The Sacrilege

Chapter X

The next morning I found that Hermes was mostly recovered from his malady, pale but upright and rubbing his belly from time to time.

"Can't guess what it might have been," he said. He had a furtively guilty look but he usually looked that way, so I could not tell whether that signified anything. "Maybe an enemy put a curse on me," he said.

"More likely you broke into my wine closet and drained a jug or two," I said. "I'll look into it later."

I greeted my clients, and in the midst of it a man arrived with a note. I recognized the fellow as one of Asklepiodes's slaves.

Please come visit me at your earliest opportunity, it read. Below the message was the whimsical seal the Greek used: a sword and caduceus. This looked promising. Perhaps he had discovered something.

We all trooped to Celer's house, and at the first opportunity I took him aside.

"Have you determined anything?" he asked.

"Just a great deal of confusion," I said. "But I must ask you something. A few days ago I spoke to Caesar in this house. He said that he had come to ask you for a night's lodgings while he was banned from his own roof."

"So he did."

"Was he here all night?" I asked.

"Well, no. About midnight he went out. He said that he had to go take the omens. He was wearing his trabea and carried his crooked staff. Why? Is this significant?"

"It may be," I said. "Did you see him after that?"

"Yes. He came in shortly after I got up. He said he'd been up on the Quirinal, but that the night had been too cloudy for decent omen-taking. Why?"

"Oh," I said, trying to sound casual, "I am just trying to account for everybody's location that night. It all happened at his house."

"Stick to Clodius, my boy. Don't go trifling with Caius Julius."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said. I did not tell him that I suspected more powerful men than Caius Julius were involved.

I dismissed my clients and told Hermes to follow me. We walked back through the Subura and trudged up the Quirinal to the ancient Colline Gate. Like all the gates, it was a holy place and had seen many battles. Hannibal is supposed to have heaved a spear over it as a gesture of defiance, and just twenty-one years before Sulla had smashed the Samnite supporters of the younger Marius outside the gate, a battle the Romans had watched from atop the walls as at an amphitheater. After the rigors of the previous years, I am told that it was something of a relief seeing blood shed outside the walls.

Since Rome had no military or police within the walls, the guardianship of the gates was parceled out among various guilds, brotherhoods and temples. The Colline Gate was the responsibility of the collegium of the nearby Temple of Quirinus. These were the Quirinal Salii, who danced each October before all the most important shrines of the city. The young patricians did not pull night guard themselves, of course, but their servants did.

In the temple I went to the wardroom, where the gate guards stayed. Then I requested to be shown the tablet of the night when the rites had been profaned. The slave who kept the wardroom rummaged among the tablets while I looked over the small facility. There was no one else there. The gates were only watched at night.

"Here you are, sir," the slave said. I looked at the scratchings on the wax. Several freight wagons had entered the city during the night. All had left the same way before first light. There was no record of the Pontifex Maximus going out to take the omens. I asked the slave if he knew anything about it.

"The augurs are always supposed to check here at the temple before they go out the gate after dark, sir. The pontifex Spinther came here about ten days ago, with his striped robe and lituus. None since then." I thanked him and left.

"Why are you asking these questions?" Hermes asked me as we descended the hill. "Is it something to do with the patrician who tried to poison you and ended up dead instead?"

"I don't know, but I suspect that it is all connected. Why do you want to know?"

Hermes shrugged. "If you get killed, I'll just get passed on to somebody who's not as agreeable."

"I am touched. Yes, there's something very strange going on. Somebody tried to murder me, and Capito was murdered on the same night. The next night the rites of Bona Dea were profaned in Caesar's house. Caesar told Celer that he was going out to look for omens on the Quirinal that night, but he didn't. The boy who tried to poison me was murdered. The woman I suspect of selling him the poison was murdered. The boy was staying with Clodius, my worst enemy. The murdered woman was with Clodius when he sneaked into Caesar's house dressed as a woman. Doesn't it strike you that there is some common thread running through all this?"

Hermes shrugged. "Free people are mostly crazy. Noble ones are the worst."

"Stay a slave," I advised him. "That way your problems will always be simple."

We crossed the city and went over the bridge to the Island, then over the other bridge to the Trans-Tiber.

"Where are we going now?" Hermes asked.

"The ludus of Statilius Taurus, to visit a friend."

He brightened at that. "The gladiator school? You must know everybody!" He was always impressed with my familiarity with the lowest strata of Roman life.

At the school I left him in the training yard, gaping at the netmen as they went through their drills and practice fights. For some reason the netmen had caught the fancy of the slaves and lowest classes. Probably because sword and shield were the honorable weapons of citizens. Like many boys his age, he probably thought of gaining fame as a gladiator. He was too inexperienced to realize that it was just a delayed death sentence. Luckily, he was old enough to understand the whip and the cross.

Asklepiodes greeted me and insisted on going through the usual amenities with wine and cakes before he would enlighten me. Eventually, we sat by a wide window and looked down upon the men practicing below.

"Since we last spoke," he said, "I have been flogging my brain to remember where I had seen that hammer wound. Yesterday I was sitting here, idly watching the men at practice, when I saw some new men arrive. They were to have direction of the munera Pompey will give after his triumph. Some were old champions paid enormously to come out of retirement to grace the games, but among them were some Etruscan priests. Have you ever seen the fights as they are conducted in the more traditional areas of Tuscia?"

My scalp prickled. "No, I have not."

He beamed with satisfaction. "Well, the sight of these Etruscans reminded me. Some years ago, I accompanied a troupe to some funeral games near Tarquinia. There I witnessed something I had not seen before. Now, in the munera, what happens after a defeated man has received the death-blow, before the Libitinarii come to drag the body away?"

"The Charon touches the corpse with his hammer to claim it for the death-goddess, Libitina," I said.

"Exactly. Have you ever wondered where he got his attributes? The long nose and the pointed ears, the boots and the hammer? These are not the attributes of the ferryman of the Styx who bears the same name."

