The River God's Vengeance(24)
“You won’t break my nose again?”
“As long as you don’t grab me by the balls like last time.”
Within a few seconds, he had me pinned to the ground with an arm twisted behind me and his knee against my spine.
“You’ve been away from the legions too long, Decius,” he said, letting me up. “When you were first back from Gaul, it took me twice that long to pin you.” Then he yelped as I grabbed his heel in both hands and heaved upward with my whole body. He landed on his back, and the breath went out of him in a great whoosh.
“Never underestimate age and treachery,” I warned him. “Youth and strength are no match for them.”
“I’ll remember,” he said, launching himself from the sand like a Hyrkanian tiger, catching me around the waist and making me fiy.
Some time later we limped from the pit, completely covered with sweat, oily sand, and clotting blood, most of the latter still pouring from my nose. True to his word, he hadn’t quite broken it. Hermes began efficiently stripping the mixture from my skin with the bronze scraper, snapping the accumulation with a practiced fiick of the wrist into the box provided for the purpose. Antonius’s slave was doing the same for him.
After all the violent activity, the cold bath felt almost good. The tepid bath was better yet, and the hot bath was like ascending to Olympus. The Falernian helped, too. It was considered bad form to drink at the baths, but I was never terribly conventional and compared to Antonius I was the soul of decorum. The young man was swiftly living up to his family’s reputation as a pack of violent criminals. He was enormous fun, though, and consequently very popular.
“When do you depart for Gaul?” I asked him.
“Not for another nine months,” he said unhappily. “Everyone insists I have to wait until after the elections. I don’t see why. It’s not as if there’s any question about my getting the quaestorship.”
“It’s because there’s been too much fiouting of the rules already, and it makes people uneasy. First Pompey gets all his commands without working his way up the cursus honorum, then Caesar gets an unprecedented five-year command, which it looks like he’s going to have extended. It looks bad. If a mere quaestor just starting out his career can ignore the rules, people will start thinking it means a return to the bad old days with Romans fighting Romans for position and power.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “We have to keep up appearances for the sake of the mob, as if the Senate and its old-fashioned rules still had any use in the real world.” He downed another slug of unwatered wine.
I sighed. How typical of an Antonine. They were as bad as Claudians. Worse, even.
A patter of sandaled feet announced the arrival of my messenger. Bare feet are the rule in the balneum, but a messenger is exempted from most of the rules of protocol. This one wore the livery of the guild: a brief, white tunic that left one shoulder bare; a round, brimmed hat with little silver wings attached; high-strapped sandals with silver wings on the heels; and a white wand. At this time the messengers were an independent company working on a State contract, much like the lictors.
While he waited I dictated a letter to the quaestor at Ostia, requiring him to find Lucius Folius’s factor in that city and deliver him a summons to report to Rome for questioning. Hermes copied the message on a wax tablet and held it out for me to stamp with my signet ring. Then he closed the wooden leaves and tied them together.
“Ride hard and you will be in Ostia well before dark,” I said, as the messenger tucked the tablet into his satchel made of waterproof sealskin. He knew perfectly well how long it took to make the fourteen miles from Rome to Ostia, but he was accustomed to people giving him unneeded advice. He saluted and ran off, silver fiashing from his winged heels.
“What’s this about?” Antonius asked, so I told him about the late Lucius Folius and the trouble his near-anonymity was causing me.
“Folius? I think I’ve met that bastard. He’s from Bovillae, I think. Was, I should say. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, he was a client of my uncle’s. The fellow was more than my uncle could stomach, and he let him know that he was unwelcome.”
“Antonius Hybrida found someone too vicious for his taste?” I said, aghast.
Young Antonius laughed heartily. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” His uncle, Antonius Hybrida, was as depraved a rogue and bandit as ever left high office in Rome to go on to do even worse things in the provinces. Cruel and corrupt, he was the epitome of all things Antonian.
“Actually, it wasn’t Folius so much as that iron-plated bitch of a wife he had. Rome’s a better place today for her passing. Once, when they had Hybrida in their house for dinner, she said the duck was overdone, or something of the sort, and she had the cook dragged in. The poor fool was a Greek, trained in Sybaris, cost a fortune. She had a big slave jam the whole duck down the man’s throat, then she had him trussed up to a triclinium wall and fiogged to death in front of the guests. Spattered blood on everyone’s best clothes.”