The Sacrilege

Chapter XIV

It was a beautiful morning. I rose just before sunrise and went up to the roof of Milo's house to watch the first light strike the gilded rooftops of the Capitol. Since it was likely to be my last such sight, I took it in with uncommon relish. All my frustrated agitation of the past few days was gone. I knew exactly what I had to do, and I was at peace.

This is not to say that I was not excited. It would be an eventful day, whatever its outcome. I spoke with the sentries and they said that Clodius's men had hung around for several hours, but then had gone away. They also said that there had been a good many unfamiliar faces among the enemy. Pompey's reinforcements, I thought.

At intervals along the roof, between the fire buckets full of water, stood bins of fist-sized rocks. The city had no laws against possession of rocks, but few things are more effective when launched from a roof. The guards boasted that they had left some sore heads among the besiegers.

Milo came onto the roof, active and alert as always. He never seemed to sleep.

"What's the plan?" he asked. "The triumphal procession will be forming up soon."

"As a Senator," I said, "I will have to take part, so first we must go to the Circus Flaminius. Just get me there safely and I will do the rest."

He was incredulous. "You really propose to march in Pompey's triumph?"

"As a Senator, I consider it my duty," I assured him.

He leaned back and roared with laughter. "You may be a fool, Decius, but you have real style. To the Circus, then."

Hermes had delivered my formal toga to Milo's house so that I would be properly dressed. Awkward though the garment was, it was so voluminous that it gave adequate concealment for my weapons.

"I wonder if Pompey will be bold enough to have you attacked during the procession," Milo mused as we walked toward the Campus Matrius.

"With luck, he won't know I'm there for a while," I said. "The Senate and magistrates march in front, with the gods. Pompey can't even come into the city until his soldiers have marched through the whole route and had the gates shut behind them afterward. As for Clodius"- I patted the handle of my sword to reassure myself-"we shall just have to see how rash he is."

All Rome was flocking to get a good position to see the triumph. The greater part would be in the two great Circuses, but a window or rooftop along the route would afford a better and closer view. Along the Via Sacra, some people had camped out for the past two or three nights on especially favorable rooftops, and landlords had rented out the best windows for tidy sums. The Roman need to gape at glory was insatiable.

At the Circus I had to leave the comforting proximity of Milo and his thugs. Circus officials, accustomed to sorting out huge crowds, were ordering matters. Near the gate where the chariots enter for the races, I was hustled toward the rear of the senatorial procession.

"By Jupiter!" said a junior Senator. "It's Decius! I can't believe you'd show your face in public."

"Duty calls," I said. "How could I forgo my very first opportunity to participate in a triumph?"

"Don't get us laughing in front of the citizens, Metellus," said another.

Atop the spina, a sheep was sacrificed and its entrails examined. To nobody's surprise, the priests announced that the gods were favorable to the celebration of a triumph on that day. I have never known them to be unfavorable at such a time. I squinted at the priests, but they were just ordinary Etruscan haruspices, not the strange hammer specialists Pompey had brought to the city.

With a blast of trumpets, we stepped out and entered the Circus, walking up one side, rounding the spina and then back down the other side. The populace applauded respectfully, although the Senate certainly wasn't what they had come to see. And so it went, all the long triumphal route, finally down the Via Sacra to the Forum, then up the Capitol. It was exhilarating, although my mind was elsewhere much of the time.

After a formal salute to the image of Jupiter Capitolinus, we Senators scattered to get good vantage points for the main part of the show. I began to walk down the hill toward the Forum and the Rostra, which was a fine vantage point from which to view a spectacle. And from which to be seen.

A hand gripped my arm and I reached for my sword I hadn't expected to be attacked on the Capitol. Men have died for less foolish assumptions.

"Draw that and I'll have you sentenced to the Sicilian sulfur mines."

"Why, Caius Julius Caesar, you do me great honor." He smiled widely, nodding and acknowledging greetings and well-wishers. I smiled back as gaily. We were two distinguished Romans, walking down the hill on this great day of Rome's triumph.

"Pompey wants you dead, and by all the gods, I never saw a man cooperate so wholeheartedly in his own assassination! How did a family of plodding drudges like the Metellans ever produce a specimen like you?"

"Oh, come now, Caius Julius, we may be a bit conservative, but we are scarcely-"

"Shut up and listen!" he hissed. "You might, just might, live to draw breath tomorrow if you will heed me. Pompey will be far too busy to concern himself with you for the next few days, what with his triumph and his games. Clodius thirsts for your blood, but while the celebrations are going on, he won't be able to get his men to do anything."

