Catilina's riddle

'Still, a poison that kills a doddering old slave may not work on a strong man of forty-seven, so you tried it out on one of your hapless slaves, didn't you, Claudia? How did you pick the poor fellow? Had he been showing signs of laziness, or was he weakened by bad joints, or had he offended you somehow? Or was he simply a good match for me, of about the same size and age, so that you could make sure of an adequate dosage to finish me off?'

She stared into the distance but made no answer:

'Wretched slave, to have such a mistress! Once you'd killed him with your poison — well, there was no use wasting the corpse, was there? Send another signal to Gordianus! A warning of things to come! Again, you removed the head to avoid any possibility of having him recognized, and delivered him via Congrio. Like Nemo, he was discovered by my daughter. Does that make you feel nothing, to know that you gave such a shock to a little girl? I suppose not, knowing what monstrosities you've shown yourself capable of committing.'

Claudia abruptly stood. 'I didn't come here to be judged, by you or anyone else. Your message said you wanted to come to some resolution and indicated that you had a proposition for me. Make it now and spare me your accusations and hand-wringing.'

'Sit down, Claudia. It's a poor murderess who can't bear to hear her crimes recited.'

'Poisoning a slave is not murder!'

'Ah, but kidnapping a freeborn child must surely be a crime.'

'That's enough!' she said, and turned to go. I seized her shoulders and pushed her down onto the stump.

'You swore you wouldn't hurt me!' she shrieked, and pulled out a long, thin dagger. I knocked it from her hand and she covered her face. I looked hurriedly around, but saw no one in the bushes. She had come armed, but alone.

'Yes, Claudia, I swore it and I meant it, though neither gods nor men would object if I were to strangle you here on this spot. You can drop your haughty demeanour; it doesn't suit you. You'll listen to all I have to say, and together we'll arrive at the truth. Nothing can proceed without that, so don't deny it when I say you intended to poison me. Congrio has confessed! You grew impatient. Months passed, intimidation had failed to move me, and so you were finally ready to resort to the murder of a freeborn citizen — ah, but only an upstart plebeian! Did you think that with me gone you could more easily pressure Bethesda and Eco to sell the farm to you? Or would you have poisoned them as well?

'You wanted Congrio to poison me. Your agent kept pestering him, but Congrio resisted. That was a little too much for him, a little too dangerous. Clementus he had poisoned for his own protection, but to murder his master was too grave a sin. And then disaster — Congrio and your agent were indiscreet and let a little girl overhear them. You know the rest. What I don't know is what you could have been thinking when you sent your men to leave Diana in the mine. Were they meant to strangle her and leave her body there? Were they to abandon her alive and let her slowly starve to death? Or would you have rescued her in time and sold her into slavery, sending her to some foreign city on a ship out of Ostia while her parents mourned her for dead?'

Claudia's eyes darted wildly. I stepped closer, making it impossible for her to bolt. 'I said that I wouldn't harm you, Claudia, and I meant it, though at this moment I regret the promise. You should be punished, Claudia — for your duplicity, for your arrogance, for murder, for kidnapping my daughter and making my wife mad with worry. But where would it end? Your cousins have too much bile in them and too much idle time; I should never feel safe if I exacted my just revenge on you. If only one could trust the gods to strike the balance against creatures such as yourself! But I've seen too much of the world to trust justice, human or divine. We make our own justice in our own way, just as you and I are going to strike a bargain, here and now.'

'A bargain?'

'An agreement, Claudia, from which we shall move forward and never look back. My sons won't be satisfied. They think you should be destroyed, like a wild dog. Nor will Bethesda be happy. She would like to pluck out your eyes and make you swallow them. But they will abide by my decision. And my decision is that you should have this farm'

She looked at me with such a blank expression that I thought she hadn't heard me. Then she looked out at the farm and I saw a glimmer in her eyes. 'Is this a trick, Gordianus?'

'Not a trick, a bargain. You shall have the farm, just as you wanted. We shall go down to Rome, to the place in the Forum where the records are kept, and I shall sign over the deed to you. And in return…'

She turned her head and looked at me sharply.

'In return, you shall give me the house on the Palatine, which you inherited from Lucius, complete with all its furnishings.'

'Absolutely nod'

'No? What use do you have for the house? It means nothing to you.'

'It's a splendid house, worth a considerable fortune!' 'Yes, probably worth more than my farm, considering all the statuary that Lucius collected, and the fine marble he installed, and the elegant furniture in each room, and the prime location on the Palatine. A valuable house, indeed I'm sure that you don't think a mere nobody like me has any business living in such a house, any more than I had inheriting Lucius's farm, but the fact is that Lucius meant for me to have a legacy from him, and I will. He intended it to be the farm, because he thought the farm would please me. It has pleased me, but it has also brought me much grief

'You, on the other hand, must want the farm very badly to have schemed so doggedly to take it from me. You'll double your holdings and have land on both sides of the ridge. You shall be the envy of your cousins, though, knowing your cousins, I shouldn't care to have their envy. So you see, the trade is equitable. Can you devise any other solution to the pass we've come to?'

