The King's Gambit (25 page)

"Healing nicely," Asklepiodes said. "There is no inflammation, no suppuration. Avoid strenuous movement and it should be fully healed in a few days." His slaves began to rebandage me.

"I may not have much choice about that last part," I told him. "There is a great likelihood that I shall spend the rest of the day running or fighting."

"Well, if it is a matter of preserving your life, do not worry too much about this cut. It will just mean a little more blood and pain."

"I shall try to be Stoic." I stood, feeling almost healthy. "The circumstances being what they are, I've decided not to wait until Saturnalia. Accept this with my thanks." It was a caduceus a foot tall, made of silver and mounted on a base of alabaster. It was not the common one you see carried by Mercury in sculptures, with two serpents twining around the shaft, topped by a pair of wings. Rather it was the older one, the heavy staff wound by a single serpent associated with his namesake, Asklepios, the son of Apollo and god of healing. I had stopped by the quarter of the silversmiths on the way to the ludus in search of an appropriate gift and had fortuitously found this in an antiques dealer's shop.

"Why, this is splendid," he said, and I could tell that his delight was genuine. "I shall have a shrine made for it. I do not know how to thank you."

"A small recompense for the services you have rendered. If I should live through this, be assured that I shall call on you frequently."

He bowed, sweeping his robes gracefully. "I shall always be at your service. I cannot tell you how much more entertaining it is to serve you than to sew up athletes or diagnose the false ailments of healthy aristocrats."

"May we always lead interesting and exciting lives," I said. "Now I must go see whether I can make mine a long one."

On my way from his quarters, I stopped to watch the men practicing their fighting in the exercise yard. Any or all of them could die in the next great
munera
, but they practiced with that inhuman serenity that gladiators always seemed to have. Sinistrus had been one of their number. The old champion Draco watched them with a critical eye, and the lesser trainers shouted out their instructions as to the proper use of dagger, sword or lance. These men never showed the faintest concern for their lives, and I decided that a Roman official, however humble, could scarcely do less.

I walked out through the school's entrance and my old soldier, Burrus, fell in behind me, as did Milo. I stopped and turned to face that remarkable young man.

"Milo, I am sure that Macro does not wish you involved in this."

"I didn't ask him. I have my own reputation to build in this city. I want it known that I don't fear Claudius and I want to be seen publicly as your supporter. After all"--he favored me with that maddening grin again--"they may pretend to despise you, but everyone secretly admires a man who's such a fool for duty that he'll throw his own life away for love of it."

"Here, now!" Burrus said, outraged. He made as if to strike Milo, but I stopped him with a gesture.

"None of that. Milo, you are one of the strangest men I have ever met, but I appreciate your honesty, even if you are a criminal. Honesty is in short supply among the respectable classes these days, so it must be valued, wherever we find it."

"Excellent. Shall we go to the house of Claudius?"

"Not yet. To the Forum first. I intend to make an ungodly show. All Romans love a spectacle, and I shall give them one."

"Wonderful!" Milo said. "May I help?"

"I don't know how you could, but go ahead, as long as you don't interfere and there is no violence on your part."

"Leave it to me," he said.

As we walked toward the Forum, every so often Milo would make a gesture and someone would come from a doorway or a knot of idlers and Milo would whisper to him. They were all rough-looking fellows or else the sort of young street urchins who provided recruits for the gangs the way farm boys provided them for the legions. After each brief consultation the one talked to would run off. I did not ask Milo what he was up to. I was too involved with my own desperation to worry about it.

As I walked, I drank in the sights of Rome, knowing that it might well be for the last time. The whitewashed walls, the little fountains at every corner, the shrines to minor gods in their niches, all stood etched with wonderful clarity, their colors vivid as if seen through the eyes of an infant. The feel of cobbles beneath my sandals, the sound of hammering from the tinsmiths' quarter, the very smell of frying garlic wafting from tenement doorways seemed charged with unbelievable beauty and significance. I would have preferred all this in late spring, when Rome is at its most beautiful, but one can't have everything.