I shifted uncomfortably. "They are said to be Etruscan in origin, like the games themselves."

"That is correct. In reality, he is the Etruscan death-demon, Charun, who claims the dead for the deity of the underworld, whom you call Pluto and we call Hades. Well, in Tuscia, he does not simply touch the corpse. He stands over the head and smashes the brow with his hammer."

"And these men came from Pompey's camp, you say?"

"That is an unhealthy and unseasonal sweat I see shining upon your forehead," he observed.

"As long as you see no hammer mark there, I am satisfied," I said. I took a long drink from my wine cup and he refilled it. Then I took a long drink from that one. "Something else falls into place," I said. "Murders with an Etruscan stamp, just when Pompey has a collection of Etruscan priests outside the walls. And Crassus told me that Pompey has lent some of them to Clodius."

"Ah! Pompey and Clodius. An unsavory pairing. What might all this portend?"

I told him what I knew, and he nodded sagely as he listened. He had that trick of nodding sagely when he had not the slightest idea what you were talking about. It was a faculty I, too, learned in time. When I described Caesar's dispersal of the crowd before my door and our subsequent discussion in my house, he interrupted me.

"Just a moment. Caesar said that the goddess Libitina is the ancestress of his house? I have gone to hear him orate many times, and he has often named the goddess Aphrodite as his ancestress."

"Venus," I corrected him. "Yes, he's taken to doing that a lot lately. That's because you practically have to go back to the time of the gods to find a Julian who ever amounted to anything. But our Venus is a more complex goddess than your Aphrodite. Libitina is our goddess of death and funerals, but she is also a goddess of fields and vineyards and of voluptuous pleasures, in which aspect she becomes the dual goddess Venus Libitina. Thus Caesar can call either of them his ancestress without contradiction."

"Religion is a thing of marvel," Asklepiodes said.

I spun the rest of the tale, not gloating over my acuity but rather telling of my perplexity. When I had finished, he refilled our cups and we thought in silence for a while.

"So this investigation of yours, which was to seek out the guilt of Clodius, now involves Pompey and Caesar?"

"And Crassus," I said. "Let's not forget him. If the other two are involved, so is he."

"What if the purpose of their plotting is to destroy Crassus?"

"That's involvement, isn't it?" I demanded.

"Excellent point," he conceded.

I rose hastily. "I thank you. I see someone down there I should speak with."

Asklepiodes followed my gaze and saw the young man who had just entered the exercise yard. "A handsome youth! And what striking coloring, almost like a German."

"Fairness like that is extremely rare among Romans."

I told him. "It's common only in a single patrician family, the gens Cornelia."

"I forgive your hasty leave-taking. I might be so precipitous myself to greet a youth so comely." He was, after all, a Greek.

The young man looked up when I approached him. His eyes were like Egyptian lapis. "I don't believe we've met since we were children, but I saw you yesterday in Pompey's camp. I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger. Are you not Faustus Cornelius Sulla?"

He smiled. "I am. I believe we rode together in the Trojan Game when we were boys."

"I remember. I fell off my horse." Faustus was a small, almost delicate-looking man, but I knew that was deceptive. He had made a name for himself as a soldier in Pompey's service, and had even won the corona muralis for being first over the wall at Jerusalem when Pompey had taken that ever-troublesome city.

"Are you here concerning Pompey's upcoming munera?" I asked him.

"Yes, and to begin arrangements for my own. My father enjoined a munera upon me in his will. Since I've been old enough to celebrate them, I've been away from Rome. This is the first time I've had a chance to discharge the obligation, and I mean to get it out of the way before I'm sent off to another war someplace." He was another of those men who had chosen foreign soldiering as a career and considered domestic civil service an onerous duty. I was precisely the opposite. My Greek friend had mistaken him for a youth because of his exquisite, almost feminine Cornelian features. Actually, he was no more than a year younger than I.

"I understand Pompey is adding an Etruscan element to his munera ," I said. Faustus had been watching the fighters practice, but now he glanced toward me sharply.

"What do you mean by that?"

"A friend saw some of his Etruscan priests here yesterday."

"They are just soothsayers," he said quickly. "They'll have nothing to do with the fights. They said they could ensure a better show by rejecting unlucky swordsmen."

"It seems to me," I said, "that some of them will have to be unlucky, or it won't be much of a show."

"I don't think that's what they meant," Faustus said.

We were interrupted when Statilius Taurus himself arrived to take charge of his distinguished visitor. I took my leave of them and retrieved Hermes.

"Who's that?" the boy said, jerking his chin toward Faustus.

"Faustus Cornelius Sulla, only living son of the Dictator," I informed him.

"Oh," Hermes said, disappointed. Doubtless he would have preferred some illustrious criminal. Well, there were plenty of those to go around, too. I decided to call on one of them.

It took some asking, but I finally tracked Milo down in a massive warehouse near the river. His guard at the door let me pass the instant he recognized me. I was one of perhaps five or six men who had access to Titus Annius Milo at any hour of the day or night.

Inside the warehouse, the scene was not greatly different from the one I had left at the ludus. Milo was drilling his men in some of the finer points of street-brawling. He had shed toga and dignity, and stood in his tunic while men circled him warily with clubs and knives. Hermes gasped when a man darted in and swung a club at Milo's head. Milo didn't duck the weapon like any ordinary man. He caught it instead and it made a noisy clack hitting his palm. I think Milo could have caught a sword that way. His years at the oar had given him palms as hard as the brazen shield of Achilles, and somehow they stayed that way all his life. His other hand grasped the front of the man's tunic and with a fierce wrench sent him careening into another who was approaching with a knife. Both men collapsed in a heap. Milo never carried a weapon and never needed one.

"That was good," he said. "Let's try another."

"No fair, Chief," said a gap-toothed Gaul. "The rest of us can't catch weapons like that."

