Catilina's riddle rsr-3

by Steven Saylor

  I dreaded the crossing of the swollen stream. As I had feared, it was more turbulent than before, or at least looked that way in the light of dawn, which picked out every scudding eddy and treacherous hole. But the task was made easy by our numbers. By linking arms, clasping hands to wrists, we formed a chain stronger than the rushing waters. The young men of Catilina's company seemed exhilarated by the plunge into icy water up to their thighs. I bore it as best I could and laughed along with them, if only to still the chattering of my teeth.

  At the place where the path diverged, leading one way to Gnaeus's

  house and the other way down the disused, steep descent to the Cassian Way, I pulled Catilina aside. 'Which path do we follow here?' I said.

  He raised an eyebrow. 'We go down the way we came, of course.' His men waited for him at the head of the narrow trail. He waved for them to proceed without him. 'Otherwise we should end up stealing on tiptoe by the house of that awful neighbour of yours, with all those howling dogs. Surely you remember—'

  'I do. But there are other things I remember as well.'

  'Gordianus, what are you talking about?'

  'You must never come to my house again. Your enemies will watch for you there—' 'I understand.'

  'My family — I must think of their safety.'

  'Of course. And I must think of keeping my head on my shoulders!'

  'Catilina, no jokes, no riddles!'

  He mirrored the distress on my face. 'Gordianus—'

  'Lucius, are you coming?' Tongilius waited at the trailhead, with Meto beside him.

  'Go on without me,' said Catilina over his shoulder, in a jovial voice. 'The old men must rest their legs for a moment.'

  Tongilius pursed his lips thoughtfully, then nodded and ducked out of sight. Meto followed, but not before looking me in the eye and hesitating, long enough to be invited to join us. At last he followed Tongilius, scowling. Why did he have to take everything I did as a personal affront?

  'Now, Gordianus, what is this all about?'

  'Ever since Marcus Caelius first approached me about playing host to you, strange things have been transpiring on my farm. The first was a headless body discovered in the stable.' I paused and studied his face. He only stared back at me blankly. "Then came the body in the well—'

  'Yes, you told me about that. The poor goatherd who showed us this path. What did you call him?' 'No, what did you caH him, Catilina?' 'What do you mean?'

  'What did you call poor Forfex? Was he your spy, your confederate, your dupe? Why did he die? Why was his head cut off before he was dropped down my well?'

  Catilina looked at me gravely. 'You do me an injustice to ask me such questions, Gordianus. I have no idea what you're talking about'

  I took a breath. ‘You have no secret relationship with Gnaeus Claudius?'

  'Your disagreeable neighbour? I saw the man only once, and that was with you! Afterwards I told Crassus about the mine. I advised him to make an offer on this property, but I told you, he wasn't interested in dealing with the Claudii. So I never came back.'

  'But you're here now, hiding on Gnaeus's property.'

  'Without his knowledge. Though not for much longer if we linger here; one of his goatherds will come along and raise an alarm. When I first saw the mine, I knew it would make an ideal hiding place, especially if Crassus bought the property. Of course, that was postulated on Crassus's remaining loyal to me’ His eyes flashed with bitterness. 'Still, the place turned out to be useful, didn't it? As for these strange happenings on your farm, what have they to do with me?'

  'They occurred at key moments, when I resisted Caelius's pressure to put you up.'

  'Pressure? Are you saying that you never wanted to have me?'

  I shook my head, not wanting to speak. How could I say that the idea had come from Cicero?

  'Gordianus, I never told Caelius to strong-arm you into having me. Caelius told me you were happy to do so.'

  'But your riddle in the Senate, about the headless masses and the Senate with its withered body. The coincidence of the headless bodies on my farm…'

  'Gordianus, are you telling me that all this time, you've hosted me only because Caelius forced you to? Well, there you have your villain. Someone told Cicero's henchmen to go looking for me on your farm last night: Caelius, obviously. He must have been loyal to Cicero all along. By Jupiter, when I think of the confidences I divulged to him…' He threw back his head with a pained expression. 'Gordianus, have you then no affection for my cause at all? Were you merely doing Caelius's bidding when you let me into your house?'

