The Gates of Rome Read online

  "I am here for Marius the consul. He is away from the city, but wanted to send me to let you know your father will not be forgotten by him."

  Gaius thanked him politely, his mind working furiously. "Send the message that I will call on Consul Marius when he is next in the city."

  The man nodded. "Your uncle will receive you warmly, I am sure. He will be at his town house three weeks from today. I will let him know." The messenger made his way back through the crowd and out of the gates, and Gaius watched him go.

  Marcus moved to his shoulder, his voice low. "Already you are not so alone as you were," he said.

  Gaius thought of his mother's words. "No. He has set my standard and I will meet it. I will not be a lesser man when I lie there and my son greets those who knew me. I swear it."

  Into the dawn silence came the low voices of the praeficae women, singing softly the same phrases of loss over and over. It was a mournful sound and the world was filled with it as the horses pulled the carriage with his father out of the gates in slow time, with the people falling in behind, heads bowed.

  In only a few minutes the courtyard was empty again, and Gaius waited for Tubruk, who had gone inside to check on Aurelia.

  "Are you coming?" Gaius asked him as he returned.

  Tubruk shook his head. "I will stay to serve your mother. I don't want her alone at this time."

  Tears came again into Gaius's eyes and he reached out for the older man's arm.

  "Close the gates behind me, Tubruk. I don't think I can do it."

  "You must. Your father is gone to the tomb and you must follow, but first the gates must be shut by the new master. It is not my place to take yours. Close up the estate for mourning and go and light the funeral pyre. These are your last tasks before I will call you master. Go now."

  Words would not come from his throat and Gaius turned away, pulling the heavy gates shut behind him. The funeral procession had not gone far with their measured step, and he walked after them slowly, his back straight and his heart aching.

  The crematorium was outside the city, near the family tomb. For decades, burials within the walls of Rome had been forbidden as the city filled every scrap of available space with buildings. Gaius watched in silence as his father's body was laid on a high pyre that hid him from view in the center of it. The wood and straw were soaked with perfumed oils, and the odor of flowers hung heavily in the air as the praeficae changed their dirge to one of hope and rebirth. Gaius was brought a sputtering torch by the man who had prepared his father's body for the funeral. He had the dark eyes and calm face of a man used to death and grief, and Gaius thanked him with distant politeness.

  Gaius approached the pyre and felt the gaze of all the mourners on him. He would show them no public weakness, he vowed to himself. Rome and his father watched to see if he would falter, but he would not.

  Close, the smell of the perfumes was almost overpowering. Gaius reached out with a silver coin and opened his father's loose mouth, pressing the metal against the dry coolness of the tongue. It would pay the ferryman, Charon, and his father would reach the quiet lands beyond. He closed the mouth gently and stood back, pressing the smoking torch against the oily straw stuffed between the branches at the base of the pyre. A memory of the smell of burning feathers slipped into his mind and was gone before he could identify it.

  The fire grew quickly, with popping twigs and a crackle that was loud against the soft songs of the praeficae. Gaius stepped back from the heat as his face reddened, and held the torch limply in his hand. It was the end of childhood while he was yet a child. The city called him and he did not feel ready. The Senate called him and he was terrified. But he would not fail his father's memory and would meet the challenges as they came. In three weeks, he would leave the estate and enter Rome as a citizen, a member of the nobilitas.

  At last, he wept.

  CHAPTER 12

  "Rome—the largest city in the world," Marcus said, shaking his head in wonder as they passed into the vast paved expanse of the forum. Great bronze statues gazed down on the small group as they walked their horses through the bustling pedestrians.

  "You don't realize how big everything is until you get up close," Cabera replied, his usual confidence muted. The pyramids of Egypt seemed larger in his memory, but the people there looked always to the past with their tombs. Here, the great structures were for the living and he felt the optimism of it.

