Roma.The novel of ancient Rome - Saylor Steven - Страница 77

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“Sergia refused to answer questions, but, with a little persuasion, her slaves spoke readily enough. They led us to more than twenty houses where the products of Sergia’s kitchen might be found. What a day that was, bursting into house after house, witnessing the outrage of the women, the disbelief of their husbands, the fear and confusion of the children. The implicated women were made to appear before the consuls in the Forum, along with the potions that had been seized.

“Before that day, there had never been a public inquest into charges of poisoning. Such matters were rare enough, and when they did occur, they had always been handled entirely within the affected household, with justice dispensed by the paterfamilias. ‘It began beneath his roof, let it end beneath his roof,’ as the saying goes. If a head of household’s wife or daughter, or his son, for that matter, dared to commit such a crime, it was the prerogative of the paterfamilias to determine guilt and exact punishment.

“But this was clearly beyond the scope of any one paterfamilias. There was simply no precedent for such a thing-a vast web of crimes spun by a conspiracy of women! The consuls were fearful of repercussions from the powerful families involved. They were only too happy to allow me, as curule aedile, to conduct the questioning.

“Sergia at last broke her silence. She claimed that her potions were remedies for various ailments, none of them poisonous. If that were so, I said, then let every woman present swallow the potion that was found in her possession. This caused a great stir among the women. There was much weeping, shrieking, tearing of hair. Gradually, the women quieted one another. At last, they agreed to the test. In unison, following the lead of Sergia, the women swallowed their so-called remedies.

Quintus shook his head. “What a sight! What a sound! The death throes of more than twenty women, there before our eyes! Not all the potions were the same, and their effects differed. Some of the women were seized by violent convulsions. Others stiffened and died with a hideous grimace. I was a young man, but I had already fought in several battles-I had killed men and seen men killed-yet I had never witnessed anything as strange and terrifying as the death of those women by their own hands!”

Kaeso gazed at his cousin wide-eyed. The details of the mass poisonings were completely new to him. Kaeso found the tale at once thrilling and repulsive. “Was that the end of it, cousin Quintus?”

“Far from it! The friends and servants of those dead women had much more to tell us. As more women were implicated, we realized that the scale of the conspiracy was larger than anyone could have imagined. In the end, more than one hundred and seventy women were found guilty, and all were put to death. The murder of so many upstanding citizens, the shocking investigation, the executions-all cast a shadow of despair across the city. The truth was too appalling for some to accept. There were those who said I went too far, that my judgment was faulty, that I allowed wicked people to falsely accuse the wives and daughters of their enemies. Well, even the gods are not infallible! I believe my investigation was thorough and impartial, and that no other man could have done better. In any event, the poisonings stopped, and the citizens of Roma rewarded me with election to higher office in the years that followed.”

Kaeso shook his head. “I had no idea the crimes were so widespread, and so bizarre. I’d heard only vague rumors before.”

“I’m not surprised. When the wretched affair was over, people did their best to forget it.”

“But why did those women commit such crimes?”

“The reasons they gave were as varied as the poisons they used: greed, revenge, spite, jealousy. Having committed murder once, many of the women seemed unable to resist doing so again. It was as if a kind of madness spread among them, a homicidal contagion, a compulsion to kill. The root cause of that madness, no one could determine. The only certain cure was death. I put an end to the plague of poisonings, and since that time, it has never recurred.”

“What a fascinating story!”

“Do you really think so?”

“Absolutely! I should like to know even more. Who were those women? What were their names? Whom did they kill, and why, and when, and-”

Amused and a little flattered by his young cousin’s enthusiasm, Quintus emitted a good-natured grunt that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “Well, young man, as it happens, I kept a very thorough dossier of materials relating to my investigation-for my own protection, if nothing else, so that if called upon later I could show exactly what evidence I had obtained and the circumstances under which I obtained it. All the details are there-names, dates, even the recipes the women used to concoct their various poisons. Quite a few of them were able to read and write, and some of them kept copious notes about the poisons and their effects.”

“Would you allow me to see that dossier, cousin?”

“Certainly. Do you know, no one has ever asked to see it before. And yet, that investigation is now a part of the family’s history, a part of Roma’s history.”

“It shouldn’t be forgotten,” said Kaeso.

Quintus nodded. “Very well. Those materials must be somewhere among my memorabilia. When I have time, I shall locate them, and let you have a look.”

Later that night, alone in his room in his father’s house, Kaeso prepared for bed. By the flickering light of a single lamp, he removed his toga without assistance; getting out of the garment was much easier than putting it on. He carefully folded the toga and placed it on a chair. He stripped off his undertunic and loincloth, and stood naked except for the gift his father had given him that morning, the fascinum which hung from the chain around his neck.

Among the other gifts Kaeso had received that day was a small mirror. A slave had already hung it on the wall. The mirror was round, made of polished silver, and decorated around its border with images engraved in the metal. The images depicted the exploits of Hercules. No doubt the giver, a colleague of Kaeso’s father, had thought the mirror would make a particularly appropriate coming-of-age gift for a young Fabius, as the Fabii considered themselves to be descended from Hercules; but the reflection of his own face, surrounded by images of the demigod, only reminded Kaeso that he was not really a Fabius by blood, only by adoption.

Kaeso stood naked before the mirror and gazed at his shadowy reflection. “Today you are a man, Kaeso Fabius Dorso,” he whispered. “But who are you? Where did you come from? Your grandfather was a foundling among the rubble; was he begotten by a god, or a Gaul? Will you live and die and never know the secret of your origin-or is there an oracle who can answer your question?”

He touched the amulet at his chest. The gold of the fascinum caught the lamp’s flickering light, and Kaeso was dazzled by its reflection in the mirror.

The next morning, Kaeso donned his toga again to pay a formal call upon a man he had never met.

Appius Claudius-the seventh of that name in the line descended from Attus Clausus-blinked in disbelief when his secretary announced his first visitor of the day. “The young Fabius?” he said. “Are you sure you heard the name correctly?”

The slave nodded.

Claudius pursed his lips and stroked his beard, which was still more black than silver. “Very well, show him in. I’ll meet him here in the garden. Turn away all other visitors until we’re done.”

If anything, the garden of Appius Claudius, with its splashing fountain surrounding a statue of three Muses and its terraces of roses, was even more magnificent than the garden of Quintus Fabius. Kaeso was duly impressed, but not surprised. If any man was as powerful and respected in Roma as his cousin Quintus, that man was Quintus’s longtime rival, Appius Claudius.

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