Oracle of the Dead(30)

“Did you leave those?” I asked, pointing to the altar.

“No, I hardly ever come here. The local folk keep up their traditions, though. These are probably offerings to someone nobody five miles away ever heard of.”

“What do the arrows signify?” Vespillo wanted to know.

“I’ve no idea. Maybe some hunter wanting to find game here.”

We ventured farther into the valley, which I now saw was actually a cleft in almost solid stone, perhaps left over from some upheaval of the earth such as might be wrought by the nearby volcano. Over the ages, the stone had acquired a covering of soil and from this soil sprang the dense growth and twining vines that shaded us. Everywhere, though, crags of solid stone thrust upward through the growth like the snaggled teeth of some long-dead dragon.

“It’s over here somewhere,” Porcia said, poking about in the undergrowth. “Ah, here it is.”

We went to stand beside her. She stood on the brink of a broad, circular well, perhaps three yards in diameter. It merited better than her description of it as a hole in the ground. The rim was of finely cut stone, unornamented but bearing the remains of what was once a fine polish. Careful of my clothes, I knelt on the rim stone and leaned over. A few feet down, the cut stone ended and the well was carved into solid rock. The walls were smooth and the bottom was lost in obscurity.

“I think it’s just an old well,” Porcia said. “It must’ve gone dry and was abandoned.”

“Awfully wide for a well,” Vespillo said.

“A sacred well gets more attention than the ordinary sort,” I pointed out. “We have more than one in Rome as elaborate as this one.” I looked about and found a black stone streaked with green the size of my fist. I dropped it in and a few moments later was rewarded with a solid thunk.

“See?” Porcia said. “It’s dry.”

“So it would seem. Did the old peasant’s callers claim any extraordinary results arising from their visits here?”

“Not that I ever heard of. It’s a mundus, not an oracle. I think they just left offerings and prayers and good wishes for their dead.”

I was vaguely disappointed and unsatisfied, and I wondered, as we passed the little altar on the way back to our litter, why people had left arrows there.





5





FOR BREAKFAST WE HAD CHERRIES IN cream to go along with the fresh, hot bread I insisted on every morning. Cherries had been introduced into Italy only about seventeen years before this time, and they were still something exotic and a bit of a luxury. Lucullus had brought cherry trees from Asia as part of his triumphal loot after his victories over Mithridates and Tigranes. He had planted a lavish orchard, and had made seedlings and cuttings available at nominal cost.

Julia finished a dish of them and called for more. “Long after people have forgotten who Mithridates was,” she said wistfully, “they will praise Lucullus for the gift of cherries.” She was passionately fond of the little fruit, and had a cook whose only employment was dreaming up new ways to prepare and present them.

“An estimable accomplishment,” I admitted. “It’s been my misfortune to campaign in places already well picked over, or else that have nothing of culinary interest to offer. Britannia is just more of Gaul, only colder, and the Germans eat little except meat.” These two being the only places I had visited ahead of most Romans. Egypt and Cyprus and the rest were well-worn territory where we’d already looted whatever was useful.

Along with her second helping, Julia received a letter. She opened it and read while popping cherries into her mouth. As usual she took her time. From Uncle Julius she had learned the useful skill of reading silently, something I had never fully mastered. I dipped hot bread in a pot of honey and waited, knowing that it was no use trying to hurry her. From the intensity of her attention, I knew that it was something significant. Making me wait was annoying to me, something she enjoyed.

“Well, who’s it from?” I demanded at last.

“It’s from my aunt Atia.” This woman was actually a niece of Julius Caesar, married to Caius Octavius, who had been proconsul in Macedonia and had died about eight years previously. Octavius had been what we called novus homo, a “new man,” meaning that he was the first of his family to achieve curule rank at Rome. After his death she had married the very distinguished Lucius Marcius Philippus.

“Well, what does she say?”

“She tells me that young Octavius is the darling of the public. You’ll recall that he delivered the eulogy at his grandmother’s funeral last year. Everyone was astonished that so young a boy could speak with such dignity and eloquence.”