Catilina's Riddle (47 page)

"It's my birthday!" she announced. "Now it's my turn to put on a toga and take a walk."

"Your birthday is not until tomorrow," I said. "As for a toga—

well, you're nowhere near sixteen. Besides that—"

' I was saved from delivering a lesson on the hard facts of male and female by the appearance of Meto above the crest of the hill, who bore down on his sister, glowering. "My sandals, you little harpy!" he snapped.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, lifted her out of the sandals, and set her down again. He didn't shove or pinch her, but his grip was not gentle.

As her bare feet struck the grass, Diana started to cry.

Meto paid her no attention as he slipped the sandals onto his feet.

Then he shot me a dark look, turned around, and disappeared over the crest of the hill.

The makeshift toga came apart and fell to the ground. Diana, dressed in her tunic, clenched her little fists and cried, striking such a shrill pitch that I put my fingers in my ears. Eco scrambled to his feet and ran to comfort her.

Where was justice, indeed?

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

t had perhaps been a mistake to exclude Meto from my conversation with Eco; on the other hand, his childish behavior with Diana seemed to contradict his own insistence that he was as grown-up as his brother. 1 brooded over this I for the rest of the day, while Meto brooded over being slighted. Eco brooded over the appearance of Forfex, and his father's stubbornness; Menenia brooded over her husband's disquiet. Bethesda brooded over the general atmosphere of unhappiness on the farm. Ironically, once she stopped crying, Diana recovered her good humor at once. The general uneasiness seemed to confuse her, but it did not quench her spirits.

Diana's birthday passed without any outward unpleasantness. Congrio once again outdid himself. If our spirits were ill at ease, our bellies had no cause for complaint. Menenia had gone shopping in the markets at Rome, and Diana was showered with little gifts—a blue ribbon for her hair, a wooden comb, a blue and yellow scarf like the one Menenia had bought for herself on Meto's toga day, which Diana had coveted.

As if to shut away our anxieties, we concentrated all our attention on Diana, who accepted this outpouring of affection as if it were no less than her due for the accomplishment of turning seven years old.

Eco returned to Rome the next day.

The few remaining days of the month of Sextilis passed quickly. In the blinking of an eye we were well into September. It was a busy time on the farm, with much tending to crops and preparations for the harvest.

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The long days afforded time to deal with the endless repairs and improvements that had accumulated in the winter and been put off through the busy spring and summer. Every day there was more work than could be accomplished before sundown. No longer did I while away my days on the ridgetop or in my library; instead
I
plunged wholeheartedly into the operation of the farm. Rather than feeling burdened by this ongoing labor, I felt liberated by it. Confronted by the mysteries of Nemo and Forfex and unable to resolve them, uneasy over Eco's involvement in the plots and counterplots afoot in Rome and yet unable to affect his fortunes, I found escape in the simple, physical exhaustion of working myself to the limit each day and falling into a dreamless sleep at night. The slaves seemed uncertain of what to think of a master who drove himself so hard; I can scarcely imagine that Lucius Claudius ever did so much as pick a single olive from a tree. By sheer energy I believe I finally began to earn Aratus's grudging respect, and by working beside him day by day, seeing how he handled the daily crises and the slaves in his charge, I finally began to trust both his judgment and his loyalty.

I tried to delegate as much responsibility as I could to Meto, thinking to assuage his complaints of being slighted, but whatever tasks I gave him ended up half-done. He was growing bored with the farm, I feared, or else had decided to shirk any task his father might give him, simply out of spite. The more I tried to include him in the running of the place, the more the rift between us seemed to widen. He became increasingly inscrutable to me.

