Monstrorum Misericordia

World of Darkness -- Pax Romana - Galchobhar - Monstrorum Misericordia Appendix

Chapter One: Tears of Fire

Centurion Lucius Vibius Fulvius walked unsteadily down the rainy and almost lightless street towards the Fortified Fornix. Most lanterns had been snuffed by this late hour. Only a few lights graced the night, a ceramic jug filled with cheap olive oil provided a mere glimmer in the gloom and the dim radiance from a closing tavern were the only competition for the torch carried by the man who walked alongside of the centurion. The fluttering orange and gold glow stung Fulvius' eyes as the storm breezes whipped the torch to greater illumination while trying to extinguish the insolent brand.

The centurion glanced sidelong at the torchbearer. Septimus Valens was a hardened former soldier of the legions and decades older than his superior, but tough as tree roots with a pockmarked face that served as a reminder of the plague that had extinguished his entire family. In these final years he made the recruits under his command the heirs of his years of martial wisdom and found the camaraderie of the Vigiles his most valued treasure. As decanus Septimus was one of ten none-commissioned officers who served directly beneath Fulvius and oversaw the hundred men in his charge and directed them in Rome's eternal battle against uncontrolled fires and the lawlessness of the night.

Tonight, the decanus' face was expressionless, and, in the rain and firelight, he appeared to be crying tears of fire. Fulvius tried to master his own scattered thoughts, but his head was still befuddled by too much wine and the exertions of the marriage bed. Less than an hour before he had been rudely awakened in the middle of the night by an insistent pounding upon his apartment door. Such disturbances were commonplace in Fulvius' line of work as those under his command often sought his direction when confronted by unique situations. But Septimus Valens was the exception to this rule and Fulvius was both unprepared for the Decanus' appearance in person as it was Septimus' habit to send a runner when seeking direction and that only in the direst of circumstances.

It was the crux of these unusual events that left the centurion uneasy, that and the hurried description of events that Septimus Valens had harshly whispered to Fulvius in the guttering glow of a tallow-dip that brightened the household shrine as the commander quickly dressed. A massacre Septimus had said, at the brothel known as the Fortified Fornix, a pleasure house Fulvius knew well, but to which he could scarcely afford to visit. As the two men marched through the rain and dark the centurion turned the pieces of what he had been told over in his mind like the parts of a child's puzzle that refused fit together. If anyone other than Septimus Valens had come to him with such an unlikely story he would not have believed, but it had been his most trusted and valuable subordinate who had relayed the tale.

Rome was a violent city. Every night there were domestic disturbances, fights, stabbings, rapes, and murders. It was the Vigiles duty to mediate these intemperate behaviors and ensure law and order throughout the black hours of the night while simultaneously preventing the city from burning down. But the word massacre did not seem to fit any category of disturbance Fulvius could imagine. Of course, there were occasional street battles between rival gangs for control of this or that neighborhood. And it was true that sometimes antagonism between soldiers of various legions resulted in bloodshed and bodies. Only the rarest of riots in the streets over food, politics or the clash of sporting factions could even come close to a massacre and at a well-regarded brothel? It beggared the imagination of the centurion.

As the two men turned from the wide avenue of Clivus Publicius into the narrow lane known as the Artery Postumus. No one still living remembered why it had been so named, in honor of a famous resident or the order in which it had been established as the Roman praenomen Postumus meant the last or final of a given thing. In any case little of this impinged on Fulvius wine-soaked thoughts as the torchlight began to pick out the faces and forms of the lane's residents lined up in doorways on either side of street and up above starring down from small windows and wooden balconies alike. It was the assemblage of so many silent spectators that began to really work Fulvius nerve and made him feel like a condemned man being ushered into an arena to be devoured by savage and yet unseen beasts.

The Fortified Fornix had once been a two storied house in the Roman style, but its owners had added a third floor in the last decade and had faced the exterior in pink marble giving the impression of a bright temple dedicated to carnal delights. Before tonight, half-naked painted whores both male and female would have drummed up business by beckoned to passersby in the streets below. At this caliginous hour, lit by the occasional flashes of lightning from the oncoming storm, the brothel’s facade gave the impression of a monstrous bloodied skull whose numerous eyes had been gouged out and filled with darkness.

Or thus it seemed to the Centurion Fulvius as the two officers of the Vigiles Urbani approached a small knot of guards who stood before the brothel doors. The rain had started coming down heavily and all the men stood beneath an awning that shielded them from the worst of the downpour. In the guttering torchlight the men’s faces appeared distorted, but Fulvius had seen the far-away look of shock present in each guard’s eyes many times before upon the faces of the survivors of assault or witnesses to murder.