"Then I'll teach you something you can use," Milo said, grinning. "Line up in two teams, facing one another." The men did so. "Now, the idea is, you just defend yourself against the man directly in front of you, but keep aware of the man fighting your comrade on the right or left. The moment he leaves himself open, turn and get him. You'll usually have your chance when he attacks the man before him. Move quickly. He won't see you coming, and the man you're engaged with won't be expecting the move. Come back to guard instantly, and he won't be able to take advantage of it. Now let's see you try it."

The two groups went at it with relish, and Hermes cheered every smack of wood against flesh. These men were inveterate brawlers and they actually enjoyed the exercise. Ever since the Gracchi, mob violence had been a common fact of Roman political life. With his usual cold-blooded realism, Milo was polishing his men's technique the way Caesar or Cicero would polish a speech. When he was satisfied with their performance, he came over to me.

"They're shaping up," he said grudgingly.

"They look fierce enough," I acknowledged.

"Ferocity is common. Clodius's gang is plenty fierce. It's concerted action that wins big fights. The gladiators only know single combat and the brawlers never think past their own knuckles. I need a street army and I intend to have one."

"You had better be careful, Titus," I cautioned. "A few words in the wrong ears could get you charged with insurrection."

"I have Cicero and a good many others working on my behalf," he said. "For every Senator who wants to see me brought down, there's an enemy of Clodius who sees me as the savior of Rome."

"Cicero is not in high favor just now," I warned, "and when Pompey comes back into the city in a couple of days, he'll be the power in Rome until new alliances can be formed."

"Thanks for your concern," Milo said, "but I've been working hard for years to arrange the sort of support I need. I feel secure for the time being."

"As you will," I said. "Titus, I need to know what sort of naughtiness Mamercus Capito might have been up to.

"I can tell you right now," he interrupted. "Nothing. I looked into it as soon as I learned he was murdered. He had no meaningful contacts among the Roman underworld, which is to say, my own colleagues. As far as I was able to learn, he wasn't taking bribes beyond the acceptable limits. He had a few silent partners, mostly his freedmen, running businesses for him, since as a patrician he couldn't be officially involved. They insist that he had no business enemies with cause to kill him. He must have been murdered for personal or political reasons. Your Senate contacts will know more about how he voted in the Senate than I."

"You've saved me a great deal of time," I told him.

"Then perhaps you can employ it in my behalf. Have you spoken with the lady yet?"

"No, but I go from here to the house of Lucullus. With luck, I'll get there in time for lunch."

"Enjoy yourself, but be eloquent."

"I'll do my best, which if I may say so is considerable. By an odd coincidence, I've just met with her brother at the Statilian School. The resemblance is striking, and I'm told they both greatly resemble the old Dictator. I'm afraid he's Pompey's man, though."

"That's unfortunate. I hope I don't fall afoul of him, since I intend to be his brother-in-law."

"Matrimony is often a perilous enterprise," I told him.

Hermes and I left, stepping over the writhing or inert bodies of thugs who had been practicing all too seriously. My slave was inordinately excited by the whole experience.

"Why don't you sell me to him, master?" he said. "I think I'd enjoy belonging to Milo."

"If he ever offends me mortally, I'll give you to him as a gift," I assured the boy.

I arrived at the house of Lucullus a little late for the full lunch ceremony, but a place was made for me at the table as the last course arrived, and that was far more than I could possibly eat even with the aid of the gods. I moderated my wine intake since I was to be doing some important negotiating later on.

Because I was not an invited guest, I did not feel that I could rightfully impose myself on Lucullus, but I lagged behind while the others took their leave, which all did very shortly after the meal. Luncheon was still so new that a routine for socializing afterward had not yet been developed. Before long, I was sitting with Lucullus in his garden while his slaves dug in the huge planting-beds, readying them for the spring.

"Does this involve the investigation Celer is being so sly about?" Lucullus asked. "If so, I fear I would be of little help. My wife is a Claudian first, like the rest of her family. She would never tell me anything that might get her dear little brother into trouble."

A server poured us wine from a golden pitcher. I sipped at it. It was Caecuban, of a vintage most men would have saved for the celebration of a victory, and only faintly cut with rose-scented water.

"No; for a change I come on an amatory mission."

His eyebrows went up. "On your own behalf?"

"On behalf of a friend. Titus Annius Milo."

Lucullus sat back and stroked his chin. "Milo. A rising man, sure to be a power in Rome in the future, if he doesn't find an early grave first."

"That grave awaits us all," I said.

"How true. And just who might be the object of that formidable man's affections?"

"Your ward, Fausta. He met her here a few days ago and was immediately felled by Cupid." I sipped again at the excellent wine. This was a new activity for me.

"I am amazed that anything can fell Milo. He is of doubtful birth," Lucullus pointed out, "and his activities are little more than criminal."

"As to his birth, he has been from birth a Roman citizen, and there is no higher birth than that."

Lucullus clapped his hands. "Bravo. If this were one of the popular assemblies, I should rise to my feet and cheer."

"If his activities lack a certain gentility, is it more respectable to slaughter foreigners than to brawl in the streets of Rome? Besides, once he has come to great prominence in the state, his youthful excesses will be forgotten, as is always the case. Look at Crassus. At Sulla, even. Both of them were abhorred as degenerate young reprobates, but the highest elements in Rome were kissing their backsides soon enough. Just wait. Soon all Rome will be puckering up for Titus Milo."

"I'll admit he couldn't have sent a better man to press his suit. I almost want to marry the rogue myself now."

"Then you will allow him to pay court to Fausta?" I said.

"There is a small but significant difficulty," he said.

"What might that be?"

"A frog croaking in my fishpond has as much influence with her as I have. I am the executor of her father's will, but she doesn't think that extends to her person, whatever the law might say. She is a Cornelia, and a daughter of Sulla, and she is not about to submit herself to a mere Licinius like me. We get along well enough, but that's about all. She gets on better with Claudia, and that's a bad sign. But if Milo is willing to risk his future happiness with a haughty demigoddess of a Cornelia, he has my permission to chance it."

