Stagily Faustus clapped his hands. “How I envy you, friend Menandros! To see Urbs Roma in all its splendor for the first time! What an overwhelming experience it will be for you! We who were born here, who take it all for granted, can never appreciate it as you will. The grandeur. The magnificence.” Yes, yes, he thought, let Maximilianus march him from one end of the city to the other until Heraclius gets back. We will dazzle him with our wonders and after a time he’ll forget how discourteously Heraclius has treated him. “While you’re waiting for the Caesar to return, we’ll arrange the most extensive tours for you. All the great temples—the amphitheater—the baths—the Forum—the Capitol—the palaces—the wonderful gardens—”
“The grottoes of Titus Gallius,” Menandros said unexpectedly. “The underground temples and shrines. The marketplace of the sorcerers. The catacomb of the holy Chaldean prostitutes. The pool of the Baptai. The labyrinth of the Maenads. The caverns of the witches.”
“Ah? So you know of those places too?”
“Who doesn’t know about the Underworld of Urbs Roma? It’s the talk of the whole Empire.” In an instant that bright metallic façade of his seemed to melt away, and all his menacing poise. Something quite different was visible in Menandros’s eyes now, a wholly uncalculated eagerness, an undisguised boyish enthusiasm. And a certain roguishness, too, a hint of rough, coarse appetites that belied his urbane gloss. In a soft, confiding tone he said, “May I confess something, Faustus? Magnificence bores me. I’ve got a bit of a taste for the low life. All that dodgy stuff that Roma’s so famous for, the dark, seamy underbelly of the city, the whores and the magicians, the freak shows and the orgies and the thieves’ markets, the strange shrines of your weird cults—do I shock you, Faustus? Is this dreadfully undiplomatic of me to admit? I don’t need a tour of the temples. But as long as we have a few days before I have to get down to serious business, it’s the other side of Roma I want to see, the mysterious side, the dark side. We have temples and palaces enough in Constantinopolis, and baths, and all the rest of that. Miles and miles of glorious shining marble, until you want to cry out for mercy. But the true subterranean mysteries, the earthy, dirty, smelly, underground things, ah, no, Faustus, those are what really interest me. We’ve rooted all that stuff out, at Constantinopolis. It’s considered dangerous decadent nonsense.”
“It is here, too,” said Faustus quietly.
“Yes, but you permit it! You revel in it, even! Or so I’m told, on pretty good authority.—You heard me say I was formerly stationed in Aegyptus and Syria. The ancient East, that is to say, thousands of years older than Roma or Constantinopolis. Most of the strange cults originated there, you know. That was where I developed my interest in them. And the things I’ve seen and heard and done in places like Damascus and Alexandria and Antioch, well—but nowadays Urbs Roma is the center of everything of that sort, is it not, the capital of marvels! And I tell you, Faustus, what I truly crave experiencing is—”
He halted in midsentence, looking flushed and a little stunned.
“This wine,” he said, with a little shake of his head. “I’ve been drinking it too quickly. It must be stronger than I thought.”
Faustus reached across the table and laid his hand gently on the younger man’s wrist. “Have no fear, my friend. These revelations of yours cause me no dismay. I am no stranger to the Underworld, nor is the prince Maximilianus. And while we await the return of Prince Heraclius he and I will show you everything you desire.” He rose, stepping back a couple of paces so that he would not seem, in his bulky way, to be looming in an intimidating manner over the reclining ambassador. After a bad start he had regained some advantage; he didn’t want to push it too far. “I’ll leave you now. You’ve had a lengthy journey, and you’ll want your rest. I’ll send in your servants. In addition to those who accompanied you from Constantinopolis, these men and women”—he indicated the slaves who stood arrayed in the shadows around the room—“are at your command day and night. They are yours. Ask them for anything. Anything, my lord Menandros.”
His palanquin and bearers were waiting outside. “Take me to the apartments of the Caesar,” Faustus said crisply, and clambered inside.
