Catilina's Riddle (29 page)

I listened to this tirade at first speechless, then with burning ears, then with my fists tightly clenched to keep them from flying through the air. At some point Claudia, her gaze nervously flitting from Manius to me, timidly laid her hand on my elbow. Her gentle restraint was unnecessary, for I had no intention of resorting to violence in my own home and spoiling the harmony of Meto's celebration. Instead I kept my hands at my sides and let the fury boil inside me while Manius continued.

"Last and least there is a daughter, I understand, born free and apparently of both parents. A Roman girl, legally, and no doubt she will someday marry into a Roman house—bringing the Egyptian and Jewish blood of her slave-born mother with her. Is it any wonder the Republic is collapsing into chaos at such a swift rate? Who stands up for the Roman family and the values it once aspired to? Even a fine Claudian like our cousin Lucius was apparently taken in—to use your word, Claudia,

'charmed'—by all this barnyard decadence, but then, Lucius was always eccentric. I suppose that's your excuse as well, Claudia—eccentricity. If you find such an association congenial, then you're welcome to it, but please keep it to yourself. I came here today as an act of goodwill, and as a favor to you, Claudia, but I see now that I was gravely mistaken. I allowed soft words from a woman to weaken my resolve and taint my judgment. My time here has been completely wasted."

An instant later he would have turned on his heel and departed in smug triumph, leaving me gasping with anger and facing no choice but to swallow my fury or run after him and make a spectacle of myself before our guests. But sometimes, in such moments, Nemesis takes a hand and makes fools of those who deserve it.

"Oh, your visit hasn't been a complete waste, surely," I said, not

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even knowing yet what I meant. The menace in my voice must have alerted Manius, for he stepped back, but not quickly enough. From the corner of his eye he must have glimpsed the upward flicking movement of my hand; he raised his arms to deflect a blow that never landed, for I made no attempt to strike his face or his vulnerable middle. Instead, without conscious intention, I aimed for that place where earlier I had seen his hand disappear into his toga while he pilfered delicacies from the tables. I slapped at a hard, bulging spot hidden within the hanging folds. Manius grunted in alarm. Claudia's hands went to her mouth and she uttered a little shriek, just loud enough to turn the heads of a small circle around us. An instant later, the little cloth bag that had been hidden beneath Manius's toga, tied to his waist, fell at his feet and burst open at the seams. Honeyed dates, stuffed grape leaves, roasted nuts, and sesame cakes spilled onto the ground as if from a cornucopia.

Claudia, who before had shrieked with alarm, now shrieked with laughter, as did not a few of the women gathered around, and there was plentiful laughter in the lower registers as well. Manius Claudius turned so red that I thought he might burst open like the sack at his feet, and his whole body seemed to twitch, as if he desperately wanted to bolt from the garden but was rooted to the spot. He fixed me with a smoldering stare and at last managed to raise his arm and make an inchoate gesture in the air, accompanied by a sputtering, incoherent curse. He spun around and might have exited with some of his dignity intact had not his stamping foot landed on a honeyed date. The slippery misstep sent him sprawling quite as effectively as if I had planted the kick I longed to deliver on his backside. He did not fall—not quite—but his awkward, bumbling withdrawal left him without a foot to stand on, metaphorically at least.

He did not grace us with another look at his face, but I could see that his ears were bright scarlet. I could easily imagine streams of smoke pouring from his nostrils.

I began to laugh, so hard that when Eco and Meto rushed to my side, thinking I was choking, it was impossible for me to explain what had transpired. I laughed so hard I wept, and all the bitterness and anger than Manius had stirred up inside me became as sweet as honey.

When at last I managed to catch my breath and wipe the tears from my eyes, I saw that Claudia had vanished, with less fanfare than her cousin but probably with no less embarrassment. Poor Claudia, I thought, you meant well, but all your efforts to make peace between our families have come to naught.

