Catilina's riddle rsr-3

by Steven Saylor

  'See that the others keep their knives about them, even while they're playing trigon,' I said. 'And have someone keep an eye on the road that leads from the Cassian Way. If Eco believes he needs a bodyguard, I trust his judgment. But he should know, and so should you, that he's no safer here than in the city.'

  I took a long walk around the farm to gather my thoughts. When I returned to the house, I found the family gathered in the atrium to escape the heat of the afternoon. Bethesda and Menenia reclined on couches facing each other; Diana sat cross-legged on the floor between them, playing with a doll; Meto and Eco sat side by side on a bench beside the pool. Between them was the little board game that Cicero had once given me and that I had passed on to Meto, called Elephants and Archers. They had evidently finished their game, for the bronze pieces had all been pushed to one side of the checkered wooden board. As I approached, I overheard Meto say something about Hannibal

  'What are you two discussing?' I asked, as blandly as I could.

  'Hannibal's invasion of Italy,' said Meto.

  'With elephants,' added Eco.

  'Actually, the elephants never reached Italy,' explained Meto, turning back to Eco. He seemed quite pleased for a chance to play the pedagogue with his older brother. "They died in the snow, crossing the Alps. So did Hannibal's men, by the tens of thousands. Don't you remember, years ago, when I first came to Rome, one of the magistrates put on a spectacle in the Circus Maximus — Hannibal crossing the Alps. They piled up mounds of dirt to make little mountains and ravines. For snow they used thousands of bits of white cloth, and slaves were hidden in little nooks with great fans to make them bluster and swirl. But the elephants were real. They didn't actually kill them; somehow the beasts had been trained to lie on their sides and play dead.' His smile faded. 'One of the slaves playing a Carthaginian soldier was trapped beneath an elephant and horribly crushed. It was awful, the red blood against the white snow — don't you remember, Eco?'

  'Yes, of course.'

  'Do you remember, Papa?'

  'Vaguely.'

  'Anyway, Eco, the point, as Marcus Mummius says, is that victory in battle hinges not only on superior numbers, bravery, and tactics, but on the elements as well — rain, snow, a muddy field, an unexpected sandstorm. "Elephants and elements both matter," he says, and "Men make war, but gods make weather." You should talk to Mummius about it sometime. He knows everything there is to know about great generals and famous battles.'

  I shook my head. 'How did you ever end up talking about Hannibal? Oh, I see — Elephants and Archers.'

  'Actually, Papa,' said Eco, 'Meto is very keen on military history.'

  'Is he? Well, if you can leave the battle behind for just a moment, Eco, I'd like to ask your opinion of the water mill.'

  Eco shrugged and stood. Meto began to stand, but I waved him back. 'Stay here. Visit with Menenia; try to keep your sister out of trouble. Surely you've seen enough of me mill by now.' Meto started to speak but bit his tongue and lowered his eyes. He sat down on the bench again and began to fiddle with the little bronze warriors.

  'He really is fascinated by things military,' said Eco as we walked towards the stream 'Where he picked up such an interest I can't imagine. I suppose he's always been fond of Marcus Mummius—

  'More to the point, what have you been up to in Rome lately?'

  Eco sighed. 'Somehow I didn't think you had come to fetch me just to have a look at your water mill.'

  "There's not much point. The thing is a failure, like almost everything else on the farm'

  'Things are going badly?'

  We reached the mill. I found a shady spot and gestured for Eco to sit beside me. Together we stared at the hard, baked mud along the banks and the thin trickle of water over the stones. 'I shall tell you my troubles first,' I said. 'Then you'll tell me yours.'

  I gave him a full account of all that had happened since we left Rome — the discovery of Forfex's corpse, the pollution of the well, the encounter with Gnaeus Claudius, the death of Clementus.

  'Papa, you should have let me know. You should have written.'

  'And you should have let me know about your dealings with Marcus Caelius.' Eco looked at me askance. 'I wrangled it out of Belbo,' I explained.'It wasn't hard.'

  'And I confess, I already knew about the body in the well.'

  'How—'

  'Meto told me. Most of the story, anyway.'

