Search the Seven Hills
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Authors: Barbara Hambly
Barbara Hambly
For the Magic Christian—Dr. Jeffrey Russell
I
He [Nero] inflicted the most exquisite tortures on this class well hated for their abominable practices and called Christians by the mob. Christus (who gave them their name) was put to death in Tiberius’ reign by the procurator Pontius Pilate; but the mischievous superstition, though momentarily checked, broke out again not merely in Judaea, but in Rome itself, where all things foul and shameful find a welcome and a home. So arrests were first made of all such as pleaded guilty; and then, on their evidence, a vast number were convicted not so much on the charge of incendiarism as of hatred for all mankind.
Tacitus
D
ISTANTLY, THE SLAP OF SANDALS
and the miscellaneous jingling of leather and brass echoed in the canyons of the narrow streets. It was the quiet time of evening, the eleventh hour of the day when most people were finishing their suppers and the few shopkeepers still open were putting up their shutters for the night; here among the elite shops and wealthy homes on the Quirinal Hill it was quieter still. The noises of Rome’s center seemed to lie far off, like a noxious sink of sound.
The young man leaning in the deep-set doorway of a modest apartment building could hear the approach of the litter quite clearly. It was still early enough that they might not have the usual entourage of torchbearers and an armed guard. If they were coming from somewhere close—this side of the Forum, for instance—they wouldn’t, but the gods only knew where she’d been. Had he been less of a philosopher, he would have prayed for this to be so, but as it was, he stoically prepared to accept whatever circumstances for the meeting Fate should choose to lay upon his bony shoulders.
Fate appeared to be in one of her pleasanter moods this evening.
At the curve of the twilit street, the chair came into view, pale curtains fluttering in the summer gloom. The houses were tall at this point, and the brilliant gilding of the sunset had faded from their brick-red roof tiles some quarter hour ago. Somber dusk filled the lane, azure and smoky purple, but even so the chair was recognizable as belonging to J. Tullius Varus, prefect of the city of Rome and, now that the emperor Trajan had resumed his campaigns in the East, one of the most powerful men in the city. It was borne by two sweating Arabs and followed by a middle-aged Greek slave laden down with parcels, but it was otherwise alone.
From his hiding place, the young man watched it approach, prey to overwhelming shyness. He wondered if she’d even deign to speak with him, or if it was she at all—he’d look tremendously silly if he hailed the occupant and it turned out to be her mother. He wondered why a perfectly adult philosopher of twenty-two should feel this helpless dread of a meeting with a girl of sixteen; a girl, moreover, whom he’d known since they were both children. It also occurred to him, absurdly, that he’d forgotten to comb his hair.
It was with a curious feeling of exposure that he stepped from the shadows of the doorway and stood, paralyzed and mute, in the gloom of the lane.
The white silk of the chair curtains moved. The chair came to a halt at his side.
Miraculously, he found his voice. “Tullia?” He cleared his throat. “Tertullia?”
The curtain slid back on its gold rings, each ring the perfect curve of a leafed tendril of vine. Vines were worked into the white silk, too, and the pattern of them laid a soft moire of shadows on the small, rather elfin face of the girl within. He saw she’d been crying, but she said in a perfectly calm voice, “Hello, Marcus.”
To a philosopher, grief and joy, fortune and death, should all be equally acceptable. But the red eyes and puffy nose evaded his philosophic armor and pierced his heart like a javelin. Forgetting his carefully prepared congratulations, he blurted helplessly, “I’m sorry! I came as soon as I heard!”
Her breath caught in a laugh that was perilously close to a sob. “Oh, Marcus, the betrothal was announced a week ago! You must be the only man in Rome who hadn’t heard.”
It was a fair hit, and there wasn’t a thing he could say. He looked so forlorn that she reached out her hands to him. “My poor Professor, I should have known you’d be so wrapped up in your books that you wouldn’t hear about it. But I’m glad you’ve come. I’m so glad.”
He clutched her hands to his breast, but the technical difficulties of embracing someone positioned in an unstable vehicle slightly higher than one’s own center of gravity defeated him. Besides, there were the bearers to think of, who might or might not know Latin, and the slave, who certainly would. “Tullia, I heard about it yesterday. I came to see you that same evening. Your father was gone... ”
“He’s in Sicily,” she whispered, her fingers tightening over his hands suddenly, as though she feared he would run from her. Then she broke off and looked around quickly. “Hylas? Why don’t you take that on home, please?”
