Saturnalia

8

That evening we made preparations for the rites at the Temple of Saturn. My clients gathered in their best clothes, everyone merry, having dipped into the wine well in advance of the official holiday, which would not begin until after sundown and which took full effect only the next morning, with complete license for the slaves and the peculiar demands of dress and behavior belonging only to the day of Saturnalia.

I had my slaves bring out trays of refreshments to keep the mood going and mingled with the clients, saying all those inane expressions of goodwill that are demanded upon such occasions. Despite the pervasive air of jollity that had seized the city, I had both dagger and caestus stashed inside my tunic. Streets jammed with noisy, celebrating crowds make even better conditions for an ambush than those same streets, deserted in the black of night.

Leaving my house, we made our slow way down to the Subura Street and thence toward the Forum, our progress paralytically slow because every last inhabitant of Rome who was not on his deathbed was out in the streets, greeting and dancing and making noise. The wine sellers had clearly been doing a great business, and most of the flutes were being played by persons of no musical talent.

In time we merged with the crowd coming down the Via Sacra, then past the basilicas and porticoes until we all stood before the great Temple of Saturn. The lictors and the temple slaves were there in force, ushering people into their proper places. Here I left my clients and took my place with the rest of the Senate on the steps of the temple, where, as a very junior member of the body, I stood in the back row. Still, this gave me a vantage point, and I could see all the most important members of the state who were in Rome at the time.

In the places of highest honor, near the altar that stood before the entrance, were the vestals, including my Aunt Caecilia, the flamines (we had no Flamen Dialis that year), the pontifices, and all the serving magistrates. Among the aediles I saw Calpurnius Bestia, and I tried to figure out which of his colleagues was Murena, but without success. I saw Metellus Scipio among the tribunes and Clodius with the tribunes-elect. The consul Bibulus had finally come out of his house for this one ritual, which required all officials holding imperium. He looked like a man who had eaten too many green peaches.

Looking down and to my left, I saw the patrician families standing in the first ranks at the bottom of the steps. From my vantage point it was shockingly plain how thin were those lines. Once the great power in the state, the patricians had grown so few that there was no longer any particular advantage to belonging to one, save prestige. There were about fourteen patrician families left at the time, and some of these, such as the Julii, were minuscule. Perhaps most numerous were the Cornelians, and even their numbers were much reduced.

Among them I saw Clodia, Fausta, and Fulvia standing in a group. Once I had spotted the Julii, it was easy to find Julia. She caught my eye and smiled broadly. I smiled back. But, then, everyone was smiling. We all get a little silly at Saturnalia.

Behind the patricians stood the order of the equites, far more numerous and collectively the most important of the classes, since it was property qualification, not birth, that gave an eques his status.

This rigid partitioning by rank was symbolic, for at the end of the ceremony all classes would mingle freely in memory of the Golden Age of Saturnus commemorated in this yearly rite. Unlike all other sacrificial ceremonies, no one, man or woman, slave or free, wore a head covering, for all such solemnity was banished from the happiest ritual of the year.

When all were assembled, the augurs came forward, standing near the altar, watching the sky for omens. Among them was Pompey, dressed like the others in a striped robe, holding in his right hand the crook-topped staff. The populace scarcely breathed for the next few minutes. The evening was a fine one and there was no thunder; no birds of ill omen appeared. They announced that the gods were favorable to continuing the ceremony.

Now Caesar made his grand entrance, striding from inside the temple through its great doorway. There was no ceremonial reason for a consul to arrive on the scene thus, but then, that was Caesar. Here he was doubly important; as consul and as pontifex maximus, the supreme arbiter of all matters touching the state religion. He halted by the altar and made a half-turn, gesturing grandly like the great actor he was.

Through the doorway we could just see the huge, ancient, age-blackened image of the god, his pruning knife in his hand. Ceremoniously, the priest and his attendants removed the bands of woolen cloth that wound around the god’s legs and lower body. In the dim past we had captured Saturn from a neighboring town, so his feet were bound to keep him from leaving Roman territory. Only on his festival was he loosed. A collective sigh came from the people as the last of the wrappings fell away.

Caesar watched the horizon and the setting of the sun, as if he were personally responsible for it. Since the portico of the temple faced northeast, this was no easy task. When the last gleam disappeared from the gilded pediment of the Curia Hostilia, ancient meetinghouse of the Senate, he gestured again, and the sacrifice was brought forward.

Since Saturn is primarily a god of the netherworld, his rites take place in the evening. For the same reason, his sacrifice was a black bull instead of a white one. The beast led up the steps by the attendants was a magnificent animal, dark as the nighttime sky, his horns gilded, draped all over with garlands. The crowd watched anxiously, for if the animal balked or made loud noises, it would be a bad omen.

