The Gods Help Those Read online

  “We could have been very happy if it hadn’t been for that Deborah.” She sneered as she pronounced the name.

  I leaned into her, as though we were two friends chatting, like the women in the Tanagra figures Gaius’ mother likes to collect. “What did Deborah do?”

  “She seduced Simon, back in that little private room of hers, off the kitchen. She thought no one knew, but I knew.”

  Or maybe Simon took advantage of the seclusion and forced himself on Deborah.

  I wasn’t sure how to get to the topic of Joshua. Clearly he was Simon’s child by Deborah. Did Licinia know, or suspect, that?

  “Can I tell you something?” Licinia dropped her voice to a whisper.

  “Of course.”

  “I wasn’t entirely honest about when I left the house with Simon and the others. He showed me my father’s body in the latrina and I helped him shove the bastard into the drain. I really enjoyed doing that, after what he did.”

  “Did Simon tell you who killed him?”

  Licinia shook her head, which also twitched now and then.

  “He’s very handy with his knife, isn’t he?”

  Licinia laughed. “He even used it to circumcise Deborah’s baby. That was a sight to see. That big knife and that tiny mentula.”

  “He didn’t take the child to a rabbi?”

  “He said the rabbis here are all lackeys of the Romans.”

  “So Deborah had Josh—the baby with her when you left the house?”

  “Yes. I didn’t want to take him, but Simon insisted.”

  It was his son, I thought. Of course he would insist. I was beginning to appreciate how deluded—almost deranged—Licinia was.

  We were passing the Flavian Amphitheatre, or the Colosseum as people were already calling it. “What happened when you got to Gaius Pliny’s warehouse?”

  She seemed to be relaxing, taking me more into her confidence. “We spent a couple of days planning and finding enough to eat. It’s hard to keep track of time, with all the rain and the warehouse being so dark. Reuben and I took that message to Berenicianus. I told you what happened after that.”

  “Yes, I’m glad you were so honest with us. How long did you stay there after Simon killed him?”

  “I’m just not sure. We hoped the rain would let up and that maybe we could find a boat to take us down the Tiber, but then the building collapsed.”

  “Why was the baby hidden, away from the rest of you?”

  Licinia waved a hand dismissively. “That Deborah was pretending the baby was Simon’s. He held it a few times, but you could see he wasn’t interested. So, while everyone was sleeping I took the baby away from her and stashed him under a pile of junk with a rag stuffed in his mouth to keep him quiet. When the building started to collapse, Deborah woke up and couldn’t find the little bastard. I wouldn’t tell her where he was. I told her I’d thrown him in the river, but she didn’t believe me. She kept crying and looking for him. Reuben said we had to get out, but Deborah wouldn’t leave without her damn baby. She was screaming for everybody to look for him, so everybody was still in there when the roof fell on us.”

  “Why didn’t you leave?”

  “It was too much fun to watch Deborah going crazy.” She cackled.

  I had told Gaius that the dead woman—Deborah—was trying to help me save her baby. Now I knew I was right. Gaius could scoff all he wanted.

  “Simon wasn’t in the building when it collapsed. Where was he?”

  “He had gone out to find food for us. That’s all I remember until you people found us.”

  By the time we got Licinia settled in Tacitus’ house and Aurora and I returned to my house, it was dinner time. During our walk she told me all she had learned from Licinia. “From her voice and some of her mannerisms,” she concluded, “I believe the poor girl is going mad, and I can’t say I blame her. She’s been treated horribly and lost her mother at a time when she most needed her.”

  “And you really think Lucullus had Simon kill his first wife? What was her name?”

  “Aemilia. Yes, I do. The time when it occurred, the method—it all points to Simon.”

  “Well, no Roman man would want to be revealed as a despoiler of girls that age. The practice is considered aberrant. And his own daughter! By the gods, the man was vile.”

  “Perhaps your whole system of arranging marriages is at fault here.”

  “It has worked for us for hundreds of years.”

  “Maybe something else would work better, if you would only try it. The Spartans used to make their girls wait until they were twenty or so before they married them off,” Aurora said. “You Romans might do well to emulate them. Children should be children.”

  “But the highly esteemed Athenians and other Greeks married their girls off as soon as they started their monthlies,” I countered. “And they still do. As soon as a girl is able to have children, she should get started. At least, that’s always been our philosophy.”

  We had reached the front door of my house and were waiting for Demetrius to let us in. “The less said about this, the better,” I said.

  Aurora bowed her head. “Of course, my lord.”

  “Tomorrow we need to talk to a few people, including Berenice and Merione. I think in both cases it would be helpful for me to have a woman with me. Can you tear yourself away from Joshua long enough to accompany me?”

  Aurora chuckled. “Miriam, Naomi, and your mother can take excellent care of him.”

  “But can they protect him if Simon comes for his son again?”

  Of the three women I needed to talk to, Sempronia lived closest to me, so I would start with her. At midmorning the next day we were at Regulus’ door. Because there was so little distance between our two houses, Aurora and I made the trip unaccompanied by the usual gaggle of servants or clients. Walking by ourselves felt liberating but also induced a degree of fear as we edged our way through the crowd. We knew all too well that Simon could be anywhere in that throng.

