Caesar's Women (69 page)

The words came out with the crack of a whip, and no one tried to interrupt.

“I am well used to the mud-slinging of politics,” he went on, still in that calm but punishing voice, “but I am not going to stand idly by while someone pays the likes of Curius to bandy my name about in connection with a business I wouldn't be caught dead participating in! For someone is paying him! And when I find out who, senators, they will pay me! Here you all sit, as brilliant and wondrous as a collection of hens in a roost listening to the sordid details of a so-called conspiracy, while there are some hens here conspiring far more viciously to destroy me and my good name! To destroy my dignitas!” He drew a breath. “Without my dignitas, I am nothing. And I give every last one of you a solemn warning-—do not tamper with my dignitas! To defend it, I would tear this venerable chamber down around your ears! I would pile Pelion on top of Ossa and steal Zeus's thunder to strike every last one of you dead! Don't try my patience, Conscript Fathers, for I tell you now that I am no Catilina! If I conspired to unseat you, down you'd go!”

He turned to Cicero. “Marcus Tullius Cicero, this is the last time I will ask this question: did I or did I not furnish you with assistance in the uncovering of this conspiracy?”

Cicero swallowed; the House sat in absolute silence. No one had ever seen or heard anything quite like that speech, and no one wanted to draw attention to himself. Even Cato.

“Yes, Gaius Julius, you did assist me,” said Cicero.

“Then,” said Caesar in a less steely voice, “I demand that this House forthwith refuse to pay Quintus Curius one sestertius of the reward money he was promised. Quintus Curius has lied. He deserves no consideration.”

And such was the fear inside every senator that the House agreed unanimously not to pay Quintus Curius one sestertius of the promised reward.

Clodius stepped forward. “Noble Fathers,” he said in a loud voice, “I crave your pardon for intruding, but I must ask the noble Gaius Julius to accompany me to the court of Lucius Novius Niger as soon as he can do so.”

About to seat himself, Caesar looked instead at a dumbstruck Silanus. “Senior consul, it seems I am wanted elsewhere, I suspect on the same kind of business. In which case, remember what I have said. Remember every word! Pray excuse me.”

“You are excused,” whispered Silanus, “and so are you all.”

Thus it was that when Caesar left the Curia Hostilia with Clodius trotting alongside him, the entire company of senators streamed in their wake.

“That,” said Clodius, panting a little, “was absolutely the best wigging I have ever heard! There must be shit all over the Senate House floor.”

“Don't talk nonsense, Clodius, tell me what's happening in Niger's court,” said Caesar curtly.

Clodius obliged. Caesar stopped walking.

“Lictor Fabius!” he called to his chief lictor, hurrying his five companions to keep ahead of Caesar in the mood for war.

The three pairs of men stopped, received orders.

Then down on Novius Niger's court Caesar descended, scattering the onlookers in every direction, straight through the ranks of the jury to where Lucius Vettius stood with a letter in his hand.

“Lictors, arrest this man!”

Letter and all, Lucius Vettius was taken into custody and marched out of Novius Niger's court in the direction of the urban praetor's tribunal.

Novius Niger got to his feet so quickly that his much-prized ivory chair fell over. “What is the meaning of this?” he shrilled.

“WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?” roared Caesar.

Everyone backed away; the jury shifted uneasily, shivered.

“Who do you think are?” Caesar repeated more softly, but in a voice which could be heard halfway across the Forum. “How dare you, a magistrate of mere aedilician rank, admit evidence into your court concerning your senior in the hierarchy? Evidence, what is more, from the mouth of a paid informer? Who do you think you are? If you don't know, Novius, then I will tell you. You are a legal ignoramus who has no more right to preside over a Roman court than the dirtiest trollop hawking her fork outside Venus Erucina's! Don't you understand that it is absolutely unheard of for a junior magistrate to act in a way which could result in the trial of his senior? What you were stupid enough to say to that piece of sewer refuse Vettius deserves impeachment! That you, a mere aedilician magistrate, would attempt to convict me, the urban praetor, in your court? Brave words, Novius, but impossible to fulfill. If you have cause to believe that a magistrate senior to yourself is criminally implicated in proceedings going on in your court, then you suspend your court immediately and you take the whole matter to that senior magistrate's peers. And since I am the praetor urbanus, you go to the consul with the fasces. This month, Lucius Licinius Murena; but today, Decimus Junius Silanus.”

