The King's Gambit(37)

It was a pair of caesti. Pugilism is the silliest of all combat arts. It consists of taking the human hand, with its multitude of tiny, frangible bones, and smashing it against the human skull, a most unyielding target. The old Greeks had alleviated the damage to their hands somewhat by inventing caesti, which in the beginning were mere straps of hide wrapped around the hands and forearms. Later, this dull sport had been livened up by the addition of bits of bronze on the striking surface. Later yet, plates were added. My pair were of the formidable Macedonian type called murmekes, also known as “limb-smashers.” These were reinforced with a thick strap of bronze across the knuckles. This in turn sported four pyramidal spikes, each a half-inch long. I had won these in a game of knucklebones during my army service, and had lugged them around with me ever since. At last, I thought, I might find a use for them. I dropped one back in the chest and from the other stripped the complicated forearm-straps, retaining only the part that wrapped around knuckles and palm. This I dropped into my tunic on the other side, so that I could slip it onto my left hand as I drew my dagger with my right.

Minutes after I had thus armed myself, Cato came in to tell me that a woman awaited outside. I ignored his reproachful look as I hurried out to join her. We had to wait for an immense hay-wagon to rumble and screech its way by before we could speak.

“Please come with me, sir,” she said. She was veiled, but nothing could disguise that insinuating voice or the snakelike way her body moved. There was sufficient moonlight, reflected from the whitewashed walls, to see fairly well.

I had flattered myself that I knew every street in Rome, but she soon had me in an unfamiliar area only a few minutes’ walk from my door. Truthfully, no person may truly know all of Rome. The city is large, and areas are leveled by fires or land speculators and rebuilt along new lines. This was an area of insulae, the new type of housing that had come into use as the expanding city crowded up against its ancient walls and there was no way to expand except upward. Five, six, even seven stories high towered these structures. The well-to-do had their apartments on the ground floor, where there was running water. The upper floors were occupied by the poor. These buildings had an unnerving habit of collapsing abruptly because of shoddy materials and inferior workmanship. The Censors kept passing laws regulating building standards, which the contractors persisted in flouting.

The faint light disappeared as we entered this district, for the insulae were so tall, and the streets so narrow, that the moon could only cast its rays from directly overhead, a period of only a few minutes each night.

Perhaps I should explain that in those days we had three types of streets in Rome. The itinera were only wide enough for people on foot. The acta were called “one-cart” streets because they were just wide enough to permit vehicular traffic. The viae were known as “two-cart” streets because it was possible for carts to pass one another on them. In those days, there were precisely two viae in all of Rome, the Via Sacra and the Via Nova, neither of which served the Subura. It is not much better now. Our Roman roads are the marvel of the whole world, but they begin outside the city gates. The streets of Rome are nothing more than our old rustic paths paved over. Visitors from Alexandria are always shocked.

Twice we saw wealthy men returning from late dinner parties, accompanied by torch-bearing slaves and bodyguards gripping wooden clubs in scar-knuckled fists. I sighed enviously, wishing that I were rich enough to own such an establishment. Not that I would have taken them on this night’s mission.

Abruptly, I felt Chrysis grip my arm and draw me into a recessed doorway. She must have had cat’s eyes to find the door, or to see me, for that matter. She scratched at the door, and from inside I could hear bolts being drawn. It opened and light flooded the street. Framed in the light stood Claudia.

“Come in, my dears,” she said, her voice a low purr that set my blood racing.

I stepped inside and Chrysis closed and rebolted the door. To my eyes, accustomed to the gloom outside, the light was dazzling at first. Lamps stood everywhere, some of them sporting seven or eight wicks, all of them burning perfumed oil. To make the best use of the limited space available in an insula, the apartment was not laid out like a conventional house, but instead had a single large room off the street entrance, with a few smaller rooms opening off the main one.

“Welcome, Decius,” Claudia said. She stood by a bronze statue of Priapus. The god’s immense phallus jutted forth, gleaming in the lamplight. Such statues ordinarily stood in gardens, but since the god was depicted in the act of lubricating his outsized member with oil from a pitcher, it was obvious that it was intended to be erotic rather than fructifying.