"Good," I said. "Just Clodius and me. That's the way I want it."

"Venus, my ancestress, deliver me from such fools!" Caesar cried, in one of his better theatrical gestures. "He has those Etruscans Pompey loaned him, and they don't care about Roman holidays."

"And I killed one of them last night," I said with satisfaction.

"Worse. Now it's personal. Decius, I will stand beside you on the Rostra for the great procession, and maybe they won't try to attack you. But when Pompey goes up to the Capitol, I will have to be there to preside over the sacrifice and then the banquet. Do Rome a favor and sneak away. Come back in a month or two, when Pompey has more immediate enemies to concern him."

We were almost to the Rostra by this time, and to all outward appearances we were conversing in greatest conviviality.

"I know what you were up to, Caius Julius," I said. "You and Pompey and Crassus. I wish I had been there. The sight of you three in women's gowns must have been rare spectacle."

I had expected him to be embarrassed. "Political expediency is not always consistent with one's highest vision of one's own dignity. But even that particular indignity is not to be despised. Glorious foreign conquest usually means months of lying on a verminous pallet, fever-ridden, covered with one's own blood and bodily effluvia, yet it can result in a triumph such as this." By this time we stood at the railing of the Rostra, and Caesar gestured toward the marching soldiers bearing standards and trophies, his golden bracelet flashing. I understood then that men such as I was up against had no more concept of shame than of conscience.

"Why are you so solicitous, Caius Julius?" I asked. "Why try to preserve me when your friends want me dead?"

He looked at me with open puzzlement. "Why do you call them my friends?"

"Cohorts, then. I know what you plotted, dividing the world among you, setting aside the constitution and the Senate, and I intend to destroy all three of you!" I never made such a reckless speech sober.

"How did you figure it all out?" Caesar said, smiling gently and obviously interested. I almost told him about Nero's letter, but decided that it might make me look less astute. I still had a young man's vanity, but more importantly, I had learned that it was best to maintain a sense of mystery about one's own capabilities. That was something Caesar had long known.

"To a logical mind," I said, "to one who knows how to see with clarity and think with penetration, the evidence was all there." That, I thought, was rather good.

"You are a truly remarkable man, Decius Caecilius," he said. "And that is why I go to so much trouble to preserve you from your own suicidal stupidity. I shall have work for you to do, in the future."

"What?" I said incredulously. "You won't have a future after this evening!"

"Look!" he said, pointing. "Here come the animals!"

So we watched the procession: the floats bearing treasures, the exotic beasts, the chained prisoners, the unthinkable booty Pompey had assembled in three separate conquests. And Pompey himself, of course. He stood like a statue in his toga picta and red paint. Getting a little pudgy, it seemed to me.

"Love your purple dress!" I shouted as he went past. Under the red paint I couldn't tell if he turned truly red In the uproar, I doubt if he or anyone else heard me.

As the crowd broke up, I noticed that Caesar was gone. It struck me, with a chill, that I was now on my own. I saw other Senators making their way up the Capitol, toward the banquet in Pompey's honor. I began to go that way myself. It was time to confront the three would-be tyrants before the assembled Senate and bring them low. Besides, I was hungry.

It was getting dark fast. I was perhaps halfway up the hill when I saw the first Etruscan. He lurked in a space between two buildings, and the last beams of the setting sun struck glimmers from his bronze hammer and steel dagger. One was no problem. I glanced at the other side of the street. Two more. Then I saw a small crowd behind the two. These were Romans, most likely followers of Clodius, taking a few minutes from the festivities to eliminate an enemy. I looked up toward the temple, which suddenly seemed to be very far away. I was already in plenty of trouble with the Roman courts, and the gods seemed to have deserted me, so I drew my sword.

"Two more!" I yelled. "I want two more of you pointy-bearded Tuscian slaves to pay for the blood of two Romans. The one I got last night wasn't enough!" No sooner asked for than received. The Etruscans attacked, howling. Even in the excitement of the moment I noted that the others weren't so eager. I would like to think that they were overawed by my heroics, but more likely they thought it unworthy to assist wretched foreigners in killing a Senator.

One came in, swinging a hammer. I ducked the blow and ran him through and then jumped on the next one before he had a chance to understand that it was I who was on the offensive. With a sense of the very finest irony, I poked him in the throat with the point of my gladius, just as my instructor had taught me years before, in the old Statilian ludus. I only wished that I had a hammer to whack him between the eyes with.

