Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth (3 page)

If Etruscan wisdom is so remarkable,
Hedia thought, smiling softly toward the pudgy little man,
then why is Velitrum a dusty village in the hills and Carce the ruler of all the known world?

“Is this soothsayer helping you plan your gift, Quintus Macsturnas?” Saxa asked, glancing for the first time at the Etruscan who walked behind them. “Choosing the day for you to give it, that is?”

Paris glared at Saxa, and at Hedia, who turned with her husband. She hadn’t paid any attention to the scraggly old man until now. He was barefoot, wearing a simple tunic and a countryman’s broad-brimmed hat. His appearance made him unusual in a nobleman’s entourage—but not interesting, at least not to Hedia.

And what an odd name. Surely he can’t be a freedman whose former owner gave his slaves names out of Homer?

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Macsturnas said, lowering his voice to where Hedia was as much reading his lips as hearing the words. “He, ah … I knew of Paris, of course, but I haven’t had actual dealings with him. As some of my fellow Etruscans have. He asked to come along today to see the scaly monkeys. I, ah … I really don’t know why.”

There was a look of nervousness on Macsturnas’ pudgy features, as though he actually cared about what the old man thought. Even if Paris was freeborn, the opinion of a poor commoner was no proper concern for a noble of Carce.

“Well,” said Saxa expansively. “I’m more than happy to have your little priest get the benefit of my son’s wisdom. Varus is an exceptional scholar, you know. Marcus Atilius Priscus assured me of that when we were last chatting. Do you know Priscus? He’s the most learned of our senatorial colleagues, in my opinion. He’s head of the Commission for Sacred Rites and a great friend of my son’s teacher, Pandareus of Athens.”

Hedia almost giggled. That sort of patronizing boast would be alien to her husband under most circumstances. Apparently Saxa hadn’t been quite as unmoved by Macsturnas’ tone as she had believed.

On the other hand, everything Saxa had said was quite true. Varus was quite a remarkable youth … as in different fashions was his friend Corylus. Corylus was a respectable scholar himself—that was how a noble like Varus had become friends with a youth of only knightly rank—but he was also an accomplished athlete and a
very
handsome young man.

Unfortunately—Hedia smiled ruefully at herself—Master Corylus also had better sense than to chance an affair with a senator’s lovely young wife. Well, that was probably for the best.

She was glad that Saxa was taking an interest in Varus. Though Saxa was anything but a social manipulator, his wealth allowed him to give dinners at which his son would be introduced to the sort of people whose help he would need while steering his future course through society. Hedia had recently begun to craft guest lists that suited that purpose, and her husband acquiesced to them happily.

She wished she could find some more worldly fellow to give Varus a grounding in the more earthy aspects of life, though. All the men Hedia knew were rather
too
worldly, unfortunately. The last thing she wanted was to turn her son into a hard-drinking wastrel like those with whom she had whiled away her time during her previous marriage, to Gaius Calpurnius Latus.

She still met them, though more discreetly since she married Saxa. Saxa was a very sweet man, but Hedia had needs that her husband couldn’t satisfy. Saxa had known he wasn’t marrying a Vestal. She suspected that he was secretly proud of her and her reputation, but it wasn’t a subject they discussed.

The procession was about to reach the entrance to Veturius’ animal compound. The walls were masonry—coarse volcanic tuff from the beds layering all the land overlooked by Mount Vesuvius—and over ten feet high.

Hedia had never visited a beast yard before, but she often toured gladiatorial schools when she was summering here on the Bay. The schools were fenced off—the gladiators were slaves, after all, and under a stiff training regimen—but she hadn’t seen any barriers so impressive as this.

“I wonder why Veturius has such walls?” Hedia said aloud. “Do you know, Lord Husband?”

“Why, no,” said Saxa, frowning. “You’ll build a wooden enclosure in back of the Temple of Venus for your gift to the people, won’t you, Quintus Macsturnas? Or have you engaged the Great Circus? You’d need several thousand animals to justify that, I would think.”

“My gift won’t be that extensive, no,” Macsturnas said with a flash of good humor. “Not for the aedileship, at least. If I gain the honor of the consulate like you, Gaius Saxa, perhaps I can manage something on a greater scale.”