The centurion steadied the men with a hearty salute which they returned with diminished enthusiasm, and he began questioning them upon all that they had seen and heard concerning the nights events and then moved on to reports given the guardsmen by neighbors or witnesses. In the hour before midnight many in the neighborhood had heard screams and the clash of blades emanating from the brothel and it was a wine merchant who shared one wall of his shop with the whorehouse who had sent one of his slaves towards the main thoroughfares looking for help from the authorities. It had been Septimus Valen's troop that had encountered the terrified slave and followed him back to the Fortified Fornix. Within the darkened building Valen's unit found only silence and carnage, victims aplenty, but no perpetrators and no witnesses.

When all the men had finished their reports, they formed up into two lines of five soldiers to either side of the brothel’s main entrance. Fulvius instinctively knew this was a gauntlet, these men had faced something he could not imagine, if he wanted to maintain their respect, he would need to pass each of them and prove his courage where theirs had so obviously failed. It was within his power to compel them to accompany him, but if he did that then he would effectively destroy the unit’s morale and its effectiveness as a team in life and death circumstances.

The Fulvius paused before stepping over the threshold, the passage beyond was a black throat that threatened to swallow him whole, and it exhaled air colder than the rain-soaked street without. Thin tendrils of mist drifted between and over his sandaled feet and out into the street. Collectively the troopers stepped back, as if somehow those pale steamers were the tentacles of something monstrous vomited up by the sea.

One of the soldiers must have handed him a brass lamp because the heat of its flame warmed his wrist as it cast faint gold illumination in a halo before him. Fulvius found himself alone in the narrow passage, its brick walls covered with pale plaster upon which lewd and suggestive scenes had been painted as a pornographic menu of services available to clients of this brothel, in the past these erotic frescoes had aroused him, but now these coarse depictions seemed a perverse foreshadowing of the tragedy that lay before him.

The Centurion glanced backwards just once and saw the doors closed behind him. There was a palpable sense of being pulled downward in the passage against his will, something that reminded him of a traumatic childhood event in which he had nearly drowned in the ocean. And now as he proceeded to exit the entry hall and enter the atrium he understood why it triggered his memory, except for his single small lamp there was nothing but darkness in all directions. And it was cold, so cold that his breath smoked, and so hushed that he couldn't even hear the storm outside. It was like being at the bottom of the sea, floating in the ruins of a sunken temple dedicated to forgotten gods.

He stood in a liminal space, between the atrium and the entry hall, neither here nor there. It was in such spaces that the two-faced god of doorway and boundaries Janus was said to reside. Fulvius felt the hand of fate upon him and heard the whispers of his genius, his higher self, enumerating the myriad ways in which he was fucked. Up to this point Fulvius had simply worked hard and done what he was told. The discipline of those two actions had brought him to within a breath of the promotion that would ensure his family's financial success and security. It had seemed an almost certainty until tonight's dreadful turn of events.

Now everything Fulvius had worked for over the last two decades lay upon the butcher's block. One wrong step and not only was his career over, so were the lives of those he loved. At first blush, his reaction was overblown, but his destiny lay in the details. A massacre had occurred at a prominent brothel in a district for which he was responsible and on the night of the Imperators funeral rites. The entire event stank of class warfare and political intrigue. If this atrocity came to light the wrong way it would make the new Emperor look weak and Fulvius' career would end. If he didn't solve this crime fast enough the very same fate would befall him. If he did solve this mystery and exposed the Emperor's enemies he and his family would die. If he reached the bottom of this mass-murder and exposed a vulnerable Emperor as responsible everyone he loved would be punished. No matter which way he turned there was a bull with sharp horns. In order to survive and prosper Fulvius would have to walk the labyrinth of Roman politics and bring justice to the dead.

Chapter Two: Silent House

Septimus Valens stood alone outside the brothel, rooted to the spot, staring at the doors through which Lucius Fulvius had vanished or rather beyond them to what lay within.

Cold rain ran down his face, seeping between layers of leather armor and cooled his body as it soaked the linen tunic beneath where it clun to him as chill second skin. His flesh was cold and wet, but the chill that came over him emanated from both the brothel before him and from his past.

Was there such a thing as evil? It was a question that had never crossed the mind of the old troop leader before. He had spent nearly twenty years at war and had seen the atrocities that men perpetrated on the vanquished and on the hapless civilians left vulnerable after a battle. Not only had he witnessed them, but he had been the culprit, for after a victory the legionaries were often given leave to sack and despoil a village, town or tribe. Of his own experience Septimus knew the kinds of things drunken soldiers did after a battle and it had never made him wonder about evil.

The storm had blown in from the west, from the sea, and had moved eastward leaving Rome and Septimus drenched. The rain had soaked into his cloak and tunic, beaded his flesh and chilled him. The air smelled of salt-water and lightening a cleaner smell than the usual melange of smoke from too many cooking fires, unwashed bodies and human waste.

Septimus wasn't conscious of the chill or of the emptiness of the street or the hush of silence that hung over the neighborhood. His mind was elsewhere in time and place. As a soldier he had seen death on a hundred battlefields, tasted the blood of other men as it was splashed about in the heat of melee and smelled the stink of the dying as they shit themselves.

