Saturnalia (21 page)

We found the house laid out with the tables and couches set up within the peristyle, since the triclinium was far too small to hold them all. To my great relief father had persuaded some of his freedmen to help out. Most of these were men and women recently manumitted who had no slaves of their own to tend to.

Hermes was already half-drunk and when he crawled onto the couch he wiggled his feet at me insolently until I took his sandals.
Just wait
, I thought to myself. I felt better about serving Cato and Cassandra. They had served my family all
their lives and hadn’t all that much time left to them. They rated a little indulgence.

For the next couple of hours we brought in the platters, kept the wine cups filled, and generally behaved as slaves. The banqueters, in turn, behaved like aristocrats and ordered us around. They observed certain unspoken limits though, all too aware that they would be slaves again tomorrow.

It was almost worth the bother to see Father, sour-faced old
paterfamilias
that he was, hurrying about, bringing platters from the kitchen, mixing water and wine in the great bowl, keeping a wary eye on the silver lest it wander away.

At last the slaves were replete and betook themselves to the streets to take part in the night-long festivities. I dropped my napkin on the floor and searched among the wreckage for something to eat. I was famished. I was also thirsty and I dipped out a good-sized cup of wine. It was too heavily watered for my taste, but I did not feel like searching out a fresh jug.

“Don’t get drunk,” Father said. “You are to speak with some important men. They should be here soon.” Like me, he was loading a plate from the scattered remnants of the slave banquet. The freedmen were helping themselves as well. Somebody turned up an almost complete tunny fish, and we divided it. There were also some first-rate olives and no shortage of bread. The slaves had gone straight for the meats and exotic fruits, things they seldom got to eat during the rest of the year.

I took a seat and began to munch. “Father,” I asked, “do you know where Ariston of Lycia lives? He attended Celer when he died and I have a few questions I want to ask him.”

“Never had any dealings with the man,” Father said, biting into an apple. “I was never ill in my life. My wounds
were all treated by legionary surgeons. Besides, I think you’re too late. I heard he was dead.”

“Dead?” I said, dropping a piece of long-cold fish.

“That’s right, dead. It happens to most people if they live long enough. I heard he was found in the river back”—he paused to remember—”back around the Ides of November, if I recall correctly.”

The Ides of November. Harmodia was found dead on the morning of the ninth. I was willing to bet that Ariston had died a few days earlier than the Ides. Had he detected signs of poison? If so, why had he said nothing? Perhaps he was another blackmailer.

“Oh, well,” I said, “that’s one less to consult.”

“There may be no need anyway,” Father said. “If what you saw out on the Vatican is sufficient evidence, we may get similar results without having to prove a murder.”

“Cicero thinks I have almost no chance of bringing charges.” I did not tell him that Clodius wanted me to prove Clodia innocent. Things were complicated enough as it was.

“You told him about it?” Father said, irritated. “I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish by that. Cicero is a timid little
novus homo
with dreams larger than his talent. He told you that because he fears that
he
would not be able to secure a conviction in such a case. Cicero is like a man who goes to the races but will bet only on what he conceives to be a sure thing, the problem being that he is a wretched judge of horses.”

Much as it nettled me to hear it, there was no little justice in what Father said. I revered Cicero for his brilliance, but he was subject to frequent failures of nerve. His learning was vast, but he could never comprehend his place in the Roman power structure. This I attributed to his obscure origins. Always
insecure, he idolized the long-established aristocracy, championed their cause, and thought that made him one of them. In the end, his indecision and self-delusion were to kill him.

I was still brushing crumbs from my tunic when our guests began to arrive. First to appear was the curule aedile Visellius Varro, an undistinguished man, rather advanced in years for the office he held. I read him as a plodding careerist with no great future, and I was right. Next came Calpurnius Bestia whom I already knew and disliked, but I also knew him to be an extremely capable man so I swallowed my distaste. He was wrapped in a tatty robe of off-purple color, probably dyed with sour wine. On his head was a voluminous chaplet of gilt ivy leaves, and his face was painted crimson like that of an Etruscan king or a triumphing general.

