The Alexandrian Embassy Read Free Page A

and then put his head back round. ‘And make sure that the poker is pulled out a bit and clearly visible. I want Sempronius to know exactly what I think of him.’
    â€˜Your tame senator sent a boy round,’ an old man with gnarled fingers and a sagging throat said, not taking his eyes off the scroll that he was perusing in the light of two lamps.
    Magnus took a seat next to him at the table in the corner of the tavern with the best view of the door through the fug of the crowded room. ‘Which one, Servius?’
    â€˜Which boy? I don’t know, I didn’t ask his name.’
    â€˜No, you old goat; which senator?’ Magnus took the cup and wine jug brought to him by the man serving behind the bar. ‘Thanks, Cassandros.’
    Servius looked up, his eyes awash with milky patches. ‘Oh, the older one.’
    â€˜Senator Pollo?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜And?’
    Servius looked back at his scroll. ‘It’s no good, Magnus; I’ll be blind before long. Already everything is vague and dimming.’ He shook his bald head and placed the scroll down on the table. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you whilst you were … in conference but the senator is very keen that you should attend his
salutio
in the morning and then accompany him to the Senate House; his nephew, Vespasian, has a job for you.’
    â€˜What sort of job?’
    â€˜The boy couldn’t say but Senator Pollo said that you were to keep the next three days or so free.’
    â€˜Three days?’
    â€˜Or so.’
    Magnus kicked the nearest stool. ‘Shit! Just when things are getting busy.’
    With a fold of his plain white citizen’s toga covering his head, Magnus crumbled a flour and salt cake over the flame of the smallfire that was kept continuously burning on the altar of the crossroads
lares
, embedded into the tavern’s exterior wall. The upkeep of these shrines was the original reason for the formation of the brotherhoods all over the city, centuries earlier. In the intervening time, however, the function of the brotherhoods had expanded to looking after the interests and welfare of the local community, for which they received remuneration from the locals commensurate with the amount of protection they needed. Their word, therefore, was law in the area in which they held sway.
    As the crumbs flared in the flame, Magnus muttered a short prayer to ask the gods of the junction of the Alta Semita and the Vicus Longus to hold their hands over the area. That done, he raised a bowl and poured a libation in front of the five small bronze figures that represented the lares, promising the same offering that evening should they keep their side of the religious bargain. Pulling the toga from his head, he patted the brother, whose turn it was to tend the fire, on the shoulder before heading off down the wakening Alta Semita, with the first indigo glow of dawn to his back and with Cassandros and a bearded, betrousered easterner, both of whom carried staves and sputtering torches, to either side.
    It was but a short walk to Senator Gaius Vespasius Pollo’s house and, although Magnus arrived there just shy of sunrise, there was already a goodly crowd of the senator’s clients waiting outside for admittance to his atrium in order to wish a good day to their patron, receive a small largesse, enquire if there was any way that they could be of service to him that day and, perhaps, occasionally take advantage of the symbiotic relationship and ask a favour of the senator themselves.
    â€˜Cassandros and Tigran, you stay here.’ Magnus did not care for order of precedence and pushed his way through the crowd to the front door, leaving his two companions waiting on the fringe of the gathering. No one objected to his progress as all were aware that this battered ex-boxer, although low on the social scale, was high in their patron’s favour.
    As the sun crested the eastern horizon,