Pompeii: City on Fire (8 page)

Each of these merchants contributed to Maius's coffers, and in return he protected them from any of that violence that might somehow find them. Over the years his wealth grew, and his influence with it. He had been one of two duoviri for sixteen years, and his elected position assured that he could not be prosecuted for any crime of which he might be accused. Not that anyone would have the audacity to accuse him. And the wealth and power left him free to pursue his other . . . interests. Interests more secretive than lucrative.

This particular merchant, the largest butcher in Pompeii, held an interest beyond monetary for Maius. He was brother to one of the two aediles, the other leading politicians who held the city's purse strings. And Maius had learned that like a bloated water skin, pressure applied here at the butcher's counter could result in movement elsewhere in the city. Namely, in the basilica, where financial decisions were made.

The butcher saw him approach and was all wide-mouthed smile and extended hands. Maius ignored the proffered hunk of crusty bread, disinterested in the salted meat that would follow. The calls of merchants and the buzz of shoppers filled the Macellum, and Maius leaned in close to deliver a few words of what he called
encouragement.
The butcher's face turned sallow and he scraped at the blood trapped under his fingernails.

"Father!" The word sang out over the noise of the market, but Maius would have known it in any pitch. He turned from the butcher, his message conveyed, and spread his arms to his precious Nigidia.

The girl pranced across the Macellum, reminding him of one of the horses that performed in the arena games he sponsored. Her dark hair threatened to escape its gold combs and tumble to the fine silk of her stola and her unusual blue eyes sparkled. "Nigidia, my pet."

She kissed his cheek, then pouted. "You said there would be a delivery from Rome today." Her voice elevated yet another few pitches and her sulky frown was meant to manipulate.

He traced the line of her aquiline nose, so like his own. Except for the strangely-blue eyes, she was his daughter, from looks to tactics. He stroked her arm. "I shall have the heads of those who caused any delay, my dear."

She grunted, and Maius understood her impatience. He had an insatiable hunger for luxuries himself.
This is why I must remain in power.
It was for his family, all that he did. The wealth he accumulated and the way in which he accomplished it. All for them.

The nagging pinch of guilt that occasionally plagued him had no power today, thankfully. Nigidia's presence calmed and pleased him as it always could.

The girl threaded her arm through his own and led him away from the butcher's shop. "Camilla says that I do not deserve any more silk from Rome."

Maius patted her hand on his arm. "Your tutor forgets that young girls must be beautiful if they are to make good matches." They strolled toward the fabrics, Nigidia leading the way, and Gracchus following. Maius pictured his daughter's stern tutor, pointing her disapproving finger at the lovely Nigidia. Another woman, Cato's sister Portia, strayed across his thoughts. He had seen her again last night and she lingered in his memory like an unplucked cluster of grapes, like an untasted jar of wine, like a—

"Do not speak of marriage to me, Father. I cannot bear to think of being separated from you."

Maius breathed away thoughts of Portia and focused on his daughter. "Who speaks of separation, my pet? A good marriage expands our family, it does not sever it."

They had arrived at the central tholos, and stared down into the pool, churning with black scales and watery eyes.

"My lord," Gracchus rasped behind him.

"What is it?" Maius had a laughable vision of throttling his advisor until his eyes bulged like the fish in the pool.

"There are some here to see you."

Nigidia released his arm and melted away, attuned as always to the needs of his position. Maius swiveled to meet a few of his loyal men on the
ordo
council, their eyes downcast as though the news were bad.

"Not here." He stalked to a corner of the Macellum, where an unused tabernae lay dusty and dim. Away from the noise of the market, he turned on them. "You have interrupted my shopping."

"Forgive us, Maius." One of the men held up his palms. "But there is talk."

"Who is talking?"

The lackey shifted and swallowed. "His name is being carried through the back rooms of power as we speak."

Maius knew the name before he spoke it out.

"Portius Cato."

The gods curse that presumptuous young whelp.
Cato had not yet settled into his new home and already he had people talking.

