Catilina's riddle rsr-3

by Steven Saylor

  The thing was quite close to me, so close that I could see the glistening flesh of its great black nostrils and the glint in its great black eyes. I should have been mad with fear, but strangely I was not. All I could think was that the beast's nostrils, moist and porous and sprouting a few coarse hairs, looked very delicate and sensitive, and that its eyes were rather beautiful in a bovine way. It was a living creature, and amid so much hard, bloodless stone anything made of living flesh seemed precious and rare, something to be cherished, not feared. Even so, as the beast stepped from around the corner and drew closer, its two hooves clicking on the stone, I was a bit unnerved at the sight of a bull who walked upright and had a human torso. I noticed also that its tall, curving horns had very sharp points and were marked by a stain the colour of rust.

  The Minotaur snorted, spraying steam from its dripping black nostrils. It stopped a few steps away and cocked its head. When it spoke, it was in a voice that seemed somehow disguised, for it sounded hoarse and unnatural. 'Who are you?' it said.

  'My name is Gordianus.'

  'You don't belong here.'

  'I came here to find something.'

  "That was foolish. This is a maze, and the purpose of a maze is to mislead.'

  'But I've found my way to you.' 'Or did I find my way to you?'

  I felt a quiver not of fear but of uncertainty, so profound that it made my head ache. I closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, I felt that something had changed, and realized that the stone walls around me had faded away. Even so, it was still quite dark. I was atop a high hill beneath starlight, looking down on a country scene — a stream with a water mill, a stone wall in the distance, a road, a farmhouse. It was my farm, I realized, though I was seeing it from an unfamiliar angle. I seemed to be on a ridge, though not the ridge I was used to. The view was oddly tilted and askew.

  We were no longer alone. I turned and saw three naked, headless bodies seated on tree stumps in a row with their hands in their laps, like, spectators at a play, or judges at a trial

  'Who are they? What are they doing here?' I asked the Minotaur in a hushed, confidential tone, though the others were clearly deaf, blind, and dumb. 'You know, don't you?'

  The Minotaur nodded.

  'Then tell me.'

  The Minotaur shook its head. 'Speak!'

  The beast snorted through its great, black, steaming nostrils and said nothing. It raised a human arm and pointed at something on the ground beside me. I looked down and saw a sword. I picked it up and weighed it in my grip, pleased by the way it gleamed beneath the starlight. 'Speak, or I shall make you join them,' I said, pointing with the sword to the three headless witnesses.

  The Minotaur remained mute. I stood and brandished the blade. 'Speak!' I said, and when the beast refused, I swung the sword with all my strength and cut clear through its great bullish neck. As its head tumbled away, I saw that the Minotaur was hollow inside; its body was only a costume, and its head a mask. The true head began to emerge from within. I stepped back, my temples aching from the suspense.

  Then I knew the truth…

  * * *

  And then I awoke, with a hammering, blinding pain in my head. Someone touched my shoulder and spoke in a low voice. 'It's all right, don't move. You're safe. Can you hear me?'

  I opened my eyes and shut them against the brutal light. If I kept still, the pain receded. I caught my breath and heard myself groan. I put my hand over my face and cautiously opened my eyes again, not to harsh sunlight as I had thought, but to the soft, filtered light of a tent. For a moment I thought I was back in Catilina's tent, and wondered how I had got there. If his tent still stood, if his camp was intact, then — I lowered my hand and saw a face so unexpected that I was cast into utter confusion. A shock of red hair, a spangling of freckles across a handsome nose, and a pair of bright brown eyes looking into my own: my friend the augur, Marcus Valerius Messalla Rufus.

  'Rufus?'

  'Yes, Gordianus, it's me.' 'Are we in Rome?'

  'No.’

  'Then where?'

  'Far to the north, near a town called Pistoria. There was a battle—'

  'Are we in Catilina's camp?'

  He sighed in such a way that I knew no such place existed any longer. 'No. This is the camp of Antonius.' 'Then—'

  'You're very lucky to be alive, my friend.' 'And Meto?' My chest constricted. 'It was Meto who saved you.' 'Yes, but—'

  'He lives, Gordianus,' said Rufus, seeing my fear. "Thank the gods! Where is he?'

