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  This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, companies,

  ­institutions, organizations, or incidents is entirely coincidental.

  The interior design and the cover design of this book are intended for and limited to the publisher’s first print edition of the book and related marketing display purposes. All

  other use of those designs without the publisher’s permission is prohibited.

  Copyright © 2017 by Albert A. Bell, Jr.

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 987-1-56474-809-6

  A Perseverance Press Book

  Published by John Daniel & Company

  A division of Daniel & Daniel, Publishers, Inc.

  Post Office Box 2790

  McKinleyville, California 95519

  www.danielpublishing.com/perseverance

  Distributed by SCB Distributors (800) 729-6423

  Book design: Eric Larson, Studio E Books, Santa Barbara

  www.studio-e-books.com

  Cover painting: “Fortune’s Fool” © by Chi Meredith

  Egg tempera on panel

  www.sites.google.com/site/meredithchiartist

  library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

  Names: Bell, Albert A., 1945- author.

  Title: Fortune’s fool : a sixth case from the notebooks of Pliny the Younger / by Albert A. Bell, Jr.

  Description: McKinleyville, California : John Daniel & Company, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016046131 | ISBN [first printed edition]9781564745873 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Pliny, the Younger—Fiction. | Tacitus, Cornelius—Fiction. | Family secrets—Rome—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3552.E485 F68 2017 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046131

  Contents

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  Epilogue

  Cast of Characters

  Glossary of Terms

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  I

  Fortune makes fools of those she favors too much.

  —Horace

  You’re going to make me get married?” My servant ­Aurora, usually so gentle with horses, drew hers to such an abrupt stop that he stumbled. She jerked the reins and turned him to face me. “Why?”

  We were out for a ride along the shore of Lake Comum, at the foot of the Alps. My mother had asked me to bring my familia here, to the smallest of my villas, one which I inherited from my natural father. We hadn’t been here in several years, and I knew she thought she was coming to see, for one last time, the place where she began her married life and to say good-bye to people she has known most of her life. She appears to be in good health, but the disease that I’m not supposed to know she has—a karkinos in her breast—is a death sentence, whether it takes a few months or a couple of years to be carried out. My great fear is that she might have come back here to end her life where it began.

  This was where I was born and lived until my father died, when I was quite young. The house sits on a small rise on the peninsula ten miles north of the town of Comum, giving it an unequaled view down the length of the narrow lake and up into the mountains. At this time of year, on a perfect morning in mid-July, no place in Italy is cooler or more lush. Aurora had been quiet, as though she had something on her mind.

  “Answer me, Gaius. Why are you making me get married?” Aurora gripped the long reins tightly, as though she was thinking about slapping me with them.

  My horse whinnied and shook his head as I reined him in. He had been fighting me for control since we rode out of the stable. “Livia says I have to. I’ve put her off for several months, but she’s given me an ultimatum. Her exact words were, ‘Either have that girl married before I come to Comum or get rid of her.’”

  “‘That girl’? Does she even know my name?”

  “I assure you, she knows it well enough to curse it.”

  “And you feel you have to do everything Livia tells you to?” She put a defiant hand on her hip.

  “She is my wife.”

  Aurora snorted derisively. “We both know what that means.”

  “It means nothing except that I have to keep peace with her, for your sake as well as mine.”

  “Gaius, why don’t you just divorce her?” The pain she showed on her face was as profound as what I felt. “You only married her to please your mother. You don’t love her and she doesn’t love you. When you got married she seemed to accept our relationship, as long as we didn’t flaunt it.”

  “She seems to feel that I am doing exactly that.”

  “How?”

  I patted my horse’s neck, trying to calm him, the way I’ve seen Aurora settle an animal down. My touch had little effect, but then I know how different—how wonderful—it feels to have her hands on any part of one’s body. Something magical passes through those hands into whatever she’s touching. “You have to understand. We’ve been married for barely six months. If I were to embarrass her by divorcing her like that, there’s no telling what sort of revenge she would—”

  “Do you still think she killed her first husband?”

  Fortunately there was no one in sight at the moment. Still, careless words have an uncanny knack for worming themselves into the wrong ears. “Be careful what you say. I have no way of knowing what happened to the man, but nothing would surprise me, given the fits of rage I’ve seen from her. At the very least I’m sure Livia would spread stories about us—you and me—and cause my mother great distress. That I will not allow, so I cannot divorce her, at least as long as my mother is alive.”

  “You know I could never wish her death.” Aurora’s face darkened. As beautiful as she is—with her olive complexion, long brown hair, and dark eyes—she can also be alarming when she gets angry. I think it’s her Punic heritage, the visage that enabled Hannibal to terrify us Romans for nearly twenty years. “Gaius, you’re a brave man. I’ve seen you stand up to all kinds of danger. And yet you cower before these two women like a…”

  “I believe ‘coward’ is the word you’re searching for. Or perhaps ‘craven coward,’ just for the alliteration. I truly would rather face a man with a sword in his hand. Then I could judge what my opponent was capable of and have some idea of how to counter his blows. I once saw a fox gnaw off one of its legs to get out of a trap. In the last few months I have come to understand that degree of desperation.”

