Caesar's Women (78 page)

Inside the packed Curia Hostilia—every senator had turned up to vote—Quintus Hortensius proposed a compromise measure.

“From the censors to the junior consul, it's clear to me that there is a significant segment in this House determined to hie Publius Clodius before a court to answer for the Bona Dea,” said Hortensius in his most reasonable and mellow tones. “Therefore those Conscript Fathers who do not favor trial for Publius Clodius ought to think again. We are about to conclude our second month without being able to do normal business, which is the best way I know to bring government down around our ears. All because of a mere quaestor and his band of youthful rowdies! It cannot be allowed to go on! There's nothing in our learned senior consul's law which can't be adjusted to suit every taste. So if this House will permit me, I will undertake to spend the next few days redrafting it, in conjunction with the two men most implacably opposed to its present form—our junior consul Marcus Valerius Messala Niger and the tribune of the plebs Quintus Fufius Calenus. The next comitial day is the fourth day before the Nones of March. I suggest that Quintus Fufius present the new bill to the People as a lex Fufia. And that this House accompany it with a stern command to the People—put it to the vote, no nonsense!”

“I am opposed!” shouted Piso Frugi, white-faced with fury.

“Oh, oh, oh, so am I!” came a high wail from the back tier; down stumbled Clodius to fall to his knees in the middle of the Curia Hostilia floor, hands clasped beseechingly in front of him, groveling and howling. So extraordinary was this performance that the entire jam-packed Senate sat stunned. Was he serious? Was he playacting? Were the tears mirth or grief? No one knew.

Messala Niger, who held the fasces for February, beckoned to his lictors. “Remove this creature,” he said curtly.

Publius Clodius was carried out kicking and deposited in the Senate portico; what happened to him after that was a mystery, for the lictors shut the doors in his screaming face.

“Quintus Hortensius,” said Messala Niger, “I would add one thing to your proposal. That when the People meet on the fourth day before the Nones of March to vote, we call out the militia. Now I will see a division.”

There were four hundred and fifteen senators in the chamber. Four hundred voted for Hortensius's proposal; among the fifteen who voted against it were Piso Frugi and Caesar.

The Popular Assembly took the hint as well, and passed the lex Fufia into law during a meeting distinguished for its calm—and the number of militia distributed about the lower Forum.

“Well,” said Gaius Piso as the meeting dispersed, “between Hortensius, Fufius Calenus and Messala Niger, Clodius shouldn't have a great deal of trouble getting off.”

“They certainly took the iron out of the original bill,” said Catulus, not without satisfaction.

“Did you notice how careworn Caesar's looking?” Bibulus asked.

“His creditors are dunning him unmercifully,” said Cato with glee. “I heard from a broker in the Basilica Porcia that their bailiffs are banging on the Domus Publica door every day, and that our Pontifex Maximus can't go anywhere without them in attendance. We'll have him yet!”

“So far he's still a free man,” said Gaius Piso, less optimistic.

“Yes, but we now have censors far less kindly disposed toward Caesar than Uncle Lucius Cotta,” said Bibulus. “They're aware of what's going on, but they can't act before they have proof at law. That won't happen until Caesar's creditor's march up to the urban praetor's tribunal and demand repayment. It can't be too far in the future.”

Nor was it; unless the praetorian provinces were apportioned within the next few days, Caesar on the Nones of March saw his career in ruins. He said not a word to his mother, and assumed such a forbidding expression whenever she was in his vicinity that poor Aurelia dared say nothing which had not to do with Vestal Virgins, Julia or the Domus Publica. How thin he was growing! The weight seemed suddenly to melt away, those angular cheekbones jutted as sharp as knives and the skin of his neck sagged like an old man's. Day after day Caesar's mother went to the precinct of Bona Dea to give saucers of real milk to any insomniac snakes, weed the herb garden, leave offerings of eggs on the steps leading up to Bona Dea's closed temple door. Not my son! Please, Good Goddess, not my son! I am yours, take me! Bona Dea, Bona Dea, be good to my son! Be good to my son!

The lots were cast.

Publius Clodius drew a quaestorship at Lilybaeum in western Sicily, yet could not leave Rome to take up his duties there until he had undergone trial.

