She picked up her basket, stood and straightened her back. 'I leave for Rome tomorrow and won't be back for such a long time — you can imagine all the instructions to be left with the slaves, and the confusion in the household with the new cook, not to mention the packing! Oh, I hate the fuss — why Lucius left me a house in the city I can't imagine! But I'm glad I managed to see you here on the ridge, both of you. And I shall see you again on Meto's toga day! The party will be at your house?'
'Yes, Eco's house now. On the Esquiline. It's a little hard to find—'
'Ah, but you and Lucius were such good friends, I'm sure his old slaves in the city will know how to find the place. I shall be there.' 'We look forwards to having you.'
'And, Gordianus — consider seriously what I said, about Gnaeus. You must watch yourself. You have a family to look after.' Before she turned away, her face took on a quite stern, almost severe expression.
The moment she disappeared into the brush I licked the honey from my lips and suddenly craved another cake, too late. Meanwhile, Catilina and Tongilius had picked up speed and made rapid progress on the Cassian Way. Meto and I watched them for a while longer, until their blue-cloaked figures began to merge with the northern horizon, obscured, by the rippling heat that rose from the sun-baked paving stones.
'Catilina is a fascinating man,' said Meto.
'Catilina,' I said, 'is a blur on the horizon.'
XV
The following days passed without incident — or rather, without any unpleasant interludes of the Nemo variety. Of incident there was an abundance, for transporting a family from the farm to the city, even for a brief visit, is a matter of complex logistics and planning. When I consider that great generals like Pompey are able to move their armies successfully over vast arenas on land and sea, complete with tents and cooking utensils and stocks of food and all their daily needs, I am truly awed.
Aratus told me he had always been in charge of helping Lucius pack his things, and since Lucius had gone back and forth from city to countryside quite often and had no doubt travelled in considerable luxury, this claim at first impressed me. Then I realized that Lucius, being so rich, could have afforded to own two or more of everything, and so had little need to carry his necessities on his back like a turtle. Conversely, Bethesda and I had to plan very carefully to bring enough so that Eco would not be burdened by us, and at the same time make sure that the farm was well provisioned in our absence. It was a considerable job.
Nevertheless, I managed to make time to begin construction on the water mill. The time was right for the project, for the weather continued clear and hot, and the flow in the stream diminished appreciably from day to day. This made it easy to remove stones and to fill areas that needed levelling with mortar and brick. I was disturbed to see the water become so slow and shallow, but, fortunately, the farm had a well at the foot of the ridge. The well had been there since before anyone living was born, Aratus told me. It was situated among olive trees and ringed with a low stone wall. The shaft was so deep it barely sent back a faint echo from its watery black depths. The old well had always been reliable, Aratus assured me, even in years of drought.
Meanwhile, between work on the mill and preparations for the trip to Rome, I enjoyed my respite from worrying over unwanted visitors. The election would be held on the fifth day before the Ides; thus the consular contest would be decided even before we set out for Rome. I could arrive in the city without giving the matter another thought; hopefully, I would be able to enjoy Eco's company and Meto's day of manhood without any further worries about matters over which I had no control and in which I had no interest. Catilina would be elected, or he would not, but in either event his brief incursion into my lite would be over.
It bothered me that the mystery of Nemo's death and identity and his appearance in my stable had never been explained, but it would have bothered me more if further threats had followed, or if Diana and Bethesda were to stay behind while I went to Rome. But we would all be together in the city, safe in Eco's house, or as sate as anyone can be in a place like Rome.
On the day before we were to leave, I took a few moments from the preparations for the trip and the work on the mill and stole away by myself to the place where Meto and Aratus and I had buried Nemo. I stood before the simple stele and ran my fingers down the vertical letters that spelled the name of no one. 'Who were you?' I said. 'How did you die? What became of your head, and who arranged it so that I would find you in my barn?' I tried to convince myself that the whole incident was now over and done with, but at the same time I felt something else that was harder to dispel than my vague foreboding: a sense of guilt and failure, of an obligation denied. Not my obligation to Cicero, which had now been discharged, but to the shade of Nemo.