But death had never been so personal as when it came for his family. He had come home after a three year absence at the end of the Cantabrian Wars in Hispania. He had not been home long when the pox struck Rome. Many apartment blocks, Insula, were overcome by a terrible fever that spread from one family to the next like links in a chain. The fever progressed quickly burning thro, ugh the victims and leaving them with dry swollen throats and bloody defecation and on the ninth day of sickness the victims sprouted angry pustules that usually proceeded a painful death.

Septimus had lived through these things, sick and impotent while his family died around him, in the end the pox took every member of his closest kin. In his darkest moment he had prayed to the gods to take his life and spare his loved ones, there had been divine no reply, but he alone had survived. The authorities quarantined anyone who even came close to the sickness and let the plague run its course. He lay there in his own filth slowly regaining his strength as the bodies around drew flies. No friends came to help him burn his dead and because he seemed no longer vulnerable to the contagion he took pay to burn all those killed by it. Ultimately this was how he had come into the service of the Vigiles.

The Decanus had sent his men to patrol the neighborhood in pairs under the false pretense that some of those responsible for the wholesale slaughter within the Fortified Fornix might still be about on the streets of the district. This was something that Septimus seriously doubted, but it gave the men a sense of purpose and reassured the populace that the Vigiles were actually doing something to protect them. The old soldier doubted that his men could protect even themselves from those responsible for the night's atrocities and it would be safest for them if they were elsewhere until dawn.

The old Decanus did not know exactly what had happened within the Fortified Fornix, but he knew it wasn't something simple. These were no ordinary killings, the number of bodies alone, well over a hundred would stand out in the annals of city history for the magnitude of the crime. While the ugliness of a mass-murder was bad enough there was something more afoot. Of those killed, two thirds were either active legionaries or retired warriors while the rest were slaves or whores. In Septimus considerable experience noncombatants took shelter or fled the scene of a battle and baring a few rare circumstances battles quickly spread from an initial starting place and spun out of control unless discipline was maintained. For these well considered reasons the decanus didn't believe this was a battle or Melee, rather the victims had been led to slaughter like calves or sheep. What stumped the old soldier were the how and the why of the bloody deed. And there was something else also, many were the night's that Septiumus and his men had passed the Fortified Fornix and every time it had been a lewd and lively extravaganza. But in a matter of hours it had become a tomb. It wasn't just the bloody carnage, the place was cold like the northern forests in winter and every single light had been snuffed leaving the bodies to cool in gloom. All of these things might have reasonable explanations, but Septimus Valen's gut said otherwise. Of course all the skullery servants, guards and customers could have fled the scene, but again he did not believe it so. Upon his initial exploration of the darkened brothel it had felt to him as if they were still there somewhere just out of sight.

Chapter Four: Equestrian

As night fell over the city of Rome on this, the second day of September the citizenry of Rome mourned the death of its greatest leader Augustus. The imperator had died only a fortnight before and his body had been carried from the southern municipality of Nuvlana all the way to Rome. Along the way the body of Augustus was displayed to a grieving mass of citizens some hundred thousand of which had escorted the departed Augustus back to the capital for a state viewing and a public cremation. While the public mourned their hero's death with wine in the streets, the Senate squared off against the heir apparent Tiberius, and the equestrian families began selling their allegiances to whichever side would advance their position the most. The death of the man who had restored stability to Rome after its last civil war might well be the cause of another savage struggle for power among Rome's elite at a time when Rome was especially vulnerable to enemies both foreign and domestic.

With these issues in mind Junius Secundus Cato made his way down the dark and filthy alley that lay in the nameless warren of streets between the old Temple of Luna and the Temple of Diana in the lower Aventine. Regularly he glanced over his shoulder in concern over the possibility of being followed. A concern that had only grown since he had slipped out of his villa in the Piscina Publica the low-lying district east of the Aventine Hill and begun the long walk west along the Via Nova. That street was the lesser of two roads in Piscina Publica and was less often used after the fall of night.

Secundus had chosen the Via Nova for that very reason hoping to avoid prying eyes as he made his way towards the Porta Ardeatina a secondary postern or lesser gate that primarily served cart traffic during the day and which was often closed by night. The other larger gate, the Porta Appia, was highly fortified and heavily staffed by the fourth cohort of Vigiles and Secundus had no desire to be stopped at the greater gate that serviced the heavy traffic of the Via Appia which paralleled the Via Nova, but whose width and wealth of business made it the most popular road for both wagons and pedestrians headed into the heart of Rome. Secundus being of the rank of equestrian, a landed cavalryman, would be recognized by any of the seasoned watchman and recognition was what the aging Eques (horse lord) most wanted to avoid this particular evening.

