Saturnalia (25 page)

A slave pointed out the man I was seeking. He was one of the stripe wearers, tall and craggy-featured, with unruly, graying hair that stuck out from his scalp in stiff waves. His beak of a nose was flanked by the sort of cold, blue eyes you don’t want to see looking at you over the top of a shield. I walked up and presented myself for his attention.

“Lucius Flavius?” I asked, not bothering with his title since he had yet to assume office.

“That is correct,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.”

“Then you are a man of distinguished lineage.” Clearly, his warmth toward the Metelli was limited.

“I am looking into the circumstances surrounding the death of Metellus Celer. I understand you had some rather notable run-ins with him.”

“That was last year. I am busy preparing for next. By whom have you been commissioned to investigate?”

“By the tribune Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica and …”

“A tribune is not a curule officer,” he snapped. “He cannot appoint an
iudex
.”

“This is an informal investigation requested by my family,” I told him. “Including Metellus Nepos, who would appreciate your cooperation.”

That gave him pause. “I know Nepos. He’s a good man.”
As long as both supported Pompey, they would be colleagues. Flavius put a hand on my shoulder and guided me to a relatively uncrowded alcove of the vast, echoing building. “Is it true that Nepos will stand for next year’s consular election?”

“It is.”

He rubbed his stubbly chin. He hadn’t dared to trust a barber that morning either. “It will be an important year to have such a man in office, if he wins.”

“He will win,” I said. “When a Metellus stands for consul, he usually gets the office. It’s been that way for more than two centuries.”

“All too true,” he mused. “Very well, what do you want to know?”

“I understand that your disputes with Celer were occasions of public violence.”

“Not all of them, but a few times. What’s unusual about that? If our debates didn’t involve a little blood on the pavement from time to time, we’d all turn into a pack of effeminate, philosophy-spouting Greeks.”

“We certainly wouldn’t want that. Do I understand correctly that the gist of your dispute was the land settlement for Pompey’s veterans?”

“You do. And a more just and politically wise policy could hardly be imagined. Celer was the leader of the loony end of the aristocratic party. They’d rather face civil war than give public land to hungry veterans who’ve earned it. And for all their protestations, it’s because they’ve been using that land themselves at a nominal rent or wanted to buy it up cheap. They …”

I held up a hand. “I know the argument, and I am fully in sympathy with the land settlements.”

He settled his ruffled feathers. “Well, even Cicero supported
the settlement, once he’d added some amendments concerning compensation for former owners, and Cicero is a notorious supporter of the aristocrats.” He shook his head and snorted through his formidable nose. “Those last weeks in office Celer seemed scarcely in control of himself once he got angry.”

His last month in office Celer had been taking Ariston’s medication. I wondered whether this might have affected his judgment and self-control.

“He was especially indignant over your depriving him of the proconsulship of Gaul?”

“Who wouldn’t be? But I considered his behavior in office disgraceful and urged the Popular Assemblies to overrule the Senate and that was that.”

“Except that he was suing to get the command returned to him,” I commented.

“Yes. But he died before he could win his case. What difference does it make? If he hadn’t died in Rome he’d have died in Gaul, and it would be some legate tidying up the paperwork to hand it over to Caesar right now.” The way he pronounced Caesar’s name told me what he thought of him.

“I think Celer would not have died if he had gone to Gaul.”

“Why should that be?”

“I now know for a fact that Celer was poisoned.”

“That’s unfortunate, but he never should have married that slut.”

“No, I am nearly certain that Clodia is entirely innocent, for once.”

“Then what is this all about?” he asked suspiciously.

“When you urged the assemblies to strip Celer of his
imperium
in Gaul, did you also try to get it transferred to Pompey?”

“Of course I did! Pompey is the most capable general of our age. He would settle that Gallic business quickly, efficiently, and at the minimum cost to Rome.”

I knew better than to argue Pompey’s merits, or rather lack of them, with one of his rabid supporters.

“So Pompey was the man with the most to lose if Celer was given back Gaul,” I said.

