I'll keep this book of Cicero's for myself. Nero really wouldn't understand it.
Casca raised the sword to the crowd. Money was brought to him on a silver platter, and coins rained down on him from the excited audience. Several rich ladies offered their homes and wealth to him if he would give them one night to lie in his arms. Never had Rome seen such a fight. Never had the arena been graced with the likes of this godling, this son of Mars, the avenger.
Casca was free. Shiu smiled secretly to himself and left…
Casca was free, but the bitterness was still there in his mouth. We made it, Crysos. Wherever you are, we made it. You are free from your world, but I have not yet finished with mine…
TWENTY-TWO
That night Casca wandered the streets of Rome, the hero of all. He drank and ate as a king might. There was nothing denied him. He spilled his seed into the bellies of faceless women as if trying to find something that could not be, and he thought the blind thoughts of futile rage and pain. Nor did he stop with that night. He stumbled through the streets, sleeping where he stopped. Two days. Then three. The pain would not leave… and all around the smiling faces of the mob… even worse, the degenerate nobility, those of the equus, the knighthood. Supposedly the honor of Rome rested with them. The thought came into his befuddled mind just at the fatal instant when he was standing before a bust of Nero.
He looked at the slack-jawed head of the glory of Rome. The wine fumes were settled firmly in his brain, and good sense was not to be found. He had had enough. He spoke to the bust:
'You, a god? You fat slug, I'm more a god than you are. You and Rome can't do anything to me. I will outlast all of you with your palaces and money and fine clothes and simpering manners. You sick, pathetic imitations of men, at least I am a real man — and a better one than you and your kind will ever be. This for your godlike power, Caesar!' Reaching down, he picked a wet, slimy handful of the gutter that ran along the street. Staggering, he went to Nero's bust and rubbed the loathsome excreta onto the face of the emperor of Rome and was still rubbing when the vigiles knocked him out with their staffs and dragged him to the dungeons.
The scene had been watched.
A noble witness had seen all this transpire and would testify against this blasphemer and traitor. After all, M. Decimus Crespas could do no more. Besides, there was always the chance that Casca might be sold on the block and he could repurchase him. If not, well, men like Casca were too dangerous to have running around loose anyway. Crespas did have certain duties and obligations to the Empire.
When Casca awoke, he had the feeling that a flock of diseased Egyptian vultures had spent the night nesting in the roof of his mouth. Rinsing his mouth at a convenient bucket after kicking several other occupants out of the way, he went over to a corner and sat, trying to figure out what had happened. Bit by bit, recollection returned. Oh, no, he mourned. They are going to put it to me now. Shiu was right. It seems as if everything goes full circle. I'm back again, but this time it's worse than when Tigelanius did it to me. This time I've insulted the emperor.
One of the inmates was busy scratching a symbol of some kind on the dungeon wall. Curiosity moved Casca over to look. 'What the Hades do you think you are doing?'
The man turned and looked at Casca. His face was calm, his eyes almost blissful. The filth on him and the rags did not seem to bother him at all.
'I make the mark of my master, the Son of God.'
Casca looked more closely at the scratchings on the wall.
'A cross? Is that your sign?'
The man looked up as though he could see through the ceiling of the dungeon to the heaven above. The aura of a fanatic surrounded him. 'Yes, my lost brother. The sign of the cross upon which our Savior gave his life for us, the cross where He died that we might be saved.'
'Oh, shit,' came Casca's response. 'That's all I need to make my day complete, another one of you Jew mad men.' He started to turn away, but the man grasped his tunic. 'Listen to me brother, for we are all brothers in the blood of the Lamb. Christ died for you, too. He died that you, too, might be freed from your sins. Has no one ever told you of our Jesus?'
'Who did you say?'
'Jesus.'
'The crucified one?' Damn! This hangover was giving him hallucinations.
'The Crucified One! Do you know our Jesus, brother?'
'I have met him,' Casca answered dryly.
'Then the Lord bless you, brother. Will you be permitted to join me and those of my brethren who are going to be martyred in the name of the Lamb?'
Casca looked at the damn fool. What he started to say he kept in his own mind: Personally, I would rather eat a lamb — in fact, I could eat at least two of them right now. But there was no point in saying anything to the old fanatic. He wrenched his way out of the soon-to-be-sainted one's hands and went back to his corner to wait whatever the fates might decree. Damn. I can't get away from the Jew, even here in Rome, in a jail. They have his so-called sign scratched on the walls. What's the big deal about him being crucified? You'd think he was the only one it ever happened to. I'm more concerned with what's going to happen to me.
He had not long to wait. A sharp-looking trooper of the imperial household guard appeared and told the jailer to bring forth the gladiator known as Casca. Taking Casca by the arm, he had him firmly remanacled and even his legs chained. This trooper had seen Casca's last fight and had no illusions as to the dangers of the prisoner. As soon as they were outside Casca could see that it would soon be midday. The guard and another four Praetorians escorted him. They took him by way of the Clivus Victoriae, the victory ramp leading to the imperial buildings on the summit. There they made their way past disdainful and aristocratic-looking senators and politicians. Casca's appearance was obviously not a welcome sight in these sanctified surroundings.
Two Praetorians stood at the arms ready position in front of a pair of ebony and gold doors that led to the inner sanctum of the empire, the personal quarters of the emperor Nero. The doors opened silently on well-oiled hinges, and Casca was immediately thrown to the ground, face first, before he could even get a good look around the place. But in the fleeting moment he had seen several faces that were vaguely familiar, and one he knew for sure-the wife of a senator. She had given him fifty gold denari for one evening. She had garlic breath, but nice legs.
He was dragged to the foot of the couch upon which Nero reclined.
Raising a topaz lorgnette, the glory of Rome peered at Casca through one eye. Nero rose and went to the marble throne, adjusted the cushions to ease a sore spot where he had a pimple starting on the left cheek of his ass, settled himself as best he could, and lounged back, guarded by the great golden eagle mounted over the throne and by the Praetorian Guards. 'Tigelanius,' he called, 'come here.'
Tigelanius? Hell, he'd be dead by now, thought Casca. He dared to peer up and saw a gorgeously attired general approach. Yes, this Tigelanius did resemble his Tigelanius. Perhaps the one in Jerusalem had sired this one-or it could be his grandson. Anyway, they both have that same nasty look that means nothing good to me.
This Tigelanius had taken over the Praetorian Guard after arranging for Burrus to be retired. He had risen to the Equus and to the position of commander of the Rome garrison through years of careful plotting and bribery from his plebeian roots as a horse breeder and trader on Sicily to the side of Nero. It was no small accomplishment. He always claimed that he had noble blood and had even taken the name of the Roman who supposedly shacked up with his grandmother while on leave in Sicily. She had said he was a famous and noble soldier from the Eastern provinces. Pointing his finger at Casca, this Tigelanius said:
'Lord, here we have the one who spat upon the honor you were gracious enough to show him. The report is here in full and witnessed by no other than his former owner and the vigiles who apprehended him in his act of desecration and blasphemy.'
Normally, Tigelanius would have handled something like this himself, but it made Nero feel as though he had control of things if occasionally he was permitted to pass down a judgment or two.
Nero stroked his sprouting beard with oiled, perfumed fingers. 'Indeed?' he squeaked. His voice was too high to be effective. 'What are the charges exactly? What did he do and say that he is brought before Rome itself?'
