The River God's Vengeance(3)

“By the way, speaking of my children”—he looked around to be sure that no one was eavesdropping—”keep this to yourself for a while, but the family has agreed that my daughter is to marry Pompey.”

“Are you serious? We’ve been fighting Pompey for years!” I was more than a bit put out that I hadn’t been let in on the deliberations. Despite my age, dignity, and experience, the elders of my family still thought me too young and unreliable to attend their councils.

“It’s been decided that it is time to renegotiate some alliances.”

He didn’t have to spell it out for me. The family had decided that Caesar was now the more dangerous man.

“But Pompey’s supporters have been calling for a dictatorship! We’re not going to support them, are we? I’ll go into voluntary exile first.”

He sighed. “Decius, if you only knew how many of the older men have been calling for your exile anyway. No, don’t go all dramatic on us; we’re going to work something out that will satisfy everyone.”

“I’ve heard that sort of talk before. I believe in the principle of compromise, but if you’ve figured out an office between consul and dictator, I’d love to hear about it.”

“Give it time,” he said. “Just find out who’s responsible for this,” he made a broad gesture toward the heap of rubble, “and let the higher councils deal with Pompey.”

Pompey was proconsul of both Spanish provinces that year, but they were peaceful so he let his legates run them while he stayed in Italy to oversee the chaotic grain supply— and, it seemed, to negotiate an advantageous marriage.

I should have expected it. A similar bout of fence-mending a few years before had resulted in my betrothal and eventual marriage to Julia, Caesar’s niece. I shuddered to contemplate how Julia would react to this change in the family position.

All through the day the public slaves labored over the wreckage, loading the rubble onto carts to be hauled out to one of the City’s refuse dumps, most of them landfills to create level ground for the ever-expanding suburbs beyond the ancient walls. These slaves were not actually owned by the State, which owned relatively few slaves at this time. They were owned by the publicanus, who held the contract for this sort of work. The carts and oxen were his as well.

The man himself stood by one of the carts, making notes with a stylus on a wax tablet, apparently keeping a talley of the carts and their loads. He was a big, tough-looking specimen, as unskilled labor contractors often are. Their slaves are the dregs of the market, sometimes criminals or insurrectionists sold off in gangs by foreign kings. He nodded curtly as I approached him.

“Good day, Aedile. Some mess, eh?”

“Very much so, and I find myself wondering why.” I rapped a fiat facing brick. “Everything is new and seemingly sound.”

“Looks so, doesn’t it?” He handed the tablet to a secretary and took one of the bricks from the cart. Pinching off a bit of mortar, he squeezed it between a thick finger and thumb, where it crumbled to powder. “Cheap mortar, for one thing, but that’s not why it fell. See, they always make the part above ground look good, else how are they going to get tenants to move in? But I’ll wager that when we get to the basement, we’ll find rotten timber and not enough of it. The upright supports are supposed to be spaced no more than an Egyptian cubit apart, but I’ve seen them spaced so you can lie down comfortably between them. The foundations won’t be dug deep enough, and they’ll be resting on river mud instead of a man’s height in gravel, as the code requires. Where you can’t see it readily, the builders cut every cost they can.”

“Disgraceful,” I said, disgusted but far from shocked. “How do they get away with it? Why don’t all the buildings collapse?”

He gave me a smile of genial cynicism. “Usually they don’t last long enough. How often does an insula like this last as long as ten years before a fire gets it? And who’s going to notice the code violations then?”

“Every builder in Rome should be fiogged in the Circus,” I said.

“Well, that’s the aediles’ job, isn’t it?” His implication was clear: Every one of my predecessors in office had been bribed to look the other way when these death traps had been erected.

“I may need you to testify in court,” I told him.

“Always at the service of Senate and People,” he said with that marvelous, toadying humility that only large, brutal men can display when dealing with superiors.

“Your name?”

“Marcus Caninus, sir.”