“What are you implying?” His face went dark. “Pomptinus was continued in command in Gaul until the matter could be settled, so he gains. Caesar is to have the whole place for five years, so he gains. Pompey is serving here in Italy on special civilian commissions and has made no move at all to take Gaul from Caesar. If you are looking for a poisoner, Senator Metellus, you are looking in the wrong place! Go look into Caesar’s doings! Good day to you, sir, and if you come to me again with unfounded allegations I shall have my lictors drag you into court!” He whirled and stalked off.

I sighed. One more powerful man in Rome disliked me. I would just have to live with it. I had borne up beneath such burdens before. I walked out into the sunlight and went to provoke somebody else. Back across the Forum and past the Circus Maximus and up the slope of the Aventine to the Temple of Ceres. The elderly freedman and the slave boy I had encountered two days before were still there, but there were no aediles present. I asked after Murena, fearing that he would still be home in bed, nursing an aching head like much of the City.

“The aedile Caius Licinius Murena,” the freedman said importantly, “is in the jeweler’s market this morning.”

So I went to find him. Outside, on the temple steps, I
paused in case the slave boy should run out with more information to sell. After a reasonable interval I set off for another trudge: back past the circus, back past the cattle market, and through the Forum. No matter how I tried to plan, I always seemed to be retracing my steps.

The jeweler’s market sold a great deal more than jewelry, but all of the wares displayed there were expensive luxury goods: silks, perfumes, rare vases, furniture of exquisite workmanship, and a great many other things I couldn’t afford. There the merchants did not operate from tiny booths and tents that they set up and took down every day. The jeweler’s market was a spacious, shady portico where the dealers could display their wares to wealthy patrons in gracious ease. No raucous-voiced vendors cried their wares, and even the most elegant ladies could descend from their litters and browse through the great arcade without being jostled or forced into proximity with the unwashed. The splendid portico was owned by the state, and the merchants secured their enviable accommodations through payment of regular fees, some small part of which usually stuck to aedilician fingers.

Murena was easy to spot in the rather thin crowd that morning. As a curule aedile he was entitled to wear the purple-bordered toga, and when I came upon him he was speaking with a Syrian who displayed a dazzling assortment of golden chains, from hair-thin specimens for a lady’s neck to massive links suitable for shackling a captive king. Doubtless, I thought, Murena was squeezing out a few more bribes before having to fold up his curule chair and doff his toga
praetexta.

“May I have a moment of your time, Aedile?” I asked. He turned, smiling. Murena was a man a few years older
than I, with an engagingly ugly face. “How may I help you, Senator?”

I went through the usual introduction and explained the bare bones of my mission. “In my inquiries concerning possible vendors of poison I came across the name of Harmodia, a Marsian woman who had a stall beneath the arches of the Circus Flaminius. She was discovered on the morning of the ninth of November, murdered. A watchman from the circus reported the killing at the Temple of Ceres, and you went out to investigate. Upon your return you dictated a report to a secretary and it was filed. Is this correct so far?”

“I remember the incident. Yes, you are correct so far as my part in it goes. Why is the woman significant?”

“I have strong evidence that the woman sold the poison used in the murder I am investigating, and I believe she was killed to silence her.”

“Those people are notorious. The City would be improved if they were all driven off.”

“Perhaps so. Now,” I went on, getting to the heart of the matter, “about two or three days after the murder, you sent a slave to the Temple of Ceres to fetch your report of the woman’s death for a presentation to the
praetor urbanus
, is this correct?”

Murena frowned. “No, I made no such report.”

“You didn’t?” Another unexpected twist in a case already full of them.

“No, it was the last full month of the year for official business and the courts were extremely busy. Nobody was interested in a dead woman from the mountains.”

“And yet the report is missing.”

“Then it was misfiled, as often happens at the temple, or
else the slave picked up the wrong report, as also happens rather commonly.”

“Possibly. Could you give me the gist of your report? It might have some bearing not only upon the murder but upon the reason for the report’s disappearance.”