It seemed at first as if Caesar's luck had not deserted him after all. He drew Further Spain as his province, which meant he was endowed with a proconsular imperium and answered to no one except the consuls of the year.

With the new governor went his stipend, the sum of money the Treasury had set aside for one year of State disbursements to hold the province safe: to pay its legions and civil servants, to keep up its roads, bridges, aqueducts, drains and sewers, public buildings and facilities. The sum for Further Spain amounted to five million sesterces, and was given as a lump to the governor; it became his personal property as soon as it was paid over. Some men chose to invest it in Rome before they left for their province, trusting that the province could be squeezed of enough to fund itself while the stipend turned over nicely in Rome.

At the meeting of the Senate which included the drawing of the lots Piso Frugi, holding the fasces again, asked Caesar if he would give a deposition to the House concerning the events on the night of Bona Dea's first festival.

“I would be happy to oblige you, senior consul, if I had anything to tell. I do not,” Caesar said firmly.

“Oh, come, Gaius Caesar!” Messala Niger snapped. “You're being asked very properly for a deposition because you'll be in your province by the time Publius Clodius is tried. If any man here knows what went on, you do.”

“My dear junior consul, you just uttered the significant word—man! I wasn't at the Bona Dea. A deposition is a solemn statement made under oath. It must therefore contain the truth. And the truth is that I know absolutely nothing.”

“If you know nothing, why did you divorce your wife?”

This time the whole House answered Messala Niger: ” 'Caesar's wife, like all Caesar's family, must be above suspicion!' ”

The day after the lots were drawn the thirty lictors of the Curiae met in their archaic assembly and passed the leges Curiae which endowed each of the new governors with imperium.

And on the same day during the afternoon dinner hour a small group of important-looking men appeared before the tribunal of the praetor urbanus, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, just in time to prevent his leaving for an overdue meal. With them were a larger number of far seedier individuals who fanned out around the tribunal and politely but firmly ushered the curious out of listening range. Thus ensured privacy, the spokesman of the group demanded that the five million sesterces granted to Gaius Julius Caesar be attached on their behalf as part payment of his debts.

This particular Calpurnius Piso was not cut from the same cloth as his cousin Gaius Piso; the grandson and son of two men who had made colossal fortunes out of armaments for Rome's legions, Lucius Piso was also a close relative of Caesar's. His mother and his wife were both Rutilias, and Caesar's mother's mother had been a Rutilia of the same family. Until now Lucius Piso's path had not crossed Caesar's very often, but they usually voted the same way in the House, and they liked each other very well.

So Lucius Piso, now urban praetor, frowned direfully at the little group of creditors and postponed a decision until he had looked carefully through every one of the huge bundle of papers presented to him. A Lucius Piso direful frown was not easy to cope with, for he was one of the tallest and swarthiest men in noble Roman circles, with enormous and bristling black brows; and when he followed that direful frown with a grimace displaying his teeth—some black, some dirty yellow—a witness's instinctive reaction was to back away in terror, as the urban praetor looked for all the world like a ferocious man-eating something.

Naturally the usuring creditors had expected a decision to garnish on the spot, but those among them whose mouths had opened to protest, even to insist that the urban praetor hustle himself because he was dealing with pretty influential men, now decided to say nothing and come back in two days' time, as directed.

Lucius Piso was also clever, so he didn't close his tribunal the moment the aggrieved plaintiffs went away; dinner would have to wait. He went on conducting business until the sun had set and his little staff was yawning. By this time there were hardly any people left in the lower Forum, but there were several rather suspicious characters lurking in the Comitia well with their noses poking above the top tier. Moneylenders' bailiffs? Definitely.

After a short conversation with his six lictors, off went Lucius Piso up the Via Sacra in the direction of the Velia, his ushers moving with unusual speed; when he passed the Domus Publica he spared it not a glance. Opposite the entrance to the Porticus Margaritaria he paused, bent down to do something to his shoe, and all six lictors clustered around him, apparently to help. Then he got to his feet and proceeded on his way, still well ahead of those suspicious characters, who had stopped when he did.

What they couldn't see from so far behind was that the tall figure in the purple-bordered toga was now preceded by five lictors only; Lucius Piso had changed togas with his loftiest lictor and nipped within the Porticus Margaritaria. There he located an exit in its Domus Publica side and emerged into the vacant ground which the shopkeepers used as a rubbish dump. The lictor's plain white toga he rolled up and tucked into an empty box; scaling the wall of Caesar's peristyle garden was not work suited to a toga.