To aid in avoiding notice Secundus had dressed in the clothes of one of his man-servants and and had left behind both his armor and bodyguards. At just over fifty years old Secundus was still fit for combat if not quite so spry. The gullies along either side of the sloping road that led up to the Porta Ardeatina were heavy with brush and a well known place for highwaymen to waylay the unwary or unprepared. Strangely, the old warrior had seen no sign of bandits and had passed through the postern at the cost of only a modest bribe. Still he had felt an uneasy sense of being followed since passing through the Servian Walls and had taken special effort to throw off any pursuit rather than lead a tail to this evening's meeting.

Secundus' backward glance revealed the narrow entrance to the secluded alley that separated the backside of a butchers shop and cheese sellers on one side and a wine shop and brothel along the opposing wall. The alleyway was no wider than a man's outstretched arms, fifty paces deep and it formed a narrow canyon on both sides two stories high which only revealed a narrow strip of night sky if one cared to look up.

The aging soldier had only glanced upwards once to verify the absence of watchers, there had been none, rather he chose to concentrate on his footing instead as the floor of the passageway was slick with refuse. A narrow channel had been dug in the hard-packed earth of the lane which served to bleed away a steady rush of unidentifiable fluids to the sewer entrance in the crowded street beyond. A powerful melange wafted from the little ditch rank from a recently emptied chamber-pot, and strong with the stench of sour wine and curdled milk. Such squalid alleys were commonplace in Rome and occasioned no surprise for Secundus, rather what triggered his mild curiosity was the absence of both rats who were Rome's most abundant pest and the mangy cats who primarily fed upon them. But being of single-minded purpose the old man dismissed such minutia as irrelevant to his mission this evening and made his way to the end of the lane where he knew the rear door to the brothel lay.

There a bloody glow from a ruby-tinted lampshade above revealed the outline of a iron-bound door in a shallow recess of the brick wall of the brothel appropriately named the Fortified Fornix. Opposite the ironclad door was another doorway that led into the butcher-shop and between the two doors lay a large pile of offal. Before the mound of fleshy remains sat a large black dog. So utterly still was the beast and so dark was it's coat that Secundus' eyes passed over it once without registering it before he did a double-take. Immediately the horse-lord realized the dog was not a run-of-the-mill mongrel so common to the streets of Rome, rather it was a noble looking beast, if sinister in coloration and demeanor.

Secundus was not sure what it was about the creature that left him uneasy. It was of course large, as large as a man if it were to stand on it's hind legs, but here it sat at ease upon its haunches with front legs splayed and it's tail curled about itself. Perhaps thought the old warrior, it was the ruby glow reflected so brightly from the dog's eyes that had chilled his blood and left him hypnotized with an uncharacteristic fascination. Being a rational man and something of a stoic philosopher, Secundus like his namesake Cato knew that the stories of hell-hounds and chthonian deities were the superstitions of the ignorant and had no place in the mind of a rational Roman. As the ebony beast had offered no
hostility towards him the old Eques turned his back on the creature and rapped upon the brothel door five times twice and then four more times. The numbers and combination signified the number fourteen, the number of Secundus' old legion and one that still harbored Tiberian loyalists from the time of the Pannonian War.

As the reverberations of Secundus' staccato strikes upon the armored door faded, the portal opened revealing a massive masculine form caparisoned in dirty leather armor and punctuated by a pair of cold dark eyes, a crown of filthy unkempt hair and a set of teeth like a broken comb. Secundus had barely offered the hand-sign of the goat and the password Capricorn when he was engulfed in a burly hug that stank of old sweat and stale wine. Secundus pushed the door guard away laughing and clasped forearms with the man.

Tullius was a Lombard who had also served in the Fourteenth Legion Gemina during the Pannonian War five years ago. Both men had nearly died during that fateful campaign and bonds forged in the heat of battle often superseded social station and in Tullius case, hygiene. Secundus was rudely pulled into a darkened hall and the door firmly shut and bolted behind him. The older man looked Tullius over as they conversed in hushed whispers. The Lombard had lost none of his prodigious strength, but had most certainly lost more teeth, still his old friend was better off than many of the companions they had each lost during the war, but he had obviously failed to rise further in the world and ranked as only a brothel-house door guard. This saddened Secundus, but had nothing to do with tonight's meeting.

From deeper in the brothel came the sounds of music, laughter and general merrymaking. The party at the Fortified Fornix was in full swing and the patrons were clearly unwilling to show Augustus his due by drinking and fornicating with some degree of respect for the honor of a fallen patriarch of Rome. This of kind lascivious behavior left Secundus disgusted with disapproval for it lacked self-discipline and seriousness for the dignity of the occasion. Tullius must have recognized Secundus' sour expression for he jabbed the old cavalryman in the ribs and showed what was left of his teeth as he pointed deeper into the den of iniquity.

