The Gods Help Those Page 7

  Phineas took notes for us, using a portable scribe’s box that he has designed to hold papyrus, pens, ink, and a stone to smooth the papyrus. The top provides him with a firm writing surface and a strap around his neck holds it in place.

  We had to step outside several times to get our breath while we examined the body. The stab wounds on the man’s back were his only injuries. His arms bore a few small scars, long since healed, the sort of scrapes and nicks anyone collects over time. I placed his age at no more than thirty-five.

  “His hands show no sign of hard labor,” Tacitus said, “nor does he bear the marks of a whip. None of those found with him appeared to be slaves either.”

  “None of them, though, had what you’d call an aristocratic bearing.” We Romans have inherited from the Greeks the conviction that one’s social class is evident in one’s physical appearance. Homer always has noble lords looking like noble lords, and a peasant like Thersites is unmistakably a peasant. “This man certainly doesn’t look noble. His head is small, and his ears too large to fit it.”

  “He’s not what you’d call handsome, is he?” Tacitus said. “But he doesn’t look like a Jew.”

  Behind us, Phineas cleared his throat. “Excuse me, my lord, but what does a Jew look like?” He can be downright impertinent at times.

  “We saw plenty of them when we served in Syria,” Tacitus said. “On the short side, black hair, with a tendency toward large noses.”

  “My mother has dark hair and eyes, it’s true, my lord, but a quite dainty nose. I have red hair and green eyes. I know some Jews, right here in Rome, who are almost as blond as Germans and have as Roman a nose as anyone in the Senate.”

  “How do you account for that?” I asked.

  Phineas straightened his shoulders. “We didn’t all come here as slaves after the war, my lord. My people have been scattered around the Mediterranean for over five hundred years, since our first temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. We were in Rome more than a hundred years ago, in the days of Julius Caesar. We’ve mixed with native populations. There are Jews who’ve never set foot in Judaea. This man may be one of them.”

  “Or he may be one of us Romans who wasn’t afraid of circumcision.” I turned to face Phineas. The dead man wasn’t going anywhere, and Phineas knew things I needed to know. “I think I’ve heard you say that you reckon Jewishness from the mother, not the father.”

  Phineas rested his hands on his scribe’s box. “Yes, my lord. You always know who a child’s mother is. The identity of the father can be…less certain. If a woman goes to the mikvah and lives by our law, she becomes a Jew. Then her children are Jews.”

  “Has my mother done that—gone to this mikvah?” I hoped to catch him off-guard.

  Phineas answered quickly. “No, my lord. I assure you, she has not. She would also need to study our Scriptures for a while, under the direction of someone like Malachi, and would have to observe our laws, for instance, about what foods to eat or to avoid. Your mother has done none of those things.”

  “If she did become a Jew, would that make me one?”

  Phineas laughed and put his hand over his mouth to cover it. “Excuse me, my lord. I mean no disrespect. It’s so rare that I hear you say something so…so foolish. No, you would not become a Jew. Only a child born after a woman’s conversion would be a Jew.”

  “Just as, under Roman law,” Tacitus said, “only a child born after a slave is emancipated is considered free.”

  “Yes, my lord, just so.”

  Relieved to hear that, I took a deep breath and regretted it as the stench of death began to overwhelm the smoldering incense. I pulled the blanket up over the dead man. “I don’t think we’re going to learn any more this way. It’s getting late. I’ll try to get Josephus here as early as possible tomorrow; then we’ll tell Malachi that he can come and remove the body.”

  Tacitus turned to leave. “Let me know what you work out with Josephus so I can be here.”

  The rain came down in such wind-blown torrents the rest of that day, overnight, and into the next day that it was almost impossible to do anything. The atrium, with the compluvium in the roof, gets damp and slippery whenever it rains, even the least bit. Sometimes I wonder why we continue to build our houses with a huge hole in the roof. We connect our houses to the aqueducts now, so it’s not as though we need to collect rain water anymore. In this storm the floor had water standing on it. Lightning was another incentive just to stay inside. Josephus had replied to my message with word that he could not see me until the day after tomorrow. I pitied the slave who had to deliver the note.

