Catilina's Riddle (38 page)

"What a lovely metaphor. Such fluid rhetoric—"

"Gordianus! You try my patience!" I had angered him at last. I could impugn his courage and satirize his pompous demeanor and he remained aloof, but he would not stand for me to belittle the mastery of his tongue. "Whether you like it or not, whether or not you understand its importance, you must continue to do what I ask of you. Catilina is too vicious a threat for me to bow to your apathy."

"Is he so vicious, really? Under my roof I sometimes thought he seemed more sentimental than seditious."

"Gordianus, you cannot be so naive!" Suddenly his smile returned.

"Oh, I begin to see the problem. You
like
Catilina! But of course, we have all liked Catilina at one time or another, everyone has, and eventually, inevitably, to their regret. Ask the shade of his murdered brother-in-law, or the shade of his murdered son, or the miserable families of the young men and women he's corrupted. Before he destroys his victims, Catilina must always make sure that they
like
him.

"Oh, Gordianus, I know that you find your old friend Cicero a bit pompous and vain; you always have. You have a sharp, unforgiving eye for anything pretentious—that's one of your gifts—and I confess that in my success I have grown perhaps a bit too overbearing and self-important.

You see through the veils of men's vanity. How can you not see through Catilina at once? Could it be that his conceit is so enormous, so monstrous, that you simply can't perceive it, the way that a man who looks at the sea cannot see a drop of water? Has he seduced you, Gordianus?"

"You're talking nonsense, Cicero. But at least your metaphors are consistent—you have me completely at sea."

He paused and looked at me shrewdly. When he lowered his head that way, the thick fold of fat in his neck pressed up against his chin like a pillow, and his eyes seemed to recede into the puffiness of his cheeks.

I thought of how he had looked when I first met him—thin, almost frail, with a neck that seemed barely sturdy enough to hold up his broad-browed head. His girth had grown with his ambition.

"Oh, I can imagine how he went to work on you, Gordianus.

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Catilina can see into other men's hearts. He senses their needs and desires, and he plays on that knowledge like a piper. Tell me if I hit the mark. He sees at once how to flatter you—he compliments your farm and family. He takes note of your unorthodox household, senses you have a soft spot for the disenfranchised and dispossessed, and so he tells you he is a man of the people, too, and wants to shake things up at Rome to give the wretched masses a better chance in life. He rails against the unfairness of the Optimates and their devious ways—never mind that Catilina would be an Optimate himself if he hadn't squandered his reputation along with his fortune and earned the disdain of every decent man in the Senate. Having insinuated himself into your personal life and warmed you with his politics, especially tailored to suit your own, he then confides some personal secret to you and you alone, letting you see that he trusts you implicitly, that you are very special to him."

I thought of Catilina's confession regarding the Vestal Fabia and felt a prickle of discomfort.

"Catilina will tell you whatever you want to hear. Catilina will be your special confidant. Catilina will cast his spell over you with your eyes wide open, if you let him. I admit it: Catilina is charming. For years I thought so myself, until I saw through him.

"While I, alas, am utterly without charm. Don't you think I know this? You have shown your hostility to me very clearly tonight, Gordianus.

You find me irritating and overbearing, and you wish I would simply go away. I annoy you. I have no charm, and I never have had; I was born without it and it cannot be counterfeited. That's precisely why I must rely on rhetoric and persuasion—clumsy tools next to the natural charm of a man like Catilina, who is halfway to winning an argument before he says a word, thanks to that handsome face and that endearing, irre-sistible, infuriating smile of his. Beside him I must seem very crude and shrill. But think, Gordianus! What is the value of charm if it hides the ugly truth? I speak that ugly truth and you wrinkle your nose. Catilina smiles and murmurs pretty lies and you find him intriguing. Gordianus, you know better!"

What can be worse, for a man of my age, than to begin to doubt his own judgment? Had Catilina cast a spell over me, made me dull and dreamy? Or was it Cicero who was practicing his own wicked magic, using what he knew of Catilina and of me to find the exact words that would disconcert me and bend me to his will?

