Down These Strange Streets (George R.R. Martin) (Kitty Norville 6.50)

“If I recall correctly,” Julia said, “most of the Marsi were clients of Livius Drusus. But then he was murdered.”

“He championed the Italian allies in the Senate, didn’t he?” It was coming back to me. Drusus had tried to get citizenship for all our Italian allies, but word got out, whether truthfully or not, that they had all secretly pledged to enter his clientele if he was successful in making them citizens. That would have made him too powerful, and his enemies had him assassinated. Typical politics for that generation. For any generation, if truth be told.

“That’s right,” Julia said, “but in the Social War, his brother was killed leading a Roman army against the Marsi, and the Livii repudiated their patronage.” Julia’s knowledge of the great families was far more comprehensive than my own. “After all the fuss died down and they were citizens, the Marsi took clientage under the Pompeius family, and when Pompey Magnus was killed, Caesar offered them patronage. His support in that part of Italy was weak, so he courted the Marsi. With them in his clientele, the other people of the central mountain district followed.”

“That sounds like Caesar,” I said. “They sent a good many young men to serve in his legions. I wonder what he promised them in return?”

“Nothing but the proper mutual obligations of patron and client, I am sure,” Julia said. She probably believed it.

Hermes spoke up. “Didn’t you say Angitia had a shrine in Rome?”

I had completely forgotten it. “Where is it, Julia? We ought to see if anyone there knows anything.”

“It’s just a tiny place near the grain market,” she said. “I don’t know if it even has a permanent staff. There is some sort of ceremony at the time of the Martialis, and people leave offerings there to protect them from snakebite. That’s as much as I know.”

The Martialis is a harvest festival and signifies the close of the agricultural year. A good time to ask the favor of a snake goddess to protect the granaries from mice. It made sense. I told the litter slaves to carry us to the grain market, and they complied with sour looks. Litter slaves always think that every direction is uphill.

We passed by the great plaza of the grain merchants with its spectacular statue of Apollo and turned down a tiny side street. Other than a small fountain at its entrance, there was nothing to distinguish it from Rome’s thousands of other little streets.

“How did you know of this place?” I asked Julia.

“My grandmother brought me here when I was a little girl. It was when Caesar departed for Syria. Aurelia believed that the entire Orient is carpeted with venomous serpents and she came here to sacrifice for his protection.”

“She was a pious woman,” I agreed. “When I was with Caesar in Gaul, she used to write him long letters detailing the sacrifices she had provided to protect him from enemies, from drowning, from accident, from scurrilous gossip and slander, and on and on. Caesar said she was single-handedly supporting all the animal sellers and priests in Rome.”

“That’s an exaggeration,” Julia protested.

“Not by much. I used to read those letters to him. He complained that he was ruining his vision with all the writing he did, so he had none to spare for his mother’s letters. She had incredibly tiny handwriting. Lavish though she was with sacrifices, she was stingy with paper, and crowded as much as she could onto a single sheet. To this day, it pains my eyes to think about those letters.”

“You never run out of things to complain about,” she observed.

“I’ve lived a tragic life,” I told her as the litter slaves set us down, gasping and puffing abundantly, despite the paltriness of the effort they had expended.

The shrine was at the very end of the street, which in turn wasn’t much more than an alley between two grain warehouses. The few doors of the flanking buildings looked as if they hadn’t been opened in years. The door to the shrine was flanked by low-relief pilasters wound with sculpted snakes. The paint was faded and flaking away. The door itself stood open. In the usual fashion of Italian temples and shrines, the portico sat atop a dozen or so narrow, steep steps.

“It looked better than this when I came here with Aurelia,” Julia said.

“We all looked better thirty years ago,” I told her. I was about to step inside when Hermes placed a hand on my arm and turned to Julia.

“What’s on the other side of this door?” he asked. I knew I was getting old. This was an elementary precaution I should have taken without conscious thought. When I was younger and my wits sharper, I would have sent Hermes through first.

“I didn’t go inside,” she said. “I stayed out here with some slave women while Grandmother went in. I don’t know if there was a priest inside or if she just made her sacrifice and came back out.”

Blood sacrifices are usually made on an altar before a temple, not inside. But there was no altar before the entrance. Sometimes food offerings were left at the feet of the deity’s image, incense burned, that sort of thing. “Is anyone here?” I shouted. There was silence from within. I looked at Hermes and jerked my head toward the doorway. He put a hand on the hilt of the sword he wore concealed beneath his clothes and strode through the doorway. Hearing no sounds of violence, I followed. Something about that open door bothered me. Thieves would not hesitate to rob the sanctuary of a foreign goddess.

Inside it was very quiet and smelled as temples usually smell—of many years of incense and the smoke of lamps, torches, and candles. No fires were burning at this time, but there were other scents beneath that of the smoke and incense. Julia’s shadow fell across the doorway.

“Don’t come in yet!” I urged her. “Do you smell that?”

“Something’s dead in here,” Hermes noted.

“And I smell cedar,” Julia said.

“Right, “I said. “There’s a snake in here somewhere and if it’s one of those damned swamp adders, we have a problem. Julia, what sort of sacrifice did Aurelia bring that day?”

I could hear the frown in her voice. “It was a long time ago. She had a small cage or basket of some sort.”

“She was bringing mice,” I said. “That’s how you sacrifice to Angitia. You feed her snake. It should have a pit or crypt of some sort here, like the one in the big temple at Lake Fucinus. The sacred snake got out of that one. This one may have as well.”