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Saturnalia(79)

By:John Maddox Roberts


I crouched so that our eyes were on the same level. “Furia, I want some answers, and I won’t leave this booth until I have them.”

“Do you really believe I will betray my religion?” she said.

“I won’t ask you to. I need to catch a murderer. It is the death of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer I am investigating, but the same killer murdered Harmodia. She was the leader of your cult, was she not? Don’t you want to see her avenged?”

“She has been!” Her eyes were as steady on mine as those of a bronze statue, and about as informative.

“I don’t understand.”

“There is much you don’t understand, Senator.”

“Then let’s talk about what I know. I know that Harmodia was selling poison to a Greek physician named Ariston of Lycia. Some months back she sold him a slow-working concoction you veneficae call ‘the wife’s friend.’ ” At the name her eyes widened fractionally. I had managed to surprise her. “It was this poison that killed Celer. Not long after he died, Harmodia was murdered by a killer who wanted to hide his tracks. Within a very few days the physician was dead as well, supposedly by accident; but we know better, don’t we, Furia?”

“Harmodia was foolish!” she said. “She dealt too much with that Greek. It is one thing to sell a woman the means to get rid of a husband who beats her or a son an easy way to dispose of the rich father who takes too long to die. What are such people to us? But the Greek was an evil man. He killed those who entrusted themselves to his care. Even worse, he sold his murdering services to others.”

It seemed that even poisoners had their own code of ethics, and Ariston had overstepped the boundaries.

“Why do you say that Harmodia has already been avenged?” I asked her.

“The Greek killed her.”

“Are you certain of that?”

“Of course. He was a great and respectable man.” These words were spoken with the withering sarcasm possible only to an Italian peasant or Cicero on one of his best days. “He could not afford to let Harmodia expose him, so he killed her.”

“Was Harmodia blackmailing Ariston? Did she demand money in return for her silence?”

Furia stared at me for a long time. “Yes, she did. I told you she was foolish. And she was greedy.”

“How did she expect to expose him without attracting the awful punishment meted out to a venefica?”

Furia actually chuckled. “She was no Roman politician. She did not threaten to accuse him in the assemblies. She would simply let his deeds be known to many people in many places. He never told her who he was poisoning, but we have our ways of learning such things. She would be far away before he could implicate her.”

“A friend of mine, also a Greek physician but an honest one, told me that the deadliest weapon in Rome today is the spoken word.”

“Then your friend is a wise man. Some things are best not spoken of.”

“Tell me, Furia,” I said, “about your cult. …”

“My religion!” she corrected vehemently. “Your spying was a profanation, and you should have died for it.”

“That,” I said, “is something that has me puzzled. While I abhor your rites, I recognize that yours is an ancient religion and one native to Italy.”

“It is that. My foremothers practiced our rituals long before you Romans arrived. Even you adopted them before you began to imitate the Greeks from the south. You Romans call human sacrifice evil, yet you allow men to fight to the death in your funeral games.”

“That is different,” I told her. “It is for another purpose, and the men aren’t always killed. You must understand the distinction between …”

“I spit on your distinctions! On the eve of the Feast of Saturnus you saw us sacrifice a slave. In the old days, before your censors made it a criminal offence, the sacrifice was a free volunteer. In times of terrible crisis, a prince of our people would willingly pour his blood into the mundus for the good of the people. What are your slaughters of bulls and rams and boars to a sacrifice like that?”

“Be that as it may, venerable and hallowed as your religion is, why do you allow the likes of those patrician women to attend? You must know that they come only for the excitement, for the decadent thrill of doing something forbidden. I know that you practice your sacrifice as a holy rite pleasing to your gods. Why then do you allow your religion to be defiled by a foreign people who enjoy it as something evil?”

“Isn’t it obvious, Senator?” She smiled knowingly. “They are our protection. I observed before that you bring no officers to arrest me and throw me into prison. Is it not exactly because of those loathsome ladies? They are most highly placed. This, too, is an ancient tradition, Roman. You have your King of Fools on Saturnalia. These women play the same role, although we don’t tell them that. And being women, their presence does not pollute our rites, as yours did.”