The Bull Slayer

CHAPTER Twenty-five

“Shall I chuck him out, sir?”

The boy, who looked to be about ten years old, wiped his crusty nose with the back of his hand. He was on the verge of tears.

Pliny came around the desk and bent down. “Who are you?”

“Epam—Epaminondas.”

“A big name for such a small person.”

“They just calls me ‘boy’ around the stable.”

“The stable? Vibius Balbus’ stable?”

The boy nodded. “You ain’t gonna send me back. They’ll kill me for sure.”

“And why would they do that?”

“I stoled a bite of food. They don’t feed us hardly nothin’, not since Master died. Cook beat me black and blue, said he’d cut off my hand if he caught me again.” The boy’s chin quivered.

“Well, we won’t let him do that.” Pliny patted his head and immediately regretted it: Epaminondas’ hair was alive with lice. “Now, what is it you have to tell me?”

The boy frowned at his feet, unable to get the words out.

“Here, come and sit down. I expect you’re hungry. I’ve some bread and cheese here. Will that suit you?”

Pliny waited while the boy crammed the food into his mouth with both hands and washed it down with large gulps of water.

“Now, then, what’s this all about?”

“About the young master, sir. The one we’re all scared of.”

“Balbus’ son? Why are you afraid of him?”

“Well, he has a curse on him, doesn’t he? We all spit in our bosom whenever he comes around the stable. Which he did, sir. I mean the day Master disappeared. The young master rode out with him. ’Twasn’t even daylight when they left. Roused us all up to saddle the horses.”

“The horses. Was Aulus’ horse a chestnut?”

The boy nodded vigorously. “The one you brought back, sir. Which Mistress said weren’t ours, but it is. She said she’ll sell us all to the quarries if we breathe a word to anyone. But I can’t stick it there no more, and so I thought…” His voice trailed off. He gazed hopefully at Pliny.

Pliny let his breath out slowly. “Clever lad. Let no one ever discount the intelligence of a slave, even the humblest. You’ve a pretty good idea what this information is worth, don’t you?”

“Will you buy me off the estate, sir? Otherwise—”

“You drive a hard bargain, Epaminondas,” Pliny smiled. “All right, I’ll pay for you. Do you like horses?”

“Yessir, I love ’em. Hope to ride my own someday.”

“Well, perhaps you will.”

Pliny summoned the optio and told him to have Epaminondas thoroughly scrubbed, fed, and handed over to his stable master with instructions to find him suitable duties.

***

He had not seen Fabia since the day of Balbus’ funeral. The passage of time had taken a toll on her appearance—her hair was unkempt, her face unmade—while, if anything, it had increased her natural obduracy. Her feet were planted firmly in the doorway, her arms crossed, as though she really intended to physically bar them—Pliny, Suetonius, Marinus, and four lictors, led by Galeo—from entering. Behind her could be glimpsed her muscular freedman, a second bulwark.

“I will speak with your son,” Pliny said again, making an effort to keep his voice low, “with your permission, madam, but, if necessary, without it.”

“He isn’t here.”

“Really? And where would he go? He isn’t well, is he?”

She said nothing but thrust out her chin at him.

“Lictors!”

Three of them moved her aside, pinning her arms behind her when she tried to wrestle with them. The freedman raised his fists and took a step forward, but hesitated when Galeo threatened him with his cudgel.

“Search the house and grounds,” Pliny commanded.

“Tyrant! Bloody tyrant!” Fabia screamed, her voice hoarse with tears of rage.

Pliny went immediately to the little room off the atrium where he had found Aulus hiding before. It was empty now. “Marinus, go through the rooms on this floor. Suetonius, take two of the men and search the grounds. I’ll look upstairs.”

And it was Pliny who found him at last, cowering behind a clothes press in his mother’s bedroom, doubled up with his arms over his head.

“It’s all right, it’s all right now. No one will hurt you.” He spoke softly, as though gentling a frightened horse. “I’ll call your mother now.”