  'Yet you let me tell you the story again, as if you knew nothing!'

  'I wanted to hear it from you, from beginning to end. Meto's account was more dramatic, but yours was more coherent. Meto seems quite proud that he was able to identify Forfex by the birthmark on his hand. You glossed over that in your version.'

  'Did I? Meto remains convinced, I suppose, that Gnaeus Claudius is the culprit'

  'He leans towards that opinion.'

  'Even if Gnaeus Claudius were, I'd be powerless to press charges against him. But he knows now that we suspect him — I as much as told him I had proof against him, so if he is guilty, and if he's capable of being intimidated, notice has been served. But there's something else I wanted to talk to you about—'

  'Papa, you act as if it were nothing, finding another headless body on the farm! And this time it was an act of malicious destruction, not just intimidation. Really, if the matter can't be resolved, I think you should bring the family back to Rome, before something truly terrible happens.'

  'Eco, we've discussed this before,' I said impatiently. "There's no room for all of us at the house, and besides, I have no stomach for living in the city. Instead of my leaving the farm, I'd suggest that you leave Rome and come here. Better that than putting yourself in the hands of Marcus Caelius. What does it mean that you've allowed him to send you into secret meetings with Catilina and his circle? Don't you realize the danger?'

  'Papa, I'm working for a Roman consul.'

  'Slim protection if you're caught in some crime with these men and slain on the spot, or if they find out you're a spy and lay an ambush for you. Where will Cicero be then?'

  Eco pinched the bridge of his nose. 'I know you've come to have a low opinion of Cicero in recent years, Papa. You seem to have lost respect for him entirely since he won his election against Catilina. But you must give him credit for being true to his friends.'

  'Don't tell me you're spying on Catilina out of friendship.'

  'Why, no, Papa, I'm doing it for money. You would be the one who's doing it out of friendship.' There was an edge in his voice I had never heard before — the voice that had always been beautiful to my ears because for so many years he was mute. We had never had a true fight before. I suddenly realized that we were on the verge of having our first. I looked away and took a deep breath. Eco did the same.

  'I suppose it would reHeve my anxiety to a degree if you would explain to me the exact circumstances of your involvement,' I finally said. 'What is Catilina really up to?'

  'What Marcus Caelius says is true: Catilina and his colleagues are compiling to bring down the state. They had hoped he would win the election, in which case he would commence his revolution from the top, using his consular powers and the powers of his friends in the Senate to bring about their radical reforms by law if they could, and by civil war if they couldn't. That was the route Catilina himself preferred. He seems to have thought he had a genuine chance of being elected. Now that the only course remaining to him is an armed revolt, Catilina hesitates. He finds himself ringed in by doubt and uncertainty.' 'I sympathize,' I said, under my breath.

  'So far, the conspirators have done nothing illegal, or at least nothing that could incriminate them. They put nothing in writing. They meet in secret, sub rosa.' Eco smiled. 'Catilina is quite literal-minded about it; he actually hangs a rose from the ceiling in any room where his friends conspire, to remind them that the rose means silence and that their words must never reach the world beyond. Still, Cicero knows eveiything they do.'

  'Because you spy for him.'

  'I'm hard
ly alone. And I'm only a lowly spy, not a member of Catilina's inner circle. I belong to an outer tier of men he thinks he can trust and who, he thinks, may be valuable when the crisis comes. Still, I hear a great deal, and I'm good at sorting the truth from all the fantastic rumours woven through it. These people are full of grand delusions; sometimes I wonder if they pose any danger at all'

  'Don't tell Cicero that! It's not what he wants to hear.'

  Eco sighed. 'Papa, you're impossibly cynical.'

  'No, that describes Cicero. Don't you see that he craves the role this crisis gives him? If there were no conspiracy against the state, I think he'd invent one.'

  Eco gritted his teeth. We were again on the brink of a rupture. I drew back. 'Give me details,' I said. ‘Who are these conspirators? Do I know them? Who else spies for Cicero?'

  'Do you really want me to tell you these things? Once spoken, they can't be unspoken. I thought you wanted to wash your hands of Rome.'