  'He'll be here soon. When I saw you were stirring, I sent a man to fetch him.'

  I sat up, clenching my teeth at the pain in my head. My limbs and torso appeared to be intact. I looked around and saw that there was no one in the tent but Rufus, unless one counted the clucking chickens who inhabited the cages stacked near the tent flap. Looking at them suddenly made me feel hungry.

  'How long since the battle?'

  "That was yesterday.'

  'How did, I get here?'

  'Your son is a very brave young man. When he saw you had fallen, he rushed to you and carried you out of danger, behind the lines, beyond the camp, up among the boulders in the foothills. He must have been utterly exhausted. Can you imagine how much you both weighed, wearing that armour? And you a dead weight? And of course he was bleeding from his own wounds—'

  'His wounds?'

  'Never fear, Gordianus, they were minor. He made sure you were far from the danger; then he must have collapsed from exhaustion. He was found unconscious beside you.'

  'By whom?'

  'After the battle Antonius's reserves were sent to scour the hills. They were ordered to take any man prisoner who was willing to give himself up, and to offer battle only to those who offered it first. Do you know how many prisoners they came back with? Exactly two: yourself and Meto, both unconscious. Of all Catilina's army, only you two survived — such a curious omen that it was thought an augur should come to see it. I was summoned, and once I saw who it was, I put you under my protection and had you brought to my tent. When he awoke, Meto explained to me how you both came to be in Catilina's camp. He went out just a short while ago to look for something to eat.'

  "Then I hope he brings something back with him,' I said, clutching my stomach. 'I don't know which feels emptier, my stomach or my head! Only we two, you say; then Catilina — '

  'Gone, with all the rest. To a man, they died bravely, and took many lives with them. All morning the soldiers here in camp have been talking about it, saying they never before encountered so much resistance from such an outnumbered foe. Catilina's commanders all died in the front ranks. Each position was held fast until every man defending it was dead, and all their wounds were in front. They exacted a terrible toll: before it was over, all of Antonius's best fighters were dead or severely wounded.'

  'And Catilina? How did he die?'

  'He was found far from his own men, deep within enemy ranks among the bodies of his adversaries. His garments and armour and flesh were all the same colour, soaked red with blood. He was pierced by more wounds than could be counted, yet he was still breathing when they found him. They called me to hear his testament if he should speak; he never opened his eyes or uttered a word. But by his face you could see that he was himself to the end. Until his final breath he wore that expression of haughty defiance that caused so many men to hate him.'

  'And made others love him,' I said quietly.

  'Yes.'

  'I know that expression. I should like to have seen his face.'

  'You still may,' said Rufus. Before I could ask him what he meant, from outside we heard a sudden wail of grief so wrenching that it froze my blood. 'That's been going on all morning,' sighed Rufus. 'No cries of jubilation and victory, only lamentations. Men have been wandering about the battlefield, some to strip armour from the dead, others to see the scene by the next day's light, as men like to do in places where they've fought. They turn over the mangled corpses of the enemy and what do they f
ind? The faces of friends and relatives and boys they grew up with. This has been a terrible and bitter victory.'

  'Why did you come, Rufus?'

  'To serve as augur, of course. To take the auspices before the battle.'

  'But why you?'

  'The Pontifex Maximus appointed me to do so,' he said, then looked at me shrewdly. 'Which is another way of saying that I came at Caesar's behest.'

  'To be his eyes and ears.'

  'If you like. As augur I can be privy to all that happens without staining my own hands with Roman blood. I sit in on the councils of war, but I do not make war. I only interpret the mood of the heavens.'

  'In other words, you're here as Caesar's spy.'

  'If a man can be a spy when everyone knows his role.'

  'Does the intrigue never end?'

  'Nunquam,' he said, gravely shaking his head. Never.

  'I don't suppose Antonius ever showed the slightest hesitation about destroying his old colleague. Catilina had hoped he might waver.'

