The Bull Slayer

“Yessir, I love ’em. Hope to ride my own someday.”

“Well, perhaps you will.”

Pliny summoned the optio and told him to have Epaminondas thoroughly scrubbed, fed, and handed over to his stable master with instructions to find him suitable duties.

***

He had not seen Fabia since the day of Balbus’ funeral. The passage of time had taken a toll on her appearance-her hair was unkempt, her face unmade-while, if anything, it had increased her natural obduracy. Her feet were planted firmly in the doorway, her arms crossed, as though she really intended to physically bar them- Pliny, Suetonius, Marinus, and four lictors, led by Galeo-from entering. Behind her could be glimpsed her muscular freedman, a second bulwark.

“I will speak with your son,” Pliny said again, making an effort to keep his voice low, “with your permission, madam, but, if necessary, without it.”

“He isn’t here.”

“Really? And where would he go? He isn’t well, is he?”

She said nothing but thrust out her chin at him.

“Lictors!”

Three of them moved her aside, pinning her arms behind her when she tried to wrestle with them. The freedman raised his fists and took a step forward, but hesitated when Galeo threatened him with his cudgel.

“Search the house and grounds,” Pliny commanded.

“Tyrant! Bloody tyrant!” Fabia screamed, her voice hoarse with tears of rage.

Pliny went immediately to the little room off the atrium where he had found Aulus hiding before. It was empty now. “Marinus, go through the rooms on this floor. Suetonius, take two of the men and search the grounds. I’ll look upstairs.”

And it was Pliny who found him at last, cowering behind a clothes press in his mother’s bedroom, doubled up with his arms over his head.

“It’s all right, it’s all right now. No one will hurt you.” He spoke softly, as though gentling a frightened horse. “I’ll call your mother now.”

Fabia crouched beside her son, wrapping him in her arms, shielding him with her body, a lioness protecting a sick cub.

As Pliny and Marinus watched in silence, Aulus kicked out his legs and threw back his head. His eyes turned upwards until only the whites showed, his tongue protruded between his teeth, and foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. Fabia put a twisted rag between his teeth, rocked him, stroked his head, and murmured in his ear while he writhed and twisted in her arms.

“Fascinating,” Marinus breathed. While Pliny, rational man that he was, felt the atavistic urge to spit rise up in him-the ancient apotropaic magic to ward off the Sacred Disease-so strong was the fear of it.

After two or three minutes the boy’s tremors subsided. His eyes closed and he went limp as a rag. Fabia continued to rock him.

“He’ll sleep for an hour or more,” Marinus whispered. “When he wakes up he won’t remember what happened.”

“Is there something you can do for him?” Pliny asked.

“Nothing that she isn’t doing already.”

“Then we will wait.”

***

It was well past midday when Aulus’ eyelids fluttered open. They had carried him to his own room and laid him on his bed. Fabia sat beside him and hers was the first face he saw. But as his eyes focused and he saw Pliny, Marinus, and Suetonius seated on stools at the foot of his bed, he shrank back.

“It’s all right,” Pliny said softly. “I have some questions to ask you and you must answer truthfully. Your mother can stay.” He looked hard at Fabia. “You will not interfere, do you understand? Otherwise I will send you out of the room.”

She met his stare and said nothing.

“We know from the testimony of one of your stable boys that you rode out with your father before dawn on the day he disappeared.”

“That filthy little liar!” Fabia cried.

Pliny silenced her with a look. “I’ve warned you. One more word and out you go. Now, Aulus, what happened out there?”

The boy drew a deep, rattling breath. “I killed my father.”

Fabia lowered her head and let out a moan.

“Can you tell me why? Look at me now, not at her. Why did you kill him?”

The boy resembled his father, Pliny noted. The same red hair, the same sharp features. But where Balbus had displayed all the menacing power of a vicious dog, his son had only a squirrel’s twitchy nervousness.

“I’m a coward. I was frightened.” The voice was barely audible. Pliny leaned forward.

“Frightened of what?”

“The cave. I begged him not to make me go. He wouldn’t listen. He said Mithras would make a man of me. Mithras was a soldier’s god, he said, and he’d done plenty for Mithras and Mithras could damn well do this for him. He was taking me to be initiated. He said there were seven ranks. He was a Lion, nearly the highest, I would become a Raven, the lowest rank. He said everyone started as a Raven, even him.”

“Did he name the other ranks?”

“Yes, but in Greek. I didn’t know any of the words.”

“Go on with your story.”

“Well, he said we would meet the others there. They all approached the cave by different routes to avoid calling attention to themselves because the mysteries of Mithras were a deep secret. He warned me that I should never breathe a word to anyone. They would blindfold me, he said, bind my arms, aim an arrow at my heart, but then it would be all right and I would be raised up to the heavens and see the god. I didn’t want to. But he slapped my face, told me to stop whining. He was doing it for me, he said, to make me a man at last.”

Pliny exchanged glances with his companions.

“It’s the curse,” Aulus whispered. “You see how I am. I don’t leave the house because people spit and make the horns with their fingers when they see me. Even here, no one will drink from the same cup or eat from the same dish as me.”

“You’ve had it all your life?” Marinus asked.

“Since I was nine. If I’d had it as a baby they would have just left me on a rubbish heap and had done with it. I wish they had.”

“No, never!” Tears were streaming down Fabia’s cheeks. It was the first time Pliny had seen her cry. She had had no tears for her husband, but she was weeping now.

“They tried every way to get rid of it,” the boy continued. “Father took me to the temples of Asclepius at Pergamum and Smyrna, the temple of Isis in Rome. I had to smear myself with mud, bathe in an icy river, run around the temples barefoot in winter, wear evil-smelling things around my neck, drink-drink the blood of a dead gladiator, but I couldn’t, I threw it up. My father made me sleep outdoors on the ground, made me practice with a sword, slapped me, hit me with his vitis when my arm faltered. And finally, after I had a very bad fit, he decided to take me to this god in the cave. I just couldn’t stand any more.”

Pliny felt a tide of anger rise in him. His heart went out to this tortured child. “By Jupiter, If you suffered all that and lived you’re more of a man than most. Now I want you to listen to what my friend here has to say. This is Marinus, my physician.”

Marinus pulled his stool closer and looked at the boy gravely. “Your father loved you very much in his way,” he said, “but what he put you through is barbarous nonsense. What you have is called the ‘Sacred Disease’ but it is no more sacred than any other disease, as the great Hippocrates tells us. It is an affliction of the brain. I’ll put it as simply as I can. Veins lead up to the brain, the two biggest ones come from the liver and the spleen. These veins carry our breath to every part of the body. Now, there are impurities in the brain of the unborn infant which normally are purged before birth. But if this does not occur then the brain becomes congested with phlegm, which is one of