Catilina's Riddle (50 page)

Naturally, there must always be exceptions, behind closed doors, that do not fit the model of the masterly mentor and the docile protege.

"We Romans, alas, do not even have a model to depart from. We scorn the Greeks, ridiculing their obsessions with philosophy and ath-

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letics. Lacking their time-honored traditions, in matters of vice we are left to our own devices. Mostly, we take horrendous advantage of our slaves, male and female alike. Such passion has no honor, and is thus unfettered and untempered by any rules of dignity or decorum, much less restrained by law. The excesses of the Romans in exploiting their human tools are literally without limit. Slave girls are commonly raped against their will, slave boys are stripped of all their dignity and exploited just as rapaciously. They are treated with a degree of contempt that most men would not inflict upon a dog; indeed, a well-trained dog costs considerably more than a reasonably pretty boy or girl at the market.

"In such a world passion must invariably mean degradation for someone—or so the consensus decrees. So a man like Gordianus the Finder, this strangely moral being, finds other ways to shape his longings.

Sex he must have, of course; in that way he is like every other man. But even so he is unconventional: he devotes himself to a slave woman, dotes on her beauty, indulges her haughtiness, and ultimately makes her his wife, thus elevating her rather than degrading her. His behavior is almost a satire upon the Roman dictum to choose a wife for her status and a whore for her beauty. So far as anyone knows, he is more faithful to his wife than ninety-nine out of a hundred of his countrymen are to theirs.

A love match, that rarest of Roman marriages!

"As for the pleasure to be had with young men, he will not approach the matter at all. Or rather, he skirts it. He has too much respect for them, whether citizen or slave, to blithely follow the formula that inevitably elevates one man and degrades the other. He prefers the role of chaste mentor, instead. This behavior is rare but not unheard of; I have seen it before and recognize it in you. Gordianus does not exploit and rape his slaves. Nor does he seek out an uncertain middle ground with a companion of his own station. He teaches; he nurtures and dotes; he elevates. He makes sentimentality a fetish; his gestures are grandiose. He goes so far as to adopt a street urchin and a slave boy and to make these young men his heirs. Such an unconventional family! And while he remains exquisitely sensitive to the beauties of young men, he sees, but he does not touch. What reticence, more given to compassion than passion! He is a man out of step with a world that encourages the strong to devour the weak, that rewards cruelty and punishes kindness, that measures manhood by a man's will to dominate other men, women, children, and slaves, the more ruthlessly the better. He is a stranger fellow than ever Catilina was!"

He fell silent. We lay next to each other, equally naked beneath the bright moon. "And Catilina," I said, my voice strange in my ears because Catilina's words had made everything seem strange, "how does he fit into such a world?"

"Like Gordianus, Catilina makes his own rules, to suit himself."

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We lay on the hill, musing and amusing ourselves long into the night.

As sometimes happens when the body has been heated by a bath, then cools, and then exerts itself again after an already strenuous day,
I
fell asleep without meaning to. Fortunately, the night remained mild and there was no morning chill.
I
awoke before cockcrow. The towel had been folded over me like a coverlet. Catilina was gone.

The moon was long departed. The sky was neither blue nor black but in between. The lesser stars had vanished. In the east Lucifer, the morning star, glittered just above the dark, brooding mass of Mount Argentum.

I stood, covering my nakedness with the towel and slipping on my sandals, which I had taken off during the night. I climbed slowly down the slope of the ridge, my back stiff from having slept on the hard ground.

The watcher atop the stable, yawning from his vigil, blinked his eyes wide open at the sight of me.

"My guests," I said, "the ones who arrived yesterday—"

"Gone already, Master. Took their horses an hour ago. Turned toward Rome when they reached the Cassian Way." He bit his lip.
"I
was a bit worried about you when he came down from the hill alone. I went up to check on you, and you seemed all right. Sleeping like a stone.

Did I do right not to wake you?"

I nodded dully and went into the house.

Bethesda was asleep, but stirred when I slid my body next to hers.