"Might I speak with her?" I asked.

"I'll send for her, but I can promise you nothing beyond that." He raised a hand so slightly that it might have been mistaken for an involuntary twitch. But his slaves were sensitive enough to detect his slightest wish. One came running and all but prostrated himself. "Tell the lady Fausta she has a visitor in the garden," Lucullus murmured. The man dashed off with winged heels.

Lucullus rose. "I wish you the best of fortune, Decius. The woman is self-willed, but not without a certain intelligence. She regards the sort of men I favor as too dull to hold her interest. If any man could strike her fancy, I suppose it would have to be someone like Milo."

He left me in the garden, leaving likewise the golden pitcher. I helped myself to another cup. Caecuban like that didn't come my way every day. While I waited for Fausta I lazed back in my chair, trying to imagine what it would be like living as Lucullus did. Without turning my head very far, I could see at least fifty slaves working in the garden. This, I knew, was only a fraction of his household staff. The table was fine porphyry, and the pitcher that sat on it was solid gold. It looked as if it would weigh more empty than a common pitcher when full. I determined to empty it and find out.

What must it be like, I thought, to pass a particularly lovely spot when traveling between, say, Rome and Brundisium, decide that you fancy the place, turn to your steward and say: "Buy all the land for ten miles around and build me a villa there." And then pass by a year later and see a mansion the size of a middling town, fully landscaped, decorated with the pick of the loot of Greece and Asia, and ready for you to move in if you should feel like resting from your trip. I thought this seemed like an extremely pleasant way to live. The problem was that the only way to amass such wealth was to conquer some extremely rich kings, as Lucullus had.

By the time Fausta arrived, a warm, fuzzy mantle had settled over the world. It was truly excellent Caecuban.

"I am terribly sorry to have kept you waiting so long, Decius Caecilius." She was no less beautiful than when I had seen her before, dressed in a gown of saffron linen over which she had thrown a brief pallium of fine white wool.

"I came unannounced," I said as I rose, "and to wait in the house of Lucullus is to live like a king. Who can complain of that?" A slave hovered nearby with a tray, from which I seized a goblet which I filled for her. The old rules against women drinking with men were fast fading, especially for informal occasions such as this. Ordinary rules never applied to women like Fausta in any case.

"Thank you," she said, taking the cup but not drinking. "Word is spreading that you are investigating the profanation of the rites. Is that why you are here?"

"I am hurt," I said. "Everyone thinks that all I do is snoop. Actually, nothing could be further from my thoughts at this moment." This was not strictly true. "Actually, I come in the guise of Cupid."

"A marriage proposal?" she said coolly. "I had heard that you were not married." The idea seemed to interest her about as much as looking for toads under rocks.

"Not at all. If that had been the case, my father would have called upon your guardian. No, I come on behalf of my good friend, Titus Annius Milo Papianus. He met you here a few days ago and was smitten, as might any man have been."

Instantly, she grew more animated. "Milo! He is no ordinary man, to be sure. I found him fascinating. But his family is unknown to me. He has an adoptive name. How did that come about?"

"His father was Caius Papius Celsus, a landholder from the south. When he came to Rome he had himself adopted by his maternal grandfather, Titus Annius Luscus. This was strictly for political reasons, so that he would have city residency and membership in an urban tribe." At least this was simple. A patrician pedigree might have forced me to drone on for an hour.

"But the rural tribes are more respectable," she pointed out. "All the best families belong to rural tribes."

"That was the old days, my lady. Power in Rome now resides in the urban mob, which Milo intends to lead. Forget names and lineages. Milo intends to make his own name and he is well on his way. Many men with fine old patrician names live in near-beggary. Marry respectability and that is all you get. With Milo you would lead what can only be described as an interesting life."

"That does sound intriguing. I suppose he has a city house of suitable magnificence?"

"One of the largest and best-staffed in Rome," I assured her. I suppose I should have told her that it was a fortress and its staff consisted of thugs, arena-bait and cutthroats such as one rarely encounters, but why deprive her of a unique surprise?

"I get so many suitors," she said, "and they are all so boring. I am twenty-seven years old, you know. I had all but decided to remain unmarried, even if that meant remaining a legal child under the care of Lucullus. This is the first interesting offer to come my way. You may inform Milo that I am willing to entertain his suit. He may call upon me informally, but he is to understand that any agreement must be between the two of us. I have sworn to open my veins rather than submit to an arranged marriage."

"Perfectly understandable. You could end up married to Cato otherwise. I am sure that this news will give Milo the greatest joy. Would you care for some more of this excellent Caecuban?" She shook her head. I do not believe she had so much as sipped at her own cup. I refilled mine. "Now that that is settled, I don't suppose you would like to enlighten me concerning the scandalous evening that has become the delight of all Rome?"

"I'm afraid that I can't," she said.

"Ah. Forbidden by ritual law, like everyone else?"

"Not a bit of it. I didn't go to Caesar's house that night."

The cup stopped halfway to my mouth. "You did not? But you were seen there."

Her eyes didn't flicker. "Then someone was mistaken or else lying. Only married women take part, and I wasn't about to waste an evening gossiping with a pack of wellborn girls half my age."

"Then I must have been misinformed," I said. "Please forgive me."

"Why? I haven't been offended. Tell Milo I shall look forward to hearing from him." She rose and extended her hand, which I took. "Good day, Decius Caecilius." I watched her walk away. That was pleasant, but it told me nothing of her truthfulness. Either she was lying, or Julia, was. I knew which one I preferred to believe.

I found Hermes waiting on a bench in the atrium. He looked up, annoyed, when I gestured for him to join me.

"You look like you ducked out and went to a tavern," he said. "Are you going to have to lean on me all the way home?"

"Nonsense," I said. "No one gets drunk on vintage as fine as I've been drinking." We left the house and walked toward the Forum.

