The King's Gambit(5)

“I did not guess,” the Greek said smugly. “The marks are there to see, if one knows what they mean. The Catalan javelin has a serrated edge, and that scar was made by such an edge. It traveled at an upward angle. The Catalans fight on foot, and this gentleman is clearly of a rank worthy to go into battle on horseback. Furthermore, he is of the right age to have served as a junior officer in the campaigns of Generals Pompey and Metellus in Spain of a few years ago. Hence, the gentleman was wounded in Spain in recent years.”

“What’s this?” I said, vastly amused. “Some new form of sophistry?”

“I am compiling a work describing the infliction and treatment of every imaginable warlike injury. With my staff of surgeons, I have worked and studied in the ludi of Rome, Capua, Sicily and Cisalpine Gaul. I have learned more in this way in a few years than twenty years with the legions could have taught me.”

“Most sagacious,” Caesar said. “In the arena fights, you get to see the effects of many kinds of foreign weapons without having to take the time and trouble to visit all those places in time of war.”

This discussion was interrupted by the return of Statil-ius. He held some scrolls and wax tablets and proceeded to display them to us.

“Here is what you want.” He opened the tablets and unrolled the scrolls. There was the bill of sale, stating that Statilius had bought a healthy Gallic slave who had all his teeth and was about twenty-five years of age. His name was something unpronounceable and he had been given the slave-name Sinistrus. Another scroll held the man’s school and amphitheater records. He had shown little aptitude for the sword and spear, and had been enrolled in the Thracian School as a dagger fighter. His record in the arena had been undistinguished except for his survival: a couple of wins, two adjudged ties and three defeats in which he fought well enough to be spared. He was wounded frequently.

One tablet was a record of a sale to the steward of one H. Ager. There was much official documentation to go with the transfer of ownership. I remembered that that had been a year of the slave rebellion, and the sales of slaves, especially males of military age, had been under severe restrictions. While I studied the documents, Caesar proceeded to ingratiate himself with Statilius, spoke of his future aedile-ship and asked for “something different” in the way of combats for the Games he intended to sponsor. Five years later, I was to witness this “something different,” and it was to be the biggest sensation in the history of the Games.

“Here’s where he got his freedman’s name,” I remarked. “With your permission, Lucius, I would like to keep these for a while, until my investigation is finished. This is a trivial business, so I should be able to return them by one of my freedmen in a few days.”

“Please feel free,” Statilius said. “Now that I won’t be buying him back, I’d probably just destroy the records, except for the bill of sale, in any case.”

We bade goodbye to Statilius and the Greek and retraced our steps toward the Forum, I to check the records at the Grain Office and Caius Julius to continue his politicking. It seemed that even this item of dull routine was to be interrupted. A Senate messenger was standing on the base of the rostra, scanning the passing throng. He must have had eagle eyes, for he spotted me almost as soon as I entered the Forum along the Via Capitolinus. He hopped to the pavement and ran up to me.

“Are you not Decius Caecilius Metellus of the Commission of Twenty-Six?”

“I am,” I said resignedly. The arrival of such a messenger always portended some unpleasant task.

“In the name of the Senate and People of Rome, you are summoned to an extraordinary meeting of the Commission of Three in the Curia.”

“No rest for one on the business of Senate and People,” said Caius Julius. I took my leave of him and made my way the short distance to the Curia. With the Senate messenger preceding me, nobody sought to detain me for conversation.

I have always felt a certain awe for the Curia. Within its ancient brick walls had occurred the debates and the intrigues that had brought us victory over Greeks, Carthaginians, Numidians and a score of other enemies. From the sacred precincts had issued the decisions and orders that had changed Rome from a tiny village on the Tiber into the greatest power in the world that borders the inland sea. I am quite aware, naturally, that it is also a sewer of corruption and that the Senate has brought Rome to near-ruin at least as often as it has decided nobly and wisely, but I still prefer the old system to that currently, and I hope temporarily, prevailing.

The great Senate chamber was empty and echoing, unoccupied except for the bottom row of seats, where sat my two colleagues on the Commission of Three, and beside them Junius, the Senate freedman who acted as secretary. As always, Junius had stacks of wax tablets beside him and a bronze stylus tucked behind his ear.