The King's Gambit(72)
“So the pious and honorable Decius Metellus is not too proud to take refuge among a pack of the city’s lowest scum!” Claudius shouted. Considering his own company, this was a weak taunt, but his crowd reinforced it with cheers and shouts of agreement.
“It’s never disgraceful to be in the company of Roman citizens,” I responded, to much applause from my new following. As a slanging match, this was not up with Cicero and Hortalus in the courts, but we were just getting started.
“Citizens! That pack of slaves and freedmen? They look like they somehow escaped from Crassus’s crosses.” This was a neat play on words, but it didn’t originate with Claudius, who wasn’t that clever. Some playwright had used it the year before. There was dark muttering behind me, and it occurred to me that a few of them probably had campaigned with Spartacus. Pompey and Crassus hadn’t caught all of them.
“At least we’re all Romans,” I said. “Speaking of which, how is your Armenian guest? Do you two share the same Greek tastes?” No one else knew what I was talking about, but they cheered at Publius’s expression of anger.
“Are we to endure this abuse from a mere Metellan,” he shouted, “whose kinsman almost lost us Spain?” His crowd jeered loudly.
“This from one who conspires to lose us Pontus and Armenia!” I yelled.
“Cowardly Metellan!” he roared.
“Chicken-drowning Claudian!” I bellowed. The whole Forum roared with laughter and Publius’s face flamed. The Claudians will never live that one down.
Screaming with rage, Claudius drew a dagger from inside his toga and charged me. I had already slipped my caes-tus onto my right hand and I stepped forward to meet him. I blocked the dagger with my left forearm and swung a blow that should have taken his jaw off, but somebody jostled me and I only raked the side of his face. He dropped like a stone and in an instant the Forum was alive with flashing daggers, flailing sticks and flying stones. It had been months since the last good riot and winter is a boring season in Rome, so nobody needed much excuse to join in. I dropped two more, men who had been standing close to Publius, then saw five coming for me with daggers. Arms grabbed me from behind and I thought I was done for, but I found myself being dragged away from the riot and into a narrow street. I heard a familiar laugh and I saw that it was Milo and Burrus who had wrested me away.
“No violence, you said!” he choked out between paroxysms.
“I didn’t think he’d start anything right there in the Forum!” I protested.
"You still don’t know him, do you?” Milo said. “Well, maybe he’s dead. That was no love pat you gave him.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “Claudians and snakes are hard to kill.”
“Where to now, sir?” Burrus asked.
“To the house of Claudius,” I said.
Burrus was astonished. “But you just dropped the bugger on the pavement back there. His friends will be carrying him home soon!”
Milo smiled. “He’s not the Claudian your patron needs to call on just now, am I right?”
“You’re right,” I said. “And Burrus is right about his men taking his inert carcass home soon. I’d as soon not be there when that happens, so we had best not waste any time.” We made a circuit around the Forum, from which we could still hear sounds of riot, and made our way through the maze of cramped streets to Publius’s town house. I paused to straighten my disarrayed toga and winced at a pain in my side. I looked inside my toga and saw that blood was seeping through my tunic. Nothing to be done about it now, I thought.
I pounded on the door until the janitor opened it.
“Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger of the Commission of Twenty-Six to see the Lady Claudia Pulcher,” I said, finishing somewhat out of breath. The janitor called a house slave and repeated the message, ushering me inside.
“You two stay here in the atrium,” I told Milo and Burrus. “I will interview her privately, but come at once if I should call you.” Burrus merely nodded, but Milo spoke in a low voice.
“This isn’t very wise. Publius and his mob will be here from the Forum at any minute and your Armenian prince may be here now, with his own band.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but I was not about to admit it. “Don’t worry. He’s trying to curry favor with Rome, not to alienate the city by killing one of its officers.”
“You constantly underestimate these people,” he said, “but have it your way.”
The house slave came to fetch me and I followed him. Behind me, I could hear Milo and Burrus arguing quietly. Burrus could not get used to the way Milo addressed me. I nerved myself for the encounter to come. My feelings for Claudia had taken many disorienting turns recently. I had tried to find a way out of this, but I could find none. Perhaps, I thought, I should have waited, slept on the problem. I had acted precipitately, without proper thought or rest. I had, in fact, not acted quite sanely. Why should I feel afraid to face Claudia with this when I had walked straight up to her brother and his mob in the Forum? I could not explain it, even to myself.