The councilman continued. "Did you know that he was quaestor in Rome, before—"

Maius growled. "I make it my business to know such things."

"He has been approached. By Taurus and his league."

Yes, of course. They would waste no time once they saw the possibility.
For all his supposed knowledge of the city's goings-on, he should have seen this coming.

First ignorant, then arrogant. The young Cato had spawned Maius's instant dislike. But this was something altogether different. Politics left no room for personal grudges.

Politics was war.

CHAPTER 8

Cato opened the wood-post gate that allowed entry into his new vineyard and swung it wide to allow the servant Remus to follow.

Since last night's theater performance his thoughts had not strayed far from Gnaeus Nigidius Maius and his unspoken threats. The vines and soil had better distract him this morning.

"Huh!" Remus grunted, taking in the plot of land before them.

"It's grown a bit wild, I suppose." Cato put a hand to his eyes to block the bright morning sun and surveyed the trellised rows that trailed away from him, toward Vesuvius in the distance, outlined in lovely purple against a pale blue sky. The vineyard was oriented in the same direction as the Forum on the other side of the city, and Cato amused himself that this was
his
Forum, the place where his fortune would be made. Vesuvius looked down on his vineyard like a mother, and Cato would be the midwife, helping her give birth to the grapes. He laughed at his mind's strange imagery.
I live with too many women.

"You'll need the hands of the gods to reach down and make this mess right." Remus scratched at his ear. "Hands of the gods."

"Ah, but look with a more kindly eye, my friend." Cato crossed the grass to the nearest row of vines. He reached between glossy leaves, cradled a cluster of small, green fruit in his hand, and tilted it to reveal the slight purpling at the base of each, and thankfully, no mildew. "We have everything we need here, Remus. Warm sunlight. Well-drained soil, black with fertility." He leaned his head back and sniffed, his heart as much as his nose filling with the scents of fruit and earth and salt. "Do you feel that breeze off the sea? Perfect."

"The posts are rotting and the vines are untrained."

Cato laughed at Remus's pessimism and held up the cluster. "But the grapes, Remus. It is the grapes that matter most."

Remus walked to the row beside him and pulled at a chunk of the black locust post that held the vine. It fell off in his hand. "Next year's harvest?" He held up the rotted wood.

"Next year's harvest will put Maius and his wine to shame!" Cato pulled a grape from the cluster in his hand, popped it into his mouth, and bit down too hard. The unripe fruit shot tartness into his cheek. The vines grew well, though wild. The jolt of taste took him back for a moment to Rome, to his uncle's fields outside the city, where he had first plunged his hands into the soil to test its moisture level, first learned to prune and train and love the woody stalks into vines that would later reward both his nose and his palate. His uncle Servius was a good man, if a bit strange with his religious beliefs, and he had been an excellent tutor. But Cato was ready to create his own
symphony of fruit,
as Servius used to say. His would be an earthier floral, with a longer finish, buttery in the mouth.

"You'll have to convince the nobility." Remus wrinkled his nose. "They've got a bad taste in their mouths from Saturninus's wine and his reputation."

Outside the fence, a line of leather and metal clad figures caught Cato's eye. He released the grapes and turned to the narrow strip of grass that lay between the border of his vineyard and the arena, also on the outskirts of the city.

The gladiators.
They marched in succession toward the arena, and for a moment Cato worried that he had missed the news of their first performance. But there were no crowds, no noise. They must have come for drills only. He watched the men, maybe a hundred of them, clomp past in full costume, from the Retiarii with their nets, to the Murmillones with fish helmets. There was the hero, Paris, larger and angrier than the rest. And that little one, what was his name? Ari. The boy seemed focused on his own sandals today, but Cato chuckled at the memory of his brash talk.

The line of men snaked into the arena's lower entrance and was lost to Cato. He mused for a moment on the irony of his vineyard of beauty and fertility so close to the arena built for gore and death.

Maius belongs more to the arena than to the vineyard.
The thought had sprung unbidden but with the ring of truth. He had known many such men in Rome. Had fought against them all. Unsuccessfully.

