Rivals of the Republic Read online

  “Have you shown this to anyone?” she asked.

  Cornelia shook her head and nodded to Fabia to replace the chair. She seemed agitated for the first time.

  “No. Fabia came to take over Helena’s duties the following morning. She summoned me as soon as she discovered the hearth unguarded.”

  “I knew something must be terribly wrong when Helena wasn’t here,” explained Fabia. “It’s forbidden for us to abandon the fire. Something else was odd – there were no footprints.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Hortensia.

  “There are always footprints on the floor. Because of the fire you see. We always joke about how you can tell when someone has been falling asleep on night duty and walked up and down, trying to wake themselves up. But there weren’t any prints that morning. It was as if someone had sprinkled fresh soot all over the floor, maybe to cover up the signs of a struggle, we think. Then when we moved the chair, we found that writing …”

  “… but by this time, Helena’s body had been pulled from the river,” finished Cornelia. “The Pontifex conferred with the consuls but together they concluded that her death must have been self-inflicted – the shame of an impious love affair. The Temple has been tarnished by scandals of that nature in the past, and the Pontifex declared that the marks on her neck were probably the result of an attempt to hang herself first. If I showed him this inscription … I did not know what the consequences might have been, for our order, for Rome. I told Fabia to place the hearth chair over it. We have managed to keep it hidden ever since.”

  Hortensia peered searchingly at the priestess. “What do you think it means?” she pressed.

  Cornelia met Hortensia’s gaze unflinchingly.

  “That, Hortensia, daughter of Hortensius Hortalus, is what I am asking you to discover.”

  XV

  BY THE TIME HORTENSIA EMERGED FROM THE HOUSE OF THE VESTALS, the sky was beginning to grow dark. She spent much of the journey home struggling to regulate the thoughts jostling with one another in her mind. She felt as though she had been plunged into a situation that was far beyond her powers of comprehension or deduction. A part of her reasoned that the Vestals were understandably upset and shocked by the gruesome death of their sister. The young priestess Fabia may have encouraged her superior to entertain this hypothesis of murder and conspiracy as an acceptable alternative to the tawdry reality of a girl who had simply been tempted. Cornelia had insisted that Helena was a shy, pious girl but – crediting herself with far more worldliness than might be expected in a young matron of seventeen – Hortensia could have told her that did not make her immune to the advances of a skilled seducer.

  The inscription on the floor was deeply puzzling though. Was it really Helena’s final communication? It was obvious what Fabia and Cornelia suspected, but Hortensia was unimpressed by such fanciful imaginings. Could Pompey in fact be the seducer? She sat upright as the thought occurred to her. That wouldn’t be so difficult to believe, and would explain why the Pontifex Metellus Pius, who had shared Pompey’s triumph in Hispania, had received such swift consular approval in declaring the case closed. But did that mean that Pompey himself had … Hortensia again had the uncomfortable feeling of being a long way out of her depth.

  The sun was setting by the time she reached home. As soon as she entered the cool of the atrium, she quickly peeled the rose-colored veil from her head, anxious to feel some air on her neck after the stifling heat of the litter. Realizing that it must be past the dinner hour, she headed toward the corridor leading to her private rooms. But her attention was distracted by raised voices coming from the direction of Caepio’s study. The door opened and Eucherius sidled out of the room, closing the door carefully behind him. Hortensia realized that Lucrio had still not returned.

  “Domina, your father is here,” Eucherius informed her in an excited whisper. “He is with master Caepio right now. I am not sure you should enter,” he added hastily but Hortensia had already ignored the warning, walked straight past him and entered the room. She was met by the sight of her father and her husband clearly in the middle of a heated argument. Caepio was leaning back against the edge of a couch, his arms folded and wearing a closed, angry look instead of his usual sleepy smile. Hortensius meanwhile was pacing from side to side, gesticulating wildly as he talked, his usually sleek hair disordered and his face red with exertion.

