The Blood of Caesar, page 17
part #2 of Pliny the Younger Series
“It’s awfully big just to bury one person, isn’t it, Chloe?”
“Other members of his family are buried there, too—his wife, a nephew, some grandchildren, maybe others. I’m not sure.”
“Why are there ... I mean, ask him why there are trees growing on top of it.”
“There’s a park around it.” I was getting tired of the game.
“This field used to be open for military training and assemblies of the people,” Tacitus said. “But Pompey, Caesar, then Augustus, started building on it when there was no longer any need for the people to assemble or train. I suppose someday it will be just as thickly populated as the rest of the city.”
I snorted. “Preposterous. It’s too far from the Forum. It wouldn’t be practical for people to live out here. They would spend all day just getting to and from the center of town.”
With the sun emerging completely from behind the clouds, I was finally beginning to feel dried out from my dunking in the stream. The sensation of Nelia’s breasts against me wasn’t fading, though.
About a stadium’s length south of the Mausoleum we passed Augustus’ Altar of Peace. Just beyond that, where another road intersected from the left, we came to the Porticus Vipsania, built by Augustus’ general and son-in-law, Vipsanius Agrippa, the grandfather of our memoir-writing Agrippina. For almost a hundred years the porticus has been a popular gathering place for people who live on the north side of the city. I pulled my horse to a stop. Food vendors, prostitutes, and beggars turned our way, like predators in the forest who’ve all spotted the same prey. I knew we couldn’t stand still for long.
“My slaves and I can take this road and reach my house without going through the main part of the city,” I said. Since Julius Caesar’s time vehicular traffic has been banned in the center of Rome during the day. If it hadn’t been banned by law, the crowds of people in the streets would effectively bring it to a halt.
“Take my horse,” Tacitus said. “You need to return him. I’ll hire one of those litters to carry me home.” He slid off his mount and handed the reins to one of my slaves.
Guiding my horse to the side of the road, I leaned down and said to Tacitus, “Did you get your letter allowing you access to the imperial archives?”
“Yes. I just haven’t gotten back there yet.”
“Please go as soon as possible. Look in those boxes we saw that were marked ‘Letters of Nero.’ Look for anything that mentions Antistius Vetus or his daughter, or Rubellius.”
* * * *
We skirted the worst of Rome’s congestion, going through the Porta Quirinalis in the old wall, across the Quirinal and Viminal Hills, and finally up the Esquiline to my house. Nelia did not get to see any of the city’s famous buildings, but there would be time for that. Seeing her wince in pain, I wanted to get her into Naomi’s hands as soon as possible.
Our arrival at the door of the house threw everyone into an uproar. In spite of my repeated explanations, my mother didn’t quite understand why I had come back with more people, goods, and wagons than I set out with.
“And this girl looks sick,” she said.
“She fell,” I told her. “I want Naomi to take a look at her.”
“All right,” Mother said. “Take her to the Ariadne room. I’ll send Naomi.”
Two of my slaves brought a small chair. Nelia sat in it and they carried her into the house.
While Demetrius made other rooms off the garden ready for Nelia’s servants, Laberius told Musonius’ drivers to start back right away, since storing the horses and wagons overnight would be difficult. But it might have been easier than turning the wagons around in the narrow street. Several of my slaves and some bystanders finally had to be enlisted to push the wagons until they were headed in the right direction. Considering what I had to pay everyone for their help, it would have been cheaper to find a stable.
As the wagons lumbered away, I entered the house, hoping for a degree of normalcy. But there was Laberius, talking with my steward Demetrius. Not just talking with him but giving him orders about how Nelia had to be quartered between him and the two female servants she had brought with her. But that, Demetrius told him, would mean moving some of our servants into different rooms.
“Then do it,” Laberius said.
Demetrius looked past him at me. I nodded. It was only for a short while, I reminded myself.
