“Like the ones who come out from Rome and think they’re great natural military leaders because they’re born into famous families?” He was remembering some bad experiences we’d had in Gaul.
I shuddered. “Exactly. The world is full of people who have perfect confidence in themselves for all the wrong reasons. They cause no end of trouble.”
Still, this was another name that had come up more than once in all this business: Fulvia. I had known her slightly for a long time and avoided closer acquaintance. She was one of those bad women to whom Hermes had hinted I was too attracted. The first time I had seen her she was in the house of Clodia. In Clodia’s bed, in fact. She’d been no more than fifteen and even then had struck me as some sort of anthropophagous creature. We had had a few encounters in the years since, none hostile but always tricky. Fulvia plus Antonius made a combination I was particularly anxious to avoid, especially now that I no longer had the protection of a family of enormous political importance. I had not realized what an advantage I had had being a Caecilius Metellus until the family fortunes had collapsed in the civil war.
We went among the throng of afternoon frequenters in the Forum, taking hands and trading political gossip in the immemorial Roman fashion. All the time I was pondering what I had learned and how it all fitted together. Surely Polasser had not just hit upon his grain scheme in a fit of inspiration. I ran through my mind a list of Roman rogues, villains, and lowlifes I numbered among my acquaintance, and I found depressingly many.
“Hermes,” I said at last, “I think we need to call on Felix the Wise.”
“Him?” Hermes said, unbelieving. “I’m all for it. I hear he holds court at the Labyrinth these days.”
“Then let’s go there. Julia will be attending the evening sacrifice at the Temple of Vesta, then going on her mysterious errand with Servilia. So we have the evening all to ourselves. Let’s go to the Labyrinth.”
The establishment thus named was at that time Rome’s largest, most fabulous, and most successful brothel. It was located in the trans-Tiber, which gave it both more space and less oversight from the aediles. People visiting Rome for the first time always made it a point to visit the Labyrinth. It attracted more of them than the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter.
We made the long, leisurely walk across town and across the river into the trans-Tiber and got to the Labyrinth just as the sun was going down. The building towered five stories high and was as large as any of the apartment blocks in Rome. Before it stood its infamous sign, a larger than life-sized sculpture of Pasiphae and the bull rendered in excruciating anatomical detail. The queen was depicted as splayed quadrupedally, the cow disguise devised by Daedalus merely hinted at with hoofed boots and gloves. The bull was well endowed even for a bull.
We went through the long corridor that led from the entrance to the vast courtyard within. There were about a hundred long tables inside beneath a canopy worthy of the Circus where people feasted and watched the entertainment. I was recognized instantly, being a well-known public figure, of course. The madam, an immensely tall woman who emphasized her height by wearing an actor’s buskins and a towering wig, greeted me with a resounding kiss on the cheek.
“Senator Metellus!” she said in a voice that echoed off the walls, “you haven’t honored us with your presence in far too long!” Heads turned from all directions to gape at me. There was a good deal of laughter.
“Ah, yes. Well, as it occurs I’m here on official business. I need to consult with Felix the Wise. Is he here tonight?”
She hooted a great laugh. “Business! Oh, that’s a good one, Senator! Business! Well, all right, I’ll go along with it. Felix usually comes here later in the night. Come along, let’s find you a table and get you something to eat.” We followed her elaborately swaying bottom to a small table near one wall, beneath a fine plane-tree that was hung with colored lanterns made of parchment. Its centerpiece was a wonderfully obscene statuette depicting Ganymede and the eagle.
The madam clapped her hands and servants laid the table with a remarkably fine dinner and a pitcher of first-rate wine. “Senator, can’t you convince Caesar to pay us a visit? It would do me ever so much good with the patrons and it would convince the aediles to accept smaller bribes to leave me alone.”
“Doesn’t he ever come here?” I asked her.
“Never once. Nor to any other lupanar that I ever heard of. Not that I blame him for avoiding them, they’re pigsties. But the Labyrinth is the most illustrious lupanar in the world. Do you suppose those stories about him and old King Nicomedes are true? Well that’s no matter, I have boys of every race and age if that’s to his taste. Or does he just prefer that his whores have patrician pedigrees?” Once again she threw her head back and hooted out her great laugh. “Now Sulla was a proper dictator. Practically lived in the whorehouses and chummed around with actors and entertainers, so my grandmother told me. She was running the Palace of Delight across the river back then.” She sighed. “Those must have been great times.” Another Roman pining for the good old days.
“Perhaps the good times will come again,” I told her. “In the meantime, you’ll just have to be content with being the most stunningly successful madam in the history of Rome.”
“Oh, you’re too kind, Senator. Well, I must toddle off. I’ll send word when Felix gets here. Business, indeed!” She swayed off, laughing and snorting.
So with nothing better to do we set teeth to our dinner, which was better than most great houses could provide. Granted, it was a menu she reserved for her highest ranking guests, but even the ordinary fare was better than you could get at any tavern.
“Rack of venison in wine sauce,” Hermes marveled. “Roast duck stuffed with quail eggs, octopus cooked in ink, poached pears-we must come here more often.”
“She’s buying favor,” I told him. “In case I should be praetor again, or city prefect, or have any of the new titles Caesar is busy inventing. She wants to be safe.”
“What of it?” he said, stuffing his mouth. “We rarely get to eat like this. I don’t anyway. You sometimes get to eat at Caesar’s table.”
“And there I dine miserably,” I informed him. “Caesar cares nothing whatever about food or wine. I don’t think he can even taste them. I’ve seen him pour rancid oil over his eggs and never notice it.” I tore off a rib of venison and it was superb.
“He doesn’t care about food and his only use for women is their pedigrees,” he mused. “What’s wrong with Caesar?”
“Some men care only about power. That’s Caesar. He wants to accomplish things and he has to have power to do so, so he has pursued power with a single-mindedness such as I’ve never seen. It makes him uncomfortable to be around. I prefer a brute sensualist like Antonius. He wants power, but that’s just so he can accumulate more wealth and more women and wine and food and houses. Power to him means things he can taste and feel. To Caesar”-I shrugged-“to Caesar I don’t know what it means. I can’t fathom him.”
By the time we finished dinner the evening’s entertainment had begun: a troupe of actors who played Atellan farces with great energy. Then there were singers and Spanish dancers and tumblers and mimes. Wrestlers and pugilists from the nearby Statilian school put on an exhibition and while these were performing, the madam sent a dwarf to inform us that Felix had arrived. The dwarf was dressed in a stylized burlesque of a gladiator’s outfit, with the addition of a huge stuffed leather phallus protruding in front, painted scarlet and gold.
We rose a bit unsteadily and made our way to the alcove where Felix lorded it over his minions. In Rome proper he would have come to me, but this was his little kingdom so I called upon him. The alcove was lined with huge cushions on which Felix and the others sat with little Arabian tables in front of them.