The slave bowed. “Of course, mistress.” He trotted away up the street, his wide shoulders briefly washed by the light that fell from the windows of the apartment houses on both sides of the street. Then he turned a corner and was gone. All about them the lane was still, the last of the shopkeepers having bolted up their shutters and gone inside. From the little lofts above the shops the ubiquitous scent of porridge and onions floated, mingling with the cooling dust smells of the lane. From the rustling gardens farther up the hill and the trees around the spacious town houses of that old and elegant neighborhood came the sleepy twitter of nesting birds. In that blue deepening light Tertullia Varia’s face looked fragile and pointy, as though she had not slept, and very young in spite of the sophisticated masses of symmetrical curls that framed it. Earrings in the shape of bronze lilies twinkled among that dark profusion like autumn flowers on the forest floor.
“Father will be back at the end of July,” she continued softly, “when the new city officials are appointed, for the inaugurations and the last meeting of the Senate.”
“So nothing can be done until then?”
She was silent for a moment, her slim fingers light on his, then tightening suddenly, as though to feel the shape of his big awkward bones. “Exactly what do you think can be done?”
Taken off-guard, he could only gape.
“Chambares Tiridates is rich,” she went on. “Your offering for my hand won’t make him any poorer. It won’t make you anything other than a penniless philosopher who spends all his time between the library and the schools of philosophy in the Basilica Ulpias.”
He gulped and found his voice. “Your father can’t seriously contemplate marrying you to—to some fat Syrian shopkeeper!”
“Tiridates isn’t a shopkeeper. He’s the wealthiest importer in Rome,” said the girl gently. “And more than money, he has political power, power among the Syrian and Persian merchants—”
“Your father has all the political power he could possibly want!” cried Marcus. “He’d have to be a megalomaniac to want more!”
“Power’s like milk,” Tullia said in a tired, ironic voice far too old for that thin elfin face. “It goes bad quickly. Father needs money; he needs popularity; it isn’t enough that a man be good at his job. You know that. To keep power, a man has to put on a good appearance, have clients at his beck and call, give splendid dinners for his friends, sponsor games—”
Outrage made his voice squeaky. “Stupid, bloody, vulgar spectacles—”
“Marcus.” She released his hands, caught his face between her palms, her fingers fragile and cold among the soft curls of his light-brown hair. He gazed up at her helplessly for a moment, remembering suddenly that even when they were children, Tullia had been the one to handle the logistics of their scrapes.
“My poor Professor,” she whispered. “Don’t you know how things are done? Don’t you know that men who have power will keep it, no matter what it costs? Don’t you know that power is based on the masses, and that the masses are crude, and vulgar, and stupid, and vicious? Don’t you know that no matter how perfect, how beautiful were the ideals of the ancient republic, our wealth comes from empire and that empire is mostly Persian and Syrian and African, and we can’t afford to ignore that? Don’t you know we must move with the times, or die?”
“I know it,” replied Marcus unhappily, taking her hands again, “but it doesn’t mean that I cannot fight for the philosophic ideal.”
“Father would never let us wed.”
“He’s a Roman,” Marcus said simply. “For all he’s a politician, wouldn’t he rather see his daughter marry a Roman, rather than a—a—”
“As of last year,” pointed out Tullia, “Tiridates has been a Roman, too.”
“Bought citizenship!”
“And in any case it might be different if the Roman were wealthy, and powerful, and could maintain a wife in the princely comfort that Father expects for his only child. It wouldn’t be some”—her voice took on Tullius Varus’ rich rolling accents in an uncanny mimicry—“some worthless wastrel whose very father has banished him from the ancestral roof.”
“That isn’t true! I left of my own accord!”
Tertullia only looked at him, pity in her dark eyes.
“And besides,” continued Marcus lamely, “my family’s wealthy enough to suit him—or it should be.”
“But you yourself live like a pauper. Marcus, I know why. I know it’s by your own choice. I know you’re committed to a life as a philosopher, and that’s what you care about.” Her voice shook, and she tightened her full, too-sensitive lips, as though to control it. “He wouldn’t understand.”
“Do you understand?” He gazed pleadingly up into her face. Both of them had entirely forgotten about the two chair-bearers, who stood with the patient stoicism of slaves in the uneven pavement of the street that was now almost wholly dark.
Her face was almost invisible in the shadows of the chair curtains, but her earrings glinted as she turned it aside. “No,” she said in a flat voice. “I don’t understand the life you lead. And anyway we shouldn’t suit. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to speak with you—”
“Stop it!” he cried despairingly.
“I mean it,” she insisted, her voice breaking.
“Tullia, please, I’ll mend my ways. I’ll go back home, I’ll leave Timoleon’s classes, I’ll learn to manage the family lands... ”
The chair swayed under the angry jerk of her body. “Don’t you dare, Marcus Silanus! Don’t you dare go crawling back to that—that selfish little shriveled-up raisin of a father of yours! What kind of philosopher are you? I’d never speak to you again if you did that, and I don’t care how rich you became!” She wrenched her wrists free of his grasp, and he was too startled by this outburst to hold them.
He began, “We could wait... ”