The Sacrilege(85)

“Pompey is coming back down,” the man said. “Word spread an hour ago that he is planning something extraordinary!”

“He’s cut the banquet short!” I said. “It should go on until midnight!”

Milo grinned. “But then most of the citizens would be asleep and unable to admire their idol.”

“I have to get up there!” I shouted. “If I can’t get to the temple before the Senate breaks up, it will be days before they meet again!”

“And you don’t have days to live, at this rate,” Milo said. “Let’s see what we can do.” What Milo could do was considerable. He shouldered his way through the tight-packed mob almost as if it weren’t there, and I followed his broad back.

Feverishly, I thought about the usual triumphal honors enjoyed by a victorious general. Ordinarily, the day culminated with the banquet on the Capitol, at the end of which the triumphator descended the hill, escorted by the Senate, bearing torches to light his way. Lucullus, at the time of his triumph, had thrown his own banquet in his new garden, but I had not heard that Pompey had asked permission for a change of routine. Pompey, it seemed, was fond of his little surprises.

Halfway to the Capitol, we broke through the crowd. A mass of lictors held it back, holding their fasces obliquely, the way soldiers carry spears when they are controlling a mob.

“I must get to the temple!” I shouted at them.

“You may pass, Senator,” said a lictor, “but not your friend.” There is no one more officious than a lictor who has been given a little authority.

“You’re on your own,” Milo said cheerfully. “Try not to die foolishly.”

I began to trot up the hill. There was a great deal of milling about going on up there. The heat built up rapidly beneath my heavy toga, but I dared not throw it off. Running heavily armed into the massed Senate could mean real trouble. I stopped to catch my breath and brush the sweat from my face; then I saw what I had feared the most: a double line of torches coming toward me. I cursed mightily and resumed running toward the lights, so agitated that I didn’t notice that they moved rather oddly. As I neared them, I snatched the message tube from within my tunic and held it aloft.

“Noble Senators!” I screamed. “I must address you! Stop! Cnaeus Pompeius has no right to—” Then I stopped and gaped. The torches were not held by Senators wearing wreaths. The were carried by elephants, at least fifty of them.

Pompey had assembled his monsters atop the Capitol so that he could come down the hill in real style. Each elephant had a mahout straddling his neck, and behind each mahout was a wooden castle manned with youths and girls who were armed with baskets of flowers and trinkets to scatter among the onlookers.

The mahout on the lead elephant pointed at me with his goad and gabbled something. I stood transfixed by the bizarre spectacle, at risk of imminent trampling.

“Metellus, I knew you’d show up!” Broken from my trance, I looked up to see that the lead elephant’s castle wasn’t manned by any youths and maidens. It held Publius Clodius and some of his thugs. Whooping like a hunter who has started a hare, he snatched up a javelin and hurled it at me. I leapt nimbly aside, and the iron-shod point struck sparks from the pavement.

Toga flapping, I whirled and ran back down the hill. It seemed that I was spending a great deal of time running from Clodius these days, but an elephant gives a man an unfair advantage.

Another javelin sailed past me by a good margin. Clodius was always a wretched spearman. Of course, his swaying platform and the uncertain light could not have helped much. Ahead of me, the crowd of citizens and lictors gaped and pointed, at me and at the elephants. I couldn’t pick out Milo’s face among the mob.

I plowed through the lictors like a ship ramming through an enemy’s battle line. They stumbled trying to get out of my way as the crowd heaved back, instinctively wanting to avoid the path of the trumpeting, torchbearing monsters. Another javelin missed me, but I heard a scream as it impaled some unfortunate citizen.

The uproar grew deafening as half the mob tried to run away from the oncoming beasts while the other half surged forward to get a closer look. It was like one of those circus riots where a panic starts and hundreds of people get trampled. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the huge gray beast towering above the mob as Clodius poised his arm for another throw. Behind him, cheerful young people mounted on other elephants waved and threw their flowers and trinkets into the mob. He missed again.

I got all the way down to the Forum in this hallucinatory fashion. The mob and the elephants spilled into the great plaza close behind me, and despite the best efforts of the mahouts, the animals lost all cohesion and began to scatter amid the confusion. People screamed or laughed. All Rome loves an event like this. There was much fleeing from before the beasts, unnecessarily. Terrifying as they are to behold, elephants are actually quite careful where they step and rarely inflict more than a crushed toe. War elephants have to be trained to trample enemies, as it is not their natural behavior. Needless to say, this was not common knowledge in the Roman streets.