  Now it was my turn to mirror his look of consternation. I might have said yes and not told a He, but the truth no longer seemed as simple as that.

  'Never mind,' he said. 'The important thing is that you didn't betray me last night, when you had the chance. Unless—' He looked at the trailhead, and his face turned grey. 'Unless Tongilius and the others are descending into an ambush!'

  He put his hand on the hilt of his sword. I felt a quiver of panic. He turned to me with murder in his eyes, and for the first time I saw the true depth of his despair. Lucius Sergius Catilina was a patrician, born into privilege and respectability. Trust was his birthright and highest value — trust in the gods, trust in the immutability of his station, trust in the high regard of his fellow citizens; trust, also, in the invincibility of his own innate charm. Now these layers of trust had been stripped away from him one by one; gods and men alike had betrayed him.

  I laid my hand on his. I had to grit my teeth with the effort to keep his sword in its scabbard. 'No, Catilina, your men are safe. I haven't betrayed you! Think — Meto is with them. I wouldn't send my own son into a trap.'

  He slowly relaxed. His lips registered a cracked smile. 'Do you see what's become of me?' He gazed towards the empty trailhead, as if he could still see the young men who had descended ahead of us. 'But they still look to me for strength, as they always have. Come, hurry!'

  As I had feared, the way down was more treacherous than the way up. The trail was littered with the debris of twigs and branches, and the rain had turned the rigid earth into a treacherous soup of mud and stones. We descended as much by sliding as by stepping. We tumbled against each other and clutched at each other's arms, using the solidity of our bodies to gain a mutual balance against the unsteady elements. I banged my elbows and scraped my knees; I slipped and fell on my rump so many times it almost stopped hurting. The near-impossibility of the descent eventually took on an air of absurdity. From below us we heard the high-spirited whooping of Catilina's men, a warning of more slipping and sliding ahead. I braced myself for the final stretch, too out of breath to laugh.

  At last we came to the stony clearing where the horses waited. The beasts looked ragged and miserable after their long night in the rain, but they nickered and shook themselves at the sight of Catilina's men, as eager to set out as their riders. Everyone was covered with mud, myself most of all.

  'I've already had a look at the highway,' said Tongilius. 'The road is clear.'

  We led our horses one by one through, the narrow passage between the boulder and the oak. To make up for the missing hone, I gave them my own. Meto and I mounted his horse together.

  The exhilaration of the descent had restored Catilina's confidence. He clutched his reins and let his mount canter about. She stood upright on her hind legs and whinnied, happy to be out of the mud and muck. When he had calmed her, he came over to us, leaning forward to stroke the beast's neck. 'Are you sure you won't come with us, Gordianus? No, I'm only joking! Your place is here. You have a family. You have a future.'

  He circled, waving for his men to form a bodyguard around him. How strange his company looked, filthy and ragged and yet wearing smiles as if they had just won some glorious battle. 'Tongilius, you have the silver eagle? Good. Gordianus, I thank you for what you've done. And for what you might have done against me but did not do, I thank you even more.'

  He turned and rode away at a swift
gallop. Meto and I followed him to the crest of the hill and watched the company for a long time as they grew smaller and smaller, vanishing into the north.

  Meto said aloud what I was thinking: 'Will we ever see him again, Papa?'

  I let my body answer — a twitch of the shoulders to form a non-committal shrug. Who but the Fates could answer such a question? Even so, I feared that we had seen the last of Catilina.

  When we returned to the house, Diana was delighted, thinking we must have been out early playing in the mud. Bethesda was appalled, but also relieved, though she tried not to show it. Exhausted, I let her scrub me with a sponge and then crawled into my bed. At some point she joined me and made love to me with a consuming ferocity she had not shown in a long time.

