To Be Wolves, page 13
“He broke into my house last night and attempted to take my life. My slaves were able to fight him off.”
“How fortunate for you,” said Pomponia.
“Yes and no,” Soren replied. “The praetor has said he will use the servile law.” He pressed his lips together. “All the slaves in my household are to be crucified.”
“Ah.” Pomponia suddenly realized they were both still standing. She walked out from behind her desk and sat down on a blue-cushioned chair, gesturing for Soren to do the same. He seemed uncertain for a moment but then did so. “I am sorry to hear that,” she said. “No doubt it will create a hardship for you.”
“It will. Many of my slaves are highly skilled, and I contract them out. Tutors, mostly. I will lose that income. Plus, I will have to buy new ones.”
“I am not unsympathetic, Soren. But if you are here to request a pardon for your slaves, I cannot provide one.”
“I’m not asking you to pardon all of them, Priestess. Just one. She is very important to me. Her name is Dacia. If my cousin were still alive, I would ask her. I am certain she would do it.”
“I knew Tuccia well,” said Pomponia, “and I am not so certain.” She leaned back in her chair. “May I ask,” she said, “why are all your slaves to be crucified? According to the servile law, if a household slave attempts to murder their master, every slave in that household is to be killed. It is a deterrent law. But Scorpus was not living in the house, correct?”
“The praetor believes there was collusion in the household,” said Soren, “but there was not. Several of my slaves have children, so if they knew what he was planning they would have told me. I know he acted alone.”
One of the guards snorted.
Pomponia looked at him. “Do you have something to add, Caeso?”
“Yes, my lady. I was informed of this at first watch. It was the opinion of the vigiles that slaves within the household granted Scorpus access to the property after dark. A kitchen window was left open for him, probably by a female slave that had been his wife of sorts while in Capua. There was collusion.” He looked at Soren. “It’s in the official report.”
“Where is Scorpus now?” asked Pomponia.
The guard spoke again. “Most likely escaped through the city gates, Priestess. Search parties have been sent out along the Viae Labicana and Tiburtina. But he’s miles from Rome by now, I expect.”
“I expect so too,” Pomponia agreed. Then turning to Soren she said, “I’m sorry, but I cannot pardon your slave . . .” She tried to remember the name.
“Dacia,” said Soren. “Priestess, I ask you to reconsider. She is innocent and had no part in this. She has been my slave for years and has never given me any trouble. She is loyal. I had plans to free her so that we could—”
“It is unfortunate you did not do it sooner,” said Pomponia. She began to rise from her chair, glancing at the guards as she did so. We’re done. See him out.
“My brother would disagree with your decision,” said Soren.
It was the tone that set Pomponia off. So much for her delightful morning. She leaned back in her chair and met Soren’s antagonism with a measured dose of her own.
“Senator Pavo would not have wasted my time with this had he known the details,” she said. “He will be standing in the portico by midday apologizing. There is no precedent for a Vestal to pardon a slave. In fact, High Priestess Fabiana specifically forbade it, and I will defer to her authority. And her experience. She lived through the Spartacus uprising, you know.”
“Perhaps that biased her.”
“Of course it did. Her nephew was a legionary soldier of Crassus. He was captured by Spartacus’s men. They crucified him on a hill in full view of his fellow soldiers, including his general and his own cousin, Julius Caesar. The poor man hung on the cross for two days until the crows began to eat him alive, like Zeus’s eagle ripping apart Prometheus bound to the cliff.”
“No man deserves that.”
“Some do. But he didn’t. Neither did the other Roman soldiers who were crucified by slaves, always in sight of the army when it was at its weakest. You’re an educated man, Soren. You know your history. Crassus had to resort to decimation to gain control of the legions. The servile law and crucifixion are not so different than decimation. The fear of them maintains order. You know what would happen if the slaves who walk our streets, who serve in our homes and even our temples, didn’t live in fear of the law.”