But the bull made it to the altar with perfect equanimity and stood patiently, waiting for the rest of the ceremony. The priest and his attendants came forth to stand by the bull with their various emblems of office, and the heart of the ritual commenced. One attendant held up the tablet bearing the written prayer, and the priest began to chant it in a loud voice. Like all such ancient prayers it is in language so archaic that nobody knows what it really means, but it must be recited precisely, hence the tablet. Behind him a flute player blasted away for all he was worth, so the priest would not be distracted by an unseemly sound like a sneeze or cough. Getting the entire population of Rome to stand still for the duration of a lengthy prayer without sneezing or coughing is a marvel in itself.

We all stood with our arms slightly extended, our hands at waist level, palms facing downward, as is proper when addressing a deity of the underworld. The prayer ended, the attendant swung his great hammer, and the bull collapsed to its knees without a sound, already dead when the priest cut its throat. Other attendants caught the gushing blood in golden bowls and carried it to the channel before the altar and poured it in, to drain away through a hole that led to the earth beneath the temple. For a sky god, the blood is poured over the altar.

Now the haruspices came forward in their Etruscan robes, chanting their Etruscan chants. They slit open the bull’s belly and the entrails tumbled out. They examined the intestines and lungs, then conferred for a while over the liver, turning it this way and that, inspecting its crevices, looking for lumps, malformations, discolorations, or other oddities to interpret, for each part of a liver has a specific significance concerning the will of the gods in particular matters. They said something to the priest, and he spoke to the chief of the Herald’s Guild, who stood beside him.

Solemnly and with great dignity, the head herald strode to the front of the portico and stood at the top step. He took a deep, deep breath. This man had, perhaps, the loudest voice in the world.

“IO SATURNALIA!” he bellowed, and was probably heard in Cisalpine Gaul.

With that the crowd erupted and the celebration was on. Cries of “Io Saturnalia!” went up from all directions. Every citizen, from consul to freedman, took off his toga, the garment that distinguishes the citizen from the slave and the foreigner. For the duration of the holiday, we were all equal. We pretended so, anyway.

Folding my toga and tucking it beneath my arm, I descended the steps to where the patricians were rapidly merging into the general populace. Amid the sea of bobbing heads it was difficult to find one small woman. But I was taller than most and not so difficult to locate.

“Io Saturnalia, Decius!” Julia cried, slamming into me like one galley ramming another, throwing her arms around me and giving me a resounding kiss. The license of the season allowed such an indelicacy, unthinkable at other times. Besides, we weren’t married yet.

“Io Saturnalia, Julia!” I said, when I could draw breath again. “Let’s find someplace less deafening where we can talk.”

As we pushed through the mob, I caught sight of Hermes. Without thinking, I held my toga out to him.

“Take this to my house!” I called out.

“Take it yourself, Decius,” he said, turning away. “Io Saturnalia!”

Julia laughed until tears ran down her face while, our arms around each others’ waists, we lurched around until we found a wine booth in front of the Basilica Sempronia, bought two rough clay cups full of even rougher wine, and sat on the base of a statue of Fabius Cunctator at the corner of the basilica steps. The old boy got his odd title, “the delayer,” from being so cautious about engaging Hannibal in combat. It was a rare case of a Roman leader being honored with a title for showing some plain good sense.

Twilight does not last long at that time of year. As the sky darkened, torches were kindled, braziers flamed with pine knots, and from them people lit the traditional wax tapers. There is an old story that, in ancient times, the god demanded heads for his sacrifice. Then somebody realized that the old word for “heads,” with a slightly different accent, meant “lights,” and we’ve been giving each other candles ever since.

“This has always been one of my favorite sights since I was a child,” Julia said, as the flickering or blazing lights spread over the Forum and the rest of the city. “It’s how I pictured Olympus or the cities in old Greek myths. How sad that it’s only for a day and two nights.”

“But the whole point of holidays is that they’re unlike other days of the year,” I pointed out.

“I suppose so,” she said, taking a long swallow. I had the distinct feeling that, like everybody else, she had started much earlier in the day. “All right, Decius, why are you here? I’ve already heard gossip that you and Clodius have called a truce, and that’s like hearing somebody discovered a lost book of the Iliad where Patroclus catches Hector and Achilles in bed together. Tell me what you’re here for and let me help you.

So I told her. I knew it was useless trying to keep secrets from her, although I didn’t see how she could help out in this case. Something kept me from giving a full account of the episode in the striga’s booth. The experience still upset me. I had to go back for refills before I got the whole account out.

“You’ve done a lot, considering you’ve been in the city less than three full days.”

“I pride myself on my diligence,” I said.

“Clodia! I wish you could stay clear of that woman. She’s perfectly capable of poisoning, and I was sure she has. Do you really think she might be innocent?”

“Only because so many others seem to have had equal if not greater reasons to do away with him. I am sure now that he was poisoned, else why kill the herb woman? It must have been to cover whoever bought the poison from her. But why are these Marsi threatening me? I would think they should want the killer brought to justice.”

