The Tribune's Curse by John Maddox Roberts

Author:John Maddox Roberts [Roberts, John Maddox]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General, Historical
ISBN: 9780312304881
Google: ocyOVqWtLy0C
Amazon: 0312304889
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2003-04-04T18:30:00+00:00

8

DO YOU THINK SHE GOT MY HAIR right?” Julia asked.

“You look superb, my dear,” I assured her. In fact, she was better than superb as we rocked along in our hired litter to the admiration of all eyes. The sides were rolled up to give those eyes the best possible view. Julia, dressed in her half-silk gown and decked in her emeralds and pearls, her face made up by an expert and her hair dressed in a high-piled lattice of curls, could have modeled for one of the goddesses. I didn’t look so bad myself, with my bruises fading and wearing my best toga. The winter sun of late afternoon, low in the south but shedding a clear light, flattered us both. Behind us, as usual, walked Hermes and Cypria.

“I am so excited,” she said, fanning herself unnecessarily.

“I don’t see why. You’ve attended the festivities at Ptolemy’s own court. This won’t be nearly so lavish.”

“You know it’s not the same. In Alexandria, I could only stay for the first part of the evening. For the sake of my reputation, I had to leave before things got really scandalous. Besides, those were the revels of a barbarian court, full of half-mad Egyptian nobles and Persian degenerates and Macedonian brutes. Lisas’s entertainments are attended by the cream of Roman society.”

“I’ve seen the cream of Roman society behave like a shipload of drunken pirates plundering a coastal villa,” I told her. “Part of a diplomat’s art is getting people to loosen up, and Lisas really knows how to do it.”

“Then you will have to protect me,” she said.

The Egyptian Embassy was situated on the lower slope of the Janiculum, in the relatively new Trans-Tiber district. Free of the cramping walls of the City proper, the estates on the Janiculum sprawled amid generous grounds, and much of the property was the domain of wealthy foreigners. At the top of the hill was the pole, from which fluttered a long, red banner, which was taken down only if an enemy approached.

We were carried across the Sublician Bridge, pushing past the throngs of beggars who always haunt bridges, thence up along the line of the old wall built by Ancus Martius to connect the bridge and the Servian Wall to the little fort surrounding the flagpole. Both the wall and the fort were in ruins, despite occasional calls for their restoration.

At length we arrived at the embassy, where flocks of slaves doused us with flower petals, sprinkled us with perfume, and generally behaved as if we had just stepped down from Olympus to let mere mortals bask in our radiance. They even draped our slaves with wreaths.

The place was a marvelous jumble of architectural styles, decorated with the most extravagant paintings, frescoes, and picture mosaics, the buildings and grounds populated with Greek and Egyptian statuary and planted with ornamental shrubs and trees from all over the world.

Lisas himself came to greet us, swathed in a tremendous, gauzy robe dyed with genuine Tyrian purple, his face plastered with heavy cosmetics to disguise the ravages of his legendary degeneracies.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.