  On that very day — while I dozed, while Catilina and his company raced northwards — Cicero made a second speech against Catilina in Rome, not to the Senate but directly to the citizens assembled in the Forum. This I learned the next day from a slave who brought a letter from Eco, which warned me, too late, of Catilina's flight. The speech to the people reiterated much of what Cicero had said to the Senate, but with even greater venom and a crude hyperbole that showed no small contempt for his audience's sophistication. Eco made no comments on the speech — understandably, for what if the letter had fallen into other hands? — but instead quoted it at length. Perhaps he was as appalled as I was and thought that rendering Cicero's words verbatim would convey all that needed to be said, or perhaps he was merely amused at such outrageously inflammatory rhetoric, and transcribed it for my amusement.

  In his speech Cicero announced Catilina's flight from Rome and humbly took credit for 'removing the dagger from our throat.' He then coyly acknowledged that some might fault him for not putting the scoundrel to death instead (though he could not have done so legally; only the courts and the people's Assembly have that right). Catilina's flight was proof of his guilt, and Cicero berated those who had been too stupid to see the truth before. If there were those who portrayed Catilina as a guiltless martyr and Cicero as his vengeful persecutor, then Cicero would bear the burden of such slander for the sake of saving Rome. As for those in league with Catilina who remained at large in the city, that band of perfumed and overdressed 'warriors' could hope to have no secrets from him; the consul's eyes and ears followed them everywhere, and he was aware of their innermost thoughts.

  As for rumours that Catilina was headed for Massilia and exile rather than for Manlius and his soldiers, Cicero hoped it might be true but doubted it 'By Hercules, even if he were utterly innocent of traitorous designs, Catilina is precisely the sort of person who had rather die an outlaw's death than wither away in exile.' Cicero had gauged his opponent shrewdly.

  He dwelt on Catilina's sex life repeatedly and at great length, calling him the world's most accomplished seducer of young men, mentioning Tongilius and others by name, and saying that Catilina made some of his conquests by murdering young men's parents at their request and thus sharing their inheritances even while he plundered their orifices. Catilina, Cicero said, was shameless in taking both the dominant and the subservient role. His once-famous attributes of physical endurance and energy had long ago been squandered in mindless orgies.

  Catilina's inner circle shared his sexual excesses. Like their mentor they flaunted their skill at playing either role in bed. Pretty boys made for dancing and singing, they had nevertheless learned to flail daggers and sprinkle poisons, and were thus more dangerous than their pouting faces and neatly coiffed beards might suggest. They frittered away their fortunes on gambling, harlots, and expensive wines, and the vomit that came from their mouths was vile talk about murdering loyal citizens and burning the city to the ground merely to cancel their debts. Now that they were fugitives, what would Catilina and his boys do without their debauched socialites and whores to tuck them in at night? Perhaps, Cicero pondered, their notorious practice of dancing naked at parties had only been conditioning for the cold nights to come by the camp fire.

  The crowd in the Forum would devour such leering wit. But could even the least discriminating among them swallow the exaggerations that Cicero served up? 'What crime or wickedness has Catilina not been guilty of?' he demanded. 'In all of Italy there is not one poisoner, gladiator, robber, assassin, parricide, will-forger, cheat, glutton, wastrel, adulterer, prostitute, corrupter of youth or corrupted youth who has not been his mtimate. What murder has been done in recent years without him? What nefarious debauchery, except through him?'

  The issues could not be clearer, for the two sides were like day and night. On the side of his cause, said Cicero, was everything modest, chaste, honest, patriotic, level-headed, and self-restrained; on the side of Catilina was everything insolent, lecherous, fraudulent, traitorous, hysterical, licentious, and hotheaded. 'On one side of this confrontation are justice, moderation, courage, wisdom, and all that is good; on the other side are injustice, luxury, cowardice, recklessness, and everything bad. Prosperity struggles against poverty; right against wrong, sanity against madness, hope for the future against bottomless despair. In such a conflict, even if human efforts may fail, will not the immortal gods themselves ordain that such a league of vices must be overthrown by such a glorious army of virtues?'

