Bethesda shuddered beside me, but I was secretly glad of the fog. If it would last until sunrise, I might be able to make my exit from the city unobserved even by eyes hired to watch me.
The stablemaster was asleep when we arrived, but a slave agreed to wake him. He was disgruntled at first; I was an hour earlier than expected, and at any rate the slave could have handled the departure without his master being disturbed. But when I explained what I wanted and offered terms, he was suddenly wide-awake and genial.
For the next two days at least he would take Bethesda into his household. I warned him not to work her too hard as she was accustomed to her own rhythms and unused to heavy work. (This last was a lie, but I had no intention of letting him work her to her limit.) If he could set her to some steady task, sewing perhaps, she would more than earn her keep.
In the meantime I wanted to hire two sturdy slaves from him to watch my house. He insisted he could spare only one. I was sceptical until he roused the boy from bed. An uglier youth I had never seen, nor a larger one. Where he came from I could not imagine. He had the uncouth name of Scaldus. His face was raw and red, blistered by the intense sun of the past week; his hair stuck out in stiff bunches from his head, the same texture and colour as the bits of straw that clung to his scalp. If his sheer size failed to intimidate any caller, his face might do the job. He was to take up a post outside my door and not to leave it until I returned; a woman from the stables would bring him food and water through the day. Even if he proved weaker than he looked or a coward, he could at least raise an alarm if intruders came to the house. As for the expense, the stablemaster agreed to extend my credit The added fee I would pass on to Cicero.
There was no need to return to the house. Everything I needed for the journey I had brought with me. A slave fetched Vespa from the stable. I mounted her, turned around, and saw Bethesda staring up at me with her arms crossed. She was not happy with the arrangement, as I could see from the tightness of her lips and the glimmer of anger in her dark eyes. I smiled, relieved. She was already recovering from the shock of the night before.
I had an impulse to bend down and kiss her, even in front of the stablemaster and his slaves; instead I turned my attention to Vespa, calming her early-morning friskiness, guiding her into the street and easing her into a gentle trot. Long ago I learned that whenever a master shows affection for a slave in public the gesture must go awry. No matter how sincere, the act becomes patronizing, embarrassing, a parody. Even so, a sudden fear gripped me, a premonition that I might regret forever having denied myself that parting kiss.
The fog was so thick I would have been lost had I not known the route by heart. The mist swirled around us, swallowing the clatter of Vespa's hooves and hiding us from the twice-million eyes of Rome. Around me the city seemed to stir, but that was an illusion; the city had never quite slept. All night long men and horses and wagons come and go in the deep-shadowed streets. I passed through the Fontinal Gate. I broke into a trot as I passed the voting stalls on the Field of Mars, taking the northward route of the great Flaminian Way.
Rome receded, invisible, behind me. The muted stench of the city was replaced by the smells of tilled earth and dew. Hidden by mist, the world seemed open and boundless, a place without walls or even men. Then the sun rose over the black and green fields, dispelling every vapour before it. By the time I reached the great northward curving arm of the Tiber, the sky was hard as crystal, utterly cloudless, and pregnant with heat.
Part Two
Portents
16
The rich on their way from city to villa and back again travel in retinues with gladiators and bodyguards. The wandering poor travel in bands. Actors go in troupes. Any farmer driving his sheep to market will surround himself with shepherds. But the man who travels alone — so runs that proverb as old as the Etruscans — has a fool for a companion.
Everywhere I have lived there is a belief among city folk that life in the countryside must be safer, quieter, less fraught with crime and menace. The Romans especially are blindly sentimental about country life, imbuing it with a tranquil, lofty character beyond the reach of crime or base passion. This fantasy is believed only by those who have never spent much time in the countryside, and especially by those who have never travelled for day after day across the roads that Rome has laid like spokes radiating through the world. Crime is everywhere, and nowhere is a man in more danger at any given- moment than when he is on the open road, especially if he travels alone.
If he must travel alone he should at least travel very fast, stopping for no one. The old woman who appears to lie hurt and abandoned beside the road may in fact be neither hurt nor abandoned nor even a woman, but a young bandit among a troupe of bandits, murderers, and kidnappers. A man can die on the open road or disappear forever. For the unwary a journey often miles may take an unexpected turn — that ends in a slave market a thousand miles from home. The traveller must be prepared to flee at a moment's
warning, to scream for help without embarrassment, and to kill if he must.
In spite of these thoughts, or perhaps because of them, I passed the long day without incident The distance I needed to cover required long, unbroken hours of hard riding. I steeled myself to it early on and fell into the rhythm of constant speed. Not a single rider overtook me during the day. I passed traveller after traveller as if they were tortoises beside the road.
The Flaminian Way travels north from Rome, crossing the Tiber twice as it passes through south-eastern Etruria. At length it reaches the river Nar, which runs into the Tiber from the east. The road crosses a bridge at the town of Narnia and enters southernmost Umbria. A few miles north of Narnia a minor road branches west, back towards the Tiber. It ascends a series of steep hills and then drops into a shallow valley of fertile vineyards and pastures. Here, nesded in a V of land between the Tiber and the Nar, lies the sleepy hill town of Ameria.
I had not travelled north of Rome in many years. When I had to leave the city, my business usually took me west to the seaport at Ostia or else south along the Appian Way through that region of lush villas and estates that ends at the resorts of Baiae and Pompeii, where the rich vent their boredom in manufacturing new scandals and plotting new crimes, and where the powerful had chosen sides in the civil wars. Occasionally I ventured east, into the rebellious territories that had vented their rage against Rome in the Social War. Southward and eastward I had seen first-hand the devastations often years of warfare — farms in ruin, roads and bridges destroyed, piles of corpses left uncovered and rotting until they turned to mountains of bones.
I had expected the same in the north, but here the land was largely untouched; here the people had exercised caution to the extent of cowardice, always hedging their bets, sniffing out the neutral path until the clear victor emerged and men rushing to his side. In the Social War they had declined to join the other client states in pressing Rome for their rights, waiting instead until Rome called on them for help and so securing those same rights without revolt. In the civil wars they had danced the dagger's edge between Marius and Sulla, between Sulla and Cinna until the dictator emerged triumphant, Sextus Roscius the elder had himself been a declared supporter of Sulla even before it became convenient.