She sat gazing out at the farm and began to tremble. 'You condemn me for scheming against you, Gordianus, but how can you know how much this land means to me? I've wanted it ever since I was a little girl. I used to daydream for hours that it was mine. But the land went to Lucius. Every year that passed without his marrying and having a son, I rejoiced, for there was always the chance that he would leave it to me, if only I outlived him. Patience, patience! But then Gnaeus began complaining in the family councils about his lot, and it was tacitly decided that he should be put ahead of anyone else in our wills. Even so, there was always a chance that the land would come to me in time. Patience and hope! Then, when Lucius died and left the property to a stranger from the city — oh, you can't imagine the shock! It had slipped away from me forever! But now…'

'Then you accept the bargain.'

She took a deep breath. 'You say you want me to leave everything at the house on the Palatine intact. You'll do the same with the farm?'

How easily she slipped from nostalgia to hard dealing, I thought. 'Of course. What would I do with farm implements in the city?'

'What about the slaves? Do they come with the farm?' 'Except for the house slaves I brought with me. Yes, you'll get the field slaves.'

'Including Aratus?'

How I hated to leave him in the hands of such a mistress! But what would Aratus be without the farm he had been running for so many years? 'Yes, Aratus will remain.'

'And what about Congrio?'

I stared at an empty blue patch of sky. 'By rights I should put him to death,' I said quietly.

'No one would blame you,' said Claudia, pensively studying her cuticles. "Though I know it would be hard for you to kill him. It goes against your nature.'

'I wouldn't have to commit the deed myself Congrio's betrayal was unthinkable — conspiring against his master, kidnapping his master's daughter. If I advertised his crime, I imagine I could gather a great number of citizens who would be happy to join in stoning such a slave to death, as an example to others. But of course that would mean advertising your involvement, as well.'

Claudia bit at one of her cuticles uneasily.

'Or I might sell him, simply to be rid of him,' I said. 'A cook of such skill would bring a great price. But how could I let loose such a viper into another man's household without warning him, and what man would buy such a slave if he knew the truth? No, I thought the matter through, last night, while I was deciding on my proposition to you. Congrio comes with the farm, whether you want him or not.'

Her eyes lit up. Could she actually eat Congrio's cooking again, knowing the treachery of which he was capable? Then let her have him! Let the vipers nest together!

'Do you accept my offer, Claudia?'

She breathed in deeply and exhaled. 'I accept.'

'Good. Then take one last look and go back to your own house. The property isn't yours yet, and until it is I want you to stay away from me and my family, and tell your cousins to do the same. We shall let our advocates settle the matter. I never want to see your face again.'

She stood, slowly surveyed the view, then turned and began to walk away, but after a few steps she stopped and turned back, not quite enough, to show her face. 'Gordianus, do you believe in the gods? Do you believe that Fortune decrees whether we prosper or suffer, and the Fates determine the hour of our death?'

'What are you talking about, Claudia?'

'When I was a girl, barely old enough, I had a baby. Never mind by whom, or how it came about. My father was furious. He said that no one must ever know, so he hid me away, and when the child came he himself tore it from me and carried it up to a wild, hidden place on Mount Argentum and left it there. I wept and screamed, because I was young and in pain and hardly understood what was happening. I told him he had killed my baby, but he said that he had only exposed it to the gods, and that if it died it was by their will.

'I won't apologize for anything I've done to get the thing I want most in the world. My apologies would mean nothing to you, Gordianus, and nothing to me, either. But I want you to know that I would never have killed your daughter outright. When that fool Congrio sent her to me, what was I to do? I decided to send her up on the mountain and to put her in the mine.'

'Where she might have fallen to her death!' I said. 'Or starved, or died from the cold.'

'Yes, but none of those endings would have come from my own hand. Don't you see? I left it up to the gods. And this is how it turned out. Your daughter is safe, and you shall have a fine house in Rome, and I shall have the farm. I did the right thing, after all.'

'Claudia,' I said, taking a deep breath and clenching my teeth, 'I think you should go from here very quickly, or else I shall break my vow, and your neck along with it!'

XLII

'Papa, there's a man to see you at the front door!' said Diana, out of breath from running.

I put down the scroll I was reading. 'Diana, how many times must I tell you that we have a slave who answers the door? I don't want you doing it yourself Here in the city¹—'

"Why not?'

I sighed. At least her bad experience with Congrio had not made her timid. I yawned, stretched my arms above my head, and looked at the statue of Minerva on the far side of the garden. Made of bronze, she was painted so realistically that I often thought I could see her breathing. She was the only female in the household who never talked back to me, though like the others she never seemed to listen, either. Lucius must have paid a great sum for her.