The others began to close in. I'd had my two. Rome was avenged. I turned and fled downhill, scattering citizens right and left. The pack baying at my heels caused further alarm. The press of celebrating citizenry got too dense to push through, and I turned to confront my pursuers. At that moment, something large and solid bowled into me, shoving me through a dense pack of ivy-wreathed celebrators and into an alley, down a flight of stairs and through a low doorway.

"Keeping you alive could call for the full-time attentions of a legion," said Titus Milo. People looked up from their tables. I smiled at them and sheathed my sword. They returned their attention to their food and wine.

"I have to get to the temple," I said.

"You won't. At least, not for a while. Let's wait here until things are quiet outside. I don't think they saw where we went."

"Good idea," I said. The tavern was like a hundred others in the city. By law they were not supposed to stay open to the public after sunset, but this was a holiday, and besides, nobody paid any attention to that law anyway. We found a table and within minutes were tearing into roast duck with fruit and white bread, which we helped down with rough local wine. I told Milo about the odd interlude with Caesar.

"He's a strange one, Caesar," he said. "But he's like one of those horses in the Circus that surprises you by coming out of nowhere to win, when you'd put your money on the flashy, quick ones."

"I think you're right," I said, helping myself to a handful of figs. "Until now, I'd dismissed him as a posturing buffoon. Everyone has. But he's been behind it all."

"Behind what all?" Milo said alertly.

I told him what I had learned from Nero's letter. "Clodius thinks it was his own doing, and doubtless Pompey and Crassus each thinks himself the dominant member of this-this triumvirate, but it is Caesar who holds the reins. He is the near trace horse." The familiar chariot-race image seemed the best way to describe Caesar's place in the arrangement.

Milo sat back, and I could see the machinery working in his head as he sorted through this information and analyzed it for political content.

"Perhaps his niece is right," Milo said at last. "He may be trying to keep the peace between the others while he is away."

"That's part of it, I have no doubt. But when he returns, the three of them will be at each other's throats. Three such men cannot last as peaceful, cooperating colleagues: a general, a financier, and a: whatever Caesar is."

"A politician," Milo said. It was a new word. I think Milo made it up. "He is a man whose sole qualification for office is that he knows how to manipulate people. As you have remarked, he brings nothing to the bargain but shattering debts and inexperience. It does not matter. He is using the system itself to propel himself into prominence."

"He underestimates the Senate," I said.

"Does he?" Milo's bland, understated contempt for the wisdom and power of the Senate did more than anything in my recent experience to shake my faith in it.

I reached within my clothes and took out the message tube. "When I reveal this, they will have to take action. The Senate has grown lax and corrupt, but even so, they cannot allow such men as these to wield power. As for Caesar and Pompey and Crassus, their ambitions could never survive such ignominy."

"Let us hope so," he said.

We ate for a while in silence. "Speaking of the Senate," Milo said, "If you are truly foolish enough to go up there and confront Pompey, you had better do it while they're sober enough to understand you."

"You're right," I said. "It is getting late."

We rose and went outside. To my surprise, the streets were still jammed. We forced our way with difficulty through the Forum and began to ascend the Capitol. Above, we could see a great lurid glare of torchlight and could hear a raucous bellowing, some of it human.

"What's happening?" I said. "The procession ended hours ago." I had a dreadful premonition that there had been a change in procedure.

"Let's ask somebody," Milo said, with his accustomed good sense. He took a citizen by the arm and made the relevant inquiry.

"Pompey is coming back down," the man said. "Word spread an hour ago that he is planning something extraordinary!"

"He's cut the banquet short!" I said. "It should go on until midnight!"

Milo grinned. "But then most of the citizens would be asleep and unable to admire their idol."

"I have to get up there!" I shouted. "If I can't get to the temple before the Senate breaks up, it will be days before they meet again!"

"And you don't have days to live, at this rate," Milo said. "Let's see what we can do." What Milo could do was considerable. He shouldered his way through the tight-tacked mob almost as if it weren't there, and I followed his broad back.

Feverishly, I thought about the usual triumphal honors enjoyed by a victorious general. Ordinarily, the day culminated with the banquet on the Capitol, at the end of which the triumphator descended the hill, escorted by the Senate, bearing torches to light his way. Lucullus, at the time of his triumph, had thrown his own banquet in his new garden, but I had not heard that Pompey had asked permission for a change of routine. Pompey, it seemed, was fond of his little surprises.

Halfway to the Capitol, we broke through the crowd. A mass of lictors held it back, holding their fasces obliquely, the way soldiers carry spears when they are controlling a mob.

"I must get to the temple!" I shouted at them.

"You may pass, Senator," said a lictor, "but not your friend." There is no one more officious than a lictor who has been given a little authority.

