The Venus Throw

by Steven Saylor

  Out in the atrium, beneath the shadowed gaze of Minerva, I looked up at the firmament of bright twinkling stars. The air was cold and clear. I studied the constellations, and to tire my mind I tried to remember all their names, both Latin and Greek, which I had learned when I was young in Alexandria: the Great Bear, which Homer called the Wagon and others call the Seven Ploughing Oxen; the Little Bear, which some call the Dog's Tail; the Goat, which some say has the tail of a fish . . .

  Still I couldn't sleep. I needed to walk. A few circuits around the fountain in the atrium was hardly enough to drain my restlessness. I walked to the front door and unbolted it. I stepped over the threshold and onto the smoothly paved street.

  At night, the Palatine is probably the safest neighborhood in Rome. When I was a boy, it was as mixed as any other neighborhood in the city, with rich and poor, patricians and plebeians all crowded together. Then Rome's empire began its great expansion, and some families became not merely wealthy but phenomenally so, and it was the Palatine, with its proximity to the Forum and its elevation above the less wholesome airs of the Tiber and the cramped valleys, which became their neighborhood of choice. Over the years tall tenements and cramped family dwellings were torn down block by block, and in their places were built great houses separated here and there by strips of green and little gardens. There are still humble dwellings among the mansions on the Palatine, and occupants who are far from wealthy (I'm proof of that), but by and large it has become an enclave of the rich and the powerful. I live on the southern side, just up the hill from the House of the Vestals down in the Forum. In a circle of no great circumference around my house— hardly further than an arrow's flight—I count among my neighbors Crassus, Rome's wealthiest man, and my old patron Cicero, who the previous September had made a triumphant return from political exile and was busy rebuilding the house which an angry mob had destroyed two years before.

  Such men own bodyguards—plenty of them, and not merely brutes but well-trained gladiators—and such men demand order, at least in their immediate vicinity. The roving, drunken gangs of troublemakers who terrorize the Subura at night know better than to bring their rowdiness to the Palatine. Rapists and petty thieves practice their crimes in other places on more vulnerable prey. And so, after dark, the streets of the Palatine are quiet and mostly deserted. A man can take a brisk stroll up the street on a chilly winter's night beneath a waxing moon, alone with his thoughts, and not fear for his life.

  Even so, when I heard the sound of drunken voices approaching, I felt it prudent to conceal myself until they passed. I stepped back against a wall, beneath the deep shadow cast by the branch of a yew tree. I was just across the street from a venerable old three-story tenement at the end of my block. The place was exceptionally well built and well maintained, the property of the Clodii, an ancient and distinguished patrician family. It had withstood the changes on the Palatine, and was still divided between shops on the ground floor and apartments above. The whole of the middle floor was rented to Marcus Caelius, the young man who had embroiled me a few years before in Cicero's battle of wits with Catilina. It was his voice, together with another, that I now heard approaching from the eastern end of the street.

  I stayed hidden in the shadows. I had nothing to fear from Caelius, but I was in no mood for company, especially drunken company. As he and his friend drew closer, careening up the street, I saw their shadows first, cast before them by the moonlight like spidery, elongated wraiths. They walked with their arms around each other's shoulders, twisting this way and that, laughing and conversing in shouts and whispers. It wasn't the first time I'd chanced to see Marcus Caelius coming home in such a state. Not much more than thirty years old and uncommonly good-looking—remarkably handsome, actually—Caelius was of that particular class of young Romans whom Dio had spoken of that afternoon when he described Publius Asicius, the man he suspected of trying to poison him: charming, quick-witted young men with good backgrounds but uncertain prospects, notorious for their complete lack of scruples, witty and well educated with a taste for hard drinking and scandalous poetry, affable, ingratiating, and never under any circumstances to be trusted. Caelius and his friend were probably returning from a late-night party at some fashionable house nearby. The only surprise was that they hadn't brought a young woman or two with them, unless, of course, they were satisfied to make do with each other for the night.