  What patriot in the Forum could fail to cheer such a sentiment?

  Along the way Cicero managed to reiterate the danger of a slave uprising, saying that even if Catilina succeeded in his revolt, he would merely bring chaos, and that would mean a country overrun by escaped slaves and gladiators. He deplored violence, but promised the people that in the dreadful event of war he would strive for the lowest number of casualties. And he piously called on 'the immortal gods themselves' to give strength to 'this invincible people, this glorious empire, this most beautiful of cities.'

  Cicero's voice was in fine form and his timing impeccable, Eco said; the speech was well received. Reading these excerpts left me profoundly depressed.

  The messenger who had arrived with Eco's letter returned bearing my reply. I told him that the house guest he had inquired about had indeed passed by on the Cassian Way, but had not stopped at my house. Indeed, by mutual agreement, the man would not be staying with me in the future. I did not want Eco to worry.

  The rains continued. The earth was refreshed and the stream was recharged. Though our worries over the shortage of hay were just beginning, our great worry about water was finally over, and for the first time I saw the water mill move without human intervention, driven by the power of the rushing current. To see it in motion, the great wheel revolving in its circle, the gears meshing against one another in harmony, made me think of my old friend Lucius Claudius, whose demeanour had been likewise harmonious. He would have been delighted by the mill, and that pleased me. I thought also of Catilina, whose practical genius had solved the riddle of the water mill where I had failed. Those thoughts pleased me less, for I could see no happy outcome for Catilina and his company. I tried not to think of them at all.'

  That would not be possible for long, I knew. All Italy must be talking about Catilina, awaiting word of his fate. Some would listen in hopeful expectation of an uprising against the Optimates; others would listen with spite in their hearts, praying for the traitor's demise; and others would simply wait anxiously, remembering the devastation of the wars, purges, and uprisings that had wracked Italy in recent years.

  I secretly hoped that Catilina would do as he had said, and flee to Massilia. But this was not the case, or so it seemed from the letter I received from Eco a few days after the Ides of October

  Dearest Papa,

  The press of events here prevents me from coming to visit you, or I surely would. I miss your steady counsel and the sound of your voice. I miss Bethesda as well, and Diana, and my brother Meto. Give them my love.

  The news here is that Catilina has definitely taken up arms with Manlius in Faesulae. He is said to have stopped in Arretium first and to have stirred up trouble there. We hear fresh rumours every da
y of uprisings to the north and south, near and far. The people of Rome are in a state of great agitation and anxiety. I remember nothing like it since the years of the Spartacan revolt. People talk of nothing else, and every fishmonger and shop owner has an opinion. As the playwright says: ‘The underworld shivers like a web being plucked at one corner.'

  The Senate, at Cicero's urging, has declared Catilina and Manlius outlaws and enemies of the people. Any man who takes them under his roof will be considered an enemy of the people as well. I know you understand.

  An army is being raised under the command of the consul Antonius. There will almost certainly be war. People speak of Pompey rushing back from his foreign duties to save the day, but people always say that about Pompey in times of domestic crisis, don't they?

  Please, Papa, come to Rome and bring the family. Surely the farm is disagreeable at this time of year. Rich men abandon their farms for the city in the winter, so why shouldn't you? If there is a war, it is likely to be waged in Etruria, and I cannot sleep when I think of your vulnerable position. The city would be so much safer for all of you.

  If you will not come for a long stay, then please come for a visit very soon, if only so that I may speak to you in terms more frank than a letter permits.

  This is the fond desire of your loyal son, Eco.

  I read the letter twice. On the first reading I was touched by his concern, smiled to see him quoting Bolitho (a second-rate playwright, but Eco has always loved the stage), and shook my head at his admonishment not to let Catilina under my roof again; why did he worry when I had already let him know that my guest would not be returning? On a second reading I was mainly struck by the unease and unnatural restraint of his tone.