  I was stymied. When someone has been murdered, the clues that might lead to the killer need to be investigated right away. But the man with the tattered stripe had been dead for at least a couple of days, and the site where he was murdered was floating down the Tiber by now. In my house I had one living person who might know what had happened, but she was incoherent. She refused to eat the broth Thalia tried to feed her. Naomi suggested a lentil soup, and the woman did swallow some of that.

  Since I could not make any progress in my investigation, I decided to spend a stormy day writing. What would I write? Tacitus is always hinting that he might write history, but that seems to me dangerous. If one chooses to write about the distant past, probably no one will read it, as Livy himself admits in his introduction to his massive work. Writing something no one reads is a waste of time and effort. As Catullus said, “If no one is reading you, you aren’t writing.” On the other hand, if one writes about more recent history, one will probably have readers looking for scandalous stories, but one risks offending powerful people for whom that past is not entirely past.

  Poetry might be another option. Ten years ago I wrote a Greek tragedy. At the time Aurora, the only person to see it, expressed admiration for it as we read it to one another. Now we both read it only when we want to amuse ourselves.

  I decided to stay where I feel most comfortable and revise one of my speeches to send to Caninius Rufus when I return his volume of poems. If I can comment on his poetry—which was actually quite good—I might expect him to return the favor. I don’t yet enjoy Tacitus’ reputation as an orator. The only way I might hope to someday equal him is to solicit the opinions of people whose literary judgment I respect, and Caninius is certainly one of those.

  The speech I selected was one I had made last year in an inheritance case in the Centumviral Court, in which I was defending a client against a claim brought by Regulus. Unfortunately, I lost the case, which cost my client quite a bit of money and enriched Regulus. As I read the speech I wondered how I could have made a stronger case. Regulus has told me that he thinks I try to cover too many points. He describes his own technique as grabbing the case by the throat and not letting go. I had a copy of his speech which Phineas had taken down in Tironian notation and then transcribed for me. I read it, once as I would deliver it and again trying to imitate Regulus’ florid style. I could see now that he had indeed latched onto something but not the throat, something much less essential. And yet he had won the case.

  On days when I can’t see the sun I lose all sense of time. I guess that’s true for most people. Aurora brought me some lunch and told me the servants had been sweeping water out of the atrium into the street all morning. She sat with me for a while, but clearly her attention was on the baby and our conversation was desultory. Demetrius came in a few times with questions, none requiring serious thought, thankfully. Late in the afternoon Phineas made a clean copy of the speech and I dictated a letter to go with it.

  At supper everyone’s attention was on Merione and the baby. I could see that Aurora was seething over Mother’s decision to give Merione full supervision of the child. I might need to intervene in the matter at some point, if I could do so without appearing to favor Aurora unduly. But, as I closed the door to my room behind me, I decided I would leave that problem for another day.

  I sat up in bed and pulled the blanket up to my chin. “
I can’t believe Plinia took the baby away from me and gave him to Merione! Just because she has those big sagging tits, like a cow’s udders. Moo!”

  Felix rolled over, showing me his back. “There’s nothing you can do about it,” he said over his shoulder. That was his signal that he didn’t want to talk anymore. Gaius had to arrange this marriage to mollify Livia. In spite of that, Felix is a kind husband, more like a father, but his patience does have a limit.

  The conversation wasn’t done, though, as far as I was concerned. I lit the lamp beside the bed. “Why can’t she see that she’s playing right into Merione’s hands, and into Regulus’?”

  Felix turned back to me, propping himself up on one elbow. “Aurora, you are becoming obsessed about this. It’s not your affair.”

