I couldn't remember the last time I had seen my even-tempered son in such a belligerent mood. The crisis was provoking reactions in all of us. "Did you bring Menenia and the twins with you?" I asked.
"Through that mob in the Forum? No, they're safe at home."
"How are they taking things?"
"Titus and Titania are old enough to know that something's very wrong- you can't hide much from two eleven-year-olds. But they don't really understand what's happening, or likely to happen."
"I'm not sure anyone does, not even Caesar or Pompey. And their mother?"
"Serene as the face of Lake Alba, even though the Menenii are as divided as any family in Rome- some for Pompey, some for Caesar, the rest trying to find a hole to hide in till it's all over. But don't worry about us, Papa. After the Clodian riots, I put a lot of effort and expense into making the old family house secure. It's practically a fortress now, there are so many bars on the doors and spikes around the roof. It sounds as if you could have used something to keep climbers off the roof here." He turned his eyes up to the roof surrounding the courtyard. "Too bad about Pompey's unfortunate kinsman. And the outrage of it, that Pompey should use such a tragedy to force you into his service, and practically kidnap Davus-"
"What's done is done," I said.
He nodded. "Just another problem to be solved, eh? You always told me there was no such thing as a big problem, just lots of smaller problems intertwined, like knots in a rope. Start at one end and work your way to the other. A good attitude to have when the whole world is falling apart. Where shall we start?"
"You should start by going home to Menenia and the twins. We may be in for a dangerous night."
"But what about our problem with-"
"Satisfying Pompey and getting Davus back is not our problem, Eco. It's my problem. I'm responsible for what happened. I'll find a way out of it."
Diana spoke up. "Papa, don't be silly. You'll need Eco to-"
"No. I won't have him involved in this. So far, neither Pompey nor Caesar has any particular claim on Eco. Let's keep it that way."
Eco shook his head and started to speak, but I raised my hand. "No, Eco. You have your own family, your own problems. Who knows what may happen in the coming days and months? It's best that you remain as independent as you can, for as long as you can. In the long run, that may help to save us all."
I could see they were not satisfied, but even in a family as unconventional as mine, as unmindful of "traditional Roman values," as the report in Numerius's shoe had put it, there is a point beyond which the will of the paterfamilias cannot be disputed. I had a hard time seeing myself as a stern Roman father in the mold of the elder Cato, but if pressed I can perform a convincing enough imitation. Eco and Diana fell silent.
Two others in the garden were unawed, however. Little Aulus, paying no attention to me at all, tripped over one of his feet and burst into screams. Bethesda crossed her arms and peered at me. "What about tonight?" she said. "If the city is as dangerous as you say, what shall we do? Without Davus there's not a bodyguard in the house, unless you count that monster Pompey left at the front door."
"I doubt if anyone is likely to slip by Cicatrix, wife."
"Unless they come over the roof, husband," she said wryly.
"I suppose Mopsus and Androcles could at least keep watch," I said dubiously.
"I can spare a man to come over and help protect the house," offered Eco. "You could post him here in the courtyard, or up on the roof."
"For that I'd be grateful," I said, laying aside my mantle as paterfamilias with the relief one feels at taking off an uncomfortable pair of shoes.
"And if things grow even worse?" asked Bethesda.
"Perhaps we'll all take refuge in Eco's house on the Esquiline, since it's more defensible. But it may not come to that. These rumors about Caesar may be only rumors. He may have withdrawn beyond the Rubicon, for all we know."
"But with so many abandoned houses, isn't there likely to be looting?" observed Diana, between making faces at Aulus to distract him.
"Perhaps not. The rich have left factotums and gladiators to guard their property. A few would-be looters hung in the streets may be enough to keep things quiet."
Bethesda looked down her nose. "Rome is as bad now as Alexandria was when I was a girl. Worse! Riots and assassinations and insurrections, one after another, and no end in sight."
"I suppose it will end only when either Pompey or Caesar is dead," said Eco. He lowered his voice without being asked.