  Alexandria too seemed awed, though in part it was at how much everything had changed in the five years since Gaius's father had bought her to work in his kitchens. She wondered if the man who had owned her mother was somewhere still in the city and shuddered as she recalled his face, remembering how he had treated them. Her mother had never been free and died a slave after a fever struck her and several others in the slave pens beneath one of the sale houses. Such plagues were fairly common and the big slave auctions were accustomed to passing over a few bodies each month, accepting a few coins for them from the ash makers. She remembered, though, and the waxen stillness of her mother still pressed against her arms in dreams. She shuddered again and shook her head as if to clear it.

  I will not die a slave, she thought to herself, and Cabera turned to look at her, almost as if he had heard the thought. He nodded and winked and she smiled at him. She had liked him from the first. He was another who didn't quite fit, wherever he found himself.

  I will learn useful skills and make things to sell, and I will buy myself free, she thought, knowing the glory of the forum was affecting her and not caring. Who wouldn't dream in a place that looked as if it had been built by gods? You could see how to make a hut, just by looking at it, but who could imagine these columns being raised? Everything was bright and untouched by the filth she remembered, narrow dirty streets and ugly men hiring her mother by the hour, with the money going to the owner of the house.

  There were no beggars or whores in the forum, only well-dressed, clean men and women, buying, selling, eating, drinking, arguing politics and money. On each side, the eye was filled with gargantuan temples in rich stone; huge columns with their heads and feet gilded; great arches erected for military triumphs. Truly, this was the beating heart of empire. Each of them could feel it. There was a confidence here, an arrogance. While most of the world scrubbed in the dirt still, these people had power and astonishing wealth.

  The only sign of the recent troubles was the grim presence of legionaries standing to attention at every corner, watching the crowds with cold eyes.

  "It is meant to make a man feel small," Renius muttered.

  "But it does not!" Cabera countered, gaping around him. "It makes me feel proud that man can build this. What a race are we!"

  Alexandria nodded silently. It showed that anything could be achieved—even, perhaps, freedom.

  Small boys advertised their masters' wares from hundreds of tiny shops along the edges: barbers, carpenters, butchers, stonemasons, gold and silver jewelers, potters, mosaic makers, rug weavers—the list was endless, the colors and noises a blur.

  "That is the temple of Jupiter, on the Capitoline hill. We will come back and make a sacrifice when we have seen your uncle Marius," Tubruk said, relaxed and smiling in the morning sun. He was leading the group and raised his arm to halt them.

  "Wait. That man's path will cross ours. He is a senior magistrate and must not be hindered."

  The others drew up and halted.

  "How do you know who he is?" Marcus asked.

  "Do you see the man beside him? He is a lictor, a special attendant. Do you see that bundle on his shoulder? Those are wooden rods for scourging and a small axe for beheading. If the magistrate were bumped by one of our horses, say, he could order a death on the spot. He needs neither witnesses nor laws to apply. Best to avoid them completely, if we can."

  In silence, they all watched the man and his attendant as they crossed the plaza, seemingly unaware of the attention.

  "A dangerous place for the ignorant," Cabera whispered. />
  "Everywhere is, in my experience," Renius grunted from the back.

  Past the forum, they entered lesser streets that abandoned the straight lines of the main ones. Here, there were fewer names on the intersections. The houses were often four or even five stories high, and Cabera, in particular, gaped at these.

  "The view they must have! Are they very expensive, these top houses?"

  "Apartments, they are called, and no, they are the cheapest," said Tubruk. "They have no running water at that height and are in great danger from fire. If one starts on the bottom floor, those at the top rarely get out. You see how the windows are so small? That is to keep out the sun and rain, but it also means you can't jump from them."

  They wound their way through the heavy stepping-stones that crossed the sunken roads at intervals. Without these, the fastidious pedestrians would have had to step down into the slippery muck left by horses and donkeys. The wheels of carts had to be set a regulation width apart so that they could cross in the gaps, and Cabera nodded to himself as he watched the process.