  “You were supposed to protect her from scandal! That was the one thing I asked of you!” They both heard Hortensia’s footstep on the tiled threshold. As soon as he saw his daughter, Hortensius flung out an arm in her direction and carried on his tirade.

  “Here she is now! Have you any idea where she has been, may I ask? For all you know she has been selling vegetables from a market stall in the forum. Or perhaps she has been down to the theater and enlisted to appear alongside Roscius in his next comedy!”

  “Your father is here to see you, Hortensia,” was all that Caepio would say.

  Hortensia regarded her father with a mixture of puzzlement and concern. “What is it, Papa? Why are you angry with Caepio?”

  “With him? It is you I am furious with, Hortensia! What in Jupiter’s name were you doing speaking on behalf of some strange female in the public courts?”

  “She wasn’t a strange female, Papa,” Hortensia explained patiently. “She was the wife of one of Caepio’s clients. And she needed my help. I did what I knew you would have wanted me to do.”

  “Oh really?” Hortensius’s voice became silkier and his gestures more deliberate, as if he were assuming his law court persona. “And if you were indeed so convinced of that, why did you keep the whole escapade a secret from me?”

  “I was going to tell you, Papa,” she said, half-defensive, half-coaxing. “But you were so busy with your trial and I didn’t want to bother you. I knew that you would be proud when you heard the whole story though,” she added encouragingly.

  “Proud?” Hortensius gave a short bark of mirthless laughter. “How proud do you imagine I felt when that corpulent braggart Pompey sidled up to me just before the court session today and told me that I have a very gifted daughter, with all the salacious relish that I’d expect of someone telling me he had recently discovered a talented prostitute?”

  A flush erupted across Hortensia’s face, as though she had been slapped across the cheek.

  “You weren’t there, Papa,” she said through clenched teeth. “They were trying to cheat the poor woman of her dowry and her children. They would have done it too if I hadn’t been there to help her.”

  “And make an exhibition of yourself in a public courtroom?” Hortensius demanded. “Invite the jests and sallies of the common rabble? Not only that, but you enlist my gardener as a player in your farce! Don’t think I didn’t recognize that boil-buttocked buffoon from Pompey’s description of his performance.”

  “I don’t understand, Papa. I thought you didn’t care what the likes of Caecilius and Cato thought. You were the one who taught me how to use my voice. You were the one who gave me all those speeches to read and made me practice them until I was word-perfect. You were the one who told me that eloquence was the noblest of all pursuits.”

  “I did not do any of those things so that you might make an exhibition of yourself!”

  “Then why did you do them?” Hortensia flung back at him. “So that you would have a performing puppy to entertain your friends? So that you could make Quintus feel even more of a fool when he didn’t live up to your expectations?”

  She knew immediately that she had gone too far. Hortensius swept the end of his toga over his shoulder. His blue eyes were bright and stormy but his voice was clipped and controlled.

  “You are hysterical, Hortensia, and I refuse to listen to you until you are yourself again. In the meantime, I forbid you to set foot in a public courtroom, do you hear me? Since your husband will not take responsibility for your reputation, I see it falls on me to exert my authority as a father.”

  “Don’t you
dare blame Caepio!”

  But Hortensius had already swept out of the room.

  Hortensia burst into tears and was quickly comforted by her husband, who wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace.

  “Don’t cry, my darling. Your Papa is not himself today.” But Hortensia’s sobs continued unabated. Caepio stroked her hair and her back for several minutes.

  “On the positive side, I hope courgette sales were good?” he eventually enquired solicitously and Hortensia’s sobs were interrupted by reluctant giggles.

  “Eucherius told me you were summoned to see the Chief Vestal. A great honor indeed – I trust she had kind words for you?”

