The Sacrilege(14)

Well, I could scarcely expect her to admit selling poisons for purposes other than suicide, since the punishment was a horrible death.

“Fortune-telling is illegal,” I pointed out.

“Well, there’s lawbreaking that gets you run out of town and there’s lawbreaking that gets you nailed to a cross. It’s that last kind that I call illegal.”

“I am going to stay here until you tell me what that boy was doing here. Then what will you do for customers?”

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Oh, sir! Wasn’t you ever that young? Didn’t you always go running to a fortuneteller every time your heart went thump over some neighbor’s pimply daughter? Lovesick boys outnumber embarrassed Senators any day.”

“Very well,” I said, “I will accept that for now, but I may be back. What is your name?”

“Purpurea, sir. You’ll find me here most days.”

I left fuming. Sometimes I envy Asiatic nobles, whose inferiors have to grovel in the dirt before them and lick their toes. Purpurea! When women get to make up their own names, they come up with some strange ones. And her pose of innocence did not impress me. In my lifetime I have known thousands of criminals, and the best of them could make a newborn infant seem a veritable monster by comparison. One thing was certain: That boy had been afraid to be seen emerging from her booth.

If you seek any prominent Roman at midday, it is usually futile to look for him at home. Your best bet is to go to the Forum and wander around until you bump into him. That was how I found Milo. He stood near the Temple of Castor and Pollux, surrounded by a group of tough-looking men, most of them dressed in dark tunics. He was the only one who bothered with a toga. He grinned his great, white-toothed grin when he saw me.

We had been friends for years, a thing most of my peers thought disgraceful. He was the most powerful gang leader in Rome, with Clodius as his only rival. He was a huge man, still young and extraordinarily handsome. He had been a rower in his younger years and was as strong as any professional gladiator or wrestler. We exchanged the usual embraces and greetings and he invited me to his house, where we could talk privily.

The minor fortress Milo called home occupied a whole block in one of the better slums. It was fully staffed with street fighters, many of them veterans of the legions or the arena. We sat at a table in Milo’s enormous assembly room, and one of his men brought us watered wine. Milo was never one for the amenities, so I launched straight into the matter at hand.

“Milo, why is Clodius still in Rome?”

“His presence has not escaped me,” Milo said. “Nor has the fact that Caesar shows an uncharacteristic fondness for our city when his fortunes are to be mended elsewhere.”

“Caius Julius doesn’t amount to much,” I said.

“Not yet, but keep your eye on him. And Clodius is Caesar’s man.”

I remembered the odd tableau that morning. “You think it’s connected?”

“I know that Clodius does very little these days without Caesar’s permission.”

My cup paused halfway to my lips. “That’s new. Were some new lines drawn while I was away?”

“The lines are much the same as always, but the number of players in this game has narrowed. There used to be many gangs controlling the streets of Rome. Now there are just two: mine and Clodius’s. Once there was a large number of soldier-politicians and lawyer-politicians contending for mastery of Rome and its empire. Most have dropped out or been eliminated. Lucullus, Hortalus and the rest have left the big struggle for power.”

“Hortalus is Censor with my father,” I pointed out.

“An office with great prestige but no imperium. No, Decius Caecilius, the contenders are now Pompey, Crassus and Cicero, with Caesar soon to join them. See what he is like when he gets back from Spain.”

“I trust your instincts,” I said. “So you say Clodius has become Caesar’s man. Celer tells me that you are now closely linked with Cicero.”

“Cicero and I are not friends, but he needs me. The men who want to control the empire must be away from the city much of the time. They must have an ally to control the city in their absence, and there is no constitutional office for that purpose.”

I always admired this quality in Milo. He knew the branchings of power as a farmer knows the branching of his grapevines. He knew which branches showed promise and which needed pruning. He was utterly untrammeled by the constitutional precedents and traditions that shaped the political thinking of more orthodox Romans.

“What is Cicero’s standing these days with the Senate and the public in general?”