The avid crowd hung on every word while Novius Niger stood, face ashen, his hopes for a future consulship tumbling down about his incredulous ears.

“You take the whole matter to your senior's peers, Novius, you do not dare to continue the business of your court! You do not dare to continue to admit evidence about your senior, grinning all over your face! You have held me up before this body of men as if you have the right to do so! You do not. Hear me? You do not! How glorious a precedent you set! Is this what senior magistrates are to expect from their juniors in the future?''

One hand went out, pleading; Novius Niger wet his lips and tried to speak.

“Tace, inepte!” cried Caesar. “Lucius Novius Niger, in order to remind you and every other junior magistrate of his place in Rome's scheme of public duties, I, Gaius Julius Caesar, praetor urbanus, do hereby sentence you to one market interval of eight days in the cells of the Lautumiae. That should prove long enough to think about what is your rightful place, and to think of how you will manage to convince the Senate of Rome that you should be allowed to continue as iudex in this special court. You will not leave your cell for one moment. You will not be allowed to bring in food, or have your family visit you. You will not be let have reading or writing materials. And while I am aware that no cell in the Lautumiae has a door of any kind, let alone one which locks, you will do as you are told. When the lictors are not watching you, half of Rome will be.” He nodded to the court lictors abruptly. “Take your master to the Lautumiae, and put him in the most uncomfortable cell you can find. You will stay on guard until I send lictors to relieve you. Bread and water, nothing else, and no light after dark.”

Then without a backward glance it was across to the tribunal belonging to the urban praetor, where Lucius Vettius waited atop its platform, a lictor on either side. Caesar and the four lictors still attending him mounted the steps, now avidly trailed by all the members of Novius Niger's court, from the jury to the scribes to the accused. Oh, what fun! But what could Caesar do to Lucius Vettius save put him in the next cell to Novius Niger?

“Lictor,” he said to Fabius, “unbind your rods.”

And to Vettius, still clutching the letter, “Lucius Vettius, you have conspired against me. Whose client are you?”

The crowd twittered and fluttered, amazed, awestruck, torn between watching Caesar deal with Vettius and watching Fabius the lictor squatting down to dismember the bundle of birch rods tied in a ritual crisscross pattern with red leather thongs. Thin and slightly whippy, thirty for the thirty Curiae lay within the neat circular bundle, for they had been trimmed and turned until each one was as round as the whole cylinder called the fasces.

Vettius's eyes had widened; he couldn't seem to tear them from Fabius and the rods.

“Whose client are you, Vettius?” Caesar repeated sharply.

It came out in an agony of fear. “Gaius Calpurnius Piso's.”

“Thank you, that is all I need to know.” Caesar turned to face the men assembled below him, front ranks filled with senators and knights. “Fellow Romans,” he said, pitching his voice high, “this man on my tribunal has borne false witness against me in the court of a judge who had no right to admit his evidence. Vettius is a tribunus aerarius, he knows the law. He knows he ought not to have done that, but he was hungry to put the sum of two talents in his bank account—plus whatever his patron Gaius Piso promised him in addition, of course. I do not see Gaius Piso here to answer, which is just as well for Gaius Piso. Were he here, he would join Lucius Novius in the Lautumiae. It is my right as the praetor urbanus to exercise the power of coercitio upon this Roman citizen Lucius Vettius. I hereby do so. He cannot be flogged with a lash, but he can be beaten with a rod. Lictor, are you ready?”

“Yes, praetor urbanus,” said Fabius, who in all his long career as one of the ten prefects of the College of Lictors had never before been called upon to untie his fasces.

“Choose your rod.”

Because ravenous animalcules chewed through the rods no matter how carefully they were tended—and these were among the most revered objects Rome owned—the fasces were regularly retired amid great ceremony to be ritually burned, and were replaced by new bundles. Thus Fabius had no difficulty unlashing his rods, nor needed to sort through them to find one sturdier than the rest. He simply picked the one closest to his trembling hand, and stood up slowly.

“Hold him,” said Caesar to two others, “and remove his toga.”

“Where? How many?” whispered Fabius urgently.