'Besides, Papa, I recognize the man. He says he's a neighbour.'

'Great Jupiter, surely not one of our old neighbours from the farm.' I imagined one of the Claudii standing at my front door and felt a tremor of alarm. I got up from my chair and crossed the garden with Diana at my heels.

The man at the front door turned out to be two men, accompanied by a retinue of slaves. The one whom Diana had recognized was Marcus Caelius. I calculated the months in my head and realized it was almost exactly a year since he had come to the farm and called on me to pay back my debt to Cicero. How Diana had recognized him I didn't know, for Caelius was clean-shaven now and his hair had an ordinary cut; the look made fashionable by Catilina and his circle the year before was not to be seen anywhere in Rome that summer.

The citizen beside him was Cicero. The former consul had gained a bit of weight since I had last seen him walking across the Forum in triumph after putting the conspirators to death.

'You see,' said Diana, pointing at Caelius, 'I told you I knew the man.'

'Citizens, excuse my daughter's manners.'

'Nonsense,' said Cicero. 'Never have I been greeted by anyone more charming. May we come in, Gordianus?'

While their retinues remained outside, Cicero and Caelius followed me to the garden. A slave brought cups and a clay bottle, and as we sipped the wine I watched the two men appraise their surroundings. Cicero's gaze lingered on the statue of Minerva. I knew that he also had a statue of the goddess in his house, but mine, I suspected, was considerably more valuable. I smiled at the thought

'Your new house is quite impressive,' said Cicero,

'Quite,' echoed Caelius.

'Thank you.'

'So you gave up the farm,' said Cicero. 'After I worked so hard to make sure you got it.'

'Your work wasn't wasted, Cicero. The farm became this house, as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly.'

'You must explain that to me some time,' said Cicero. 'Meanwhile, welcome back to the city. How you ever thought you could stand to leave it, I don't know. We're neighbours now, if you can imagine that. My house is just over that way.'

'Yes, I know. From the terrace off my bedroom upstairs I have a splendid view of it, with the Capitoline Hill behind.'

'And I'm your neighbour as well,' remarked Caelius. 'I've just taken an apartment in a building around the comer. The rent is exorbitant, but I've come into a bit of money lately.'

'Really?' I said, thinking it would be impolitic to inquire where his money came from.

'What a beautiful garden,' said Cicero. 'And what a fine statue of the goddess. If you should ever wish to part with it, I'm sure I could offer you—'

'I think not, Cicero. like this house, it came to me by way of a very dear, departed friend.'

'I see. Of course.' He sipped his wine. 'But we didn't just come to admire your good fortune, Gordianus. I have a small favour to ask of you.'

'Do you?’ I said, feeling a chill despite the warm summer sun.

'Yes.' He looked vaguely distressed 'Ah, but first, I wonder if the private facilities are as impressive as the more public ones?'

'You'll find a privy down that hall,' I said Cicero excused himself.

Caelius leaned forward 'Dyspepsia,' he said confidentially. 'And loose bowels. It's been worse than ever in the last year. Do you know, I sometimes wonder how Cicero manages to finish a speech before the Senate.'

'Thank you for sharing that confidence, Marcus Caelius.'

He laughed 'Actually, his digestion improved considerably for a while after the Senate passed that bill in the spring.'

'What bill?’

'The one that pardoned everyone concerned in putting the conspirators to death.'

'Ah, yes, I wasn't yet back in the city when that happened But my son wrote to me with the details: "To all members of the Senate and to all magistrates, witnesses, informers, and other agents involved in any violations of law which may have been committed in relation to the execution without trial of Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, Gaius Cornelius Cethegus, et alii, the Senate of Rome grants permanent immunity against prosecution." In other words, the Senate rather sweepingly let everyone off the hook.'

'And a good thing for Cicero. For a while he was truly afraid he might be brought to trial for murder.'

'And why not? The executions were completely illegal'

'Please, Gordianus, don't say such a thing when Cicero returns! Or at least wait until I'm gone.'

'Leaving, so soon?'

'I can't stay. I have to see a man in the Street of the Weavers about buying some rugs for my new apartment. He uses a new dye that no one else has. It duplicates exactly the green of the eyes of a certain widow I'm trying to impress.'

'You've always had such refined taste, Marcus Caelius—'

'Thank you.'

'—that I'm left puzzled by your choice of loyalties. Knowing both of them as well as you must have, and having wavered between them, how did you ever come to choose Cicero over Catilina?'

'Gordianus, really! You show your own lack of good taste in asking; such a question.'

'Because it impugns your youthful idealism?'

'No, because it impugns my common sense. Why would I have chosen to be on the losing side in such a conflict? Oh, yes, I know what you mean about Catilina, and about Cicero. But sometimes, Gordianus, expediency wins out over good taste.' He sipped his wine. Keeping an eye on the door through which Cicero had departed, he leaned forward and spoke in a confidential tone. 'But if you want to know the truth of the matter, the real truth—'

'As opposed to the false truth?'