With humor turned all hard professionalism Tullius spoke in the harsh and guttural Latin of the Lombards:

"The Mother of the house waits for us my old friend. There is no more time for chit chat."

And with that pronouncement Tullius led Secundus down the darkened hall towards a flight of wooden stairs guarded by a muscular young Sirian whom the Eques had met, but whose name escaped him. A quizzical look towards Tullius triggered a response.

"Gabr. Also of the Fourteenth Gemina, good man, but after your time."

Secundus merely nodded. At their approach the young man saluted with fist-to-heart as Tullius gave him instructions to guard the backdoor and called one of the two men guarding the atrium where the girls and the customers socialized.

Secundus noted aloud: "Your discipline is not as lax as such a setting would imply Legionnaire."

Tullius simply showed more missing teeth and led the way upstairs. The second floor consisted of a balconied walkway which surrounded the atrium and all along its rectangular length stood doorways whose interiors were screened from outside view by simple cloth hangings or beaded curtains. True doors would be a security risk in case a guest became rough with one of the
whores and would impede the guards in ending any funny business.

As the two former soldiers walked towards the far end of the balcony, Secundus noted that before each occupied room stood a water-boy, the term wasn't very flattering, but it did describe the services rendered even as it diminished their importance. Such men, and all the water-boys were men, stood guard while patrons satisfied their baser urges with the whores and then provided a bucket of both warm and cold water with which to wash after their carnal exertions and a towel for drying. Absently the old horseman noted that nearly every door had a water-boy which merely meant business was booming and that they were a rough looking lot, but as the neighborhood was poor it followed those employed here would also be likewise.

Just then Secundus returned his full attention to what Tullius had been saying that Iovita, the house-madame or mother as such women were often called in Rome, had asked for the aid of the old Egregius ("distinguished gentleman") personally, saying only that it was of the utmost importance to the security of Rome.

Tullius had led them to the last doorway on the second floor and Secundus
noticed that it actually did have a wooden door and that it was guarded by a
large blond warrior who held a Germanic long-sword blade unsheathed and pointed
earthward. Tullius introduced the Dominus Cato to the guard who only spoke broken Latin,
but who looked fully capable of killing anyone who approached uninvited or unannounced.
At a word from the Lombard, the Germanic guard stepped back and opened the door
for them. As Secundus stepped through the open door he had no idea precisely what
he had been summoned here to do, but that the summons came from such an important
woman suggested a matter worthy of his attention.

Chapter Four: Black Dog

The black dog remained sitting in the filthy alley next to the pile of offal as if
it were his master's throne. The beast unconsciously cocked his head and pricked up
his ears as he strained to hear what was happening within the nearby whorehouse.

The merrymaking had taken on a sentimental tone as the drunken songs being sung
within bore more than a touch of nostalgia for comrades lost upon distant battlefields,
and the din of men's voices raised for past triumphs and the hope of better days
stirred the animal to rise from its resting place and pad with utmost silence to the
fortified door.

The alleyway was empty of all but the beast, absent even were the pests of the night,
and if there had been anyone else present they would have seen the canine adumbration
cast upon the wall of the butcher's shop grow momentarily indistinct as it grew taller
and more slender coming to resemble the shadow of a man.

A young man, dark of hair and eye, too tall to be Roman and too fair by far. He was
dressed all in shades of black, a sumptuous velvet tunic covered his pale flesh girded
at the waist by a finely molded leather belt with matching sandals and a hooded cloak
of good quality soft wool. The ensemble was completed by a dagger and scabbard beaded
with jet.

The pale youth rapped upon the iron-shod door five times, then five more, and a final
set of four distinct raps which fell away into silence. This time when the door opened
it revealed the athletic form of a richly tanned man apparently only a few years older
than the pale youth but clearly of foreign birth.

Chapter Five: Gate Keeper

Gabr had made his way downstairs listening all the while to the drunken elegies of the
soldiers and whores who filled the inner court. The guests this evening were obviously
all men formerly of the legions, they struck Gabr as a dour lot, but their coin was just
as welcome at the Fortified Fornix.

Upon reaching the ground floor Gabr turned away from the sorrowful descant and the lights
of the courtyard for the relative dimness of the outer hall that connected the kitchens
with the whore's quarters. Directly between the two areas of the house lay the postern or
back door in the rear wall of the house of assignation.

There he relieved another of the guards to seek the latrines and took up the night's vigil
with only a barrel to sit upon, a bowl of tallow for illumination and a cup of Posca (a
dilution of wine vinegar and water generally drunk by the poor of Rome) for his thirst.

Gabr was tired. He had been awakened at midday to prepare for tonight's meeting and as he sat
his mind drifted momentarily into the past. Gabr, a nickname, or Gever ben Ari was a Hellenized Jew from Siria whose
family specialized in the spice trade. At an early age Gabr had come to the realization that he
would likely spend the rest of his life as a spice trader in the third largest city in the empire
- Antioch or he would have to break with family tradition.