“I was chosen King of Fools at a big party on the Palatine,” he proclaimed, grinning. I restrained myself from saying that he had to be the only logical choice.

The final arrival came as a surprise.

“Caius Julius,” Father said, taking his hand, “how good of you to come. I know how busy you must be with your own preparations.”

“If the matter touches upon our religious practice, the
pontifex maximus
must hear of it and rule upon it.” Caesar delivered this line without the faintest trace of irony. He could say the most incredibly pompous things and somehow manage never to sound either embarrassed nor overtly hypocritical. I never knew another man who could do this.

Father, like most of the Metelli, detested Caesar’s politics and everything else he stood for. On the other hand, Caesar had become one of the most promising contenders for power and might, against all odds, succeed to great prominence.
As a family, we Metelli liked to place a bet on every chariot in the race. I had the discomforting suspicion that, as Nepos was the clan’s man in Pompey’s camp, I would be expected to play the same role with Caesar. My betrothal to Julia was a purely political maneuver as far as my family was concerned.

Father began. “Allow me to preface these proceedings by informing you that my son has been investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer.”

“ ‘Circumstances surrounding the death,’ “ I said. “I like that. It sounds much better than just, say, looking into the way the old boy croaked. I may use it myself when I …”

“I assure you, my friends and colleagues,” Father said, overriding me, “that his peculiar talent is the only reason I had for recalling my son to Rome.” He looked pained. Well, he was getting old.

“Tell us, young Decius,” Caesar said, “just how did you come to be out there on the Vatican field in the dead of night?”

I gave them a somewhat truncated account of my investigation, leaving Clodius’s semipeace treaty out of it. He had probably already told Caesar, but there was no reason for the others to know.

“Clodia!” Varro said. “That woman could destroy the Republic all by herself.”

Caesar smiled indulgently. “I don’t think the Republic is all that fragile. She is an embarrassment, no more.”

“More an embarrassment to you than to the rest of us, Caesar,” Bestia put in.

“How can one slightly degenerate patrician woman be an embarrassment to me specifically?” Caesar asked blandly.

“She is the sister of Publius Clodius Pulcher, and Clodius,
as all the world knows, is your hound.” His smile was malicious and made more so by his paint. As Pompey’s lackey he was on the lookout for any way he could discomfit Caesar.

“Clodius is his own man,” Caesar said. “He supports me, and by doing so he supports my good friend, Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus. Surely this should be a cause for rejoicing.”

Deftly outmaneuvered, Bestia fell silent. He was forced to acknowledge the fiction of the triumvirate formed by Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus.

“This matter of Fausta Cornelia disturbs me,” Visellius Varro said. “Granted she is a shameless woman, but she is the daughter of the dictator and, as such, is something of a symbol to the aristocratic party. The Cornelii are a great family, consulars since the founding of the Republic. In these unsettled times the public must have faith in our great families. I think it would be inappropriate to bring her name into this sordid matter.”

I tried to remember whether the Vissellii were clients of the Cornelii. They were an extremely obscure family, and I had never heard of any man of distinction with that name, which meant that his father or perhaps grandfather had most likely been a freedman, not that I had any prejudice against the recent descendants of slaves, but such men often had an excessive loyalty to their former owners.

“What about the woman Fulvia?” Father asked. “I’ve never met her and scarcely know her family. The Fulvii were great once, but they’ve nearly died out or else removed from the City. There hasn’t been a consul of that name for seventy or eighty years.”

“This one is from Baiae, I think,” said Caesar. “She can be discounted. She’s the betrothed of Clodius, but that means nothing. He can always find another.”

I cleared my throat rather loudly. “Gentlemen, I hesitate to speak in so distinguished a company, but I thought we were here to discuss what to do about an impious cult practicing forbidden rites on Roman soil, not how to deal with the patrician presence at those rites. I saw quite a few, after all. Those three were only the ones I recognized.” Father glared at me but he didn’t say anything.