'Exactly. The fact of the matter is this: all during the last year I was serving neither Catilina nor Cicero, though both of them believed me to be their man.'

'Neither of them? Who, then?'

'My old mentor, Crassus.' When he saw the look of disbelief on my face, Caelius shrugged. 'Well, he needed someone to keep an eye on both Cicero and Catilina and to report back to him on anything that might concern him; I was able to do both jobs at once. Do you think that Cicero is the only man who keeps spies all over Rome? And Crassus pays considerably better.'

'As you should know, if all three of them were paying you at once. I supposed you must have become rather confused sometimes, spying on yourself. Crassus, you say?'

He smiled. 'I tell you this in confidence, Gordianus, knowing that you're one of the few men in Rome I can trust to keep a secret. Knowing, too, that you're not really sure whether to believe me or not.'

‘I wonder, Caelius, if you yourself know whom you truly serve.'

He sat back with a bemused look on his handsome young face. 'You know, Gordianus, I think it suits you to be back in the city. You seem so much more relaxed, so much sharper than when we met on your farm.'

A moment later Cicero rejoined us, looking relieved. Caelius stood and bade us both farewell.

'Leaving so soon?' said Cicero.

'It has something to do with rugs and green eyes,' I explained. Cicero smiled to cover his puzzlement, and Caelius departed.

'Now, as I was saying, I have a small favour to ask of you, Gordianus.'

'I wasn't aware that I owed you one.'

'Gordianus, look around you!' he said, indicating the splendour of the garden, with its statuary and its fountains. "You yourself just gave me credit for—'

'Credit once removed. Believe me, Cicero, I earned this house myself, every stone of id' I spoke with such passion that he drew back to reconsider his rhetorical thrust

'Very well. But hear the favour I ask before you reject it'

'It seems to me that if anyone is owed a favour between us, it's me. Call it reparations, if you will. Some months ago, while I was still living in the country, considerable damage was done to my house by men from Rome. They were pursuing Catilina and thought to find him under my roof. Who could have sent them on such an errand? Who authorized them to ransack my house and cause such great distress to my family and myself? Had they found him, I have no doubt they would have slain Catilina on the spot Even then it struck me that such an act would have amounted to murder.'

Cicero made a face. Either I was beginning to wear on his nerves, or his dyspepsia was returning. 'Very well, for the sake of argument, Gordianus, well say that I owe you a favour. Is it such a terrible thing to have the Father of the Fatherland in your debt? And would you not extend another favour to him, knowing his credit is good? Will you hear me out or not, Gordianus?'

I put down my wine and crossed my arms.

Cicero smiled. 'It's such a simple thing, really. Well, then, officially, there were no survivors from Catilina's army after the battle of Pistoria…'

'So I've heard,' I said, my mind suddenly flooded with memories of blood and steel. 'They all died with their wounds in the front'

'Yes, Romans to the end, no matter how woefully misguided. Nonetheless, unofficially it's come to my ears that there were at least two survivors of that battle, a man and his son.'

'Really? How do you^- know that?'

'I still have my spies, Gordianus. There's something I want from those survivors.'

'Not more revenge, I hope. Surely there were enough trials and purges in the months that followed Catilina's defeat. I thought all the enemies of the state had been rounded up and punished already.'

'No, nothing like that From those survivors, I want their memories of Catilina's speech.'

'His speech?'

'The one he delivered to his troops before the battle. He must have given a speech; every Roman general does.'

'Perhaps. Why are you so interested in it?'

'To complete the record of my year as consul. I have copies of all the speeches I made against Catilina, and Tiro and his staff made a complete transcript of the debate that took place in the Senate before the executions. I have copies of the incriminating letters that doomed the conspirators, and a copy of the speech that Antonius's lieutenant made to his troops before the battle.'

'Because Antonius was crippled by a hangnail.'

'By gout!' said Cicero in the sympathetic tones of a man who suffers from chronic dyspepsia. 'But what I don't have, what no one has, is a copy of the speech that Catilina delivered to his troops. Forget my talk of a favour; I should gladly reward with silver the man who could recall that speech for me.'

'Does this have something to do with your memoirs, Cicero?'

'Perhaps. Why not? Catilina's conspiracy against the state was one of the most crucial events in the whole history of the Republic. As for the part I played in suppressing it, there are those who go so far as to say that in the hours when I wielded absolute power I fulfilled Plato's vision of the philosopher-king. Perhaps they exaggerate, but still—'

'Please, Cicero!' Now it was I who felt dyspeptic.

'What I want from you, Gordianus, is a transcript of Catilina's speech, for posterity. Taken down at your convenience, however you like. You could make notes at your leisure, or I could send over Tiro to take your dictation.'

'In his famous shorthand?'

'If you speak that fast.'