“My slaves are no threat to Rome or to anyone.”
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if that were true.” Pomponia contemplated the wound around his neck. Soren tried not to react. “All slaves are a threat to Rome,” she continued. “They may lower their heads when they bring your supper, but who knows what is in their hearts? Spartacus’s men were as evil as any enemy Rome has faced. There are countless slaves in the empire, and each one is a potential enemy to his master and his master’s family.”
“With respect, isn’t the sacrifice of my other slaves enough? Cannot one be spared?”
“How many are to be killed?”
“Eighteen in the household, nineteen including Dacia.”
“So, by this time tomorrow morning, nineteen crosses will stand along the Appian Way outside the city walls. Once Scorpus is caught, it will be twenty, although I suspect his will be the one most visited. That is good. The people need to see that he is no Titan. He is no god, no legend. He is only a man. And twenty crosses is not so big a number. Six thousand crosses stood along the Via Appia after Crassus defeated Spartacus. They ran for over a hundred miles from Capua to Rome. We cannot encourage a second Spartacus because you have fallen in love with your bed slave. I would not spare a slave of Caesar’s, never mind one of yours. It would be a debasement of the Vestal privilege and an insult to the legions that fought and died for Rome.” She exhaled tiredly. “Out of respect for Tuccia, I’ve taken the time to explain my decision. But we are finished now. Good day, Soren.”
As she stood, Soren leaned forward, and his hand reached out for her. In the blink of an eye, before she could even process what had happened, Caeso and Publius had lifted him out of his chair and were holding him against the wall. Caeso’s hand gripped Soren’s already-raw neck.
“I meant no harm.” Soren looked bewildered. His face contorted in pain as Publius bent one of his arms at an unnatural angle. “You misunderstand . . .”
Caeso looked at Pomponia. “The Carcer?”
The Vestal shook her head. Soren was desperate. He was aggressive. But it was unlikely that a nobleman, even one such as he, would attempt violence against her. Plus, Senator Pavo was a respected politician. He didn’t need the scandal of a brother in prison.
“Go home, Soren,” said Pomponia. “You have the means to recover from this. You will rebuild your household soon enough.”
He seemed to calm himself. “Thank you for your time, Priestess.”
Pomponia didn’t respond. With a glance at Caeso, she instructed the guards to escort Soren out of her office and the House of the Vestals. She suspected it would not be a pain-free journey for Soren. So be it. Who was she to tell the guards how to do their job?
Trying to swallow her irritation, she poured herself a cup of mint water from the green glass jug on her desk, drank it all at once, and tucked her hair behind her ears. She left her office and headed for the courtyard.
Pomponius was already there, sitting in the same chair he always sat in when he visited, and looking the same as he always did: absorbed in some scroll he had found in the library, an untouched tray of food and drink sitting on the table beside him.
She all but collapsed into the chair next to his. “What are you reading, brother?”
“Aristotle,” he said. “An exceptional copy.”
Pomponia looked at the scroll. “We may have an original in the vault,” she said. “You will have to ask the librarian. And probably bribe him as well.” She smiled.
“Money well spent.” Pomponius smiled back at his sister. “What was your business, Pomponia? Not pleasant, obviously.”
“I don’t know how apprised you are of the latest gossip,” she said humorlessly, “but Scorpus the Titan—you remember, the chariot driver we saw—well, he escaped from a prison cart last month. The man I just met with was his former master. Scorpus tried to kill him last night. I can understand it too. I felt like strangling him after two minutes.”
“What did he want from you?”
“The praetor is going to apply the servile law. Seems that a number of his slaves were in on it, including one that was Scorpus’s wife of sorts. He wanted me to spare his bed slave.”
“Are you going to?”
“No.”
Pomponius rolled up the scroll and took a sip of water. “So, all his slaves will be killed?”
Pomponia nodded absently as she eyed the food tray. “Yes, all of them.” She picked up a bowl of pear slices and began eating them with her fingers.