Julia’s brow wrinkled in deep thought. There were times when she could see the patterns in things better than I could, probably because she didn’t have to deal with all the violence that kept me continually on my toes. She always claimed that it was because she drank so much less.

“There is one common factor that keeps cropping up in all this, if you can ignore the witches long enough.”

“They’re pretty hard to ignore,” I said. “What factor?”

“Gaul. Murena and his brother were in command there not so long ago. Celer was to have Transalpine Gaul for his proconsular province, but Flavius took it from him and Celer died before he could get the courts and the Senate to give it back. He spent his whole consulship fighting Pompey, and Pompey wanted that Gallic command.”

“Instead,” I said, turning over the possibilities in my mind, “your uncle Caius Julius got the whole of Gaul for five years.”

“My uncle had nothing to do with killing Celer!” she insisted. She still had a blind spot for Caesar, although by then his ambitions were plain to everybody.

“Gaul. I don’t know, Julia. We’ve been occupying and colonizing and fighting in that place for so long that hardly anyone of public consequence hasn’t had some connection with it. I’ve been there myself more than once on military or diplomatic duties.”

“But so many of them connected with the murders, and so recently! Right now, Gaul is the biggest plum to be picked. I’m surprised they haven’t tried to poison my uncle. You know Pompey wants Gaul.”

“Caesar is too smart for that,” I said, with the clarity of vision that wine sometimes bestows upon me. “He finally got Pompey’s veterans their settlement. With his disgruntled soldiers behind him, Pompey was a force to be reckoned with. Even with a good war in view, they may be difficult to pry off their fat Campanian farms now.” It had been a neat bit of maneuvering now that I thought of it, the way Caesar had protected himself from treachery by Pompey.

“Besides,” I went on, “Lisas told me that it may turn into a fight with the Germans, not just the Gauls. There’s precious little loot to be had fighting the Germans.”

“Germans?” she said sharply. “What’s this?”

So I had to explain my talk with Lisas in some detail. She followed my recital closely, with a Caesar’s quick grasp of political and military nuance.

“Do you think you can trust that scheming Egyptian?”

“I don’t see what advantage there would be for him in making it up,” I told her. “It could be catastrophic for your uncle. It won’t be the war he was counting on.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He is equal to anything, including big armies of bigger barbarians. When he comes back from Gaul, he’ll celebrate the biggest triumph ever seen in Rome.”

I didn’t think he stood a chance, which shows how much I knew about it.

“Decius, for the holiday I have full freedom to move around the city without my grandmother’s supervision.” Julia’s grandmother was the frightening Aurelia, mother of Caius and Lucius Julius Caesar. She was not above demanding my public flogging and execution for impropriety with her granddaughter, and had done so more than once in the past.

“Even so, I don’t see what you can …?”

“What is there to do in this case except pick up rumors, gossip, and malicious innuendo? I can do that as well as you!”

“Well, yes, but …”

“Then it’s settled.” And so it was.

By this time we needed another refill, and as I handed Julia her cup, she noticed the bandage on my hand.

“What happened to your hand?” She set down her cup and took my wounded paw in her delicate, patrician fingers, as if she could heal it by contact.

“On the voyage here we were attacked by pirates,” I told her. “I received this wound when I drove them back to their ship and slew their captain.”

She dropped my hand. “You probably cut yourself shaving.”

For the remainder of the evening we wandered among the stalls, admired the many mountebanks performing their various arts, and generally got into the mood of the season. We saw performing animals, boys dancing on tight-stretched ropes, troupes of beautiful youths, and maidens performing the ancient dances of the Greek islands, Nubian fire-breathers, Egyptian magicians, and others too numerous to recall.

A Persian magus made a bouquet of white flowers appear from within Julia’s gown, and as she cried out in delight and tried to take them in her hands, the flowers became a white pigeon and flew away. We had our fortunes told by a benevolent-looking old peasant woman who gazed into our palms with rheumy eyes and predicted that we would enjoy long years of happy marriage with many children, prosperity, and distinction. She was predicting the same for everyone who came to her. Long lines stood outside the booths of the many more professional seers as people waited to hear their fortunes for the coming year. I looked for Furia’s booth but did not see it.

Everywhere, people were rolling dice at folding tables, monument bases, or just on the pavement. On Saturnalia, public gambling was allowed. The rest of the year, one could bet openly only at the circus. As the evening wound down, the torches began to burn low, smoke, and flicker. Then only the diehard gamblers remained at the tables, rolling their dice and knucklebones beneath the light of Saturnalian candles.

As midnight neared, people began to trail off toward their homes, to rest up for the even greater revelry of the following day. I took Julia to the door of Caesar’s great house on the Forum, the mansion of the pontifex maximus adjoining the Palace of the Vestals. There we were met at the door by the formidable Aurelia, who for once was constrained by custom from upbraiding me. We promised to meet the next day, but we did not dare to exchange so much as a kiss with her grandmother looking on. She was quite capable of setting her slaves on me with whips and staves.