  'Better to know than not know.'

  'But secrets are dangerous. Whoever possesses them takes on the burden of keeping them. Do you really want that responsibility?'

  'I want to know what company my son is keeping. I want to know who threatens my family, and why.'

  'Then you've given up on hiding your head in the sand?'

  I sighed. 'The feathers of the ostrich are highly prized, but easy to pluck. Burying his head in a hole gives him no room to manoeuvre.'

  'And leaves his long neck exposed to daggers,' said Eco. 'A sharp observation.'

  'A sharper pun.' We both winced, then laughed. I reached out and clutched his hand for a moment. 'Oh, Eco, you say these conspirators are deluded, but not half so deluded as I've been, imagining. I could escape from Rome. No one can! Ask any slave who's fled all the way to the Pillars of Hercules or the Parthian border, only to be trapped and carted back to his master in a cage. We're all slaves of Rome, no matter how we're born, no matter what the law says. Only one thing makes men free: the truth. I've tried to turn my back on the truth, thinking that by ignorance I could escape the Fates. I should have known better. A man can't turn his back on his own nature. I've lived my lite searching for justice, knowing how rare it is and how hard it is to find, — still, if we can't find justice, sometimes we can at least find the truth and be satisfied with that. Now I've given up on justice altogether, and I even seem to have lost my appetite, not to mention my instinct, for finding the truth, until I despair of ever finding it again; but to give up on that search is to be utterly lost.' I sighed and shut my eyes against the brightness of the shimmering leaves above. 'Do these rumblings make any sense to you, Eco? Or am I too old, and you too young?'

  I opened my eyes to see him smiling sadly at me. 'I think you sometimes forget how much alike we are, Papa.'

  'Perhaps I do, especially when we're apart. When you're with me, I'm a stronger, better man.'

  'No son could ask for more. I only wish you felt the same…' His voice trailed off and he bit his Hp, but I knew he was thinking of another who was not with us — of Meto, up in the house with his mother and sister, excluded once again from his father's counsel.

  XXVIII

  'So,' I said, making myself comfortable on the grass, 'tell me all you know of Catilina and his circle.'

  Eco made a rueful expression.

  'I accept the responsibility of knowing,' I said.

  'It's not only you I'm thinking of but myself. If word ever got back to Catilina that there had been a breach in his secrecy and that I was responsible—'

  ‘You know you can trust me to keep quiet.'

  He sighed and settled his hands on his knees, locking his elbows. I recognized the posture as if I looked in the mirror. 'Very well. To begin with, there are more of them than you might think. Cicero and Caelius always speak as if their enemies were legion, but you know how Cicero tends to exaggerate.'

  'Cicero exaggerate?' I said, feigning shock.

  'Exacdy. But in this case, he has good reason to be alarmed.'

  'What exactly are these conspirators conspiring to do?'

  'That remains unclear, probably even among themselves, but some sort of armed insurrection is definitely in their plans, and Cicero's death is their first priority.'

  'Do you mean to say that all those bodyguards and that absurd breastplate were not just for show? I thought it was merely a vulgar display to frighten the voters.'

  'I'm not so certain that Catilina wanted Cicero dead before the elections, at least not badly enough to actually plot his assassination. If Catilina had won the consulship, things might have gone very differently. But now the conspirators are all resolved on one point, if on nothing else: that Cicero must be eliminated, partly from revenge, partly as a lesson to others who serve the Optimates, partly as a practical matter.'

  'Who are these men? Name names.'

  'There's Catilina himself, of course. Everywhere he goes nowadays he's attended by a young man named Tongilius.'

  'I know them both, from the time they spent under my roof. Who else?'

  'Chief among them, after Catilina, is Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura.'

  'Lentulus? "Legs" Lentulus? Not that old reprobate!' 'The very one.'

  'Well, Catilina has chosen a colourful enough character for his chief conspirator. You know the man's history?'

  'Everyone does within Catilina's circle. And like you, they smile at the mention of his name.'