When I found a shady spot in the garden Aurora brought me some wine. I asked her to send Dymas, Moschus, and Aristides to me. Among them, surely, my chief scribe, doorkeeper and nomenclator could tell me what I needed to know. They knew, or knew the names of, anyone in Rome of any significance for the past twenty-five years.
But they didn’t know this man.
“Lucius Cornelius Catulus?” Aristides said, repeating the name slowly, like a man tasting a new, somewhat suspicious, wine. “I’ve never heard of him, my lord.”
“He’s no one your uncle ever knew, my lord,” Moschus added.
“And I’ve never run across the name in anything your uncle and I read, my lord,” Dymas said. “The cognomen Catulus is more common among the Lutatius family than among the Cornelii, I believe. And it hasn’t been used for several generations at least.”
I sent them back to their work and sat musing about the mysteries of Nelia. There were big questions, such as who her father was and who killed him, and small questions, such as the odd lumps I felt with my thumb when I had my hand clamped over her mouth. When I put my hand over my own mouth, I felt nothing like that.
“Would you like some more wine, my lord?” Aurora asked. I hadn’t even been aware of her approach.
“Yes, thank you.” As she filled my cup, I studied her mouth.
“Is something the matter, my lord?”
I stood beside her and, almost apologetically, raised my hand. She was my slave; I could do anything I wanted to with her body, but my fondness for her separated her from the rest of my slaves and made me hesitate even to touch her.
“This may seem strange, Aurora, but I’m going to put my hand over your mouth. Just bear with me for a moment.”
I laid my hand over her delicate mouth, with my thumb as close to where it had been on Nelia’s face as I could recall. “I’m going to press a bit, but I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know you won’t, my lord,” she mumbled through my hand.
No matter how I moved my thumb, I could not detect any lumps like those I had felt in Nelia’s mouth. And Aurora didn’t bite me. Instead, lifting her eyes to mine, she gave my palm the barest kiss.
“You’ve been hurt, my lord,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “Let me tend to that.” She had me sit down and, dipping a cloth in the undiluted wine, knelt beside me and began to clean the place where Nelia had bitten me.
She had just finished when my mother and Naomi approached us. “Have you looked after Nelia?” I asked.
“I have, my lord,” Naomi said. “She has no broken bones or serious injuries, only some bruises. What I’m concerned about is whether she’s going to lose her baby.”
XI
MY CUP CLATTERED to the pavement and broke. Aurora jumped back from me.
“Baby? What ... what baby?”
“She’s about three months pregnant, my lord.”
“How could that be?”
Naomi blushed and looked at my mother in amusement. “Well, my lord ...”
“That’s not what I meant. I know how. I think I even know who. You say you’re concerned about whether she’s going to lose the baby?”
“Yes, my lord.” Naomi recovered her composure, folding her hands in front of her. “A hard fall can cause a woman to miscarry. But she’s a strong, healthy girl, and there’s no bleeding. That’s a good sign. I’ve given her something to relax her. She should rest for a few days and let nature take its course.”
“Is she still awake?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then I want to talk to her.”
My mother stepped in front of me. “But, Gaius, the poor girl needs to rest. You treated her very roughly.”
“I ...?”
How did I become the villain? I wasn’t the one who bolted or the one who struck the first blow beside the stream. But there’s no sense arguing with women once they decide to band together, so I didn’t even attempt to correct her view of the incidents.
“I don’t think it will tax her to answer a few questions, Mother. She won’t even have to get out of bed.”
Mother looked at Naomi, who nodded. “Very well, dear. But I’m going to be there, and if I feel you should stop, I’ll tell you.”
I had to acquiesce. This was a new side of my mother, or rather a side I only remembered from the days before Vesuvius erupted. She looks frail and speaks softly. Over the past four years I had forgotten how determined she could be once she made up her mind things would be done a certain way. Something about her had been different since she returned from the funeral of Naomi’s brother. She seemed to have found a new vitality, like a flower that’s been watered after a long dry spell.
