The Raven and the Rose (2 page)

“Corvus, look sharp!” someone called to him, and as Marcus turned he caught an object tossed in his direction. It turned out to be a ripe bundle of figs tied together by their stems with a piece of thin twine.

“From Judea,” the fruit seller said, saluting him. “The best. Enjoy them.”

Marcus reached for the bag of coins at his belt, but the vendor waved him away.

“
Pro bono
,” he said. “For your past services to the state. Just make sure you keep the barbarians away from Rome on your next campaign.”

“I will try,” Marcus replied, always amazed when some stranger recognized him. He did not think of himself as well known, but in a brutal world where a country survived or succumbed on the strength of its fighting force, highly successful soldiers were national celebrities.
 

Marcus stopped at a stall which boasted a hand lettered sign reading, “In just today from Pompeii.” Fresh trout and carp and flounder hung on hooks above urns of
garum
, the fermented fish sauce the Romans used with everything in their cooking, and flasks of must, the pressed grape husks that served as filling in desserts. He moved closer to examine the wares and bought a bottle of garum marked
“Optime
,” the very best, to bring as a gift when he attended dinner that evening. He stowed it, and the figs, in the capacious pockets of his cloak, and then walked on, pausing beside a stable to wipe his brow with the back of his arm. The day was a warm one for February and the sun was arcing overhead.
 

The smell of horse dung made him wrinkle his nose. Romans venerated cleanliness, and did their best to maintain it, despite the refuse problems associated with close to a million people living in cramped quarters. The teeming
insulae
, or low rent apartment houses, flimsily built and often on fire, were the source of the worst contamination. There was no running water above the first floor and tenants dropped offal into the streets from the roof during the dark of night, since there was a stiff fine for littering. The insulae were behind a row of shops on the Via Sacra, but Marcus fancied he could smell them too. They were a sanitary challenge to the entire city, the subject of much Senatorial legislation concerning the best way to improve them.

From what Marcus had seen of the living conditions there, he doubted that passing laws would make much of a difference. People who could not afford anything better would flock to the insulae no matter what restrictions were enacted. Civic pride was a national mania, but it was at odds with the desire of every Roman citizen to live within the city, which meant clogged streets and crowded houses. From the estates on the Palatine hill, where property of a quarter of an acre was considered sumptuously large, to the tiniest cell of the insulae, the population battled disease and dirt, but remained in place. Refuse was hauled away by slaves pulling wagons, homeowners and shopkeepers were required by law to sweep their properties every day, and a vast system of drainage ditches swept away liquid waste and carried it underground. But, even so, it often seemed to the city bound residents that the litter was winning.

Marcus squinted in the sunlight and looked around, turning toward the sound of running water. The Romans countered the heat and dust of their environment with the purity and renewal of water; in the massive public baths, in the 11 aqueducts which carried millions of gallons of bubbling freshets down from the hills, in the thousands of fountains, public and private, which sparkled and murmured in the Italian sunlight, they brought the source of cleanliness close to home. Rome was a city which streamed with water.

 
Marcus walked over to the fountain nearby and splashed his face. The statue at the center of the marble basin was of Diana, goddess of the hunt, her hair bound with a leather thong, a quiver loaded with arrows strapped to her back. Water cascaded from her outstretched hands into his. As he turned away he sidestepped a slave bending to look at a poster tacked to the footing which advertised a gladiatorial show.
 

The people pressing in around Marcus as he dried his face with the hem of his cloak made up a human rainbow. In the crowd he saw blacks from Carthage and Utica in North Africa, emancipated Gauls with ruddy complexions and bristling red hair, dark eyed descendants of Etruscans like himself, golden Greeks from Corinth with pale complexions and Alexandrian ringleted hair, all of them wearing the toga of citizenship. Racial prejudice did not exist in Rome, but civic prejudice was the republic’s greatest flaw. There were only citizens and non-citizens, and the former regarded the latter as one step above chattels. Therefore it was the ambition of every slave and freedman to attain
civilitas
, citizenship, which allowed one to vote, register in the census, participate in the swell and murmur of public life. Otherwise you were a slave to be ordered about and dominated, cared for, if you were lucky, but merely in the way a faithful dog is maintained by its master.

Marcus had been born a citizen, which forever separated him from the rabble that swirled around him as he made his way past a grove of statues and the praetor’s tribunal to the
curia
, where the Senate met. Only citizens could wear the
toga
, the long draped cloak which distinguished the important people from the rest; the latter, dressed in simple woolen shifts, outnumbered the former three or four to one. Slaves were mostly members of conquered tribes who’d been captured as booty. They were brought back in chains to Rome by the victorious legions to be sold at auction. Since Rome’s conquests ringed the Mediterranean, which its citizens called
mare nostrum
, “our sea”, there were slaves everywhere.

Marcus, like most citizens, gave little thought to the slaves. There was always the hope they could become citizens, through a noble deed, purchasing liberty after many years of savings, or emancipation by a grateful master. But the majority did not attain freedom, and they lived out their days serving those whose only difference from them was membership in a republic which boasted the most powerful and victorious army in the world.

Marcus himself was a prime example of why the Roman army drove all before it and swallowed enemies like a tidal wave clearing a shore. Discipline was the keynote of his life. Like all Roman soldiers he could march sixteen miles a day on sparse rations and then build a camp at night before he went to sleep. He was a war machine, trained and expert in the art of battle, and everything else in his life was secondary. He had not seen his family for years, had no friends outside the army, and had never been in love. His attitude toward women had always been utilitarian: desire was expected, procreation necessary, but letting the emotions overmaster the soul seemed foolish, even shameful. He was handsome, not to mention a highly decorated soldier, and he had never lacked female companionship. But a special attachment was something he’d never had the time or the inclination to pursue.

