The River God's Vengeance(26)

“Of course I didn’t handle the bodies, but the heads didn’t seem deformed; and there was no blood soaking their hair.”

“There need not be an obvious injury. I would have to palpate the skulls to be sure. Where are the bodies?”

“Since nobody stepped forward to claim them, I had them taken to the Libitinarii by the Temple of Venus Libitina. I’d be most grateful if you would examine them and send me a report.”

“I will be most happy to be of service. You have no idea how boring it gets here with nothing to do save patching up fools who refuse to take care of themselves. I will go right now before someone comes along and reduces them to ashes.”

“I cannot express my gratitude.”

“You’ll think of something.” He called for his slaves and his litter and I went back outside, where I found Hermes watching the sparring practice.

“You spend half your time here as it is,” I reminded him. “I’d think you get to see enough of this.”

“I’ve hardly been here at all since you took office,” he protested. “Anyway, I train here in the mornings. I don’t get to see the men who train in the afternoons. And there are at least two hundred here who’ve arrived since my last visit.”

It was true. The swordsmen were coming in from all over Italy and from as far away as Sicily, where some of the best schools of the day were located. It wasn’t just for the upcoming festival season, though. Between bouts, most of them hired out to the politicians as bodyguards, although their duties more often involved breaking up the rallies of their political opponents, intimidating voters, disrupting speeches, and the like. It made for the sort of rioting we had witnessed that morning. Worse, it affected the quality of the fights because the men were too busy being hired thugs to train properly.

“Oh, by the way,” Hermes said, “Titus Milo is here. He says he’d like to speak with you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, exasperated.

“I just did.” It was no use. “He said wait until you were finished with your business. It’s not urgent.” He led me to a corner of the yard where a number of men sat around a small fountain. On two folding chairs sat Milo and Statilius, the owner. Several giants stood behind Milo or sat on the edge of the fountain. I recognized them as his personal bodyguard, all of them famed champions of the arena, now retired and riding high on Milo’s political fortunes. Milo could have outfought any of them, but his current dignity as ex-praetor and candidate for the consulship made personal combat in the streets unbecoming. These days he left most of the head breaking to his subordinates. He was as splendidly handsome as ever, but I was astonished for no good reason to see that his hair was fiecked with gray. I had thought Milo immune to that sort of thing.

“Greetings, Aedile,” Milo said, standing to take my hand. In some ways he was the most powerful man in Rome at that time, but he was as punctilious as Cato about observing the proprieties of office. “We’ve just been discussing some matters that concern you.”

“How is that?” I asked. It seemed that everything concerned me since I had taken office.

“First off, these men of mine,” he indicated the thugs, who nodded curtly, “have all volunteered to fight in your munera at a nominal rate. I’ll send their contracts to your office in the next few days, but you may go ahead and publish their names in your announcements.”

“That is most generous,” I said to them. “Metellus Celer was a very great Roman, and the people will expect extraordinary magnificence at his funeral games. With such famous names on the bill, their success is all but assured.” They grinned and said they were glad to honor the memory of so great a man. Of course, they weren’t doing it for Celer or for me. They were doing it for Milo, who was my friend.

In truth, the risk they took was not as great as many people imagine. They would fight only with champions of equal rank, where it was no disgrace to be defeated. They had so many fans, they would all but certainly be spared in defeat. It was the tyros on their first bouts and the men who had not been fighting long enough to gain a following who suffered the high mortality rates.

Still, men who had been spared, and even men who won, sometimes bled to death from a bad cut; and a trifiing wound could mortify and bring death as surely as a severed artery, only after weeks of suffering. So it was no small thing for men like these to leave a prosperous retirement to reenter the arena. Usually, a single pair of retired champions to top off a day’s combats was the most an aedile could afford. They could cost as much as all the rest of the day’s combatants together. But the people would rather see two such fight than any number of half-trained tyros. To have so many, and at a low price, was the best news I had had in months.