Marcus tugged at my tunic; my eyes were drawn back to the boy, but not my attention. Why would Nestor want me dead? I could understand why Pio might help him flee, but was that where his involvement ended? Nestor did not seem the type to cultivate connections of such a base nature. The house was in a state of dreadful disruption, and at its vortex the fact that I was still alive. I did not understand, nor could I connect the logical points. Unhappily, I was about to be tutored, for it was only a moment or two before the sun was eclipsed a second time. Pio was still holding the flowers, but their stems looked crushed in his unwitting stranglehold. His stare was now direct and purposeful.
“Why you make change? You hate us? You make jealous?” I started to protest, but there was no room here for dialog. “You are like carpenter…” Pio dropped to a knee-cracking squat and I flinched, but his attention was on the boy, not me. “Marcus, you be good boy and find mother.”
I had a wild impulse to beg the five year-old to stay, and was absurdly relieved when Marcus protested. “Go now,” Pio insisted. He smiled and handed the boy several flowers. The trade was struck and off Marcus ran, leaving a trail of pulled petals.
Pio remained squatting. He turned to me, the look of affection for Crassus’ son transformed. “I see you, I think of carpenter who fuck my mother,” he said. “You not fuck, but you come to my house. You do not belong here. Like him. After he come to my house, all bad.” The animation left his face as he rose; he lumbered off toward the lararium to make his offering. Those flowers would be dead come morning.
It suddenly occurred to me that my consternation, which was palpable, was not rooted in fear, though by any standard it should have been. What struck me like a blow from a fist as I sat swirling my fingers in the fountain’s waters, the sun polishing cabochons from each drop of spray, what pierced me like one of Sulla’s arrows was the realization of the extent to which I had become accustomed to living in the house of Marcus Crassus. Though I would not have thought it possible, there were good people here. The days were not onerous and the nights, though lonely, were at least peaceful. I was finding my place, and the last thing I wanted was change. To what god could I pray to stop the sun and send it spinning backwards? Let Nestor be surly and Pio romantic, let knives not fly and halcyon days return. Had I faith, I would bend my knee to Kronos, god of time, a barbarous Titan who had devoured his own children. I would do this, and fervently, too, for more miraculous than any myth of creation, I had begun to feel at home.
Chapter XIII
80 BCE — Summer, Rome Year of the consulship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius
It was never proven whether or not Pio had helped his friend escape, but the look on his face when Boaz’s men dragged Nestor back in chains six days later condemned him as surely as any confession. Even so, Crassus was loath to punish his atriensis, though as paterfamilias he could do so on a whim, with or without proof. Crassus was not a capricious man; his steps were thoughtful and measured. Still, he must have been asking himself how long could a man’s past loyalty balance the scales against his present transgressions?
Malchus and Betto told me what had transpired when they met in the small guardhouse at the front of the estate on the far side of the gates, opposite the schoolroom and clinic. The men who found Nestor had not been kind. The lumps on the runaway’s face ranged in hue from eggplant to urine. He floated between our world and a better one, in and out of consciousness. Crassus allowed Pio to revive him with sips of watered wine laced with sambucus and cinnamon, but would not permit his bonds to be undone so that he could hold the cup himself.
Present were dominus, Pio and Nestor, with Betto and Malchus close by, hands on pommels. Betto confessed he had fretted through the entire meeting, afraid that should Pio become enraged, he and Malchus would prove to be a man or two short in the effort to subdue him.
When Nestor was more or less himself, Crassus began the interview with a single word. “Why?”
Nestor sat straighter and winced with the effort. “We were doing fine without him,” he said, jerking his chin toward the house. “We didn’t need him mucking everything up.” Pio held the cup to his lips, but Nestor turned his head away. “We had a system; it was working. Dominus, if you’d been here, if you’d spent more time at home, I mean I know you are an important man, but still, you would have seen it.”
“You have shamed this house. Your crime is a capital offense. By all rights I should plant a cross in the front yard and nail you to it.” No one doubted the senator’s resolve; words now needed to be chosen very carefully.
“Mercy, dominus.” This was not Nestor, but Pio, who actually had tears in his eyes.
Nestor continued to speak as the aggrieved party. “This school,” he continued, the pitch of his voice rising, “he devised it to be rid of me. I could see it, I could see what was happening. He knew you wouldn’t need me, that you’d send me away. I’d be off to the mines.” He looked up at his companion, his face suddenly soft and sad. “And Pio. Pio would be alone again.”
Crassus stood considering, twice about to speak and once holding his tongue. “This interview is over. I shall ask no more questions regarding the attempt on Alexander’s life, for I fear to hear the answers and what they will demand of me.
“Pio, you have served me well, but what would you have of me? There must be payment, and it must be public. This is my wilclass="underline" nine days hence you and this entire household will escort Nestor to the forum. There his crimes will be announced and you will mete out his sentence. You will bind him with a collar like the dog he is; upon its
iron face you will have inscribed the words, ‘PROPERTY OF M. LICINIUS CRASSUS. RETURN AND BE REWARDED.’
“After the collar is affixed, across his forehead you will brand him fugitivus with the letters FVG so that all may know his shame.”
“No, dominus, no!” Pio cried. Crassus was unmoved.
“I know your part in this, Pio. Let your punishment be the administration of his. And consider yourselves fortunate that when that day is past you will both yet draw breath.”
Pio never had to carry out Nestor’s awful sentence. I don’t think he could have done it in any case, such was his feeling for the little Greek. It was the day before punishment was to be exacted. We were taking the midday meal at our place in the kitchen. Everyone was present except Sabina, whose patients were especially numerous that morning; Nestor, confined to our room with the aid of a leather collar bolted to the wall by a sturdy chain; and Betto, on guard duty.
Two days earlier Crassus had escorted Tertulla and the children to Lavinium. Sabina had been released from Tertulla’s service to allow her to tend to her practice. Ostensibly, the purpose of the trip was a visit to her parents, whom she had not seen for almost a year. A fortuitous lapse; the bolt that came closer to the mark was that the family was not immune from the pall shrouding the household. They were due back tonight, in time for the spectacle the following day.
Livia was last to table, the exuberant frenzy of her thirteen years oblivious to our sour mood and thankfully ignorant of its cause. I put my hand on hers as she sat next to me to quell her delightfully irritating whistling. When she asked why everyone was so grumpy I answered by grabbing a few figs and passing her the bowl. She wrinkled her nose at them, shoved them to Ludovicus the handyman, and instead reached for the hard boiled eggs with one hand and the grapes with the other. Today her red hair was piled high and tied with multi-color ribbons. The back of her neck, long and pale, revealed a fine down of softest incarnadine gold. I realized I was staring and hastily reached for the bowl of figs, perhaps taking one or two more than was decorous. I do so love their gritty texture, their subtle, complex flavor.