I saw one tile make it through the rude shields and drop the bearded Thorius to the pavement. So Catilina’s men were at my side, as promised. I wondered where Titus Milo might be. It was his men I wanted with me should things get rough.
As we passed an intersection of two itenera, a mob of Via Sacrans bulled into us and my bodyguard dissolved into a score of individual fights. Arms grabbed me from behind and then Clodius was in front of me, trying to wrestle the head from my grasp. His grip was uncertain, because by this time I was covered with oil, honey, blood, both my own and the horse’s, along with other fluids, all of them discouraging to a firm grasp. Besides these, I was liberally dusted with crumbs and barley meal. 1 kicked out mightily, catching him in the testicles most satisfyingly. As he fell, I struck to the rear with an elbow, heard an explosion of breath, and the arms around me loosened. I broke free and dashed for an alley, kicking Clodius in the face as I passed, just for good measure.
A few steps down the alley I turned into another. This alley curved to the left, then turned into a flight of stairs leading up to a shrine of Quirinus. I had lost pursuit, but likewise I had lost my protection. In fact, I was lost generally and 1 stopped to get my bearings. There was a small fountain beside the shrine and I took the opportunity to wash some of the blood from my face. My whole body screamed with pain but I maintained a stoic silence. Any sound from me was sure to draw Clodius.
I knocked on the nearest door and, somewhat to my surprise, it opened. The man who gaped at me was a bearded foreigner in a long, striped robe. This was excellent luck. Any citizen would have been attending the festival.
“Excuse me,” I said, “I am the Quaestor Decius Cae-cilius Metellus the Younger. Could you direct me toward the Subura?”
He gathered his composure and bowed. “Certainly, my lord. If you will just go back down those stairs and turn right-”
“I am afraid I cannot. There are men back there who might kill me, or at least take this.”I held up the head, which now seemed to weigh twice as much as it had when I lifted it from the altar. “Is there an alternative route?”
He thought for a moment. “If you will come into my poor house, there is a back door that opens on a street leading in that direction.”He bowed again and gestured for me to enter.
“I would hate to drip on your floor,” I said.
“It is nothing. Please, my lord, come in.”I could scarcely refuse such hospitality and entered. As I did, I saw an interior door close softly, a veiled woman disappearing behind it. The room was humble but not shabby, and was scrupulously clean.
“If my lord will come this way.”The man led me into another room containing a desk and a cabinet of scrolls, and then into a kitchen.
“Where do you hail from?” I asked. He seemed vaguely eastern.
“Jerusalem.”I knew little of the place except that Pom-pey had sacked it a couple of years previously. Gesturing for me to stand back, he opened the kitchen door and looked out into the street on the other side, turning his head to see both ways. Then he turned to me. “The street is deserted. If you go to the right, uphill, you should reach the Subura in a few minutes’ walk.”
“This has been most kind of you,” I said, stepping out into the street. “If I can ever do you a favor, please feel free to call upon me.”
“My lord is too generous,” he said, bowing again.
“And your name?” I inquired.
“Amos, son of Eleazar, a humble accountant for the House of Simon, importers.”
“Well, perhaps I’ll be able to do you a good turn someday. I might be elected Praetor Peregrinus. If, that is, I can reach the Subura alive.”
“I wish my lord the best of fortune,” he said, bowing again and closing the door, a most polite and accommodating foreigner.
By now I had regained my breath and I set off up the street at a fast trot. My arms were aching from holding the horse’s head, which must have weighed more than thirty pounds. I had my bearings now, and knew that if I could just avoid the Via Sacra mob for a few minutes longer, I would be safe in the Subura. In the distance, I could still hear the rampaging mobs in full uproar.
As I passed an intersecting street someone saw me and pointed. “There he is!” I began to sprint. A few paces behind me, my pursuers poured into the street, screaming, cursing me and shouting encouragements to one another. I caught a glitter from something metallic. I had thought myself near exhaustion, but this caused my heels to grow wings like the sandals of Mercury. These were Clodius’s personal followers, and they had their daggers out.
