The fasces was there, that grim bundle of rods with which to flog the condemned, from which protruded the ax with which to behead. Neither rod nor ax had been used to work affliction upon the wretched false-coiner, although his own more dreadful punishment was not alone legal but even customary; perhaps rods and ax dated from a time before coinage, full or false, had reached Rome. Technically this symbol belonged most properly to the chief magistrate of a city, but Averno was a special case in this as in almost all other things; the fasces and lictor meant most likely something else -
He hoped the litter did, too….
The lictor was (highly improperly!) holding the bundle under one arm, and applying to his nose a pouncet box. He tried to come to an attention when he saw Vergil, but first the one thing slipped, and then the other. Vergil seized the pouncet box, this at least seeming in no way a form of lese-majeste; from it arose the strong and fragrant medicinal odor of the pomander; and it was he who stood to something like an attention until the lictor had gotten himself in order. Then -
“Master Vergil, a Citizen of Rome?”
“Yes, Lictor.”
“I greet you in the name of the Senate and the People of Rome.”
“Stinking place, this, isn’t it?” Vergil did not feel in a mood of much formality; neither, by his look, did, much, the lictor. Who -
“Oh, the gods! Well, sir. As you were kind enough to save the medicine from falling to the muck, I take liberty to offer that you bear it yourself, and I of course must bear the fasces, and lead on as — Oh. . Forget me own agnomen, next. Ser Vergil, his Honor the Legate presents his compliments and sends his litter and hopes that Master Vergil is to find it convenient to honor his Honor by taking some very good wine with his Honor.”
The Legate. That meant, of course, the Legate Imperial; in such a special case as Averno’s, he would be part governor, part ambassador, part viceroy. . all, very much for the most part, pro forma. For the most part, then, the Legate Imperial was locally the Imperial official of highest rank. Mostly his duties were such as could be reduced to no simplistic legal formula. Had he the power to compel Vergil’s acceptance of the so courteously worded invitation? Very likely. Was Vergil’s position honorable enough and his conscience clear enough to persuade himself to acceptance of the invitation without more ado and less mental quibbling? Very likely.
“Of course, Lictor. I am honored by his Honor’s invitation and by your own kindly offer. However” — he delved into his pouch and disclosed his own pouncet box. Its classification as “medicine” was, in his own opinion, doubtfuclass="underline" but the stinking and maleficent air was less afflictive when strained through the dried spice-studded fruits and fragrant herbs. He had gotten into the litter even while the lictor murmured his appreciation at getting his own pomander back. Dignity did not perhaps allow him to bear it openly in one hand as he marched holding the fasces, so he thrust it high into his tunic and bowed his head so that his nose was almost next to it.
“Litter-bearers! Up, litter! March.”
March they did, through the grimy streets. It might well be that money did not stink. But it was not money that Vergil saw through the slightly parted curtains. He saw garbage and slag and slops which had not waited the collectors of the night soil, and people with cutpurse (and, for that matter, cutthroat) looks; and — endlessly — slaves crouching and stumbling beneath every sort of burden; bundles and bales of rags awaiting the sole washing ever they were likely to get before being dyed and clipped and resewn; saw the as-yet-uncollected recently dead, and the as-yet-unrelieved-by-death, animal and human. Saw faces sullen and faces scornful and faces devoid, seemingly, of capacity for expression; saw faces all filthy and glances grim. He saw the steamy tipped-out rank residue of the reeking dye-pots, and smelled, above even the sulfurous and omnipresent breath of “the good gods of hell,” the rotting offscrape of the inner, fleshy sides of pelts in the wool-pulleries; used-up wads of foul, fetid tanbark -
In short: all, or most of all, of the characteristic sights of the Very Rich City. He did not, though, as they marched, and at no slow pace, see the torture chambers.
But then, of course, he had already seen them.
Sissinius Apponal Casca was the gray-faced shadow of what had been a large and healthy man, as witness his own bust in a niche in the wall. Since those days he had lost most of his hair, most of his teeth, most of the flesh beneath his skin, and most of that sense of firm control of life that the bust (and it alone) presently commemorated. He did, however, both look up and, somewhat, cheer up, as Vergil entered. The Emperor Julius had of course been bald, and the Emperor Sulla, that famous Sulla, entirely edentulous, in their days of command, victory, and glory: neither of them had looked a tithe of a tithe as bad as this Legate Imperial, nor would they, had their losses in one countenance been combined.
“One doesn’t dare attempt to keep wine, once it’s been opened,” Casca said, formulas of greeting and respect done with; “not here. My butler is opening the best jug right now. Also I have fresh spring water brought twice a day. . from a spring well outside this horrid place, that is. . to use the local water to mix even the worst wine, let alone the best, well …”
Understanding looks were passed, the wine was decanted and mixed, libations poured, and the wine tasted. “It is good,” said Vergil.
The Legate’s next words almost caused Vergil to spill the wine, good as it was. “What of this fellow who is called King Cadmus?” asked S. Apponal Casca. And suddenly Vergil had an image of those rods lacerating the dancing madman’s back, of that ax severing the curly head from its wounded shoulders.
He obliged himself to speak carelessly. “Why, he is mad, that’s all.”
“There was a certain madman who claimed to be a certain emperor, after the real emperor was dead, and kept half of Little Asia in turmoil for two years and more.”
“Ah, but that fellow was merely mad enough to believe his masquerade could succeed. This fellow — Cadmus — is utterly mad. Doesn’t know the calends from the ides. Surely you have seen that. . if you have seen him.”
“I have seen him. Yes.”
“Well, then.”
But beneath the gray and wasted skin some muscle twitched; the flabby mouth suddenly became, somehow, firm. “I haven’t asked you here for you to say, ‘Well, then,’ I have asked you here to ask you what you can tell me. And by that, I mean everything.”
In the brief instant of fear that shot through him, Vergil now recalled something which had flashed through his mind as he was getting into the litter and as swiftly had flashed out of it. A brief exchange of words, that time past, with Armin, the young Avernian. . Avernian so different from almost every other Avernian, young or old, whom he had so far met.
What will you tell them, when you go to Rome?
I do not go to Rome.
Ah, no? But you know. . Rome may come to you….
Rome, in the form of the lictor and the litter, had gone to him.