  'He did, in his way. He was struck by a bad case of gout just before the battle, and put one of his lieutenants in charge. During the actual fighting Antonius was in bed with his tent flap tied shut. No one can say he failed to pursue his old friend Catilina, as he was charged to do by the Senate; nor can anyone say, strictly speaking, that he took part in Catilina's destruction. Soon the old goat will be off to enjoy the lucrative governorship in Macedonia he finagled from Cicero, and Rome will have one less hypocrite to clutter up the Forum.'

  I shook my head, then winced at the lightning behind my eyes. 'My head feels like an overripe gourd.'

  'And looks like one, too.' Rufus smiled. 'You have a knot on your forehead the size of a walnut.'

  There was a noise at the tent nap. I turned my head too quickly and fell back against the cot, groaning. The sound must have been more alarming than the actual pain, for Meto was quickly at my side, clutching me and asking Rufus through clenched teeth, 'Is he—'

  'Your father is well except for the pain in his head.'

  I opened my eyes and saw Meto for only an instant before his image was blurred by tears. The tears seemed to carry away some of the ache behind my eyes, which was good, for I had many tears to spill. But tears would never make Meto the way he had been before. Rufus had said his wounds were minor, and by the scale of suffering around us he was correct, for Meto still walked and breathed and had all his parts. But the blade that had sliced away a bit of his left ear and cut a gash all the way to the corner of his mouth would leave him with a scar that he would carry forever.

  It was impractical and inadvisable for Meto to speak, because the movement of his jaw pulled at the torn flesh of his wound. Rufus had fashioned for him a simple bandage to tie around his head, which kept his mouth shut and also covered the cut. When I first saw him, he had removed the bandage for a while to take a little food and water.

  It was hardly easier for me to speak, or listen for that matter, because of the throbbing in my head. Perhaps it was just as well, for words could only have obscured the feelings that passed between us as he sat beside my cot, holding my hand.

  I did manage to tell him about the new corpse which had appeared just before I left the farm, and also of my dream about the Minotaur, and what I had surmised from it, I knew now who had left the bodies on the farm, and why, and with whose assistance. Meto was taken aback at first, disbelieving, and questioned me through clenched teeth, but as I laid before him the bits of evidence that came to my mind, he was compelled to agree with what the dream had told me.

  I longed to go home. Now that Meto was safe, I brooded over the safety of Bethesda and Diana, whom I had left at the mercy of the Minotaur. Had Eco come, as I asked him to? Even if he had, bringing Belbo and a dozen bodyguards with him, I feared that he might fail to protect them, not knowing what to protect them from The Minotaur was growing more desperate and more devious. But when I stood up and attempted to dress myself, I barely managed to stagger back to the bed. Riding a galloping horse would have been a torture impossible to bear.

  Rufus offered me nepenthes for my pain and also to help me sleep. I refused him, telling him that there must be wounded men in the camp in far more agonizing pain than I was, who could use the same draught of forgetfulness to ease their release into death. Still, I think he must have put some poppy juice in the wine he brought me later, for despite my pain and the turmoil of my worries, I slipped into a fretless, healing sleep unhaunted by Minotaurs or any other monsters.

  I woke only once in the night, to a darkness lit by a single small lamp and the sound of two voices quietly conversing.

  'But the eagle at the Auguraculum, and Catilina's eagle—' I heard Meto say, his voice constricted by the bandage around his head.

  'Yes, I agree, these were signs and you read them rightly,' said Rufus. 'It was the will of the gods that you should fight beside Catilina.'

  'But I should have stayed with Papa! I only ended up taking him away from Bethesda and Diana when they needed him most — when they needed both of us to protect them. If something terrible has happened on the farm—'

  'You can't blame yourself, Meto. There are forces greater than ourselves that drive us through this world, just as winds drive sailing ships or make feathery seeds go dancing on the air. To submit to the wind that brought you here was not a folly.'

  'But if that was my destiny, I should have died fighting beside Catilina! It was what I thought would happen. I was ready; I didn't fear it. But when I saw Papa fall, I had to go to him. When I saw he was still alive, I couldn't leave him there. I left the battle and carried him to safety, meaning to return, but my strength deserted me and the enemy found me unconscious. I should fall on my sword in shame!'

