Saturnalia (26 page)

We ended up on the portico of the beautiful little Temple of Venus on the Via Sacra near the Temple of Janus. Like that of Vesta, Venus’s temple was round, in the shape of the huts in which our ancestors had lived. The place was deserted, for the goddess had no rites at that time of year. The portico was newer than the rest of the building and featured a long bench against the wall of the temple, where citizens could sit and enjoy the shade on hot days, which are numerous in Rome.

From where we sat, we could see the doors of the Temple of Janus. We could see one set of doors, I should say, for that temple has doors at each end. The doors were open, as usual. They were only closed in times of peace, when Roman soldiers were nowhere engaged in hostilities. This is to say that they were never closed.

“Now tell me what you’ve been up to,” Julia said. It seemed to me that she was growing all too accustomed to making such demands.

“The hours since we parted yesterday evening have been eventful and more than a little puzzling,” I informed her.

“Tell me. I can probably make more sense of it than you.”

I began with the meeting in my father’s house after the slave banquet. Julia frowned as I described the proceedings.

“You mean they treated that … that atrocity as if it were just another little political embarrassment?”

“These men look at everything that way,” I affirmed.

“But my uncle is
pontifex maximus!
How can he treat this flouting of our sacred laws so lightly?”

“My dear, the supreme pontificate has become just another political office. Caius Julius is widely known to have
secured it through a campaign of bribery such as has seldom been seen in Rome, even in this decadent era.”

“I cannot believe that. But I confess to being shocked at his cavalier treatment of the matter. It must be that the Gaulish campaign weighs so heavily on his mind. I know what a burden it is, spending as much time in his house as I do. Lately he has been agitated and busy from long before dawn to long after dark. He just calls for lamps and keeps on working, interviewing prospective officers, dispatching letters all over … he has become distracted with work.”

“I can imagine the shock,” I said. Caesar had long been famed for his indolence. The sight of him actually working had to be a worthy spectacle. “It seems that I may be one of those lucky men who shall go out and win undying glory for him.”

“What?” Now she had to hear all about that.

“It’s true. He asked for my services and my father thinks it’s a good idea and now I’m cornered. I may spend the next few years among the barbarians, constantly under attack and eating the worst food in the world.”

“This is disturbing news,” she said. From somewhere within her mantle she produced a palm frond and fanned herself with it. In December. She had probably overdone it in disguising herself with cloaks and veils. “But surely he will assign you to administrative duties … embassies, payrolls, that sort of thing.”

“He’ll have quaestors for the payrolls,” I told her, “and embassy or envoy duty can be dangerous in that part of the world. Nations wishing to join a rebellion usually declare their loyalty by killing their Roman ambassadors. Envoys who deliver terms the Gauls don’t like are often slaughtered. The Germans are rumored to be even worse.”

“Well, I am certain that my uncle will keep you well away from danger. Your reputation has never been that of a soldier, after all.”

“I am touched by your faith.”

“Anyway, that is next year. What happened after the conference?” This time she got the story of my flight from my father’s house and the little battle near my house.

“It’s a good thing Milo assigned you such capable men,” she commented.

“I did pretty well for myself,” I said. “I settled for one and was about…”

“You would have been killed had you been alone,” she said flatly. “Do you think the men were Clodia’s?”

“No, and that is a part of all the things that have bothered me about this case. It’s not Clodia’s style.”

“Have you forgotten?” she said crossly. “I told you that she might do just such a thing to divert attention from herself.”

“I remember quite well. No, it’s the quality of the men. I’ve been in Clodia’s house quite a bit”—I caught her look and added hastily—”in the line of duty, of course. Everything Clodia owns, buys, hires, or in any way whatever associates with, is first class. Her clothes, her furniture, her collection of art, even her slaves all are of the very highest quality.”

“I’d like to get a look at her house some time,” Julia said wistfully.

“But Milo’s thugs said that the attackers were very inferior fighters from an inferior school. Even allowing for the customary school rivalry, they did seem less than adept. They were not very pretty either. If Clodia had hired assassins, she would have hired only the best.”

