A Point of Law (12 page)

Finally only Asklepiodes and I remained of the evening’s guests.

“Callista,” Asklepiodes said, “my friend the Senator Metellus has a singular problem, its solution requires a combination of skills and talents that I have informed him are possessed in abundance by you alone of all the scholars now resident in Rome.” He spoke in Greek, which I could follow well enough.

“How intriguing. I shall seek to vindicate your trust in me.” She turned to me and switched to Latin. “And how may I possibly be of help?”

I took out the papers. “These documents were written in cipher by a person whose activities I am investigating. The alphabet used is Greek, although I can’t say whether the language thus encoded is Greek or Latin.” I handed them to her, and she studied them by the light of a multiwicked lamp.

“Are you certain that it is one of those two languages? I ask because
of the extraordinary repetition of the letter delta. The arrangement, even taking into account the common letter substitution of ciphers, doesn’t look like either language.”

This could mean trouble. “The man in question lived almost all his life in Baiae, which is in Campania. It’s conceivable that it’s the Oscan dialect that is used. But Oscan has almost the same grammar as Latin, though the vocabulary and pronunciation are different.”

She shook her head. “Then that can’t be it. Do you know to whom this is written?”

“I have no idea.”

“If he turns out to be Syrian or Egyptian, I will be of little use to you, I fear.”

“I strongly doubt that the author knew any such language. He was of an old Latin family. His sister has lived in Rome for many years. The family is distinguished but not for scholarship. I would venture to say that he would be lost in any language save Greek or Latin.”

“That will simplify things. Would it be possible to leave these letters with me?”

“They are of no use in my possession, and any excuse to call upon you again is welcome.”

“You need no excuse, Senator. Please feel free to call upon me anytime. I have no lectures scheduled for tomorrow. I find that election time in Rome is not a good time for much of anything. I’ll devote the morning to this. If you can come by tomorrow afternoon, perhaps I’ll have made some headway.”

“Depend upon it, I’ll be here,” I told her.

I found Hermes waiting outside. He had brought along a small bodyguard of men from my neighborhood who were under obligation to me.

“I believe the lady is rather taken with you,” Asklepiodes said slyly as he took his leave.

“If this were another city, and if I were not as married as I am, I would be greatly taken with her,” I said. “But I think I am in enough danger as it is.”

“Life’s little complexities keep us from growing old too soon,” he assured me. “Please keep me informed how this fascinating business progresses.”

We walked home without incident, and I dismissed my little guard with my thanks. Julia was waiting up when I went inside.

“I hear you’ve been up to your old activities,” she said, as she took my toga and directed the slaves to lay out a late supper. “It’s been a long time since you practiced house breaking and burglary and escaping through the alleys and over rooftops.”

“You’ve been listening to Hermes. That’s always a mistake.”

“He’s acting innocent as a sacrificial lamb. It’s the rest of the City buzzing about your activities.”

“Oh. Well, gossip is unreliable, you know.” I picked up a chicken leg.

“Tell me your news, and I’ll tell you mine. And stop evading.”

So I began with my visit to Fulvia’s house and my encounter with Curio.

“He is a man with a scandalous history,” she commented, “but very courageous, and it looks as if he’s chosen the right side now. He spoke up for you in the
contio
this evening by the way.”

“He said that he would. Tell me about that.”

“When you’ve told me the rest of your day’s doings. Have some of that soup. It will keep you from catching cold running around like this in the winter.”

Obediently, I sipped at a cup of her grandmother’s cold remedy. It was broth of stewed chicken laced with
garum
and vinegar. Not bad, actually. I told her about our visit to the goldsmith’s guild and the lapidary.

“That was a waste of time,” she commented.

“You never know. Then, of course, I went to get those encoded letters examined by an expert.”

“Which one?” she asked.

“Well, I went to Asklepiodes first, and he recommended Callista.”

Julia was silent for a moment. “Callista?” The name sounded ominous in her mouth.

“Yes, she’s an Alexandrian, quite brilliant in—”

“I know who she is. She’s said to be quite beautiful.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Her nose is a little long for my taste. Anyway, I didn’t call on her for her looks, but for her expertise in Greek and mathematics.”

