He flipped the switch on the music again, and walked out.
“He’s bluffing,” Caesarion said.
Brutus shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on. We’re supposed to shake in our boots. Big deal.”
“I don’t want to go downtown,” Brutus said. “I really don’t want that kind of trouble. They don’t care, brother. They beyond don’t care, downtown.”
Caesarion didn’t say anything for a few beats. Then he shrugged, parked the pool cue against his hip, flipped a comb out of his pocket and swiped it through his hair. “Let the old man sweat it,” Caesarion said. “Not our problem.”
Brutus cast a look at the door, thinking that it was their problem. Julius would bluff. Julius was good at it. But there was no percentage in thinking he was doing it right now. In point of fact, Julius had told him how it was – how soft it was being a Roman in hell, compared, for instance, to the types with more specific afterlives. And how they had all the freedom they wanted, so long as they didn’t rock the status quo … and get the whole lot of them assigned to one of the nether levels.
Hell did have other levels. Sargon swore to them. Hatshepsut said this was the best place, and told him about space and planets and how he could have tech if he could believe in it. Julius stopped with World War II, but he was working on Korea. Sargon was taking advice from Hatshepsut, who was the best of all of them at believing.
Himself, he believed in here, real hard. He had fallen off a horse on his way back from the south of Italy, and he was here, and Julius treated him like a son, which was what he had wanted.
Until Caesarion showed up, who was Cleopatra’s and Caesar’s son, and who blamed Augustus for his being dead, and his mother for just about everything. Augustus said he’d been a fool to come back to Egypt, that he’d listened to bad advice, and Caesarion had said that he had had a safe conduct, and there it went: Caesarion ended up stalking out and refusing to listen and now Caesarion was having a private war against the rest of the house, including Julius.
Which was how they’d ended up in Tiberius’ villa, and in trouble.
He didn’t want get into a lawsuit and go downtown. And he didn’t want to come near Tiberius’ villa again. ‘The old goat,’ Julius called him.
Old goat didn’t begin to cover what the old man was. Every inch of the place done up in erotica. Even the door handles. And at the heart of it, like a spider, a fat-bellied, spindly-limbed, decaying and syphilitic old man with designs on anything, male or female, that came within his reach.
Hell no, he wasn’t getting into a lawsuit with that old lecher.
Question was – how good was this lawyer Julius had gotten and what in hell could they buy the old lecher off with if they could get him to drop the lawsuit?
Caesarion nudged him with a pool cue.
“Your shot.”
Band-aids. Sticking plasters. Rose scratches. And this time a determination to get Dante out of the library, hand him a basket and a pair of shears and get the job done. Machiavelli was in no mood to temporize. If the roses didn’t get trimmed, Augustus was going to be upset, and an upset Augustus was not going to deal well with Cicero, who was already on the outs with practically everybody.
He headed down the stairs to the library – and met Dante coming up, with an armload of books of various ages.
“Dante, my friend. I need help.”
“No time, no time.”
“What, no time! You left me with the rose garden, we had a damned imp, and now the roses are twice the mess.”
“One regrets, Niccolo, one regrets it entirely, but I have a chance – I have a chance, my friend. You know it’s a mistake that I’m here, a complete confusion of records. I have my justification – I have to file a petition!”
“Downtown? A petition with the Injustice Department? Dante, Dante, you are mad! You will not be filing petitions!”
“I have to tell them! I have to make them understand!” Dante began to push past him. He caught Dante’s sleeve, and books fell, thumping down the stairs.
“Dannazione, Niccolo!”
“You are not presenting any petition to the Audit! Not from this house!”
“You cannot stop me! No one has the right to stop me! I do not belong here! It’s a simple, stupid clerical error, and the Audit will fix it! Let go of me!”
They had acquired onlookers, at the top of the stairs. Hatshepsut, resplendent in a skin-tight catsuit, and stocky, bearded, barrel-chested Sargon, in a kilt.
“What’s the trouble?” Hatshepsut asked.
“This fool wants to file a petition with the Audit,” Niccolo shouted up, and took a firmer grip on Dante’s arm, propelling him up a step. “He wants a review of his case!”
“A review!” Hatshepsut said.
“These are heaven’s agents. They are my chance! It is all a mistake, a terrible mistake that assigned me here! You have no right to stop me!”
“They are not your heaven’s agents,” Sargon said. “They are from deep, deep places. They bring the Tiamat. They bring the Scorpions. You cannot deal with them, brother!”
“I have a right of appeal!”
Niccolo shoved him up the stairs and Dante fought him, batting at him and trying to set his feet: poor Dante, who had turned up in the villa with a computer and an obsessive belief that if he could reconstruct his great Commedia Divina from memory he could be forgiven, and reassigned to heaven, with his beloved Beatrice forever.
“If you appeal,” Hatshepsut said, “you can lose everything. Worse, you can draw attention to this entire household. Augustus will never permit you to go to the court.”
“He cannot stop me!” Dante cried, and shoved him, hard. Niccolo’s heel slipped off the step, backward. He fell against the wall and rail, and kept his grip on Dante, which brought Dante down, flailing and shouting, “No one can stop me! It’s my right, my right!”
Dante had led cavalry once. But muscle had gone, with age, with bookish pursuits, with obsession. There was nothing of that in the man, now, just a sense of injustice and betrayal.
“I can manage him,” Sargon declared, thumped downstairs with bandy-legged force, reached out and seized a fistful of Dante’s doublet, Dante flailing and cursing the while.
“He is hell’s iconic poet,” Hatshepsut said from above, “and if you are reassigned, son of the ibis, it will very likely be to the domicile of that Crowley person downtown, never to see your good friends again, let alone your Beatrice. If you go there, you will live in your hell, Dante Alighieri!”
“He should be so lucky,” Sargon said, as Niccolo unwound himself from Dante’s legs and hauled himself up against the banister. Sargon hauled Dante up, too, now that he was free of the tangle, seized him by the front of his collar and brought his own tanned, aquiline, curly-bearded face all but nose to nose with Dante’s pale, mince-mouthed, large-eyed countenance.
“Let me tell you, scribe, the thing you court. The Auditor is Plague. He is Injustice Incarnate. He kills the just and the unjust. He deals injustice. His helpers slay whoever they cast eyes on. He brings turmoil and pestilence. Go to him with your plaints about a lost love and he will track down that love and slay her before you. Where his eye falls, there follow boils and blindness. Where his breath goes, is fever. Where his steps fall, scorpions spring up. He brings the Tiamat, the great ocean dragon. He is here to audit hell, Dante Alighieri, to see if he can find fault in its misery! His handiwork is Overthrow, and if he can find the least chink in hell, he will rip its guts out and cast down every soul into older, deeper elements. The good Augustus, who is far too merciful, and a lover of the arts and of fine things, has given us place among the secrets under his roof, in a paradise which the Romans have made. The Romans have given you sacred hospitality, scribbler, have admitted you to their Elysian Fields, which they have managed to make exist – they have protected you, they have housed and fed you, and shielded you from such things as you have not imagined! This is a good place, Dante Alighieri, and you are a fool if you think we will allow your besotted dream of this chit in heaven to bring Overthrow into it!”