As I walked home, I felt not the least fatigued despite all the wine I had drunk and the food I had stuffed down my gullet. As I crossed the fast-emptying Forum, thick with the smoke of burned-out braziers, I was struck by its eerie aspect at such a time. The few gamblers crouched over their candles were like underworld spirits tormenting some unfortunate mortal singled out by the gods for special punishment. The outlines of the majestic buildings were soft and muted, more like something willed into being by Jupiter than the work of human hands. This was the Forum as we see it in dreams.

Far up the slope of the Capitol, just below the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, I could make out the dark, forbidding crag of the Tarpeian Rock, where traitors and murderers are hurled to their deaths. From the frantic gaiety of the earlier evening, all was transformed to a sinister gloom.

It was with thoughts of this sort that I made my way through the narrow, winding streets to my home, acknowledging the greetings and good wishes of weaving drunks, stepping over the recumbent bodies of those who had partaken too lustily and hadn’t made it to their own doors, thoughts of gloom and demons wended their way, inevitably, to the witches. What were they doing that night, out on the Vatican field?

At my house I had to let myself in, since my slaves weren’t about to answer my knock at the door. I went to my sleeping room and finally unburdened myself of my toga, which had been making my arm sweat all evening. I began to undress for bed, then stopped, sat on the edge of the bed, and thought. I was wide awake. If I lay down, it would only be to stare at the ceiling until the sun came up.

There was no help for it. I had been in Rome for three days, being cautious, trying to cover myself, trying to restrict my investigation to talking to people. It just wasn’t natural. I couldn’t get my mind off those strigae and their fascinating rites outside the walls. Enough of safety and caution. It was time to do something stupid, dangerous, and self-destructive.

I got up, removed my sandals, and put on a pair of hunting boots that laced up tightly above the ankle. I changed my senator’s tunic for one of deep blue and threw on a dark cloak that had a hood and covered me to the knee. I wasn’t the helmet of invisibility, but it might do. I replaced my dagger and caestus and thought about belting on a sword. No, that would be overdoing it. My days of guerilla fighting in Spain had taught me that, for a spy on renonnaissance, a fast pair of feet are a surer defence than any weapon.

Minutes later I was back in the streets and hurrying, as fast as the uncertain light allowed, toward the river. From my home, the quickest way across was by skirting the northern end of the cattle market and crossing the river by the Aemilian Bridge. This access to the city was rarely closed off at night because throughout the night farmers from the countryside drove their carts in for the morning markets. The bridge gate was closed only in emergencies. According to legend it takes only one Roman hero to defend a bridge.

Once across the river, I was on the Via Aurelia and in country that was a part of ancient Tuscia. The noise of the creaking farm carts disturbed me, so I took a side lane to the north to get away from them. Soon all I could hear was the occasional hoot of an owl, for the weather was too cool for many insect sounds.

The Vatican field is very large, and I began to feel rather foolish in having followed my impulse. How was I going to find a few celebrating witches in this expanse of farmland? Still, it was peaceful and rather pleasant to be walking along so civilized a Roman road, paved even though it was just a farm lane, beneath the soft light of the moon. The air smelled pleasantly of new-turned earth, for it was time for the winter sowing. At intervals I saw herms set up, most of them of the old design: a square pillar topped with the bust of a benevolent, bearded man and, halfway down, an erect phallus to bestow fertility and ward off evil spirits. Fine family tombs were situated by the road, for the dead could not be interred within the old City walls.

This was the face of nature we Romans love, nature tamed and turned to the human purposes of production or religion. We have always preferred tilled fields to wasteland; flat, arable ground to hills and mountains; gardens to forests. Wild nature has no appeal for us. Pastoral poets sing the praises of nature, but their dreamy idylls are really about the tame sort, with nymphs and shepherds frolicking among wooly lambs and myrtle groves and stately poplars. Only Gauls and Germans love the real thing.

I decided to give up on my mission and simply enjoy the beautiful, fragrant night, so near the city, yet so far from its crowding and bustle. Then my spine turned to ice when I heard the unearthly cry of a screech owl and I remembered that the words for witch and screech owl were one and the same: striga.

Let Etruscans busy themselves with the guts of animals. We Romans know that the most powerful omens come from lightning, thunder, and birds. I am not superstitious, but my scepticism wanes at night and returns with daylight.

The sound had come from my left, and I walked until I found a path leading in that direction. It was not paved, but was a well-trodden dirt lane so old that much of it was sunken two or three feet beneath the surface of the surrounding fields. It takes many, many generations for the tread of bare or sandaled feet to wear a path so deep, for the lane was too narrow for farm carts. It must have been there long before Romulus, perhaps before even the Etruscans, when only the Aborigines inhabited Italy.