“You went to the home of a foreign woman at night, without invitation?” The dark clouds were gathering.

“It’s a sort of open salon she holds for intellectual sorts.” I floundered about for something to allay her suspicions, which were all too justified. “My dear,” I said, “Marcus Brutus was there.”

The clouds seemed to recede. “Brutus. Well, the gathering must have been respectable anyway.”

“Boringly so. Incidentally, Brutus seems to regard Caesar with some hostility.” I told her what he had said. Nothing distracted Julia as effectively as an insult to her revered uncle. But she didn’t seem concerned.

“Brutus has some foolishly old-fashioned notions. Caesar thinks the world of him. He’ll come around. Now tell me what Callista said about the letters.”

So I told her what the woman had said. “I’ll call on her tomorrow to find out what she’s learned.”

“Not if you’re under arrest, you won’t.”

“What?” I all but choked on my wine, a light Falernian, as I recall.

“The vote in the
contio
was close, but you are to be tried for the murder of Marcus Fulvius.”

“Ridiculous! There is no evidence!”

To my surprise, she leaned over and kissed me tenderly. “Decius,
I think I love you most of all when you are being foolish and naive. Surely you understand that you are the only man in Rome who cares about things like evidence. Trials are not about evidence. They are not about guilt or innocence. They are about friends and enemies. Do you have more friends than enemies?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Then you’ll probably be vindicated. But you may also find that you have enemies you knew nothing about.”

“I’ve already discovered one: Marcus Fulvius, although he’s no longer numbered among the living. And whoever is behind him.” Another thought struck me. I told her about Caesar’s veterans arriving.

She clapped her hands like a child. “Wonderful! They all know you. We can count on their support.” Then she frowned. “But men who’ve spent years in Gaul won’t be in the jury pool.”

“What form is the trial to take?”

“You’re to be tried before the
concilium plebis
, with a jury of three hundred
equites.”
Very large juries were the rule at that time. It was thought to be difficult to bribe so many people.

“When?”

“On the third day from this.”

“What? We only found the bugger dead this morning! It’s customary to give an accused man ten days to get his defense together.”

“Do you want to be praetor or not? They could delay the election no longer than that. Conviction or acquittal, the election goes ahead in four days.”

That was that. Nothing to be done about it. “What was the mood of the crowd? Did your sources say?”

“It’s a sideshow to the general spectacle of the elections. You’re a popular man with the plebs and nobody knew Fulvius, so there was no crowd baying for your blood. Some good people spoke up for you, and the ones demanding a trial appealed to hatred of the aristocrats.”

“Running according to form then,” I said, refilling my cup. “What about the Tribune, Manilius? Was he rabble-rousing?”

“From what I heard, he conducted it well, shutting up anyone who spoke too long, putting a quick stop to shouting matches.”

“I wonder which side he’s on,” I said.

“That one is easy,” she said. “Until he proves otherwise, consider him your enemy.”

B
Y MORNING NO LICTORS HAD AP
peared to arrest me, so I presumed I was free to go around as I pleased, which I proceeded to do.

That morning featured a new distraction for the citizens, the arrival of Caesar’s men on the Campus Martius. For the moment I was forgotten as everyone flocked out through the northwestern gates to the old drill field to welcome the heroes of Gaul. Being under arms they could not enter the City, but elections were held on the Campus Martius so they didn’t have to.

The field had become greatly built up in the last generation, with the homes and businesses around the Circus Flaminius and Pompey’s theater complex, which was practically a village in itself, but there was still plenty of ground devoted to military drill. By the time I got there, at least two cohorts’ tents were already pitched, and more soldiers were arriving, an endless stream of them coming down the Via Flaminia.

They were veterans and they looked it. Their arms were dingy, their shield covers weather stained, their helmet crests and plumes drooping, their cloaks every shade of red from scarlet to rust brown. But their boots and swords were immaculate, and if their equipment wasn’t spruced up for parade, it was in perfect battle order. They looked supremely competent and dangerous.

I went out through the Fontinalis Gate with a knot of fellow senators I’d joined in the Forum.

“Jupiter protect us!” said one, as we caught sight of them. “I am glad to know that Caesar is still north of the Rubicon!”