“Quite right,” Bestia said. “It might be a mistake to prosecute Fulvia. Who knows whom she might name as her sisters in these unclean rituals?”

“We are dealing with unlawful human sacrifice!” I insisted.

“True,” Caesar said. “The law is quite clear on the question. The problem is, I do not know of a single case in which anyone was prosecuted on the charge. If the victim was a slave and the property of one of the participants, the charge of murder is invalid. The censors may expel citizens for immorality, but legal prosecution is another thing.”

“Then,” I said, “as
pontifex maximus
can you declare these persons and their cult to be enemies of the state and take action against them? Could you not condemn them, level their holy site, and fill in their
mundus?
”

“I could, but what would be the point? Except for the highly placed thrill seekers, these people are mostly aliens, even if they come from places with titular Roman citizenship. The real purpose of driving the more disgusting foreign cults from the City is to preserve public order. These witches practice their rites at a discreet distance from the walls and, as far as we can tell, have been doing so for centuries without causing any public disorder at all.”

“But what they are doing is infamous!” I said. “It is an offense to our laws and our gods!”

“I believe,” Caesar said, “that I am a better judge of that on both counts. Before I leave for Gaul, I shall appoint an investigative board to look into the matter, and I shall authorize the members to take action by my authority. I shall also speak with Clodius concerning his sister and her friend, Fulvia, who I believe is living with her. I shall speak with Lucullus as well. Fausta is his ward. Her brother, Faustus, is with Lucius Culleolus in Illyricum, and I shall speak with him as well when I get there. I shall urge that all three women be sent away from Rome, not to return, for their own good and for the good of their families. It will, of course, have to be done with discretion to avoid public scandal.”

“If you will forgive me, Caius Julius,” I broke in, “I think a public scandal is exactly what is needed just now. What I saw …”

“What you saw, Decius,” Caesar said, in tones like ringing sword steel, “was enough to bring charges against three silly patrician women and exactly one Etruscan peasant woman. I daresay you could harangue the Popular Assemblies and get some sort of action, but it would be mob hysteria and it would be aimed at
all
the market people from the outlying territories, specifically the Marsians. I need hardly remind you that we fought a very bloody war with the Marsians not so long ago, and it wouldn’t take a great provocation to make them take arms against us now, the very last thing we need with war facing us in Gaul.”

“Very true,” Bestia said. “People are on edge just now. A bit of loose talk about witchcraft and human sacrifice would spread through the slums like a fire. One foreign slave sacrificed over a
mundus
would become twenty citizen’s children murdered and eaten. I agree, it’s too risky.”

“I urge moderation also,” said Varro. “The offense
scarcely seems to merit the sort of public unrest sure to arise.”

“I do not like the idea of alien barbarities practiced right on Rome’s doorstep,” Father said, “practically beneath the noses of the censors, for all practical purposes. Perhaps we can indict the woman Furia and try her alone. Punish their ringleader or high priestess or whatever she is, and the others will scuttle for their hills.”

“An excellent idea at any other time,” Caesar said, “but there will be no courts for the balance of December, and with the new year the new magistrates take office. To testify against the woman, your son will have to be in the City while Publius Clodius is tribune.”

“That does make it touchy,” Father said.

“I’m not afraid of Clodius!” I protested.

“Who needs to be afraid of Clodius?” Father said. “Do you think it will be some sort of Homeric duel between champions? He’ll be untouchable, and he’ll have a thousand men each eager to curry favor with him by delivering your head.”

“Unless,” Bestia put in, “it’s true what I heard, that you and Clodius have patched things up?”

“What’s this?” Father said, frowning.

“Yes, Decius,” Caesar said, amused, “tell us all about this prodigy.”

“Clodius thinks my investigation will prove his sister innocent,” I said, cursing Bestia’s big mouth. “I put no stock in his protestations of a truce. Whether I find for or against her, it will be open war again.”

“All the more reason to be away from Rome next year,” Caesar said. He smiled and cocked an eye at Father. “Cut-Nose, why not send him with me to Gaul? I have plenty of room on my staff for another aide.”