Varus wouldn't have believed that his tomboy sister would ever want to act like a lady, let alone that she would be capable of doing a creditable job of it. The fact that Alphena was here in the theater, wearing a long dress with a silk cape over her shoulders, was almost as remarkable as other things that had happened in the course of the past week.
Almost. Varus had seen the earth open and demons rise from the blazing rivers of the underworld. He had seen that, or he thought he had seen that; and it had seemed that he himself was the magician whose chanted spell had dispersed those demons and sealed the world against them.
Varus prided himself on his intellect; intellectually he knew the things he recalled could not be true. Unfortunately for logic and reason, his teacher recalled the same things. When a scholar of the stature of Pandareus accepted the evidence of his eyes over common sense, a mere student like Varus was left with a dilemma.
The line of mules moved steadily except when one stopped, raised its tail, and deposited dung on the stage. Pandareus leaned forward, watching with more interest than he had shown for the splendid goods themselves.
"How will they clean the stage after the performance, Lord Varus?" he said. "That is, I understand there are to be eight hundred mules. If even a small portion of such a herd…?"
Varus laughed. He wasn't a frequent spectator at Carce's mass entertainments, but he obviously got out more than his teacher did. He said, "They hold beast fights and hunts-"
So-called hunts, that is. Archers and javelin throwers behind metal fences shot corralled animals until they had no more living targets.
"-here also. Channels from the Virgin Aqueduct divert water over the stage and the cellars beneath to wash detritus into the sewers."
He met his teacher's eyes and added, "I don't believe that will be part of the performance though, as this mime doesn't include Hercules cleansing the stables of King Augeas."
They smiled together. Varus was proud to be able to make literary jokes with his teacher, and he suspected that Pandareus was pleased to have students who actually appreciated literature as something more than a source for florid allusions to be thrown out during a speech. Of the ten youths studying with Pandareus at present, only Varus and his friend Corylus could be described as scholars.
Varus let his eyes drift over the audience to where he had spotted Corylus while the jugglers and rope dancers were performing before the mime itself began. Publius Cispius was a Knight of Carce, entitling his son Publius Cispius Corylus to a seat in the first fourteen rows at any public entertainment. Corylus was in the fourteenth row, so that his servant, Marcus Pulto, could sit directly behind him.
The elder Cispius had capped a successful military career with command of a squadron of Batavian cavalry and had been knighted on retirement. He had purchased a perfume business on the Bay of Puteoli with the considerable money he had made while in service.
By ordinary standards, Cispius was wealthy-but Saxa was wealthy by the standards of the Senate. At Varus' request, Saxa had invited Corylus to watch the mime with them in the Tribunal. Corylus had refused, politely but without hesitation.
Part of Varus deplored the stiff-necked determination of a sturdy provincial not to look like a rich man's toady. There was no question of anything of the sort: Varus just wanted his friend to sit with him at this lengthy event.
On the other hand, if Carce's citizens hadn't been so stiff-necked and determined, the city would not rule all the land from Mesopotamia to the Atlantic, from the German Sea to Nubia. Logically, Varus would admit that being without his friend's presence was a cheap price to pay for an empire.
In his heart, though, he wasn't sure. Corylus was a soldier's son and destined for the army himself. He had grown up on the Rhine and the Danube, where mistakes meant not embarrassment and expense but death in whatever fashion barbarian ingenuity could contrive. Corylus projected calm.
Varus needed calm right now. He wasn't really watching the stately procession of treasures across the stage. That vision of the wizened old woman seated on a throne in the clouds, was becoming sharper in his mind.
She was the Cumean Sibyl, and she prophesied the approach of Chaos.
Hedia's face was turned toward the stage, wearing a look of polite pleasure. That was the appropriate expression for the wife of the noble patron of the entertainment, so of course that was how she looked. She would have tried to appear just as politely pleased while torturers used a stick to roll her intestines out through a slit in her belly if that were what the duties of her station called for.
Moved by a sudden feeling of fondness, Hedia patted the back of her husband's hand. He looked at her in surprise, then blushed and faced the stage again.
Saxa was a thoroughly decent man, a sweet man. There were people-there were quite a lot of people, in fact-who felt that Hedia in her twenty-two years of existence had encompassed all the licentious decadence which had flowed into Carce along with the wealth of the conquered East. There was evidence for their belief, but even Hedia's worst enemies would never claim that she wasn't a perfect wife in public.
As for what happened after dinner parties at the houses of friends or in Baiae while the business of the Senate detained her husband in Carce, well-there were stories about any wealthy, beautiful woman, and not all of them were true. In Hedia's particular case, most of the stories were true, but she maintained a discreet silence about her private life. That was, after all, the appropriate response to impertinent questions.
The dreadfully long line of mules seemed to have passed. Another patron might have made a hundred mules do, leading them around behind the stage and exchanging their loads for fresh goods. Saxa's wealth made that unnecessary.
The actor draped in a gilded lion skin raised his hands, one of which held a glittering club. Hedia thought he was supposed to be Hercules, but she hadn't paid much attention. She had always found life to hold quite enough drama without inventing things to put on stage.
"As a sign of my prowess!" the actor boomed. He seemed a weedy little fellow, despite his armor and the lion skin, but his voice filled the hollow of the theater. "I raise these pillars to mark my conquest!"
On cue, a pair of gilded "hills" began to rise from the basement, through trap doors in the stage. Hedia frowned: bizarrely, monkeys were tethered in niches in the steep cones. The animals had been dusted with gold also, but in between bouts of angry chittering they were trying to chew their fur clean.
"In later years, another conqueror and god will come to this strait!" said the actor. "He too will bring the whole world beneath his beneficent rule before he returns to the heavens; but greater than I, he will found a line of succession. Each of his descendents will be more magnificent than his predecessor. Hail Caesar, and hail to your mighty house!"
A monkey shrieked and made a full-armed gesture. Something splattered the ornate shield displayed on a frame beside the actor.
Hedia blinked, uncertain of what she had just seen. Oh by Venus! The little beast is throwing its own feces! she realized. She started to whoop with laughter, not because what had happened was particularly funny but because its unexpectedness had broken the shell of fear that had enclosed Hedia since last night's dream.
She stifled the laughter into what she hoped would pass for a coughing fit. She was horrified at herself. The incident would embarrass Saxa if he noticed it, and to have had his own wife leading the seeming mockery would shrivel his soul.