Other Alexander, The (9 page)

Chapter XI

81 BCE   -   Spring, Rome

Year of the consulship of

Marcus Tulius Decula and Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella

I was lending a hand in the kitchen, dredging chickens with flour. Everyone was busy except Pío and Nestor who were playing a game of dice on a corner table, their backs to the activity and bustle behind them. Cook had asked twice for another pair of hands but Pío waved him away. A moment later, Crassus came wandering in, still wearing his purple-striped toga from the senate; he was looking for a snack. Cook had just handed one of his Greek assistants a last-minute shopping list. The young woman looked at it, made a face and brought it straight to me. I started to translate but she protested, "Too much, too much! Write it down, for pity’s sake." I held up my flour-coated hands and called to Nestor to please, if he wouldn’t mind, jot it down in Greek for Eirene.

“I’m busy,” Nestor snapped. “Wipe your damn hands and do your job.”

There came the sound of a patrician ‘ahem;’ both Nestor and Pío leapt to their feet to find Crassus standing behind them. “
Dominus
,” said Pío, “forgive me.”

“Why? Have you done something that needs forgiving? Nestor, lend a hand, or lose it.” 

“Yes,
dominus
!” Nestor took the list and Pío shoved a
calamus
and a pot of ink toward him, looking as nervous as if he himself had spoken harshly to me. Nestor took the pen in hand and studied the list intently. Crassus chewed on a date and asked cook to review the evening’s menu. As they talked, Eirene waited patiently at Nestor’s side, but as yet he had done nothing but look at the list, turn it over and stare at it. He was becoming increasingly agitated.

Pío and I came to the same conclusion simultaneously. He moved to distract Crassus and I went to Nestor, wiping my hands on my tunic as best I could. I took the list and the pen from his shaking hands and translated it into Greek as fast as I could. Pío used his bulk to block us from view.

When I handed the list to Eirene, the poor, polite thing said, “Thank you, Alexander,” and our impromptu scheme was undone. Crassus turned round, gently pushed the big Spaniard to the side and saw Eirene holding a list dusted with flour.

“Who wrote that?” he demanded.

“Nestor’s writing is next to illegible,” I began. I was about to say more, but Crassus stopped me.

“Remember that lashing I spoke of when you first arrived?” I assumed correctly this was a rhetorical question. “Please do not lie to me. Nestor, bring me the list.”

Nestor obeyed. Crassus looked it over and handed it back to him. “Read it.” Nestor began reading the list, but Crassus interrupted him. “Wonderful. Now try the side written in Latin.”

Nestor turned the scrap to the side written in Latin and pretended to read, stopping when his memory failed him. “I cannot,” he said, looking down at the floor. 

“Look at me,” Crassus said. The moment Nestor raised his head Crassus slapped him hard. The surprise and force of the blow almost knocked Nestor off his feet. “Unlike you, I have an excellent memory. When general Sulla asked how he might be of assistance, I asked for slaves who could both read and write in Greek and Latin. Did you tell the general’s man that you could do this?” Nestor nodded. The left side of his face was turning pink.

“Disappointing,” Crassus said. “Very disappointing. You are to be congratulated for deceiving this house as long as you have.” He adjusted his toga on his shoulder and turned to go. “Pío,” he said as he walked away, “there are limits to my good nature. Were it not for you, Nestor’s deception would not be tolerated.”

•••

Livia had been spirited into the house while Sabina was in the garden helping Tessa cut bouquets. Publius was at their feet, chortling with delight at every worm he could wrest from the dirt. Crassus and Tertulla summoned Sabina to their private quarters; the shriek of joy could be heard throughout the house. At supper that evening, an unusual night in that Crassus and his wife were neither entertaining nor being entertained, they called the entire staff into the atrium to make the announcement. This was superfluous, of course, as every ear had the gist of the tale poured into it practically before mother and daughter had left the masters’ bedroom.
Dominus
, however, thought it important to make a formal declaration. As he spoke, cook passed around a tray of spiced wine; not the cheap
lora
, mind you, but one of the sweet vintages served to company. I emptied a cup and reached for another. “Your
domina
and I have decided ...,” he said, making eye contact with everyone in his or her turn, “... well, is there anyone present who does
not
know what it is we have decided?” Everyone laughed, although it looked as if Nestor would speak up till Pío put a hand on his shoulder. “Let us say only that our family has been most joyfully increased by one."

On cue, Sabina and Livia came into the atrium, hand in hand.

