“They’re in the atrium,” he said, munching cheese. “Speaking of which, how about some money so I can celebrate properly?” Hermes was insolent at the best of times. On Saturnalia, he was insufferable. I went into my bedroom and opened a chest. I took out a pouch, first counting to make sure he hadn’t appropriated some of my money already.
“There,” I said, dropping the pouch on the table in front of him. “Keep it out of sight. In the streets you like to frequent they’ll cut your throat for that much money. Don’t come home with any exotic diseases, and I don’t want you so hung over that you’ll be of no use to me tomorrow. I’m in the middle of something very bad and I expect to be busy.”
“Who wants to kill you this time?” he asked, taking a swig of watered wine.
Before I could answer him my clients began to arrive. There was the usual round of greetings. They gave me presents. Since they were mostly poor men, these consisted mainly of the traditional candles. By custom, my own gifts to them had to be more valuable, although my own circumstances were modest. I gave Burrus a new sword for his son who was with the Tenth Legion, soon to be in the thick of the fighting against the Gauls and the Germans, winning glory for Caesar.
From my house we all trooped off to my father’s. His mob of clients spilled out onto the street outside and had to make their way through in shifts. When I finally got in, I found Father talking with a couple of distinguished-looking men, although their rank was hard to guess since they wore plain tunics. I made my formal obeisance, and Father introduced the two as Titus Ampius Balbus and Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, two of the praetors of the year. Balbus was to govern Asia in the next year, and Saturninus was to have Macedonia. Clearly, Father thought I should be currying favor with these two, who were up-and-comers in a position to offer me fine appointments, but I needed to confer with him privately.
“What do you want?” he asked impatiently, when we were a little separated from the others. “You know that official business is forbidden today.”
“And you know that I am acting in a highly unofficial capacity. I’ve come upon something important and I need to know a few things. Was Celer engaged in suppressing or expelling forbidden cults within Rome and its environs?”
“What kind of idiot question is that? He was a praetor, not a censor. And when no censors hold office, that is the province of the aediles, along with public morals.”
“You and Hortensius Hortalus were our most recent censors,” I pressed on. “Did you take action concerning such cults?”
He frowned. But then, he always frowned. “Hortalus and I conduced the census, we completed the lustrum, and we purged the Senate of some very unsavory members. Beyond that, we oversaw the letting of the public contracts. I turned in my insignia of office last year, and the subject of obscene foreign cults never came up.”
“Not foreign cults, Father. Domestic cults. Native Italian cults operating within and just outside of Rome. Cults numbering among their members some very highly placed Romans.”
“Explain yourself,” he said. So I gave him a succinct rendition of my experiences of the previous two days, leaving out nothing. Well, leaving out very little, anyway. When I got to the part about the sacrifice, he muttered, “Infamous!” and made a complex gesture to ward off the evil eye, one he must have learned in childhood from a Sabine nurse.
“A cult of witches, eh?” he said when I was finished. “Human sacrifice. A hidden mundus. And noble Romans involved?” Absently, he rubbed a hand across the scar that divided his face, a characteristic gesture meaning he was plotting evil against his enemies. “This is a chance to rid Rome of its three very worst women. Exiled, at the very least. After this they could never return.”
“Don’t forget the man who wanted to poke my eyes out,” I reminded him.
“Oh, him. Yes, it’s too bad you didn’t get a look at his face.” This was for the sake of form. If you wanted to get rid of murderous men, the best way would have been to block up the doors of the Senate house during a meeting and set fire to the place. Murder was a popular pastime among the male gentry. It was the scandalous women who outraged men like my father.
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Look, we can’t stay closeted like this. People will suspect we are doing something official. I’ll manage to get the aediles aside sometime today to discuss this.”
“I am not sure that would be a good idea. I am not satisfied with Murena’s handling of the murder of the woman Harmodia. For some reason he took the official record of the case and hid or destroyed it. He is either concealing something or protecting somebody.”