'Where are we going?' I asked the slave.
'Yonder.' The big fellow pointed beyond the Forum, toward the Esquiline Hill. I suspected he was a bit simple. The powerful often prefer to use illiterate slaves to carry messages, and only a slave too simpleminded to learn to read can be trusted not to.
The rim road was as busy in the early morning as it had been the night before. We crossed to the other side, threading between litters and carts, and onto the Ramp, which would take us down to the Forum. The pathway was so crowded that people were pressed shoulder to shoulder and no vehicles could possibly have passed. The descent was slow and tedious. We found ourselves pressed against the sheer rock face of the Palatine, the view of the Forum to our right blocked by the crowd. People jostled, stepped on each other's feet, squealed in pain and spat insults. At one point a fist fight broke out nearby.
As we descended farther, any glimpse of the Forum was blocked by the massive rear wall of the House of the Vestals. At last we reached the bottom of the incline, packed as tightly as sheep in a run. Here the Ramp narrowed even more as it made a sharp right turn into the gap between the House of the Vestals and the Temple of Castor and Pollux. The crush became dangerous. Behind me I heard a woman scream.
Panic spread through the crowd like a wave of prickling heat. A stampede began.
I clutched the messenger's arm. He looked over his shoulder and gave me a simpleminded grin, then gripped my arm and pulled me forward, practically lifting me off my feet. Around me swirled a sea of faces. Some grimaced in pain. Some shouted. Some screamed. Some were wild-eyed with fear, while others stared blankly, dumbfounded. I was punched and prodded from all directions by elbows and flailing arms. I felt as helpless as a pebble in an avalanche.
Then, all at once, the narrow path emptied into the open space of the Forum. The messenger pulled me around a corner. We staggered onto the steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. I sat down, gasping for breath.
'We could have been trampled to death!' said the big fellow. His penchant for stating the obvious reminded me of Davus. As we watched, people spilled out of the narrow passageway into the Forum, looking dazed and shaken, many of them weeping. At last the torrent thinned, and the trickle of stragglers emerging from the Ramp seemed utterly unaware of the panic that had preceded them.
As soon as I caught my breath, we set out again. The Forum had an air of unreality, a continuation of the nightmare that had begun on the Ramp. I felt as if we were walking through a succession of theatrical scenes staged by some maniacal director. People ran in and out of temples, waving votive tapers and shouting prayers to the gods. Huddled family members took leave of one another, holding hands and weeping, kneeling together to kiss the ground of the Forum, while street urchins perched on nearby walls threw pebbles at them and made rude remarks. Angry crowds outside the banks and exchanges threw stones against doors that were locked up tight. Despondent women wandered through empty market stalls picked clean by hoarders and profiteers. The oddest thing was how little notice strangers seemed to take of one another. Everyone appeared to be boxed inside his own little tragedy, to which the rushing panic of others was merely a backdrop.
Not everyone was leaving Rome. Hordes of people were coming into the city from the countryside to seek refuge. Caesar, according to one rumor, was on the outskirts of Rome no more than an hour away, leading an army of savage Gauls to whom he had promised full citizenship- one Gaul to be enrolled for every Roman killed, until the entire male population of the city was replaced by barbarians loyal to Caesar.
Amid so much chaotic movement, my gaze was suddenly arrested by the sight of a formal cordon of magistrates wearing their senatorial togas with purple stripes- the only togas besides my own I had seen in the Forum that day. The entourage strode through the Forum at an unusually quick pace, preceded by twelve lictors in single file, each bearing on his shoulder the ceremonial bundle of rods called the fasces. A dozen lictors meant a consular procession, and sure enough, within the cordon of senators I recognized the two newly installed consuls, Lentulus and Marcellus. They looked grim-jawed but rabbit-eyed, as if a sudden loud noise could send them scurrying for the nearest cubbyhole.
'I wonder what that's about,' I said aloud.