"Do my words make sense to you, Gordianus? Do you hear the urgency in my voice? Will you not continue to render the single favor I ask of you, to play host to Catilina when he desires it? Do this for the good of Rome. Do this for the sake of your children."

When I didn't answer, Cicero sighed and slumped his shoulders.

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Was he acting, or was he genuinely weary? And why could I not tell for certain—I, who possessed such a sharp, unforgiving eye for pretense? "Think on it, Gordianus. When you go back to that lovely, peaceful farm, think on it and remember that Rome is still here, in terrible danger.

And if Rome burns, never doubt that the conflagration will spread across the countryside." He lowered his face, thickening the fold of fat in his neck. He studied me for a long moment, but I had nothing to say. "I won't see you face to face again, not until the crisis is resolved. Marcus Caelius will be my messenger, as before. It was a risk, coming to see you here tonight, but my watchers tell me that Catilina's eyes are elsewhere this evening, and Caelius told me that you were wavering, and I hoped that I might prevail upon your better judgment if I could speak to you man to man." He turned away. The stiff folds of his toga rustled softly in the still, warm air of the garden. "I'll go now. There are many calls I must pay tonight before I sleep. No one is safe with Catilina's rabble rioting in the streets, but I can't let that deter me. I know
my
duty to Rome; I only wish it were as easy and simple as yours."

With that he departed.

I sat on a bench by the fountain. The sky was dark and the stars were bright overhead. The moon had begun to rise, its silver light glinting across the tiled roof of the portico. "You may come out now, Meto," I said softly.

He stepped from behind the curtain to his room and into the shadows of the portico.

"Did Bethesda hear?" I said.

"No. I could hear her snoring now and then through the wall." He stepped into the moonlight. He was wearing only his loincloth. It occurred to me that he was of an age to begin wearing more clothing about the house.

"Good. Eco and Menenia seem to be asleep, or else too busy to have paid any attention to voices from the garden. Only you and I know of Cicero's visit."

"How did you know I was listening? I was so careful not to make the curtain move."

"Yes, but the big toe on your left foot showed beneath the curtain's edge. A bit of starlight glinted on your toenail. In the wrong circumstances such carelessness could be fatal."

"Do you think Cicero noticed?" he asked.

I had to laugh. "I don't think so. Otherwise he'd have summoned his bodyguards from outside and you'd have been full of daggers before I could've said a word."

Meto looked alarmed, then skeptical.

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"Well, what do you think of our esteemed consul, Meto?"

He hesitated for a moment. "I think Cicero is a windbag."

I smiled. "So do I, but that doesn't mean he's not telling the truth."

"Will you do what he wants, then?" I was so long in answering that Meto asked again. "Will you, Papa?"

"I only wish I knew."

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C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E

fter the election we spent five more days in Rome. I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would, strolling about the seven hills, seeing old friends, savoring the delicacies of the food vendors in the markets, observing the comings A and goings of every sort of man and woman through the streets of the Subura and feeling swallowed up by the never-ending pulse of life in the great city.

Not all was pleasure. One morning, while Bethesda browsed in the shops on the Street of the Silversmiths, I consulted with the advocate who was defending my rights to the stream against Publius Claudius's challenge. His name was Volumenus, and his office was on the second floor of a squat, ugly brick building just a stone's throw from the Forum.

The whole building was populated by lawyers and breathed the musty smell of old parchment. The walls of Volumenus's cramped little office were covered with scrolls in pigeonholes. He was rather like a scroll himself, tall and straight with a long face and a very dry manner.

No progress had been made toward having the matter of my water rights heard by the courts, he told me, though he assured me he was doing all he could on my behalf.

"Why must it take so long?" I complained. "When the Claudii challenged my inheritance of the farm, that was surely a more complicated matter, but Cicero managed to have the case settled in a matter of days, not months or years."

