The Catiline Conspiracy (23 page)

"That is so. I believe that, just now, Crassus is trying to put distance between himself and anyone involved in the conspiracy."

"And the nature of your argument?" I asked... "He wants me to surrender my patronage of the Allobroges. He claims it is for business purposes, involving his many Gaulish interests." He snorted disgust. "He offered to buy my patronship, as if such a thing could be subleased! Crassus thinks of everything in terms of money. Of course, he simply wants to manipulate the Gauls in Catilina's behalf. He does not yet know that they have already revealed everything to me."

"And you told Cicero of this?" I asked.

"I did. By now, you know that he is afraid to prosecute Crassus."

"So I have found, and I cannot understand why. I thought that Marcus Cicero was afraid of nothing. Why is he so fixed on Catilina when he knows that there must be someone more powerful behind him?"

He brooded over the expanse of moonlit marble around us. "Decius Caecilius, you and I are of ancient senatorial families, mine patrician, yours plebeian, families almost synonymous with the Roman state. Cicero is a good man, but he is
novus homo
, and can never forget it. No matter how high he climbs, he will never be secure." This was a sorrowful thing to hear about a man I greatly admired, but in later years I was to find it an accurate assessment of Cicero. "He will pursue Catilina, and that ruthlessly, precisely because he is the
least
of the leading traitors. He wants to smash the rebellion before it has a chance to become fully organized, in hopes that the great men will then back away from a lost cause."

"But won't Catilina implicate them?" I asked. He shrugged. "Who will believe him? We have already heard the names of wholly innocent men he and his followers have thrown around to appear stronger than they are. If he should accuse Crassus of backing him, why should Crassus not claim to be as innocent as your father?"

"Why, indeed?" I said. "And we can be sure that Crassus will put his name to no foolish letter to the Gauls."

"Of that you can be certain," Fabius agreed. "Quintus Fabius," I said, "one more question. You went to Cicero with your report of treason. Why not to Antonius Hibrida?"

He laughed, a flat, humorless sound. "The same reason as you. Hibrida is no more to be trusted than any other man bearing the name of Antonius. They are a reckless, unreliable breed, and I've no doubt that Catilina has already approached him."

I had not thought of that. "Any chance that he is with them, do you think?"

He shook his head. "You recall how the proconsular provinces were assigned, after the election?"

"Certainly. Cicero drew Macedonia, Anotonius drew Cisalpine Gaul. But for some reason Cicero refused Macedonia and Antonius got it by default. Catilina thinks Cicero is afraid of the command because there is fighting in Macedonia."

"Wrong. Catilina wanted to be Consul this year with Antonius as his colleague, but Antonius threw in with Cicero instead. Too much dirt has clung to Catilina from past corruptions. Anyway, Cicero made him a better offer."

"A better offer?"

"He
gave
Antonius Macedonia because Antonius wanted it. Antonius wanted a foreign war and the loot that a foreign war brings. And thus he bought Antonius's loyalty. I don't doubt that Antonius is toying with Catilina even now, but not seriously."

He was uncommonly well informed for a man who spent little time in Rome, but patricians have their ways of passing information among themselves. Another imponderable occurred to me.

"I am greatly troubled by the position of tribune-elect Bestia in all this," I said. "He is more intelligent than the others, and I think he's playing some game of his own."

"When are tribunes ever anything but troublemakers?" he said, in true patrician fashion. "Somehow, over the centuries they've bypassed the Senate and the courts and come to be the most crucial members of the government, and
anybody
can get elected to the tribunate."

"Anybody but a patrician," I reminded him. "Clodius has given up his patrician status just to become a tribune."

"It's about what you'd expect from a Claudian," Sanga all but growled. "I know very little about Bestia, but he seems to be a friend of your kinsman, Metellus Nepos."

"Pompey's
legatus
? That makes little sense."

"Things seldom make much sense in politics until you get a closer look. Sometimes not even then."

"How true. For all I know, Nepos and Bestia are old school friends, studied philosophy at Rhodes or some such. Pompey is the one man we can be certain has nothing to do with this conspiracy."

"Nothing is certain," Sanga reminded me. "Good night, Decius Caecilius Metellus."

I bade him good night and we went our ways. Before returning home, I trudged the long climb to the Capitol and entered the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. At that hour there was no one in the temple but a slave who, every hour or so, would check the oil level in the lamps and trim their wicks.

The new statue of Jupiter was a beautiful thing, much like the old one but nearly double its size. It was in the traditional mode, modeled after the legendary Olympian Zeus of Phidias. This statue had been paid for by the great Catulus and the god's body was sculpted of the whitest alabaster, his robes of porphyry. His hair and beard were covered with gold leaf and his eyes were inlaid with lapis lazuli. In the flickering lamplight, he almost seemed to breathe.