“Inefficiency requires no reason, Senator Metellus,” he pointed out.

“Profoundly put. But, if you will humor me …”

“Very well. Let me see …” He concentrated for a while. “This was several weeks ago, and the incident was a trifling one, so please bear with me if my memory lacks its usual keenness.”

“Quite understandable. A mere murder, after all.” It was a pretty fair assessment of a homicide in Rome in those days, at least when the victim was a person of no importance. At the moment, though, I could feel little sorrow over the death of Harmodia. She was a seller of poisons. Ariston had been equally despicable. As far as I was concerned, their murders were just an impediment to my investigation. As, of course, they were intended to be.

“The murder was reported by one Urgulus …”

“I have spoken with him,” I said.

“Then you know the circumstances under which she was found and I was summoned. I went to the Flaminius and found the body of a fairly stout woman in her thirties or forties lying in a large pool of blood. The cause of death was a deep knife wound to the throat, nearly severing the head. Questioning revealed no witnesses to the deed, which had occurred several hours before, judging by the condition of the body.”

“Were there any other wounds?” I asked. “Urgulus was unsure.”

“While I was asking questions, the Marsian women prepared
her for transport to her home for burial. They took off her bloody gown, washed her body, and wrapped her in a shroud. I saw no other wounds, but I suppose if she’d been knocked on the back of the head with a club there might have been no obvious sign of it.”

“No evidence found nearby? The murder weapon, that sort of thing?”

“In that district? Thieves would have stolen the blood if they could have gotten anything for it.”

“That is so. Anything else?”

He thought for a moment. “No, that is what I reported. As I said, there was very little to report. When I went to court that morning I made a brief mention of it for the morning report.”

“Yes, I found that at the
tabularium
. Tell me, Caius Licinius, weren’t you in Gaul a few years back?”

“Yes, it was four years ago, when Cicero and Antonius were consuls. I was legate to my brother, Lucius. I was left in charge when he returned to Rome for the elections. Why, were you there at the time?”

“No, it’s just that Gaul is on everybodies’ minds these days.”

“It may be on everybodies’ minds, but it’s in Caesar’s hands now, though he may come to regret that, and serve him right.”

“You favor Pompey then?”

“Pompey!” he expressed utter scorn. “Pompey is a jumped-up nobody, who earned his reputation over the bodies of better men. And before you ask, Crassus is a fat sack of money and wind who once, with help, beat an army of slaves. Is that satisfactory?”

“Eminently.”

“Those men want to be kings. We threw out our foreign kings more than four hundred years ago. Why should we want a home-grown variety?”

“You are a man after my own heart,” I told him. Indeed he was, if his sentiments were sincere. I took my leave of him and walked away, pondering. He was not what I had expected, but it is always foolish to expect people to fall into one’s preconceived notions. He certainly seemed plausible, even likable. But Rome was full of plausible, likable villains.

Flavius had been more the sort of man I expected to find involved in this: the kind of brutally aggressive tribune who made the lives of the senior magistrates such a torment. That made me want to believe that he was a part of the plot to poison Celer, and that, too, was a foolish line of thought. The will to believe is mankind’s greatest source of error. A philosopher told me that once.

I felt that I had come to a dead end and had learned all I was going to by asking questions. The year was dwindling, and I had satisfied no one. All I had really determined was that Celer had indeed been poisoned. Clodia’s guilt or innocence was unproven. Clodius would be growing impatient. So would the leaders of my family. Gaul was looking better all the time.

“Up so early?” A small, veiled figure stood at my side.

“Julia! I’ll have you know I was up before dawn … well, not long after dawn, anyway, and working diligently. How did you get away from Aurelia?”

“Grandmother is never quite well on the day after Saturnalia. Waiting on slaves upsets her.”

“How very un-Roman. I expect greater respect for our traditions from our distinguished matrons.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her that. Where can we talk?”

“There is no shortage of places. The Forum isn’t exactly thronged this morning.”