Gabr chose the latter when he signed up with a legionary recruiter at the age of fifteen.
Six years and two wars later, Gabr considered himself a Roman and a soldier before he
thought of himself as a Jew or Syrian. And tonight he found himself caught up in some sort
of conspiracy or so he reasoned, but for whom and for what? These were things he felt certain
concerned his prospects for the future.

But his musings were interrupted by a rhythmic knocking at the postern door.

Immediately Gabr stood, as he did so, he also loosened the Roman short-sword at his waist
and moved to open the door. The ruby-tinted lantern light barely cut the darkness of the
fetid alley that ran behind the brothel. He barely registered the humid stinks wafting in
for what was revealed in the lamp's bloody glow. A young man of seeming of Circassian
origins dark of hair and pale of skin, athletic and well dressed if in the somberest color.

Gabr stood as if stricken, his mouth gone dry, unable to move or speak for the beauty of the
Circassian youth whose deep dark eyes seemed pull at him. He wasn't aware of the passage of
time or that he should be doing something as his eyes wandered from the perfect face to flesh
pale and elegant like moonlight on marble. It was a cold beauty and eerie for the stillness
of the figure, but it triggered a fire in Gabr's loins which was only quickened by the longing
he saw in the stranger's eyes.

The Circassian's speech shattering the moment and left Gabr aware that the pale youth was just a
a hands-breath from him, far too close were violence to erupt, and yet he wanted this young man
close.

The Circassian's voice was a low whisper: "May I come in...?"

Gabr felt heat rising to his cheeks at his slow response and obvious stare.

"Of course...please do enter...and a thousand welcomes to the Fortified Fornix."

As the Circassian stepped across the threshold Gabr felt a sudden sense of apprehension.

The Circassian's low whisper suddenly took on a strangely threatening tone:
"You have my sincerest thanks...Gabr. Of all those who reside now in this establishment your reward will be the greatest."

Suddenly Gabr didn't like the way the youth spoke and he clenched the hilt of his short sword
hard enough to hear his knuckles crack. Something was wrong. Gabr now noticed that the postern
door was closed. He couldn't recall if he had closed it or if it had been the stranger who had
done so or even when that might have happened. As fear started to steal over Gabr pressing him
towards fight or flight the young Circassian smiled and looked him directly in the eyes and
suddenly Gabr wanted to hear what the beautiful Circassian had to say.

In a conspiratorial hum the pale youth spoke again: "Gabr I am here looking for someone, but I am not entirely sure why she would come to this place."

Gabr could barely contain himself waiting for the looming question that he now longed to answer.

The Circassian's next question took on a heated undertone: "Is there something special happening tonight in the Fortified Fornix?"

Gabr felt the sweat break out all over his body as he struggled to answer quickly enough.

"There is a secret meeting taking place up on the second floor in the Mother's rooms between the old leadership of the Fourteenth Legion Gemina and several Tiberian loyalists!"

With the words finally uttered Gabr felt a kind of release not unlike that of ejaculation. The
Circassian merely leered in a knowing way as if they two had just participated in some perverse
and unspeakable pleasure that bound them together in dark camaraderie.

The Circassian continued the questioning with in a low coquettish drone: "And do tell what is the occasion of this covert meeting?"

Immediately Gabr felt that buildup of need to tell the pale youth everything he knew about the
meeting. So much so that muscles throughout his body trembled from the exertion of his need to
confess - which was frustrated by his inability to come up with anything like an answer. In turn
the Circassian suddenly looked exasperated.

As if whispering more to himself than to Gabr the beautiful boy asked a further question.

"You don't know why they are having the secret meeting tonight do you?"

Gabr felt an explosive release of tension that would have left him on the floor if the Circassian
hadn't been holding him up bodily.

"No!"

His answer or something else elicited a low husky laugh from the dark clad Circassian. If Gabnr's lack of answers disturbed him the Circassian did not show it. Rather he leaned into Gabr with a familiar intimacy, his lips pressed to Gabr's own and a cold tongue worked its way like an eel deep into his mouth. Gabr struggled just to breath as arousal turned to revulsion and revulsion to nausea as the Circassian vomited into his open throat refusing to release him until he swallow bloody bile.

When Gabr next became aware he lay on his side paroxysms of vomiting still wracked his body. He felt filthy, degraded, defeated and forgotten. This last was not so for when he next looked up from where he lay the Circassian stood over him. At first the boy did not speak just smiled at him the way a rapist leers at a despoiled victim, but his voice held that low husky intensity that had originally hypnotized Gabr. "You are mine now Gabr! I have marked you and there is no distance you flee and no place you can hide that I cannot find you." Gabr flinched at these pronouncements and heard a unexpected metallic jingling close to where he lay on the cold brick floor. Immediately thereafter the Circassian squatted directly over him and in that same familiar and seductive voice said: "In the coming days and nights you will earn that bag of gold there my beautiful Eromenos. But tonight I think its best you leave this establishment, you reek of fear and it wouldn't do for you to join this tableau just yet...Now Run!"