'They're leaving the Temple of the Public Lares,' said Maecia's messenger. 'I saw them going in on my way to your house. They were performing a special ceremony. What's it called? A 'rite of safekeeping'- asking the hearth- gods to watch over the city while the two consuls are away.'
'Only one consul at a time ever leaves Rome,' I explained, remembering he was simple. 'One may go off to lead an army, but the other stays to run the city.'
'Maybe so, but this time they're
I took a last, fleeting look at Lentulus and Marcellus, and knew the fellow was right. They had been consuls for less than a month, but this might well be their last formal walk across the Forum. Hence the grim jaws; hence the rabbit eyes and the unseemly pace of the procession. The consuls were abandoning Rome. The state was deserting the people. In a matter of hours- however long it took Lentulus and Marcellus to return to their homes and join in the mad rush to get out of Rome- there would be no government remaining in the city.
Maecia's house was in the Carinae district on the lower slopes of the Esquiline Hill, where a great deal of real estate had been in the hands of the Pompeius family for generations. Pompey's private compound was not far away. Maecia's house was not as grand as that. It faced onto a quiet street and was freshly painted in bright shades of blue and yellow. The black wreath on the yellow door struck a discordant note.
The slave knocked with his foot. Someone inside peered at us through a peephole, then the door swung open. As I stepped across the threshold, I hardened myself for the sight that awaited me.
Just beyond the foyer, the body of Numerius Pompeius lay upon a bier in the atrium, beneath the skylight. His feet pointed toward the door. The smell of the evergreen branches surrounding him mingled with the heady odor from a pan of incense set in a brazier nearby. The overcast morning light surrounded his white toga and waxen flesh with a pale ivory nimbus.
I forced myself to step closer and look at his face. Someone had done a good job of removing the horrible grimace. Embalmers sometimes break a jaw or stuff the cheeks to achieve the proper effect. Numerius seemed almost to be smiling, as if enjoying a pleasant dream. His toga had been arranged to hide the ugly marks around his throat. I saw him in memory nonetheless, and clenched my jaw.
'Is it so hard to look at him?'
I looked up to see a Roman matron dressed in black. Her hair was undressed and her face without makeup, but the ivory glow from the skylight was kind to her. I thought for a moment that she might be Numerius's sister, then looked again and decided she must be his mother.
'I think he looks rather peaceful,' I said.
She nodded. 'But the look on your face- I think you must have been remembering how he looked when you found him. I didn't see him until later, of course, and not… not until Pompey made sure he was presentable. That was kind of Pompey, to think of a mother's feelings, with so much else on his mind. Was Numerius so terrible to look at, when he found him?'
I tried to think of an answer. 'Your son…' I shook my head. 'The older I become, the more of death I see, yet the harder it is to look at.'
She nodded. 'And we shall be seeing so much more of it, in days to come. But you haven't answered me. I think you know what I'm asking. Did he look as if… as if he suffered a great deal? As if his final thoughts were of the horror of what was happening to him?'
The skin prickled across the back of my neck. How could I possibly answer such a question? To avoid her gaze I looked down at Numerius. Why could she not be content to remember him as he looked now, with his eyes closed and a serene expression on his face?
'I've seen the marks on his throat,' she said quietly. 'And his hands- they couldn't quite unclench them. I imagine him with that thing around his neck, reaching up to claw at it. I imagine what he must have felt… what thoughts went through his mind. I try not to think of those things, but I can't stop myself.' She looked at me steadily. Her eyes were red from weeping, but there were no tears in them now. Her voice was calm. She stood erect, with her hands clasped before her.
'You needn't worry that I'll collapse to the floor sobbing,' she said. 'I don't believe in hair-tearing, especially in front of an outsider. I have no more tears. None I intend for a stranger to see, anyway.' She smiled bitterly. 'The men of this house have all run off, except for the slaves. They've left me to bury Numerius by myself.'