Caesar ignored him. “Because this man is a Roman citizen, I will not diminish his standing by stripping away his tunic or baring his backside. Lictor, six strokes to his left calf, and six strokes to his right calf.” His voice dropped to ape Fabius's whisper. “And make them hard or it'll be your turn, Fabius!” He twitched the letter from Vettius's slack grasp, glanced briefly at its contents, then walked to the edge of the tribunal and held it out to Silanus, who was substituting this day for Murena (and wishing he too had had the sense to come down with a blinding headache). “Senior consul, I give this evidence to you for your perusal. The handwriting is not mine.” Caesar looked contemptuous. “Nor is it written in my style—vastly inferior! It reminds me of Gaius Piso, who never could string four words together.”

The beating was administered to yelps and skips from Vettius; the chief lictor Fabius had liked Caesar enormously from the days when he had served him as curule aedile and then as judge in the Murder Court. He had thought he knew Caesar. Today was a revelation, so Fabius hit hard.

While it went on Caesar strolled down from the tribunal and went into the back of the crowd, where those of humble origin stood enthralled. Anyone wearing a shabby or homespun toga to the number of twenty individuals he tapped on the right shoulder, then brought the group back to wait just below his platform.

The chastisement was over; Vettius stood dancing and sniffling from pain of two kinds, one for the bruises on his calves, the other for the bruises on his self-esteem. Quite a number of those who had witnessed his humiliation knew him, and had cheered Fabius on deliriously.

“I understand that Lucius Vettius is something of a furniture fancier!” Caesar said then. “To be beaten with a rod leaves no lasting memory of wrongdoing, and Lucius Vettius must be made to remember today for a long time to come! I therefore order that a part of his property be confiscated. Those twenty Quirites I touched on the shoulder are authorized to accompany Lucius Vettius back to his house, and there to select one item of furniture each. Nothing else is to be touched—not slaves nor plate nor gilding nor statuary. Lictors, escort this man to his house, and see that my orders are carried out.”

Off went the hobbling and howling Vettius under guard, followed by twenty delighted beneficiaries, already chortling among themselves and dividing the spoils—who needed a bed, who a couch, who a table, who a chair, who had the room to fit in a desk?

One of the twenty turned back as Caesar came down off his tribunal. “Do we get mattresses for the beds?” he yelled.

“A bed's no use without a mattress, no one knows that better than I, Quiris!” laughed Caesar. “Mattresses go with beds and bolsters go with couches, but no cloths to cover them, understand?”

Caesar went home, though only to attend to his person; it had been an eventful day, the time had gone nowhere, and he had an assignation with Servilia.

An ecstatic Servilia was an exhausting experience. She licked and kissed and sucked in a frenzy, opened herself and tried to open him, drained him dry then demanded more.

It was, thought Caesar as he lay flat on his back, mind cooling into sleep, the best and only way to eliminate the kind of driving tension days like today provoked.

But though temporarily sated, Servilia had no intention of letting Caesar sleep. Annoying that he had no pubic hair to tweak; she pinched the loose skin of his scrotum instead.

“That woke you up!”

“You're a barbarian, Servilia.”

“I want to talk.”

“I want to sleep.”

“Later, later!”

Sighing, he rolled onto his side and threw his leg over her to keep his spine straight. “Talk away.”

“I think you've beaten them,” she said, paused, then added, “for the time being, anyway.”

“For the time being is correct. They'll never let up.”

“They would if you'd grant them room for their dignitas too.”

“Why should I? They don't know the meaning of the word. If they want to preserve their own dignitas, they should leave mine alone.” He made a noise both scornful and exasperated. “It's one thing after another, and the older I get, the faster I have to run. My temper is fraying too easily.”

“So I gather. Can you mend it?”

“I'm not sure I want to. My mother used to say that that and my lack of patience were my two worst faults. She was a merciless critic, and a strict disciplinarian. By the time I went to the East I thought I'd beaten both faults. But I hadn't met Bibulus or Cato then, though I did encounter Bibulus very quickly after. On his own I could deal with him. Allied to Cato, he's a thousand times more intolerable.”

“Cato needs killing.”

“Leaving me with no formidable enemies? My dear Servilia, I am not wishing either Cato or Bibulus dead! The more opposition a man has, the better his mind works. I like opposition. No, what worries me is inside myself. That temper.”