Free Venus in Pearls by John Maddox Roberts Page B

Brutus.
    The triumphal preparations covered a vast area, much of it protected by the largest awnings ever seen in Rome, even greater than the one that shaded the audience at the Circus Maximus. The whole area was guarded by a full legion of Caesar's veterans, another little reminder, were one needed, of who was master in Rome.
    I was well known to Caesar's men, so they passed me through without difficulty. Beyond the guards were acres of loot: gold and silver in every form imaginable, from crowns to cooking pots, gems, precious woods, woven goods of all sorts, sculpture, painting, beautiful captives of both sexes, incredibly detailed models of cities and forts Caesar had taken, exotic animals, entire trees with their limbs trimmed and hung with arms and armor as trophies, images of all the state gods to be borne at the head of the procession, images of enemy gods to be borne in chains behind them, captives like their conquered worshippers.
    As in everything else, Caesar intended that his triumph should outshine anything ever seen before. This one would stretch on for days and would commemorate his conquests in Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and Africa. His most recent victories would not be acknowledged; there would be no trophies to celebrate his defeat of Pompey and his supporters. It was forbidden to celebrate a triumph for the defeat of Roman citizens.
    A little asking led me to a tent stitched with gold thread and surrounded by protective herms. Before its entrance, incense burned on a small altar of finely wrought bronze. I passed within and found the interior illuminated by that ghostly glow that comes of sunlight passing through cloth, this time faintly tinged with gold. In the center stood the image of the goddess, now covered by a cloth of Tyrian purple—this pall alone worth a good-sized country estate.
    The image stood beneath a frame of beams shaped like a doorway with a pulley in the center of the lintel. A few yards to the rear of the statue was a rope and windlass arrangement, with a ladder and a pile of heavily padded cloths. I had seen this sort of apparatus many times before. It had been used to raise the statue onto its pediment and soon would be employed to lift it onto a huge float that would be borne on the shoulders of Caesar's men at the head of the procession.
    "May I be of assistance, Senator?" The speaker was a young woman whom I did not recognize at first, but some subtle cast of her features identified her as a member of Caesar's small family. She wore the spotless white robe of a priestess, and she was attended by a number of slave girls, also clad in white.
    "Chloe!"I said.
    She beamed. "I am amazed. The last time you saw me I was ten years old."
    I now remembered the occasion. It had been at a wedding celebration during the consulship of Pompey and Metellus Scipio, so the girl was now about seventeen. Of course, her real name was Julia, like my wife and every other woman of that family, but the Caesars usually gave girl children Greek nicknames. Besides Chloe I knew a Thisbe, a Helen, a Circe, and a poetically inclined girl called Sappho.
    My own wife had been called Briseis as a girl before she decided that Julia would remind everyone of who she really was.
    "I would know you anywhere. You've only grown more beautiful." This gallantry was not entirely insincere. She was an attractive girl with huge eyes that were set just a little too close together, a common flaw in that family. But she had the grace and dignity that were drilled into the Caesars of both sexes from birth.
    "You are very flattering." Then the smile disappeared. "You're here about the pearls, aren't you?"
    "Your great-uncle has assigned me to investigate."
    "I just do not understand it!" she said, showing her distress. "Yesterday we performed the evening sacrifice, closed the tent, and left. This morning we reopened the tent, and the pearls were gone! With all the soldiers guarding this place, how could it have happened?"
    "Who was last