  'No, Meto. You told me something earlier, about the eagle standard. You said that just before you went to your father, you saw the standard totter and fall.'

  'Yes, Tonguius was struck in the eye by an arrow. The standard fell and there was no one to pick it up.'

  'Don't you see? An eagle appeared to us all at the Auguraculum, to signal the beginning of your manhood. When you first saw Catilina's silver eagle, you recognized it as an omen and followed it all the way here and into battle. But when that eagle fell, not to rise again, you were released. You had done what you were meant to do. It was the gods' way of telling you to leave Catilina, whom the gods themselves could no longer help, and to go to your rather, whom you alone could help. You did the right thing.'

  'Do you really think so, Rufus?'

  'I do.'

  'And I'm not just a coward or a fool?'

  'To follow a dream is never the act of a coward; to lay that dream aside in the fullness of time is the opposite of foolishness. To carry a man over your shoulders across a battlefield is not the act of a coward; to do so for the sake of your father marks you not as a fool but as a Roman, Meto. Ah, your rather seems to be stirring. Gordianus? No, I see he's still asleep. But look, he's smiling; his pain must have eased, for him to be having such pleasant dreams.'

  The next morning I felt remarkably better. Long hours of sleep and the draught of nepenthes must have sorted out the jumbled humours in my head, and the walnut on my forehead had miraculously shrunk to a chickpea. Rufus fretted that I was not yet ready to travel, but when I insisted, he said he would supply horses for us.

  'We're not prisoners, then? We're free to go?' I said.

  Rufus smiled. 'Certain privileges are allowed to an augur who represents the Pontifex Maximus himself Let us say that, like nepenthes, I have been able to induce forgetfulness. Officially neither of you ever existed. No prisoners were taken at the battle of Pistoria; every one of Catilina's men died in combat. So the Senate will be told, and so the historians will record it. You're both remarkably lucky, not just to be alive but to have each other. Fortune smiles on you, Gordianus.'

  "Then I pray she continues to smile,' I said, thinking of the farm and what might have transpired in my absence.

  No one took an
y notice of us as we mounted our horses and made our way through the makeshift lanes and thoroughfares that threaded among the tents and bonfires. A sombre mood prevailed, but there was also that hint of anarchy that enters such encampments when the battle is won and danger has departed. Men sat about in groups, drinking wine, arguing over details of the battle, gambling and haggling over the loot they had stripped from the dead.

  Towards the rear of the camp our route took us by the commander's tent. Was Antonius still hiding inside, crippled by gout? I smiled at the thought, but the smile stiffened on my face when I saw the trophy erected on a spit outside the tent. Meto must have seen it in the same instant, for I heard him suck in his breath through clenched teeth.

  Now I knew what Rufus had meant when he had said that I might see Catilina's face again.

  They had saved it so that it might be taken to Rome and shown to the Senate and the people as proof of his demise. Those who had feared him would have their fears allayed; those who had wished for his triumph would see their wishes shattered; those who might want to emulate him would be given a vivid warning. 'I see two bodies, one thin and wasted, but with a swollen head, the other headless, but big and strong,' he had told the Senate. 'What is there so dreadful about it, if I myself become the head of the body which needs one?' But now the head of Catilina, bloody and torn at the neck, was mounted on a stake outside the tent of his conqueror, of no more use to anyone. The expression of haughty disdain frozen upon his features was wasted on the impervious flies which buzzed about his eyes and hps.

  I swallowed hard. Beside me Meto made a peculiar sound, a great sob stifled by the bandage that kept his jaw shut. We paused for a long moment, gazing upon Catilina for the last time. It was Meto who turned away first, snapping his reins and kicking his horse to a gallop. He raced through the camp and I followed, past startled soldiers who shook their fists and cursed, and slaves who stooped to pick up their scattered burdens. Meto did not slow his steed until he was well out of the camp and onto the open road, where the cold grey sky and the naked hills seemed to offer a kind of solace.