The lane led me through the plowed fields away from the road, away from tombs and herms. The ground grew rougher, with heaps of stones piled up where the plows had turned them up, only some of them seemed to have been piled with greater regularity than others, and here and there I saw single, daggerlike, standing stones such as you see in some of the islands and in the more remote parts of the Empire, where ancient peoples worshipped gods whose names we do not know. I had not thought that any such were to be found so near the City. But then, I thought, perhaps I was letting the moonlight and my imagination deceive me. Maybe they were just big stones, too large for the plowmen to haul away, and instead stood on end to take up less ground.

I came to a low hill topped by a dense copse of trees. At the uttermost limit of hearing, I thought I detected odd, rhythmic sounds, thumpings as of small drums, and perhaps a chanting of human voices. I thought that now would be an excellent time to return to the City. Instead, having determined upon a course of foolishness and danger, I took a deep breath and stepped away from the sunken lane. I began to walk toward the wooded hill.

The new-plowed earth was soft beneath my boots and soon I detected something else: Besides the regular furrows there were many other indentations there. I crouched to see what they might be and the moonlight revealed that lines of footprints other than my own led from the lane to converge upon the little hill. I straightened, checked that my dagger was loose in its sheath, and my caestus was handy, then I went on.

At the base of the hill the sounds were far more plain. The thumping of the drums was now mixed with the skirling of flutes and the rhythmic chants were punctuated by loud, seemingly spontaneous cries. If these formed words they were in a language I did not know. The beat of the music was something primitive and stirring, touching me on a level below my overlay of Roman culture, as the sight of the standing stones had touched me.

At the edge of the trees I could see a faint, ruddy glow from within the copse. These were not cultivated orchard trees; no apples or olives for this sacred spot. For the most part they were ancient, gnarled oaks, rough-barked, their trunks home to owls and their roots the abode of serpents. Beneath my boots the dry, crenellated leaves of the trees crunched faintly, like parchment or the flaking remnants of Egyptian mummies.

From the limbs of the trees I could see dangling strange objects made of feathers and ribbons and other materials I could only guess at. Wind harps made soft music that could scarcely be heard over the noise from the center of the grove.

Placing my feet with great care, barely daring to breathe, I walked through the trees, my eyes straining through the gloom for hidden sentries. The Spaniards had always been too lazy to set sentries, but Italian witches might be more careful. I thought of what Urgulus had said: that there was a mundus on the sacred ground of the witches. These passages to the underworld are rare and are greatly revered, for it is through them that we communicate with the dead and the gods below. There was one in Rome and others up and down the Italian peninsula. I had never heard of this one.

I began to see shadows, as of human forms passing between me and the source of the light. Now I moved even more cautiously, stepping from tree to tree, trying to work my way closer while remaining invisible myself. I could see that I was approaching a clearing, and that it was filled with people whirling, dancing, clapping, chanting to the rhythm of pipe and drum. The trees were beginning to thin, but I saw a dense clump of bay at the very edge of the clearing between two oaks and I made my way toward it.

My nerves were on edge as I sidled from tree to tree, even though the frenzied revelers seemed to be paying no slightest attention to anything outside the clearing. I could get no clear look at them beyond an occasional glimpse of shining flesh, but the voices I could hear seemed for the most part to be those of women.

At the clump of bay I lowered myself to a crouch. I was within a few feet of the clearing, but the branches and foliage of the bush were so thickset that I couldn’t see much. I lay down flat on my belly and began to creep forward. My weapons dug painfully into my belly, but that was the least of my worries. These people held their rites in remote secrecy specifically because they did not want to be observed by profane eyes. They would be inclined to punish anyone who spied on them. I was reminded of the stories of the Maenads, those wild female followers of Dionysus who were wont to tear apart and devour any man unfortunate enough to stumble upon their woodland rites. And these celebrants, whoever they were, seemed to be in a state of Maenadic frenzy.

When only a final low-hanging branch remained before my eyes, I very carefully moved it aside with my hand and had my first clear view of the revels within the glade.

In its center burned a massive bonfire that cast flame and sparks high into the black night overhead. Besides the blazing logs and faggots in its heart, I could see the shapes of what I hoped were sacrificial animals, and there was a heavy smell of scorching meat in the air. But the fire and its victims did not rivet my attention. The women did.

The only men I saw were those playing instruments and these, unlike the women, wore masks that completely concealed their faces. All the others were female, perhaps a hundred of them, all dancing with demented vigor. None of them wore proper clothing, although many were scantily draped in animal skins and all wore abundant vine wreaths and chaplets. There were no children, the youngest of them being at least nubile. There were a few aged hags, but the greater part of them were women of childbearing age. The greatest shock, though, was that not all were peasant women.

When the first patrician lady flashed before me, I doubted my senses. Then I began to pick out more of them. Some may have been of the noble plebeian families, but I recognized a few of them, and these were all of ancient patrician families. The first to whirl before my eyes was Fausta Cornelia, Sulla’s daughter and the betrothed of my friend Milo. Then I saw Fulvia, who seemed to be right in her element. And, as I might have guessed, Clodia was there, managing to appear cool and languid even in the midst of such festivities.