“Let’s go then,” I said, and I followed her and Naomi across the garden to Nelia’s room.
“I’ll see if she feels like talking to you,” Mother said. She and Naomi entered the room, leaving the door open to admit more light. That allowed me to hear the conversation.
“Are you feeling any better, dear?” Mother asked.
“A little. The medicine Naomi gave me is starting to work.”
“Good. My son would like to talk with you.” Her tone was so apologetic she might have been asking the princeps for a favor. “Do you feel up to that?”
“Couldn’t it wait until later?”
“It might be better to go ahead and let him ask a few questions now, to take the edge off his curiosity. He is inordinately curious. Then you can talk with him at greater length when you’re feeling better.”
“All right. The jailer always has the last word.”
“I beg your pardon,” Mother said.
“He’ll know what I mean.”
“I certainly do,” I said, stepping into the room. “And I’m tired of hearing you talk about me that way. I was asked to do a favor for a friend. At considerable inconvenience to myself and my family I have agreed to let you stay here for a while. You will get to see Rome, which you claim you’ve always wanted to do. But all I’ve heard from you is complaints. I don’t expect you to appreciate what I’m doing or to like me, but I do expect you to be civil.”
Nelia started to cry. I wonder if men will ever develop a defense against women’s tears. Naomi sat on the bed and took Nelia’s hand. How fitting that the fresco over Nelia’s bed showed Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus on the isle of Naxos, her hands outstretched, her tears flowing.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Mother said, rushing to the defense of a weeping member of her own kind. “You’ve upset her. I think you should leave.”
“No. No, let him stay,” Nelia said, sniffing and rubbing her eyes. “Gaius Pliny is right. He deserves better treatment from me than he’s been getting.” She looked up at me and I knew she had just wrested control of the situation away from me in my own house, and she knew it, too. How long until she would be ordering my slaves around?
“I suppose they told you I’m carrying a child,” she said.
I nodded. “About three months along, I gather.”
She looked down, in shame, I hoped. “So now you understand why I wanted to stay on cousin Gaius’ estate, to be near my child’s father.”
“Just to be absolutely clear,” I said, “Marcianus, the boy on the next estate, is the father, isn’t he?”
“Why, yes. He’s the only one who could be. What do you think of me?” She brushed away a tear, drawing another of my mother’s harsh glances in my direction.
“I’m uncertain about too many things,” I said, “to know what to think of you.”
“I’ve told you everything cousin Gaius has told me. What else do you need to know?”
“Who your father was, to start with.”
“Didn’t cousin Gaius tell you in his letter?”
“I want to know what Musonius told you.”
“He told me that my father was Lucius Cornelius—”
“Not just his name. Who was he? None of my slaves who are knowledgeable about such things has ever heard the name, not even my nomenclator. And he served with my uncle in Cisalpine Gaul, where this Cornelius Catulus supposedly came from.”
“Is that what Musonius told you?” When I didn’t answer, Nelia stuck out her lower lip and said, “If you had just let me see his letter, you wouldn’t have to worry about what to tell me and what to conceal from me.”
My mother looked from one of us to the other. “Letter? Why did Musonius write you a letter?”
“Because there’s something about my parents he doesn’t want me to know,” Nelia said before I could explain.
“Where is the letter?” my mother asked.
“Gaius Pliny destroyed it rather than let me read it,” Nelia replied, folding her arms over her chest and pulling the blanket up over her.
“Gaius! Why would you do such a thing?”
“Musonius instructed me not to reveal the contents of the letter to Nelia.”
“That’s entirely unreasonable. And unkind. Don’t you think a child deserves to know who her parents were and what happened to them?”
“I don’t know Musonius’ reasons, Mother. All I can do is what he asked of me.”
“So her father was named Lucius Cornelius Catulus?”
“That’s the name Musonius gave me, but it isn’t a proper Roman name, and yet it’s not some half-Roman, half-Greek concoction from the provinces either.”