The Forum was simmering when we arrived. Crowds were gathered near the Curia, around the Rostra and before the Basilica Aemilia, where my father held court that day. I could see others coming into the Forum from side streets. I could not believe that it was all on my account. I was simply not that important. At the center of the crowd by the Rostra, though, I saw Publius Claudius. The instant he caught sight of me, he came for me, with his whole mob behind him.

I checked to make sure that my dagger and
caestus
were in place, for all the good they would do me in this situation. No, I thought, this is just
too
public. He won't attack me here. A fat lot I knew about it.

They stormed across the all-but-empty stretch of pavement in the middle of the Forurn. Scattering the few pedestrians who stood in their way, the crowd bore down upon us as if to trample us. I knew then that Claudius fully intended to kill me, right in the middle of the Forum with half of Rome looking on. He had scant judgment, but you couldn't fault the man for sheer gall.

As if having collective second, thoughts, the crowd broke step, wavered and slowed to a halt a few paces from us. I was under no illusion that they had acquired a respect for the law as they crossed the pavement, so I looked behind me. About thirty young men stood there, hard boys from the gangs. None of them displayed weapons openly, although a large number leaned on perfectly legal walking sticks, as if a sudden plague of lameness had broken out among the youth of Rome. Apparently, Milo was building up his own, independent little mob.

"So the pious and honorable Decius Metellus is not too proud to take refuge among a pack of the city's lowest scum!" Claudius shouted. Considering his own company, this was a weak taunt, but his crowd reinforced it with cheers and shouts of agreement.

"It's never disgraceful to be in the company of Roman citizens," I responded, to much applause from my new following. As a slanging match, this was not up with Cicero and Hortalus in the courts, but we were just getting started.

"Citizens! That pack of slaves and freedmen? They look like they somehow escaped from Crassus's crosses," This was a neat play on words, but it didn't originate with Claudius, who wasn't that clever. Some playwright had used it the year before. There was dark muttering behind me, and it occurred to me that a few of them probably
had
campaigned with Spartacus. Pompey and Crassus hadn't caught all of them.

"At least we're all Romans," I said. "Speaking of which, how is your Armenian guest? Do you two share the same Greek tastes?" No one else knew what I was talking about, but they cheered at Publius's expression of anger.

"Are we to endure this abuse from a mere Metellan," he shouted, "whose kinsman almost lost us Spain?" His crowd jeered loudly.

"This from one who conspires to lose us Pontus and Armenia!" I yelled.

"Cowardly Metellan!" he roared.

"Chicken-drowning Claudian!" I bellowed. The whole Forum roared with laughter and Publius's face flamed. The Claudians will never live that one down.

Screaming with rage, Claudius drew a dagger from inside his toga and charged me. I had already slipped my
caestus
onto my right hand and I stepped forward to meet him. I blocked the dagger with my left forearm and swung a blow that should have taken his jaw off, but somebody jostled me and I only raked the side of his face. He dropped like a stone and in an instant the Forum was alive with flashing daggers, flailing sticks and flying stones. It had been months since the last good riot and winter is a boring season in Rome, so nobody needed much excuse to join in. I dropped two more, men who had been standing close to Publius, then saw five coming for me with daggers. Arms grabbed me from behind and I thought I was done for, but I found myself being dragged away from the riot and into a narrow street. I heard a familiar laugh and I saw that it was Milo and Burrus who had wrested me away.

"No violence, you said!" he choked out between paroxysms.

"I didn't think he'd start anything right there in the Forum!" I protested.

"You still don't know him, do you?" Milo said. "Well, maybe he's dead. That was no love pat you gave him."

"I doubt it," I said. "Claudians and snakes are hard to kill."

"Where to now, sir?" Burrus asked.

"To the house of Claudius," I said.

Burrus was astonished. "But you just dropped the bugger on the pavement back there. His friends will be carrying him home soon!"

Milo smiled. "He's not the Claudian your patron needs to call on just now, am I right?"