  “But I found him, Felix. I saved his life—”

  “And almost lost your own.”

  “I would do the same thing again, without a moment’s hesitation.”

  Felix put his hand on mine. In the dim light I could barely see the tenderness in his eyes, but it came out in his voice. “What’s come over you, Aurora? Ever since you were injured this past summer, you’ve been like a different person.”

  I’ve never told Felix the true nature of the “injury” I suffered a few months ago. The fewer people who know the truth, the easier it will be to conceal it. And I have to conceal it. I got up from the bed. “I’ve got to protect that child.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t sleep. I’m going out in the garden to think about this. There’s got to be something I can do.”

  The garden of Gaius’ house has a small arbor back in one rear corner with a bench under a vine-covered trellis. In summer the blossoms on the vine provide a perfume. Unfortunately, they were finished for the year, and the odor of the murdered man in the nearby room was growing stronger by the hour.

  Still, the arbor is one of Gaius’ favorite places to sit and contemplate. If you sit there quietly, you become practically invisible. Whenever I see him there I wish I could sit down beside him. Perhaps put my head on his shoulder. But, of course, that could never happen in a place where others could see us.

  The clouds were thinning, letting the moon show through a bit. On a pedestal next to the bench is a marble bust of his uncle, and it’s an excellent likeness. As I sat down I found myself looking the old man in the eye, and for some reason I wondered if my mother had loved him. Or had her relationship with him been simply a way of improving her status in the household—and mine as well? Did she trade her body for our benefit? In the crudest terms, was my mother a whore?

  For that matter, was I doing the same thing?

  I shook my head. I believe Gaius loves me, just as much as I love him. We became friends the day I entered this house when I was seven, and we have grown closer every day since. And I think the old man did love my mother. His grief when she died seemed genuine. He lived six years after her death, and he did not take up with another woman before he died.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting under the trellis when I saw someone come down from the upper level of the house—the slaves’ quarters—and work his way across the garden. At first I thought it was a man, but I wasn’t entirely sure because the figure was wearing a cloak drawn up over his head. He kept to the shadows on the edge of the garden, and he was clutching something close to his chest. Then that something squirmed and let out a small cry.

  It wasn’t a “he.” It was Merione, and she was stealing the baby! Looking around while still in the shadows, she checked to see if she was being watched, then stepped over to the rear door of the garden and put her hand on the latch.

  Bolting from my seat, I grabbed Merione from behind and spun her around, slamming her up against the door.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded. “Where are you taking that baby?”

  “I don’t have to answer to you,” she sneered.

  “You’re taking the baby to Regulus, aren’t you? Why? What does Regulus want with him?”

  Merione laughed. “Regulus? You’re not nearly as clever as everybody thinks you are, you bitch. Why would Regulus want him? Now, get out of my way or I’m going to scream.” She took a breath.

  I clamped my hand over her mouth and knocked the back of her head against the door. She let out a moan and slumped to the ground. The baby started to cry, but I picked him up and snatched Merione’s cloak off her, wrapping it around both of us.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart. I’ve got you now. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Nobody.”

  I came out of my room the next morning—the first rainless, though still cloudy, morning in five days—to find my mother and Naomi in the garden, along with several other servant women, hovering over someone who was sitting on the ground by the back gate.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I heard Mother ask.

  I could see now that she was talking to Merione, who nodded and put a hand to her head.

  “I think so, my lady, but my head really hurts.”

  The other women stood back as I approached. “What happened?” I asked.

  “Oh, Gaius,” Mother said, “someone attacked Merione last night and took the baby.”

  I stood in front of Merione as two of the servants helped her to a bench. “Tell me what happened. Who did this?”

  “I don’t know, my lord. The baby was restless, so I thought I would walk with him to settle him down. That’s the last thing I remember.”

  My mother looked at a few of the women around her. “Your rooms are near Merione’s. Did any of you hear anything unusual last night?”

  Heads shook all around.

