“This is most unexpected,” I said. Immediately, though, I could see the advantages of such an arrangement. Among other things, it meant that I would see more of Julia. “But let’s discuss it.”
She sat on a stone bench and patted the place beside her, which was only slightly damp. “Sit here with me.”
I looked around the garden. “We are not chaperoned. Will your family think this is correct?” The men in noble old families could behave like goats or worse, but their women had to be chaste, or at least perceived as such. Caesar’s wife, etc.
“Gaze over my left shoulder,” Julia said. “Do you see a shadow lurking beneath the colonnade?”
I complied. “I see such a shadow.”
“That is my grandmother, the lady Aurelia. Rest assured, if she sees anything untoward, she will interpose herself between me and dishonor. She has the eyes, the instincts and the claws of a bird of prey.”
“Oh, good. Now we can plot. Just how would you go about being my assistant?”
“Colleague, if you please.”
“Very well.” This concession cost me nothing.
“Most of the highly married ladies in Rome were here that night. I shall call upon some of them and pump them for information.”
“Aren’t they forbidden to speak of the rites to one who is not an initiate?”
“Certainly. But some of the most scandalous ladies of Roman society were there, women known for their indiscretions. Besides Clodia, I know that Fulvia and Sempronia were there, along with that whole lot from Lucullus’s household: his wife, Claudia, and his ward, Fausta the daughter of Sulla, and your cousin Caecilia, the wife of the younger Marcus Crassus. If I can’t get information out of some of those women, I’ll take vows and become a Vestal.”
“That would be valuable,” I admitted. “But if your grandmother over there were to hear of you being in the company of any of those ladies, she would open her veins.”
“I will be suitably cunning. I can contrive to run into them at some innocuous location—the baths, for instance.”
In those days, there were several baths in Rome exclusively for women. The thought of Julia soaking in the caldarium with any of those notorious ladies instantly filled my head with distracting images.
“That seems safe enough,” I allowed. “But stay away from Clodia. She is a truly dangerous woman, whereas the others are only mildly wicked. I have Celer’s permission to question her myself, not that I expect to get much out of her. How will you get in touch with me?”
“Have you a slave you can trust?”
“I have a boy named Hermes, but he is a duplicitous rascal.”
“Then I will send someone to you when I have something of worth to report.”
“I would like to know one thing. Why are you doing this? Besides being bored, I mean.”
“I find that quite sufficient reason. And, like most decent Roman women, I detest Clodia.”
“That’s intriguing. Most of the men feel the same way about her brother. Just keep clear of her.”
“That will not be difficult. I am afraid of her.”
“And well you should be. Personally, she terrifies me. She is far subtler than Publius.” I debated telling her about the poisoning attempt, but restrained myself. I was being far too trusting as it was. I rose from the bench.
“I will take my leave, then, and hope to hear from you soon.” She saw me out with all the usual courtesies, most of them, I presumed, for the eyes of the dragonlike grandmother.
I walked away greatly bemused. It might be wondered that I would even consider trusting someone from the family of Caesar. A major reason was that I wanted to trust her. This tendency to confuse desire with reason has landed me in more trouble than I care to remember. Nonetheless, my instincts, which were sometimes reliable, said that she was sincere.
In a way, it was not a good time for me to be so distracted, for my next stop was the house of the man I genuinely feared. Marcus Licinius Crassus and I had crossed paths more than once, and although our relations were cordial for the moment, I did not mistake this for any sort of permanent arrangement.
Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives was believed to be the richest man in the world, and his house did nothing to dispel the belief. It was not far from the house of Celer, on a broad stretch of ground that had once belonged to several enemies of Sulla’s. Crassus had eliminated the owners for the Dictator and was given their estates as a reward. He had demolished the old structures and had built his own palace, surrounded by spacious grounds landscaped by the best Greek artists and populated with the most sumptuous statuary imaginable. The whole collection was something of an oddity in Rome, for Crassus had actually bought most of his treasures. He had acquired little of it decently through inheritance and almost none of it as loot from foreign wars. This was still a rather new concept in Rome, where we associated great purchasing power with wealthy equites and freedman.