  They stopped in the street before the entrance to Caelius's private stairway. Caelius banged on the door, and while they waited for a slave to come open it I overheard some of their drunken conversation. When I heard Caelius say the name 'Asicius" I gave a start. Probably, I thought, I merely imagined it, putting it together from a sigh and a hiss; I had just been thinking about Dio's description of Publius Asicius, and so had the name in my mind. But then I heard it again. "Asicius," Caelius said, "you ass, you very nearly flubbed it this time as well! Two disasters in a row!"

  "Me?" cried the other man. I couldn't see him well for the darkness, but like Caelius he appeared to be tall and broad-shouldered. His words were slurred, some shouted, some muttered, so that I could catch only fragments of what he said. "I'm not the one who . . . you neglected to tell me that we'd have to . .. and then, to find . . . already! . . . and the look on his . . . oh go on, off to Hades with you, Caelius, along with that pitiful Egyptian ... "

  The door rattled and opened. Caelius and his friend moved to enter simultaneously and bumped into each other. Something clattered on the pavement; moonlight flashed on steel. Caelius turned back, stooped down and picked up the dagger that had been dropped. That was when he looked up and saw me in the shadows across the street.

  He squinted drunkenly and turned his face sidelong, trying to decide whether I was a man or merely a shadow. I held my breath. He stepped slowly toward me, holding the dagger in his hand.

  "Where in Hades are you off to now?" moaned Asicius. "Come on, Caelius, it's cold out here. You said you'd warm me up!"

  "Shut up!" Caelius whispered hoarsely. He was halfway across the street, staring straight at me.

  "Caelius, what—is someone there?"

  "Shut up, Asicius!"

  The night was so still I thought they might be able to hear the pounding of my heart. Caelius's dagger glinted in the moonlight. He stepped closer and tripped on a paving stone. I flinched.

  "It's only me, neighbor," I said, through gritted teeth.

  "Only—you, Gordianus!" Caelius grinned and lowered his dagger. I sighed with relief.

  "Who is he?" demanded Asicius, swaggering up behind Caelius and reaching inside his tunic. "Trouble?"

  "Oh, probably not," said Caelius. In the moonlight, with a smile on his lips, he looked like Apollo done in white marble. "You're not looking for trouble tonight, are you, neighbor?"

  "Out for a walk," I said. "I leave on a trip tomorrow. I can't sleep."

  "Cold for a walk, isn't it?" said Asicius.

  "Not too cold for you to be out," I said.

  Asicius growled, but Caelius slapped him on the shoulder and laughed. "Go home and get some sleep, Gordianus! Only people up to no good are out at this time of night. Come on, Asicius. Time to warm you up." He put his arm around his companion's shoulder and drew him back to the doorway. They disappeared inside and the door slammed shut.

  In the stillness of the night, through the closed door, I heard their muffled voices and the clump of their heavy footsteps on the stairway. These sounds quickly faded, and the empty street seemed almost preternaturally quiet. The cold suddenly penetrated my cloak, making me shiver. I walked back to my house taking quick, careful steps. Everything was bland oyster-white and fathomless black shadow. Cold moonlight had turned the world to stone.

  I slipped back into bed. I might have stayed awake for a long time, staring into the darkness above, but Bethesda rolled toward me and snuggled against me, and I fell asleep almost at once.

  As planned, my son Eco came calling before daybreak. Belbo brought horses from the stable,
and the three of us set out through the quiet gray streets of the waking city. We took the Flaminian Way and passed through the Fontinal Gate, leaving the dangers and deceits of the city behind us, at least for a while.

  Chapter Six

  The journey was without incident, except for a brief but wave-tossed crossing from Fanum Fortunae, at the terminus of the Flaminian Way, across to the Illyrian shore. In winter there are only a handful of boatmen who will ferry passengers across the Adriatic Sea, and on this trip we discovered why, for we very narrowly escaped a sudden squall that easily could have sent boat, Belbo, horses, Eco and myself to the bottom of the sea.

  Before we left Fanum Fortunae, I had insisted on visiting the famous grounds consecrated to the goddess Fortune and leaving a few coins at her temple. "Better spent tipping the boatman," Eco had muttered under his breath. But after surviving the wet, windy crossing, it was Eco who suggested we give thanks at the nearest temple of Fortune. Pounding rain turned the wooden roof into a drum. Inside the rustic little temple incense swirled, coins jangled, and the goddess smiled, while the trembling in my knees and the queasiness in my stomach gradually subsided.

