The Subura District, Rome
"Gods, what a pit!" The dead man sneered, his leathery face twisted into a grimace. He and Abdmachus rode down a narrow way behind the Forum. The alley was choked with garbage, broken furniture, and the rotting corpses of dead animals. The little Persian led, while the dead man had the young Prince thrown over the front of his saddle. A gray cape had been added to the clothes Abdmachus had given him in the tomb. The moth-eaten hood was pulled forward, shading the man's extremely pale complexion. The Persian nudged his horse right and they turned into a little courtyard behind the brick edifice of a four-story insula. The dead man looked around carefully, his face a mask, while the Persian swung off his horse and made his way up a flight of broken steps to bang on the door at the back of the block of flats.
A sound rose, echoing from the pale brick faces of the buildings, a great murmur like the sea against a steep shore. The dead man turned around on his horse, looking for the source of the noise. Off to the south he saw a great cliff of marble rising over the red tile roofs. A forest of banners and pennons surmounted it. Smoke rose around it, curdling against the soaring wall and collecting in the arched openings that ringed the top of the edifice. He scratched his nose, then held his hand up in the morning light. It seemed odd for it to be so bleached and pale, very like the belly of a fish.
A man in a dirty yellow smock opened the door and nodded to the Persian. Abdmachus stumbled down the steps and came up to his horse.
"What is that?" The dead man pointed at the building looming over the rooftops.
Abdmachus turned, his fingers busy untying the straps that held the Prince to the horse. He squinted into the sun.
"Oh," the Persian said, "it's the Colosseum. There must be games today."
They had entered the city through the Porta Ostiensis gate, by the river, at dawn. A great throng of merchants and draymen had already clogged the artery leading into the city from the southwest. The Persian had shown his papers to the overworked guards at the gate, and they had entered without incident. The dead man was, by turns, troubled at the wan pallor evident on the faces of the people and stunned by the vast size of the city and the crumbling monuments therein. Cutting across the city toward the bowl of the Subura, they had passed through ancient gates, triumphal ways, and skirted the palace-clogged magnificence of the Palatine. As they rode through the thronging crowds, the Persian could hear the dead man muttering to himself.
The Prince owned an insulae on the southern side of the Subura, and the Persian and the dead man carried his body up the steps, down a rank hallway, and through a stout wooden door into a bare apartment. Only a few sticks of furniture were about, but there was a bed made of pine boards and crisscrossed leather straps. They lay him there and the Persian bustled off to find water and make an infusion. The dead man crossed the bare dusty room to the windows set into the south wall and, putting his shoulder to them, opened the shutters. Brilliant sunlight flooded the room, cutting long sparkling trails through the dusty air.
"Ai, no strength in these limbs," the dead man mused to himself. He clenched his fists and frowned at the sound of muscles cracking.
Beyond the windows, the temples and pillars of the Forum rose up over the tiled roofs of the buildings across the street. The way below was crowded with morning shoppers. The little door fronts were crammed with goods: fruits, slabs of meat, bushels of grain, carefully bundled feathers. The noise from the street echoed off the roof in the apartment. The dead man half closed the shutters. Abdmachus returned to the room with a steaming pot of water. The sharp smell of mint and sage rose from it.
"What is that great cylinder?" the dead man asked, pointing out the window.
Abdmachus glanced up, then said, "The triumph of Trajan. A long bas-relief depicts his conquest of the Dacians."
The dead man snorted and rubbed the side of his long face. Dust and grit came off under his fingers. He smiled.
"Dacia… always troublesome. How long was I in the ground, Persian?"
Abdmachus tipped the lip of the pot to Maxian's lips and spilled a little of the brew. The young man twitched and the Persian managed to get more of the brew down him. The Prince groaned and his eyelids fluttered.
"Over six centuries," the Persian answered absently, his attention focused on the pulse and color of the Prince.
"Six centuries and the Republic winds up looking like a pigsty?" The dead man came to the other side of the bed and gazed down on the long-limbed youth who lay between them. "Six centuries and the city is a crumbling ruin, filled with plague victims and lepers? Is there no order? I see that the administrative skills of the Senate have not improved…"
Abdmachus looked up briefly but said nothing. The Prince stirred, his eyes opening.
"Are we in the city?" Maxian's voice was faint.
The Persian rolled back each of the young man's eyelids and pursed his lips in concern. "Lie still, lad, you're still shaken up. The effects of the spell were rather stronger than I expected."
Maxian smiled weakly. "Feels like my skin has been scrubbed off and then put back on, wet."
With a great effort he turned his head to look at the dead man. "Welcome back to the land of living."
The dead man scowled and looked over his shoulder at the partial view of the city from the window. "Not much to see. How many have died from the plague?"
The Persian and the Prince exchanged puzzled glances. Abdmachus cleared his throat. "My lord, this is twice you've referred to the plague. We don't understand."
The dead man stared at each of them in turn, his face a picture of incredulity.
"Out there"-he pointed out the window-"the people on the street. They look ghastly… the only time I've seen such deprivation in an unbesieged city was during the outbreak of the plague in Thapsos when I was a young man."
Maxian coughed, then managed to clear his throat. "It is no plague, my friend, it is the common state of the Roman citizen in these days. Those men and women are as healthy as they're liable to get."
The dead man shook his head in disbelief, then took quick steps to the window. He looked out for a long time. Then he said: "They are like the walking dead. Each face is cut with terrible weariness and pain. The citizens are… diminished, frail almost."
Abdmachus exchanged a knowing glance with the prince, then said: "It is why we have brought you back, my lord. There is a… a curse upon the city. We need your help to break it. But be warned, it is very strong. We believe that it is, in part, the doing of your nephew."
"Who?" The dead man was puzzled. His face creased in thought. "I have-I had-no nephews. All of my children are dead."
Maxian struggled to rise and managed to get up far enough to lean against the plaster wall. "The Histories say that he was adopted by you, made your heir. He used your name, in part, to make himself Dictator of the city. You must remember him-Gaius Octavius. Your sister's daughter's son."
The dead man stared at Maxian with something like shock on his face. He rubbed the back of his head, then turned around and paced to the window. There he turned back again, his hands on his hips. "Octavian? That mousy little sycophant claimed to be my heir? A colorless, mewling senatorial lickspittle? All he did was follow around on my heels, snooping. I surely left no will naming him my heir…"
Abdmachus laughed. The dead man was beside himself with disgust. Maxian was more serious. The dead man continued to curse luridly, until at last he ran out of epithets.
"Whether you made out that will or not, it was presented to the Senate in your name. After a civil war he became Emperor," the Prince continued with a weak voice. "The first of many. Under his supreme rule, the Republic became a shell, and the Empire came to rule the world. It was in his time that this curse that you see reflected on the faces of the citizens began. We think, Abdmachus and I, that it was intended to protect and sustain the state and that for a long time it did. But the world is changing and the state, because of this curse, cannot change with it. The people are the ones who are suffering. The state remains, but it is becoming more and more rotten. Great changes must be made to cure this ill."
The dead man had barely heard anything that Maxian had said. "But what happened to Marcus Antonius? What happened to my supporters? Marcus should have followed me as Dictator-he was well beloved of the people! The Senate would not stand for an Emperor… did the wars continue, did Rome bleed still more?"
Maxian sighed. It was going to take a long time to bring the dead man up to date on the doings of the city and the Empire… If only his head did not feel like it was being crushed in a vise. The dead man began pacing restlessly. The nervous energy in that spare frame only made the pain in the Prince's head worse.