The street abruptly narrowed and became a short flight of steps. I climbed them, my breath sounding like a blacksmith’s bellows. At the top of the steps I turned right into an itenera that I knew led directly into the Square of Vulcan, which was firmly within the Subura.
Something hit my shoulder and I felt a burning pain and saw something glittering fly past me to clatter on the cobbles. One of my pursuers had thrown his knife and managed to cut my shoulder. I dared not look back. Then I saw men in front of me and was sure I was done for. I clutched the horse’s head tightly to my chest, lowered my own head, and charged directly toward them. To my unutterable relief, they stood aside for me. They were Milo’s men.
When I was past them, I paused to look back. There were only about ten of Milo’s men, and they were armed only with staves and short clubs, but they were all burly exgladiators, unafraid of a little sharp steel. I was never so happy to see a pack of thugs in my life. The sound of skulls cracking beneath the hardwood clubs was as the poetry of Homer to my ears. The street began to grow littered with fallen men and dropped weapons.
I turned to trot toward the square when a scream from above made me pause and look up. Something large was descending upon me from an overhead balcony. I had a quick impression of a face that was a mask of blood, a mouth twisted into a grimace of fury and demented eyes. Even in flight, Clodius was unmistakable.
He landed on me like a stone from a catapult, driving me to the ground and forcing the breath from my lungs. Clodius grabbed the horse’s head and twisted it from my arms, standing and raising it aloft, screaming a victory cry like some Homeric hero who has slain an enemy and stripped him of his armor.
If Clodius had run then, he might have gotten away with it, but the fool had to pause and kick me for a while. The first few got through my dazed defense, but then he spun to run away and I lurched forward from my kneeling position and tried to tackle him. I did not manage to get both knees but my arms wrapped around one leg. As he tugged and stumbled to get away, my slimy coating made me slide down his leg until I held only his ankle. My hands and arms were terribly weary and I knew I could not hang on much longer, for he was kicking back at me violently. My jaw muscles, however, were quite unfatigued. As he tried to kick back at my face, I sank my teeth into his heel, which was unprotected by his sandal. He screeched and tried to twist away, but I held on grimly. At last I was able to grip his other ankle and brought him down.
The instant he hit the cobbles, I scrambled atop him, pummeling away. He raised his hands to defend his patrician face and I got both arms around the horse’s head and stood, wrenching it away from him. He tried to get to his feet, but I raised the head and brought it down sharply on his skull, twice. Clodius collapsed into an inert heap. This time, I did not pause to kick him as I leapt over him. Look what that had done for Clodius.
I was running like a man made of half-melted wax when I reached the Square of Vulcan. Somebody saw me and raised the cry. Soon I was surrounded by my neighbors, enduring slaps on my back as we walked to the Guildsmen’s Hall, the building where the neighborhood guilds held their meetings and banquets. There, the still-beautiful head was washed in a trough and was fastened to a spike atop the pediment over the portico of the hall. The Subura had regained its luck and the rejoicing was deafening. At least, that was what I was told later. I passed out during the head washing.
I AWOKE LOOKING UP AT A grave, bearded old gentleman who
leaned on a staff. The staff was wound with a serpent and the old man was about twenty feet tall and made of marble. I was in the Temple of Aesculapius, on the island in the Tiber. Now a much smaller man appeared above me, one whose face I knew.
“Asklepiodes!” I said, or rather croaked. “I thought you were in Capua.”
“There will be no more games for a few months, so my services were not much in demand. I took leave to come here and work in the temple. You are not badly hurt, and I took advantage of your unconscious state to do most of the necessary stitching. Your face escaped damage, but your scalp was not so lucky. You will not appear comely to gods regarding you from above for some time to come. The shoulder wound was nasty, but the stitches took care of that. The whip injury is just the sort of thing that most slaves have to put up with, and they seldom complain. Can you sit?”