"Welcome home, sweet Livia!” Tertulla cried.

Crassus waited for the applause to subside, then described the healer’s new clinic, which he encouraged everyone to visit. He spoke fleetingly of the school, but this was Sabina’s moment. She stood next to Tertulla, dabbing her eyes with the white linen
orarium
given her by
domina
. The square of cloth was wet from one end to the other by the time her happy ordeal was over. Livia clung to her mother but reached across to take Tertulla’s hand when Crassus announced that the girl would be taken into
domina’s
personal service to be taught spinning and weaving.

I felt a foolish tear play about my eyelid and quickly banished it. Watching Sabina's own eyes water as she fussed with Livia's hair, a spark of clarity illuminated the parody before me. Why should I allow this pretty scene to make me cry? Twigs of frustration fueled an anger I could not vent. Here was one poor child being sold from one place to another, nothing more. A business transaction, profit for the master. Had the comfort of this new life clouded my vision so quickly and thoroughly that I could no longer recognize the chains that bound us to this place or feel the invisible walls that confined us here? What cause was there for celebration? Could there ever be justification for separating a loving mother from her daughter? Instead of applauding her return, we should be outraged that they had ever been parted. But no, we must show gratitude to our masters for their generosity. The
taberna
, Sabina's
peculium
, all of it - we were no more than pigeons, scrambling to peck at the crumbs flung into our midst. The wine in my belly soured and I turned to flee.

"Alexander," Ludovicus called, "where are you going?"

Was I the only one to lament that the price of this reunion was the freedom of both Sabina and her child? "I am no witless, feathered scavenger!" I said, knocking over an incense burner in my haste to depart.

"He's overcome with emotion," I heard someone say.

"He's drunk!" said Tessa, the gardener, with surprise.

They were correct, the both of them.

•••

Crassus and Tertulla kept their promise, taking credit for making Livia a permanent member of the household, but the girl had come back into our lives so quickly after my conversation with Sabina that she was naturally suspicious. Suspicious enough so that every week until her departure a fresh bunch of flowers appeared on my schoolroom table. She spoke to me about it but once. It was the day of my first class, a week after Livia's return. The benches and tables had not yet arrived, but no matter. We sat in a circle on the floor:  three students from our house and three staff members from the homes of some of Tertulla’s friends. Each of those placed coins in my hand when they left. I looked at them and thought to myself with pride, now you are a professional. Little Nestor tapped me on the shoulder and snickered,
yesterday you were a slave; today you are a slave with a few coins
.

Livia and I were playing a game of
tali
after everyone else had left. Sabina came through the door adjoining our two rooms. She watched us quietly for several moments. I glanced up from the floor where we sat cross-legged and bid her join us.

“I cannot say what part you have played in this,” she said, gesturing to her daughter, “or why you would choose to hide it.” Livia was about to roll but held the knucklebones to listen. “I have decided that I do not need to know. However,
you
need to know this:  you will always be in our hearts; no matter where the fates may take us, you will always be remembered.” She left without further comment.

Livia asked, “What’s she talking about?”

“You heard her. I’m in your heart.”

“Well
I
might not remember you.”

“Just roll.”

“All right, be like that.” She gave the bones a good shake and threw a Venus. “Hah!” she cried. “Victory! Just for that, I’m not giving you a rematch.”

It was hard to be a curmudgeon, hard as I tried. One day I came upon Pío teaching Livia and Nestor a melody from the Laletani village of his childhood. Astounding to both eyes and ears. The sound of laughter and children playing seeded every hour:  contentment took hold, grew and flourished. Even the food improved:  Tertulla gave cook stacks of recipes from her mother’s kitchen. He grumbled, behind her back of course, having no choice but to try them. When the quality of mealtime rose by several degrees, all he would say was that execution was everything. The weight he himself was gaining, however, was a belt-loosening contradiction.

From the first day Sabina opened her practice, her waiting area was never empty. Crassus was as good as his word. As that word spread, she became so busy Tertulla was forced to relinquish her as a wet nurse and hire another. By the end of the first month, even after she had paid the master for furnishings and rent, Sabina had put aside three hundred
sesterces
in the family books. In two years, maybe less, her debt would be paid and she could begin to apply her fees toward the purchase of their freedom.