I wrinkled my nose at the idea of putting Catilina's last public words into the hands of his destroyer. And yet, why should I let those words be lost forever? What other legacy of him would survive? No statues of Catilina would ever be erected in Rome; no histories would ever be written to glorify him; he had left no son to carry on his name or his cause. In a few years all that would remain of Catilina would be a series of speeches vilifying him before all the worid.

There was also, of course, the water mill. It was Lucius Claudius who had inspired it and Catilina who had solved the riddle of its design. The mill was my private memorial to them both. Before I handed the farm over to Claudia I had seriously considered burning the mill, thinking she was unworthy to possess it, I even went so far as to equip the slaves with torches and hammers one day, intending to demolish it. But the sight of its wheel elegantly turning in the water caused me to desist. I chose to leave it standing as a memorial to all of us who had a hand in creating it.

The sound of Cicero clearing his throat called me back to the present. 'Even if I was present at Pistoria,' I said, 'and even if I wanted to help you, Cicero, what makes you think I could remember Catilina's speech?'

'I'm certain that you could, Gordianus. Your memory for such things is very keen. It's your nature and your vocation to remember fine details, especially words. I've often heard you quote word for word from arguments and statements made years before.'

'True enough, Cicero. A man can't escape his memory. Do you know what I happened to remember a moment ago, when I saw you on my doorstep? Words spoken years ago by a man long dead. Yes, it was a little over eighteen years ago, in your old house over by the Capitoline Hill, on the night after the trial of Sextus Roscius. Do you remember? We arrived at your house, you and I and Tiro, and found Sulla's bodyguards and lackeys outside, and the dictator himself was waiting for us in your library.'

Cicero drew in a breath, as if the encounter still unnerved him. 'Of course I remember. I thought we were all going to have our heads cut off and mounted on stakes.'

'So did I. But for a monster who had just stubbed his toe, Sulla was surprisingly gracious, though not particularly flattering. He said that I was a dog that went digging up bones, and asked if I never got tired of getting worms and mud in my snout.'

'Did he say such a thing? I vaguely remember.'

'When poor Tiro spoke out of turn, Sulla said he was hardly good-looking enough to be allowed such liberties and suggested that you beat him'

'That sounds like Sulla.'

'And do you remember what he said about you?'

Cicero's face stiffened. 'I'm not sure I know what you mean.'

' "Stupidly daring or madly ambitious, or maybe both," he said. A clever young man and a splendid orator, just the sort of fellow he'd like to recruit to his ranks, but he knew you'd never accept such an offer, because your head was still too full of republican virtue and scorn for tyranny. And then he said — let me see if I can quote him word for word: "You have delusions of piety, delusions about your own nature. I'm a wiry fox and my nose is still keen, and in this room I smell another fox. I tell you this, Cicero: The path you've chosen in life leads to only one place in the end, and that is the place where I stand. Your path may not take you as far, but it will take you nowhere else. Look at Lucius Sulla and see your mirror.'''

Cicero fixed me with a gelid gaze. 'I recall no such words.'

'No? Then perhaps you shouldn't trust my recollection of Catilina's speech.'

His gaze thawed a bit, 'What were you doing in Catilina's camp, anyway?'

'Retrieving a lost lamb who turned out to be a lion cub. But don't you know the details already, from your spies?'

'Some things my spies can't tell me, such as what resides unspoken in a man's heart. Oh, Gordianus, had I known you would be so susceptible to Catilina's corruption, I would never have sent Caelius to ask for your help. I thought that you would see through him in an instant. Instead, I think he must have seduced you, after all. Though not literally, I hope,' he added, laughing.

I gazed across the garden at the statue of Minerva. Her bland silence had a way of calming me; detachment from anger is one part of wisdom. 'Do you have no regrets about your year as consul, Cicero?'

'None at all.'

'No nagging doubts about the precedents you set for the future of this frayed and fragile republic? No secret wish that you could have broken free of the Optimates and struck a blow for change?'

He shook his head and smiled condescendingly. 'Change is the enemy of civilization, Gordianus. What is the point of innovation, when things are already in the hands of the Best People? What you might consider progress can only be decay and decadence.'

'But, Cicero, you're a New Man! You rose from an unknown family to become consul. You stand for change.'

'To be sure, a newcomer of outstanding gifts may sometimes rise to join the Best, just as a high-bom patrician like Catilina may fall into ruin and disgrace. Such is the balance of the gods—'

"The gods! How can you be an atheist one day and declare yourself the vessel of Jupiter the next?'

'I was speaking metaphorically, Gordianus,' said Cicero patiently, as if my literal-mindedness were an eccentricity to be indulged.

I took a deep breath and gazed at Minerva, but my equanimity was at an end. ‘I think I must be alone now, Cicero.'

'Of course. I'm sure I can find my way to the door.' He stood up but did not turn away. Instead he looked down at me expectantly.