  I examined the back of Merione’s head, the spot she was rubbing. “There’s a bit of blood. Someone get water and a bandage.”

  While the women were tending to Merione, Felix came up beside me and said softly, “My lord, may I speak with you?” He gestured with his head toward the door to his room.

  “What is it?” I asked, matching the volume of my voice to his.

  “I don’t know where Aurora is, my lord,” Felix said quietly as we stepped away from the women.

  I lowered my voice a bit further. “She’s not in your room?”

  “No, my lord. She couldn’t sleep. You know she’s been very moody lately, even morose at times. She said she was going to sit in the garden to clear her head. I thought she might have come to your room.”

  Aurora often does come to my room at night, though less often since her miscarriage. We’re always careful that she returns before dawn to the room she and Felix share. That’s why I gave them the room next to mine, instead of a place in the servants’ quarters.

  “I was afraid she had stayed too long with you, my lord,” Felix said.

  “I haven’t seen her since yesterday evening.”

  Aurora had tended to me at dinner, as she always does, but she had obviously been distracted. Mother had insisted on Merione and the baby sitting behind her place on the middle couch during dinner, beside Naomi. They might as well have had Merione sitting in front of us, in the center of the triclinium, as though she and the child were the evening’s entertainment. Even Demetrius’ daughters got permission to sit with Merione and shower attention on the baby, who still seemed sluggish and not particularly responsive. I hoped a few days at Merione’s breasts would restore his health. The girls took turns holding the child and suggesting names for him. Naomi told us one of her stories about a baby being pulled from a river. Aurora had been especially interested in that one.

  “What should I do, my lord?” Felix asked.

  I was certain now that Aurora had taken the baby and left the house. “I’ll send a few men out to places around here where Aurora might have gone. Josephus is coming at the third hour—Tacitus as well—so I can’t leave before then.”

  I had a strong suspicion that I knew where Aurora was, and I suspected that Merione was lying about what had happened to her, but I needed to see if Josephus knew anything about
the poor fellow who was rotting in the room at the back of my garden. There was a certain urgency about that. Once he was disposed of, I could join the search for Aurora.

  But before any of that, I had to know why Merione was lying to me. I returned to where the women were tending to her and examined the place where she had been on the ground and gave close attention to the gate, which was locked from the inside. There was now enough light to see what I needed to see.

  “I’d like to talk to Merione alone,” I said, waving my hand to dismiss the rest. My mother’s face showed her displeasure, but she complied.

  I sat down next to Merione. “Tell me what really happened,” I said.

  She wouldn’t look directly at me. “My lord, as I told your mother, someone knocked me senseless and took the baby.”

  “And you didn’t see who it was?”

  “No, my lord. They came up behind me.”

  I took her hand and led her to the gate, putting my finger next to a spot on the doorpost. “Do you see that?”

  Merione peered closely. “Yes, my lord.”

  “That’s blood,” I said. “And when I stand you up beside it”—which I did—“it matches the spot on the back of your head. Someone slammed you up against the doorpost, so they were in front of you, not behind you. You must have seen who it was.”

  “It was dark, my lord.”

  I grabbed her arm. “I’ll have the truth out of you, woman, one way or another.”

  Fear flickered in her eyes for an instant, but I suppose she had heard others in the household describe me as mild-mannered. She did not back down. “Are you sure that’s what you want, my lord? What if I told you it was your woman, that Aurora, who attacked me? Would you want me to say that?”

  I let go of her arm. “If that’s the truth, then that’s what you should tell me. It will be up to me to decide what to do about it, but I must have the truth.”

  “That is the gods’ own truth, my lord. She was lurking somewhere over there”—she pointed to my arbor—“and jumped on me for no reason. And you’re right. She did give me a good crack up against the doorpost. I was wearing a cloak—my pretty blue one that my lady Sempronia gave me—and carrying the baby. She must’ve taken them both.”