"I've attended at banquets in houses as fine as this," he said. "I never realized the guests were puking from sheer joy."

"You are a vulgar little rascal," I chided. "You should not speak about your betters in such a fashion."

"You ought to hear how we slaves talk about you when there are no freemen about."

"You aren't earning yourself any favors this way," I warned him.

"Hah. You probably won't remember-uh-oh." His eyes went wide and so, I confess, did mine. A crowd of brutal-looking men swaggered toward us, blocking the narrow street. In center front was the ugliest of the lot: Publius Clodius Pulcher.

"Uh-oh, indeed," I muttered. "Hermes, be ready to back my play."

"Back you? What can you do against that lot?" The boy's voice quivered with terror.

"Just watch and keep your wits about you," I said reassuringly. I picked a level spot. To my left, a flight of steps led between two buildings to a higher street. Behind us, the street was relatively clear, but it ascended steeply. While I was by no means drunk, I wished belatedly that I had been more moderate with the Caecuban.

"Metellus! I have the feeling that you have been avoiding me! I am hurt!" He grinned his ugly, oily grin. Clodius had been making no formal calls and was dressed only in tunic and sandals. These latter were ordinary brown leather, although he was entitled to the thick-soled red buskins with the ivory crescent at the ankle. Even his tunic was the workingman's exomis, the Greek type that leaves the right shoulder and half the chest bare. Clodius, man of the people.

"You know how dearly I cherish your company, Publius," I said. "You have but to call at my house during my morning reception."

His laugh was loud and false. "When did a Claudian ever come calling on a Metellan?"

I waggled a finger at him. "Careful, Publius, your patricianship is showing. People might think you were wellborn, and you'll have wasted all that slumming and hanging around with low company."

"He's drunk," said one of the thugs.

"Drunk is as good a way to die as any," Clodius said. "Get him."

"Just a moment," I said, holding out a palm. "You have the advantage. Give me a moment." Ceremoniously, I removed my toga and folded it.

"He wants to make a fight of it," Clodius said. "I wouldn't have given him credit. Go ahead, Decius. Afterward we'll wrap you up in it, and you won't look so bad when your servants come to carry you home. You'll look better than poor Appius Nero did after you murdered him."

"I didn't kill him, Publius, you did, or maybe it was Clodia."

He went into his vein-popping routine again. "Enough of this! Kill him!"

As I have already said, running in a toga is futile. Since I was no longer encumbered with mine, I bounded like a deer up the steps to my left. When I reached the street at the top of the steps, I turned right, downhill. I survived the next few seconds only because Clodius and his men were temporarily surprised by my bolting. Only a fool could have expected me to stand and fight against such odds, but men are capable of endless folly, and Publius Clodius of more than most men.

Nonetheless, I could almost feel their breath on my heels as I dashed down the street, with startled pedestrians dodging out of my way. Romans were all too familiar with the sight of a man running for his life and knew how to behave accordingly. I mentally vowed a goat to Jove, asking him to cloud the eyes of the people before me. My greatest fear was that someone would recognize Clodius behind me and would try to stop me to curry favor with him.

I was far from Milo's territory and I did not know what Clodius's strength might be in this area. If I could make it to the Subura, I would be safe. Clodius and his men would probably not make it back out alive. Unfortunately, to make it all the way to the Subura I would have to be as swift and enduring as that Greek who ran with the news from Marathon to Athens. I cannot recall his name just now.

Our fine new colonial cities have beautiful, wide boulevards, flat as a pond and straight as a javelin. Rome has none. The streets I ran on rose and dipped, bent in serpentine curves or sharp angles, narrowed without warning and transformed into steps with no order or reason. This worked to my advantage, because I was recently returned from military service and Celer had insisted that his officers train as hard as the legionaries, to include broken-field running in armor. This stood me in good stead as I dodged, hopped, turned and leapt over the occasional recumbent drunk.

Clodius had no athletes in his following, and most of his ex-gladiators were well-drilled in arms but not in running. When I risked a glance over my shoulder, I saw that Clodius was close behind, but he had lost all but three or four of his men. The odds were getting better all the time.

I came to a warren of low wineshops and whores' cribs. The road had narrowed to an alley and took a right-angled turn to the right. On both sides rows of low doorways gave access to tiny cubicles and the services of their inhabitants. I ducked into one, and such was my state of heightened awareness that I still remember the sign above the doorway. It read: Phoebe: Skilled in Greek, Spanish, Libyan and Phoenician (this did not refer to languages). Price: 3 sesterces. 2 denarii for Phoenician. The smell within was rank, and from the back of the room came heavy breathing and the sound of flesh slapping rhythmically against flesh. I had my dagger and caestus out, and when a shadow crossed the doorway I lunged. There was a sharp indrawing of breath and the man toppled, clutching his belly. The face was bearded. Not Clodius, worse luck. Another man tripped over the one I had stabbed, and I kicked him in the jaw as he fell. I barged out the doorway, swinging at the first face I saw, and felt a jawbone crack under the bronze spikes of my caestus. Someone swung a curved short sword at me and I felt it draw a cold line along my shoulder, missing my throat by a finger's breadth. Before the man with the broken jaw had a chance to fall, I got my unwounded shoulder into him and sent him crashing into Clodius.

With a single leap I cleared the tangle of bodies and flailing limbs and was running at top speed down the alley. I passed a crowd seated in the open front of a wineshop, and they whistled and clapped in appreciation. In the years since, I have sometimes had cause to wonder what the Phoenician style might be. It must have been complicated. Two denarii was awfully expensive for a girl in that part of town.

My shoulder began to sting, but the fire in my lungs was worse. The alley opened onto a small plaze in front of a temple of Vertumnus. This gave me my bearings, and I ran toward the temple with the sound of sandals slapping close behind me. A few more of Clodius's men must have caught up with him. I veered to the right and went down the narrow street that ran between the temple and a towering tenement. Unwillingly, I had to slow down and tread carefully. The pavement before a tenement is often slick, because the wretches who inhabit such places are often too lazy to carry their chamberpots to the nearest sewer opening and just dump them into the street. Squawks and thuds behind me told me I was correct in being cautious.

