see baskets of herbs and dried roots, some of them pungent. In the rear a peasant woman sat cross-legged on a reed mat, dressed in a voluminous black gown and wearing an odd hat of what appeared to be black horsehair woven into a thin, stiff fabric. Its brim spread as wide as her shoulders and its crown was shaped into a tall, pointed cone.

“Welcome, Senator,” she said, apparently unawed by my rank. “How may I serve you?”

“Are you Furia?”

“I am.” Her accent was that of Tuscia, the land just across the Tiber. These latter-day Etruscans enjoy a great reputation as magicians.

“I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger and I …”

“If you’re one of the aedile’s assistants, I’ve paid my fees.” By this she meant her bribe.

“For a fortune-teller your powers of anticipation are not great. I have nothing to do with the aediles.”

“Oh, good. I’ve had quite enough of them for this year. Bad enough having to look forward to the next lot.” She was a handsome, big-boned woman with straight features and the very slightly tilted eyes common to those of Etruscan descent. Her dark brown hair was pinned up beneath her headgear. “So what may I do for you? When folk of your class want to consult with me, they usually send their slaves.”

“Do they? Well, there are some things I prefer to do for myself. Things concerning certain, shall we say, very private matters.”

“Very wise. I don’t suppose you need medicinal herbs. I’ll wager you consult with a Greek physician to treat your ills.” She looked down her high-bridged nose as she said it, to show her contempt for such newfangled foreign practices.

“I enjoy excellent health at the moment.”

“An aphrodisiac, then? I have some excellent medicines to restore virility.”

“I’m afraid not; and before you suggest it, I do not require an abortifacient.”

She shrugged. “Then you’ve about exhausted my store.” Her attitude was strange. Vendors usually press their wares upon you whether you want them or not. This one seemed almost disdainful.

“Suppose I found myself plunged into deepest despair?”

“Try a skilled whore and a jug of wine. That should fix you up nicely. Improve your outlook no end.”

I was almost beginning to like her. “But this is a melancholy beyond bearing. I must end it.”

“Try the river.”

“That would be ungentlemanly. You get all bloated and fish nibble at you.”

“You look like you’ve spent some time with the legions. Fall on your sword. You can’t get nobler than that.” She was amused, but she also seemed angry.

“I want an easy and painless way out of my troubles. Is that so difficult to procure?”

“Senator, your talk may be good for making the flowers grow, but that’s all. What is it you’re after?”

“I want to know why you are so reluctant to sell me a perfectly legal means of suicide.”

She stood, unwinding gracefully from her cross-legged seat without using her hands. She was taller than I had expected. Standing in her bare feet she was able to look me straight in the eyes. Her own were green and startlingly direct. She stepped very close, within a few inches of me. As a trained rhetorician, I knew that she was making use of her great physical presence to intimidate me. It worked.

“Senator, go away. Words like ‘legal’ may have some sort of meaning in the Senate, but not among us.” Her breath smelled sweetly of cloves.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ll not end up like Harmodia, and neither will anyone else in this market. Try as you will, nobody will sell you what you want.”

“Who is Harmodia? And why this sudden coyness concerning poison?” But I was already talking to her back. She stepped delicately to her mat and pirouetted as gracefully as a dancer, then settled on it as gently as a cloud. I couldn’t do that without my knees popping like sticks in a fire.

“The subject is closed, Senator. Now leave. Unless you want your fortune told?” Now she showed a hint of a smile. I wondered if she were badgering me.

“Why not?”

“Then come sit here.” She gestured to the mat before her as graciously as a queen offering a seat to the Roman ambassador. I sank onto the reeds, trying not to make too awkward a job of it. We were almost knee to knee. She reached behind her and brought out a wide oval tray of very ancient design, made of hammered bronze with hundreds of curious little figures chased on its surface. I knew the work to be Etruscan. She balanced it across our knees and picked up a bronze bowl with a lid and handed it to me. Then she took off the lid.

“Shake this thirteen times, circling to the left, then pour it onto the tray.”

