"I haven't the slightest interest in your honesty or lack of it," I told her. "But people are getting murdered all over the city, and I was almost one of them. I suspect you of involvement. Your best course is to implicate somebody else, so speak up."
"Murder! I am involved in no such thing. The lady Clodia sent for me to procure certain herbs and have her fortune told. Her and young lady Fulvia, that is, and isn't that one a hot little piece?"
"She is indeed," I agreed, "and no doubt Rome suffer grievously because of her in years to come, let's return to Clodia. Would whatever is rustling in that basket have anything to do with telling her fortune?"
"Oh, aye." She reached into the basket and hauled out a fat, torpid black snake at least three feet long. "Old Dis here is the best fortune-telling snake in Rome. He's not very lively this time of year, though."
"And the herbs?" I asked.
"Just the usual."
"The usual?"
"You know, aphrodisiacs. You ought to let me mix some up for you. Give you a cock like Priapus there."
"I don't suffer from the deficiency," I said, nettled.
"They all say that, except the ones old enough to be honest about it. I think her husband needs a bit of encouragement now and then."
"Are you sure that is all you delivered to her? No poisons, by any chance?"
"Now, sir, you've tried that one before," she chided. "Do you really think I'm going to admit to a capital offense?"
"I suppose not," I said, rising. Then I let fly an arrow at random, the sort that sometimes strikes an unexpected target. I do not know why I asked her, except that her craft was an ancient one, involving many arcane rituals. "Citizens are being murdered, Purpurea. Someone is stabbing them in the throat and then, after they are dead, smashing them on the forehead with a hammer. What do you know of that?" To my astonishment her face drained of color and her jaw dropped.
"You mean they're in the city?"
I was taken much aback. "Who? Who do you mean by 'they'?"
She jumped up, clutching her basket. "Nobody I want to be involved with. Take my advice and don't you fall afoul of them, either. Good day to you, sir." She shouldered past me and headed for the street.
"Stop!" I said. "I want to:" By that time, I was addressing her back, She was not just walking away. She was running. I began to chase her, but I quickly gave it up. The toga is a wretched garment for performing anything strenuous, and I did not dare throw it off. Someone would steal it for certain.
I shrugged, thinking that I could always find her in her booth. Then I trudged back home, where I found two notes waiting for me.
One was from my father, informing me that the following morning the Senate would go to Pompey's camp to give him formal permission for his triumph. I was to dress properly for the occasion.
The other was from Julia. It read: I have important information. Meet me tomorrow evening at sunset en the portico of the Temple of Castor.
Chapter IX
It was a fine morning, and we assembled in the Forum dressed in our best togas. It was not an official holiday, but there was a holiday spirit in the air, as there always is when routine is broken. Hortalus got up on the Rostra and proclaimed our mission, and the crowd cheered, praising the Senate's wisdom.
Of course, Pompey had known for days of the Senate's decision, but his flunkies had insisted that we revive the ancient custom of the entire Senate trooping in a body to the victorious general's camp to give him the good news personally. Since they had adequate historical precedent to cite, there was no way the rest of us could get out of it.
As we went down the Via Sacra to the city gate, we all kept good, impassive senatorial faces, but there was plenty of grumbling all around. I did a bit of it myself.
"It had better be the triumph to top all triumphs," somebody groused near me, "since he's putting us to all this trouble."
"Just like Pompey," said somebody else. "Not enough to get his triumph; he has to see the whole Senate come out to him to kiss his glorious backside." This was all to the good, to my way of thinking. In those days the Senate still had a great deal of pride and was an assemblage of peers. We did not like anyone who puffed himself up and gave himself kingly airs. A triumphator received semi-divine honors for a day, and that was thought to be enough for any man.
Pompey's lackeys had been petitioning the Senate to grant him the right to wear his triumphal regalia at all public functions, a piece of abject toadying that horrified all right-thinking Romans. Unfortunately, right-thinking Romans were getting fewer all the time.
Pompey's camp was laid out identically to a legionary camp, but without the customary fortifications. That would have been an intolerable provocation. His soldiers were still under arms, but they showed the lax discipline Pompey allowed between campaigns. Few bothered to wear armor or bear shields, and those detailed to guard the treasure merely belted on their swords and leaned on their spears, most of them passing the time with dice and knucklebones. There were some flaming faces as we made our way to his praetorium. Many felt mortally insulted that Pompey had not bothered to have his men turn out for an inspection parade to honor a visit by the massed Senate.
At the praetorium we found Pompey enthroned on a dais. We walked down the via praetoria between the ranks of his honor guard. These indeed were finely turned out, their mail newly cleaned and oiled, the sun flashing from the polished bronze of their helmets. Their cloaks and their horsehair crests were new and colorful. The damage had been done, though, when the Senate had seen the slovenly louts standing guard. I remembered what Cicero had said about Pompey, that he was a political imbecile. A man who neglected to flatter the most august body of men in the world had little future in Roman politics.
"Just like calling on the King of Kings, isn't it?" I turned to see Crassus standing close to me. "Look at him. That dais must be fifteen feet high, and that curule chair is ivory, unless my eyes deceive me."
Indeed, Pompey looked more like a king than a soldier, for all his gold-plated armor and scarlet cloak. His curule chair was draped with leopard skins, and his feet rested on a footstool cleverly wrought from the crowns of monarchs he had conquered.
"He certainly doesn't mind rubbing it in," I concurred. Behind him stood the eagle-bearers of his legions, their heads and shoulders draped with lion pelts above their old-fashioned scale shirts, and beside him stood some odd-looking men whose long, pointed beards echoed the shape of their tall caps. They were draped in rough brown cloaks. I asked Crassus about them.
"Those are the Etruscan soothsayers I told you about. He claims they bring him good fortune."
These were hard-faced, fanatical-looking men. But then, I thought, men who spent their days cutting open sacrificial animals and delving among their viscera for omens had not chosen the pleasantest of professions.
We stopped before the dais and stood there looking noble while Pompey tried to look regal. Hortalus stepped forward and spoke sonorously.
"Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus, we, the Senate of Rome, in exercise of our ancient right, do hereby grant you the honor of a triumph!" His grandiloquence was somewhat marred by the trumpeting of an elephant nearby.
Pompey stood. "Honorable conscript fathers," he began; then several more elephants blasted away. He waited for them to quiet down, then went on. "I accept this honor, to the glory of the gods of Rome and the ancestors of my house."
"What ancestors?" said some wag. "That flute-player four generations ago?" This raised some guffaws. Like many others, his family had been raised to prominence by Sulla. They had amounted to nothing before that.
" Io triumphe!" shouted the honor guard, drowning out all the sly remarks being passed at Pompey's expense.