The King's Gambit(78)

As I was dragged away, I shouted over my shoulder, “Chain her to a wall by a neck-ring! Double-riveted! She’ll get out of anything else!”





12


THE MAMERTINE PRISON WAS NOT one of the show places of Rome. It was a cave below the Capitol. I spent two days there, alone, which shows how diligent Roman authorities were in apprehending criminals. The place was cold and cheerless, its only light coming through the iron grating of the overhead hole through which I had been lowered. At least, for the first time since the whole mess had started, I had time to sit and think, free from distractions and assaults.

I spent much of this time cursing myself for being an idiot, especially where Claudia was concerned. The treacherous bitch had played me expertly, knowing a fool when she saw one. It had been the night in her hideaway, with the multitalented Chrysis, that had thoroughly befuddled my investigation. Aside from the confusion and general embarrassment, the fact that they had both been with me the night Sergius Paulus was killed distracted my suspicion. But the eunuch had said that the earliest light of dawn was visible when the cessation of his master’s snoring woke him. Chrysis had slipped away and killed him while I slept.

I found myself wondering how the Consuls would handle this. Marius would simply have had me killed by his thugs. Sulla would have put my name on a proscription list, to be killed by the first citizen who found an opportunity to do so and claim a part of my estate. But the times were more settled now, and they would probably wish to go by constitutional forms. Since I had not committed a capital crime, perhaps a discreet poisoning might be in order.

There was, of course, the possibility that Publius Claudius might die. Gratifying as the thought was, it would lay me open to a charge of murder. Unlike the magistrates, a mere commissioner had no immunity from prosecution. Freeborn men were rarely condemned to death for murder, especially if there was a brawl involved. Grown Roman men were supposed to be able to take care of themselves. If Publius couldn’t manage to kill me first in a perfectly open and straightforward brawl, he deserved little sympathy from a court.

That would have been the case in normal times, at any rate. The only thing I had in my favor was that the Consuls were trying to maintain the pretense that these were normal times. I would most likely get off with banishment. To me, that seemed little better than a death sentence. I had always loathed being away from Rome. If I were to be banished, there was the prospect of an eventual return. Pompey and Crassus could easily fall out, or Hortalus might wish to curry extra favor with my family, or they might all die, which was not at all unlikely. Or, Lucullus might come home a trium-phator and get himself a Consulship, and remember that I had tried to do him a good turn. One should never trust the gratitude of powerful men, but at that time I was desperate to find any sort of happy outcome to my predicament.

My jailer was a tongueless public slave who provided little company or diversion. I found myself wishing that some felon would be thrown down into the prison with me. Anything was better than being alone with my thoughts. A streetwise thug might know what was going on in the city, whether there was any public sentiment in my favor.

It had looked promising in the Forum and in the Basilica, but the Roman public is endlessly distractible. News of a defeat in the East or an earthquake at Messina would do it. If he wished to go to the expense, Crassus could suddenly remember a dead relative who had to be honored and declare a day of races in the Circus. That would cause the public to forget me entirely. At least the weather in recent days had been too cold and wet for racing. Besides, Pompey and Crassus were both Blues, and a victory for the Greens might be interpreted as a bad omen for them.

Of course, it never occurred to me that I might simply be too unimportant for them to worry themselves about greatly. Long after dusk on the second day, I heard a voice hailing me from above.

“Are you down there, idiot?”

“I haven’t gone anyplace, Father,” I answered.

“A rope is being dropped to you. Grab it and you will be pulled up.”

It was black as the bowels of Cerberus, and I stumbled about on the straw for quite a while before I encountered the rope. I grasped one of the knots and tugged. Up I went like a water bucket as the rope creaked through its pulley. There was a hot wire of pain where my side had been cut but I was getting used to that. The room was illuminated by a small torch. By its light my father looked me over critically.

“You could do with a bath and a shave,” he said.

“Bathhouses and barbers are in short supply down there,” I pointed out.

He was not impressed. “That’s unfortunate, because you are about to appear in the Curia.”