  Aurora let out a long breath. “So I’m to be sacrificed, like Iphigenia on the altar at Aulis. Why now?”

  “Livia and her mother are coming up here. They’ll arrive in a day or two.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” She threw her head back, as if raising a protest to the gods, or looking to be whisked away, the way some versions of the story say Iphigenia was, to be replaced by a deer. “This was such a pleasant holiday. I should have known it was too good to last.”

  Her reaction was precisely why I had decided to break this news to her while we were away from the house. There was no way to make it sound good. She was right. We had been enjoying ourselves for the last five days. My friend Tacitus and his wife, Julia, had come up with us, stopping over for a few days on their way to Tacitus’ estate in Trans­alpine Gaul. They know the natur
e of my relationship with Aurora and are happy with it, so we can all relax and enjoy one another’s company, as long as my mother isn’t in the room.

  At times Julia even seems to forget that Aurora is a slave. They sit in the garden, talking and laughing with their heads together, like the women in a Tanagra figurine. Julia isn’t as well-educated as Aurora—not even as intelligent, I suspect—but the experience of losing a child before birth almost two years ago has given her a different type of wisdom and maturity to complement her lively personality. If I were to let myself, I could imagine what it would be like to be married to Aurora and have Tacitus and Julia as our closest friends.

  But I can’t let myself.

  Clicking her tongue, Aurora tapped her horse’s sides with her heels and we resumed our ride, now turning back to the villa. I wasn’t ready to go back, but it was clearly futile to hope for any more pleasant conversation today, or some time alone in the woods. I hadn’t really expected any intimacy, knowing what I had to tell her. She looked out over the deep blue of the lake and the houses lining the opposite shore. Without turning back to me, she said, “So, who is to be my husband? He won’t be a happy man. I’ll guarantee you that, and I doubt you will be, either.”

  I reached over and put a hand on her arm. “Please, let me explain. I’ve got the perfect solution to this problem.”

  “Perfect” might have been too optimistic a word, but I did believe I had found an answer to our dilemma that would satisfy Livia and not impose too great a burden on Aurora.

  I’ve never admitted to Livia that I’ve coupled with Aurora, but I’ve never denied it. She hasn’t asked, just assumed, correctly. Merely to satisfy Livia, I wasn’t going to marry Aurora to some young, virile man in my household. But, if I married her to my oldest, doddering, gray-haired slave, Livia would see through the subterfuge at once. Although our own marriage might be a sexless sham, at her insistence, she would never let me get away with putting Aurora into a similar relationship.

  “Which of us should be wearing the Tyche ring now?” Aurora asked. When we were children we had found the ring—bearing an image of the goddess Tyche, or Fortune—in a cave near my house at Laurentum. Now we passed it back and forth between us, depending on who most needed the luck it was supposed to represent. At the moment it was on a leather strap around my neck.

  “I think I’m going to need a good deal more fortune than you are over the next couple of days.”

  “Don’t let Livia get her hands on the strap. She might strangle you with it. No, wait, a blow on the head is more her style, isn’t it?”

  “I wish you would stop talking like that. There’s no evidence she did anything to her first husband.”

  “But you think she did.”

  I couldn’t deny that, and I couldn’t squelch my fear that she might harm Aurora, so we rode in silence for a while. We arrived back at the villa as several people were stepping out of a raeda.

  “You said Livia wasn’t due to arrive for a couple of days,” Aurora said, not trying in the least to suppress her annoyance.

  “That’s not Livia. Come and meet your husband.”

  * * *

  The people getting out of the raeda were servants from my estate in Tuscany. I had ordered several of them—three men and four women—to be moved up here permanently. And the moves were justified. This house at Comum, I now realized, was not being run efficiently. The income was adequate, but I didn’t understand why it wasn’t making more money. I had paid too little attention to it, and the familia here had gotten lazy. I thought these people from Tuscany had talents that would inject life into this place, but there was one man for whom I had a special assignment.

  “Ooh, I hope it’s him,” Aurora said, pointing to a tall, blond Gallic fellow who was helping one of the young women down from the raeda. His name was Brennus, and I had brought him here to oversee the vines and wine-making on the estate. He had a most remarkable nose.

  “I thought you were angry about this.”

  Aurora gave me a mock-serious expression. “Well, if I’m to be forced to bed down with some man I don’t know, maybe I should make the most of my chance. You can think about that while you’re not doing whatever it is you don’t do with your wife.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” I said as we dismounted. “Or your gown either.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “I was only teasing, Gaius. You don’t have to talk to me like I’m some whore.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said in little more than a whisper, hiding my face against my horse’s shoulder. “I’m truly sorry. I hate having to do this. I hate being married to Livia. I hate that my mother is dying. And, most of all, I hate that I can’t be with you.”