At last the carpenters brought long tables and benches to my schoolroom, plus one for me as the master, and a most comfortable chair. With a cushion! The schedule was set:  two hours, three times a week the house came under my tutelage, even Livia. Tertulla soon saw that my hours were doubled, easily convincing her friends to send their own servants.  Crassus began dropping by late in the day; he found in me his own apt pupil; discussing an invigorating regimen of politics, philosophy and oratory. He never spoke down to me and always gave ear to my remarks with interest and thoughtfulness. He asked questions and invited debate when he could have commanded unilateral acceptance. The omnipresent imbalance of our status never left my consciousness, but it faded to a background noise, like the sound of distant surf. He made me feel valued, and by doing so, let me rediscover my manhood, which had been stripped away like bark from a tree.

Atop Rome’s richest hill, we lived at the cold heart of the world, where distance made everything sparkle, and close inspection was almost never required. Our masters were kind and our bellies full; who among all the bustling, struggling throng below could say as much? We could forget who we were and how we had gotten there. Yes, we were actors playing a part, but every day was dress rehearsal, and with enough practice, we could become the characters we played. The days passed and without even realizing it, the small estate on the Palatine began to feel like a place where I belonged.

All might be well again.

Except that it could never be. Boaz’s Eastern philosophers must have been mistaken. Perhaps there, at the edge of the world, life was more just, but here in Rome, one could never be certain that goodness would be rewarded in kind.

Chapter XII

80 BCE   -   Summer, Rome

Year of the consulship of

Marcus Tulius Decula and Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella

Sulla had given up his dictatorship after only a year, having needed only those few months to turn centuries of Roman law inside out. His enemies, allies of Cinna and Marius, were either dead or exiled. He had had himself elected consul along with his friend Metellus, but even that was a sham:  Sulla had been dictator in all but name. No one dared dispute his “reforms,” most of which shored up the aristocracy and eviscerated the plebian council, whose power to thwart the senate was neatly castrated. Ironically, it would be under the consulship of Crassus and Pompeius ten years hence that most of Sulla’s legislative upheavals would be overturned.

Eventually, Sulla must have tired of staring at his bloodstained hands, for there was one nineteen year-old member of the
populares
who none could believe the new master of Rome would ever let slip through his sticky fingers. Recently married to Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna himself, he was near the top of the proscription lists. This friend of Marius fled to the countryside while his supporters and family petitioned clemency. Sulla was somehow swayed and lifted the sentence of death, but only upon condition that the lad divorce the daughter of his hated enemy. In an act some would call reckless, others insane, the insolent, headstrong rebel refused. The gods clearly had grand plans for this impudent Julius Caesar, for only they could have stayed Sulla’s outstretched hand of clemency from returning to its more accustomed role as wielder of the executioner’s blade. He relented, but warned those that had lobbied for clemency:  “in this one Caesar, you will find many a Marius.” History would prove that it was Sulla, not Marius, that Caesar would eventually emulate, and unlike Sulla, Caesar would not tire of the role of dictator.

Rome, then, had settled into an uneasy peace. Not so the house of Crassus. Up from its chthonic bonds beneath the Palatine, Hades was about to break, and it was a damned soul once named Alexandros who had already unlocked the Gates.

•••

If Nestor had had any faith at all in his master, it never would have happened. Crassus would not dream of willingly causing harm to the man who had sustained him those many months in hiding while Marius and Cinna hunted for him. But Nestor left our
dominus
no choice. It was hot on the Kalends of Quintilis. All the doors had been opened, the curtains pulled back and a dozen fan-bearers rented from Boaz. Sabina had taken Livia to town to restock her rapidly dwindling supply of herbs and ointments. I had just finished the afternoon’s last class in Latin grammar. The inside door to the front garden was open; so too the door to the street which I normally left bolted to discourage prying eyes and dampen street noise. Today the need for cross-ventilation bested privacy. 

I looked up at the lesson wall, sweating like a Thracian wrestler. The layers of whitewash cried out for a good scraping and a fresh coat of paint, but it was hotter than Hephaestus’ forge in summer. Happy with my procrastination, I had grabbed my bag of scrolls from the teaching table and taken two steps toward the street-side door in order to shut it when two men stepped through the opening into the schoolroom.

“Salve,” I said. “If you’re looking for the front entrance, it’s the gate just after the next door down the street.” I am pitifully unworldly, for one look at these two and anyone else would have known they would never come a-calling on any establishment other than a brothel, a tavern or a barn.

“Tall and skinny,” one said to the other.

“Must be the one,” said the other. “What’s your name, then?” They stepped closer and I took a step back. It is laughable how good manners so often interfere with my survival. My sluggish instincts had finally flashed a warning, but rather than run from the room screaming for help, I hesitated. What if my apprehension was unfounded? How rude it would be for me to flee. Decorum demanded that I give them the benefit of the doubt.

