Free A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven by Andrew Levkoff Page B

sight of the beating heart of Rome, thirty years earlier. At the time, my own heart was more beaten than beating, led behind the horse of a magnificent centurion to be presented as a multi-lingual gift from a grateful general , Lucius Cornelius Sulla, to his heroic legate Marcus Licinius Crassus. I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his harvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on some distant, ruined field, defending the honor and the ever-expanding borders of the Republic? What we foreigners have failed to comprehend over the centuries is that the proud centurion would have found either fate equally satisfying. This is why Rome grows, and the rest of the world shrinks.

Chapter VI
    56 BCE   Fall, Rome
    Year of the consulship of
    Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus
     
     
    If there was grumbling over my insistence that our mission remain strictly business, I could not hear it, for as we crossed the Nova Via at the southeastern border of the forum, a great tumult was occurring at the other end. The echoes of a man in a toga gesticulating on the rostra rolled down to us, held aloft by distant cheers from the crowd.
    “What’s that about?” Betto asked with his usual anxiety.
    “Keep moving,” I said. “It is either Clodius Pulcher or Annius Milo, riling up their respective mobs.”
    “Are we safe?” Betto asked.
    “Clodius feigns championship of the plebs, and Pompey has brought Milo up to oppose him, so either side should be content with men of Crassus.”
    Betto said, “So this is a polite throng, is it? They’ll stop to ask us who we support before they club us to death. That’s comforting.”
    Malchus said, “Within the hour it won’t be safe to be anywhere near the forum, no matter whose side you’re on.”
    “Which is why we must make haste.” The narrow box I gripped felt suddenly heavy.
    “What’s all the ruckus about, anyway?” Valens asked. “Clodius hates Milo because Milo is Pompey’s man, Milo hates Clodius because he forced Cicero into exile, and just about everybody but Milo hates Cicero. Politics is easy once you know who hates who.”
    Betto, who had picked up the pace once he got sight of the crowd, said, “We need elections. If we had consuls by now, we’d have order. The gods hate anarchy. I hate anarchy—it interferes with my peace of mind.”
    “Everything interferes with your peace of mind,” Malchus said.
    Moments later, even before we had crossed over to the Sacra Via, three ravens flew overhead, one following the other. “Did you see that?!” Betto cried. “Pray the augurs were looking elsewhere. As bad omens go, that one excels, mark me.”
    “Just do your job,” Malchus said, his face set.
    We headed northeast toward the Esquiline and before long turned on to the Vicus Sandaliarius. The street was choked with commerce, the smell of leather and men who balanced piles of hides on their shoulders—deer and cattle and pig. The tanning workrooms and smithies were open to the street, but other stretches kept their secrets behind unmarked doors and blank walls littered with graffiti. Shopkeepers were cranking down their awnings; those directly across from each other almost touched above the worn paving stones, concealing those beneath in yellow shade.
    We were making our way through the throng when I felt a sharp tug at my neck. I looked back just in time to see Valens deliberately trip a poor fellow heading in the opposite direction. The man scrambled to his feet with dagger in hand. That was unmannerly, I thought. Perhaps it was an accident; in any case Valens should apologize. The thin, unwashed creature crouched in a fighting stance, looking for his assailant. To my surprise, a second man joined him, also armed, the hole where his left eye had been drawing as much of my attention as his knife. Street traffic recoiled in an arc around them,