The Blood of Caesar, page 10
part #2 of Pliny the Younger Series
Aurora stood talking with a servant I didn’t recognize. Had she grown more beautiful while I was away, or had I just forgotten how beautiful she has always been?
I needed someone to talk to, not just a mute marble muse but someone who could actually respond to me, so I sent a slave to invite Tacitus to dinner.
VII
WHILE WAITING FOR Tacitus’ reply, I went to my bedroom and retrieved the writing box I keep there. Sometimes when I wake up early I work on a draft of a speech or a poem before going out to meet my clients. The box contains pens, a vial of ink, and some pieces of papyrus. Held on my lap, it serves as a writing table.
Returning to my seat in the garden, I pulled out Agrippina’s letter and made two copies. One I intended to place in my library, the other in a secure place in my tablinum. The original would go back in its hiding place under my bed. I was putting things back in the writing box when a young girl’s voice split the air.
“Give me that!” Hashep cried.
“You can’t make me!” Dakla said. When she squealed I could tell the sound was moving from the atrium in my direction. I stood and took a few steps toward the piscina.
In another moment Dakla ran into the garden, with Hashep only a few strides behind her. The younger girl almost knocked me down as she put me between her and her sister, clinging to my tunic.
“Uncle Gaius,” Hashep said, “please make her give me that.”
“What is it?” I asked.
Hashep hesitated. “Just ... something I was writing.”
I reached behind me, pulled Dakla off of my tunic, and lifted her into my arms. She waved a piece of papyrus over her head. My arm was too long for her, though, and I took it away from her and handed it to Hashep without looking at it.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said. It was the first time she had called me that. Suddenly seeming too mature, she bowed her head and left the garden.
I put Dakla down and knelt in front of her. “Dakla, why do you annoy your sister so much?”
“She wouldn’t play with me.” The little girl’s lower lip stuck out. “She wanted to practice her stupid writing.”
“Now, writing is very important. It’s how we tell our ideas to people who are far away from us, too far away to talk to. And it’s how we learn what people thought many years ago.”
“Hashep was writing a stupid song. She thinks she can write them like you do.”
I could see I wasn’t impressing her. “Would you like for me to teach you how to write some letters?”
She nodded her head eagerly. I stood up and took her hand.
“I just happen to have my writing box here. Come sit with me.”
We sat side by side on the bench, sharing the writing box. “Your name is actually easy to write,” I said. “The first letter, delta, is three straight lines, two down and one across, like this.” I formed the Δ “Then an alpha. It’s also three lines, but the line that goes across is in the middle.” Α “Then a kappa.” Κ
“They’re all three lines,” Dakhla said.
“That’s true. The lambda is only two lines, though.” Λ
“It looks like the alpha.”
“There’s no line across the middle.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She didn’t sound entirely convinced.
“Then another alpha at the end. Now you try it.” I dipped the pen and handed it to her. She bent her head over the writing box and diligently copied over and over the letters I had written at the top of the page.
Watching her, I wondered how my life had gone from the simplicity of learning to form letters to the complexity of trying to figure out if a letter from a long-dead woman was what it purported to be and, if it was, what significance it held. Could I have kept my life simpler, and safer? Some men of my class chose not to pursue a public career. They lived quietly on their country estates, undisturbed by surprise visits from the princeps. My uncle had been harsh in his criticism of such men. They wanted to enjoy the benefits of Roman prosperity, he said, without doing anything to contribute to it. But even he had held no offices for ten years while Nero was in power.
“Look, Uncle Gaius! I did it!” Dakla startled me as she held up the papyrus proudly. Her letters wobbled and she had ink all over her hands, but she had indeed spelled out her name: ΔΑΚΛΑ
“That’s very good, sweetheart. Do you want to show Hashep?”
“Not yet. Can you teach me to write my name in Egyptian letters? Hashep can’t do that.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know Egyptian letters. They’re pictures, aren’t they?” The only ones I’d ever seen were on the obelisks brought from Egypt and set up in Rome.
“Yes. Like this.” Dakla pulled out a necklace from under her tunic and held up the pendant so I could see it. “My papa got it for me. It’s my name in Egyptian letters. On the other side it’s in Greek. Hashep has one, too.”
I peered closely at the piece of lapis lazuli on the silver chain. It had obviously cost a great deal. How had my steward been able to save enough out of his own money to afford two of them? I’d better pay closer attention to those account ledgers he showed me.
Three Egyptian symbols had been cut into the rich blue stone in a vertical row. The top one looked like a man’s hand with the fingers extended and the thumb sticking up slightly. The second was simply a cup with a small handle on one side, and the bottom one a crouching lion. But why only three symbols when the child’s name in Greek required five letters?
Odd, I thought, how a word from one language can be written with the letters from another. I turned the locket from front to back a few times. An Egyptian could look at Dakla’s name in Greek and never recognize it. But isn’t that what we Romans do all the time with Greek words and names? Plato wouldn’t know his own name in Latin letters, nor would he recognize the Latin word ‘philosophia,’ even though he spoke it and wrote it many times in his own language.