"You're right," I said. "And Burrus is right about his men taking his inert carcass home soon. I'd as soon not be there when that happens, so we had best not waste any time." We made a circuit around the Forum, from which we could still hear sounds of riot, and made our way through the maze of cramped streets to Publius's town house. I paused to straighten my disarrayed toga and winced at a pain in my side. I looked inside my toga and saw that blood was seeping through my tunic. Nothing to be done about it now, I thought.

I pounded on the door until the janitor opened it.

"Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger of the Commission of Twenty-Six to see the Lady Claudia Pulcher," I said, finishing somewhat out of breath. The janitor called a house slave and repeated the message, ushering me inside.

"You two stay here in the atrium," I told Milo and Burrus. "I will interview her privately, but come at once if I should call you." Burrus merely nodded, but Milo spoke in a low voice.

"This isn't very wise. Publius and his mob will be here from the Forum at any minute and your Armenian prince may be here now, with his own band."

I hadn't thought of that, but I was not about to admit it. "Don't worry. He's trying to curry favor with Rome, not to alienate the city by killing one of its officers."

"You constantly underestimate these people," he said, "but have it your way."

The house slave came to fetch me and I followed him. Behind me, I could hear Milo and Burrus arguing quietly. Burrus could not get used to the way Milo addressed me. I nerved myself for the encounter to come. My feelings for Claudia had taken many disorienting turns recently. I had tried to find a way out of this, but I could find none. Perhaps, I thought, I should have waited, slept on the problem. I had acted precipitately, without proper thought or rest. I had, in fact, not acted quite sanely. Why should I feel afraid to face Claudia with this when I had walked straight up to her brother and his mob in the Forum? I could not explain it, even to myself.

She received me in a sitting-room, looking cool and serene. She sat with her back to a fretted window, so that the light surrounded her with a nimbus. Her gown was of some flimsy material, clinging to every curve, a brilliant blue. It complimented her eyes perfectly, as did the jewelry she wore: gold set with lapis lazuli and sapphires. She looked every inch the patrician lady, not the wild-haired maenad she had seemed when I had last seen her.

"Decius, how good to see you," she said, her voice as low and intimate as ever. It went through me like the vibration of an overstretched lyre string when it is plucked.

"I am sorry to appear before you in so unkempt a condition," I said.

She smiled with one corner of her mouth. "You were a good deal less kempt when we last parted."

I could feel my face flushing and was infuriated that this woman could bring out so juvenile a reaction in me. "There was a rough scene in the Forum, involving your brother and his thugs."

Her face hardened. "You have not hurt him, have you?"

"He'll probably live, which is better than he deserves. His men will probably bring him here soon, although they may take him to a physician first."

"What do you want, Decius? I have little time for you. You are no longer a player in the game. You might have been, but you chose to play the fool. You count for nothing now. Make this brief."

"A game. Is that what it is to you?"

Her look was utter contempt. "What else is it? It is the greatest game in the world. It is played on a board made up of kingdoms and republics and seas. The men are just counters. They are placed on the board and struck from it at the whim and according to the skill of the players." She paused. "And there is the uncertainty of luck, of course."

"Fortuna can be a whimsical goddess," I said.

"I don't believe in the gods. If they exist at all, they take no interest in what men do. But I believe in blind chance. It just makes the game more interesting."

"And you have a taste for this sort of gaming? Knucklebones and dice and races and the
munera
grew too tame for you?"

"Don't talk like a fool. There is nothing else in the world like this game. The prize is power and wealth beyond dreams. The Pharaohs never saw such wealth. Alexander never wielded such power. This empire we have built with our legions is the most incredible instrument for imposing the leader's will that has ever existed."

"There are no legions of Rome," I said. "They are the personal followers of twenty or more generals. The four or five most powerful generals are always mortal enemies, more occupied with cutting each other's throats and stealing each other's glory than with expanding Rome's empire."

Her smile was dazzling. "But that is what the game is all about. At the end of it, there will be one man who controls all the legions, who controls the Senate, who will be followed by patricians and plebs alike. No more bickering parties and treacherous senatorial votes behind the leader's back."