The road began to level out, and I began to feel a bit of hope that I might get out of this alive. The great, hulking building just ahead of me was the Basilica Aemilia. I was looking at its unornamented rear, and I knew that if I could just get past it, I would be in the Forum, where even Publius Clodius might hesitate to murder me. My sides were cramping and my lungs were working so hard that I felt as if blood were about to burst forth from them.

Then I was past the basilica and down its steps and onto one of the wooden trial platforms in front of it, And, just my luck, there was a trial in progress. I knew that because it was crowded with men and a barrister was in mid-gesture, his beringed hands raised dramatically as he made the crowning point of his argument. I will never forget the look of horror on his face when I ran into him. We went sprawling across the platform, his snowy toga billowing about us like the sail of a ship carried away in a storm.

I came up in time to see Clodius bearing down on me, his face distorted with transcendent rage, purple as a triumphator's robe. In one hand he brandished a curved short sword. So he was the one who had cut me. I was swept up with the urge to do the same to him, only worse. The sword came down at me with a wild slash, which I managed to deflect with my caestus. I stabbed straight for his throat, but he lunged forward and ducked, throwing a shoulder into my belly and wrapping his arms around my waist. I went over backward, and this time we both rolled over the unfortunate lawyer. I struggled to keep Clodius from getting his sword arm free while he concentrated on biting my face off. I kneed him in the balls and that, at least, made him open his mouth, freeing my nose. Another good one to the cods and he squealed like a gelded pig. I broke his hold and scrambled out from beneath him, dealing a weak, backhanded blow to the side of his neck as I did so. It was enough to half-stun him and send him sprawling on his belly. I clambered onto his back and seized a handful of his thick, curly, greasy, goatlike hair and yanked his head back. I placed my dagger beneath his neck and was poised to cut his throat from larynx to spine when both my arms were grabbed and all but wrenched from their sockets. A lictor's fasces was placed across my throat and locked there by the official's arm in a unique variant of the common wrestling hold. The bundle of rods nestled into the crook of his elbow while his hand, on the back of my head, pressed my throat against the rods until the breath whistled in my nostrils. Another team of lictors applied the same treatment to Clodius.

The jury and spectators whistled and stamped at this rare entertainment. The lictors hauled us before the praetor like reluctant sacrifices.

"Who dares offend the majesty of a Roman court in this fashion?" The man in the curule chair wore an expression of cold fury. It was the distinguished praetor Caius Octavius, famed jurist and soldier and, incidentally, the true father of our esteemed First Citizen, who was still a burping baby in that year.

We croaked our names, the pressure of the fasces making it very difficult to articulate the simplest sounds. This raised a good laugh. I must admit that my voice sounded rather comical.

"And what prominent person has died," Octavius said, "that we have funeral games in the Forum?"

"Clodius and his thugs attacked me!" I said. "I was running for my life! Do you think I would seek a fight with a dozen armed men?"

"Just going about your business, eh?" said Octavius. "Just like any other citizen, with a caestus on one hand and a pugio in the other? Bearing arms within the pom-erium is another punishable offense."

"At least they're respectable weapons," I pointed out. "He was carrying a sica!"

"A pertinent point!" said one of the lawyers, unable to help himself. The distinction between honorable and dishonorable weapons was a strict one in Roman law. The glare Octavius gave the lawyer boded ill for the progress of the trial.

"What have you say for yourself, Publius Clodius?" the praetor demanded.

"I am a serving Roman official and cannot be charged with a criminal offense!" he said, gloating.

Octavius gestured with his baton toward a white-gowned figure seated near him. It was one of the Vestals. "You realize," he said, "that had one of you killed the other in this lady's presence, the survivor would have been taken outside the walls to the execution ground and there flogged to death with rods. There are few capital offenses left on the tables, but that is one of them."

"In that case," I said, nodding to the lictors, "I wish to thank these fine citizens for preventing me from killing that loathsome and deranged reptile over there."

"It is lucky for you," Octavius said, "that you intruded upon a court for extortion. Had this been the court for crimes of violence, I might have had you charged, tried and judged on the spot." He exaggerated. Actually, there was a good deal of oath-taking and posting of sureties before a trial could begin. "This is not the first time the two of you have been charged with public riot. You are a menace to the safety of all citizens."

"I protest!" I cried. "I was just minding my own-"

"Silence!" Octavius barked. He raised his eyes and gazed out over the Forum. "Where is the Censor Metellus?" He gestured to a lictor. "There he is, over by Sulla's monument. Fetch him." The man ran off and a few minutes later returned with my father. I could tell by the way he was glaring at me that the lictor had been giving him a colorful account of recent events.

"Noble praetor, what is your wish?" Father said.

"Cut-Nose, I am going to charge your son with public riot and bearing arms within the pomerium. I am also going to check the law books and see if a charge of crime against Maiestas is appropriate. I would like to do the same for Publius Clodius, but there is some question whether his quaestorship protects him. Will you stand surety for Decius the Younger if I release him to you?"

"I will," Father said.

"Then take him away. I will send to Pompey's camp for Clodius's elder brother, Appius. Perhaps if we can keep these two separated, we need not fear for the destruction of Rome and the sanctity of her courts." He truly had a gift for sarcasm.

"I will see to it that my son arrives for trial on the appointed day. No Roman is above the law."

"These two least of all," Octavius said wryly.

The lictors released me and I stooped to pick up my weapons. The charge had been made, so it didn't matter if I had them in my possession now. Clodius and I exchanged a final, mutual glare, and I turned to walk away with my father.

"You have always been an idiot," my father began as we walked across the Forum, "but this surpasses your previous enormities by a wide margin. Whatever possessed you to try to murder Clodius in a Roman court under the nose of the senior praetor?"