“Well, you’ll just have to ask cousin Gaius about it,” Nelia said. “Perhaps he’ll write you another letter.”
“That’s another problem I’m having. I’m not sure I can trust anything Musonius has told me about you, or anything he’s told you about yourself.”
My mother gasped. “Now, dear, that’s very harsh. I don’t know Musonius, but I do know his reputation. His integrity is unquestioned. Why would you doubt him?”
“Because he has raised Nelia in complete isolation and won’t tell anyone why.”
Mother turned to Nelia. “What reason does Musonius give for raising you that way?”
“He says it’s my best—my only—hope of safety.” Nelia’s voice softened, as though she was making herself afraid.
“Why would you need to worry about your safety any more than anyone else in Rome?”
“I’m not really sure. Cousin Gaius won’t tell me anything specific. He says it would only worry me. He says my father got into trouble—what sort, I don’t know—and was killed shortly before I was born. My mother died when I was three. I don’t remember her.”
“And you know nothing about your father except his name?” Mother raised an eyebrow.
“Cousin Gaius won’t tell me anything else about him, or about what he did. He says it’s better that I not know. After my mother died cousin Gaius brought me to his estate here, and I haven’t set foot off the place until today.”
“He has your interests at heart, I’m sure,” Mother said, patting Nelia’s hand. “He wants to protect you.”
“I think he’s just a mean old man.” Nelia’s lower lip jutted out.
I jumped back into the conversation. “That’s not the impression I have of him. He’s a most gracious host in his house in Rome. He welcomed me warmly there.”
Nelia met my eyes as though I was a slave who had interrupted his mistress. “There seem to be two Musoniuses. I hope I’ll get to meet the Roman one someday. How did you come to know him?”
“While I was in Syria I met his son-in-law, Artemidorus—”
“Son-in-law?” Nelia’s surprise seemed genuine. “But that means he has a daughter. He’s never mentioned her—or any children—to me.”
I had no reply to that. How could a man divorce his life in Rome so completely from his life in the country? My esteem for Musonius was crumbling. What was he hiding? From whom was he hiding it?
“What is she like?” Nelia’s voice dripped with jealousy. “This ... daughter?”
I suppose, in a way, she had considered herself Musonius’ child all these years. Now to learn that there was a legitimate daughter—she must feel betrayed, like a woman finding out her lover is married.
“Well ... she’s a ... a lovely girl.” Why did I suddenly feel like I was on trial?
“How old?”
“About fifteen, I think.”
Nelia sat up in bed and continued to fire questions at me. “Musonius isn’t married ... is he? Who was her mother?”
“Musonius’ wife died ... in childbirth.” A fact I hated to mention, since Nelia would be undergoing that perilous experience in a few months. She was too angry to make the connection.
“How long has this girl been married?”
“A year. I was at the party celebrating their first anniversary.”
“She’s well educated, I suppose.”
“I couldn’t judge. I met her only twice, on social occasions.”
“So, he gives his daughter in marriage when she’s fourteen. I’m eighteen and he won’t let me even talk to a boy.”
Like someone inexperienced in speaking in court, she had exposed a weakness in her own case. I seized on it. “But obviously you have talked to one. In fact, you’ve done a good deal more than talk.”
“Gaius!” my mother said.
“You can’t make me ashamed of what I did.” Nelia placed a protective hand on her belly and glared defiantly at me.
“Now, now,” my mother said, laying her hand over Nelia’s. “Don’t upset yourself. How did you meet this boy?”
Nelia turned to her and smiled, like a little girl sharing a secret with her mother. “There’s an old bridge over the stream that’s the boundary between our estates. It’s Etruscan, I think. I like to study the writing on it. Marcianus saw me there one day. At first I wanted to run from him. I thought he was one of those people cousin Gaius had warned me about.”
“The ones who would want to kill you?”