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C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N

was not allowed either to brood or gloat over the incident with Manius Claudius, for the party continued and the demands on the paterfamilias went on. I greeted, charmed, said farewells. Eventually, after a few embarrassing lapses, I I insisted that Eco stay close by my side, as if I were a politician in the Forum and he were my nomenclator, whispering in my ear the names I couldn't quite remember. The number of people one has met after living continuously for more than twenty years in a city like Rome is staggering. A profession such as mine had brought me into intimate contact with an ever-expanding circle of well-connected clients, and Eco had carried on my work. The remarkable thing was how respectable we seemed to have become. I could remember a time when orators and advocates would never deign to enter my house or invite me into theirs; they dealt with me through their slaves instead.

But perseverance and prosperity lend credibility, and over the years I suppose any line of endeavor can become respectable so long as it succeeds and survives, and especially if it brings profit to the right class of people.

My feet began to ache from so much standing. I ate far too much for the middle of a hot summer day, and I drank too much wine (because my throat was dry from so much talking—at least that was my excuse).

And yet, altogether, I was elated. I felt light as a feather. I was at the party, and yet I also observed the party, detached and amused, like a visitor from Olympus. It was the wine, I told myself, or the succession of flattering accolades bestowed on myself and on Meto, or the lingering glow of Manius Claudius's humiliation—it was these things, I told myself, that accounted for my mood, which became happier and happier as the

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day progressed. It had nothing to do with the simple fact of being back in Rome, of feeling myself at the very center of the greatest concentration of humanity in the world, of sensing all around me the power and passion of those who live, love, connive, suffer, triumph, and die every day in such a mad place. I no longer loved Rome, I told myself; we had been lovers once, but that was over now, once and for all. I might return to her from time to time, but merely as a visitor, free of the torrid, squalid, jubilant memory of our tumultuous marriage. I loved Rome no longer, I told myself, and almost believed it.

No moment of all the moments in that day was more purely joyous than the one in which a certain booming laugh struck my ears and stirred my memory to instant recognition. I looked up from whatever superficial conversation I was engaged in and searched for the source of the laughter, but in the crowd I could not discern the face I looked for. Then I heard the same laugh close at hand and turned to see Meto being squeezed in the bearish grip of a broadly smiling, stoutly muscled man with a thick beard all black and white like variegated marble. Behind the bearish man stood another figure in a toga, a strikingly handsome younger man with an enigmatic smile on his lips, like a Greek statue in Roman dress.

At last the man released Meto, who caught his breath and dazedly tried to straighten the folds of his toga. Meto felt my gaze and returned it with a strange expression on his face. "Papa," he called, with an odd quaver in his voice, "look who's here!"

"As usual, I heard you before I saw you!" I said, laughing and striding toward the newcomer. I braced myself for the ironlike hug of my old friend Marcus Mummius.

It was Mummius who had defied the will of Marcus Crassus, sought out Meto in Sicily and saved him from a life of slavery chasing after crows in a dusty field. Mummius had delivered Meto to this house on the very day that Diana was born. In my heart he would always have a special place.

Meto had not been the only one of Crassus's slaves whom Mummius had made a special endeavor to save. Behind him now stood Apollonius, whom Crassus had sold to a cruel Egyptian master. Mummius had sailed across the inland sea to rescue the slave, had brought him back to Rome and had ultimately set him free. Apollonius remained in Mummius's household as his freedman and constant companion. How Crassus had despised the passion that had driven his lieutenant to care so deeply for the fate of a mere slave! That discord had been the wedge that drove Crassus and Mummius further and further apart until Mummius at last switched his allegiance to Pompey—which was just as well, for only in the service of Pompey, scourge of the sea pirates and conqueror of the East, could a military man like Mummius exercise his true genius.

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"Marcus!" I cried. "And Apollonius! How good to see you both, especially on this of all days. But what a surprise! I should have thought you were still in the East with Pompey."

"What, with no more fighting to be done?" said Mummius. "Mith-ridates is finished, the lesser kingdoms have been brought under Roman control—there's nothing left to do but make political settlements. Playing Jupiter, I call it, moving petty princes about like knucklebones on a playing board. Pompey loves that sort of work, but you know I haven't the patience for it. It's taking an army into battle that I'm good at, though I think I must be getting too old and slow to be a soldier much longer, unless that's how I want to die. Here, just look at this!"

