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The River God's Vengeance(61)

By:John Maddox Roberts


“Might I have a look at his notes?”

She rose and went to the desk with its honeycomb of scrolls. After a bit of searching, she unrolled a scroll and took from it a few sheets that had been stuck into it for safekeeping. These she handed to me. At a glance I spotted a few familiar names among some verbiage that told me he planned to make his oration in the fiorid Asiatic style, then going out of fashion but still practiced. This was going to take some work.

“Might I take these with me?” I asked her. “I will return them as soon as possible. I know you want to preserve your husband’s papers for your sons.”

“I have no sons,” she said, standing, this interview at an end. “If you can bring his murderers to justice, you may burn his whole library on their funeral pyres for all I care.”

She saw me to the door through the crowd of refuge seekers, and I took a hasty leave. It was almost dark as Hermes and I found ourselves on the thronged street outside.

“Back home?” Hermes said.

“Not yet.” He put on an exaggerated look of fatigue so I told him, “You’re going to like our next visit.”

“Where are we going?”

“To a whorehouse.”

His face split in a broad grin. “It’s about time!”





10


IT WAS TIME FOR ANOTHER long walk; and while the hour was late and the time of year dismal, it might as well have been Saturnalia. The push to high ground was in full force, but there was no panic. It takes a great deal to panic Romans, and a mere fiood was not among the things that upset them greatly. Even an approaching enemy only makes them a little nervous. A big fire or an earthquake will unnerve them completely, but little else. They do riot from time to time out of anger. At least they used to, before the First Citizen made things so tame.

But this time there was an odd, almost festive atmosphere to the dislocated populace. Whatever damage and devastation the event might portend, it was a break in routine, and such a break puts most people in a giddy mood. Men knew they would not have to go to their work tomorrow, if they had any. Their wives knew that they would not have to make the long trudge to the fountain for water, then carry the heavy jar up the steep stairs of the insula. Children knew that there would be no schoolmaster to face in the morning.

Perhaps there would be no home to return to afterward, but that was a worry for later on. For now they were doing something different, seeing friends and relatives they hadn’t seen in a while, maybe spending a few days in a garden or on a rooftop with strangers. There would be gambling and storytelling to pass the time. Perhaps the men would be drafted into work gangs to stave off damage or clear rubble. It would be something different in their otherwise dull lives.

The best thing about a fiood was that, unlike a fire or an earthquake, it killed few people outright. It was easy to get out of the way of rising water. Mortality would come later, from exposure and disease and, I greatly feared, contaminated water. Those clogged, backed-up drains, now overfiowing, would spread filth throughout the City. Anyone who has ever endured a siege knows that filth and pollution breed disease. This may be because, as some believe, evil spirits inhabit foul-smelling things or because uncleanliness angers the gods or for some reason entirely unrelated to the supernatural world; but it is irrefutable. It is well that these people are enjoying themselves, I thought, because many of them are going to die in the weeks and months to come.

The crowd thinned as we crossed the Forum. This, as I have mentioned, was once a swampy area, and already I saw murky, brown water bubbling from the street drains and a foul odor suffused the splendid place. Idly, I wondered what had become of old Charon and his boat. Doubtless, I thought, he had a refuge. He must have endured many fioods in his long years below the City.

The Forum Boarium and the area near the Circus Maximus were getting decidedly damp, and I was glad to climb the embankment and walk out onto the Sublician Bridge, which would remain well above the waterline throughout the fiood. The bridge was lined with gawkers, observing and commenting importantly upon the progress of Father Tiber’s rampage.

There was something unreal about the scene, and it wasn’t just the incongruously festive attitude of the citizens. I decided that it was the juxtaposition of the rising river with the clear sky and the unseasonable warmth. We always associate fioods with heavy rain. It was hard to believe that this was all the result of a wind from Africa and melting snow in mountains far away.

“If we cross the river,” Hermes said apprehensively, “we may not be able to get back to the City for days.”

“Nevertheless,” I assured him, “the Labyrinth is in the Trans-Tiber and that is where we must go. Don’t worry. The bridge will stay above water. If the river goes over the artificial embankment, it will settle in the low places. It may be deep in spots, but there will be little current. Look.” I pointed to the embankment, where already men were dragging small boats and barges cobbled together from scrap wood. “The river fishermen and other enterprising souls are already preparing to make some money ferrying people through the fiooded areas. We may have to get home by boat, but we will get home.”