  Regulus’ ianitor informed us that the great man was not in. That suited me fine, since I wanted to talk to Merione and figured that would go just as well if Sempronia were with us. The doorman, his eyebrows arched in surprise when I asked to see his mistress, escorted us to Sempronia’s wing of the gigantic house. It must have originally been someone else’s house that Regulus had purchased—or seized in some nefarious scheme—and incorporated into his own by breaking through walls in appropriate places. Like Domitian taking over the top of the Palatine, Regulus seemed to be oozing all over the top of the Esquiline.

  The doorman stopped before a large bronze door decorated with a scene of Sappho reading her poetry to two of her devotees. When he knocked, the door was opened by a woman I guess I could call the ianitrix.

  “Gaius Pliny asks to see the lady Sempronia,” he said.

  The young woman, blond and wearing a short tunic, stepped back and motioned for us to enter. We followed her through a short passageway into an atrium about half the size of mine. Some young women were engaged in wool-working and other tasks one expects to see women doing in a household; others were reading. They all stopped and looked up, their attention focused not on me but on Aurora.

  The frescoes around the atrium glorified Amazons and showed scenes of women—known as hetairai—entertaining at dinner parties. There was one significant difference: the guests reclining on the couches were women, embracing and kissing as men are shown doing on Greek pottery used at the parties known as symposia. I had the impression I was in an all-female brothel, or rather, one with female customers.

  “My lady Sempronia is in the garden,” our guide said. “Please follow me.”

  We could hear voices coming from the garden, making the sort of noises one usually associates with people watching a fight of some sort. When we emerged into the full daylight of the garden, I was stunned to see Sempronia and another woman wrestling—oiled and clad only in loincloths, such as women wear when having their monthlies. We stopped and
waited until Sempronia tripped the other woman and pinned her to the ground with a knobby knee on her chest. The vanquished woman raised her hand with the index finger extended to indicate her surrender. A cheer went up from the circle of women who were watching. I doubted that Sempronia lost many matches.

  Aurora leaned toward me and asked, “Are these slaves or free women?”

  Looking at the women exercising or reading in various spots in the garden—most of them only partially clad—I recognized the wives and daughters of several prominent families. “I believe there are some of both,” I said.

  One woman began wiping the oil, dirt, and sweat off Sempronia, dipping a towel in a bowl of water. She was followed by a second woman who dried her mistress with another towel. While they were tending to her, Sempronia turned to face me so that I could see her small breasts and almost nonexistent hips. She untied her loincloth and dropped it to the ground. When her servant handed her a gown, she hesitated a moment before slipping it over her head and pinning it at her shoulders. She did not take her eyes off of me the whole time, nor did the languid expression on her face ever change as she approached me. A servant gave her a cup and she took a long drink.

  “Well, Gaius Pliny,” she said, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, “to what do I owe this intrusion, or pleasure, or whatever it may be.”

  I finally managed to find my voice. “Thank you for seeing me, my lady. I have some information on that matter you asked me to look into. I thought I might discuss it with you…in private. And I’d like to talk to your woman Merione, the nurse that Regulus sent to my house.”

  Sempronia gave an order to one of the woman close to her, who left the garden. “Merione will be here shortly. Meanwhile let’s adjourn to this room here.”

  We followed Sempronia to one of the rooms off the garden, containing a table and three chairs. She looked surprised when Aurora came in with me.

  “Are you sure you want her here?”

  I nodded quickly. “She gives me a reliable witness to conversations, in case I can’t remember exactly what was said.”

  “Hmm. I’m sure some of my girls would enjoy wrestling with her.”

  I didn’t think she was talking only about the kind of sport we had just witnessed.

  “Your girls seem to be in excellent physical condition,” I said. “As do you yourself, if I may say so.”

  “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t, Gaius Pliny. Now, what information do you have for me?” She sat down in one chair and I took another, one with arms. She waved a hand at Aurora. “Oh, sit down, girl. You’re making me nervous.” Aurora sat on the arm of my chair.

  “I have learned, beyond any doubt, that your cousin, Licinius Lucullus, was murdered by one of his servants, a man named Simon.”

  “That’s what I suspected. Do you know where this Simon is? Nobody seems to be able to find him.”

  “He is quite elusive, but he is still in Rome, and I don’t think he will leave any time soon.”

  She crossed her legs and propped her arms on her knee. “Why not?”

  “He wants to retrieve his son and kill his mother.”

  I expected her face to register shock, but all I could see was indifference. “That’s an ambitious agenda. Who is his mother?”

  “Berenice.”

  Sempronia sat bolt upright. “Our Berenice? But her son was killed a few days ago, in a most gruesome fashion.”

  “It seems there is a second son. His name is, or was, Hyrcanus. He was taken captive after the destruction of Jerusalem and was sold to your cousin Lucullus. He now calls himself Simon ben-Hur.”

  “By the gods! Berenice has never so much as hinted—”

  “There was bad blood between them. He hates all things Roman, including his brother and his mother. He sees her mainly as a woman who was involved with Titus, the man who destroyed Jerusalem.”