The contrast between the patrician ladies and the peasant women was far greater than I might have imagined. Far from being leveled by the removal of their clothing, the contrast was rendered even more vivid. The peasant women had unbound their hair to let it stream wildly as they danced. Even the palest of them were darker than the noble women, their arms and faces burned darker still by exposure to the sun. Hair lightly furred their arms and legs and grew in dense thatches beneath their arms and between their legs.

The elaborate coiffures of the patricians stayed in place during their wildest gyrations. Their skins, protected from the sun all their lives, were whiter than pearl and they wore costly cosmetics. They were slender in contrast to the broad-hipped stockiness of most of the peasant woman. Most striking, though, was that except for their scalps, the patrician women had been divested of every trace of hair with tweezers, wax, and pumice stone. Next to the intense animality of the rural witches, these Circes of Rome looked like polished statues of Parian marble.

If I had not already been pressed solidly to the ground, my jaw would have dropped. They were like members of unlike species, as different as horses and deer, united only in their devotion to this orgiastic celebration. What was it Clodia had said to me only the night before? I indulge in religious practices not countenanced by the state. She had certainly been understating the matter.

I felt that I had no cause for surprise or shock. The state religion was just that: a public cult in which the gods could be propitiated and the community strengthened and united through collective participation. There were other religions and mystery cults all over the world. From time to time, usually when faced with a crisis, we consulted the Sibylline Books, and they sometimes directed us to import a foreign god, complete with cult and ritual. But this was only after lengthy discussion by the pontifexes, and it was never a degenerate Asiatic deity. Many religions were permitted in Rome, as long as they were seemly and did not involve forbidden sacrifices or colorful mutilations, as when the male worshippers of Cybele, in their religious frenzy, castrate themselves and fling their severed genitalia into the sanctuary of the goddess.

No, what made my spine crawl was not the nature of this celebration but the fact that it was native, not some exotic import from an Aegean island or the far fringes of the world. Its sacred grove was within an hour’s walk of Rome and had probably been going on there for countless centuries. Here was a religion as ancient as the worship of Jupiter, in Jupiter’s own land, yet unknown to the vast bulk of the Roman people, little more than a whispered rumor among the common people.

And there was the participation of the patrician women. That, at least, was not so astonishing. Wealthy, indulged, and pampered, but shut out from public life or any sort of meaningful activity, they were usually bored and were always the first to pick up any new foreign religious practice to appear in Rome. And the three I recognized were just the sort to seek out any strange cult, just so it was sufficiently exciting and degenerate.

A woman broke from the whirling rings of dancers and stood next to the fire, shouting something, repeating the cry until the others slowed and, finally, stilled. The noise of the instruments died away, and the woman chanted something in a language I did not understand, with a prayerlike cadence. Her face was so transformed by her ecstatic transport that I did not immediately understand that this was Furia. Her long hair was laced with leafy vines and over her shoulders was thrown the flayed skin of a recently sacrificed goat. Its blood liberally bespattered her body, as it had so recently been decorated by my own. In one hand she held a staff carved with a twining serpent, one end terminating in a pine cone, the other in a phallus.

I saw then that she stood between the fire and a ring of stones perhaps three feet across. This had to be the mundus through which the witches contacted their underworld gods.

Bowls were passing among the celebrants; ancient vessels decorated in a style that was vaguely familiar to me. Then I remembered the old bronze tray on which Furia had cast her miscellaneous prophetic objects. The wild-eyed, heavily sweating worshippers seemed to be unaffected by the chill of the December night. Whatever the brew was, the patrician ladies sucked it up as lustily as their rustic sisters.

The men did not partake. I noticed then that, besides their grotesque masks, the men wore cloths wrapped tightly about their lower bodies, as if to disguise the fact of their maleness, rendering them temporary eunuchs for this female rite.

Now a woman, one of the peasants and older than Furia, came forward. She wore a leopard pelt over her shoulders, and her arms had been painted or tattooed with coiling serpents. In one hand she held a leash and its other end was looped around the neck of a young man, who wore only garlands of flowers. He was a sturdy youth, handsome and well-proportioned. His skin was perfect, free from scars or birthmarks, and I was uneasily reminded of the perfect bull we had sacrificed earlier that evening. If he had an imperfection, it was in his blank gaze. He was either utterly fatalistic, half-witted, or drugged.

Two of the men came forward and seized the youth from behind by both arms. They marched him to the lip of the mundus and forced him to his knees beside it. Furia handed something to the woman in the spotted pelt. It was a knife, and it was as archaic as the ritual, almost as primeval as the women’s own bodies. It was even more ancient than the bronze dagger I used on my desk as a paperweight. Its grip was the age-blackened antler of a beast I had never beheld, one that certainly had not roamed the Italian peninsula since the days of the Aborigines. Its blade was broad and leaf-shaped, made of flint, its edges chipped in rippling facets, beautiful and cruelly sharp.

