Roma Eterna by Robert Silverberg Read Free Book Online

words.
    Farther on was a row of apothecary stalls cluttered one upon the next in a series of narrow alcoves that were part of what looked like an abandoned temple. Lamps were burning before each one. These dealers in medicines offered such things as the bile of bulls and hyenas, the sloughed-off skins of snakes, the webs of spiders, the dung of elephants. “What is this?” the Greek asked, pointing into a glass vial that contained some fine gray powder,and bar-Heap, after making inquiry, reported that it was the excrement of Sicilian doves, much valued in treating tumors of the leg and many other maladies. Another booth sold only rare aromatic barks from the trees of India; another, small disks made of rare red clay from the isle of Lemnos, stamped with the sacred seal of Diana and reputed to cure the bite of mad dogs and the effects of the most lethal poisons. “And this man here,” said Maximilianus grandly at the next stall, “purveys nothing but theriac, the universal antidote, potent even for leprosy. It is made mainly from the flesh of vipers steeped in wine, I think, but there are other ingredients, secret ones, and even if we put him to the torture he would not reveal them.” And, with a wink to the drug’s purveyor, a one-eyed hawk-faced old Aegyptian, “Eh, Ptolemaios, is that not so? Not even if we put you to the torture?”
    â€œIt will not come to that, I hope, Caesar,” the man replied.
    â€œSo they know you here?” Menandros asked, when they had moved onward.
    â€œSome do. This one has several times brought his wares to the palace to treat my ailing father.”
    â€œAh,” the Greek said. “Your ailing father, yes. All the world prays for his swift recovery.”
    Maximilianus nodded casually, as though Menandros had expressed nothing more than a wish for fair weather on the next day.
    Faustus felt troubled by the strangeness of the Caesar’s mood. He knew Maximilianus to be an unpredictable man who veered constantly between taut control and wild abandon, but it was mere courtesy to offer a grateful word for such an expression of sympathy, and yet he had been unable to bring himself to do it. What, he wondered, does the ambassador think of this strange prince? Or does he think nothing at all, except that this is what one can expect the younger son of a Roman Emperor to be like?
    There were no clocks in this subterranean world, norwas there any clue in this sunless place to the hour available from the skies, but Faustus’s belly was telling him the time quite unmistakably, now. “Shall we go above to eat,” he asked Menandros, “or would you prefer to dine down here?”
    â€œOh, down here, by all means,” said the Greek. “I’m not at all ready to go above!”
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    They ate at a torchlit tavern two galleries over from the arcade of the apothecaries, sitting cheek by jowl with scores of garlicky commoners on rough wooden benches: a meal of meat stewed in a spicy sauce made from fermented fish, fruits steeped in honey and vinegar, harsh acrid wine not much unlike vinegar itself. Menandros seemed to love it. He must never have encountered such indelicate delicacies before, and he ate and drank with ravenous appetite. The effects of this indulgence showed quickly on him: the sweat-shiny brow, the ruddy cheeks, the glazing eyes. Maximilianus, too, allowed himself course after course, washing his food down with awesome quantities of the dreadful wine; but, then, Maximilianus adored this stuff and never knew when to stop when wine of any kind was within reach. Faustus, not a man of great moderation himself, who loved drinking to excess, loved the dizzy float upward that too much wine brought on, the severing of his soaring mind from his ever more gross and leaden flesh, had to force himself to swallow it. But eventually he took to drinking most of each new pitcher as fast as he could, regardless of the taste, in order