“I hope,” he said, strolling into Caesar's study clad only in a tunic, “that you keep some decent wine in that terrifically elegant flagon.”

Few people ever saw an amazed Caesar, but Lucius Piso did.

“How did you get in?” Caesar asked, pouring wine.

“The same way rumor says Publius Clodius got out.”

“Dodging irate husbands at your age, Piso? Shame on you!”

“No, moneylenders' bailiffs,” said Piso, drinking thirstily.

“Ah!” Caesar sat down. “Help yourself, Piso, you've earned the entire contents of my cellar. What's happened?''

“Four hours ago I had some of your creditors—the less salubrious ones, I'd say—at my tribunal demanding to garnish your governor's stipend, and very furtive they were about it too. Their henchmen shooed everyone else away, and they proceeded to state their case in complete privacy. From which I deduced that they didn't want what they were doing to leak back to you—odd, to say the least.” Piso got up and poured another goblet of wine. “I was watched for the rest of the day, even followed home. So I changed places with my tallest lictor and got in through the shops next door. The Domus Publica is under supervision, I saw that lot as I passed by up the hill.”

“Then I go out the way you came in. I'll cross the pomerium tonight and assume my imperium. Once I have my imperium no one can touch me.”

“Give me an authorization to withdraw your stipend first thing in the morning, and I'll bring it to you on the Campus Martius. It would be better to invest it here, but who knows what the boni might think of next? They really are out to get you, Caesar.”

“I'm well aware of it.”

“I don't suppose,” said Piso, that direful frown back, “that you could manage to pay the wretches something on account?”

“I'll see Marcus Crassus on the way out tonight.”

“Do you mean to say,” asked Lucius Piso incredulously, “you can go to Marcus Crassus? If you can, why haven't you done so months ago—years ago?”

“He's a friend, I couldn't ask.”

“Yes, I can see that, though I wouldn't be so stiff-necked myself. But then again, I'm not a Julian. Conies very hard for a Julian to be beholden, doesn't it?”

“That it does. However, he offered, which makes it easier.”

“Write out that authorization, Caesar. You can't send for food, and I'm famished. So it's home for me. Besides, Rutilia will be worried.”

“If you're hungry, Piso, I can feed you,” said Caesar, already writing. “My own staff are completely trustworthy.”

“No, you've a lot to do.”

The letter was finished, furled, joined with hot melted wax and sealed with Caesar's ring. “There's no need to go out over a wall if you'd rather a more dignified exit. The Vestals will be in their own quarters, you can go out through their side door.”

“I can't,” said Piso. “I left my lictor's toga next door. You can give me a leg up.”

“I'm in your debt, Lucius,” said Caesar as they entered the garden. “Rest assured I won't forget this.”

Piso chuckled softly. “Isn't it just as well people like moneylenders don't know the ins and outs of Roman nobility? We may fight like cocks between ourselves, but let an outsider try to pluck our feathers, and the ranks close up. As if I'd ever let a slimy lot like that get their hands on my cousin!”

* * *

Julia had gone to bed, so that was one fewer painful farewell Caesar had to make. His mother was difficult enough.

“We must be grateful to Lucius Piso,” she said. “My uncle Publius Rutilius would approve, were he alive to tell.”

“That he would, dear old man.”

“You'll have to work terribly hard in Spain to clear yourself of debt, Caesar.”

“I know how to do it, Mater, so don't worry. And in the meantime, you'll be safe in case abominations like Bibulus try to pass some law or other permitting creditors to collect from a man's relatives. I'm going to see Marcus Crassus tonight.”

She stared. “I thought you wouldn't.”

“He offered.”

Oh, Bona Dea, Bona Dea, thank you! Your snakes will have eggs and milk all year round! But aloud all she said was “Then he is a true friend.”

“Mamercus will be acting Pontifex Maximus. Keep an eye on Fabia, and make sure the little blackbird doesn't turn into Cato. Burgundus knows what to pack for me. I'll be at Pompeius's hired villa, he won't mind a little company now he's eating grass.”