Gabr flinched at this decree, but still in shock his body seemed to have a mind of its own as he scrambled to his feet with the leather bag of coins clutched in his numb finger. Numb because while he had lain on the floor the room had grown darker and colder, the bowl of burning tallow barely visible in the gathering gloom. But what light there was seemed to halo that pallid face with eyes that blazed in the shadows like those of feral cat.

As Gabr struggled for the door he lost sight of the Circassian, but the other's words followed him like carrion birds would a dying animal - A Cappella.

"I see your red door, I want it painted black"
"No colors anymore, I want them to turn black"
"I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes"
"I have to turn my head until my darkness goes..."

Chapter Six: Downstairs Killers

By nightfall the Fortified Fornix was packed with soldiers young and old, verterans and mercenaries, auxiliaries and calvary, the sons of Equestrians too young to have seen action and the young toughs who liked be seen associating with real warriors.

Next in number were the whores, there were no more than one woman to every four men, but they were hard women used to rough men and the jealous blades of outraged wives and the competitive backbitting and occasional backstabbing of their fellow prostitutes.

One of their number was a petite beauty with long hair that hung to her knees and dyed red with Hena and her name was Rapax.

Rapax sashayed through the crowd of drunken soldiers and the whores looking for action, she filled every drinking cup whether the customer had coins in front of them or not and she endured every catcall and grasping hand with a steely control so uncommon among women of the streets.

But then Rapax was a professional. Not a whore whose work was essentially an honorable trade. Rather she belonged to Rome's most despicable vocation, those who took lives through deception for money - an assassin.

But Rapax was not alone. Three other assassins accompanied her in her mission to neutralize the ground floor occupants of the Fortified Fornix - the Eunuch, Calvatus, and Haedus.

The Eunuch was an effeminate musician, performer and acrobat. He was the intelligence arm of the group and could enter any location and within minutes locate a target or acquire needed information from unsuspecting sources while memorizing the layout of a site designated for an assassination. Charismatic and attractive the Eunuch was also a master of disguise and deception.

Calvatus filled the role of muscle for the small group of killers. He was a short, bald and bulky man whose body rippled with muscle. While not terribly smart, Calvatus possessed an animal-like cunning that served him well. Originally a soldier of the legions Calvatus was a ruthless killer who enjoyed his work a little too much, but it was not his enthusiasm for murder that saw him expelled from the legions, rather it was a penchant for cannibalism that even the Roman military found too extreme.

The last member of the team was Haedus. A mute boy from the streets whose native stealth and flexibility at squeezing through small spaces made him ideal at midnight assassination. A capable killer, the boy came to the Brotherhood with several murders already under his belt and a thorough lack of empathy that made his future a bright one among the assassins.

At the moment each had a single specific objective that they had been tasked with in order to accomplish their overall mission.

Rapax had assigned herself the role of wine-server with the goal of delivering poisoned wine to each and every patron. While it certainly wouldn't be possible to poison every patron of the whorehouse it was likely that most of the guests tonight would partake to some degree facilitating the elimination of the majority of guests in the most efficient manner possible. Any potential survivors could then be liquidated by the small group of assassins without undue fuss.

The Eunuch's assignment was to keep the guests and guards distracted with his artful performance of the lyre and the eloquence of his honeyed voice. By keeping all attention upon himself he freed the rest of the assassins to carryout their tasks with greater ease.

Calvatus' objective was more limited and specific, familiarize himself with as many of the legionaries and guards as possible and gather them together so that they could be eliminated as quickly when the time came. To accomplish these goals he had flashed his coin about in the buying of drinks, flattering whores with large tips and struck up a game of dice at which he continually lost.

Haedus acted as an advanced scout for the group as he kept a close count of the crowd from the upper gallery where a child playing with toys would not draw undue attention from the guards set to protect the secretive meeting taking place upstairs.

This last assignment was strictly speaking not part of the contract that the guild had set for the ground-floor Killers. But Rapax had understood from the beginning that whosoever had purchased two teams of assassins for this contract must be powerful indeed and secrets were more valuable than gold. If the petite murderess could discover what was being discussed in the rooms above and eliminate all the targets and the team of upstairs killers as well she could likely advance her position in the order and give herself significant influence in Rome all in one step and no one but the patron would know otherwise.

Chapter Seven: Mother

Tullius opened the door and ushered Secundus into the perfumed dimness within. Secundus had formed within his mind an image of what he thought the abode of a mistress of whores might be like and it was utterly incorrect. His imaginings had consisted of a cramped chamber larger than the cells assigned to common whores, but richly appointed with a sumptuous bed, silken pillows and littered obscenely with lewd pieces of art.