Marcus lifted his tunic away from his neck with a forefinger, then grimaced as he bent to remove a pebble from his sandal. Lately an unfamiliar loneliness had been stealing over him, making him somehow dissatisfied with the
spartan army existence which had previously sustained him. Maybe he had just been at war too long, or perhaps it was time for a change in his life. He didn’t know, but this new feeling left him vaguely unsettled and searching for something more, something different.
 

He didn’t like it.

Marcus glanced around him, taking in the color and confusion which had always made him glad to return to Rome. Corsica was a rural backwater by comparison, and he looked forward each year to winter camp near the city, where a short walk would take him into the bustling throng that eddied around him now. A builder lumbered by, leading a string of mules laden with materials, and two dogs snapped at each other in his wake, snarling over a bone. A funeral passed on the other side of the street, its hired mourners rending their garments, as a poet read his latest work aloud before a book shop. In a covered portico to his left a painter did portraits, selling them off to the passersby, and a merchant offered pearls and bronzes from India as well as Tyrian purple dye to color the toga hems of the wealthy. Marcus took it all in, wondering why it didn’t cheer him as it always had in the past.

“Good day, Centurion,” said the stable owner as he walked past Marcus, leading a horse into the street. “Are you in the market for some excellent horseflesh? I have a new Arabian that’s a beauty. Free stabling for the winter until the army goes on the march.”

Marcus shook his head, smiling. “I’ve heard about you, Postumus. You’re always trying to pawn some nag off on an unsuspecting soldier. By the time the horse comes up lame the army is in the Alps and you’re in the Suburra spending your sesterces on the Aquitanian whores.”

The stable owner made a sad face. “My reputation is undeserved. The competition spreads vicious rumors. I’m surprised an officer like yourself listens to such gossip.”

“You stung my friend Septimus, old man,” Marcus replied, laughing. “You picked the wrong mark, he has an influential family and a big mouth.”

“I sold Septimus Valerius a very fine mare. It’s not my fault if he ran the animal into the ground.”

Marcus bit his lip. “The animal had rickets.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Septimus goes into the forum every morning since the army’s been in camp to tell everyone about it,” Marcus added, folding his arms, grinning.

The stableman yanked the horse he was leading after him and stalked off, mumbling to himself.

Marcus chuckled, then glanced up at the sun and noticed that it was almost overhead. The
apparitor
standing on the steps of the old curia would soon give the signal for the trumpets to be sounded, announcing the noon hour. The Senate session would then end. He went on his way again, briskly this time, his garnet cloak dangling down his back from its metal shoulder clasps, his hobnailed leather sandals clicking when they struck a stone.

He did not want to keep Caesar waiting.

* * *

Julia Rosalba Casca entered the atrium of the shrine of Vesta and set down the copper vessels she’d been carrying, filled with water from the sacred spring of Egeria, near the
Porta Capena.
It would be used for the ceremonial sprinkling and sweeping of the altar to Vesta. Julia performed the water carrying twice a month, sharing the duty with the other Vestals, and she was always glad when it was over and she was back at the temple. The noise and the crowds of the city gave her a headache. Even though her litter was preceded by a lictor and she was guarded at all times, there was something unnerving about the press and clamor of all that humanity, reminding her of everything she was missing as she passed her life in the quiet and seclusion of the temple.

Julia was seventeen, and had been in the service of Vesta for seven years. She’d been taken from her family just before her tenth birthday and solemnly admitted to the Vestals by the chief priest. He cut off her hair and, addressing her as “beloved”, pronounced the solemn formula of initiation. Since then she had lived in the opulent hall, or Atrium, of Vesta which adjoined the temple and learned to perform her duties; the study comprised her first decade of service. During the second she would practice them fully and during the third instruct the new Vestals. At the age of forty she would be free to go, but in fact few Vestals ever left the service, since after so many years marriage and children were unlikely and it was difficult to give up the privileges and honors of a Vestal’s life. They lived in great luxury and were attended by many servants in return for their guarding the sacred fire of Vesta. This perpetual flame was thought to keep the city of Rome free from plague and foreign invaders. But to be worthy of this honor the Vestals must remain virgins; they faced death by public execution if they violated their vow of chastity.

Julia barely remembered her initiation into Vestal service. It seemed so long ago. What she remembered was that she had not been consulted about the decision. Her grandfather, Gnaeus Casca, had pressed her father to dedicate the life of his younger daughter to Vestal service. This was considered a great honor and brought even more distinction to an already distinguished family. Julia’s older sister, Larthia, had been married to a provincial governor when she was fifteen so it fell to Julia to fulfill the Vestal role.

She had been denied the future comforts of marriage and children when she barely had her second teeth.

There were compensations, to be sure. The Vestals were national icons, treated with veneration when they appeared in public or to officiate at ceremonies. They were kept at State expense in high style. The
Atrium Vestae
, where they lived, was marble floored and hung with Persian silks. Its tiled bath house was fed by a hot spring and a staff of seamstresses, hairdressers and German masseuses lived there permanently. Each Vestal had her own suite of rooms with an antechamber for her personal maid. Vestals were given the best education in order to record wills and official documents for a population that was largely illiterate. Julia commanded several languages, Greek and Persian as well as Latin, and she could play stringed instruments, dance and sing and recite the ancient poetry of Homer and the modern poetry of Virgil.

But whenever Julia went out in public, she would look longingly at the young wives buying fish for dinner, at the young mothers shepherding unruly children. Her gaze would linger as her lictor walked before her litter, clearing a path for the Vestal through the bowing crowd.

At times, she would have to glance away, her vision clouded by tears.