“That’s a hard law,” he said.
“Maybe,” Pomponia replied, crunching a pear slice between her teeth. “But what good does a soft law do?”
* * *
Soren didn’t sleep that night. Dacia was gone. While he had been in the Forum begging that bitch of a priestess to spare her, soldiers had come to his home and removed her and his other house slaves.
Soren had never been in his home without the presence or sound of his slaves. It felt like a different house entirely. He didn’t eat lunch or supper and didn’t take any wine. There was no one to prepare it or serve it. He hadn’t bothered to light any lamps, but had let the night descend unchallenged to fill each room with blackness.
As the first light of day broke through the open window of his bedchamber, he got out of bed and struggled to dress himself, without the aid of his dressing slaves, in a toga. He gave up and put on a tunica instead. He shaved himself and combed his hair.
The streets were busy, and it took him longer than he expected to reach and then pass through the Esquiline gate and finally the less crowded outskirts of Rome.
When Soren arrived at the execution site, he found that a long row of thick wooden posts was already erected and secured to the ground in postholes. These were actually permanent structures as this particular stretch of road just outside the city limits was often used for mass crucifixions.
Crucifixion was, as the Vestal had said, a deterrent. At least that was its overarching purpose. Yes, it could be a source of entertainment. Yes, it could be a just punishment for criminals. But those were just bonuses. The act of crucifying a person, or even better, hundreds or thousands of people at one time, was ultimately a political statement: Rome is in charge. Follow our rules, or this is where you’ll end up.
There was just something about the way a body hung on the cross, so exposed and degraded, that worked really well. There was something about the expression of agony on a crucified person’s face, about how long it took them to die, that was phenomenally effective.
Try as they might—and they had tried—Rome’s executioners had failed to come up with any other punishment that inspired so great a fear response or such a macabre reputation. The whole process was even more memorable when the crosses were placed at eye level. This let people get nose-to-nose with a kind of pain that stirred a guttural response in even the most numb-to-
violence among them.
Nonetheless, crucifixion could be a labor-intensive job for the soldiers who had to carry it out, so they had created some shortcuts. Having permanent posts along the execution route was one time-saver. That way, the condemned, who would be nailed to the crossbeam while on the ground, could simply be hoisted up by a couple of soldiers, and the crossbeam’s center hole slipped over the tapered top of the post. Even a single century of soldiers, led by one keen centurion, could have hundreds of crosses standing by midday. It was Roman efficiency at its best: minimum manpower with maximum productivity.
Yet, before the main event of placing the crossbeam onto the post could happen, each of the condemned had to be scourged. This didn’t just add another layer of pain to the experience, it also put them in shock, subduing them so they were easier to deal with. That also helped to keep things moving.
It was this phase of the execution that Soren saw upon his arrival. The first slave he recognized was his dressing slave—he could have used him this morning—who had been stripped naked and was now tied to a scourging pole, his arms pulled high over his head and his legs nearly dangling below.
A soldier carrying a mean-looking, leather flagrum strolled casually to the pole and was just about to strike the slave’s back when he noticed Soren. “Might want to stand back a bit, sir,” he said. He held up the whip and then eyed Soren’s good tunica. “It splatters.”
Soren kept walking. There was only one slave he was here to see. It didn’t take much longer for him to spot her—or rather hear her, first. Her voice, soft and pleading, soon rose to a panic-stricken scream of protest.
He passed by two more scourging poles, including one to which Scorpus’s woman, Cassandra, was tied. Her back was covered in blood, and she was hanging limp by the wrists. A soldier reached around to slap her on the face, and she jerked back into consciousness.
Soren kept walking until he reached Dacia’s pole. She had also been stripped naked, and her hands were tied over her head. Her beautiful, shapely backside was fully exposed to the soldier who stood behind her, although he didn’t seem overly impressed. He was too busy chatting idly with the soldier next to him. Their centurion walked by, and both soldiers snapped back to their duties.