  'He's an old charmer, I won't deny that. I did some work for him myself, six or seven years ago, right after he was expelled from the Senate. Everything about the man cried out "scoundrel", but I couldn't help liking him. I suspect his fellow senators liked him, in a begrudging sort of way, even as they were voting to expel him from their ranks. Does anyone call him "Legs" to his face?'

  'Only his fellow patricians,' said Eco.

  Sura is the nickname, meaning the calf of the leg, that had been earned by Lentulus in the days of Sulla's dictatorship, when Lentulus held the office of quaestor. A rather substantial sum of state money disappeared under Lentulus's administration. The Senate called on him to explain the matter. In response, Lentulus came forth and in an offhand and contemptuous manner stated that he had no account to render (the accounts being empty), but that he would offer them this — whereupon he stuck out his leg, as boys do when they play trigon and miss the ball. Lentulus got away with his show of contempt, thanks in no small part to his kinship with Sulla, under whose dictatorship a mere crime of embezzlement was child's play, but the nickname stuck.

  At another point in his career Lentulus was brought to trial for some malfeasance or other, and was acquitted with a plurality of two judges voting in his favour. Later he was heard complaining that he had wasted his money by bribing one judge too many. A scoundrel, as I have said, but not without a sense of humour.

  The scandals surrounding him did not prevent him from attaining

  the praetorship and finally the consulship; unfortunately, he was elected to the office at the worst possible time, during the slave revolt led by Spartacus. Virtually everyone in power at the time was discredited by the state's faltering attempts to contain the rebel slaves; an orgy of recriminations and finger-pointing erupted when Spartacus was finally defeated. A year after his consulship, bereft of allies and vulnerable to his political enemies, Lentulus was expelled from the Senate on charges of misconduct. This time he showed his fellow senators not his bony leg but the back of his bowed head as he departed in disgrace.

  But Lentulus persevered. At a time in life when most men would have been crushed by such a humiliation and too weary to recover, he reentered the electoral fray, beginning at the bottom like a young man. A year ago he was elected to a praetorship, more than ten years after his first term as a praetor, and thus won readmission to the Senate. Sheer brazenness had fuelled his re-emergence, but he possessed many other assets — the distinguished patrician name of Cornelius; a populist pedigree handed down by a famous grandfather who died sixty years ago in the anti-Gracc
han riots; his marriage to the ambitious Julia, kinswoman of Julius Caesar, with whom he was raising her young son Marcus Antonius; and not least, a seemingly lazy but shrewdly calculated oratorical style which imparted the full charm of his jaundiced sense of humour and his compelling ambition.

  'What are the man's motives in conspiring against the state?' I asked. 'After all, he's recovered his senatorial rank. He could actually run for consul again.'

  'With no hope of ever winning. Behind his jaded sense of humour there's a great store of bitterness, and a burning impatience. Here's a man who had to start over at the middle of his life; he's eager for a shortcut to reach his destiny.'

  'His destiny?'

  'There seems to be something new in his character of late: a weakness for fortune-tellers. It seems there are some rather shady soothsayers. They've regaled Lentulus with verses purportedly from the Sibylline books that prophesy that three men of the Cornelius family will rule Rome. We all know of two — Cinna and Sulla. Who could be the third?'

  'These soothsayers tell Lentulus outright that he's to be dictator?'

  'Nothing as obvious as that. Oh, these fortune-tellers are clever. You know how the Sibylline verses are said to be written in acrostic, with the first letters of each line spelling out hidden words? Well, what do you think the first letters of these particular verses spell?'

  I pursed my lips. 'Does it begin with an L?'

  'Exactly: L-E-N-T-U-L-U-S. Naturally, they didn't point this out to Lentulus, but left him to notice it for himself. Now he's convinced that he's meant by the gods to rule Rome.'

  'He's mad,' I said. 'I see what you mean by delusions. Still, a man like that, having risen so high, fallen so low, and risen again — he must feel that Fortune has some special role in store for him.' I stretched my legs on the grass and gazed up at the sun-spangled leaves. 'So Lentulus is the "leg" on which Catilina stands?'

  Eco winced. 'The chief leg, yes, but as with most bodies there are two. The other is not quite so strong.'