"You smell like wine," she murmured, with an edge to her voice. "Where have you been all night? If this were Rome, I would think you had been with another woman."

"Absurd," I said. "No chance of that happening here."

I closed my eyes and slept till noon.

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

hat night on the ridge with Catilina was one of the last moments of calm before the deluge.

T September continued dry and mild. The first days of October turned leaves to gold and quickened the harvests.

With the puzzle of the mill solved, I gave myself over to running the farm again, and the work continued at a busy
I
pace. I busied myself with small matters to distract me from the looming crises of hay and water, and from Meto's continuing coolness toward me.

Catilina visited once again in September and three times in October. On each occasion he brought other companions besides Tongilius, but there were never more than five or six. These men were large and armed: bodyguards. Bethesda did not care for the look of them, but they slept in the stable and ate the same fare as the slaves without complaint, and Catilina never stayed for more than a night.

On each succeeding visit Catilina became less communicative and more distant. I sensed in this the reticence of a man increasingly distracted and pressed for time. He would arrive late in the day and leave early in the morning. He did not haunt the atrium or go walking naked under moonlight, but took to his bed soon after dinner and rose at dawn.

I was seldom alone with him for even a moment; we shared no more revelations about the anguish of his defeat or the obscure geometries of desire. He did not even spare the time to revisit the water mill, though I offered to show it to him more than once. I had found it necessary to rebuild some parts of the mechanism to match better with Catilina's solution, and once the general design had been altered, Aratus also

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suggested a few minor adjustments to the overall scheme. This work was done in desultory fashion, in bits and pieces as the more pressing work of the farm allowed. By late October it was virtually finished, though its true utility could be confirmed and measured only when the stream once again rose high enough to drive the wheel. I looked to the skies every morning and night, hoping for rain.

It was on a day near the end of October that I decided to show Claudia the mill. It was Claudia who had told me of her cousin Lucius's intention to build such a mill; without her, I would never have known. I sent a message that she should meet me on the ridgetop at midday, suggesting we share a simple meal and telling her I had something to show her.

I brought cheese, bread, and apples. Claudia brought honey cakes and wine, and the greatest delicacy of all: a jug of fresh water. I told her that the honey cakes were sweet and the wine delicious, but that it was the fresh water from her well that ravished my palate.

"Has it grown that serious, your shortage?" she said.

"Yes. We're able to collect some water from the trickle in the stream; once the silt settles, it's good enough to drink, but there's hardly enough to quench the thirst of every slave and animal. Then there's a tiny spring that comes out of the ridge. That, too, is low; an urn placed under it is only half full by the end of the day. So to water the stronger animals we still use the well, though it loosens their bowels. Fortunately, there are still a few tall urns of water that were drawn before the well was polluted—

I've set them aside as if they were filled with silver. And there's plenty of wine, but sometimes a man must have water to drink."

"I suppose the well water is good enough for washing," said Claudia.

"Aratus advises against it. Still, we use it sparingly with sponges and strigils. The well is low anyway, thanks to the lack of rain. Instead of immersing herself in a hot tub of water, Bethesda dabs herself with scented oils. She's normally as fastidious as a cat; unable to preen, she pouts. I'm afraid we've all become rather tawdry. This tunic I'm wearing could use a good washing."

"Alas, I wish I could spare you more water myself, but my own well is dangerously low, or so my foreman says. Enjoy the water I've brought—

drink up, and see if it won't make you drunk," she laughed. "Where is young Meto, by the way?"

"Busy, I suppose. He preferred not to come."

"Oh, but I haven't seen him in so long; hardly at all since his birthday. Well, I won't press you about it," she said, reading the look on my face. "Though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he's less than happy here. I've told you before that you belong in the city, and the

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same is even truer for Meto. Not everyone was meant to be a farmer, especially when the city can offer such a full, rich life. Ah, but I said I wouldn't press the matter, and here
I
am giving unsolicited advice like the bossiest Roman matron who ever lived!"

