The Sacrilege(65)

“Up to your old activities again, eh? Are those human teeth marks I see on your face?”

“Actually, they belong to a rodent, a species of weasel, or perhaps a stoat.” His poking and prodding elicited the usual flares of agony. This was the part he liked.

“Well, I can stitch and patch you up enough to keep you alive and relatively mobile, but the ladies will shun your company for a few days. Speaking of ladies, who is Julia?”

I averted my eyes as the silent slaves brought in horse-hair sutures, wickedly curved needles and ornate bronze pliers.

“I was confused. I had a vision on the way here, and the last thing I saw was a lady of my acquaintance named Julia.”

“She must be exceptional, since you seem to prefer her company to mine despite your manifest need for my attentions. What sort of vision? I am not especially skilled in the interpretation of dreams, but I know of some skilled practitioners not far from here.”

“It wasn’t a real dream, but a sort of waking vision. I was aware of what was going on around me while it happened.” I spoke mainly to take my mind off his activities. I am not among those persons who believe that all their dreams are of great significance, and wish to tell you all about them, at great length. I rarely remember them, those I do remember are usually duller than my waking life, and such visions as the gods have given me have usually come to me under just such circumstances as these: wounds, blood loss or severe blows to the head.

I related my vision to Asklepiodes, and he sat facing me with chin in hand, murmuring occasional wise noises. When I had finished, he resumed his horrid labors.

“The appearance of persons with whom you have recently been involved is not at all unusual, even in the common or non-portentous dream,” he said. “But the appearance of a mythical beast is always of the highest significance. Does Cerberus have a significance among you that he does not have among Greeks?”

“None that I know of,” I said. “He is the watchdog of Pluto, who keeps the dead from leaving the underworld or the living from entering.”

“Pluto, then: How does he differ from Hades?”

“Well, besides being lord of the dead, he is also the god of wealth.”

“He is so among us, too, and by the same name, Pluto. That may be from confusion with Plutus, the son of Demeter, who is also a personification of wealth. But then, this may be because the name of both is derived from the very word for ‘wealth,’ which is—” He broke off when I squealed almost as Clodius had recently. In his pedantic reverie, he had dug a needle in too deep. “Oh, please forgive me.”

“You’re enjoying this,” I said.

“I always enjoy learned discourse,” he said, deliberately obtuse. “But it may be that wealth is behind all this.”

“It usually is, when men plot villainy,” I said. “But I think it may be more significant that Cerberus has three heads. One body, three heads; that is important.”

“You saw the heads of Pompey and Crassus, enemies you have come up against in the past. But the third was unclear?”

“Unclear, and the greatest of the three. How can that be? Who could be greater than Pompey and Crassus?” This, truly, seemed an impossibility.

“I don’t suppose it could be Clodius? You are rather obsessive about him.”

I almost laughed, but I knew how it would pull at the stitches. “No, not Clodius. He is a flunky and a criminal, nothing more.”

“Then what of the boy Appius Claudius Nero? What was he trying to give to you, and why did the three-part beast crush him?”

“That,” I said, “I would give a great deal to know.”





11

I woke up and immediately wished I hadn’t. Not only were my wounds screaming at me, but the night before, I had sought to promote sleep by draining a good-sized pitcher of cheap wine. I was now suffering the effects of both.

“Serves you right,” Hermes said. “Leaving me there like that, holding your toga while you ran like a mountain goat up those stairs.”

“You should have seen me on the flats,” I croaked. “Faster than a racehorse then. Silverwing on his best day couldn’t have touched me.”

“Those men might have killed me!” he said indignantly. Slaves like Hermes take things so seriously.

“Why would they have done that?” I said. “It was me they were after. I’m just glad that none of them thought to snatch my toga and you didn’t think to sell it.”

“You certainly have a low opinion of me!” he huffed.

“Yes, I know I’m probably wronging you, but just now I am not a friend to humanity. I feel like going out and upending a chamberpot all over a Vestal.” I got some breakfast in me and felt a tiny bit better. My morning calls went by in a fog, and I was about to leave for Celer’s when a new man arrived. It was the gap-toothed Gaul I had seen at the warehouse with Milo.