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XXX. QUERCULUS STRIKES LIKE A VIPER
In the morning, you leave your cockroach and flea infested apartment in the Dwelling of the Heron and make your way through Subura. Rome looks different now that you are fugitives on the run. Strangely, you feel at home as never before—maybe it’s because you share that quality of fear—no, terror—deep in your hearts and guts that many Romans accept as an everyday part of life.
You pass through the Fora, where law cases are being heard in all the basilicas. The noise of the crowds is deafening. There may not be traffic jams, but there are body jams, if you will. You’re almost glad you aren’t that fancy lady in her litter, whose slaves cannot seem to move forward through the throng. You’re almost glad you aren’t that poor man with his basket, trying to shop at the arcades, and getting swept along after he hands over his coin but before he can collect his onions from the vendor. You pass the barbershop—oh, the tale-telling that goes on in there! Roman men keep their hair short and frown on facial hair. At the moment there is an important chariot race about to start at the Circus Maximus. The Greens are favored over the Blues, and bookies are doing brisk business on street corners as crowds of men rush to the circus. These two teams acquire almost the cachet of rival political parties, and over the next thousand years will nearly bring both the ancient Roman and the later Byzantine Empires to their knees as mobs riot over contested referee calls. As always, rival sects of priests parade along the streets banging drums, singing, playing sistrums, and carrying votive images of their particular deities. Fistfights between holy men aren’t uncommon. Less frequently, holy gals are let out of their temples, and they may just as well end up in hair-pulling contests in the fora. The higher-end priests and priestesses native to Rome would never stoop to such buffoonery, and the city still has its share of ancient temples. The most venerable of all along the Via Sacra is the Temple of Vesta, the hearth-goddess, in this case the hearth referring to the fire at the heart of Rome herself. These women are effectively nuns, and they are treated with the utmost respect. For example, they have a special box at the Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum) where they can sit in their white garments and white linen crowns, and watch with dignified, stony faces as the erstwhile sacred games go forward. As much as the games have degenerated at times and under certain emperors in particular into the most vile and unimaginable horrors (Nero, for example, would have a choir of innocent country people fervently singing patriotic and religious songs, and they never knew why the audience was breaking into stifled laughter, until, too late, they realized dozens of ravenous lions had been released from underground and were now stalking around to devour them as they sang). Near here is the oldest public document, an inscription in archaic Latin on the Lapis Niger (‘black stone’)—it’s a marble slab alleged to mark the burial place of Romulus himself. You pass the Tabularium, the archive that is the administrative headquarters of the civil service of the Empire. The public buildings and monuments are dizzyingly numberless, and you are overwhelmed as always. You worry about Darwin’s ability to keep on, though he appears hale and game.
At last you arrive at the villa of Ulpian. You stand outside like beggars, wondering how to get in, until you decide to toss a few pebbles up at the library’s side windows. A slave peers out, and summons a higher slave, who peers out, and he summons Polybius. The latter takes one shocked glance, waves for you to stand still, and runs out a side door with several other slaves to summon you into the house. "We were worried about you!" Polybius cries. Marcellus adds: "We had people looking all over for you."
As they lead you into the kitchen for refreshments, babbling and fussing over you, another voice is heard overriding all of them. It is the stern, loud voice of Querculus, the Quaestor, Carinus’ police inspector. "So! There you are. How simple and logical. I expected you would find your way back here, after all the mischief you caused. And now you have a bit of explaining to do before we haul you before a judge and make your heads roll." The slaves gibber in fear, the two librarians have faces as pale and ghostly as freshly scrubbed parchment, and the dozen or more armed men with Querculus grin at you with nasty humor.
"That one!" the Quaestor booms, pointing at Felix. "Seize him! I have word that he is a woman dressed as a man, or by some magic masquerading as a man. We’ll get to the bottom of all this tomfoolery."
As they drag poor Felix/Amalthea away, you start to protest and help him/her but the policemen of the urban cohort block your way. Darwin asks: "Where is the Lord Ulpian to correct these injustices?"
Querculus grins. "The Lord Ulpian will appear before His Imperial Majesty to explain in person how it is that his librarians harbor spies. That’s what you are doing here, isn’t it?" he asks the two frightened Egyptians. "You are working for Diocles and his traitors, aren’t you?" He pats one hand with a heavy leather whip held in the other. "We’ll chat further in my special interrogation chambers at the prison. Take them away!" He waves his whip, and rough hands seize you.
At that moment, some force intervenes. You hear a loud, female babbling that can only come from the voice of Amalthea. She screams insults in a mixture of Etruscan and Archaic Latin and perhaps even the Minoan dialects spoken in Aechaean times. As she rattles off a chaotic tumult of words, the room grows dim. In the uncertain light, soldiers and slaves alike, and Querculus in their forefront, stand with mouths hanging open. The ground shifts (or did your feet move sideways?) and a wrenching movement pushes you from one world into another.
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