"I thought I might never get another chance!" I said.

"You were specifically instructed to keep away from him."

"I've done my best," I protested. "He sought me out. He set a dozen men on me. I had to run and I had to fight."

"Am I to take it, then, that the blood on your dagger is neither yours nor Clodius's? I thought it best not to ask in front of the praetor."

I shrugged, sending a dart of fire through my wounded shoulder. "Oh, there may be a body or two in the streets back there. Nobody who amounts to anything, just Clodius's hired scum."

"Good. I would hate to think I had raised a coward as well as a fool. How bad is that shoulder?"

"Kind of you to ask. It's painful and bleeding freely. I think it will need stitching. I'll go see Asklepiodes in the Trans-Tiber. He's sewed me up before."

"The question is, can I trust you to go there without getting into more trouble?" Of course, it never occurred to him to accompany me there.

"One fight a day is enough even for my glory-lusting spirit, Father." We were out of the Forum by this time, and passersby ogled at my wild appearance.

"I think you should leave the city for a while," Father said.

"But I just got back!"

"Rome can take only so much of your presence. A stint managing the estate at Beneventum might settle you a bit. The realities of farm work could only improve you."

There is a belief among us that the only respectable life is agriculture. Probably because it is the dullest life imaginable. Of course, there is no virtue in working the land. The virtue lies in owning the land. How instructing an overseer to boss a gang of slaves returns a man to the realities of tilling the soil escapes me, but many swear by it.

"I have an investigation to conduct, Father," I said. "I can't just break it off to go watch slaves spread manure under grape vines."

"Your wishes are of no importance," he said.

One of the most infuriating provisions of Roman law is the one conferring lifetime authority upon the paterfamilias. You can be the gray-haired commander of legions and conqueror of provinces, but if your father is still alive, you are still, legally, a child.

"It's a matter of state security," I insisted.

He gave a short, humorless laugh. "That business about the rites of that foreign goddess?"

"There is far more to it that that," I said with some urgency.

"Go on," he said, still walking from long habit at the standard legionary pace.

I gave him a somewhat truncated account of my findings to date, along with some speculations as to their significance. I did not identify Julia. He would assume that any woman who shared my taste for snooping must be unworthy.

"So you suspect Pompey is behind it, eh?" He said this grudgingly, but I could tell that his interest was piqued. Like the rest of the aristocratic party, he hated Pompey and feared that the man would crown himself king of Rome.

"No one else is so bold. He is the one who has a pack of tame Etruscan priests."

"And," Father mused, "he wants to settle his veterans on public lands in Tuscia."

"He does?" I said. This was new to me.

"Yes, as you would know if you ever paid any attention to important public business instead of crawling through every sewer in the city."

"I've only been in the Senate for a few days," I said.

"That does not excuse you. And you realize that your vaporings are built upon the words of some of the most degenerate people in Rome?"

"I always take that into account," I said. A sudden inspiration struck me.

"Tell me, how did Capito stand on the question of settling Pompey's veterans?" At this question Father actually stopped in his tracks and stared at me as if at some wonderful apparition sent by the gods. I wiped blood from my upper lip with the back of my caestus. My nose was bleeding inside and out from Clodius's bite.

"There may be something in your mad sophistry after all. Capito opposed the settlements most violently."

"So does more than half the Senate. What was Capito's particular objection?" We were nearing Father's house by this time. We presented an odd spectacle, I must admit: the dignified Censor in his toga praetexta and I, who looked like the receiver of the second-place award in a munera. And the subject was politics, as always.

"He claimed it would upset the public order and give Pompey a power base near Rome and so forth; everyone says that. But the real reason was that his family leases a huge tract of the ager publicus in Tuscia, an area that will be cut up into farm plots for Pompey's veterans if the legislation goes through."

I grinned, but it made my mouth hurt. "So Capito's family has been farming and grazing that land for several generations, paying the state at a nominal rate set a hundred or more years ago?"

"Closer to two hundred."

"Oh, the elevated and patriotic motives of our Senators," I said.

"You'll see worse than that in the Senate, if you live," Father said. By this time we were at his gate.

"Could you send a slave to my house?" I asked. "My boy, Hermes, should be there by now with my toga. Have him meet me at the surgery of Asklepiodes. He knows where it is and bring me a tunic."

Father popped his fingers and a slave came to take my instructions. The man ran off and we continued with every Roman's favorite subject.

"Where does Caesar stand on these questions?" I asked.

"As a popular, he is for giving the land to the veterans, but he favors the ager publicus in Campania. A bit farther from Rome, but the best farmland in Italy."

"They don't seem connected, do they? What have those two concocted between them? I think it must be behind all this."

"They both argue that their settlements will strengthen the state," Father said while I dripped on the tiles of his atrium. "Be a reservoir from which to draw soldiers for future generations. All that sort of talk."

In spite of everything, I managed a short laugh. "What pap! We all talk about the fine old times of the founding fathers and the virtues of the Italian peasant, backbone of the state. Does anyone really believe we can conjure those times back, like some necromancer raising the dead to prophesy? How long will those stalwart veterans last on their idyllic little farm plots, Father? How long before they sell up and leave the land to join the urban mob here in Rome? What peasant, however hard-working, can compete with latifundia the size of small countries and worked by thousands of slaves?"

"They might last for Pompey's lifetime," Father said. "That's long enough for his purposes."

"How very true."

"And what would you do?" he asked, his face getting red. "How would you change things?"

"Break up the latifundia for a start," I said. "Forbid the importation of new slaves and the selling of Italians into slavery. Tax those plantations until the owners have to sell off land."

"Tax Roman citizens?" Father bellowed. "You're mad!"

"We're dying by inches as it is," I insisted. I usually didn't talk like this, but I was very tired and had lost a lot of blood. "I'd pay the owners a small, very small, indemnity and repatriate those slaves right out of Italy. They're the root of most of our problems. The fact is, we Romans have grown too damned lazy to do our own work. All we do anymore is fight and steal. We have slaves to do all the rest."