  "This is a well-planned city," he said. "I have never seen another like it."

  Tubruk laughed. "There is no other like it. They say Carthage was of similar beauty, but we destroyed that more than fifty years ago, sowing the land with salt so that it could never again rise in opposition to us."

  "You speak almost as if a city is a living thing," Cabera replied.

  "Is it not? You can feel the life here. I could feel her welcoming me as I came through the gate. This is my home, as no other house can be."

  Gaius too could feel the life around him. Although he had never lived within the walls, it was his home as it was Tubruk's—maybe more so, as he was nobilitas, born free and of the greatest people in the world. My people built this, he thought. My ancestors put their hands on these stones and walked these streets. My father may have stood at that corner, and my mother could have grown up in one of the gardens I can glimpse off the main street.

  His grip on the reins relaxed and Cabera looked at him and smiled, sensing the change of mood.

  "We are nearly there," Tubruk said. "At least Marius's house is well away from the smell of dung in the streets. I don't miss that, I can assure you."

  They turned off the busy road and walked the horses up a steep hill and a quieter, cleaner street.

  "These are the houses of the rich and powerful. They have estates in the country but mansions here, where they entertain and plot for more power and even more wealth," Tubruk continued, his voice blank enough of emotion to make Gaius glance at him. The houses were sealed from the public gaze by iron gates, taller than a man. Each was numbered and entered by a small door for those on foot. Tubruk explained that this was only the least part; the buildings went back and back, from private baths to stables to great courtyards, all hidden from the vulgar plebeians.

  "They set great store by privacy in Rome," Tubruk said. "Perhaps it is part of living in a city. Certainly, if you were just to drop in at a country estate, you would be unlikely to cause offense, but here you must make appointments and announce yourself and wait and wait until they are ready to receive you. This is the one. I will tell the gatekeeper we have arrived."

  "I'll leave you here then," Renius said. "I must go to my own house and see if it has been damaged in the rioting."

  "Do not forget the curfew. Be inside as the sun sets, my friend. They are still killing everyone left on the streets after dark."

  Renius nodded. "I'll watch out."

  He turned his horse away and Gaius reached out to put a hand on his good right arm.

  "You're not leaving? I thought..."

  "I must check my house. I need to think alone for a while. I don't feel ready to settle down with the other old men, not anymore. I will be back tomorrow dawn to see you and... well, tomorrow dawn it is." He smiled and rode away.

  As he trotted down the hill, Gaius noted again the darkness of his hair and the energy that filled the man's frame. He turned and looked at Cabera, who shrugged.

  "Gatekeeper!" Tubruk shouted. "Attend to us."

  After the heat of the Roman streets, the cool stone corridors that led into the house grounds were a welcome relief. The horses and bags had been whisked away, and the four visitors were taken into the first building, beckoned on by an elderly slave.

  They stopped at a door of gold wood and the slave opened it, gesturing inside.

  "You will find all you need, Master Gaius. Consul Marius has given you leave to wash and change after your journey. You are not expected to appear before him until sunset, three hours from now, when you will dine. Shall I show your companions the way to the servants' rooms?"

  "No. They will stay with me."

  "As you wish, master. Shall I take the girl to the slave quarters?"

  Gaius nodded slowly, thinking. "Treat her with kindness. She is a friend of my house."

  "Of course, sir," replied the man, motioning to Alexandria.

  She flashed a glance at Gaius and the expression was unreadable in her dark eyes.

  Without another word, the quiet little man left, his sandals making no noise on the stone floor. The others looked at one another, each taking some form of comfort from the company of friends.

  "I think she likes me, that one," Marcus mused to himself.

  Gaius looked at him in surprise and Marcus shrugged. "Lovely legs, as well." He went in to their quarters, chuckling, leaving Gaius stupefied behind him.