'Very well,' I finally said. 'Send Tiro around tomorrow morning, if you like, with his writing materials. I shall duplicate Catilina's speech from memory as best I can.' Cicero nodded and turned to go with a smile on his lips. 'And perhaps Tiro will recall Sulla's words more clearly than you do,' I added, and saw Cicero's shoulders stiffen almost imperceptibly.

EPILOGUE

Four years have now passed since Cicero's visit to my new house on the Palatine.

I thought then that the story was finished, as much as such matters can ever be finished. But it seems to me now that recent events have transpired to give a more fitting ending. Like the statue of Jupiter that took years to put in place, it was simply a matter of time.

The intervening years have seen the continued ascendancy of Caesar, who two years ago formed a coalition (or triumvirate, as they call it in the Forum) with Crassus and Pompey, and who last year was elected consul, at the age of forty-one. Now Caesar is off to Gaul, putting down a troublesome tribe called the Helvetii. I wish him well in his military endeavours, if only because my son is with him.

Shortly after our return to Rome, Meto enlisted under the charge of Marcus Mummius, but he didn't care for Pompey, and now serves under Caesar. His choice of a military career baffles me, but I long ago accepted it. (He has always been inordinately proud of the battle scar he received at Pistoria.) In his latest letter, posted from the town of Bibracte in the land of the Aedui, Meto writes of going into battle against the Helvetii with an account that makes my hair stand on end. How did the winsome little boy I adopted ever grow so inured to the sight of blood and gore? Before the engagement began, Meto writes, Caesar had all the horses sent out of sight, beginning with his own, thus placing every Roman in equal danger — a gesture familiar to me from my one experience of battle under a less fortunate commander. Meto assures me that Caesar is a military genius, but this is hardly reassuring to a father who would prefer a son humble and alive to one covered with glory and dead.

I write to him often, never knowing if my letters will reach him. The battle at Pistoria made us closer in a way, even as it widened the gulf between us. It is easier to open my heart to him in a letter, addressing myself to the image of him I conjure up from memory, than to speak to him face to face. My greatest fear is that I may be writing words to a young man already dead, without my knowing it.

I append copies of two of my letters to him written some months apart, the first from the month of Aprilis:

To my beloved son Meto, serving under the command of Gaius Julius Caesar in Gaul, from his loving father in Rome, may Fortune be with you.

The night is warm, and made even warmer by the heat radiating from the flames which shoot up from a burning house nearby.

Let me explain.

A little while ago I was minding my own business, reading in the garden by the last of the daylight. I noticed that the darkening sky had an oddly reddish tinge, but this I attributed to a florid sunset. I was about to call for a lamp when a slave came to say that I had a caller, and our neighbour Marcus Caelius burst into the garden asking if I could see the fire from the terrace upstairs. Together we rushed to my bedroom, where Bethesda already stood transfixed on the terrace, watching Cicero's house go up in flames.

A few days ago Cicero fled into exile, hounded out of the city by the populist tribune Clodius. The reaction against Cicero has been building for some time. There are still those who praise his virtue and his service to Rome, but even many of his staunchest supporters have grown sick of hearing him go on and on about how sharp and fearless he was in putting down Catilina, in such overblown terms that it's become something of a joke. And then of course his overweening vanity and rudeness have become legendary. Crassus despises him, Pompey barely tolerates him, and you know the sentiments of your beloved commander, Caesar. And of course there are a great many people of all classes who sympathized with Catilina without ever joining him, who are rankled by Cicero's constant boasting and his vilification (beyond the grave!) of a man they respected.

As tribune, Clodius has been a genius at organizing the people (the Master of the Mob, they call him) and at cowing (even terrorizing) the Optimates. They say his feud with Cicero began as a personal matter (incited by Cicero's wife Terentia, who accused Clodius's sister of trying to break up her marriage by going after Cicero — imagine!), but soon enough Clodius found he could whip up a firestorm of popular support by making public attacks on Cicero. To elicit sympathy, Cicero let his hair grow and went about the city dressed in mourning, but Clodius and his mob followed him everywhere, jeering at him and pelting him with mud, and the hordes of sympathizers Cicero expected to rush to his defence never materialized. What had become of the masses who had hailed him as Father of the Fatherland only a few years before? The mob is fickle, Meto.

Cicero grew so fearful for his life that he fled from the city, whereupon Clodius got the people's Assembly to pass an edict condemning Cicero to exile 'for having put Roman citizens to death unheard and uncondemned' and forbidding anyone within five hundred miles of Rome to give him shelter. (Never mind the law the Senate passed promising everyone immunity after the conspirators were executed.) Further, it was decreed that anyone agitating to bring Cicero back from exile should be regarded as a public enemy, 'unless those whom Cicero unlawfully put to death should first be brought back to life.' Clodius has a dry sense of humour.