"This is wild talk," Father said. "You sound worse than Clodius and Caesar combined, far worse."

I laughed again, this time quietly and a little shakily. "I'm no radical, Father," I said. "You know that. And I'm not going out into the streets to rabble-rouse, if only because I know how futile it would be. Reform or reaction, all they mean is Roman blood in Roman streets. We see enough of that as it is."

"See that you curb your tongue, then. Talk gets you killed as efficiently as action, these days."

"I don't suppose," I said, "that I could talk you out of a litter and some bearers to take me to my physician?"

"All that bad, is it? Oh, very well." He called to another slave and there was some scurrying about. The old man was mellowing with age. Time was when he would have lectured me half the day about how he had marched for fifty miles in full armor with wounds far worse. Maybe he had. I never claimed to be especially rugged.

The ride to the Statilian ludus was a bit hazy. The sun kept getting brighter, then dimmer. I think only the fortification of that excellent Caecuban kept me from passing out. As it was, the gods sent me visions. I thought I saw the goddess Diana, in her brief hunting tunic, bow and quiver, but then she became Clodia, and she was laughing at me. Clodia had laughed at me before, with good reason. I was about to tell her what a scheming slut she was when I realized that it was not Clodia but Fausta. She said something that I could not understand, and I tried to ask her to repeat it, but then I saw that it was not Fausta but her brother, Faustus. The metamorphosis had been subtle because the twins were so alike. He was reaching something out to me in a beringed hand, but that did not seem right, because soldiers rarely wear a great many rings, especially large poison rings. Another transformation had occurred. Now it was Appius Claudius Nero, and he was holding something, something he urgently wanted me to take, trying to speak despite the puncture in his throat and the dent in his brow.

Then a huge shadow reared up behind Nero. It was a four-footed beast towering over him, and its great paw descended, crushing him before he could give me whatever it was. I looked up and saw that the beast was Cerberus, the guard-dog of the underworld. I knew this because, unlike ordinary dogs, he was gigantic and had three heads. They were not dog heads, though, but human heads, like one of those hybrid Egyptian deities. The head on the right was that of Crassus, regarding me with those cold blue eyes. That on the left was the jovial head of Pompey. The one in the center was in shadow and I could not recognize it, but I knew that this one was the master of the other two, else why was he in the center? Then someone else was in front of Cerberus. This was Julia, and she, too, was reaching out for me. Her hand touched my shoulder.

"Decius?" Asklepiodes gripped my unwounded shoulder lightly and shook me. His face wavered in my vision, then solidified.

"I really would have preferred Julia," I said.

"What?" His elegantly bearded Greek face showed concern. "I was not expecting to see you again quite so soon, Decius." He turned and shouted something over his shoulder. A pair of gladiators came and lifted me out of the litter as lightly as if I had been an infant and carried me to the physician's quarters, where his servants efficiently stripped and washed me as he examined my wounds.

"Up to your old activities again, eh? Are those human teeth marks I see on your face?"

"Actually, they belong to a rodent, a species of weasel, or perhaps a stoat." His poking and prodding elicited the usual flares of agony. This was the part he liked.

"Well, I can stitch and patch you up enough to keep you alive and relatively mobile, but the ladies will shun your company for a few days. Speaking of ladies, who is Julia?"

I averted my eyes as the silent slaves brought in horsehair sutures, wickedly curved needles and ornate bronze pliers.

"I was confused. I had a vision on the way here, and the last thing I saw was a lady of my acquaintance named Julia."

"She must be exceptional, since you seem to prefer her company to mine despite your manifest need for my attentions. What sort of vision? I am not especially skilled in the interpretation of dreams, but I know of some skilled practitioners not far from here."

"It wasn't a real dream, but a sort of waking vision. I was aware of what was going on around me while it happened." I spoke mainly to take my mind off his activities. I am not among those person who believe that all their dreams are of great significance, and wish to tell you all about them, at great length. I rarely remember them, those I do remember are usually duller than my waking life, and such visions as the gods have given me have usually come to me under just such circumstances as these: wounds, blood loss or severe blows to the head.

I related my vision to Asklepiodes, and he sat facing me with chin in hand, murmuring occasional wise noises. When I had finished, he resumed his horrid labors.

"The appearance of persons with whom you have recently been involved is not at all unusual, even in the common or nonportentous dream," he said. "But the appearance of a mythical beast is always of the highest significance. Does Cerberus have a significance among you that he does not have among Greeks?"

"None that I know of," I said. "He is the watchdog of Pluto, who keeps the dead from leaving the underworld or the living from entering."

"Pluto, then: How does he differ from Hades?"

"Well, besides being lord of the dead, he is also the god of wealth."

"He is so among us, too, and by the same name, Pluto. That may be from confusion with Plutus, the son of Demeter, who is also a personification of wealth. But then, this may be because the name of both is derived from the very word for 'wealth,' which is-" He broke off when I squealed almost as Clodius had recently. In his pedantic reverie, he had dug a needle in too deep. "Oh, please forgive me."

"You're enjoying this," I said.

"I always enjoy learned discourse," he said, deliberately obtuse. "But it may be that wealth is behind all this."

"It usually is, when men plot villainy," I said. "But I think it may be more significant that Cerberus has three heads. One body, three heads; that is important."

"You saw the heads of Pompey and Crassus, enemies you have come up against in the past. But the third was unclear?"

"Unclear, and the greatest of the three. How can that be? Who could be greater than Pompey and Crassus?" This, truly, seemed an impossibility.

"I don't suppose it could be Clodius? You are rather obsessive about him."

I almost laughed, but I knew how it would pull at the stitches. "No, not Clodius. He is a flunky and a criminal, nothing more."

"Then what of the boy Appius Claudius Nero? What was he trying to give to you, and why did the three-part beast crush him?"

"That," I said, "I would give a great deal to know."