“No pursuit is so low that good taste cannot be observed,”
Julia said. “I still think you’re trying to find her innocent in spite of all evidence.”

“Then listen to this.” I told her about the interview with Narcissus. She was enthralled by, of all things, Asklepiodes’s diagnosis of the injury caused by the falling roof tile.

“And he can actually open up a man’s head and heal so terrible an injury!” she said, dropping her fan and clasping her hands in delight. “Such a skill must truly be a gift from the gods.”

“Well, if anyone can do it, it must be Asklepiodes. Now pay attention. That is nothing.”

“Nothing!” she said before I could continue. “All you men spend your days scheming about how to injure people and you idolize the worst butchers, but you think it is nothing that someone can draw an injured man back from death like that!”

“I don’t go around injuring people,” I protested. “And I don’t admire people who do. Besides, we don’t know that he will pull through. Marcus Celsius may have the Styx lapping about his ankles this very moment.” How had we gotten off onto this? “Enough. Let me tell you about a less admirable physician.”

Julia listened open-mouthed as I described the activities of the late Ariston of Lycia.

“Oh, this is infamous!” she cried. “A physician, sworn to the gods by the oath of Hippocrates, deliberately poisoning his patients!”

“You think you’re shocked?” I said. “He was
my
family’s physician. Suppose I’d fallen ill?”

“Do you think you are important enough to poison?”

“Some people have deemed me quite worthy of homicide.”

“They might have stabbed you to death in the street, perhaps. That usually calls for a temporary exile. Poisoning brings a terrible punishment.”

“It is a puzzler, and that brings up another question. With all the suspicions about her, why would Clodia poison Celer? She had to know that she would be the most prominent suspect. If she, as you suggested, might wish to divert suspicion from herself, would she not have hired an assassin to strike him down in the city? Everyone would have automatically assumed that he had been killed by one of his multitude of political enemies.”

That gave her something to think about. “It does confuse things.”

“So, having determined that the poison originated with Harmodia and that Ariston was the vector, as it were, by which it was transmitted to the victim, I have to sift through the rather numerous suspects to determine which one hired Ariston”.

“Must it be only one?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“As you’ve said, Celer had no dearth of enemies. Might Ariston not have shopped his services around to a number of them? He might have taken pay from more than one, and each would think that he was the only one who had hired Ariston.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted, intrigued by the idea. “It would present some interesting judicial problems in assigning guilt, wouldn’t it? I mean, if it wasn’t, technically, a conspiracy, how would the courts go about punishing them? Give each a portion of a death sentence? Find extremely tiny islands for them all?”

“Rein in your imagination,” she said. “Probably only the
saga
would get the full sentence of the law; perhaps the Greek
physician as well. Those who hired him might get off with exile, since they were probably of the nobility. They would at least be given the option of honorable suicide.”

“Probably,” I mused. Then I shook my head. “It wouldn’t work anyway. The more people Ariston involved, the greater the chance of discovery. He was a cautious man, and poison is notoriously the weapon of a coward. I can’t imagine him being so bold as to dupe a number of murderously inclined men that way. I think he sold his services to one of them and deemed himself safe.”

“It is worth considering. Anything else?”

“Yes, I conferred with Flavius, the fire-eating tribune of last year.” I told her of my interview. “He was everything I’d hoped: violent, abrasive, obnoxious, and a firm supporter of Pompey.”

“So what is wrong?”

“He’s too good to be true. Besides, everything about him proclaims a willingness, even an eagerness, to shed his enemy’s blood with his own hands. I just don’t think poison is his style, although Celer’s death was awfully convenient for him, coming when it did. His anger when I brought up the subject of poisoning was too convincing. If he’d been expecting the accusation, I doubt he’d have been able to summon up that extravagant facial color on cue.”

“I am not convinced that your judgment of men is as accurate as you think, but where does that leave us?”

“It leaves us with the curule aedile Murena, who reported upon the death of Harmodia and then sent for the report, which has subsequently disappeared.”