So now, with Cicero headed for Greece, Clodius is on a rampage, and Cicero's lovely house on the Palatine is going up in flames. I write to you not by lamplight, but by the bright, flickering flames that illuminate my bedroom and would make it impossible to sleep, even if I were so inclined.

Now, can you tell me a story of fighting the Helvetii as hair-raising as that?

Where all this chaos will lead I do not know, but I doubt that we have seen the last of Cicero; foxes have a way of slinking back to their lairs once the hunters have moved on.

I wish you every blessing of Fortune in your service under Caesar, and each day I pray for your safe return.

Finally, this letter, which bears today's date, the Ides of Sextilis:

To my beloved son Meto, serving under the command of Gaius Julius Caesar in Gaul, from his loving father in Rome, may Fortune be with you.

I have just returned from a trip up north to Arretium. How wonderful to come home to Rome, to the welcome of Bethesda and your little sister Diana, who in a few days will celebrate her twelfth birthday. They send their love, as do Eco and Menenia and the twins, who have become quite uncontrollable. (I should have become a grandfather in my thirties or forties like most men now I fear I'm too old for it!)

But I must tell you what I discovered on my trip to the countryside. I had not been north on the Cassian Way in years; I have avoided that road, not wanting to pass by the farm again, but a bit of business involving a lost necklace and an adulterous wife compelled me to go to Arretium. (If you want to know the details, you shall have to give up soldiering, come home, and take up your father's profession!)

On the way up I was so rushed that I merely rode by the farm at a quick pace. Mount Argentum, the ridge, the farmhouse, the grape arbours and orchards and fields — I felt a pang of nostalgia, which lingered long after I had pressed on. On the way home I had more time, and so when I came to Mount Argentum and the farm, I slowed my horse to a walk.

The first thing I noticed was that the stone wall at the northern end of the farm was in the process of being demolished. The earth was hazy with heat and dust, but I could see the farmhouse and the other buildings clearly enough. Squinting beyond them, towards the stream, I could not see the water mill at all, until I was able to pick out its ruined foundation. The mill was gone.

I was almost tempted to go riding up to the farmhouse. Instead I simply stopped in the road and stared. A little while later an oxcart driven by a single slave set out from the stable, heading towards the highway. As he drew closer, I saw that he was not one of the slaves we had owned, so I asked him if he belonged on the farm.

'Yes,' he said. His manner was cowed, and he would not look in my eyes.

'Then perhaps you can tell me when your mistress started tearing down the wall up north.'

"That wasn't the mistress's idea,' he mumbled, looking perplexed at such a suggestion. 'It was the master's.'

'The master?' I said, wondering if Claudia could have married. 'What is his name?'

'Manius Claudius. He started tearing down the wall as soon as he inherited the property, which was a year ago. And quite a job it is, breaking up all that stone and carting it off! Now that he owns all the land as far as the eye can see on both sides of the ridge, he says he has no use for the wall.'

'But what happened to Claudia?'

'Ah, the master's cousin, who left him the land. She died — a year ago.'

'How did she die?'

'It happened quite suddenly. They say it was quite awful. She went into convulsions, and her tongue turned black. They say it must have been something she ate.'

I was quiet for some time, absorbing this. 'And the water mill — why was it demolished?'

"That was also at the order of my master Manius. He said, "Such an abomination is an insult to the institution of slavery!" '

'I see.'

'Pardon me,' the slave said, looking at the ground, ‘Butyou must be the old master, the one who was here before Claudia.' 'That's right'

"The old hands speak of your time as a Golden Age.'

'Do they? Golden Ages have a way of being overrated. And they never seem to last Tell me, is Aratus still the foreman?'

'Yes, and a better one I've never worked for. A steady hand in good times and bad.'

'So he is, and I hope your master appreciates him And tell me, is Congrio still the cook?'

'He was, until shortly after the master inherited the farm. Then the master made Congrio a free man and let him go off to the city with a bag of silver on his belt. Can you imagine that?'

'Yes,' I said, ‘I think I can.'

From this story, you may draw your own conclusions.

Recounting this tale, putting it into words as if you were here, makes me miss you very much, my son. I worry for your safety. I long for your companionship. Though we have had our differences, there are things we two understand that no one else knows o£ and so you are precious to me. Without you, there would be no one else to remember and bear witness to certain incidents that still confound and haunt me.

Seeing the farm again has unleashed many memories, which circle my head like harpies. To whom but you could I ever speak of my feelings about Catilina? What a waste, I sometimes think, to have spent my precious time with him suspecting and resisting him! But another part of me says: What if you had supported him, given yourself to him heart and soul — towards what end? And an even more sceptical part still doubts everything about Catilina and suspects he was nothing more than a very charming and very desperate charlatan, no different from the rest.