“Alexandros,” I said, swallowing. “Whom do you seek?”

“What, not Alexander?” The two looked puzzled and stopped their slow advance.

“You a teacher?” asked the second ruffian in a veritable lightening bolt of inspiration. My parents taught me never to lie. I nodded, my knuckles white on the edge of the table.

They looked at each other and said simultaneously, “Close enough.” Each drew an iron dagger from his belt, and my wits finally connected with my mouth and I cried out for help. I couldn’t take my eyes off the knives, so rather than turning to run I backed up, immediately tripping over one of the low benches. I landed up against the wall right next to the inside doorway, the air knocked out of my lungs, the overturned bench up against my feet. As I gasped for breath they advanced, the taller one tossing the knife between his left hand and his right, back and forth. The two men stepped over the bench at the same time.

I kicked out with both feet. The shorter one, the one on my left, tripped and slammed head first into the wall. He cursed and rolled away out of my line of sight, but the other one was lighter on his feet. He hopped neatly over the skidding bench and crouched by my side. The few teeth in his smile were not many shades lighter than his knife blade.

He gave me no time to plead for my life or even cry out. He was smiling, but he knew what he was about; do the job and leave. The other man called out, quite unnecessarily, “Do him, Quintus, and let’s fly.”

The knife was in Quintus’s right hand; he must have been left-handed for he flipped it across his chest one last time to wield the blade where it was most comfortable. While it was still in mid-air, a half-eaten apple sailed threw the open doorway and hit him hard in the face. Close behind it came a blur of Betto and obscenities. The dagger clattered to the floor as our legionary flew at the bigger man. They crashed to the ground then scrambled away from each other, but the assassin had somehow come up wielding his knife. Circling round the room till they were side by side again came his partner, his own weapon drawn.

The two intruders had lost all interest in me and were focused on the one man in the room who might foil their escape. Their mission had failed; the door to the street held their only salvation. Everyone in the room knew it. The two men faced off against Betto.

“You’re a young wisp of a soldier, ain’t you,” the taller one asked. “But we’re a generous pair, we are, and not too proud to admit we’ve come to the wrong house. Stand aside, let us pass and you’ll be bothered no more by us.”

“Wrong house, came to the wrong house,” Flavius Betto mumbled. “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT YOU CAME TO THE WRONG HOUSE!” he screamed. Everyone jumped. The intruders took a step back. Then, as if to himself, in little more than a whisper, Betto said, “I knew I should have taken the roast squash. I took the apple, and now Ceres spites me for my choice. Typical.”

“What are you on about?” the man called Quintus asked cautiously. The two assassins took a step away from each other. Betto answered by sidestepping to his right, moving between the killers and their only means of escape.

“My lunch, you thick-skulled clodpate. You interrupted my lunch.”

“Now, now. No need for insults.”

“Yes. Yes, there is need for that and more. But enough talk.” Betto drew his
pugio
. His eyes were wild and bulging. “Put your knives on the ground, and follow them with your asses. Alexander, get to the house. Raise the alarm.”

I couldn’t do it. It was the right thing to do:  what use was I in a fight? But I couldn’t leave him. Two against one; what if I returned to find Betto dead on my schoolroom floor, murdered because I had abandoned him even as he fought to save me? I scrambled on all fours, not to freedom but to the teaching wall behind my table. The pigskin of white paint lay where I had left it, full and unused. Bless my laziness, I thought as I grabbed the neck and tried its weight. Gods, it was heavy.

The tall one, the one with a bit of apple still clinging to his cheek said, “Very brave, ain’t he, Lucas? Doesn’t even draw his sword. Now why do you suppose he ain’t even drawing his sword?” They were moving further apart, flanking Betto left and right.

“Because my aim is much better with this.” I heard a grunt, but by the time I looked toward the sound, the one called Quintus was down, Betto’s knife sunk hilt-deep in his chest. While my protector was throwing his weapon, I saw the remaining assassin toss his own dagger in the air to grab it by the blade; he was bending his arm back to throw. I rose as the knife was released, knocking the legionary aside, holding my shield of pigskin before me. The knife sliced into the heavy sack right where Betto’s neck had been half an instant before.