I knew that I should do something, but I was paralyzed with a sense of futility. These were not women who would run screaming at the sight of a lone man brandishing his dagger. The men might have weapons handy. And if the dazed boy was not inclined to run, it would be the height of folly to try to bear him off. Perhaps if it had been a small child I might have added to my night’s foolishness by attempting a rescue. I like to think so.

Furia held her hands out, palms downward, over the youth’s head. She began a slow, tuneless song. The others joined in, except for the men, who held their hands before their eyes and slowly backed away from the firelight into the obscurity of the trees. The song ended. The young man now was held only by the older priestess, whose left hand gripped his hair. He seemed perfectly ready to accept his fate. I wondered whether the sacrificial bull had been drugged. Furia clapped her hands three times and three times called out a name, which I will not try to reproduce. Some things must not be written.

With the tip of her wand Furia touched the side of the boy’s neck. Instantly, the other priestess plunged the flint knife into the indicated spot. It went in more easily than I would have imagined, up to the antler hilt. Then she withdrew it and a deep, collective sigh went up from the worshippers as the bright, arterial blood fountained into the mundus. It happened in eerie silence for there was no sound of splashing from the stones within. Perhaps it truly led all the way to the underworld. Or perhaps something was drinking it as fast as it poured in.

The blood seemed to gush from the boy’s neck for an impossibly long time, until his heart ceased to beat and he slumped forward, pale and already looking like a shade. Then a number of the women rushed forward, seized the corpse, and hurled it onto the blazing pyre with a strength that seemed unnatural.

I was cold and sweating at the same time, and I knew that I must look as pale as the unfortunate sacrifice. I had looked upon a great deal of death, but this was different. The commonplace slaughters of the street, the battlefield, and the arena entirely lack the unique horror of a human sacrifice. Rage and passion and cruelty, even cold-blooded calculation, are paltry things compared to murder when the gods are called upon to participate.

I was so transfixed by what was happening before me that I neglected to pay attention to what was going on behind.

I nearly fainted when something grabbed my ankles. For an insane moment I thought that one of the underworld deities, summoned by the blood offering, was going to drag me down beneath the earth. Then other hands were on me and I was twisting around, yanking out my dagger and thrusting. Bay leaves whipped my face as I was jerked upright, and I heard a deep, masculine voice cry out as my blade connected. Then both my arms were held in wrestler’s locks, and my dagger was snatched away from my grasp.

Like the boy, only struggling, I was frog-marched into the clearing, and women, amazed and outraged, drew back from my defiling presence. Then, screeching, they attacked. I suffered a few nail scratches, but Furia beat them back with her wand and they quieted.

“Look what we found, Priestess!” said one of the men who held me, in the by now familiar Marsian accent.

“I think he wants to be sacrificed,” said another of the men. “Shall we take him to the mundus?” This one was Roman, and upper class to judge by his diction. Furia lashed him across his face mask with her wand and he yelped.

“Fool! This one is ugly and scarred like a gladiator! The gods would be mortally offended if we offered them such a one!”

I thought she was being a little rough on me. No artist had ever asked me to model for Apollo, but I had not judged myself to be truly repulsive. She was right about the scars, though. I had picked up a lot of them for a basically peaceable man. I was not going to argue with her, however. She tapped the tip of her wand against my cheek.

“I told you not to look into these matters, Roman, and my two attendants warned you as well. If you had listened, we would not have to kill you now.”

“You said I was going to live a long time!” I protested. “That makes you a pretty poor prophetess, if you ask me!”

She actually chuckled. “A man may always will his own destruction, even if the gods are kindly disposed. You have brought this upon yourself.” Her hair was a snarled mare’s nest, and her eyes were wild. She was bloody and sweaty and she stank abominably from the flayed goat’s skin, but at that instant I felt a powerful lust for her, far surpassing anything I could have felt for the immaculate noblewomen. Some things are entirely beyond reason.

She noticed. Stepping close to me she said in a low voice, “We celebrate here to propitiate our gods and bring peace to our dead. If this were a fertility rite, I might have made use of you.”

Clodia stood next to me. “You were always a man of peculiar tastes, Decius, but your timing is off. In the spring rites, randy he-goats like you are in some demand.”

“He is on sacred ground in the presence of the gods, Patrician,” Furia said. “The powers of life and death are strong in all of us at such times.” She turned to the men who held me. “His blood cannot be shed on this holy ground. Take him outside the grove and kill him.”

“Wait,” Clodia said. “He is a well-known eccentric, but his family is one of the most powerful in Rome. His death will not be passed over lightly.”

“He is one of them!” said one of the Marsian men. “We should never have permitted these high-born Romans into our rites! You see how they stick together?”