To my knowledge there is no god of regret, or of doubt; why should there be when a Roman is not supposed to feel such things? And so there is no altar upon which I can lay these feelings, see them purified by name and turned to ash. Instead I live with doubt and regret, sustained by the love of those close to me, bemused by such ironies as Cicero's exile and Claudia's fate, and I continue to ponder, as I know you must, Catilina's riddle.

Few figures in history have attracted more controversy than Lucius Sergius Catilina. A generation after his death he was already being portrayed as a damned soul by Virgil in the Aeneid. Over the centuries he has alternately been held up as a hero or villain, often in extreme terms. Two works published hundreds of years and thousands of miles apart illustrate the dichotomy by their tides alone: compare Patriae Parricida: The History of the Horrid Conspiracy of Catiline Against the Commonwealth of Rome, published by an anonymous pamphleteer in London in 1683, and Ernesto Palacio's Catilina: Una Revolution contra la Plutocrada en Roma, published in Buenos Aires in 1977. Which is it to be: Catilina the depraved insurrectionist, or Catilina the heroic revolutionary? The destroyer of decency, or the champion of the underclass?

Ben Jonson adhered faithfully to the classical sources hostile to Catilina to produce Catiline his Conspiracy, a tragedy first performed in 1611 by the players of King James and revived in the Restoration; its antirevolutionary themes would please a monarch. Voltaire made Cicero an exemplar for the Age of Reason and Catilina an agent of chaos in his play Rome Sauvie, ou Catilina, which grossly distorts the historical record; Caesar is sent into the field to fight the conspirators! (From Gaston Bossier's La Conjuration de Catilina of1905 we learn that Robespierre was called le Catilina modeme.) In 1850 Ibsen delivered a radical revisionist Catilina which portrays the conspirator as a sort of Hamlet struggling with his conscience to take a stand against tyranny.

'The problem with Catilina lies in the primary sources, which are severely biased against him. Cicero's four famous orations against Catilina are models of invective, and Sallust, who was a partisan of Caesar, had his own agenda when he wrote his book-length history of the Bellum Catilinae. The venom in these accounts must be taken with a grain of salt. One finds evidence from his own writings that before and after the conspiracy Cicero found much to admire in Catilina, and Sallust, while repeating every vile rumour about Catilina and his followers like a dutiful tabloid reporter, nevertheless provides compelling evidence to justify their actions.

Many modern historians seem content to accept the negative portrait of Catilina at face value, even knowing that it was painted by his enemies. Others follow revisionist lines that seek to look behind Cicero's rhetoric and Sallust's melodrama. In general, the clearest revelation to emerge from most historical reconstructions is of the particular historian's personal politics and point of view; Catilina becomes merely a prop. Even more distressing are those historians who insist on having the 'last word' on a subject for which there can be no last word, short of the invention of time travel or communication with the dead.

Fortunately, the first-person novelist, liberated from any pretence of omniscience, can adhere scrupulously to historical evidence even while allowing for the development of a subjective interpretation. The essential details in Catilina's Riddle, including the speeches and the various political manoeuvrings, are authentic. Nevertheless, the reader is ultimately free to question Gordianus's perceptions and his conclusions, as does Gordianus himself. It has not been my aim to rehabilitate Catilina, as Josephine Tey sought to rehabilitate Richard III in The Daughter of Time. Catilina remains today what he must have been in his own time: an enigma, which is to say, a riddle.

Books beget books, and I should acknowledge the one that first made me think that a novel about Catilina was dramatically feasible, The Conspiracy of Catiline by Lester Hutchinson (Barnes and Noble, 1967), which remains my favourite book-length reconstruction. Among shorter works, 'In Defense of Catiline' by Walter Allen, Jr. (Classical Journal 34,1938) provided unique insights. I should also acknowledge Arthur D. Kahn's The Education of Julius Caesar (Schocken Books, 1986); the very title of his chapter 'The Conspiracy of Cicero and Catilina' challenged me to turn every interpretation I encountered inside out.

Among primary sources, after Cicero and Sallust come the Roman histories of Appian and Dio, and of course the Lives of Plutarch, a treasure trove of juicy details, including the use of Tironian shorthand to record the Senate's debate, Cato's altercation with Caesar over Servilia's love letter, and the notorious riddle itself What a pity that Plutarch left us no full-scale biography of Catilina!

Readers of previous novels in the 'Roma Sub Rosa' series, curious about Gordianus's benefactor, Lucius Claudius, may wish to know that he has previously appeared in short stories belonging to the series, most of them published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

Research for this novel was conducted at the San Francisco Public Library and through the Interlibrary Loan system; at the Perry-Castaneda Library at the University of Texas in Austin; and at Harvard's Widener Library. For access to the latter I am grateful to Michael Bronski and Walta Borawski.

My personal thanks, as always, to my editor Michael Denneny and his assistant, Keith Kahla; to Penni Kimmel for reading the manuscript; to my sister Gwyn, Keeper of the Disks; and of course to Rick Solomon, Master of the Macintosh and all its mysteries.