Hedia pursed her lips in silent approval. Macsturnas had asked to accompany Saxa to curry favor with his senior colleague, after all. He must have belatedly realized that boasting about his lineage wasn’t the way to accomplish that.

“Well, when we’re inside, we can ask my son,” Saxa said. “I’m sure Varus will know why it’s built this way.”

“Better that we ask Veturius himself, my dear heart,” said Hedia, patting her husband’s hand to take away any suggestion of sting in her rebuke. “See, there he is in the gateway to receive you.”

The servants leading the procession had fallen away to either side. Varus and Corylus waited with two older men. The elder Cispius would be the one wearing the toga whose border was dyed with the two narrow stripes of a knight.

The other man must be Veturius. The beastmaster’s toga was plain, and he looked as though he’d been used very hard.

Hedia consciously avoided a frown: been used and used himself. The broken veins in Veturius’ nose were surely the result of wine.

“Welcome, noble Senators Gaius Alphenus Saxa and Quintus Macsturnas!” Veturius said. His voice was strong, though it reminded Hedia of rusted metal. “You are most welcome to my establishment, Your Lordships!”

Corylus had a hand on Varus’ shoulder, a silent direction to his mentally distant friend. Hedia relaxed slightly. Corylus would prevent her son from injuring himself in his present state. If Varus suddenly shouted an incomprehensible prophecy, as he had done before, that would be easy enough to brush from the consciousness of social inferiors, Macsturnas included.

But it didn’t remove Hedia’s deeper fear. When Varus had fallen into waking dreams in the past, it had always been a warning of some event that was about to occur.

Some
terrible
event.

*   *   *

C
ORYLUS TOUCHED THE FRAME
of the gateway, feeling the dryad still present though the wood came from the ancient keel of a broken-up trading vessel. She stirred faintly. Though the sycomore sprite was aged, she managed to smile at him; her eyelids were shadowed with kohl.

Corylus was worried by Varus’ state and still more worried at what his waking dream might mean this time, but there was nothing to be done about those things at the moment. His present duty was to act as intermediary between his father and the pair of senators facing him.

“My lord Gaius Saxa…,” Corylus said in a clear voice. He and the two veterans were all braced to attention. “Allow me to present my father, Publius Cispius, and his friend Marcus Veturius.”

Instead of bowing—they were freeborn citizens of Carce—Cispius and his friend each saluted by striking his clenched right fist on his chest. If they had been equipped for battle, that gesture would have banged their spear shafts against their shield bosses.

Saxa had stepped down from the consulship after the usual month in office, but he remained Governor of Lusitania and nominal commander of the troops there. Saxa had the right to the salute, though it probably startled him to receive it.

Lusitania was on the rocky Atlantic coast of Europe, closer to Britain than to Carce or to civilization generally. Saxa would never visit it: a younger, fitter, hungrier Knight of Carce was acting as the governor’s representative. Saxa had an antiquarian’s knowledge of Carce’s history, though, and enough patriotism to feel the honor of a salute from two of the men who had held the Republic’s borders against barbarism.

To Corylus’ surprise, Saxa returned the salute. The new aedile, Macsturnas, blinked at the scene.

Of course. Saxa probably couldn’t draft a dinner invitation in an organized fashion, but he would have read lengthy monographs on the forms of military protocol.
Varus’ father wasn’t a stupid man, though he was a profoundly silly one.

“Marcus and I had the honor of serving under your cousin Sempronius Mela,” Cispius said. “When he was Legate of the Alaudae, that is. It’s a real pleasure to meet a kinsman of Mela.”

Corylus didn’t let his mouth drop open in amazement the way Macsturnas was doing, but he was certainly surprised. Instead of creating an awkward situation, Cispius—the third son of a farmer in Liguria—was handling the wealthy senator perfectly.

Corylus suddenly realized that his father wouldn’t have risen through the ranks as he had without meeting many noble officers. Some would have been as foolish as Saxa and a great deal less pleasant personally.

“Master Cispius, I’m pleased to meet you,” Saxa said. “And to meet your friend, of course. You’ve a fine son in Master Corylus, a very fine son.”

“We are here to view the scaled monkeys from Africa, are we not?” said the old farmer who had come with Macsturnas. His tone was querulous.

“And who would that be, lad?” Cispius asked, quietly but in a voice that sounded like the growl of a big cat. Corylus might not have understood the words if he didn’t know his father well enough to expect them.