With a little help from one of his Egyptian slaves, I was able to sit on my pallet. A wave of dizziness washed over me, but it was quickly gone. There were many pallets in the temple, but few patients. The beds would fill in the evening, when the ill and injured would come to the temple to sleep, in hopes that the god would send them a dream to aid in their cure.
I found that I was naked, but I had been washed well by the slaves. Except for numerous unsightly bruises, I looked as if I had just returned from the baths. “I would appreciate the loan of something to wear home.”
“Certainly.”He checked the bandaging of my scalp and made sure that all was to his satisfaction. His slaves were the most artistic bandagers who ever dressed my wounds. “You have not consulted me on a murder in a long time,” the physician chided.
“It is not for lack of homicides,” I assured him. “It’s just that the latest string of killings have been damnably crude and unimaginative, with no subtlety about them.”I found myself relating to him the story of the murders since I had encountered the body of Oppius.
Asklepiodes was a very eccentric physician, who actually did his own cutting and stitching. As physician to the gladiators of the Statilian and other schools, he had acquired a knowledge of every sort of weapon-inflicted wound, and I had consulted him on murders before. He could glance at a wound and say what sort of weapon had made it, whether a blade’s edge had been straight or curved, whether the killer was right- or left-handed, whether he was taller or shorter than the victim, whether the victim had been standing, sitting or lying down when he received his deathblow. Asklepiodes had developed this sophistry into a sort of sub-branch of medical philosophy that had no name. He was named for the Greek god of medicine, Asklepios, which is how the Greeks name Aesculapius. Greeks can never pronounce anything correctly.
“The art of murder in Rome seems to have reached a new low of amateurism,” Asklepiodes commented.
“Cheer up,” I said. “Somebody may die interestingly yet. If so, I shall not hesitate to call upon you.”
A slave brought a tunic that was almost my size and I drew it over my head, wincing at the stiffness of all my movements. I tried out all my limbs and they all seemed to work. The pain was so diffuse that I seemed to hurt everywhere equally.
“What time of day is it?” I asked. It seemed like several days since I had mounted the October Horse.
“About midafternoon,” Asklepiodes said.
“Good. I have a dinner engagement and I need to get home to change clothes.”
“In your condition,” the physician said, “I should devote the evening to repose.”
“A matter of duty,” I said. “It is connected with the murders. At least, so runs my theory. There is also a lady of high birth and great beauty involved.”I have found that one can discuss these things with a physician.
“After a day of such exertion your mind is still fixed not only upon duty and danger, but upon love. This is truly heroic, my friend! Incredibly foolish, of course, but much to be admired.”
8
I DESCENDED THE STEPS OF THE temple, wincing at the pains that enveloped my body like a cloud. I might have persuaded Asklepiodes to lend me a litter and some slaves, but I was determined to walk lest I grow too stiff to move at all. I crossed the bridge to the riverbank. This was the old wooden bridge. The fine stone bridge that now stands there was built the next year by the Tribune Fabricius. In the city, the celebration was still in full roar. Applause greeted me wherever I showed my bandaged head, and red-dripping wineskins were held out to me by the score, but I only sipped at a few, just enough to ease my way to my house. I wanted a clear head that evening. It took a great effort of will, because I desired nothing more than to drink until my pains were forgotten and lose all my cares in the city’s festal mood. I was weary of murders and intrigues and scheming politicians and generals.
Ladies wearing the brief tunic and feminine toga of the courtesan offered themselves to me freely, but my mind was so fixed upon a single woman that I was not even tempted. Infatuation is a terrible thing. Musicians wound through the streets playing flutes and cymbals, and behind them danced women in the fashion of Bacchantes; their hair unbound and dressed only in animal skins or flimsy chitons open down one side. This was a Greek custom frequently forbidden by the aediles or the Censors, but it had been a few years since the last censorship and the aediles had more important concerns, anyway.