They knew which Caesar he meant. In Roma the name could be applied to a great many persons of high birth, from the Emperor on down—Faustus himself had some claim to using it—but as a rule, these days, it was an appellation employed only in reference to the two sons of the Emperor Maximilianus II. And, whether or not Faustus’s bearers happened to be aware that the elder son was out of town, they were clever enough to understand that their master would in all probability not be asking them to take him to the chambers of the austere and dreary Prince Heraclius. No, no, it was the younger son, the pleasantly dissolute Maximilianus Caesar, whose rooms would surely be his chosen destination: Prince Maximilianus, the friend, the companion, the dearest and most special friend and companion, for all intents and purposes at the present time the only true friend and companion, of that aging and ever lonelier minor official of the Imperial court, Faustus Flavius Constantinus Caesar.
Maximilianus lived over at the far side of the Palatine, in a handsome pink-marble palace of relatively modest size that had been occupied by younger sons of the Emperor for the past half dozen reigns or so. The prince, a red-haired, blue-eyed, long-limbed man who was a match for Faustus in height but lean and rangy where Faustus was burly and ponderous, peeled himself upward from a divan as Faustus entered and greeted him with a warm embrace and a tall beaker of chilled white wine. That Faustus had been drinking red with the Greek ambassador for the past hour and a half did not matter now. Maximilianus, in his capacity as prince of the royal blood, had access to the best caves of the Imperial cellars, and what was most pleasing to the prince’s palate were the rare white wines of the Alban Hills, the older and sweeter and colder the better. When Faustus was with him, the white wines of the Alban Hills were what Faustus drank.
“Look at these,” Maximilianus said, before Faustus had had a chance to say anything whatever beyond a word of appreciation for the wine. The prince drew forth a long, fat pouch of purple velvet and with a great sweeping gesture sent a blazing hoard of jewelry spilling out on the table: a tangled mass of necklaces, earrings, rings, pendants, all of them evidently fashioned from opals set in filigree of gold, opals of every hue and type, pink ones, milky ones, opals of shimmering green, midnight black, fiery scarlet. Maximilianus exultantly scooped them up in both hands and let them dribble through his fingers. His eyes were glowing. He appeared enthralled by the brilliant display.
Faustus stared puzzledly at the sprawling scatter of bright trinkets. These were extremely beautiful baubles, yes: but the degree of Maximilianus’s excitement over them seemed excessive. Why was the prince so fascinated by them? “Very pretty,” Faustus said. “Are they something you won at the gambling tables? Or did you buy these trinkets as a gift for one of your ladies?”
“Trinkets!” Maximilianus cried. “The jewels of Cybele is what they are! The treasure of the high priestess of the Great Mother! Aren’t they lovely, Faustus? The Hebrew brought them just now. They’re stolen, of course. From the goddess’s most sacred sanctuary. I’m going to give them to my new sister-in-law as a wedding present.”
“Stolen? From the sanctuary? Which sanctuary? Which Hebrew? What are you talking about, Maximilianus?”
The prince grinned and pressed one of the biggest of the pendants into the fleshy palm of Faustus’s left hand, closing Faustus’s fingers tightly over it. He gave Faustus a broad wink. “Hold it. Squeeze it. Feel the throbbing magic of the goddess pouring into you. Is your cock getting stiff yet? That’s what should be happening, Faustus. Amulets of fertility are what we have here. Of enormous efficacy. In the sanctuary, the priestess wears them and anyone she touches with the stone becomes an absolute seething mass of procreative energy. Heraclius’s princess will conceive an heir for him the first time he gets inside her. It’s virtually guaranteed. The dynasty continues. My little favor for my chilly and sexless brother. I’ll explain it all to his beloved, and she’ll know what to do. Eh? Eh?” Maximilianus amiably patted Faustus’s belly. “What are you feeling down there, old man?”