  With our feet back on solid ground, even the arduous, rain-soaked journey up the rugged coastline and over the windswept hills to Caesar's winter quarters seemed like a holiday.

  After he became a soldier in the legions of Gaius Julius Caesar in Gaul, I didn't see my son Meto for months at a time, though we conversed often by letter. This was fortuitous in a way that I could never have foreseen.

  Meto's letters came to me by military messengers. This is a common way to send all sorts of correspondence, since only very wealthy men can afford to have slaves merely for the purpose of carrying letters, while military messengers range far and wide throughout the empire and are more reliable than merchants or pleasure travelers. Letters leaving Caesar's camp, as it turned out, were not entirely private; the messengers who carried them usually read them to make sure that they contained no compromising information. One of Caesar's most trusted messengers, impressed by Meto's style and observations, passed a copy along to one of Caesar's most trusted secretaries, who thought it worthwhile to pass it along to Caesar himself, who then moved Meto out of the tent where he had been ordered to polish newly minted armor and into the com-mander's staff.

  Between conquering Gaul and vying for control of Rome, it seems that the great man finds time in his busy schedule to keep a minutely detailed journal. While other politicians leave their memoirs as monuments to posterity, Caesar intends to distribute his (so Meto suspects) as a tool in his election campaigns. The people of Rome will read of Caesar's extraordinary skills of leadership and his triumphs in spreading Roman civilization, and then rush to support him at the polls— provided, of course, that things continue to go as Caesar wishes in Gaul.

  Caesar has slaves to take his dictation, of course—Meto says the commander often dictates while on horseback riding from camp to camp, so as not to waste time—and he has slaves to assist in the collation and compilation of his notes, but as my own experience has often borne out, the rich and powerful will make use of other men's talents wherever they find them. Caesar happens to like Meto's prose style—never mind that Meto was born a slave, received only sporadic tutoring in mathematics and Latin after I adopted him, and has no experience at practicing rhetoric. Ironic, too, is the fact that Meto, who chose to be a soldier against my wishes, now finds himself a tent-bound literary adjutant in-stead of a sunburned, wind-bitten legionary. It would be hard, I imagine, for one of his humble origins to rise much higher, with so many patricians and sons of the rich vying for honor and glory in the upper ranks.

  Which is not to say that he no longer faces danger. Caesar himself takes extraordinary risks—this is said to be one of the keys to the hold he has over his men, that he faces the enemy alongside them—and no matter what his day-to-day duties, Meto has seen plenty of battle. His role as one of Caesar's secretaries simply means that during quiet times, instead of building catapults or digging trenches or making roads, Meto labors over his commander's rough drafts. Just as well; Meto was never very good at working with his hands or his back. But when the crisis comes and the enemy must be faced, Meto puts down his stylus and takes up his sword.

  Meto had plenty of hair-raising tales to thrill his older brother and set his brooding father's teeth on edge. Ambushes at dawn, midnight raids, battles against barbarian tribes with unpronounceable names—I listened to the details and wished I could cover my ears, as images ran riot through my head of Meto in hand-to-hand combat against some hulking, hairy Gaul, or dodging a rain of arrows, or leaping off a catapult consumed by fire. Meanwhile I watched him wide-eyed, at once amazed, appalled, proud and melancholy at how thoroughly the boy had vanished and the man taken his place. Though he was only twenty-two, I counted a few gray hairs among the shock of unruly black curls on his head, and his jaw was covered with stubble. His speech, especially in the excitement of recounting a battle, was salted with crude soldier's slang—could this really be the boy whose prose Caesar found so admirable? Relaxing in his quarters, it was Meto's custom to wear the same garment day after day, a dark blue, much-washed woolen tunic. I raised an eyebrow at his slovenliness but said nothing, even when I noticed the numerous murky spots, large and small, which stained the fabric in various places. Then I realized that the stains were clustered where his armor joined and around the edges of his leather coat. The spots were bloodstains, made where the blood of other men had soaked through his battle gear.