He shook his head. Those memories were buried deep.
Let them rot there.

"And so we will convince them, Remus." He turned once more to the untamed plot of land. "How about a competition? Bring the people out for a friendly contest between wines."

Remus snorted. "With Saturninus's wine? Or do you propose to wait until next year for your contest?"

"Good point, my friend." He strolled down the first row, Remus trailing behind. "So perhaps we shall give it away."

"You are a strange man, master. With a strange way to make money."

Cato stopped and turned on his laborer. "No, it is a good idea, Remus! I will hold my first dinner party as a citizen of Pompeii. We shall invite the nobility, and we'll make sport of Saturninus's bad wine. I'll send them all home with jugs of the stuff to give to their slaves and servants, demonstrating that my wine will be far superior."

Remus said nothing, only scrunched up his forehead against the sun. The idea was a good one, from the man's lack of objection.

"You see, Remus? We will show them that they have a choice. Maius does not own the town."

Remus shrugged. "It could work."

From the arena beyond, the first shouts of training and clash of swords reached them.

Cato slapped his laborer on the shoulder and hurried back through the row of vines. "Tend to the vines. I will start immediately."

It took half of a Junius hour to criss-cross through the narrow streets and reach Cato's new Pompeiian villa on the upper end of the town. Like all wealthy homes, the façade and the entrance made a statement about the status of the owner. The front door stood open as usual, with the line of sight designed to allow passersby to glimpse the interior of the house and form an opinion. Cato paused in the doorway and tried to see the home through the eyes of his impending guests.

The mosaic greeting in front of the door,
HAVE,
welcome, invited guests. The entry hall's high walls were sculpted like miniature temples, and it opened to a large garden courtyard overflowing with green shrubbery and small trees, and in the atrium between the entry and the garden lay the most impressive piece in view, a bronze statue of a dancing faun poised on the lip of the
impluvium,
the tiled basin in blues and greens designed to catch rainwater. The faun must have been an especial commission by Saturninus, representing as it did the wild followers of Dionysus, Greek god of wine.

The peristyle garden was bordered on three sides by opulent receiving and dining rooms, with elegant furnishings, elaborate frescoes of deep reds and warm golds on the walls, and intricate floor mosaics. Before reaching the dining area at the rear, guests would cross a huge piece depicting a four-hundred-year-old battle between Alexander and Darius of Persia, a tessaraed mosaic that would make a Roman nobleman envious.

All in all, the house made a statement favorable to its owner, if only he could erase the stigma of Saturninus's failure.

A figure crossed the atrium before him and must have sensed his shadow in the doorway.

"Quintus, what are you doing standing there?" It was his mother.

"Admiring the view." He smiled and winked, and thought he saw his mother blush even from this distance. Since his father had passed, he had tried to remember to compliment his mother from time to time. The elder Portius Cato had been charming above all else.

He crossed the atrium and met his mother in the garden. "We are going to have a dinner party, Mother." He brushed at some loose stones on the atrium half-wall. "How soon can the house be made ready?"

Octavia's eyebrows shot upward. "You must be jesting, Quintus! The house is musty from disuse and in desperate need of repainting and tiling! A dinner party is out of the question!"

Cato shrugged at his mother's outrage. "So we shall tell the guests to bring their rags and tools."

"You most certainly will not���"

He wrapped an arm around his mother's shoulder. "Be at ease, mother. I shall not embarrass the Catonii."

A voice from the entry hall turned mother and son toward the door. "Is Quintus defiling the family name again?"

Portia's question was asked in jest, but he winced at the bite of truth.

His sister entered hand-in-hand with her husband Lucius, and Octavia pulled away to embrace them both. "Your brother wants to host a dinner party already."

"Does he?" Portia did not share her mother's indignation, and instead her narrowed eyes spoke suspicion of his motives. As usual, Lucius remained quiet, content to let his wife speak.

"We're going to prove to the town that we have something to offer that Nigidius Maius does not."

"And what is that?"