I shrugged. To relieve a kink in the muscles of my shoulders, I thought — or was it to demonstrate my indifference to the restless dead? What did I owe Nemo, after all? If I had seen his face, would I have even known him? It seemed to me unlikely. He had been neither client nor friend, so far as there was any way of knowing. I owed him nothing. I shrugged — yet I did not turn my back on his gravestone, and instead found myself staring at it, studying each of the four letters of the name I had given him, which was not a name at all but the very opposite.
Other men live with mysteries, never knowing the truth from day to day; it is a way of surviving in a world in which the truth is always dangerous to someone. I would live in ignorance as well, and prosper, and protect my family. I would do what the mighty demanded of me, and otherwise mind my business. So I told myself, but with faltering conviction. Why had I come to Nemo's burial place at all unless it was to pay my respects and converse with his shade? I had made vows to other dead men, to find their killers, to see that some semblance of justice prevailed. I had done so because the gods had made me wayward and dissatisfied with ignorance and injustice. But I had never made a vow to Nemo while he lived, I reasoned, arguing with myself; he was no one, and I owed him nothing.
I turned my back on the stele, but not easily; I could almost feel the hand of Nemo on my shoulder, holding me back, trying to extract from me a promise I would not make. I tore myself away, cursing everyone from Numa to Nemo, and made my way back to the stream.
I yelled at Aratus for no reason that afternoon, and after dinner Bethesda told me that I had been as cross as a child all day. In bed she did her best to raise my spirits, and succeeded at least in raising something eke. Within the familiar recesses of her body I found warm solace and left my worries behind. Afterwards she grew talkative. Her speech came quickly, all in a rush, which was not at all like her usual languid way of talking, especially after sex. It was the chance to go back to the city, after being away for so long, that excited her so. She catalogued the temples she would visit, the markets where she would shop, the neighbours she would impress with her new status as a country matron.
At last she grew weary. Her voice slowed and deepened, but I could tell, even with my eyes shut, that she smiled as she spoke. Her happiness gave me comfort, and I fell asleep to the soothing music of her voice.
The gods smiled on the day of our journey. The heat relented and occasional breezes wafted across the paving stones of the Cassian Way. A procession of white, puffy clouds paraded across the sky, threatening no rain but providing long passages of soothing shade. The wagon that carried Bethesda and Diana did not break an axle, and the horses on which Meto and I rode made no complaint. I picked out a few of the brawniest and ugliest slaves to accompany us as bodyguards — more for show than for any skill they might have in fighting — and though they knew little about riding horseback, they managed the journey without mishap.
Just north of Rome the Cassian Way branches in two directions. The smaller, southerly branch leads around the Vatican and Janiculum hills to join with the Aurelian Way, which enters the city at its very heart across the ancient bridges that cross into the great catde markets and thence into the Forum. Arriving by the Aurelian
Way is always impressive — the first glimpse of the glimmering Tiber, dotted with small ships and lined with warehouses and shipyards along its banks; the clattering of hooves on the bridges; the looming skyline of the great city, dominated by the Temple of Jupiter high atop the Capitoline Hill; the slow progress through the markets and the sheer spectacle of the Forum with its magnificent array of temples and courts. It would have been a fitting way to enter the city for the purpose of celebrating Meto's coming of age as a Roman citizen, but simple pragmatism made me decide against it, for the traffic on the Aurelian Way going into the city on a late afternoon can be as slow as a dead man's pulse, and with a wagon in our retinue I dreaded being trapped on one of the bridges or amid the market stalls.