  Hortensia was filled with an impulse to unburden herself of everything she had seen and heard at the temple. Caepio would know what to do and she would not have to worry about it anymore. But just as she was about to open her mouth and blurt out the incredible tale she had heard, something made her hesitate. The rational part of her brain believed that the Vestals were placing too much faith in Helena’s chastity. But if Pompey was involved somehow, what good could come from involving Caepio? At the last second, she decided to give her husband only an abridged account of what had taken place.

  “She heard about my victory in the courtroom and wanted to tell me that she approved. At least someone appreciates what I did.” She gave a watery sniff.

  Caepio laughed and kissed the top of her head. “Poor Hortensia. I promise that your Papa will come round. It has been a difficult day for him.”

  “Is the trial still not going well?”

  Caepio shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Cicero has enough witnesses to keep everyone’s attention for at least another six or seven days. He won’t hesitate to twist the knife as deep as possible, he’d be mad not to. All your Papa can do is sit there. It must be deeply frustrating for him but there’s nothing he can do. Oddly enough, he seems to be quite sanguine about it all, more so than I would have thought.”

  “That’s what Mama said.” Hortensia thought for a while, her attention wandering back to the scene in the forum the previous day. She hesitated, then raised her head.

  “Caepio, do you remember that man we met at Crassus’s games? The man with the scar?” She saw that her husband was frowning. “I saw him standing next to Papa outside the court yesterday.”

  “Yes, I know who you mean. Tiberius Dolabella. Why do you ask?”

  “I just … wondered. I didn’t get the impression Papa liked him very much, so why would he be there?”

  “I don’t know, if I’m honest, my dear. I saw him approach your father just after proceedings adjourned for the day but Hortensius seemed to give him pretty short shrift …”

  Caepio broke off, and after staring at the floor for a moment, he smiled and shrugged.

  “Who knows? Maybe he wants your father to be his advocate, or to lend him money. Either one would be quite plausible in his case. I shouldn’t worry your head about it, my dear. He’s not the sort of man I would want you to have any dealings with.”

  A slave appeared to summon them to dinner, and Caepio did not notice the worried look on his wife’s face.

  XVI

  THE CAELIAN HILL WAS A LESS FASHIONABLE RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT THAN the Palatine but popular nonetheless with members of the Roman elite who did not mind living in such a busy, crowded neighborhood. Its summit commanded the most spectacular views of the city and had in recent years been colonized by an increasing number of impressive villas whose open front doors invited envious inspection of their cavernous interiors by poorer citizens who lived lower down the hill. As evening set in, the contrast between the villas’ vibrant inner walls and the darkness outside was so spectacular that some tourists to Rome made the journey up the hill just to see it. Thus it was that Lucrio was able to make a close observation of the house of Tiberius Dolabella without attracting too much notice.

  The villa was one of the largest on the Caelian hill, situated in the middle of a wide avenue on the summit. Through the front entrance, Lucrio could see marble columns, rich red wall hangings and a painted corridor leading all the way to a colonnaded portico at the back of the house. A bored looking door-keeper in a grey tunic was slowly pacing back and forth on the threshold of the lighted doorway, exchanging a few words with another attendant just out of view. The door-keeper glanced only perfunctorily at Lucrio as he shuffled past, exaggerating his limp for the slave’s benefit. As soon as he reached the end of the row he looked behind him and having made sure that there was nobody watching, he vaulted on to a wall that ran alongside the last house on the street. From there, he jumped across on to the roof of the adjacent villa, wincing as he came down on his weak leg.

  Crouching low, he peered into the courtyard garden of the house. A low table was laid out for dining on the colonnaded terrace below but it was a cool night and he could hear from the sound of chatter beneath him that the family who lived there had evidently decided to take their meal indoors. Moving with great care, Lucrio picked his way nimbly across the terracotta tiles before springing lightly onto the portico roof of the next house. He then proceeded to the next roof and the next again, counting as he went. One villa. Two. Three. He had never been able to break the habit of counting out loud in the Romans’ own tongue. Sertorius had taken it upon himself to teach him personally, first with a handful of used slingshot pebbles, then with a battered abacus. Every time Lucrio mouthed the numbers to himself, in his mind’s eye he could see his adolescent fingers tentatively sliding the little beads along their row.

