The Sacrilege

"Yes, sir?"

"You've said that Clodius and the herb-woman were standing in a hallway entrance. Do you know where that hall leads?"

"It's one of the ones that lead to the rear of the house, Senator."

"Where the unmarried women retire at a certain stage of the rites?"

The girl thought for a moment. "No, that is on the other side of the house. The hall where I saw the two of them leads back to the living quarters of the Pontifex Maximus. Some years, we slaves were sent to wait there when we were not needed."

"But not this year," I said.

"No, Senator."

I thanked the two women and left the house. I was still thoroughly mystified, but now I was excited as well. I felt sure that I now had the crucial piece of evidence that would resolve the puzzle of what had happened on that very odd evening, if I could just figure out where it fit. There had been too many anomalous women present, and too damned many veils.

Hermes was waiting outside the gate. He had taken the opportunity to return my bath gear to my house. He fell in beside me, and after a few minutes of walking I noticed that he was imitating me, walking along with his head down and his hands clasped behind his back. I stopped.

"Are you mocking me?" I demanded.

"Who, me?" His eyes went wide with i

"That had better be the case," I warned him. "I will not be treated with disrespect."

"Certainly not, sir!" he cried. We resumed walking. "But I was wondering, sir. All this questioning and people trying to kill you and all-what's it all about?"

"That is exactly the sort of thing that I am famed for detecting," I said.

"And have you figured it out?"

"No, but I expect to have everything sorted out soon. A little time for peaceful reflection is all it takes."

"I don't know about you, sir," he said with heavy insinuation, "but I never think my best on an empty stomach."

"Now that you mention it, it's been a while since breakfast. Let's see what the district offers." Luckily, you never have to go far in Rome to find someone selling food. Before long, we had acquired bread, sausages, pickled fish, olives and a jug of wine and retired to a public garden to restore the mental faculties. We sat on a bench and watched the passing show for a while as we attacked the food and drained the jug. The streets were unusually crowded and many vendors were setting up, although it was an odd hour for it.

"Jupiter!" I said. "Tomorrow is Pompey's triumph! I'd all but forgotten. They're setting up now to have good spots in the morning."

"I hear it's going to be a great show," Hermes said, munching and nodding eagerly.

"It ought to be," I said. "He's robbed half the world to finance it."

"That's what the world's for, isn't it? To make things good for Romans?" He did not say this bitterly, as a foreign-born slave might. Like most native domestics, he expected to be manumitted and made a citizen someday. We are far more easygoing about such things than most nations.

"I'm not sure that was the original intention of the gods, but that is how things turned out," I said.

"Then it ought to be a good show," he maintained. "I mean, who cares about a bunch of barbarians?"

"Spoken like a true Roman," I said. "You have real citizen material in you, Hermes, even if you were given a Greek name."

Men in blue tunics were ru

"What's the lineup?" I asked.

"The games will go on for days, Senator," he said. "Just now, we're posting the schedule for tomorrow. We'll be posting each day for the following day's entertainments. The big munera won't be for three days. That's what everybody's waiting for."

"What's on for tomorrow?" I asked him.

"To begin with, there'll be plays. Italian mime in the two old wooden theaters, but a full-dress Greek drama with masks in Pompey's new theater on the Campus Martius. The theater's still under construction, but there's enough finished to hold the highest classes."

"That's unfortunate," I said. "I'd prefer the mimes to Greek drama, but I suppose the Senate will have to go to Pompey's theater. What's the play?"

" Trojan Women, sir."

"Sophocles, isn't it?" I said. "Or was it Aeschylus?"

"Euripides, Senator," he said, with a slightly pitying expression.

"I knew it was one of those Greeks. May we hope for something more lively later in the day?"

"After the plays there will be lusiones. All the men to fight in the great munera will be fighting demonstration bouts with mock weapons."

"That's better," I said. "Not as exciting as the real death-fights, but fine swordplay is always a joy to watch. When will the great triumphal procession be?"

"The day after tomorrow, Senator, and it will be a ceremony of unsurpassed magnificence. Leading off will be the beasts General Pompey has collected in his travels, all to fight in the morning shows before the gladiators. Besides the usual lions, bears and bulls, he has collected leopards, Hyrcanian tigers, the biggest wild boar ever seen, a white bear from the far north:"

"It all sounds inspiring," I said. "There's nothing like a triumph to stir the blood and remind people what Rome is all about. And what embodies Rome these days better than Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus himself?"

"Quite right, Senator," said the sign painter a little hesitantly. He left and went back to his task.

"Uh, master, maybe you'd better be more careful how you talk, right out in public." Hermes looked around, distinctly ill at ease.

"Why?" I demanded. "Have we reached such a pass that a Roman citizen-a Senator, no less-can't publicly express his opinion of the likes of jumped-up would-be monarchs like Pompey and Crassus and even Julius Caesar?"

"I take no more than a slave's interest in political matters," the boy said, "but as I understand it, we've reached exactly such a pass."

"It's intolerable!" I said, out-Catoing Cato. "I tried to behead Clodius right in front of the senior praetor and I'll probably have to pay a fine for it. But say the wrong thing in public about a lowbred military adventurer, and I'm supposed to worry that he will try to kill me."

"Maybe he already has," Hermes said. "Tried to, I mean."

"What's that?" I said.

"Well, somebody tried to poison you. Haven't you had run-ins with Pompey before?"

"Yes, I have." Somehow, I had neglected to suspect Pompey of that particular crime, perhaps because of the relative abundance of other suspects. "To be brutally honest, I never believed I was important enough to attract his hostility. Some rather important men have told me exactly that, in fact."

"Master, I may be only a slave, while Pompey's the greatest conqueror since Alexander, but even I know that there's no such thing as an enemy who's too small to kill."

"This will bear some thinking," I said. "You may turn out to be not such a burden after all, Hermes. Keep thinking like this. After he tried to poison me, you saw Nero go to the house of Celer. I'd thought only of Clodia, since she's the sister of Clodius and has tried to do away with me before, but she's acted as cat's-paw for Pompey in the past. But he has those lethal Etruscans with him. Why not send one of them?"

We thought about that for a while, passing the jug back and forth.

"How about this?" Hermes said. "Maybe he didn't want people to think you'd been murdered at all. You can't always tell with poison. People die all the time from bad food or simply unknown causes."