  Cabera whistled softly as he entered the room. The ceiling was forty feet from the mosaic floor, and a series of brass rafters crossed and recrossed the space. The walls were painted in the dark reds and oranges that they had seen so often since entering the city, but the floor was the thing that caught the attention, even before they looked up at the vault of a roof. It was a series of circles, gripping a marble fountain in the middle of the huge room. Each circle contained running figures, racing to catch the one in front and frozen in the attempt. The outer circles were figures from the markets, carrying their wares, then, as the eye followed the circles inward, different aspects of society could be seen. There were the slaves, the magistrates, the members of the Senate, legionaries, doctors. One circle contained only kings, naked except for their crowns. The innermost ring, forming a belt around the actual fountain, contained pictures of the gods, and they alone were still. They stood looking up at all the running hordes that sprinted around but could never leap from one circle to another.

  Gaius walked across the rings to the fountain and drank, using a cup that rested on the marble edge. In truth, he was tired, and impressed as he was by the beauty of the room, the most important fact was that no food or couches were included in the splendor. The others followed him through an arch into the next room.

  "This is more like it," Marcus said cheerfully. A polished table was laid with food: meat, bread, eggs, vegetables, and fish. Fruit was piled in bowls of gold. Soft couches stood around invitingly, but another door led onward and Gaius could not resist looking.

  The third room had a deep pool in the center. The water steamed invitingly and bare wooden benches lined the walls, piled high with soft white cloths. Robes hung from stands by the water, and four male slaves stood by low tables, ready to give massages if needed.

  "Excellent," Tubruk said. "Your uncle is a fine host, Gaius. I am for a bath first, before I eat." As he spoke, he began to pull off his clothes. One of the slaves walked to him and held out an arm for the garments as they were removed. When Tubruk was naked, the slave disappeared with them out of the only door. A few moments later, another entered and took up his place at the tables.

  Tubruk lowered himself completely into the water, holding his breath as he slid below the surface and relaxing every muscle in the heat. By the time he surfaced, Gaius and Marcus had scrambled out of their garments, flung them at another slave, and plunged into the opposite end, naked and laughing.

  A slave held his arm out for Cabera's clothes, and the old man frowned at h
im. Then he sighed and began stripping the robe from his skinny body.

  "Always new experiences," he said as he eased into the water, wincing.

  "Shoulders, lad," Tubruk called to one of the attendants.

  The man nodded and knelt at the side of the pool, pressing his thumbs into Tubruk's muscles, unknotting the stresses that had been there since the slave attack on the estate.

  "Good," Tubruk sighed, and began to doze, lulled by the heat.

  Marcus was first out onto the massage table, lying on the smooth cloth and steaming in the colder air. The nearest slave detached some instruments from his belt, almost like a set of long brass keys. He poured warm olive oil on liberally and then began to scrape Marcus's wet skin as if he were skinning a fish, working the dirt of the journey off the surface and wiping a surprising amount of black filth onto a cloth at his waist. Then he rubbed the skin dry and poured a little more oil on for the massage, beginning great sweeping strokes along the spine.

  Marcus groaned with satisfaction. "Gaius, I think I'm going to like it here," he muttered through slack lips.

  Gaius lay in the water and let his mind drift free. Marius might not want to have the two boys around. He had no children of his own and the gods knew it was a difficult time for the Republic. All the fragile freedoms his father had loved were coming under threat with soldiers on every corner. As consul, Marius was one of the two most powerful men in the city, but with Sulla's legion on the streets, his power became a fiction, his life at Sulla's whim. Yet how could Gaius protect his father's interests without his uncle's help? He had to be introduced to the Senate, sponsored by another. He could not just take his father's old place; they would throw him out and that would be the end of everything. Surely the blood tie to his mother would be worth a little help, but Gaius could not be sure. Marius was the golden general who had dropped in on his sister occasionally when Gaius was small. But the visits had become fewer and fewer as her illness progressed, and it had been years since the last visit.