“A rather large subject,” she said, “but you probably needn’t concern yourself with the Eastern sort, the slave cults, and other such nonsense. I’ll make inquiries among my friends. Some of them are dreadfully superstitious. They trade the names of their magicians the way they do those of their jewelers or their perfumers. What will you do?”
“I’ll look into the records of the aedile’s office, to begin with. They have the task of expelling magicians from the City. I won’t waste much time with it. I suspect that the bulk of them are nothing but mountebanks, and that goes for the ones your lady friends frequent as well.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? But please recall that some of them are priestesses of very respectable cults and can be expected to know things to which very few men are privy, especially senators, who care far more about war and politics than about religion.”
“I knew being married to you was going to come in handy.”
“Something else strikes me,” she mused. “Crassus himself is a pontifex. Do you think he had any idea of what was being used to curse him?”
I thought back over the scene at the gate. “I don’t think so. If he had, he probably would have turned right around and gone home. Surely even his lust for loot has limits.”
“So one would think.”
Soon I was back in the Forum, but this time I wasn’t wearing my candidus. Instead, dressed as an ordinary citizen, I went to the end of the Forum where the men standing for the office of quaestor were lounging about, cadging votes. Among them was Faustus Sulla, looking uncomfortable the way an aristocrat always does when he has to go about the low-bred process of vote-grubbing. Near him was the younger Marcus Crassus, who looked much more at home. He grinned engagingly when I walked up. We went through the usual, overdone public greeting.
“Taking the day off, Metellus?”
“Yes, but not willingly. Not much longer until the elections, anyway. Will you be joining your father in Syria to be his quaestor?” Like me, he was almost certain of election. Nobody could outbribe a Crassus.
“No, I’ll be with Caesar in Gaul. My brother Publius will be leaving Caesar’s army early next year to take some Gallic cavalry to Father’s war with Parthia.”
“Lucky you. I spent my year in the Treasury.”
“Safe but unprofitable,” he said. “I hear Caesar’s doing rather well.” In peacetime a general’s quaestor was little more than a paymaster, but in a great war he could get rich. Besides disbursing pay for the troops, he let contracts to businessmen supplying and serving the army, divided and accounted for the loot, and sold prisoners to the slave traders who followed the army like a bad smell. A bit of every transaction could stick to his fingers, and I had no doubt that the younger Marcus Crassus had been an apt student of the elder.
“Your father’s campaign certainly had an ill-starred beginning.”
He shrugged. “It takes more than maledictions mumbled by a swine of a tribune to frighten the old man. Spells and curses are how our nurses make us behave when we’re children. They have no place in the real life of men of affairs. If magic were any real use, how did we ever whip the Etruscans? And why does everyone push the Egyptians around with impunity? Everyone says they’re great magicians.”
“An astute observation. So your father didn’t act as if this curse was anything especially menacing?”
“No. Why do you ask?” His eyes sharpened on me, bright with suspicion.
“I’ve been charged to investigate the incident.” This much at least I could admit to. “You’re probably right, and it’s nothing but a lot of mumbo-jumbo to impress the masses.”
“The curse is nothing. The insult—well, that’s another matter. The second that viper steps down from office, I’m going to be waiting there with my flagrum. My slaves will tell you that I don’t wield it with a light hand when I’m annoyed. I’ll flog him from here the whole length of the Via Sacra and out of the City.”
“That’ll serve him right,” I commended. “Well, I have to go and catch up on some paperwork. Good luck, Marcus.”
He shrugged again. “All this is a waste of time if you ask me. I’ve bought the office already.”
Spoken like a true Crassus, I thought.
My steps next took me south through the Forum Boarium and past the Circus Maximus to the Temple of Ceres. There, amid the archives of the aediles, I found one of the year’s plebeian aediles, a man named Quintus Aelius Paetus, who never achieved any greater distinction that I ever heard about. He lifted an eyebrow when he saw me come in.