"You're on your own," Milo said cheerfully. "Try not to die foolishly."

I began to trot up the hill. There was a great deal of milling about going on up there. The heat built up rapidly beneath my heavy toga, but I dared not throw it off. Running heavily armed into the massed Senate could mean real trouble. I stopped to catch my breath and brush the sweat from my face; then I saw what I had feared the most: a double line of torches coming toward me. I cursed mightily and resumed running toward the lights, so agitated that I didn't notice that they moved rather oddly. As I neared them, I snatched the message tube from within my tunic and held it aloft.

"Noble Senators!" I screamed. "I must address you! Stop! Cnaeus Pompeius has no right to-" Then I stopped and gaped. The torches were not held by Senators wearing wreaths. The were carried by elephants, at least fifty of them.

Pompey had assembled his monsters atop the Capitol so that he could come down the hill in real style. Each elephant had a mahout straddling his neck, and behind each mahout was a wooden castle manned with youths and girls who were armed with baskets of flowers and trinkets to scatter among the onlookers.

The mahout on the lead elephant pointed at me with his goad and gabbled something. I stood transfixed by the bizarre spectacle, at risk of imminent trampling.

"Metellus, I knew you'd show up!" Broken from my trance, I looked up to see that the lead elephant's castle wasn't manned by any youths and maidens. It held Publius Clodius and some of his thugs. Whooping like a hunter who has started a hare, he snatched up a javelin and hurled it at me. I leapt nimbly aside, and the iron-shod point struck sparks from the pavement.

Toga flapping, I whirled and ran back down the hill. It seemed that I was spending a great deal of time running from Clodius these days, but an elephant gives a man an unfair advantage.

Another javelin sailed past me by a good margin. Clodius was always a wretched spearman. Of course, his swaying platform and the uncertain light could not have helped much. Ahead of me, the crowd of citizens and lictors gaped and pointed, at me and at the elephants. I couldn't pick out Milo's face among the mob.

I plowed through the lictors like a ship ramming through an enemy's battle line. They stumbled trying to get out of my way as the crowd heaved back, instinctively wanting to avoid the path of the trumpeting, torchbearing monsters. Another javelin missed me, but I heard a scream as it impaled some unfortunate citizen.

The uproar grew deafening as half the mob tried to run away from the oncoming beasts while the other half surged forward to get a closer look. It was like one of those circus riots where a panic starts and hundreds of people get trampled. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the huge gray beast towering above the mob as Clodius poised his arm for another throw. Behind him, cheerful young people mounted on other elephants waved and threw their flowers and trinkets into the mob. He missed again.

I got all the way down to the Forum in this hallucinatory fashion. The mob and the elephants spilled into the great plaza close behind me, and despite the best efforts of the mahouts, the animals lost all cohesion and began to scatter amid the confusion. People screamed or laughed. All Rome loves an event like this. There was much fleeing from before the beasts, unnecessarily. Terrifying as they are to behold, elephants are actually quite careful where they step and rarely inflict more than a crushed toe. War elephants have to be trained to trample enemies, as it is not their natural behavior. Needless to say, this was not common knowledge in the Roman streets.

An elephant passed by me, and its inhabitants showered things all around me. This turned out to be almost as deadly as the javelins Clodius was hurling, for it transpired that Pompey was not scattering mere trinkets this night. In the torchlight I saw gold coins, carved gem-stones, vials of perfume amid the flowers, and wherever they landed, fights broke out over possession.

I looked for Clodius and saw him standing in his little castle, looking all over for me. I saw that his beast was about to pass close by the Rostra. I got to the fringes of the mob and ran toward the old monument and dashed up its back steps. There I threw off my toga, consigning the expensive thing to unavoidable oblivion, crossed the base and stepped out onto one of the bronze ship's rams that decorated the marble front of the platform.

As the elephant jostled by, I jumped into its castle, my sword bare in one hand and a caestus on the other. The men whirled around with looks of shock and I smashed my bronze-spiked left fist into the jaw of one, in the next instant slashing another across the face. Both men tumbled screaming to the pavement fifteen feet below. Now it was just Clodius and me.

Screaming, he leapt on me before I could rebrace myself. I had not anticipated the rocking of the platform beneath my feet and I swung my arms wide to regain balance. That gave him the chance to grasp both my wrists as he closed, trying to knee me in the crotch. I spent several seconds jockeying to protect myself. He tried to bite my nose off again, but I tucked in my chin and butted him in the face instead.