Instead we took the main, easterly branch of the Cassian Way, which joins with the Flaminian Way at the Tiber some distance north of the outskirts of Rome, and crosses the river over the Milvian Bridge. The entry into Rome by this route is less spectacular, for the countryside recedes and the city insinuates itself in stages, so that the traveller finds himself first on the outer edges and then in the very midst of the great city before he knows it. One passes the marching grounds and open spaces of the Field of Mars on the right, and then the great voting stalls (empty and probably Uttered with debris after the election the day before, I thought), and then passes through the Flaminian Gate and into the city proper. Our route would stay well north of the Forum and take us to Eco's house on the Esquiline Hill with hardly a glimpse of a priest or a politician, and with far less traffic than if we chose the Aurelian Way.
And yet, as we approached the juncture of the Cassian and Flaminian ways, the traffic became very heavy, and seemed to come to a virtual halt before the Milvian Bridge. The vehicles and riders were of all sorts — old men in oxcarts, groups of young men on horseback, farmers driving cattle to market. It struck me as the sort of crowd that typically thronged the city on an election day, when people gather from all over Italy to cast their votes, except that the traffic was flowing heavily in both directions, and the election was already over. Or so I had every reason to believe.
As we made our way towards the bridge, the noise of the crowd beat on my ears — people shouting, whips cracking, wheels creaking, asses braying. The traffic pressed in on both sides of us, so that we moved ahead with no choice in the matter, like leaves on a sluggish stream. Fortunately the flow carried us into a more vigorous channel while others became trapped in sluggish eddies all about us, and we managed to keep our retinue together in spite of the din and confusion. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Bethesda had lost her composure and was shouting something in Egyptian at a passing farmer who had somehow offended her. I heard a shout in front of me and turned to see that my horse had almost stepped on a child who had fallen from a passing wagon. A slave leaped from the wagon to retrieve the child, while his master in the cart began to shout and gesticulate wildly, whether at the slave or the child or me I couldn't tell. I was jostled on either side by two men on horseback who somehow found openings and raced ahead of me. We were only halfway across the bridge, and I already felt an impulse to turn around and go back to the countryside.
Back in the city! I thought with a groan, but said nothing, thinking there was no point in spoiling the occasion of Meto's return to Rome. He probably could not have heard me above the noise, anyway, and in fact he seemed quite impervious to the distress and discomfort all around him. The expression on his face as we entered the thickest of the crush on the Milvian Bridge was of unbridled delight, as if he actually enjoyed the jostling and the racket and the odours of so many men and beasts jammed together. I glanced back at the wagon and saw that Bethesda too was smiling, as if exercising her lungs on a complete stranger had given a lift to her spirits. She was holding Diana on her lap and the two of them clapped their hands, laughed, and pointed at a flock of bleating goats that scurried past us.
At last the ordeal was over and we reached the far bank of the Tiber. The traffic thinned a bit but continued to be heavy in both directions. At a high place in the road I stood in my stirrups and peered ahead, down the straight course of the Flaminian Way. All along the road, in open spots as far as the field of Mars, wagons had been pulled to the side of the road and their occupants appeared to have settled for a stay overnight. It was such a scene as one sees in wartime, when great masses of people take to the road unsuitably prepared, and yet there was no sense of panic in the air. Clearly, the strange state of confusion bad something to do with the election, but what?
Hooked around and saw a friendly-faced farmer on horseback. His copper-coloured hair and round face reminded me of my old friend Lucius Claudius, though Lucius would never have been seen in a tunic with so many patches. The man also had Lucius's red cheeks and nose and his unconcerned air, but these may have been attributable to the vanished contents of the deflated wineskin that hung from his shoulder. I hailed him and drew up alongside him.
'Citizen, what do you make of all this?' I said.
'Of what?’
"The crowd. The wagons alongside the road.'
He shrugged and burped. "They have to sleep somewhere. I went all the way back home to Veii myself, and now I'm back. There wasn't room for me and the rest of my family at my cousin's house in Rome. I could hardly camp by the road like these others, not by myself.'