The corner of Volumenus's mouth twitched slightly. "Then perhaps you would prefer to have Cicero handle all your legal affairs," he said wryly. "Oh, or is he too busy for that? Really, I'm doing all I can. Yes, if I happened to be one of the most powerful politicians in Rome, then

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I'm sure I could arrange for the courts to expedite this matter, but I'm only an honest advocate—"

"I understand."

"No, really, if you think you can get the mighty Cicero to take over this case, you're more than welcome—"

"That was a special favor. If you tell me that you're doing all you can—"

"Oh, but Cicero could do more, I'm sure, and better, and more quickly—"

I eventually managed to smooth his ruffled feathers before I left. I stepped back onto the street feeling not so much dissatisfied with his efforts as reminded of just how great a debt I owed to Cicero. Without his assistance and his powerful connections, the question of my inheritance, if not settled against me outright, could easily have been held up in the courts for years while I stayed in Rome and watched my beard turn gray.

On the evening of our seventh day in Rome we packed for the trip home, and set out early the next morning.

We arrived at the farm late in the afternoon, stiff and dusty. Diana leaped from the wagon at once and ran from pen to pen to give a hug and kiss to her favorite lambs and kids. Meto, his energy pent up all day, hiked at once to the ridgetop. Bethesda set about seeing how much damage the household slaves had done in her absence, and then, having perfunctorily scolded them, went to her jewelry box in our bedroom and deposited her new acquisitions.

I withdrew to my study and consulted with Aratus over what had transpired in my absence, which was little enough. The stream had dwindled even more, which he assured me was normal for the season.

"I would hardly bother to mention it," he said, "except that there might be a problem with the well. . . . "

"What sort of problem?" I asked.

"The taste of the water is off. I noticed yesterday. Perhaps a cat managed to squeeze through the iron grate, or perhaps some burrowing animal dug through the wall of the shaft, fell into the water and drowned."

"You mean there's a dead animal in the well?"

"I suspect as much. The taste of the water, as I said—"

"What have you done about it?"

From the way he tilted his head back I could tell I was speaking too harshly. "The first thing to do in such a case is to lift off the grate, lower a bucket or a hook, and try to lift out the carcass. Dead bodies float, after all—"

- 225 -

"Did you do this?"

"I did. But we were unable to lift anything. At one point the hook became trapped. It took two men to pull it free. It may be that some stones have become dislodged. It could even be that a considerable portion of the wall has fallen in. If that is the case, the foul taste could have been introduced when the dislodgment took place—a burrowing animal may have been crushed or drowned, you see. If the damage is extensive—and that any damage at all has occurred is only a supposi-tion—this could be rather serious. Major repairs to the well would prevent it from being used, and with the stream running so low . . . "

"How will we know whether it's damaged or not?"

"Someone will have to go down into the well."

"Why wasn't this done yesterday? Or this morning? Meanwhile, the dead ferret or weasel or whatever just keeps rotting away, poisoning the water."

He folded his hands and lowered his eyes. "Yesterday, by the time our efforts to use the hook had failed, it was too dark to send anyone down into the shaft. This morning there were storm clouds approaching from the west, and it seemed to me that it was more important to bring the bales of hay from the north field into the barn, to prevent them from getting wet."

"There were bales of hay sitting outside? I thought all the hay had been brought in already."

"It had, Master, but a few days ago I ordered the men to take the hay back out into the sun. The bales that were not lost to the blight may yet succumb, but this might be prevented by exposing the hay to the hot sunlight."

I shook my head, dubious of his judgment once again. "And did it rain this morning?"

He twisted his mouth. "No. But the clouds were quite dark and threatening, and we did hear thunder nearby. Even if the slaves had not been occupied with the hay, I would have hesitated to send a man down into the well with a storm threatening, considering the danger. I know how you value your slaves, Master, and I would not squander them."

"Very well," I said glumly. "Is there still time to send someone down into the well before it gets dark?"

"I was about to do that when you arrived, Master."

I went out to the well with Aratus, where a group of slaves was already gathered. They had made a kind of harness out of rope and had tied it to a much longer rope. One of the men would put himself into the harness while the others lowered him down.