I summoned Mopsus and Androcles to help me dress. Usually Bethesda assisted me in donning my toga; she had grown so skilled that the procedure was effortless. Mopsus and Androcles had helped a few times before, but still had only a vague idea of what to do. Following my instructions they laid the irregular oblong of wool over my shoulders, wrapped it across my chest, and attempted to arrange the folds. There seemed to be four of us in the room: myself, two slave boys, and a very unruly toga intent on thwarting the rest of us. As soon as one fold was tucked, another came untucked. The boys became flustered and sniped at one another. I rolled my eyes, admonished myself to be patient, and kept my voice low.
At last I was ready. On my way out I encountered Bethesda emerging from Diana's room. She coolly looked me up and down, as if I had no right to wear such finery when my daughter's life was ruined. Her unpinned hair hung in tangles and she could scarcely have had more sleep than I; even so, she looked remarkably beautiful to me at that moment. Time had never yet diminished the luster of her dark eyes. Perhaps she read my thoughts. She paused to give me a fleeting kiss and whispered in my ear, "Be careful, husband!"
In the foyer I encountered Cicatrix. The hulking monster was leaning with his back against the front door, arms crossed, idly scratching the ugly scar across his face. He gave me an impertinent look, then stepped away from the door to let me pass.
I cleared my throat. "Let no one in while I'm gone," I told him. "Take orders from no one except my wife or my daughter. Do you understand?"
He nodded slowly. "I understand that I'm to keep an eye on this house for my Master, the Great One." He gave me an unsettling smile.
As I stepped out the door to join the waiting messenger, I whispered a prayer to Minerva to watch over my household.
• • •
"Where are we going?" I asked the slave.
"Yonder." The big fellow pointed beyond the Forum, toward the Esquiline Hill. I suspected he was a bit simple. The powerful often prefer to use illiterate slaves to carry messages, and only a slave too simpleminded to learn to read can be trusted not to.
The rim road was as busy in the early morning as it had been the night before. We crossed to the other side, threading between litters and carts, and onto the Ramp, which would take us down to the Forum. The pathway was so crowded that people were pressed shoulder to shoulder and no vehicles could possibly have passed. The descent was slow and tedious. We found ourselves pressed against the sheer rock face of the Palatine, the view of the Forum to our right blocked by the crowd. People jostled, stepped on each other's feet, squealed in pain and spat insults. At one point a fist fight broke out nearby.
As we descended farther, any glimpse of the Forum was blocked by the massive rear wall of the House of the Vestals. At last we reached the bottom of the incline, packed as tightly as sheep in a run. Here the Ramp narrowed even more as it made a sharp right turn into the gap between the House of the Vestals and the Temple of Castor and Pollux. The crush became dangerous. Behind me I heard a woman scream.
Panic spread through the crowd like a wave of prickling heat. A stampede began.
I clutched the messenger's arm. He looked over his shoulder and gave me a simpleminded grin, then gripped my arm and pulled me forward, practically lifting me off my feet. Around me swirled a sea of faces. Some grimaced in pain. Some shouted. Some screamed. Some were wild-eyed with fear, while others stared blankly, dumbfounded. I was punched and prodded from all directions by elbows and flailing arms. I felt as helpless as a pebble in an avalanche.
Then, all at once, the narrow path emptied into the open space of the Forum. The messenger pulled me around a corner. We staggered onto the steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. I sat down, gasping for breath.
"We could have been trampled to death!" said the big fellow. His penchant for stating the obvious reminded me of Davus. As we watched, people spilled out of the narrow passageway into the Forum, looking dazed and shaken, many of them weeping. At last the torrent thinned, and the trickle of stragglers emerging from the Ramp seemed utterly unaware of the panic that had preceded them.
As soon as I caught my breath, we set out again. The Forum had an air of unreality, a continuation of the nightmare that had begun on the Ramp. I felt as if we were walking through a succession of theatrical scenes staged by some maniacal director. People ran in and out of temples, waving votive tapers and shouting prayers to the gods. Huddled family members took leave of one another, holding hands and weeping, kneeling together to kiss the ground of the Forum, while street urchins perched on nearby walls threw pebbles at them and made rude remarks. Angry crowds outside the banks and exchanges threw stones against doors that were locked up tight. Despondent women wandered through empty market stalls picked clean by hoarders and profiteers. The oddest thing was how little notice strangers seemed to take of one another. Everyone appeared to be boxed inside his own little tragedy, to which the rushing panic of others was merely a backdrop.
Not everyone was leaving Rome. Hordes of people were coming into the city from the countryside to seek refuge. Caesar, according to one rumor, was on the outskirts of Rome no more than an hour away, leading an army of savage Gauls to whom he had promised full citizenship- one Gaul to be enrolled for every Roman killed, until the entire male population of the city was replaced by barbarians loyal to Caesar.
Amid so much chaotic movement, my gaze was suddenly arrested by the sight of a formal cordon of magistrates wearing their senatorial togas with purple stripes- the only togas besides my own I had seen in the Forum that day. The entourage strode through the Forum at an unusually quick pace, preceded by twelve lictors in single file, each bearing on his shoulder the ceremonial bundle of rods called the fasces. A dozen lictors meant a consular procession, and sure enough, within the cordon of senators I recognized the two newly installed consuls, Lentulus and Marcellus. They looked grim-jawed but rabbit-eyed, as if a sudden loud noise could send them scurrying for the nearest cubbyhole.
"I wonder what that's about," I said aloud.
"They're leaving the Temple of the Public Lares," said Maecia's messenger. "I saw them going in on my way to your house. They were performing a special ceremony. What's it called? A 'rite of safekeeping'- asking the hearth-gods to watch over the city while the two consuls are away."
"Only one consul at a time ever leaves Rome," I explained, remembering he was simple. "One may go off to lead an army, but the other stays to run the city."
"Maybe so, but this time they're both leaving town."
I took a last, fleeting look at Lentulus and Marcellus, and knew the fellow was right. They had been consuls for less than a month, but this might well be their last formal walk across the Forum. Hence the grim jaws; hence the rabbit eyes and the unseemly pace of the procession. The consuls were abandoning Rome. The state was deserting the people. In a matter of hours- however long it took Lentulus and Marcellus to return to their homes and join in the mad rush to get out of Rome- there would be no government remaining in the city.
• • •
Maecia's house was in the Carinae district on the lower slopes of the Esquiline Hill, where a great deal of real estate had been in the hands of the Pompeius family for generations. Pompey's private compound was not far away. Maecia's house was not as grand as that. It faced onto a quiet street and was freshly painted in bright shades of blue and yellow. The black wreath on the yellow door struck a discordant note.