  Meto told us of mountains he had crossed and rivers he had forded, of Gallic villages with their peculiar sights and smells, of Caesar's genius at outwitting the tribes and putting down their rebellions. (Much of the commander's behavior sounded like gratuitous cruelty and base treachery to me, but I knew better than to say so.) He confirmed that the Gauls were uncommonly big, many of them veritable giants. "They think of us as a midget race, and make fun of us to our faces," he said. "But they don't laugh for long."

  He was eager for news of Rome. Eco and I shared with him all the gossip we could remember, including the latest maneuvers regarding the Egyptian situation. "Pompey and your beloved commander seemed to have matched scores in the latest round," Eco noted, "extorting equal hoards of silver from King Ptolemy in return for bribing the Senate to smile on his claim to the Egyptian throne. It's Crassus who's been left out."

  "And what does Crassus need from Egypt?" said Meto, who had his own reasons to dislike the millionaire quite apart from his loyalty to Caesar.

  "He's rich enough."

  "Crassus will never be rich enough for Crassus," I said.

  "If he wants to keep his hand in the contest," said Meto, absently reaching for his short sword and fiddling with the handle, "Crassus will need to wrangle another military command from the Senate and score some victories to impress the people. Silver buys votes, but only glory buys greatness." I wondered if these words came from Meto himself or from Caesar, whose finances become more precarious even while the list of his conquests grows longer.

  "But Pompey has pacified the East, and now Caesar is pacifying Gaul," said Eco. "What's left for Crassus?"

  "He'll simply have to look further afield," said Meto.

  "Well, Egypt is as far as I care to cast my thoughts," I said, and proceeded to relate what I had learned from Dio on the night before I left Rome. From his proximity to Caesar and his staff, Meto already knew a little about the murders of the Alexandrian envoys, but had not realized the scale of the scandal. He seemed genuinely appalled, and I found myself wondering how someone who had become so inured to the carnage of battle could be alarmed any longer by mere murder. The thought made me uneasy, as I suddenly felt the growing distance between Meto and myself. Then, as I continued to describe the peculiar circum-stances of Dio's visit and my guests' absurd disguises—the philosopher as a woman, the gallus as a man — Meto burst out laughing. His laughter encouraged me to pile on more details, which made him laugh all
the harder. Suddenly the stubbly jaw and the bloodstains faded from my sight. The harrowing tales and the crude soldier's slang were forgotten. I saw the face of the laughing little boy I had adopted years ago, and found what I had come searching for.

  As it turned out, Eco and I were gone from Rome for almost a month, and did not return until after the Ides of Februarius. First a snowstorm detained us. Then I fell ill with a cough in my chest. Then, just as I was well enough to travel, Belbo fell ill with the same complaint. While some men might scoff at postponing a trip to coddle a slave, it made no sense to me to go traveling over dangerous back roads with a sick body-guard. Besides, I welcomed the excuse to spend more time with Meto.

  On the way back, we happened to cross the Adriatic using the same intrepid boatman and in the same boat as before. I had no trouble getting Eco to pause for a few moments in the temple of Fortune before we set sail. Happily for our crossing, the sky was clear and the waters were calm.

  Back in Rome, Bethesda seemed to be in considerably better spirits than when I had left. Indeed, her attentions to me on the night of my return could have stopped the heart of a weaker man. Once there had been a time when a month's separation was enough to build our appetites for each other to a ravenous pitch; I had thought those days were long gone, but on that night Bethesda managed to make me feel more like a youth of twenty-four than a bearded grandfather of fifty-four. Despite the aches and pains of the previous days' long hours on horseback, I arose the next morning in excellent spirits.

  As we ate our breakfast of Egyptian flat bread and millet porridge with raisins, Bethesda caught me up on the latest gossip. I sipped at a cup of heated honeyed wine and listened with only half an ear as she explained that the miserly senator across the way was finally putting a new roof on his house, and that a group of Ethiopian prostitutes appeared to have taken up residence at the home of a rich widower who keeps an apartment up the street. When she turned to affairs down in the Forum, I paid closer attention.