We ate for a while in silence. It was a magnificent autumn day, the air crisp, the sky cloudless. The landscape below us was arrayed with subtle shades of ocher, gray, and evergreen. Slender plumes of smoke from the farms all around, from bread ovens and burning piles of leaves, rose straight into the air like white pillars. From the valley below, the lowing of the animals and the calling of slaves carried across the crys-talline air.

"Was there ever such a day as this in the city?" I said quietly.

"You have a point there," said Claudia, who looked down on the scene with a placid smile. "But your messenger said that you had something to show me."

"So I do, as soon as we've finished eating."

"I'm done," she said, popping her plump fingers into her mouth to clean the morsels of honey cake. "Though you mustn't leave your apple half-eaten."

"We have more apples than we can eat."

"But it's such a waste!"

I laughed. "I shall feed it to the pigs on our way down."

"Down?"

"To the stream."

"Oh, Gordianus—are you going to show me the water mill?" She wore a strange expression.

"I am."

"I've seen you building it, you know. I can't help but notice it whenever I'm up here on the ridge. The building is quite handsome."

I shrugged. "It was made from bits of other buildings. It's no temple, but I suppose it doesn't pain the eye to look at it."

"It's charming!"

"Perhaps. More important is what's inside. The mechanism actually works."

"Then it's finished?"

"As finished as it can be, without a stream to move it."

We rose from our respective stumps and gathered up the slim remains of our meal. I glanced toward the Cassian Way, as I always did whenever I was leaving the ridgetop. I noticed two horsemen coming up from the south. There was nothing remarkable in that, but even so,
I
felt a bit uneasy as we stepped down the path, and I kept glancing toward the road even after the brush and trees had blocked it from view.

Claudia was quite impressed; indeed, her enthusiasm was so extreme as to appear a bit forced, especially considering that she seemed to have

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no understanding of the mechanism at all. She asked the purpose of this gear and that shaft in such a way that it was clear that no explanation would suffice. When I summoned slaves to push the wheel and set the grinding blocks in motion, she gave a start and her smile cracked. "Oh, dear!" she said. "Like horrible, huge, gnashing teeth! Like being in a Titan's jaw!" Deep down she did not like the mill very much, I thought, and she felt uncomfortable being near it. I ascribed this to her class and its deep conservatism, which distrusts all innovations, whether social or mechanical. Her cousin Publius had put it quite eloquently when I had told him that the mill could be to his benefit: "What would I want it for? I have slaves to grind my meal!" I had hoped Claudia would be more receptive, but in some ways she was no different from her cousins.

The gears were in full motion when a voice called out, "Magnificent, Papa!"

I turned and saw Eco standing in the doorway, with Belbo behind him—the two riders I had seen on the highway.

I laughed in happy surprise and stepped forward to embrace Eco.

Meanwhile the slaves ceased their labor and the gears ground slowly to a halt. Claudia smiled crookedly, then jumped as one of the gears made a loud popping noise.

"It's nothing," I said, but the only way to calm her was to get her out of the mill house. I ushered everyone out the door and onto the rocky stream bank. Eco wanted to see the mechanism demonstrated again, but I nodded discreetly toward Claudia to indicate that we should defer to our guest. "Perhaps later," I said. "Drive the slaves too hard and one of them is likely to injure himself."

"But how did you solve the problems you were having? Don't tell me: inspiration came to you in a dream! Just as it has so many times when you've been faced with a mystery that seemed to have no answer. " "Not this time. As a matter of fact, a mutual acquaintance suggested the solution."

"An acquaintance?"

"An occasional guest." I indicated Claudia with a twitch of my jaw. "Ah!" Eco understood the need for secrecy and nodded. "That man from the city."

"The very one. But we mustn't ignore today's guest," I said. Eco acknowledged Claudia with a bow of his head.

"Oh, Eco, how lovely to see you," crooned Claudia. Our brief conversation had given her time to recover her composure. "What news from the city?"