  Aurora stepped closer. The anguish and the love on her face told me that she wanted to embrace me, and I wanted her to, but it couldn’t happen, not with all those people around.

  “My lord,” my scribe Phineas said, drawing closer to us and raising a hand to interrupt us, “these are the people you sent for.”

  “You’ve made good time to get here early in the afternoon.”

  “Last night we stayed with your friend Caninius Rufus, my lord, as you suggested we do. I pushed us yesterday so we wouldn’t have too many miles today. Caninius was most gracious and sent you this.” Phineas handed me a sealed note.

  “It is still a bit of a trek from his house.” I had brought Phineas with me on this trip because this house doesn’t have a scribe of his caliber and also to accompany his mother, Naomi, my mother’s most valued companion. In spite of his youth—he’s only a couple of years older than I am—I had placed him in charge of the trip to Tuscany because I knew I could trust him with any task.

  “Thank you, Phineas. Please get the others settled and send Felix to my room.”

  “Certainly, my lord. Will you need anything else?”

  “No. You can get back to sorting those papers in the library.”

  “Yes, my lord.” He started toward the house, obviously happier to be set to a task involving ink and papyrus, especially old papyrus. The small library on this estate has been neglected for years, and the estate’s elderly scribe had recently died. I had assigned Phineas the task of getting the library in order and picking out someone who could be trusted to maintain it.

  I turned to Aurora. “You need to find something to do until I send for you. Put on a nice gown and that necklace of your mother’s that looks so good on you.”

  “I thought I was about to meet my husband.”

  “I need to talk to him first. He doesn’t know yet that he’s going to be your husband.”

  * * *

  Felix had lived on my uncle’s estate in Tuscany since before I was born. I knew little about him because he made himself so inconspicuous. Although he was about fifty, he looked younger, with barely any gray in his hair. The only sign of his age was that he had begun to gain weight in recent years. Working under the steward in the house, his primary responsibility was to keep track of our food and other household supplies and to procure things as needed. I knew he had done one other important task for my uncle. That was why I had chosen him to play the role of Aurora’s husband.

  He knocked on my door and I told him to enter. “Close the door behind you.” I wished I could leave the door open. The rooms in this old-fashioned house are particularly small. It makes them easier to heat in winter, which is colder here than in Rome, but oppressive to someone, like me, who dislikes confined spaces. The frescoes were done in a dark, heavy style, popular some years ago, which only added to the gloom.

  “Yes, my lord.” He was tentative, uncertain, as he had every right to be, looking around as though trying to comprehend where he was and why he was here. A slave who has served as long and as well as Felix has in one position would not be summarily moved somewhere else without a serious reason.

  “Welcome to Comum,” I said, remaining seated at my writing table, crammed into a corner of the room.

  “Thank you, my lord, but, i
f I may be so bold as to ask…why am I…here?” His intonation on the word “here” made clear his instant dislike for the place. I could sympathize. This villa was older and much smaller than the one in Tuscany. Because I seldom come here, I haven’t spent any money on updating or remodeling it. Even though I was born here and am fond of the area, the house itself doesn’t appeal to me the way several of my other estates do. In fact, it has an ominous feel to it, like the story I’ve heard of a house in Athens that was haunted by the ghost of a man who’d been murdered and stuffed down an abandoned well in the garden.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “you won’t be here long.”

  Instead of consoling him, that statement caused his eyebrows to rise and his breathing to quicken. “My lord, am I to be sold? Have I done something to displease you?”

  “No, not at all.” I held out my hand to calm him. “I want you to do something else for me—a different task but, I think, a not unfamiliar one.”

  “And what would that be, my lord? All I’ve ever done in your household, and your uncle’s before you, is watch over your stores.”

  I touched the pointed end of my stylus to my lip, as though warming it so I could write something. “That’s not entirely true. At one time you were married to my uncle’s servant, Delia.”

  He nodded, his eyes growing wary. “Yes, my lord, I was. She was a sweet girl.”

  “She had a child, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, my lord.” He looked down.

  “And it wasn’t yours, was it?”

  “No, my lord,” he said without looking up.

  I tapped my stylus on the table. “Delia, I assume, was my uncle’s lover. Am I correct to think that the child was his?”

  “As far as I know, it was, my lord.” He studied his feet as though he had never seen them before.

  “So my uncle married her to you to divert someone’s attention from his affair.”

  “Yes, my lord. His wife’s. She strongly disapproved of his affair with Delia, as I suppose any wife would.”

  Was that statement as insolent as it seemed to be? But I had to let the comment go because I needed his help. I was beginning to wonder if the Stoic doctrine of a recurring cycle of events might not be true. I had almost forgotten that my uncle had ever been married, to a woman named Tullia. It lasted less than a year, and nothing was ever said about it in our family. If only that part of the story could be repeated in my own life. I could endure another six months with Livia if I knew there would be an end to it after that and the whole fiasco could be forgotten.