This popped my eyes. “That means you’ll be a senior centurion without ever having served in the junior centurionate!”
“Caesar knows how to reward the best men,” his father said, holding up one of the braceleted wrists for general admiration. “He’d be wearing the phalerae if he’d had the rank when he earned these.” These formidable decorations, nine massive silver disks worn on a harness, were awarded only to centurions. “As it is, he’ll be the youngest man ever to be senior centurion in the Tenth.”
“This we must hear about,” I said. We made room for them all at the table and spent the next hour or so hearing Lucius Burrus’s war stories. And to think that, just a few years before, I had saved this young hero from being executed for murdering his own centurion! It just goes to show that good deeds really are rewarded. Sometimes, anyway.
When the questioning eased up, Lucius turned to me and said, “Father tells me that you and your whole family are under attack.”
I gave him a brief rendition of events, the parts that had become public knowledge.
“Pompey’s probably behind it,” he stated flatly.
“Why do you say that?”
“He isn’t supporting us the way he was when the war started. He’s jealous of Caesar’s success and glory.”
“I don’t doubt that at all, but I don’t see him taking part in something like this. It’s too subtle. Pompey’s a man of direct action. Besides, how is this supposed to push us into Pompey’s camp?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “but it’s him. You’ll find out.” There was no shaking his assurance.
He was getting to be like Julia: Caesar could do no wrong, and Caesar’s rivals and enemies were not to be trusted. All of Caesar’s soldiers thought and spoke this way. I have never understood why men are so loyal to a man who is getting them killed for his own profit and glory, but they do. To be truthful, there is a great deal about human behavior that I fail to understand. Maybe philosophers know, but I am too old to take up philosophy now. Besides, I suspect that most philosophers are frauds and fools.
Later, Julia and I wandered over to the little Temple of Mercury that stood just behind our house.
“There’s another name that’s turned up too many times,” I said to her as we walked, “Octavius.”
“He was just a common political nonentity,” she said. “He made it as high as praetor, but he never achieved any real distinction. I think he died last year or the year before. But you’re right. A name that comes up twice when you are investigating a conspiracy has to be suspicious. Just this morning we were talking with Callista about his daughter and her marriage to Caius Marcellus—”
“That’s it!” I exclaimed, just as we turned the corner next to the little temple. Its altar fire still burned high, attended by a couple of sleepy-looking priests. They glanced our way at the sound of my cry.
“Keep your voice down. That’s what?”
“What Octavia said that was important and I couldn’t remember. She said she hadn’t seen her brother since he was an infant.”
“Yes, so?”
“Earlier this morning I talked with Cato. He says that, a few months ago, the younger Caius Octavius gave the funeral eulogy for his grandmother, Julia, the sister of Caesar. Is Octavia saying that she didn’t attend her own grandmother’s funeral?”
“Decius! Sometimes you really are inspired! I attended that funeral. She was my aunt, after all, and I was there with all the Julia Caesares. I heard the boy speak, and it was excellently done for one so young. It was while you were still on Cyprus.”
“And was Octavia there?”
“She was. So why is she lying about it now? Why does she want to pretend she has nothing to do with her brother?”
“I intend to find out.”
9
THE NIGHT HAD BEEN A LONG ONE, but I woke early and fully alert for a change. Time was getting short, and I had none of it to waste. I rousted Hermes, and Julia and the slaves got me presentable and out the door before full daylight broke over the City.
“To the Archive again, Hermes,” I said.
“Again?”
“Yes. Today, it’s the Land Registry.”
This was located on the ground floor with several of its rooms dug back into the side of the Capitoline Hill. Since nothing was more important than ownership of landed property, these documents got the most stringent protection from fire.
In charge of this department was an old freedman from Athens named Polyneices. We found him at his desk in the gloomy interior of the huge building. He was white as a grub from spending his days entombed within the sacred soil beneath the Capitol. The only illumination came from oil lamps that burned in locked lanterns with lenses of inch-thick glass. The lamps had to be lighted outside, then locked before being carried within. To kindle a light within these rooms meant crucifixion for a slave, beheading for a free man.