The owner’s son, a tall boy with a sour face, swiped the bread out from under him, glaring, and Spurius found suddenly that his balance was off. Momentum carried his hand into open air where the bread had been, his feet seemed to do some complicated dance and moments later he was face down in the straw and horse shit by the side of the road with two bakers laughing at him.
Hurriedly he picked himself up, dusting off the worst of the crud, and gathered his bag in his arms, clutching it tight. A quick glance up failed to improve his mood.
As a haruspex, a diviner of truths in the entrails of beasts, Spurius was expected to be staid, sombre, sober, and above all, accurate. However, since he had ‘learned’ his craft, such as it was, from a drunken lunatic with a tendency to dribble, a beard that things lived in and the most curious smells, skin afflictions and twitches, all for the price of a place to stay for a month, he was not entirely convinced of his pedigree. The man had claimed to be an Etruscan of age-old lineage. What, in fact, he appeared to be was a drunk, a fraud, and quite possibly a carrier of disease.
Certainly Spurius had learned a few things from the old man. While he may have had all the talents of prognostication of a jar of fish sauce, he knew the jargon and the basic principals and it was astounding in the past decade just how often Spurius had made accurate predictions based partially on the signs around him and partially on a one in two chance of being right.
Above, three blackbirds flew in formation. Spurius knew that this could be interpreted in numerous ways, and the most positive (the one you always told clients) was that it represented the Capitoline Triad and that Jupiter, Juno and Minerva were watching over them with a kindly eye. It was how Spurius took it for himself this morning, which made it all the more poignant and irritating when a great bird of prey hurtled out of the blue and snatched one away, scattering the other two. Clearly not a good omen in anybody’s book, let alone that of the Etruscan mystics.
Grumbling to himself, Spurius strode on. The one thing he was sure of was there was no more lucrative place in the Empire to practice haruspicy. The diviners of omens so favoured by the Roman masters were shunned and loathed by the Jews, and most reputable haruspices would go nowhere near the place for fear of their lives. That meant that the noble Romans of Judea would pay highly for the talents of even the lowest pond-life if they knew how to open a goat.
His appointment at the palace was at the hour before noon and he’d planned on spending the morning begging for coins in front of the great temple so that he could afford to have his robe washed and perhaps a bath and a shave. Instead, he had woken late and rudely to broken fingers, dung and ill omens. Still, he would be at the palace on time and it was not a neat, pristine white augur the client was paying for; it was a reading.
The best things came in shabby packages, as he regularly failed to convince people.
Turning a corner, he made for the animal trader. His employer had informed him yesterday that Lebbeus had put a sheep aside for him and the cost would be deducted from his fee. Bah!
He’d tried to persuade the client that all that was really required was an egg. Divination was just as easy with an egg. And so much easier to fake, too. Who the hell knew what the future held by looking into the way the yolk separates from the white. Oh he’d tried to actually make sense of what he’d been told many times, but the thing was: the liver of a goat was a powerful looking item, and people could believe in it as a symbol. Crack an egg, however, and people just stared at you. Not Etruscans, of course, ‘cause they would know the truth of it. But to a Roman, and to Spurius particularly, an egg was an egg was an egg. And an egg was cheap.
But the sheep had been a requirement and the trader had the unfortunate animal penned carefully aside to keep it pure.
Spurius rolled his eyes. As though the future was ever going to be clearer because of what the sheep had been doing the night before. Ridiculous. But then if the rituals were to be followed to the letter, he himself should be bathed, shaved, sober, of respectful attitude and, above all, not a charlatan with a three day hangover and halitosis that would help anaesthetise the sheep. He was also supposed to have fasted last evening instead of eating the greasy food of Bothus the Syrian and drinking cheap wine.
Grumbling, he strode into the emporium and marked the trader’s ledger, collecting the sheep on the way out. Master Lebbeus looked at him the whole time as though he might have just crawled out of a sewer, but Spurius didn’t really care. Grasping the leash of the sheep, he all-but dragged it from the place, swearing as it took the time to carefully manure on his foot.
Outside the store, he tethered the sheep and took a moment to prepare himself. From his bag he drew the fringed robe, patched and darned in many places, and the slightly bent conical hat. He hated them. Wearing them both, he felt like one of those Aegyptian obelisks. But it was expected. Obviously the liver would hardly reveal anything to him if he weren’t to dress like a deranged childrens’ entertainer.
The journey along the long street to the palace was horrible and tortuous, spat on twice by Jews who repeatedly jeered at his apparel. Tightly, in his free hand, he clutched the bag that contained his knives and tools, wondering whether it would be sacrilege to open one of the jeering locals and divine something from his liver.
But the jeering and the spitting was only the start.
Omens came thick and fast as he walked, each one annoying him more than the previous.
The sudden, almost explosive backwash from a drain cover that soaked his shin was hardly a good omen. The only cloud in the wide blue firmament, a few inches across at most, managing to hover in front of the sun and put him in the shade while every other person in the street remained brightly lit? That was clearly saying something. The thrown bucket of slops that hit the sheep, staining its pristine white coat with brown sludge? The dog that tripped him up and then took an unhealthy interest in the sheep until he managed to deliver a heavy kick to its testicles? It all had the unhealthy aura of a campaign of hate against him by the Gods.
Certainly, if it were not such a lucrative commission, he’d have gone home and hidden under the bed.
As he reached the end of the street and stared up at the palace steps, he’d glanced down at the frightened, bedraggled and shit-covered animal and realised there was no hope in hell of him getting away with that. The client would dismiss him without payment. No one could ritually sacrifice a shit-soaked sheep! Racking his brains, he looked around, his eyes alighting with glee on the butcher that occupied the last building on the left. The sheep that was hanging in his window was still white and pristine, though dead of a snapped neck and about to be bled according to their law. With a grin, he jogged across to the shop.
Ten minutes of tense negotiating resulted in his leaving the shop with a dead white sheep while the butcher looked after Fuscus, as he’d named the poor animal for its new colour. The promise he’d made to return with full payment was genuine, though. While Spurius was far from a good man in most respects, he had never been a violent one, nor wished harm to an innocent creature. In fact, he’d always hated the sacrificial part. He would have ample leftover in his wage for this to pay the butcher, and could take little Fuscus with him when he left. The idea of arriving in Alexandria with a sheep in tow brought a smile to his face.
A practiced confidence trickster, Spurius set his jaw square and allowed a serious, imperious look to fall across his features. Striding across the square, he cradled the sheep in his arms, using his hand hidden beneath the beast to rhythmically push, giving the poor thing the outward appearance of breathing.