My relations with Bethesda, however, entered a delightfully mellow phase. She has always loved hot weather, for it reminds her of her youth in Alexandria, and as the long summer wore on into September she became more and more her essential, sensual self. She took to leaving out the pins and combs from her hair and wearing it down, in long tresses that cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. There was more silver amid the black than there had been in past summers, but to me these silver strands were like the rippling face of the moon reflected in black water. My own newfound physicality seemed to please her; she liked the smell of sweat on my body, and the hardness of my arms after a day of strenuous work. Often, when I went to bed thinking I was completely exhausted, she would prove to me that there was indeed a measure of strength left in my body. She would summon it up and take it from me, leaving me limp and covered with a fresh sheen of sweat, drained of all anxiety and empty of every appetite, motionless, thoughtless, utterly at the mercy of Morpheus.

The stream continued to dwindle, and the water from the well remained impure, but Aratus expressed the opinion that we would last until the rains came in the fall; as head of the household I was advised to pray to the gods to avert a dry autumn. As for the shortage of hay,

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which would loom large in the coming winter, I asked Claudia if I could purchase a quantity from her; unfortunately, she said, she had none to spare. To ask any of the other Claudii for help was, of course, out of the question. Other farmers in the region were not yet ready to sell their own private stocks, uncertain whether they had a surplus or not and preferring to wait until it was truly needed, when they could get a better price for it.
I
would have to solve the hay shortage when the time came; hopefully I would have the money on hand to buy what I needed, rather than see my livestock perish or face premature slaughter.

Though by comparison with these problems it was a minor complaint, I continued to be thwarted by the water mill. Aratus had no solution. I even invited Meto to help, but perhaps he detected the suppressed skepticism in my voice, for he exhibited an extreme disinterest.

The failure of the mill would not have mattered so much if I had not begun the labor in memory of Lucius Claudius. Nor did it help that
I
had told Publius Claudius across the stream about it and had even invited him to share in its use. I hated to think of the wicked fool laughing smugly at my failure and passing the tale to his cousins Manius and Gnaeus behind my back.

On the morning of the Ides of September, I took a trip into the nearest village. We were constructing a new stone wall along one side of the stable, and I needed to hire a few extra laborers for the day. There was a market in the village where this could be done. I might have sent Aratus alone on the errand, but given the ugly events that had transpired on the farm that summer, I wanted to see for myself where any hired laborers came from and look them over before letting them on my property.

Aratus and I left on horseback early in the morning and returned a few hours later, leading a band of six workers on foot. They were slaves, but not shackled; these were trusted men, lent out by their masters for a fee. I would have preferred to use freedmen, but the man who ran the labor market in the village said that they had grown scarce in recent years. In hard times freedmen tend to give up the one thing they own, selling themselves back into slavery just to keep from starving.

As we turned off the Cassian Way, Aratus rode up beside me.

"Visitors, Master," he said.

Sure enough, two strange horses stood tethered outside the stable, a dot of black and a dot of white against the wall. I left the slaves to Aratus and rode ahead. Meto had been in charge of the farm in my absence; I had made a point of conferring the responsibility on him, thinking it might help salve his pride. But when I reached the house he

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was not in sight, nor did he come when I called. The slave who was on watch—since the finding of Forfex, I had always kept watchers posted—scurried across the pitched roof of the stable and jumped to the ground.

"Where is Meto?"

"Down at the mill, Master."

"The visitors?"

"Also down at the mill."

"Only two?"

He nodded.

I rode at a gallop but slowed as I approached the mill. I dismounted and let the horse wander down to the streambed in search of tender grass and any pools of water that might be found among the dry stones and caked mud. As I approached, I heard a familiar voice from within.

"Then the problem must be
here.
Well, it's obvious these two gears were never meant to mesh—like trying to mate an ass and a goat." This was followed by good-natured laughter—Meto, laughing with more genuine enthusiasm than I had heard from him in many days, and someone else. I stepped into the doorway and saw Tongilius leaning against one wall with his arms crossed. His tunic was dusty and his hair windswept from riding. Meto stood nearby. They were both looking toward Catilina, who crouched among the great wooden wheels and axles.