By contrast the two former legionaries stood in a small foyer, dimly lit, but illuminated on both sides of the room by the glow of beeswax candles. Secundus breathed in the warm aroma and marveled at the golden light as it played over an alter to the Dii Consentes, the twelve primary deities of the Greco-Roman pantheon. The candle light illuminated each of the divine statues from below and the flickering of the flames in the draft from the suddenly opened door lent a sense of motion and life to lifeless icons and threw lurid shadows upon the wall behind.

The small square chamber was a shrine to the gods. The deities were segregated by sex, six male gods on the right side and six goddesses on the left. The beeswax candles were votive offerings and since each individual candle was staggeringly expensive the twelve candles together equaled a small fortune. Secundus stood momentarily speechless at the devotion such an offering suggested and how wrong his assumptions had been concerning the woman who ran this house.

As the door shut behind them, Tullius extended a hairy muscular arm gesturing for Secundus to proceed through a set of black drapes that curtained off the shrine from rooms of Iovita beyond.

Chapter Eight: Water Boys

Procax and his Pueri

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Errata

List of Characters

• Lucius Vibius Fulvius -- Centurion of the Vigiles Urbani ("watchmen of the City")
• Septimus Valens -- Decanus of the Vigiles Urbani
• Junius Secundus Cato -- An aging equestrian of uncommon intelligence
• Tullius -- A Lombard legionary veteran if the Fighting Fourteenth and friend of Junius Secundus Cato
• Galchobhar -- A henchman of Morpheus and Mors he is a nightmare that feeds on blood and fear.
• Gever ben Ari -- Gabr is a former legionary made a slave to Galchobhar.
• Rapax --
• The Eunuch --
• Calvatus --
• Haedus --
• Iovita -- A senior imperial intelligence agent posing as the whore-mistress of the Fortified Fornix
• Wigbrand -- An aging leader of the Numerus Batavorum
• Fabianus Calvus Varius -- Priest
• Junius Iuvenalis Flavianus Physician

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porta_San_Sebastiano

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regio_XII_Piscina_Publica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigiles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_ancient_Rome

https://www.historynet.com/espionage-in-ancient-rome.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_legions#Early_Empire_legions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellum_Batonianum

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_timekeeping

Roman Architecture

Ancient Apartment Buildings - Insula

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/roman/x7e914f5b:beginner-guides-to-roman-architecture/a/roman-domestic-architecture-insula

https://www.thoughtco.com/rome-apartments-117097

https://smarthistory.org/roman-domestic-architecture-insula/

Roman Houses - Domus

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/roman/x7e914f5b:beginner-guides-to-roman-architecture/a/roman-domestic-architecture-domus

https://www.worldhistory.org/article/77/the-roman-domus/

https://www.realmofhistory.com/2020/04/08/3d-animations-layout-roman-domus-house/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domus

Famous Roman Homes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Augustus

Roman Mansions - Villas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_villa

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/roman/x7e914f5b:beginner-guides-to-roman-architecture/a/roman-domestic-architecture-villa

https://upgradedhome.com/roman-villa-floor-plans/

https://smarthistory.org/the-villa/

Ancient Poisons

https://www.poison.org/articles/why-is-monkshood-considered-a-poison--174#:~:text=The%20severity%20of%20aconitine%20poisoning,%2C%20abdominal%20pain%2C%20and%20diarrhea.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgajpd/medicina%20antiqua/sa_poisons.html#:~:text=Vegetable%20poisons%20were%20best%20known,)%2C%20yew%20extract%20and%20opium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_poison

https://www.thecollector.com/poison-in-ancient-history-5-illustrative-examples-of-its-toxic-use/

https://listverse.com/2018/09/06/10-notable-poisonings-from-the-ancient-world/

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/23174/5-classic-poisons-and-people-who-used-them

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/80232/6-legendary-poisons-and-1-legendary-antidote

https://gizmodo.com/the-deadliest-poisons-in-history-and-why-people-stoppe-5942161

https://www.thoughtco.com/list-of-poisons-609279

https://sites.dartmouth.edu/toxmetal/arsenic/arsenic-a-murderous-history/

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/how-to-poison-like-an-ancient-roman-25b2160d006c

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridatism

https://brewminate.com/poisons-poisoning-and-the-drug-trade-in-ancient-rome/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128153390000159

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgajpd/medicina%20antiqua/sa_poisons.html

https://classicalwisdom.com/people/locusta-the-poisoner-ancient-romes-first-female-serial-killer/

https://www.unfortunatehistory.com/podcast/ancient-roman-poison-ring/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128153390000159

Ancient Prostitution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_ancient_Rome

https://www.historytoday.com/reviews/brothels-ancient-pompeii

https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/curiosities/types-of-roman-prostitutes/

Roman Politics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_institutions_of_ancient_Rome

Roman Religion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_ancient_Rome

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