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.