As the soldier raised his flagrum and aimed it at Dacia’s smooth backside, Soren took a step back. The soldier snapped his whip, and it struck her body with an audible crack. Deep red lines appeared across her lower back and buttocks. A moment later, the flesh parted and a fountain of blood poured down her legs. A moment after that, the pain registered, and she let out an excruciated scream, twisting wildly from her tethered wrists until her body spun around and she faced the soldier—and Soren.
“Soren!” she cried out. “Help me!”
He stood like a statue in front of her, unmoving and emotionless.
The soldier glanced at Soren for a moment—this was intriguing—but then spotted his commanding centurion returning and pulled back his whip again, this time striking her across the front of her body, slicing into her bare breasts and midsection. Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open. Soren counted three seconds until she screamed.
Her left breast had been all but ripped open. Soren looked down at the soldier’s flagrum. Like all of them, it had long strips of leather; however, this soldier had gone through the trouble of attaching chunks of lead and shards of bone to them, just for extra impact. No doubt scourging could become a boring job after a while. Innovation kept things interesting.
Dacia opened her mouth to cry out again, but she saw the soldier pull back his whip and take aim for a third lashing. In a pitiful attempt to protect her torn breast, she tried to spin around and present her back to the soldier. The whip caught the side of her body this time. Another stream of blood coursed down her buttocks and over both legs. Another delayed scream.
Soren was grateful she was facing away from him again. There was nothing he could do for her, anyway. He didn’t know why he was here. To comfort her? No. To see it through and prove to himself that he could watch it? Perhaps.
The soldier snapped his whip a fourth time, and Dacia’s head fell back. Drained of the energy to scream, she instead fell into strange low sobs. It sounded like she was trying to form words, but Soren couldn’t be sure.
The soldier was about to whip her again, when he glanced over his shoulder to see how many bodies still had to be lashed. His shoulders slumped. More than he’d thought. Another cartful had just arrived: overflow from the games the day before, a large huddle of men and women who hadn’t been needed in the arena. He’d be here all day if he didn’t get a move on.
He curled his whip and attached it to his belt, then approached Dacia and reached over her head to untie her. “Got one for you,” he shouted to his colleagues. Two soldiers quickly came to get her, as a third soldier pushed another slave against the scourging pole in her place.
The pair of soldiers dragged her, naked and dazed toward the row of upright wood posts that ran along the roadside. Ten or twelve slaves had already been raised up on crossbeams, and Soren could see Dacia stare at each one in wide-eyed horror as she passed.
A few of the smaller slaves, three youths in their teens didn’t warrant the full post-and-crossbeam treatment. Instead, their wrists were wrenched above their heads and hastily nailed to the post, leaving them to hang by the arms. One of the youths was convulsing silently, his eyes fixed straight ahead as if looking at some horror only he could see. The other two were weeping uncontrollably and trying to catch gurgling gasps of air between sobs. With their arms extended above them, they could not take a breath without first lifting their entire body weight using only their impaled wrists. Their faces contorted with the torturous strain of each inhalation.
Pulling her to the first available wooden post, the soldiers pushed Dacia facedown onto a heavy crossbeam that lay near its base. They stretched her arms out to both sides until her palms were pressed against the splintered wood of the beam and her breasts were pushed into the muddy ground.
Soren stood back but Dacia somehow managed to turn her head and spotted him. “Soren, do something! Pray gods, save me! I don’t want to die!” He took two steps to the side so she could no longer see him. “Please stop, please stop,” she begged the soldiers.
Unmoved, the soldiers worked in unison. Each man knelt on an outstretched arm to hold it in place while leaning over to retrieve a thick rusty nail from a basket.
From where he was standing, Soren could see the soldier who knelt on her left arm position the tip of the nail against the back of Dacia’s wrist. She must have felt it and known what was to come, because she cried out “No!” with a force that Soren wouldn’t have thought she was still capable of and almost wished she wasn’t.