•••

“You should have seen him,” Betto said. “He was a man possessed.” Crassus was home from the senate and had assembled the stunned household outside the front of the house. Tertulla had insisted, not wanting to get any paint on the mosaic floor of the atrium. The surviving assassin was trussed and harmless, most of his face and chest splattered white. Malchus had drawn his
gladius
; the blade against the assassin’s spine impressed upon him the need for stillness. “After the sack stopped this villain’s blade,” Betto continued like a proud father, “the teacher bellowed like a bull and came right at that poor bugger, swinging his pigskin like he was at the Olympics. The bag must’ve weighed sixty pounds! He spun round on one foot and that sack whistled through the air. It clopped the bastard right in the head, as anyone can plainly see.”

I remembered none of this:  the assassins came into the schoolroom, Betto’s apple hit one of them, and the next thing I recalled was Crassus asking if I was all right, here outside the house. I do not know how I came to be standing here, though Betto and Malchus assured me they were with me, their new hero, every step of the way.

Crassus stilled any further chatter with a raised hand. He addressed the captive. “I do not know what chain of events has brought you into my home,” he said in a calm voice, a disinterested voice. “You may have been a good man cursed by ill luck or lived your entire life outside the law. I do not know and I cannot care. Whatever choices pushed your life along its unfortunate path, they are of no consequence now, for your actions have reduced
my
choice to one. There are many ways a man may die - look at me - and here I have some leeway. Answer truthfully and I will give you a death you do not deserve, one reserved for men of honor. Lie to me and before we speak of death again we will speak of pain. And so I ask you, who hired you?”

“I never saw him,” Lucas said, working to control his fear. His eyes scanned the people encircling him. “He’s not in this lot, I can tell you.”

Suddenly, Tessa turned sharply in her chair, causing one of the daisies she always wore in her pinned up braids to fall to the table. “Where’s Nestor?” she asked.

A second later, his stern voice a thin skin unable to hide the stab of betrayal, Crassus asked, “And where is Pío?”

Cook, still flushed and breathing heavily from his run through the house from the kitchen, raised his hand. “He left early this morning,
dominus
. Didn’t say why. Said he’d be home before dark.”

Before Crassus dismissed us, he instructed Malchus to execute the assassin and arrange to have his body and that of his partner thrown in the Tiber. There was neither ice nor heat in his voice, no hint that these sounds strung together in a certain order meant a man would die. It was the first time I saw the unbending steel at my master’s core.

“
Dominus
, Malchus said, “shall we keep this one alive till Pío returns? Just in case?”

“No. Give him a quick death. I was foolish to think this poisonous cake would only have one layer. Whoever hired these men put more than one face between the coin and the knife. Send word to Boaz. I want Nestor found.”

True to his word, shortly before supper the Spaniard passed through the gates. He appeared genuinely stunned to be met by drawn swords and a quick escorted march to Crassus. Pío earnestly claimed he’d been to the temple of the Vestals to pray for his family as he had every month since he’d arrived in Rome. Crassus accepted the alibi, but without joy.

Nestor was gone, yet remained:  in the sullen bark of our master’s sharpened tongue, in the despair and sorrow that hung like weights from poor Pío’s eyes, in the shame bore by the rest of us, knowing we served in the house of an apostate. The big Spaniard became lethargic, despondent, and the house sank into dark waters; we moved sluggishly, unable to talk to one another, afraid to meet the eye of either Pío or our master. Everyone knew that Crassus would not let the matter rest; his reputation had been sullied. Nestor, property of M. Licinius Crassus, by running away had in effect, stolen himself from his master. Boaz’s men were searching throughout the city, and they knew where and how to look:  each carried an image of the fugitive and a purse heavy enough to animate the most reluctant tongue. The law of
furtum
hastened the inevitable:  to conceal a runaway was the same as theft, and theft could result in flogging or worse:  consignment to the aggrieved with freedom forfeit.

Three days after Nestor’s disappearance, young Marcus and I were sitting on the rim of the peristyle’s fountain, building papyrus boats to see whose design would stay afloat the longest. A shadow came across the sun and I looked up, shading my eyes to see Pío looming over me. His huge hands cradled a bunch of flowers, which I assumed he was going to arrange at the shrine of the house gods in the atrium. Yet his demeanor struck me more like a mourner making a gravesite offering. He stood there, immobile yet tense, a bear sniffing out prey. His eyes rested on me like dead coals, staring down at me; no, not at me, through me. Spray from the fountain blew our way and Marcus laughed. I almost hushed him, as if to warn him of imminent danger. Pío glanced his way, then turned and walked away, allowing me to exhale.