A vendor handed me a flat loaf wrapped around a heap of thin-sliced lamb, fried onions and olives, all of a delightful greasiness. This I devoured hungrily, for I had had nothing since breakfast and I knew I would have to drink with Ca-tilina and his cronies or else be suspect. It was so good that, when another vendor offered me a broad fig-leaf heaped with grilled sausages, I accepted that too. These needed something to wash them down, so I next took a cup of unfermented apple juice at a stall, along with a handful of figs and dates.
Women rubbed themselves against me for luck and I did not complain. Men tried to do the same and I did complain. I was hero for a day, but for a day only. The Roman people are infinitely distractable, and I would be forgotten by the next day.
I reached home pleasantly stuffed and let my elderly house slaves fuss over me for a while. They might treat me like a hero for as much as two days, or perhaps even three, if I did nothing to offend them in the meantime. Cassandra wanted to strip the fine bandages from my head and try her favorite poultice on me, but I preferred to trust Asklepiodes’s more professional treatment.
When the sun drew low to the west, 1 donned a decent tunic and opened my arms chest. Inside were my swords, my field armor and my parade armor, my daggers and my caesti. I took a sheathed pugio and thrust it beneath my tunic, under the girdle. Then I took up a caestus. I had won the boxing gloves in a long-ago game and I had stripped one of its complicated straps, leaving only the thick, bronze bar that went over the knuckles. With its half-inch, pyramidal spikes it was just the thing to give an assailant a truly memorable punch. I tested it to make sure the single strap was still snug against my palm and then tucked it beneath my tunic on the other side, where I could reach it easily with my left hand.
I did not fear trouble from Catilina or his men, but it was likely that Clodius and his men might be prowling the city and he was unstable enough to attack me on sight. I would have to watch out for Clodius until someone else should enrage him. That would not be long. Clodius acquired enemies the way Caesar picked up votes.
Leaving word that I would return late, I left my house and entered the darkened streets. The revelry had quieted some, but not entirely, by any means. It is seldom truly quiet in the Subura, but by this time most of the roistering had moved indoors, although in the open squares and courts of some neighborhoods, tables had been erected and the dwellers of the local insulae sat back, picking their teeth contentedly. The day’s sacrifices had provided plenty of meat and the harvest was in, so fruits and vegetables were plentiful and cheap. Fall was usually a good time in Rome, unless the harvest had been bad. Then it would become necessary to squeeze the provinces.
I reached Orestilla’s house without encountering Pub-lius
or his myrmidons. The janitor let me in and I went into the atrium. A cheer went up at my arrival. Catilina rose and took my hand.
“Well done, Decius, well done!” His arm around my shoulders, he turned to face the others and gestured grandly. “Here is our hero, at last. We’ve been awaiting your arrival, Decius.”
There were a dozen men present, and all of them rose from their seats to congratulate me. Some of them I knew already: Curius, Cethegus Sura, Laeca, the twin beards, Thorius and Valgius. The latter two showed the trophies of their vigorous efforts on my behalf that morning. Thorius sported a bandage around his head, although it was not as artistic as my own. Valgius had a pair of black eyes, nearly swollen shut. There was a bulky, balding man in the tunica laticlavia with the narrow red stripe; an eques. The rest bore no marks of distinction.
“Decius,” Catilina said when the balding man approached, “this is Publius Umbrenus, a prominent businessman with interests throughout Gaul.”So this was the mysterious financier who had been speaking with the Allob-roges.
“I knew your father in Gaul,” Umbrenus said. He had the false heartiness of an auctioneer.
The others were introduced, but I had little opportunity to absorb more than their names: Publius Gabinius Capito, Lucius Bestia, Marcus Fulvius Nobilior and Lucius Statilius were all of the equestrian order, although they had purposely attended in common tunics. They were living proof that not every eques was a wealthy businessman, for these were as ragged and hungry a pack of ne’er-do-wells as one could ask for. Some were ruined entrepreneurs like Umbrenus, others had never reached high enough to achieve ruin.
SPQR II: The Catiline Conspiracy Page 14