Cispius didn’t have the vinewood swagger stick he had carried as a centurion, but as a child Corylus had met his father’s calloused hand enough times to remember its weight. Cispius had grown plump and softer in retirement, but he could still deal with the likes of Macsturnas’ hanger-on without help or a weapon.

“I’m sure we all wish to see the strange animals, Master Paris,” Macsturnas said nervously, glancing between Saxa—who wasn’t the sort to take offense—and the farmer. “As soon as Lord Saxa is ready to, of course.”

“The aedile’s pet philosopher, I guess,” Corylus said quietly to his father. “And the aedile’s not a particular friend of Saxa’s, but he’s footing the bill for this load of animals.”

“Right,” said Veturius, relaxing. “Not the business of a poor working soldier like me.”

“Till they tell us it is,” Cispius added, but he had relaxed also.

“Well, if you’re ready, Macsturnas,” Saxa said. He nodded to Veturius. “Take us through, my good man. I’m quite interested in what my son thinks of the creatures.”

“Why do you need such walls, Master Veturius?” Hedia asked. “Are your animals so dangerous as that?”

Corylus flinched minusculely. He’d been so focused on Varus that he hadn’t noticed Hedia was at his elbow until she spoke.

The servants had stepped aside as they neared the gate, allowing the principals to come together for the first time since they stepped out the front door of Saxa’s house in Puteoli. Alphena, who must have been at the end of the procession, had joined her parents also. She wore a stony expression.

“Well, they’re dangerous enough, Your Ladyship,” Veturius mumbled, refusing to meet Hedia’s eyes. “But the cages that held the bloody creatures all the way to here ought to hold them now. The problem’s the boys here in the port—aye, and some of the girls too. They’d creep in at night for a lark, don’t you see, if we didn’t have walls like these—”

He slapped the coarse tuff with his right hand. It sounded as though he’d laid into it with a harness strap.

“—to keep them out.”

Macsturnas had leaned close to Paris and was whispering urgently, presumably to forestall another impatient outburst. The aedile had no intention of letting a boorish associate turn Saxa into an enemy.

“Does it matter if a few kids look at the animals before they’re shipped to Carce?” Alphena asked. Varus’ sister was a fairly good-natured girl underneath, though half the time she seemed determined to prove something. She drove herself and everybody around her to distraction when she got frustrated. For now, at least, curiosity seemed to have drawn her out of her earlier bad temper.

“Well, it’s not that, mistress,” Veturius said. “You see, we just keep the rare stuff and the carnivores in here. I’ve got pasture outside the city for the bulk animals, the deer and wild asses and bulls, that sort of thing. Even the ordinary elephants. But when there’s a big load like now, the aisles between the cages here are pretty tight.”

Corylus had seen his father wince, but there was no harm done. Cispius sold perfumes and unguents to upper-class households and thus knew not to call a senator’s daughter “mistress,” instead of “Your Ladyship.” An importer whose clientele was brokers—slaves and freedmen—who handled beast hunts and gladiatorial bouts didn’t normally need to worry about forms of address.

“I don’t see…,” Alphena said, letting her voice trail off as she apparently realized that interrupting a man like Veturius wasn’t going to get information out of him more quickly. “No, no, just go on.”

Cispius had been the Alaudae’s First Centurion, the legion’s highest permanent officer—directly under the legate whom the Emperor appointed. At that time Veturius had commanded the tenth company of his tenth cohort. In the Alaudae the Tenth of the Tenth was the Special Service company rather than being a posting for the legion’s most junior centurion. It handled raids and patrolling, the sort of jobs that the Scouts did when Cispius became prefect of the 3d Batavians on his final posting.

Scouting and the things that scouting requires take a toll on a soldier even when he retires with all his limbs and not too many physical scars. Corylus was only ten when he moved with his father to the Batavians on the Danube, but even then Veturius drank enough to be noticed in a community of professional soldiers.

“Well, some kid would be poking a stick at the baboons, but he’d jump back when they banged into the bars and a lion would reach out a paw and grab him from behind,” Veturius said earnestly. “Or it might be the other way around, you see? And when there’s a fresh kill like that and blood all over, hell, why, the whole compound screams and carries on all night.”