For some reason, we never feared a Roman army as long as its general was somewhere else. Caesar’s imperium ended at the Rubicon. If he crossed it, he would be just another citizen. Or so we thought.

A good-sized fair was taking shape on the Campus Martius that morning, as the itinerant vendors and mountebanks descended upon this cornucopia of soldiery, marched all the way from Gaul with their pay in their purses.

The men themselves were from all over Italy and Sicily, from the tip of Calabria to the northern edge of Umbria. They were the men of the villages and countryside, from towns that had borne Roman citizenship for centuries and others whose fathers had been at war with Rome within living memory. Most of them probably had never laid eyes on Rome.

That was getting to be more and more common of late. In Hannibal’s day, the consuls had been able to whistle up ten legions within a day’s march of the City, so densely was Latium peopled with prosperous peasant families. Now we had to scour the whole peninsula for enough men to fill that many legions, and few real Romans served except as officers. Perhaps Caesar was right, and someday we would have to recruit Gauls. If he didn’t kill them all first, that is.

I searched for familiar faces, but in an army so vast I knew only a relative handful of men. Most of my time in Gaul I had spent in command of
auxilia
or else working in Caesar’s headquarters. The first
soldiers to arrive belonged to legions that hadn’t even been in Gaul when I was last there. The war, originally a fairly modest campaign to support our allies and drive the Germans back beyond the Rhenus, had turned into a vast war of conquest that had spread out to reach the obscure island of Britannia.

Despite their victories, there were no laurels, trophies, or other triumphal insignia in evidence. That would have been too arrogant even for Caesar, and he must have given strict orders for his men to make no such presumptuous display. The Senate still guarded jealously its right to grant or withhold a triumph, and Caesar was not ready to break completely with the Senate. Not yet, anyway.

In fact, as soon as their camp was made, the men made tripods of their spears, leaned their shields against them, put their helmets on the spear points, and stored their armor and swords inside the tents. When they circulated among the crowds, they retained only their military belts and boots as insignia of their status. At this demonstration of goodwill, the most ardent anti-Caesarians breathed a sigh of relief and joined in the general festivity. Thus disarmed, the soldiers were free to enter the City.

The soldiers, like soldiers of all times and places, showed off their awards and souvenirs and loot. Torques—the twisted neck rings worn by all Gallic warriors—were everywhere, from simple bronze pieces worn by the humbler Gauls to magnificent specimens of highly worked gold and silver taken from the necks of chieftains, often by the simple operation of removing the head at the same time. Within days it seemed as if every boy in Rome was wearing a big, bronze ring around his thin neck.

Others displayed beautiful shields of enameled bronze and long, narrow swords that looked exotic to eyes accustomed to the short, broad
gladius
. Gauls are passionately fond of jewelry, and these men had brought back tons of it, as well as yards of extravagantly dyed cloth worked in bewildering patterns of stripes and checks. Rome soon had the most colorful, glittering whores in the world.

I suppose it must have been the same when the Greeks returned from Troy.

“Very clever,” remarked Scribonius Libo, another candidate for praetor and a friend of Pompey. “It’s just like Caesar to accomplish several things with a single act. First, all these men will weight the polls in favor of his candidates. Second, it will remind everyone of how powerful he has grown. Third, it’s a recruiting campaign: these men are proclaiming, ‘Look how rich a soldier can become by serving with Caesar.’ ”

“Caesar uses his resources efficiently,” I agreed, “but it’s all perfectly legal.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Scribonius grumbled. “We need a law that keeps the legions on the frontiers as long as they’re under arms.”

There was a lot of such talk in those years. Our old system of raising legions for each new war and then disbanding them upon their return was terribly outdated. We still raised them that way for a really large-scale war like Caesar’s, or for an impromptu campaign like that of Crassus against Parthia, but settling the veterans of victorious wars proved to be a perpetual headache. Usually they had no land to return to, much of Italy having been bought up by plantation owners. These, having got the land cheap, were reluctant to see any of it parceled out to veterans. Many of the greatest of these landlords were senators. This was one more way in which my own class was busily cutting its own throat during those years.