"I'm afraid that might be only the beginning," I said. "If Cicero is right, it's inevitable that one or the other will make himself dictator, and not for a year or two as Sulla did, but for life. Romans may have forgotten how to run a republic, but they certainly can't remember how to live under a king. The end of this crisis may mark the start of another, far worse."
"What a time for Aulus to grow up in," said Diana. Cicero had expressed the same anxiety for his expected grandchild. She turned her face away, hiding sudden tears from Aulus, but the boy was not to be fooled. Confusion crossed his face, then he opened his mouth to join her quiet weeping with a pitiful wail of his own. Bethesda hurried over and spread her arms to embrace them both, shooting a sharp glance at me over her shoulder.
Eco and I, with Androcles and Mopsus surreptitiously peering from the doorway, looked on helplessly. What good was the much vaunted power of the paterfamilias, if it could not stop a woman from weeping?
VII
As it turned out, Caesar did not lay siege to Rome that day, nor the next, nor the day after. The remaining days of Januarius slipped past. Every dawn spawned new rumors and fresh panic. Every sunset faded without the arrival of Caesar before the gates.
From south of the city came news that Pompey had joined the loyalist legions in Capua, had appointed Cicero to organize resistance along the Campanian seacoast, and was daily consulting the consuls and the coterie of senators who had fled with him.
The talk of Rome for several days had to do with the famous training school for gladiators in Capua owned by Caesar and notorious for the ferocity of its pupils. First I heard that five thousand gladiators, promised freedom by their master, had broken out, massacred Pompey's troops, and were marching on Rome to rendezvous with Caesar. Then word spread that Pompey had anticipated Caesar's gambit, freed the gladiators himself and enlisted them in his army- over the furious objections of his advisors, who argued that wholesale manumission of slaves in a time of crisis set a dangerous precedent. The last rumor to trickle in- least spectacular and most likely- claimed that the school had been shut down and the gladiators dispersed to various new masters throughout the region, purely as a precautionary measure.
Daily, Bethesda asked what progress I had made in getting Davus back from Pompey. I explained to her that staging a serious inquiry into the death of Numerius was virtually impossible. Both Caesar's and Pompey's partisans had left Rome to join their respective leaders. Anyone with reason enough to kill Numerius, or to know who did, was probably in one camp or the other, and miles from Rome.
Bethesda was not impressed. "Pompey won't give back Davus until you find his kinsman's killer. If you lack the energy, husband, why don't you ask Eco to do it?"
"It occurs to me, wife, that your job is to see that this household is kept warm and fed- which so far you have done brilliantly, in spite of the shortages and outrageous prices at the markets. Are those duties not enough to keep you busy, and out of my affairs?"
A chill settled between us in those first days of Februarius, making the house as cold inside as out. Around us the crisis wore on.
Despite my protests to Bethesda, I was not entirely idle. If Rome was a foundering ship from which captains, crew, and paying passengers had fled, the rats remained aboard- and rats have keen eyes and ears. I called upon old contacts and put out feelers among the lower orders of the city- petty thieves, poison-dealers, pimps, and tavernkeepers- seeking knowledge of Numerius's shady dealings.
<
br /> The few scraps of information I was able to find- or more precisely, purchase, at prices as outrageously inflated as everything else for sale in the city- were piecemeal and second-hand, largely unreliable and mostly useless. Repeatedly, I was told what I already knew, that Numerius had spent most of his time running errands for Pompey, which meant that he had frequently been seen all over the Forum and on the doorsteps of senators and wealthy merchants. His contacts among the powerful ranged far and wide. But at least occasionally the Great One's favorite cousin had patronized far more humble surroundings; more than one of my contacts claimed to have seen Numerius entering or leaving a particularly notorious establishment in the seedy warehouse district between the Forum and the river. I knew the place from previous investigations: the Salacious Tavern.
I had not been to the tavern for a long time; it had been over two years since I last spent an afternoon there, with Tiro of all people, drowning our sorrows after the trial of Milo. On the chilly afternoon I decided to pay a visit I almost got lost in the maze of narrow streets surrounding it. Once I found the right alley, it was impossible to miss the familiar sign, an upright post surmounted by an erect marble phallus. A phallus-shaped lamp hung over the door, sputtering fitfully beneath the overcast sky. I knocked.