“There’s Hashep!” Dakla said. “I’m going to show her this. Thank you, uncle Gaius.”
Waving the piece of papyrus, she ran off after her sister. As I put my writing materials back in the box, I noticed the copies of Agrippina’s letter that I had made. They were fair copies, with the same number of lines as the original, but I hadn’t written the odd Greek letters on the back. I pulled the original out of the pouch I was still wearing around my neck and unrolled it once more.
There were six Greek letters on the back. Or Greek-looking letters. Perhaps they were just written by someone who didn’t know the language very well. If I were to draw the Egyptian characters in Dakla’s name, I’m sure an Egyptian would think they looked barbaric. These letters did not spell any Greek word with which I was familiar.
But what if they were intended to spell out a Latin word?
Even that didn’t work. I tried them backwards in both languages. They still made no sense. Somewhere in my uncle’s notes I had read that Julius Caesar used to write in a code, substituting D for A, E for B, and so on. Applying that principle first in Greek, then in Latin, I still could not turn these letters into any recognizable word.
My failure raised two possibilities. First, I had not guessed the correct substitution pattern. Second, the Greek letters were being used to write a language which I did not know.
I was relieved to put the problem aside when a familiar voice said, “If I’m going to spend so much time over here, perhaps I should rent a room from you.” Tacitus strode into the garden.
“You could have waited and come in time for dinner. You didn’t have to return with the slave.” But I was glad he had, rather than waiting a couple of hours to come along.
“I appreciate the invitation. Any excuse to get away from my wife is welcome, but none more than an invitation from you.”
I closed the writing box and we settled onto couches in the exhedra, the outdoor eating area at the far end of the garden. The women’s work was done for the day, so it was safe for men to enter this part of the house again. Aurora brought wine, cheese and bread. I instructed her to wait by the piscina instead of standing behind my couch. The flute and lyre players I had summoned were placed halfway between us and the piscina. This conversation, I suspected, was not going to be one I wanted to be overheard by even my most trusted slave.
“How is your speech for that court case coming?” I asked, to give Aurora time to get out of earshot.
“I believe I’m ready,” Tacitus said. “It’s not a very complex case and I’ve still got a few days to work on it. Do you want to hear a bit of it?”
“Later, perhaps. I doubt I could concentrate on it right now.”
“What’s troubling you? Your brow hasn’t unfurrowed since I got here.”
I told him first about Maxentius working in the cryptoporticus and my conclusion—the only possible conclusion—that he couldn’t have been killed by a falling brick. My words seemed to hang in the warm, muggy air, with the flies darting in among them.
“Are you suggesting Domitian killed him or had him killed?” The shadows cast by the late afternoon sun partially obscured Tacitus’ face, but I couldn’t miss the anxiety in his voice.
“I’m convinced he was murdered. By whom, or on whose orders, I don’t know. And I’m sure Domitian lied to me about what he knew about Maxentius’ death.”
“Why? What purpose of his would it serve to do that? You might as well suggest there’s some connection between the mason’s death and Agrippina’s memoirs.”
“What if there is?”
“Oh, Gaius Pliny, where did you come up with that centaur of a speculation?”
“I didn’t. You did, just now.”
“I was joking and you know it. Any connection between those two things would be as unlikely as a creature half-human, half-equine. Maxentius would have been a very young man living in the East when Agrippina died. What possible connection ... No, it simply isn’t worth wasting any more time on.”
“You’re right, I know. Anyway, I’m more concerned about the question of his murder.”
“‘Murder’ is a strong word. Every princeps since Augustus has had people killed, if they haven’t done it themselves. It’s inevitable when you have the type of government we now have.”
“Your beloved Republic had its share of assassinations and bloodbaths. Don’t forget Sulla’s proscriptions, Caesar’s twenty-three wounds, and Cicero’s head on a pole in the Forum.”
Tacitus raised his cup. “That point I’ll have to concede. Perhaps Rome can’t be governed under any guise without the need to eliminate the enemies of those who govern. But in the past they’ve been people who seemed to pose a threat—members of their own families, members of the senate, rebellious generals. Why would someone as powerful as Domitian kill an insignificant workman?”
“That’s just it. I can’t think of any reason.”
“Maybe he did it for sport. Nero used to disguise himself and lurk around the streets of the city at night, attacking people.”
“Nero was a madman. Domitian is colder, more calculating. If he killed this man, there had to be a reason.”
“I thought you believed it was to test Pliny the necromancer.”
I grimaced at the reminder of the scene in the archives. “But why kill this particular man? Was he actually inspecting the work on his new house when he just happened on Maxentius and decided to kill him on a whim? I find that hard to believe.”
“If you don’t believe it, you have to assume that the ruler of the Roman world set his sights on one insignificant man, someone who would be no more important to him than one of these flies would be to you or me.” Tacitus waved a hand over the table.
I liked his analogy. “But what if one of these flies lands in my wine or on the food I’m about to eat. Then that particular fly draws my attention to itself.” An obliging fly landed on the table right in front of me. I put my hand slightly behind it and when it tried to fly again, I caught it and crushed it.
“How do you do that?” Tacitus asked with a laugh. “I’ve never been able to catch one of the accursed things.”