“Have you found him?”

“I have. I told you I haven’t been wasting my time today.”

She patted my hand. “Yes, dear, I didn’t mean to imply
that you are an irresponsible overgrown boy who drinks too much. Now proceed.”

I told her of my interview with Murena in the jeweler’s market, finishing with: “And then I walked out into the Forum and you found me.”

“Politically, he sounds just like you,” she observed.

“That’s the problem. I rather liked the man. But I won’t deny that I have been fooled before.”

“There are too many things that don’t fit together,” she said. “There has to be something we are overlooking.”

“Undoubtedly,” I said, gloomily. “I am sure it will come to me in time, but time is just what we’re short of. It’s going to do us little good if, six months from now, I wake up in a leaky tent in Gaul while the savages beat their drums and toot their horns all around the camp in their massed thousands and I cry, ‘Eureka!’ ”

“Yes, that would do us little good,” she agreed.

“Did you hear anything last night?”

“I may have. After the banquet was over and the slaves had departed for the festivities, we cleaned up the triclinium and the ladies of the various households visited among themselves, bringing gifts. It’s traditional.”

“I’m familiar with the custom,” I told her. “My father’s house has been without a lady since my mother died and my sisters married, but I remember them all flocking about on Saturnalia.”

“Since my uncle is
pontifex maximus,
we went nowhere. Everyone came to us. Only the family of the
Flamen Dialis
has as much prestige, and there hasn’t been one of those in almost thirty years.” The high priest of Jupiter was so bound by ritual and taboo that it was increasingly difficult to find
anyone who wanted to assume the position, prestigious as it was.

“I know why Caesar wanted to be
pontifex maximus,
” I said. “His mother put him up to it. Aurelia just wanted to have every woman in Rome, even the ladies of the highest-ranking households, come to her and abase themselves.”

She punched me in the ribs. “Stop that! As usual, there was gossip. People speak more freely at Saturnalia than at other times. A lot of it was about Clodia.”

“Everyone assumes she poisoned Celer?”

“Of course. But there was more. It seems to be common knowledge that she is the brains behind her brother’s rise to political power. They are wildly devoted to one another; everyone knows that. She may do most of his thinking for him as well.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “Clodius certainly isn’t the brightest star in the Roman firmament.”

“Then,” she said, leaning close and being conspiratotial, “if someone wanted to eliminate Clodius without bringing the wrath of Clodius’s mob down upon him, wouldn’t it make sense to get rid of Clodia?”

“I thought you were of the opinion she is guilty,” I said.

“I’m trying to think like you, dolt!” Another punch in the ribs. “Now pay attention. By poisoning Celer, somebody hoped not only to eliminate him as an enemy, but to bring Clodius into disgrace as well, possibly to eliminate him entirely by getting the sister upon whom he depends sentenced to death by the state as a
venefica
. Even if Clodius is capable of handling his own career, the disgrace would be devastating. Does this plan eliminate a few suspects from your list?”

“It does that,” I admitted. “If Clodius was one of the real targets, then somebody wants to cut Caesar’s support in the
City out from under him while he’s in Gaul.” I glanced at her suspiciously. “You didn’t brew this up just to make your uncle look innocent, did you?”

“I only search for truth and justice,” she said, with lamblike innocence. Then her eyes went wide with alarm. “Those men over there!”

I looked around, expecting assassins. “Where? Is someone after us? Me, I mean?” I reached into my tunic and grasped the hilt of my dagger. I could see no northern thugs or Marsian louts.

“No, idiot! Those two old slaves over there. They belong to my grandmother, and they’re looking for me.” She drew her veil aside and kissed me swiftly. “I have to run back. Be careful.” Then she was up and away, around a corner of the temple.

F
OR A FEW MINUTES LONGER I
sat on the portico of the temple, basking in the light of the sunny morning. With most of the litter of the holiday swept up and carted away, the Forum was almost back to its customary state of majestic beauty, and the eye was not distracted by the usual swarming crowds. Rome at its most beautiful, though, can be a strange and dangerous place.