The River God's Vengeance(82)

We came out into the gigantic half bowl of the auditorium and gazed around. Overhead the sky was brilliantly blue, the tall masts stood as always, and the seats looked ready to receive the audience. Above the stage, the scaena towered three stories, all ornamental architecture, gilded pilasters, artificial wreaths draping the balconies, and everything bright with new paint.

Below the seats and the stage, though, was nothing but water. I wondered if I was seeing another trick of the light because this water, instead of being brown like the water outside, was a dark red color, like drying blood.

“Let it not be an omen!” I said, using the old formula Lepidus had spoken a few hours earlier.

“What makes it look like that?” Hermes asked. “Is it the paint they were using?”

“I don’t think so.” I stepped out into the orchestra where the senators would sit during a performance, stooped and scooped up a handful of mud. It was like damp, red sand, full of larger fiakes and irregular chunks, all of the red color.

“What is it?” Hermes asked. He carried my toga rolled up over one shoulder, his metal-shod stick held at its balance point in one hand.

“It’s dissolved brick,” I told him. “After sitting here for several years deteriorating, this fiood was all it took to turn the foundation of this building into mud.” There was another, even longer and louder groan, and the whole theater seemed to shudder.

“Aedile Metellus!” A portly man came waddling from the false architecture of the scaena onto the stage area. “How good of you to come!” He walked to one end of the stage and descended the three or four steps to the orchestra without hesitation. “Quite a mess, eh? Well, at last we meet.” He sloshed straight up to me and grasped both my hands in his. Hermes stood ready, his eyes scanning the nearby corridors. Scaurus appeared to be about forty, with a heavy thatch of hair gone white already. His cheeks were fat, and they wrinkled deeply as he beamed. Above the cheeks, his eyes were as steely as Caesar’s.

“Yes, I have been wishing to speak with you, Aemilius Scaurus,” I said. “I—”

“Please, Aedile, we have little time for pleasantries, I fear to say. Come with me for just a moment; I have something to show you.” He turned and walked into the corridor through which we had followed the actor-playwright Syrus only the morning before. I followed the fat back before me, one hand on the hilt of my dagger, while Hermes followed after me, walking backward most of the way to keep an eye on the entrance we had just used.

We came out onto the balcony area that overlooked the river, and my stomach took a turn as I saw that we stood on what appeared to be a sinking ship. The river had risen right up to the level of the fioor on which we stood. Back on the City side of the theater the water was still; but here, in the most acute curve of the river bend, Father Tiber was turbulent, and the balcony vibrated like a plucked lyre string. It was very nearly as upsetting a sight and situation as I had ever experienced.

Scaurus turned, smiled, and leaned easily upon the railing. “You see, Aedile? I fear that holding your Games here will be out of the question. I am going to have to condemn this building and pull it down, as so many old-fashioned senators have demanded I do anyway. A pity, it was the finest Rome has ever seen. No help for it now, though, don’t you agree?”

So he was going to make it a test of nerve, leaning there as if he were standing by the pool in his own house, trusting his patrician aplomb to overwhelm my plebeian effrontery. Well, I had been in tight spots he had never dreamed of. None quite like this one, though.

“Now,” he went on, “of course I shall refund the money you paid out to rent the theater for the year, and I agree I really should pay you a little extra for your inconvenience.” He pretended to count on his fingers, then looked upward as if he were adding up figures in his head. “Shall we say, ten times what you paid?”

“Good try, Scaurus,” I told him, “but we’re a little past the bribery stage now. And the statue was a clever move, but it won’t work, either.”

“Isn’t it exquisite?” he said, a salacious note slurring his words, like a man describing his favorite sexual practice. “I have many more of them, and you may have your pick. I agree, art is so much more dignified than mere money.”

“Forget it, Scaurus,” I said, my words almost drowned out by another groan from the tortured building. I turned slightly and saw that the Sublician Bridge was packed with people now; and upriver, a little farther away, I could see a similar crowd on the Aemilian. Father Tiber was giving them a real spectacle today.