A peephole slid open, then shut. The door swung open to reveal a fleshy eunuch in a capacious white tunic, ostentatiously bedecked with glass jewelry. Rings glittered like little rainbows across his fingers. Baubles of faux topaz, amethyst, and emerald were strung around his neck and dangled from his elongated earlobes. The long, dimly lit room behind him exhaled the warm smell of moldering wood, oily smoke, and sour wine. To my eyes, unadapted to the dark, the place looked as black as a cave.
"Citizen!" The eunuch smiled. "Do I know you?"
"I think not. I don't know you. I take it the tavern is under new management?"
"Yes! Did you know it before?"
"I came here once or twice."
"Then you'll find it much improved. Come in!" He shut the door behind us.
"Funny, it smells the same." I wrinkled my nose. "Same rancid lamp oil, smoking up the place. Same foul wine, stinking up the floors."
The eunuch's smile wavered.
My eyes adjusted a bit to the dimness. Leaning against a wall a few feet behind the eunuch, I made out a bored-looking redhead. She, too, was familiar. Ipsithilla was already a fixture in the tavern the first time I stepped foot in the place, six years before, with the drunken poet Catullus. By the orange glow of a nearby lamp she still looked relatively young and fresh, testament to just how dim the lighting was. "Even the girls are the same!" I said.
The eunuch shrugged. "There are only so many pleasures to be had in this world, citizen. But you'll find them all here, I promise- for a price."
"What I really crave is a bit of information. Might I find that here, for a price?"
The eunuch raised an eyebrow.
I left the Salacious Tavern that day without having indulged a single vice, but with a few intriguing bits of information. Numerius Pompeius had indeed been a frequent patron; the eunuch knew him by sight, and had heard the news of his death. Numerius, the eunuch told me, always arrived at the tavern alone and left alone. He always sat in the same corner. Sometimes he met with others, but what they discussed, and who those others were, the eunuch couldn't say; it was his practice never to eavesdrop, and the men Numerius met with were strangers to the Salacious Tavern who never came again- except for one.
"Ah, yes," the eunuch told me, "I remember, one day Numerius shared his corner bench with that fellow Soscarides."
"Soscarides?"
"Odd name, isn't it? Greek, I suppose. From Alexandria. Swarthy little fellow with a beard. Been coming in for a couple of months now. A philosopher- rather famous, to hear him tell it. Perhaps you know him, citizen?"
"I'm sure I don't."
"Well, Numerius Pompeius did. They sat in the corner for a long time that day, he and Soscarides, talking and drinking, drinking and talking."
"Talking about what?"
"Alas, citizen, I never eavesdrop, and neither do my girls. A man's secrets are safe in the Salacious Tavern, even from the gods."
"When was this?"
"Oh, let me think- why, just before Pompey fled the city, so I suppose it must have been only a day or two before Numerius was murdered."
I nodded and mouthed the name Soscarides. I was sure I had never heard of him. A philosopher; a dark, swarthy little fellow with a beard…
The eunuch, fingering his already-swollen coin purse, was eager to be helpful. "As I said, Soscarides comes in here every so often. When I see him next, shall I tell him you're looking for him, citizen?"
I shook my head. "I was never here." I gave him another coin, to be sure he understood.
Several days of stormy weather followed my visit to the Salacious Tavern. The weather was so foul that no one went abroad in the city; even the Forum was deserted. I spent those days holed up in my study, reading philosophy. In rare moments when the rain broke I paced in the garden, gazing up to contemplate Minverva's inscrutable features. She was the only witness to everything that happened the day Numerius Pompeius died. She had heard his final words, had seen the face of his killer. "What shall I do next?" I asked her. She gave no indication of hearing.
The storm passed. Two days after the Ides of Februarius I made my way down to the Forum to catch the latest flock of rumors. At Bethesda's insistence, I took Mopsus and Androcles along with me, to give the boys a chance to use up some of their pent-up energy from being housebound by the storm. Going down the Ramp, they ran ahead of me and then back up to me over and over, making a game of it. Just watching them exhausted me.