I took a handful of powdered incense from a chased bronze bowl and tossed it onto the brazier of coals that glowed at the feet of the god. The
haruspices
had said that this new Jupiter would warn us of dangers to the state, but as the smoke ascended he said nothing. As I left the temple, I paused on the steps, but I saw no mysterious flights of birds, no lightning from the clear sky, no falling stars or thunders from inauspicious directions. As I walked home, I decided that the gods probably had little interest in the petty schemings of the degenerate dwarfs men had become. In the days of heroes, when Achilles and Hector, Aeneas and Agamemnon had contended, the gods themselves had taken an active part in the struggle. Those heroes were near to being gods in their own right. The gods were not likely to bestir themselves for anyone like Catilina, Crassus or Pompey, and least of all for Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.

The next morning Asklepiodes was found murdered on the bridge connecting the island to the riverbank. Since I was investigating these murderous doings, I made my way to the Temple of Aesculapius to view the body. Anything to get out of the Temple of Saturn. Forum gossip was full of speculation about this latest wrinkle in the wave of murders that had swept the city. Most of the other victims had been wealthy
equites
. This one, while wealthy, was not even a citizen. For once, I had the satisfaction of knowing what it was all about.

Asklepiodes had a fair number of friends and many professional colleagues, but the city was being swept by one of its frequent gusts of superstition, and the rumor had gotten around that, with so many murders in the city, it might be bad luck to attend the obsequies of the slain. As a result, poor Asklepiodes was laid out in an
atrium
of the temple with few attendants except for his own slaves. Among the few visitors I recognized Thorius, his jaw still in a sling, sent there to confirm that I had indeed murdered my creditor. As he left he winked at me, the little swine.

Asklepiodes had been washed and laid out on his bier, with lamps burning at its four quarters. His skin was gray and there was a shocking wound in his throat. This was carrying fakery to an amazing extreme. Surreptitiously, I touched his face. His skin was cold. I took a wrist. There was no pulse. He was really dead.

I was shaken more thoroughly than at any time since this whole insane business had begun. Who had murdered him? For a few disordered moments I entertained the thought that I had done it myself. Perhaps I was as crazy as the rest of them. One of the physician's slaves came up to me and handed me a note. I unfolded the papyrus and read.

The
Quaestor
Metellus is requested to attend the office of the physician Asklepiodes on the sixth hour on a matter touching the physician's will
.

"Who wrote this?" I asked. The slave shrugged. None of his assistants spoke Latin, or so he claimed.

I passed the day in a state of agitation. In fact, that had been my invariable state for some time. I kept checking the sundials as the shadows crept slowly across them. When it looked as if the sixth hour might be approaching, I hurried off to the island.

When I arrived the
atrium
was vacant, the body having been removed to await the arrival of the Greek's city patron, who would have the duty of seeing to his burial. A slave conducted me into Asklepiodes's office, which was empty. As I sat the slave shut the door behind me and, far too late, it occurred to me that this was a trap. Somebody had murdered Asklepiodes, and I was next. I leapt to my feet, my hand going to my dagger, as another door opened. I would sell my life dearly if need be.

"Please, Decius, you needn't stand for me," Asklepiodes said. "I pray you resume your seat."

I sat, or rather collapsed into the chair. "I saw you this morning," I said. "You were irrefutably dead."

"And if you thought so, knowing that we were planning to perpetrate a fraud, how much more convincing must it have looked to those who suspected no such thing?"

I knew what he wanted me to ask and I struggled against the temptation while he sat there, smiling smugly, all bland Greek superiority. At last I could stand it no longer.

"How did you do it?"

"Through skill, artistry, and, I doubt not, some aid from the god who is my patron. A decoction of hemlock, belladonna and wormwood, taken in a minutely measured quantity, brings on a near-cessation of the vital signs, convincing to any but the most astute of physicians, of which I must say in all modesty I am the only specimen in Rome."

"It could bring about a complete cessation, I would think. Wasn't it hemlock that Socrates was executed with?"

"It is a matter for delicate judgment, but it has been used in the past to simulate death when such a subterfuge seemed desirable. I tested it first on a slave, a man of my own age, physique and general state of health, The results were wholly satisfactory; three hours of deathlike coma followed by a quick recovery and no aftereffects."

"And the wound?" I asked, searching his neck for marks.

"A most excellent effect, was it not? I obtained the skin of an unborn lamb, such as is used to make the finest parchment. This I trimmed to proper shape and used to cover my neck. The skin is all but transparent, and the cosmetic I applied to exposed areas to simulate a deathlike pallor contributed to the illusion. I had the skin stitched up at the back of my neck, and the edges where it met with my actual flesh were covered by my hair, my beard or my clothes. The slit over my throat I packed with thin strips of calf's liver to simulate a most ghastly wound. Was it not convincing?"

"It was a masterpiece," I said sincerely. I had gotten over my fright and now was all admiration. "How did you manage an illusion so elaborate on such short notice?"