The Sacrilege(84)

One came in, swinging a hammer. I ducked the blow and ran him through and then jumped on the next one before he had a chance to understand that it was I who was on the offensive. With a sense of the very finest irony, I poked him in the throat with the point of my gladius, just as my instructor had taught me years before, in the old Statilian ludus. I only wished that I had a hammer to whack him between the eyes with.

The others began to close in. I’d had my two. Rome was avenged. I turned and fled downhill, scattering citizens right and left. The pack baying at my heels caused further alarm. The press of celebrating citizenry got too dense to push through, and I turned to confront my pursuers. At that moment, something large and solid bowled into me, shoving me through a dense pack of ivy-wreathed celebrators and into an alley, down a flight of stairs and through a low doorway.

“Keeping you alive could call for the full-time attentions of a legion,” said Titus Milo. People looked up from their tables. I smiled at them and sheathed my sword. They returned their attention to their food and wine.

“I have to get to the temple,” I said.

“You won’t. At least, not for a while. Let’s wait here until things are quiet outside. I don’t think they saw where we went.”

“Good idea,” I said. The tavern was like a hundred others in the city. By law they were not supposed to stay open to the public after sunset, but this was a holiday, and besides, nobody paid any attention to that law anyway. We found a table and within minutes were tearing into roast duck with fruit and white bread, which we helped down with rough local wine. I told Milo about the odd interlude with Caesar.

“He’s a strange one, Caesar,” he said. “But he’s like one of those horses in the Circus that surprises you by coming out of nowhere to win, when you’d put your money on the flashy, quick ones.”

“I think you’re right,” I said, helping myself to a handful of figs. “Until now, I’d dismissed him as a posturing buffoon. Everyone has. But he’s been behind it all.”

“Behind what all?” Milo said alertly.

I told him what I had learned from Nero’s letter. “Clodius thinks it was his own doing, and doubtless Pompey and Crassus each thinks himself the dominant member of this—this triumvirate, but it is Caesar who holds the reins. He is the near trace horse.” The familiar chariot-race image seemed the best way to describe Caesar’s place in the arrangement.

Milo sat back, and I could see the machinery working in his head as he sorted through this information and analyzed it for political content.

“Perhaps his niece is right,” Milo said at last. “He may be trying to keep the peace between the others while he is away.”

“That’s part of it, I have no doubt. But when he returns, the three of them will be at each other’s throats. Three such men cannot last as peaceful, cooperating colleagues: a general, a financier, and a … whatever Caesar is.”

“A politician,” Milo said. It was a new word. I think Milo made it up. “He is a man whose sole qualification for office is that he knows how to manipulate people. As you have remarked, he brings nothing to the bargain but shattering debts and inexperience. It does not matter. He is using the system itself to propel himself into prominence.”

“He underestimates the Senate,” I said.

“Does he?” Milo’s bland, understated contempt for the wisdom and power of the Senate did more than anything in my recent experience to shake my faith in it.

I reached within my clothes and took out the message tube. “When I reveal this, they will have to take action. The Senate has grown lax and corrupt, but even so, they cannot allow such men as these to wield power. As for Caesar and Pompey and Crassus, their ambitions could never survive such ignominy.”

“Let us hope so,” he said.

We ate for a while in silence. “Speaking of the Senate,” Milo said, “If you are truly foolish enough to go up there and confront Pompey, you had better do it while they’re sober enough to understand you.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It is getting late.”

We rose and went outside. To my surprise, the streets were still jammed. We forced our way with difficulty through the Forum and began to ascend the Capitol. Above, we could see a great lurid glare of torchlight and could hear a raucous bellowing, some of it human.

“What’s happening?” I said. “The procession ended hours ago.” I had a dreadful premonition that there had been a change in procedure.

“Let’s ask somebody,” Milo said, with his accustomed good sense. He took a citizen by the arm and made the relevant inquiry.