“Someday I’ll tell you.” I raised my hands and rubbed them together to signal Aurora to bring me a bowl of water and a towel. “It’s a little trick I learned from my uncle’s scrolls.”
“Ah, yes. Those infamous, oracular 160 scrolls.” He waited until Aurora was far enough away again. “But how would Domitian’s attention ever have been drawn to the fly that was Maxentius? How could Maxentius have landed in a position where the princeps would notice him and want to crush him before he could fly away?”
“That’s what I intend to ask Peleus, if he ever gets back from his uncle’s funeral. But there is one more thing I need to catch you up on.” I told him about my visit to Josephus and what I had learned about Titus’ relationship with Nero’s family and his cleverness with a pen.
“He wanted to be known as the world’s most celebrated forger? Where’s the logic in that? To be celebrated, a forger’s work would have to be recognized as forgeries, and that would mean they weren’t good enough to fool anyone.”
“I don’t believe this letter is a forgery,” I said, wiping my hands on the towel and reclining again on my couch. “And I suspect those markings on the back of the letter have a significance we haven’t understood yet.”
“Perhaps you should have Peleus look at them. If he can master Tironian notation, he might recognize some other kind of code or secret writing.”
“Good idea. Now, let’s put this business aside. It’s making my head ache. Why don’t you divert us with a piece of your speech?”
Tacitus would be speaking for the plaintiff in a case of a disputed inheritance, to be heard before the Centumviral Court in the Basilica Julia. His introduction, like most of his oratory, was more notable for its style than its content. But, after I made a few suggestions, I felt he stood a good chance of carrying the day. My clients and I would applaud him vigorously in hopes of swaying the members of the court.
It was growing dark and slaves were lighting torches in the garden when Demetrius approached us. “My lord, you wanted me to inform you when your mother returned.”
“Ask her to come out here and bring Niobe and Peleus with her.”
Tacitus and I stood as my mother crossed the garden. She sat on the third couch and, much to my surprise, invited Niobe to sit beside her. Peleus understood his place well enough to remain standing as Tacitus and I sat on the edges of our couches. The clothing of both slaves was torn in front. I would inquire about that after I’d assured myself of my mother’s well-being.
Kissing her on the cheek, I said, “I’m glad to see you home safely, Mother. I was worried about you.”
“Why? I was never in any danger.”
“You look ... tired.” It wasn’t exactly the right word, but I had never seen this expression on her face before. She appeared less anxious, almost younger.
“Tired? Why, no, dear. I feel exhilarated.”
“Where have you been all this time?”
“We went first to their synagogue.” She held Niobe’s hand.
“What’s a synagogue?” Although it was Greek, the unfamiliar word stumbled off my tongue.
“A sort of temple. Could you explain it?” my mother said, turning to Peleus.
“Actually, my lady, my lord,” Peleus said, “it’s a place of study and worship, but not a temple. For us there is—or was—only one temple.”
Again, he didn’t say ‘until you Roman dogs destroyed it,’ but his tone certainly implied that.
“Where is this synagogue?” I asked.
“In the Subura,” my mother said, as calmly as she might have said ‘in the Forum.’
I jumped up. “The Subura?” Rome’s most disreputable neighborhood, home of thieves, beggars, cut-throats and whores. And Jews, it seemed. I turned on Peleus. “You took my mother into the most dangerous part of Rome? How dare you!”
“Calm yourself, Gaius. Phineas didn’t take me. I went along with him.”
“Phineas? Who is Phineas?” Confusion deflected my anger.
“The young man you’re berating. That’s his true name. And this dear woman is Naomi. That’s what we shall call them from now on.”
New names, my mother strolling in the Subura—this was too much to take in at once. “We’ll discuss that later, Mother. In private. Right now I want to talk with ... Peleus. Perhaps you could see how preparations for dinner are coming. I’d like to eat out here.”
“Very well, dear.” She and Niobe stood. “But don’t chastise Phineas too severely. He and his mother have suffered a terrible loss, just as we did four years ago. Keep that in mind. Come, Naomi.”
Peleus didn’t turn around, but Tacitus and I watched the two women until they entered the kitchen. My mother’s step seemed more confident than it had since my uncle’s death, her back straighter. And she had ventured out of the house for longer than she had at any time since the eruption of Vesuvius. I wanted to talk to her apart from Niobe, to see if I could determine what influence the slave woman was exercising over her. Even if their relationship seemed helpful to my mother at the moment, there was no predicting what effect it might ultimately have. I would do whatever it took to protect her, even if it meant sending Niobe to one of my country estates or selling her.
But first I had to deal with Peleus. I stood in front of him and looked him up and down, like a centurion inspecting a legionary. I consider myself a kind and reasonable master, but I wanted to show Peleus—and Tacitus, for that matter—just how stern I could be.
I tugged at the front of his tunic. “How did this get torn?”
“In our funerals the clothing of family members is torn in this way, my lord. It’s a sign of mourning.”
“And a waste of perfectly good garments. Which are my property, I must point out.” I paced around him. Tacitus leaned against his couch, arms folded across his chest.
