Free The Inquest by Stephen Dando-Collins Page A

authoritative then fortune tellers. He had once dreamed that he was wearing a crown, and within a week he’d been given his cap of freedom and manumitted by his master. Another time he had dreamed he had to choose between a plump sow and a bowl of fishes, and days later he had for the first time met the ample Priscilla, who had told him he must give up all his other female companions if he wanted to share her bed; which he had. “The dream may have been sent to guide you, my lord,” he said, looking down at his superior with a mixture of interest and concern.
    “Do you think so?” Varro responded. He had never been one to have dreams, prophetic or otherwise. Not dreams that he remembered, anyway. His mother, on the other hand, frequently experienced them and swore by their predictive powers. She even employed a slave whose sole duty was the interpretation of her nocturnal visions.
    “Tell me about your dream, my lord,” Callidus urged. “It may be important.”
    Sitting in his bed, Varro proceeded to describe all he could remember of the dream. He told himself that he did it to humor his freedman, yet the dream had seemed so shockingly real he felt compelled to revisit it, as if to assure himself that is was the product of imagination, not of memory.
    “Two goats?” said Callidus pensively once the questor had finished.
    “Do you think there is anything in it, Callidus?” said Varro. “I cannot imagine what it could possibly mean. If it means anything at all.”
    Callidus scratched his head. “Well, of course, goats are sacrificial animals, my lord. It would not surprise me if the gods are telling you that they want you to sacrifice another goat, or perhaps two, to guarantee the success of your mission.”
    “Perhaps.” Varro nodded slowly, unconvinced. The fact that the dream had lodged in his mind as vividly as if it were a living memory continued to trouble him. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he placed his feet on the woolen rug covering the floor. “Bring Artimedes,” he instructed Hostilis. “He claims some expertise in this area. Perhaps the secretary can shed light on the matter.”
    When, a few minutes later, a yawning Artimedes was ushered into the questor’s room by Hostilis, Varro was standing, dampening his face to refresh himself, using a bowl and pitcher of water which were kept on the side table.
    Varro’s secretary had been a member of his family’s staff for a number of years. Initially, the little Greek had served as under secretary to Varro’s mother and been one of her favorites. In the few years before Varro had gone off at eighteen to do his mandatory six months service with the legions as an officer cadet, Artimedes had been the youth’s tutor. When Varro’s Syrian appointment had been confirmed, his mother had transferred Artimedes to her son to act as his personal secretary. Varro knew that the secretary frequently wrote home to Rome to keep Varro’s mother confidentially appraised of her boy’s welfare, but he never let on that he was aware of the correspondence. Artimedes, Varro also knew, was a highly superstitious man who shared his mother’s passion for horoscopes, omens, and the divination of dreams.
    “Artimedes, can you decipher my dream?” Varro asked.
    “Tell me about it, my lord,” said the secretary, his gravity laced with anticipation.
    So, settling on the edge his bed, Varro once again recounted his dream, this time for Artimedes’ benefit, with the secretary, Callidus and Hostilis clustered at the bedside bearing studious expressions. “There,” he said when he had finished. “What construction do you put on it, Artimedes?”
    Even before the questor had reached the end of his telling, the little bald Greek had begun to pace the room with hands clasped behind his back and mind whirring. “To dream of goats wandering in a field,” Artimedes now began, “signifies fine weather and an excellent yield of crops. But to see them