“Not me,” said the cultured Roman who held one of my arms. I was sure I knew the voice. He held my dagger up. “I will be more than happy to cut his throat, Priestess.”

She paused for a moment, thinking. “Roman, I saw a long life for you, and I will not oppose the will of the gods in this.” Then she addressed the men. “Take him from the grove and put out his eyes. He will never be able to lead anyone back here.” She turned to Clodia. “Will that satisfy you, Patrician?”

Clodia shrugged. “I suppose so. He is a troublemaker and no one will credit his ravings if he shows up blinded.” Then, to me, “Decius, you are like some creature out of Aesop. You are a living embodiment of human folly.” I thought her eyes were trying to tell me something else, but her tone was as nonchalant as always. Somehow I didn’t find her blood-speckled nudity as intriguing as that of Furia. But then I had seen Clodia naked before. Besides, I was about to get my eyes poked out with my own dagger.

“Take him away,” Furia ordered. As I was dragged off, we passed close by Fausta.

“Wait until Milo hears about this!” I hissed at her. She laughed loudly. Typical Cornelian.

When we were among the trees, the Roman waggled the blade of my dagger before my face.

“You’re always poking that long Metellan nose of yours where it doesn’t belong,” he said. “I think I’ll cut it off for you, after I take out your eyes.” This man was simply not in the spirit of Saturnalia. He held my right arm with his free hand while the other was held by one of the Marsians. I could not tell how many more were behind me, but I could hear at least one. I wanted to say something biting and sarcastic, but I was doing my best to seem stunned and fatalistic.

“This is far enough,” said the Roman, as we cleared the trees.

“I don’t know,” said a Marsian. “I think we should take him to the road. This is too close to the mundus.”

“Oh, very well.” The Roman was impatient for my blood. We walked out onto the plowed ground. This suited me well as the new furrows made for uncertain footing. I had to make my move before we got to the road.

The Marsian holding my left arm stumbled slightly on a ridge of plowed earth and I pretended to fall. The Roman cursed and braced himself, and in that instant I lurched against him with my shoulder and jerked my right arm loose.

“That won’t save you!” he said, coming in with my dagger held low.

Most men, having taken a weapon off me, fancy that I am unarmed. That is one reason I usually keep something in reserve. My hand went into my tunic and came out gripping my caestus. I swung at the Roman, trying to smash his jaw, but the spiked bronze bar glanced off his cheekbone. The blow put him down, and I whirled to my left. The Marsian, foolishly, tried to grip my arm more tightly instead of letting go, springing back, and going for his own knife. The spikes of my caestus sank into the thin bone of his temple and he collapsed, dead as the bull beneath the hammer of the flamen’s assistant.

I sprang free and saw my dagger glittering in the slack hand of the supine Roman. I dived for it, caught it on the roll, and came up facing back toward the grove. I was about to cut the Roman’s throat, but there were three other masked men almost upon me. I managed to slash the arm of one; then I spun and ran.

I could hear their feet slapping the soft earth behind me, but they weren’t slapping it as hard as I was. Terror lent me the winged heels of Mercury and I had trained as a runner, as much as I disliked exercise. The men behind me were plodding peasants, unused to a fast sprint. Besides, I was wearing a good pair of boots where they were barefoot or sandaled. Still, I was sweating ice at the thought that I could easily take a fall on this uneven earth in the dim light of the low-hanging moon.

Then I was on the sunken lane and able to reach full speed. I could hear the men behind me still, but they were slowing. By the time I reached the paved road, I could not hear them at all. I went the rest of the way to the Via Aurelia at a steady lope and then I slowed to a walk. If the men were still behind me they would be awfully tired when they caught up. I wanted to get my breath back before I had to fight.

In the event, I made it into the city without further violence. This was a good thing, because I wasn’t feeling up to anything really epic. My cut palm throbbed where the gripping bar of my caestus had transmitted the impact of the weapon’s blows. I was covered with scratches and bruises and minor cuts and was horrendously fatigued.

As I walked I thought of the nightmarish scene I had just experienced. We regarded human sacrifice as uncivilized, and it was practiced by the state only in the most extraordinary circumstances. The casual use of humans, even worthless humans, as sacrificial animals we regarded as barbarous, a practice fit for Gauls and Carthaginians, but not for civilized people, but how long ago, I thought, had our Saturnalia offerings been genuine heads instead of “lights”? I thought of the thirty straw puppets we threw into the Tiber from the Sublician Bridge on the Ides of May. When had those been thirty war captives?

As I crossed the Forum I thought of the man and woman who had been buried alive there to consecrate its founding. Their bones were still down there somewhere.

These were the last coherent thoughts to pass through my mind that night. I have no memory of getting to my home, undressing, and falling into bed. The moon was still up as I crossed the Forum, and the eastern sky was fully dark. It had been one of the longest days of my life.