As he staggered back, the platform began to rock violently. I spared a glance down and saw that scores of Clodius's thugs had rallied to him and were trying to scramble up the sides of the elephant to rescue their master. The poor beast trumpeted with alarm, waving its torch-laden trunk about and scorching several bystanders.

At last, the strain proved to be too much for the unstable castle. The elephant stumbled sideways and the girth parted. The tower lurched and fell, landing on a set of steps amid a great splintering of wood and rending of wicker. We were thrown violently apart, and I somehow managed to retain my grip on my weapons. I lurched to my feet to see Clodius's whole mob a few steps away, but they had the look of abashed schoolboys and did not climb the stair as they helped Clodius, shaking his head groggily, to regain his feet. I looked to see who had cowed them and saw, standing in the doorway behind me, the lady Aurelia, Caesar's mother, livid with rage.

"Who dares to bring bloodied weapons to the house of the Pontifex Maximus?" she screeched. Hastily, I re-sheathed my sword and thrust my smeared caestus beneath my tunic.

"If you will excuse me, my lady," I said, "these men are trying to kill me. May I come inside?" I could see Julia standing behind her.

"If you enter this house, I will demand your public flogging!" said the old bat.

"Let him in, Grandmother!" Julia pleaded.

"Never!"

Clodius grinned and came for me again, and I was about to draw when a clopping of hooves interrupted us. From a courtyard beside the house came Caius Julius and a sizable retinue, all mounted. This was a rare sight in the city, especially after nightfall. Well, it was a night for strange sights.

"What is this?" Caesar shouted. He wore a military tunic and boots.

"This man," his mother said, pointing at me, "has violated your house. Have him executed at once, my son!"

Caesar smiled. "Now, Mother, calm yourself. This is Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, and the gods keep special watch over such as he. I, the Pontifex Maximus, have said so." He turned to Clodius. "Publius, call off your dogs."

But Clodius had gone into his gorgonlike rage. "Not this time, Caesar! He is mine!"

"Decius, come here," Caesar said. I stepped over to him, keeping a wary eye on Clodius. Caesar leaned from his saddle, an eyebrow sardonically arched. In a low voice, he said: "Decius, just how badly do you want to get out of Rome alive tonight?"

"Rather badly," I admitted.

"The only way you are going to do it is to ride out with me. I am on my way to Spain, and my men are all veterans of long experience. Clodius won't dare attack. But I want something from you first."

"Is that what you do these days, Caius Julius?" I said bitterly. "Make bargains, like some publicanus angling for a government contract?"

"It's the way of the new Rome," he said. "Be quick about it."

"What do you want?"

"Many things, but right now what you must give me is your evidence." He held forth his hand.

I looked at the enraged Clodius and his murderous men. Nowhere could I see Milo or his thugs. I was alone and I could measure my life expectancy in seconds. I took the message tube from my tunic and placed it in Caesar's hand.

"Is this all?" he demanded.

"It is," I said, sick at heart. He snapped his fingers, and a man led up one of the remounts and helped me scramble onto its back. He had a hard, scarred, veteran's face.

"Attack if you will, Clodius," Caesar said, radiating contempt. Clodius and his men fell back as we rode through them. I looked back at the doorway and Julia waved shyly. I waved back, rejoicing in my survival, sickened at my defeat. It was an odd sensation, and the situation was rather like one of those tedious Greek dramas.

We passed through the Forum, which was still alive with its surging mobs and its miniature elephant stampede. This night would be remembered for some time to come. I didn't see Pompey. As we rode through the streets, Caesar read the letter by the light of a torch held by one of his men. When he was finished, he stuffed it into a saddlebag.

"What a young fool, to put something like that in writing," Caesar said. "Just as well he's dead. He certainly had no future in Rome."

We moved out through the Ostian Gate and it closed behind us. After a mile or so, we halted.

"Come with me to Spain, Decius," Caesar said. "I shall attach you to my staff."

I shook my head. "My father tells me the family estate in Beneventum is in urgent need of my attention."

"As you will. You can return to the city in a month or two and all will be forgotten, temporarily. It will be interesting times when we are all back in Rome together again." He smiled. "As I said, I shall have work for you."

"I will never do your work, Caius Julius," I promised.

"You'll change your mind. And I want you to marry my niece, Julia Minor."

I gaped, unable to think of anything to say.

"Farewell, Decius," Caesar said. He wheeled his mount and he and his escort clopped off. I watched until the last glimmerings of torchlight disappeared into the surrounding gloom.

"Caesar's wife must be above suspicion," I yelled after them. In spite of everything, I couldn't help laughing.

These were the events of eleven days in the year 693 of the City of Rome, the Consulship of Calpurnianus and Messala Niger.