‘I don't understand. People are leaving Rome and then coming back?'
He looked at me a bit suspiciously. 'What, you mean you're just now arriving? But you are a citizen.' He looked to the iron ring on my finger for confirmation.
'Does this have something to do with the consular election?'
'What, you don't know? You haven't heard?' He gave me that look of smug satisfaction that citizens who vote reserve for those who do not. "The election was cancelled!'
'Cancelled?'
He nodded gravely. 'By the mighty-mouthed Cicero himself. He got the Senate together and talked them into calling it off Filthy Optimates!'
'But why? What was the reason?'
"The reason, or more properly the pretext, was that Catilina is hatching some terrible plot to kill off the Senate, as if most of them didn't deserve to have their throats cut, and so it's not safe to hold an election. It all happened days ago — what, do you live in a cave? Messengers were sent out all over Italy telling people not to come to Rome, because the election was postponed. Well, a lot of people didn't believe it — thought it was just a trick to keep us away from the polls. Sounds just like the sort of thing the Optimates would pull, doesn't it? So we showed up anyway. Seeing such a crowd, the senators were ready to go ahead and hold the voting. But the day before, thunderbolts were seen on the horizon, out of a clear blue sky, and that night there was a small earthquake. The next morning the auspices were read and the augurs declared all the omens to be terrible. The voting stalls were all shut down. The election? Indefinitely postponed, they kept telling us. What in Hades does that mean? Then the rumours started flying thick and fast, saying the election will be in two days, or three, or ten. You see people leaving Rome and coming back and passing themselves going both ways. The last I heard is that the election will probably be the day after tomorrow.' 'What!'
'Yes, the same day as the election for praetors. That's why I'm heading back today. I figure that instead of two days from now, they'll try to have it tomorrow, you see, so they can fool me into showing up a day late! But I won't be fooled by those dirty Optimates. I’ll be at the Field of Mars outside the voting stalls bright and early tomorrow morning, ready to be counted with the rest of my tribe, and if need be, I'll be there again the next day and the next. For Catilina!' he abruptly shouted, raising his fist.
Around us, among the small circle who could hear the man's voice above the din, a number of fists went up in the air and I heard the name 'Catilina!' shouted again and again, until several voices took it up as a sort of chant.
The man smiled at the demonstration of support he had set oft) then turned back to me. 'Of course,
not everybody can stay in Rome indefinitely,' he said, his smile fading. "That's why you see all these people going in the opposite direction. Common citizens have to get back to their farms, don't they? They have to worry about making a living and looking after their families. Not like Optimates, who can travel about at whim and never miss an election.' He looked me up and down suspiciously. 'I don't suppose you're one of the "Best People"?’
'I don't have to justify myself to you, citizen,' I snapped, and then realized I was not angry at the man, but at what he had told me. So it now appeared that the one thing I had most scrupulously avoided would take place, and I would be in Rome for the consular election! The gods were having a joke at my expense, I thought. No wonder we had suffered no mishaps on the journey — the gods insisted I get to Rome so that I could suffer through the election! I started to laugh. I stopped myself) then realized that it felt good to laugh, and so I let the laughter out. The stranger started to laugh, too, interrupted by a loud burp.
He raised his fist again. 'To Catilina!'
My laughter stopped. 'To the day when this madness is finally over,' I said under my breath.
'What's that?' the man said, leaning towards me. I merely shook my head, slowed my horse, and waved as he moved on ahead of me.
We made slow but steady progress into the city. Great clouds of smoke and dust rose from the Field of Mars, where thousands of voters from outside Rome had pitched their camps; on a normal day one would have seen chariot racers practising or soldiers staging mock battles. The Villa Publica, the open space where voters gathered, and the adjoining voting stalls, built like a maze of sheep runs, were closed off and empty. Traffic slowed again at the Flaminian Gate, but once through its portals we were at last within the old walls of the city, in Rome itself
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