Oracle of the Dead(78)

“Hail, Praetor!” he shouted, saluting with upraised arm. “I take it you have things wrapped up here?”

“Just about,” I said. I’d already sent a servant for copious wine and now we sat and she poured drinks all around.

“What do you want me to do?” Cato said, after he’d drained his cup and held it out for a refill.

“I want you here as a witness. I am about to do some things of questionable legality and I know that you will report to the Senate exactly what you have seen. There are few senators I can trust to do that.”

He nodded. “Yes, there are no other senators who have my integrity.” He said this with absolute sincerity and not a trace of humor. He was absolutely sincere about everything—and absolutely humorless. “How do you intend to proceed?”

I gave him a brief rundown of my plans. He nodded. “You will be exceeding your authority, all right, but I agree that the circumstances of this case are unique. Unique cases call for unique action. When Cicero condemned the Catilinarian conspirators to death without trial, he exceeded his powers as consul by a great margin, but I supported him because there was no other way he could have proceeded with sanity. When traitors are about to overthrow the constitution with violence, it is pure foolishness to give them the benefit of the constitution.”

“Despite your support, which was admirable, Cicero ended up in exile,” I noted.

He shrugged. “Sometimes a man must pay a price for his patriotic actions. At least he escaped death, which a good many senators wanted to inflict upon him.”

“Things may get rough. I don’t know for sure how many are involved in this and some may not come along quietly.”

Cato gestured toward the men who followed him. They all looked supremely tough. So did Cato. “We don’t object to a little bloodshed. Speaking of which, I heard you got shot with an arrow.”

So I entertained him with the tale of my close brush with death. He and his men thought the whole affair was funny. I have said that Cato was humorless, but he did find amusement in things like pain and suffering. At the end he nodded with approval.

“That’s the way to handle wounds: get back to the gymnasium as soon as you’re back on your feet. A Roman on public service can’t let something as trivial as being skewered by an arrow slow him down. You’re just lucky that arrow wasn’t poisoned.”

I shuddered to think of it. “Apparently it didn’t occur to my enemy to poison the arrows. About the only serious lapse in an otherwise excellent plan of mass homicide.”

I sent for Hermes and he appeared within moments. “Hermes, take some men and go arrest the woman Porcia. Search her house thoroughly and bring back anything you find interesting. Put her under close guard in one of the rooms here. That means a permanent suicide watch.”

He grinned. “So she’s one of them after all, eh? I’m off!” He ran down the steps, calling out names, calling for horses. In moments he and a dozen other armed men were mounted and pelting down the road toward the villa. Then Cato surprised me.

“You’ve raised that one well. He’d make fine material for the army and even the Senate. It’s too bad he’s a freedman and barred from office. He’s better quality than half the men in the Senate.”

I was dumbfounded. For once, Marcus Porcius Cato had said something absolutely correct and sensible. “I’ll tell him you said so. Coming from you, it will mean a lot to him.”

“War is coming. When it comes, if you don’t have a position for him, send him to me. I’ll have command of at least one legion. I’ll give him a centurionate.” In those days it was still possible for an exceptional man to be appointed centurion without spending years in the ranks first.

“I will keep that offer in mind,” I said, “but I expect that I’ll have plenty of use for him.”

Cato favored me with one of his rare smiles. “Of course, you’ll be taking the field yourself.” Cato always assumed that I was as military-minded as he was, and that I would look forward to wielding command. I had won a certain military distinction, but it was almost all against my own inclinations. He could never understand that. I certainly was not about to send Hermes to serve with Cato, no matter in what capacity. Not that Cato wasn’t a good commander, but I knew he would sacrifice his army and himself over some point of principle that meant nothing to anyone else.

“All right,” Cato said, “you’ve just taken your first extralegal step. I take it we are to expect more?”

“Far more,” I assured him. He meant that I had no power of arrest here and the arrestee was not a foreigner.