Under Vesuvius

quite eradicated from Italy. Their filth and rags proclaimed that they had been living in the hills for a long time.

Two of the Numidians rode out to round up our scattered horses. By the time they returned with the wandering beasts, the good burghers of Baiae had begun to show up, looking none too pleased with my peremptory summons. Well, I was none too pleased with them. Uninvited gawkers also appeared. Violence and bloodshed attract them like flies.

To my surprise, Cicero was with them. 'What's going on here, Decius?' he asked. 'This district hasn't seen such a pile of bodies since the funeral games for Pompeius Strabo.'

'Listen to me!' I said to the assembled officials. 'The situation here is getting entirely out of hand. At first it was just a murder here, a murder there-nothing to get upset about. But today I was attacked by a whole crowd of bandits. They tried to assassinate me, possibly to kill this man in my custody.' I pointed at Gelon with a sword and realized that I still held a weapon in each hand. Also, I was liberally bespattered with blood from head to foot. No wonder they were looking at me with such strange expressions. Quite a change from my snowy, purple-bordered toga.

'You people have let the situation here deteriorate into a shocking state,' I said. 'I am minded to call in the troops to restore order. Pom-peius has a training camp at Capua and I'm sure he'll be happy to lend me a cohort or two to establish martial law here.'

'Praetor, Praetor, you are making too much of this,' said Norbanus. 'This is simple banditry. What sort of people usually travel on this road? Wealthy citizens, the caravans of merchants-all ripe pickings for bandits. The day was dark and rainy; there was ground fog. These wretches did not see that this was a well-armed band of military men and warriors until it was too late.'

'Yes, Praetor,' said Manius Silva. 'We always have increased bandit activity whenever the volcano gets frisky.'

'The volcano?' I said, not certain I had heard him correctly.

'Oh, yes,' Norbanus chimed in. 'You see, bandits fort up in the crater of Vesuvius. They've done it for centuries. The local farmers bring them food and wine rather than endure their raids. Most of the time they are content with this. There are only a couple of very narrow passes into the crater, so they are relatively safe there. But when there is a venting, the smoke and ash drive them out and they raid in the lowlands until it clears up.' Everyone nodded and agreed that this was so.

'You lot,' I said, 'have to be the most useless pack of soft-assed degenerates on the whole Italian peninsula! You mean to tell me that you allow a whole colony of bandits to camp on your doorstep! Why don't you go up there and exterminate them?'

'This is Campania, Praetor,' Norbanus said stiffly. 'It's always been the practice here.'

His wife, Rutilia, spoke up. 'When some malcontent decides to be an enemy of society, Vesuvius gives him a place to go. We'd rather they do that than hang around here and murder us in our sleep.'

I turned to Cicero. 'Do you think Cato could be right? Is this what too much good food and soft living does to people?'

'Your troubles this day are not yet over, Decius,' said the ex-consul.

I closed my eyes and sighed. 'What now?'

'Ah,' Silva began hesitantly, 'Praetor, you see-well, there's been another killing in town. Discovered just this morning, in fact.'

'No one important,' Norbanus added hastily. 'Just a slave.'

'What sort of slave?' I asked bleakly.

'A runaway,' he answered. 'Someone identified her as a girl from the Temple of Apollo.'

I didn't say anything for a while and they, quite wisely, didn't intrude upon my ruminations. Finally, I came to a decision.

'I am coming into town. Make a house available for my use. No craft are to leave the harbor, no one is to pass through the gates without my permission. I am sending for troops to enforce my authority and you may consider yourselves under siege until I find out what is going on here and have taken steps to correct it.'

'You can't do that!' Silva cried. 'You need a decree of the Senate for such a thing. Besides, it will ruin business.'

'He can do it,' Cicero informed him. 'He has the authority to declare martial law under his own imperium until the Senate has reached a decision. General Pompey will back him up. Pompey wants no disturbances in Campania right now.'

Everybody knew what he meant. The Senate was disturbed by Caesar's defiance and was turning to Pompey as a savior. Pompey's greatest strength was in southern Campania and points south on the peninsula, all the way to Messina. Here he would raise his legions if need be. He wanted things orderly here.

The white-robed chief priest of the city came forward. 'Praetor, before you can enter the walls, you must be purified of this blood and so must your men.'

'Delicate lot, aren't you?' I sneered. 'In Rome, we bathe in the stuff.'

'Decius,' Cicero said in a low, warning voice.

'Very well,' I said. 'I will not offend your guardian gods.'

'I will see to the arrangements,' the priest said.

'Then go, all of you,' I ordered. The crowd, stunned by the turn of events, began to straggle back to Baiae.

Rutilia, again in her golden wig, did not get back into her litter. Instead, she approached me. 'Decius Caecilius,' she said when she stood before me, 'allow me to tell you that you look very good dressed in blood.' Then she turned and went back to her litter.

'Cicero,' I said, 'do you think Roman women will ever be like that?'

'Decius,' he said, 'haven't you noticed? They already are.'

10

By the time we reached the city gate the priest had made his preparations and we went through the ceremony of being washed in purified water, fumigated with incense, passed between two flames, and dressed in new clothing. Thus cleansed of blood, we entered the city. A spacious town house owned by a friend of Cicero's was being prepared for us, and while we waited I demanded to be taken to view the body.

The duumviri conducted us to a long, low building behind the Temple of Venus Libitina. As at Rome, the goddess in this aspect was the patroness of the funeral trade and a conductor of the shades of the dead to the underworld. Chambers for receiving the dead opened off a portico that ran the length of the building. We were taken to the last chamber. Inside were three or four bodies.

'This is where we take the bodies of slaves, paupers, and foreigners who have no patrons or hospites,' explained the chief undertaker. 'Those usually are sailors who happen to die while in port. If no one claims the body by the second day, they are taken to the burial pits outside town.'

Rome had such a facility, though of course much larger. It was something of a scandal that elderly slaves were often cast out of the house to die in the streets and go unclaimed, so their masters could be spared the trouble and expense of decent burial. At least Baiae had few paupers and, it seemed, few skinflint slave owners.

The body lay on a tablelike stone bier, about waist height to me, covered by a sheet to keep away the flies. At my nod a slave drew back the sheet. Charmian lay stiff and pale, bold-eyed no more. She looked thinner than when I had last seen her, as if she had been drained. There were bruises and weals and whip stripes all over her naked body. Her neck was bruised, but whether from the beating or strangulation I could not tell.

'We wondered about this one,' said the undertaker. 'As you can see, she had recently been severely beaten. That's probably why she ran.'

'I want to see her back,' I said. The gloved and masked attendants turned her on her side. In her death rigor she moved like a wooden statue. Her back was savaged worse than her front, but I saw no stab wounds. There had been no crushing blow to the back of the skull. I signaled them to let her rest.