The daily panic over an immediate occupation by Caesar receded. Reliable reports now placed him to the northeast, along the Adriatic coast. All of Picenum had surrendered to him. It was said that the people of the towns he passed through had welcomed him jubilantly, offering prayers as if he were a god. He had garrisoned strategic cities with troops, and now was heading south, where Pompey and the loyalist forces had occupied the region of Apulia, but were split in two. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus- who by the Senate's decree was supposed to have replaced Caesar as governor of Gaul at the first of the year- had occupied the central city of Corfinium, only seventy-five miles east of Rome, with thirty cohorts, eighteen thousand men. Pompey, in the meantime, had moved farther south. There seemed to be a tug of war between the two loyalist generals, Domitius wanting Pompey to reinforce him in Corfinium, Pompey demanding that Domitius abandon the city and join him.
If Domitius had his way, would the deciding battle take place at Corfinium, with Caesar's legions confronting the combined loyalist forces? Or would Corfinium be abandoned in a loyalist retreat? If that happened, it was easy, looking at a map, to imagine Caesar's troops forcing Pompey relentlessly southward into the heel of the Italian boot, toward the seaport of Brundisium. Some rumors claimed that Pompey was already assembling a navy at Brundisium, and had all along intended to flee across the Adriatic Sea to Dyrrhachium rather than engage Caesar.
Hearing such tactical questions discussed by citizens standing in line for pots of rancid olives and loaves of stale bread was a strange experience. It was common enough to hear men in the Forum speculate about battles and troop movements in faraway provinces- but never on Italian soil, and with the fate of Rome in the balance.
The sky began to drizzle. I had had enough of the Forum.
I made my way back to the Ramp, with Mopsus and Androcles running circles around me. Halfway up, beneath the branches of a towering yew that blocked the drizzle, I happened to look ahead. My heart skipped a beat.
Had I lost my sense? Or was the same uncanny experience happening again? Up ahead, I thought I saw a familiar figure, except that this time the man in the green tunic was pulling on his cloak, not shrugging it off.
"Boys!" I said, calling them in from their orbit. "Do you see that fellow up ahead, walking a
lone?"
Mopsus and Androcles nodded in unison.
"I want you to follow him. Not too close! I don't want him to know. Do you think you can do that?"
"I can, Master," said Mopsus, hooking his thumb to his chest.
"And so can I," insisted Androcles.
"Good. When he arrives at his destination, one of you find a hiding place to keep watch while the other runs back to tell me. Now go!"
Off they went. When they drew close to the man in the dark cloak, one broke to the left, the other to the right, like jackals hunting in tandem. One by one, all three reached the upper end of the Ramp and disappeared. I resisted the urge to quicken my stride. I whistled a comic Egyptian tune, one that Bethesda used to sing to herself back in the days when she was my slave instead of my wife and had no slaves of her own to do the household chores. Happy days, I thought. Those were the days when I first met Tiro.
I came to the top of the Ramp. The stump of the fallen yew was out of the drizzle, so I sat there to wait. If I was correct, the man in the dark cloak would not be going far, and it would not be long before one of the boys came running back with news.
I waited. And waited some more. At last I began to wonder if I had been wrong after all, and had sent the boys on a fool's errand. The drizzle stopped. I got up from the stump and walked in the direction of Cicero's house. It occurred to me that if the man was not who I thought he was, I might have put the boys in danger. The crisis had frayed everyone's nerves. Even a respectable citizen might react unpredictably if he discovered he was being followed by two unknown slave boys.
I followed the rim road to Cicero's house and stopped in the deserted street. There was no one to be seen. I had been wrong, after all, I thought- and then heard a hissing from the opposite side of the street, where the cedars and cypress trees had been thinned to allow a view of the Capitoline Hill.
"Master! Over here!"
I peered into the underbrush of shaggy bushes dotted with tiny red berries. "I can't see you."
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