  “Does Berenice know that he’s here and the danger he poses to her?”

  “I sent her a message this morning, and I’ll go there and talk to her when I leave here.”

  “She must have suspected something. She asked for the bars on her windows and made it sound urgent. As her landlord and friend, I was glad to comply.”

  “I hope they will protect her, but the man got into my house two nights ago. I’m not sure anything will ultimately stop him.”

  A knock sounded on the door and Sempronia called, “Enter.” The door opened and Merione stepped into the room.

  “You wanted to see me, my lady?”

  “Yes. Close the door.” Sempronia changed her position in the chair so she could easily look from Merione to me and back. “Gaius Pliny would like to ask you some questions. I want you to answer him forthrightly, as you would if you were talking to me or Regulus.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Merione clasped her hands in front of her, rubbing them together nervously.

  I decided to attack directly, as I would in court, to try to throw someone I didn’t trust off-balance. “Merione, you tried to steal a baby from my house. You said you weren’t doing it for Marcus Regulus or your lady Sempronia. Tell me what you intended to do then. For whom were you going to take that baby?”

  Her voice quivered. “For a man, my lord. I don’t know who he was.” Aurora gave a muted gasp.

  “You expect me to believe that you would give a baby to a man you didn’t know? Why would you do such a thing?”

  “He offered me money, my lord,” Merione blurted. “An aureus.”

  “An entire gold coin? Is that what a baby’s worth?” I sat back in my chair, as though settling in for a long conversation. “Maybe you’d better start from the beginning.”

  “Yes, my lord.” She took a deep breath. “You see, my lord Marcus Regulus told me to go to your house to be wet nurse for a baby. As I was on my way there a man fell into step beside me.”

  “Did you know this man? Had you ever seen him before?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “I’m not sure, my lord. He just seemed to appear—out of an alley, from behind a door. I don’t know.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “About your height, my lord. He had dark hair and a beard.”

  That had to be Simon, both from his appearance and his sudden presence out of nowhere.

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He said he knew I was going to be wet nurse to a baby, my lord.”

  Now it was my turn to gasp. Simon had been somewhere near us when we were bringing people out of the warehouse. Near enough to hear what was being said and to know who we were. The man was ubiquitous.

  “Did he say why he was interested in you or the baby?”

  “He said the baby was his, my lord. It had been taken away from him.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “How could he prove that?”

  “That’s what I asked him, my lord. He said I would see that the baby was circumcised. Well, that’s something he couldn’t exactly be guessing about, isn’t it? I mean, first of all, just knowing it was a boy and then knowing it was circumcised.”

  I held out a hand to prevent Aurora from saying that Joshua wasn’t an “it.”

  “No, I suppose he couldn’t be guessing. What else did he say? Did he threaten you?”

  “Not at all, my lord. He seemed very nice, sort of sad. He said he would give me an aureus if I helped him get the child.”

  “Where would he get that kind of money?” Sempronia put in.

  “I don’t know, my lady, but he showed it to me.”

  I didn’t want Sempronia distracting Merione, but I couldn’t very well protest. The woman was her slave and this was her house. “I’m sure this man was Simon, the man who killed Lucullus. Porcia said that Lucullus shared some of his profits with Simon because of the…type of work Simon did for him.”

  Sempronia’s lowered eyelids let me know that she understood that Simon was a paid assassin. That would also explain where he got thirty denari
i to cram into his brother’s mouth. “How were you supposed to get this baby to him?” she asked.

  “He said we should wait a full day, to let people in Gaius Pliny’s house start to trust me.” She turned to me. “I’m sorry, my lord. I’m not usually a devious person.”

  I waved a hand. “It’s all right. Go on.”

  “Well, then, in the middle of the second night, I was supposed to be by the back gate. He would tap on it. I would open it and give him the baby. He would give me the aureus and would make it look like I’d been knocked out and the baby stolen.”

  “But you were knocked out, weren’t you?” Sempronia asked.

  “Yes, my lady. By that one.” She pointed to Aurora. “She gave me a blow on the head and took the baby and left before Simon got there. As far as I’m concerned, she owes me an aureus.”

  I laughed in disbelief. “For giving away a baby that wasn’t yours?”

  “With all due respect, my lord, he wasn’t yours either. He was just something you found, entirely by accident. This man did know he was circumcised.”

  “I assure you, Merione, all you would have gotten from Simon would have been a knife between your ribs. You owe Aurora your life. Being knocked out is not nearly as bad as being dead.”

  And that I know because I have been both knocked out and dead.

  XII

  Sempronia’s servant showed us out by a door that led directly from the women’s part of the house onto the street. “I’m going to need a bath when we get home,” Aurora said with a shudder.

  “What? You don’t like being the object of everyone’s desire?”

  “Only yours, dear Gaius. Only yours.”

  “I must admit it felt odd to be completely ignored by all those women. I know I’m no Adonis, but still…”

  Aurora shivered. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  A stray dog crossed our path and trotted into an alley. “Agreed. It worries me to learn how freely this Simon moves among us. He could just as easily have been that dog. We pay no attention to him. That first day when we were at the warehouse, did you see anyone that could have been him?”