Fabia crouched beside her son, wrapping him in her arms, shielding him with her body, a lioness protecting a sick cub.

As Pliny and Marinus watched in silence, Aulus kicked out his legs and threw back his head. His eyes turned upwards until only the whites showed, his tongue protruded between his teeth, and foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. Fabia put a twisted rag between his teeth, rocked him, stroked his head, and murmured in his ear while he writhed and twisted in her arms.

“Fascinating,” Marinus breathed. While Pliny, rational man that he was, felt the atavistic urge to spit rise up in him—the ancient apotropaic magic to ward off the Sacred Disease—so strong was the fear of it.

After two or three minutes the boy’s tremors subsided. His eyes closed and he went limp as a rag. Fabia continued to rock him.

“He’ll sleep for an hour or more,” Marinus whispered. “When he wakes up he won’t remember what happened.”

“Is there something you can do for him?” Pliny asked.

“Nothing that she isn’t doing already.”

“Then we will wait.”

***

It was well past midday when Aulus’ eyelids fluttered open. They had carried him to his own room and laid him on his bed. Fabia sat beside him and hers was the first face he saw. But as his eyes focused and he saw Pliny, Marinus, and Suetonius seated on stools at the foot of his bed, he shrank back.

“It’s all right,” Pliny said softly. “I have some questions to ask you and you must answer truthfully. Your mother can stay.” He looked hard at Fabia. “You will not interfere, do you understand? Otherwise I will send you out of the room.”

She met his stare and said nothing.

“We know from the testimony of one of your stable boys that you rode out with your father before dawn on the day he disappeared.”

“That filthy little liar!” Fabia cried.

Pliny silenced her with a look. “I’ve warned you. One more word and out you go. Now, Aulus, what happened out there?”

The boy drew a deep, rattling breath. “I killed my father.”

Fabia lowered her head and let out a moan.

“Can you tell me why? Look at me now, not at her. Why did you kill him?”

The boy resembled his father, Pliny noted. The same red hair, the same sharp features. But where Balbus had displayed all the menacing power of a vicious dog, his son had only a squirrel’s twitchy nervousness.

“I’m a coward. I was frightened.” The voice was barely audible. Pliny leaned forward.

“Frightened of what?”

“The cave. I begged him not to make me go. He wouldn’t listen. He said Mithras would make a man of me. Mithras was a soldier’s god, he said, and he’d done plenty for Mithras and Mithras could damn well do this for him. He was taking me to be initiated. He said there were seven ranks. He was a Lion, nearly the highest, I would become a Raven, the lowest rank. He said everyone started as a Raven, even him.”

“Did he name the other ranks?”

“Yes, but in Greek. I didn’t know any of the words.”

“Go on with your story.”

“Well, he said we would meet the others there. They all approached the cave by different routes to avoid calling attention to themselves because the mysteries of Mithras were a deep secret. He warned me that I should never breathe a word to anyone. They would blindfold me, he said, bind my arms, aim an arrow at my heart, but then it would be all right and I would be raised up to the heavens and see the god. I didn’t want to. But he slapped my face, told me to stop whining. He was doing it for me, he said, to make me a man at last.”

Pliny exchanged glances with his companions.

“It’s the curse,” Aulus whispered. “You see how I am. I don’t leave the house because people spit and make the horns with their fingers when they see me. Even here, no one will drink from the same cup or eat from the same dish as me.”

“You’ve had it all your life?” Marinus asked.

“Since I was nine. If I’d had it as a baby they would have just left me on a rubbish heap and had done with it. I wish they had.”

“No, never!” Tears were streaming down Fabia’s cheeks. It was the first time Pliny had seen her cry. She had had no tears for her husband, but she was weeping now.