Without hesitation he hoisted up his purple-bordered senator's toga to show his burly thighs. Since the wearing of a toga entails the absence of any sort of underclothes that might constrict the private parts—a man could hardly tend to the call of nature with his left arm draped, all the folds of a toga to contend with, and a loincloth as well—Mummius was dangerously near to exposing himself. As I recalled, there was quite a bit of him to be exposed. I looked about a little nervously and gestured with my hands as if I were putting out a fire, but one might as well try to stop a bear from scratching its stomach as try to stop Marcus Mummius from showing off a war wound. Fortunately the only woman who happened to be passing by was Bethesda, heading toward the kitchen with an officious air. At the spectacle of Mummius showing off his burly legs, she paused, cocked her head, and cast a cool, calculating stare as if she were passing judgment on a purchase at the butcher's market.

"Here, see this one!" Mummius pointed to a long, thin scar that ran from the pale flesh of his upper thigh down to the region of his knee, where the skin was tanned as dark as an Egyptian's. Amid the furlike covering of hair, the pink, denuded strip of flesh stood out vividly.

Mummius flexed the muscles beneath and made the long scar writhe like a snake. He seemed to find this uproariously amusing, to judge by his raucous laughter. I glanced over his shoulder at Apollonius, who rolled his eyes but smiled indulgently. No doubt he had witnessed the scene many times before.

"Battle of the Abas River!" Mummius declared, dropping the hem of his toga. "And I was a fool to let it happen. I was on horseback and the Albanian was on foot, wearing nothing but a bearskin and rushing at me with his sword drawn, screaming at the top of his lungs. I saw him coming—had plenty of time to knock him flat with the blunt end of my spear, or else impale him on the point, or draw my sword and parry his blows, or simply give my horse a good kick to get out of his way. The problem was, I had too much time to think—couldn't settle on one choice or the other. Should have been pure reflex, but on that day I

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found out that my reflexes are as dead as Carthage. Found out the hard way. Oh, the burning when that blade broke the flesh and then tore straight down! I was the one screaming then."

"What did you do?" said Meto, who had always loved soldiers' tales.

"Where before I had done nothing, now I did everything at once!

Banged the fellow's helmet with the blunt end of my spear, whipped it around and stabbed him in the chest with the point, unsheathed my sword with my other hand and slashed his throat, then gave my horse a hard kick and headed straight into the enemy ranks! It all happened in the blink of an eye."

"You went toward the enemy, not away? Even wounded as you were?"

said Meto.

"I had no choice. Something I've learned in battles before—if you take a bad wound, the worst thing to do is stop. That's the one thing you mustn't do, because then the pain'll come crashing down on you all at once and that's the end of you. I've seen many a man die from a wound that shouldn't have killed him, just because he stopped what he was doing and gave in to the thing. No, you open your mouth in a scream to let the Furies come inside you, and you plunge into the thick of it.

That way you never even feel the wound at all, and you don't bleed to death either, because all the blood rushes into your head and your sword arm, instead of pouring out of the cut."

Meto stared at him, awed.

"You know, they say there were Amazons fighting with the Albanians in that battle, though I didn't see any, and there were no women found among the dead. I'm not sure I'd care to go up against a woman in combat . . . But here I am talking about myself, as usual, when this day belongs to young Meto! What a sight you make in your manly toga!

Why, I remember when you were a small thing, running about the villa at Baiae, carrying messages and pestering the other—the others . . . "

The last word came out oddly. "Other slaves," he had meant to say. I saw again the strange look that had crossed Meto's face on Mummius's arrival. So long as Mummius carried on in his usual bluff manner, boasting of his battles, Meto could simply listen in fascination, but as soon as the conversation turned to the past, Mummius became a palpable reminder of the very circumstances from which he had rescued Meto long ago. Meto's cheeks turned red, but not as red as those of Mummius, who realized that he had trod upon uncertain ground. He attempted a hasty retreat, but found himself mired.