Page 8 of Of Love and Treason
Titus left with a noncommittal chuckle, and Quintus locked the ironclad door over the dark stairwell to the silent cell beyond. If what Titus said about the riots proved true, Quintus wouldn’t be going home for days. With a debating glance at the rumpled cot, Quintus told Helix he’d be back at first light and set off for home. He descended the stairs outside, feet like leaden weights.
The long and pristinely swept Forum stretched before him, lined with temples and public buildings. Moonlight glowed on the smooth marble facade of the Curia Julia where the Senate had met for centuries. Smoke from smoldering incense altars within the temple of Saturn hung close on the still air. Cutting between the Curia Julia and Basilica Aemilia, Quintus wove through residential streets, which, unlike the Forum, were dark and littered with refuse. Before long he let himself through a painted door, dark in the moonlight. He moved cautiously through the courtyard to avoid strangling himself on the now-invisible laundry lines.
The night grew chilly, and while most of the balcony doors were closed, they were thin. A baby screeched. Someone else snored. The old couple was arguing again—something about a chicken. Keys jingling, Quintus trudged upstairs and let himself into the apartment as silently as he could. A thin moonbeam left a patch of pale light on the floor and set the rest of the room in shadow. A soft snore behind the curtain told him Iris was already asleep.
Out of habit, he knelt before the shrine, searching his soul for ascrap of anything that might resemble faith. He lit the incense and watched it smolder in front of the small statue of Panacea, casting the clay goddess in an orange glow.Goddess of misplaced hopes.The thought came tinged with bitterness but no remorse. A gray curl of pungent smoke rose around Iaso, goddess of recuperation, and Hygeia, goddess of health and cleanliness.
He didn’t pray. He didn’t know to whom he should pray or what he could say that he hadn’t already said. Quintus just stayed on his knees and watched the smoke. It swirled, pale and translucent, lighter and lighter until it disappeared into nothing. He brushed away a spiderweb connecting the staff and twisted snake of Aesculapius to Aceso, goddess of the healing process, and then sank his head into his hands, overwhelmed. There were so many gods and goddesses.So many.How would he ever find the right combination of whom to appease and to whom he should appeal? And what about the seer’s unknown god? How would he begin to search him out among thousands? Was he Roman? Greek? Egyptian? Persian?
His head ached, hollowness filling his belly. He should give up and accept the will of the gods but still, he knelt until his knees went numb and his limbs soaked up the coldness of the floor and held it like marble in winter. He stared at the figures, pale wood, clay, brass, stone. He lifted one, studied the frozen limbs and lifeless eyes, and set it aside on the floor, reaching for another. Soon the niche was empty.
Quintus lit a new bowl of incense and placed it in the empty space. He prostrated himself, pleading to and invoking a god he did not know and asking for forgiveness for overlooking a service he had not noticed.
His hope dwindled. A tiny flickering in a murky sea.
The unknown god was silent.
Distant.
Unmoving.
III
VALENS EXITED THE STREET BISTROeating a pastry filled with honey and pistachios. It was decidedlynotas good as the raisin pastries from Paulina’s Bakery, but he licked the sticky, flaky bits from his fingers anyway and sent a quick glance at the sky. He would be late. Again. He’d hoped that stopping for a few minutes would give the afternoon congestion a chance to ease, but it’d had the opposite effect. One hand over his leather satchel and humming an absent tune, Valens joined the mash of the crowd leaving the Forum.
The air, heavy and hot, was too still to clear the stinging smell of sweat. He shuffled with the crowd for a few blocks, then broke free of the crush, swerving down an alley. Pulling up sharp, Valens avoided a collision with a humped laundress struggling to free a small handcart laden with linens from the clutches of a pothole.
“Here, let me help.” He took hold of the handle and gave a tug.
“You’re very kind, sir.” The woman beamed at him with a round-faced smile.
He sighed, giving in. “Are you going far?”
By the time he’d delivered the laundress and cart to an apartment courtyard filled with kettles, he was really late. He took a moment to orient himself and set off again, this time at a jog, though it would not make a difference. A slave cradling a jar of cheese floating in thin milk struggled with the back door of a café. Valens caught the door for him as he went by.
As the door shut, the café owner poked his head out and shouted after him, “You get a discount for that. Come in and eat.”
Valens laughed. “Next time. I’m late.”
The man waved him off and Valens continued past the Markets of Trajan and toward Quirinal Hill. His sandals scuffed and scraped the black cobblestones as he trotted by several temples of lesser deities and beneath the triumphal arch of ClaudiusI. Here, he left the tangled web of side streets and joined the wide Via Flaminia, buildings rising on either side of the road with all the order of a child dumping blocks out of a basket. He wound around insula apartments stretching six levels high and small homes clustered next to each other with scarcely room enough for a man to squeeze between them.
Why was every street in this city uphill?
Wheezing hard, and trying harder to mask it, Valens stopped at a walled villa perched on the edge of the Via Flaminia. The varnished wooden door in front bore a simple painting of a snake draped over a cross. The sign said the physician was out. He knocked once and the door flung open. Valens barely stopped his fist from knocking the nose of the answering youth.
Abachum, youngest of the three Calogarus brothers, grinned. “Right on time.” He stepped back to let Valens inside.
Valens frowned and stepped through the doorway. “I am?”
Abachum closed the door and led Valens through a darkened clinic. “I told everyone you’d get sidetracked on the way, so we told you to be here an hour ago—an hour before you’reactuallysupposed to be here.” Abachum grinned again, teeth flashing. “And here you are, perfectly on time!”
Valens shook his head, unable to suppress a smile. “It’s a relief not to be late, but I’m thinking perhaps I need to preach on the dangers of deception at our next gathering.”
The boy swung open a door to the courtyard. “We only said tobe herean hour ago. Not that itstartedan hour ago.”
“That’s a slippery slope, my friend.” Valens followed him into a lush garden filled with potted palms and citrus trees strung with chains of late-season flowers. A marble fountain trickled peacefully,splitting a white granite walkway that wrapped around it and led to a corner where three men played soft Eastern music. Valens raised a hand toward Audifax, the middle Calogarus brother, who had set aside his shipping scrolls and bills of lading to play a flute with ink-stained fingers. He gave Valens a raised-eyebrow nod in return.
“I should have brought my lute.”