The bowl contained a multitude of tiny objects and I did as I was bidden, rotating the bowl violently in leftward circles thirteen times. Then I upended it and the things inside tumbled out. There were stones and feathers and a great many tiny bones; the reedlike bones of birds and the knucklebones of sheep. I recognized the skulls of a hawk and a serpent, and the yellow fang of a lion old enough to have been killed by Hercules. She studied these, muttering under her breath in a language I did not recognize. The light coming in over the door curtain seemed to dim, and a cold breeze touched me.

“You are rooted to Rome, but you spend much time away,” she said. “Your woman is high-placed.”

“What other sort of woman would I have?” I said, disappointed. “And what senator doesn’t spend half his time away from Rome?”

Furia smiled slyly. “She is higher than you. And there is something about her that you fear.” This took me aback. Julia was patrician. But fear her? Then I remembered what there was about Julia that I feared; I feared her uncle, Julius Caesar.

“Go on.”

“Oh, you want a special fortune told?” Now her smile was openly malicious. She gathered up her things and replaced them in the pot and covered them. Then she put away the tray. “Very well. But remember that you requested this.”

Now she settled herself and her face went blank, hieratic, like the face of an Asian priestess.

“Give me something to hold that is yours. Have you something that has belonged to you for a long time?”

All I had with me were my clothes, a small purse, my sandals, and the dagger I usually hid in my tunic when I went out during uncertain times. I took out the dagger.

“Will this do?”

Her eyes glowed eerily. “Perfectly. I won’t have to use a knife of my own.” That sounded ominous. She took the dagger and held it for a moment.

“You’ve killed with this.”

“Only to preserve my own life,” I said.

“You needn’t justify yourself to me. I don’t care if you murdered your wife with it. Give me your right hand.”

I held it out. She took it and gazed into my palm for a long time and then, before I could pull it back, she slashed the tip of the blade across the fleshy pad at the base of the thumb. The blade was so sharp that I felt no pain, just a thrum like a plucked lyre string that went all through my body. I made to jerk my hand away.

“Be still!” she hissed, and it was as if I was rooted to the spot. I had lost all power of motion. Swiftly, she drew the blade across her own palm, then she gripped our two hands together, with the hilt of my dagger between them. The bone grip grew slick with blood.

I was almost beyond astonishment, but she further amazed me. She raised her free hand to the neck of her gown and jerked it down, baring her left breast. It was larger than I would have expected, even on so Junoesque a woman, full and slightly pendulous. In the dimness the white of her flesh was almost luminous against the black fabric. She drew my hand toward her, and held both hands and dagger against the warm softness of her breast.

For a moment I thought, half-crazily, This beats gutting a sacrificial pig any day! Then she began to speak, in a rapid monotone, running her words together so that they were difficult to follow as her brilliant green eyes lost focus.

“You are a man who draws death like a lodestone draws iron. You are Pluto’s favorite, his hunting dog to chase down the guilty, a male harpy to rend the flesh of the damned and blight their days, as yours will be blighted.” She released my hand, almost throwing it back at me. As I fumbled the dagger back into its sheath, she contemplated the spiderweb of our mingled blood that nearly covered her breast, as if she read some significance in the pattern. A heavy drop gathered on the bulbous nub of her nipple, mine or hers, who could tell?

“All your life will be the death of what you love,” she said.

Unnerved as I seldom had been in my life, I scrambled to my feet. This was no mere fortune-telling saga. This was a genuine striga.

“Woman, have you cast a spell on me?” I demanded, unashamed at my shaking voice.

“I have what I need. Good day to you, Senator.”

I fumbled beneath my toga, trying to extract some coins from my purse. Finally, I cast the whole thing before her. She did not pick it up, but looked at me with her mocking smile.

“Come back any time, Senator.”

I stumbled toward the curtain, but even as I grasped it she spoke.

“One more thing, Senator Metellus.”

I turned. “What is it, witch?”

“You will live for a long, long time. And you will wish that you had died young.”

I staggered out of the booth into a day that was no longer wholesome. All the long way home, passersby avoided me as one who carried some deadly contagion.