As I entered they all looked toward me.

"Gordianus!" said Catilina. "What a piece of work you've created!

You thought up this design yourself?"

"With some help from Aratus."

"Amazing! You're already known for cleverness; let no man say you lack ambition as well. I thought all the engineers were busy building catapults and siege towers for the legions, or else constructing bridges and aqueducts for the Senate. You have quite a talent. Who taught you?"

"Books and common sense. Having eyes and ears also helps. But not enough, I'm afraid. The mill doesn't work."

"Ah, but it will. There's only one thing stopping it."

"What do you mean?"

"Look here, at this shaft. It's exactly wrong."

"What do you mean?" I found myself irritated at his self-assurance, but at the same time I had a glimmering that he knew what he was talking about.

"It should originate there," he said, pointing, "and be precisely perpendicular to its present arrangement."

"But that would mean moving everything else around, changing the structure completely," I said, hardly believing the solution could be so easy.

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"Not at all. The two gears will meet side by side rather than at right angles. As it's now arranged, the mechanism must tear itself apart within a revolution. But with that single change—"

"By Hercules!" I tried not to look a fool, agape at how simple it was. He was absolutely right, without a doubt. "Why could I not see what was before me?"

Catilina shrugged and laid his hand on my shoulder. His hair was windswept like Tongilius's, and his face was ruddy from riding. He looked half his age, happy and sure of himself, not at all like a skulking conspirator. "You created the mill from scratch, and your head is cluttered with all the multitude of choices that went into its design; amid so many others, the single small detail that keeps it from working is invisible to you. I, on the other hand, came upon the design in its elegant entirety, and to me the one thing wrong with its perfection is glaringly obvious.

You see, Gordianus, sometimes a fresh perspective can be of immeasurable help to a man. You're not the only one who needs that from time to time." His voice lent a certain gravity to these final words, and he gave me a significant look as he gave my shoulder a squeeze before releasing it.

I contemplated the gears, trying to convince myself to accept the simplicity of Catilina's solution. Was his deduction as unremarkable and logical as his unassuming explanation made it sound, or was he a genius?

How could he see in a moment an answer that had been perplexing me for months? I was at the same time irritated, impressed, elated, and still dubious.

"You've been riding," 1 said absently. "Surely not all the way from Rome this morning?"

"No, from up north," said Tongilius. Catilina had been conferring with his general Manlius and the Sullan veterans up in Faesulae, I thought.

"Your invitation to me still stands, doesn't it?" interjected Catilina with a smile. "Marcus Caelius led me to think so."

I took a quick breath and pretended to examine the gears again so that there would be an excuse for the hollowness in my voice. "Yes. Of course."

"Ah, good. You'd be surprised, or perhaps not, at how many of my friends and colleagues suddenly have no room for me under their roofs after my latest disaster at the polls. But then other friends appear, to make up the balance."

Catilina and Tongilius retired to the house to rest and change their clothes. I was too excited at the prospect of finally completing the mill to join them. Instead of building the new wall at the stable, I set the

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hired laborers to work realigning the gears. We worked into the night.

Bethesda sent Diana to call me to dinner, but I told her to send down some bread and cheese instead.

Eventually the new arrangement of gears was set in place. In the absence of a rushing stream, slaves pushed the paddle wheel. Within the mill the mechanism shuddered and began to turn. The shafts revolved; the teeth fitted and meshed; the grinding wheel turned for one revolution, and another, and another, without mishap.

Small adjustments would be necessary, the housing would have to be completed, and actual use would no doubt suggest improvements, but for all practical purposes the mill was a success.

This moment filled me with a greater sense of achievement than I could have anticipated. Aratus wore such a smile as I had never seen on his face before. Even Meto dropped his sullen frown and seemed to share in my excitement. Catilina should have been with me. I looked toward the house, at the darkened windows, and wondered again at the simplicity of his genius.

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C H A P T E R T H I R T Y