A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow - By Levkoff, Andrew Page 0,1

wing! Give me that!” I seize the torch from the slave. “See my atriensis in the morning and instruct him to flog you. Ask for Alexander. Now be gone!” Athena, protect me—not here again. Not again, I beg you.

I point the sputtering torch down a dark hallway and see that it is too short to be my own. In the dark, they all look alike. The spirits of a house come alive at night. Torchlight sets them free. Too many columns. Too many shadows. No one about. Even the slaves are abed. I’m drunk. How can I be drunk and dreaming?

Luca.

They say the entrance to Hades is at Avernus, but for me it lies here, somewhere in this house. No matter where I walk, in the end, the torture of the pit awaits me. I’m so tired. If I could but sleep a dreamless sleep. Come nightmare, do thy worst and let me rest. I hurry now past columns that throw grasping shadow arms. There is the garden atrium, rain splashing into the impluvium and blowing spray in gusts over the slick tile floor. I slip on a wet spot and fall to my knees. The torch skids, hits a clay planter head-on and goes out with a hiss and a small explosion of sparks.

That is the sign. I am close now. I get to my feet and grope along the walls until finally, I hear a woman’s voice, low and urgent. It doesn’t sound like my wife. More words, then a grunt as if someone has been struck. I draw my pugio from its scabbard for the hundredth time, swearing that this time I will plunge it into the traitor’s neck. I make my way down the hall, past two empty cubiculae. I squint at a wall painting, recognize the image of Orpheus and Eurydice, the viper curled around her ankle. Now it comes.

Knowledge spurs me not to greater speed, but turns my feet to stone. They scrape on the stone floor as I drag myself forward, my mind silently screaming, ‘Awaken! Awaken!’

The cubiculum has no door, and the heavy drapes that separate it from the hallway are partially drawn. I peer past the curtains. The room is dark, and I can hear more than I can see. The rhythmic grunts of the man in the room are occasionally echoed by a woman’s groan, whether in pain or pleasure I cannot tell. There is also the intermittently rhythmic thump of a chest of drawers as it is knocked up against a wall.

Forms begin to be discernible out of the murk. Two bodies face the wall, leaning over the waist high wooden chest. A man whose head is turned away from the doorway has his tunic pulled up above his waist and stuffed into his belt. His pale, exposed buttocks moves in a short arc, up and down, like comic moons unsure whether to rise or set. I can see the prominent bald spot on the back of Caesar’s head as he hunches over my wife’s right shoulder.

“Haste, Julius,” she says, “or my husband will discover how boring you are.” Her last word turns into a grunt as Caesar responds with a vicious thrust that practically lifts Tertulla off her feet. I gag as I always do. Does she mock him, or encourage him? I can never tell. The left shoulder of her tunic is torn. Did she struggle? Or is this more evidence of their ardor? I know as I follow the slender line of her bare arms, up to her shaking shoulders, past her neck and the ringlets of hair that half obscure her cheeks, that whenever I force myself to gaze just a little higher, I will find that she is looking straight into my eyes.

Now Crassus, now! Here in the instant of recognition, in the one moment when all the gods call out for decisiveness, for retribution, this is the moment for action! I feel the knife in my hand, but I cannot move a muscle. She has pinned me like an insect; though the light is still very dim, I know she sees me standing here. Is that a look of terror that passes over her face at the sight of me. Too soon, whatever was there is replaced by an expression of unbearable sorrow.

The meeting of our eyes is far more terrible than the sight of her rutting. Move, Crassus, move! The longer I stand here, the more my shame grows. The longer I