Read Online Rubicon by Steven Saylor - Free Book Online Page A

consuls for less than a month, but this might well be their last formal walk across the Forum. Hence the grim jaws; hence the rabbit eyes and the unseemly pace of the procession. The consuls were abandoning Rome. The state was deserting the people. In a matter of hours— however long it took Lentulus and Marcellus to return to their homes and join in the mad rush to get out of Rome— there would be no government remaining in the city.
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    Maecia's house was in the Carinae district on the lower slopes of the Esquiline Hill, where a great deal of real estate had been in the hands of the Pompeius family for generations. Pompey's private compound was not far away. Maecia's house was not as grand as that. It faced onto a quiet street and was freshly painted in bright shades of blue and yellow. The black wreath on the yellow door struck a discordant note.
    The slave knocked with his foot. Someone inside peered at us through a peephole, then the door swung open. As I stepped across the threshold, I hardened myself for the sight that awaited me.
    Just beyond the foyer, the body of Numerius Pompeius lay upon a bier in the atrium, beneath the skylight. His feet pointed toward the door. The smell of the evergreen branches surrounding him mingled with the heady odor from a pan of incense set in a brazier nearby. The overcast morning light surrounded his white toga and waxen flesh with a pale ivory nimbus.
    I forced myself to step closer and look at his face. Someone had done a good job of removing the horrible grimace. Embalmers sometimes break a jaw or stuff the cheeks to achieve the proper effect. Numerius seemed almost to be smiling, as if enjoying a pleasant dream. His toga had been arranged to hide the ugly marks around his throat. I saw him in memory nonetheless, and clenched my jaw.
    "Is it so hard to look at him?"
    I looked up to see a Roman matron dressed in black. Her hair was undressed and her face without makeup, but the ivory glow from the skylight was kind to her. I thought for a moment that she might be Numerius's sister, then looked again and decided she must be his mother.
    "I think he looks rather peaceful," I said.
    She nodded. "But the look on your face— I think you must have been remembering how he looked when you found him. I didn't see him until later, of course, and not ... not until Pompey made sure he was presentable. That was kind of Pompey, to think of a mother's feelings, with so much else on his mind. Was Numerius so terrible to look at, when he found him?"
    I tried to think of an answer. "Your son ..." I shook my head. "The older I become, the more of death I see, yet the harder it is to look at."
    She nodded. "And we shall be seeing so much more of it, in days to come. But you haven't answered me. I think you know what I'm asking. Did he look as if ... as if he suffered a great deal? As if his final thoughts were of the horror of what was happening to him?"
    The skin prickled across the back of my neck. How could I possibly answer such a question? To avoid her gaze I looked down at Numerius. Why could she not be content to remember him as he looked now, with his eyes closed and a serene expression on his face?
    "I've seen the marks on his throat," she said quietly. "And his hands— they couldn't quite unclench them. I imagine him with that thing around his neck, reaching up to claw at it. I imagine what he must have felt ... what thoughts went through his mind. I try not to think of those things, but I can't stop myself." She looked at me steadily. Her eyes were red from weeping, but there were no tears in them now. Her voice was calm. She stood erect, with her hands clasped before her.
    "You needn't worry that I'll collapse to the floor sobbing," she said. "I don't believe in hair-tearing, especially in front of an outsider. I have no more tears. None I intend for a stranger to see, anyway." She smiled bitterly. "The men of this house have all run off,