“They tried every way to get rid of it,” the boy continued. “Father took me to the temples of Asclepius at Pergamum and Smyrna, the temple of Isis in Rome. I had to smear myself with mud, bathe in an icy river, run around the temples barefoot in winter, wear evil-smelling things around my neck, drink—drink the blood of a dead gladiator, but I couldn’t, I threw it up. My father made me sleep outdoors on the ground, made me practice with a sword, slapped me, hit me with his vitis when my arm faltered. And finally, after I had a very bad fit, he decided to take me to this god in the cave. I just couldn’t stand any more.”

Pliny felt a tide of anger rise in him. His heart went out to this tortured child. “By Jupiter, If you suffered all that and lived you’re more of a man than most. Now I want you to listen to what my friend here has to say. This is Marinus, my physician.”

Marinus pulled his stool closer and looked at the boy gravely. “Your father loved you very much in his way,” he said, “but what he put you through is barbarous nonsense. What you have is called the ‘Sacred Disease’ but it is no more sacred than any other disease, as the great Hippocrates tells us. It is an affliction of the brain. I’ll put it as simply as I can. Veins lead up to the brain, the two biggest ones come from the liver and the spleen. These veins carry our breath to every part of the body. Now, there are impurities in the brain of the unborn infant which normally are purged before birth. But if this does not occur then the brain becomes congested with phlegm, which is one of the four bodily humors. If the cold phlegm flows into the veins, the sufferer becomes speechless and chokes, he gnashes his teeth and rolls his eyes—your symptoms exactly. This is all because the phlegm clogging the veins cuts off the air supply to the brain and lungs. The patient kicks when the air is shut off in the limbs, and cannot pass through to the outside because of the phlegm. Rushing upwards and downwards through the blood, it causes convulsions and pain, hence the kicking. The patient suffers all these things when the phlegm flows cold into the blood, which is warm. In time the blood warms the phlegm and the patient recovers his senses. There is no curse. Do you understand me?”

The boy sat up suddenly, wrenching away from his mother’s embrace. “Then there is a cure?”

“Ah, well,” Marinus stroked his beard. “That is more difficult. Diet sometimes helps. But honestly, at your age, a cure is unlikely.”

“Then it’s still a curse. How can I live like this?”

“Julius Caesar managed it rather well,” Suetonius struck in. “Had it all his life. Most people never suspected. I invite you to read my biography of him when it’s published. I’ll send you a copy.”

“But I’ve killed my father! That is the worst curse of all. What will they do to me?”

“Tell me,” said Pliny, “precisely what happened. Everything you can remember.”

“The sun was just coming up. We’d already ridden for two, maybe three hours up into the hills. I was cold, shivering. I begged my father to turn back but he wouldn’t listen. Then he said we should dismount and tie the horses to a tree and go the rest of the way on foot. He said the cave wasn’t far. “

“Do you know where it is?”

“No. The ground was steep and rocky. There was hardly a path that you could see. I was so frightened I could hardly stand up. I felt a fit coming on. Father grabbed my hand and dragged me along. I was crying and he was saying all these things about Mithras and how I would be a man he could be proud of. I broke away and started to run back. He came after me and threw me to the ground. We struggled and I picked up a rock and I hit him with it as hard as I could, here.” Aulus pointed the side of his head. “And then I fainted and that’s all I remember. When I woke up, the sun was low in the sky. And my father wasn’t there. I thought he had just left me. So I went home. I couldn’t find the horses. I had to go the whole way on foot and it was late at night before I got back. I expected him to be there and I was terrified of what he would do to me. But he wasn’t there. I must have wounded him mortally and he dragged himself off into the bushes to die. That’s where you found him, isn’t it?”

“And that’s what you told your mother?”

The boy nodded.

Pliny turned to Fabia. “And you kept his secret to save his life.”

“Should I have lost both of them?” she cried.

Pliny shook his head in amazement. “It’s the stuff of Greek tragedy, like something from the pen of Sophocles! Madam, I admire you—and I never expected to hear myself say that. Now listen to me both of you. We found Balbus buried, with his neck broken. There was no fracture of the skull. I don’t know who killed him or why, but Aulus is not guilty of his father’s blood.”