  At last, he dropped down into the fifth garden and immediately sucked in his breath as he realized he had almost collided with a wind chime hanging from the underside of the roof. He exhaled slowly as he stared ruefully up at the swaying ornament from his crouched position in the shade of the portico. It was a grotesque trinket, the likes of which Lucrio knew hung in many a Roman garden, a fact that had greatly amused him when he first arrived in the city. A little bronze statue of the god Pan, his mouth open in an extravagant leer as he sat astride a giant phallus which appeared to be flying through the air. Bells hung from its undercarriage, attached by strings of varying lengths, which tinkled very gently as the object swung in the breeze. Glancing around Tiberius’s garden, which was considerably larger than that of his neighbors, Lucrio realized that there were many of these rude little chimes dangling from various vantage points around the garden. A crude warning system perhaps, but they reminded Lucrio that he would have to tread very carefully.

  He approached the house through the shadows of the colonnade. Several of the rooms were in darkness but it was clear from the shouts of male laughter and the clinking of silver on silver that he had arrived on a night when his host was having a dinner party. Lucrio was anxious for blood but would not risk his chances of success by shortening his own odds. He was prepared to wait all night for the right opportunity, if that was what it took. So he crouched down in a shady corner beneath the window of a room in which there were no lights lit and waited for Tiberius’s guests to leave. He occupied himself in the meantime by studying the stars and running his fingers along the blade of the knife he had brought with him.

  A sliver of moon glimmered in the night sky. Lucrio listened to the men carousing next door, knowing from his time in Hortensius’s service that such occasions could go on for many hours. He could tell which course was being served by the smells that wafted out to him – oysters with pungent quantities of garum followed by roasted meat and onions. The scent of roses and honey heralded the arrival of dessert, which was interrupted by a sudden raucous chorus of approval. Lucrio quickly realized what had precipitated it. A girl had begun to sing, her dulcet voice just audible over the cheering of the men. From her accent, Lucrio guessed that she was from Hispania, almost certainly a war-prisoner like him. Later on, she would probably be offered to Tiberius’s guests, who would take it in turns with her, assuming their inebriated bodies would cooperate.

  The girl was still singing when
Lucrio became aware of a pool of light on the ground around his feet. He looked up quickly, his fist closing down hard on the handle of his knife, and he realized that someone had entered the room behind him and lit a lamp. Squatting on his haunches, he peered cautiously over the window ledge. When he saw that it was Dolabella, and that he was alone, Lucrio’s blood began to thump through his veins. He shifted his weight and watched for a few seconds as Tiberius lit a second lamp and placed it on top of a low cabinet. The light illuminated his sinewy, damaged face and ignited a glow in the strange amber eyes which had haunted Lucrio since he was a child. Everything about the man was just as he remembered, save the deep scarring on his left profile. Lucrio felt a pang of regret that one of Sertorius’s men had obviously got to Tiberius before he could. As soon as his quarry’s back was turned, he gripped the hilt of his dagger and prepared to spring through the open window. But at that moment a slave entered, followed by another man, tall and well-groomed in a plain white toga with a purple border.

  “You will forgive me for receiving you in here, my dear Crassus.” Tiberius’s voice was just as Lucrio remembered it, dry and lazy. “I’m also quite certain that you will excuse me for not inviting you to join my party next door. I doubt they’re really your sort of people. Especially not now that you hold such distinguished office.”

  Tiberius Dolabella flashed his small, jagged teeth in a smile as he poured a cup of wine for his guest. Lucrio withdrew further into the shadows, making sure he could not be seen by the occupants of the room. He could hear Crassus irritably refusing the offer of refreshment.

  “I don’t want your hospitality Tiberius. It’s been ten days now and you have failed to respond to my repeated messages. I want to know – where is the item you promised me?”