Saturnalia (17 page)

“
Io
Saturnalia! How about some breakfast, Decius? Come on, get up!”

Creakily, aching in every joint, I lurched up and sat on the edge of my bed. The light hurt my eyes, and I buried my face on my cupped palms.

“Why didn’t I kill you yesterday when it was legal?” I groaned.

“Too late,” he said cheerily. “You can’t even execute a traitor on Saturnalia. Go fetch me something to eat.” Then he saw what I looked like. “What were you doing all night? You must have been in the roughest
lupanar
in town.” He inspected some of my more egregious wounds. “I’ll bet it was
one of those places where the madam chains you to a post and the girls work you over with whips. You should try being a slave; then you could live like that all the time.”

I found my dagger and started for him, but he pointed at it with an odd expression and I held it up. There was brownish blood all over the blade.

“I hope you didn’t kill anyone inside the City,” he said.

I pondered the weapon. “I’ll have to wash this blood off or it’s going to rust the blade.”

“You can do that in the kitchen,” Hermes suggested. “While you’re there, find me something to eat.”

Wearily, I shuffled back toward the kitchen. From Cato and Cassandra’s room I heard the sound of snoring. At least I wouldn’t be fetching breakfast for them. I poured water from a jug into a basin and dipped my blade into it, scrubbing away the dry, flaky blood with a rough cloth and a sponge. When all the blood was gone, I inspected it. It was too late. The fine sheen of the Spanish steel was marred with tiny pits. Blood is the worst thing in the world for weapon steel. That is an oddity, when you think about it. I made a mental note to stop at a cutler’s and have it polished, when people were back at work again.

I poked around until I found some bread and cheese and a few dried figs. I was sure my slaves had stocked up for the holiday, but I had no idea where they stored the provender and was in no mood to institute a detailed search of the kitchen. I found Hermes in the courtyard seated at his ease in the chair I usually employed. I began to sit in the chair opposite him, but he waggled an admonitory finger at me.

“Ah-ah-ah. Not today, you don’t.”

I sat down anyway. “Don’t overdo it. We’re not supposed to remember how you behave on Saturnalia, but we do anyway.”
I grabbed some of the food and started to eat. “My clients will be here soon. Did Cato and Cassandra make up their gifts?”

“They’re in the atrium,” he said, munching cheese. “Speaking of which, how about some money so I can celebrate properly?” Hermes was insolent at the best of times. On Saturnalia, he was insufferable. I went into my bedroom and opened a chest. I took out a pouch, first counting to make sure he hadn’t appropriated some of my money already.

“There,” I said, dropping the pouch on the table in front of him. “Keep it out of sight. In the streets you like to frequent they’ll cut your throat for that much money. Don’t come home with any exotic diseases, and I don’t want you so hung over that you’ll be of no use to me tomorrow. I’m in the middle of something very bad and I expect to be busy.”

“Who wants to kill you this time?” he asked, taking a swig of watered wine.

Before I could answer him my clients began to arrive. There was the usual round of greetings. They gave me presents. Since they were mostly poor men, these consisted mainly of the traditional candles. By custom, my own gifts to them had to be more valuable, although my own circumstances were modest. I gave Burrus a new sword for his son who was with the Tenth Legion, soon to be in the thick of the fighting against the Gauls and the Germans, winning glory for Caesar.

From my house we all trooped off to my father’s. His mob of clients spilled out onto the street outside and had to make their way through in shifts. When I finally got in, I found Father talking with a couple of distinguished-looking men, although their rank was hard to guess since they wore plain tunics. I made my formal obeisance, and Father introduced the two as Titus Ampius Balbus and Lucius Appuleius Saturninus,
two of the praetors of the year. Balbus was to govern Asia in the next year, and Saturninus was to have Macedonia. Clearly, Father thought I should be currying favor with these two, who were up-and-comers in a position to offer me fine appointments, but I needed to confer with him privately.

“What do you want?” he asked impatiently, when we were a little separated from the others. “You know that official business is forbidden today.”

“And you know that I am acting in a highly unofficial capacity. I’ve come upon something important and I need to know a few things. Was Celer engaged in suppressing or expelling forbidden cults within Rome and its environs?”

“What kind of idiot question is that? He was a praetor, not a censor. And when no censors hold office, that is the province of the aediles, along with public morals.”

“You and Hortensius Hortalus were our most recent censors,” I pressed on. “Did you take action concerning such cults?”

He frowned. But then, he always frowned. “Hortalus and I conduced the census, we completed the
lustrum,
and we purged the Senate of some very unsavory members. Beyond that, we oversaw the letting of the public contracts. I turned in my insignia of office last year, and the subject of obscene foreign cults never came up.”

“Not foreign cults, Father. Domestic cults. Native Italian cults operating within and just outside of Rome. Cults numbering among their members some very highly placed Romans.”

“Explain yourself,” he said. So I gave him a succinct rendition of my experiences of the previous two days, leaving out nothing. Well, leaving out very little, anyway. When I got to the part about the sacrifice, he muttered, “Infamous!” and
made a complex gesture to ward off the evil eye, one he must have learned in childhood from a Sabine nurse.

“A cult of witches, eh?” he said when I was finished. “Human sacrifice. A hidden
mundus.
And noble Romans involved?” Absently, he rubbed a hand across the scar that divided his face, a characteristic gesture meaning he was plotting evil against his enemies. “This is a chance to rid Rome of its three very worst women. Exiled, at the very least. After this they could never return.”

“Don’t forget the man who wanted to poke my eyes out,” I reminded him.

“Oh, him. Yes, it’s too bad you didn’t get a look at his face.” This was for the sake of form. If you wanted to get rid of murderous men, the best way would have been to block up the doors of the Senate house during a meeting and set fire to the place. Murder was a popular pastime among the male gentry. It was the scandalous women who outraged men like my father.

He put a hand on my shoulder. “Look, we can’t stay closeted like this. People will suspect we are doing something official. I’ll manage to get the aediles aside sometime today to discuss this.”

“I am not sure that would be a good idea. I am not satisfied with Murena’s handling of the murder of the woman Harmodia. For some reason he took the official record of the case and hid or destroyed it. He is either concealing something or protecting somebody.”

“You are making too much of the matter. The slave who was sent to fetch the document probably stopped at a tavern on the way to court, got drunk, and lost it. It happens all the time. It was just another murder of another nobody.

“But if it will set your mind at ease, I’ll avoid Murena
and confer only with Visellius Varro and Calpurnius Bestia and the others. I should speak with Caesar as well, although he is probably too busy preparing for his Gallic campaign to take much of an interest. Still, as
pontifex maximus
it’s his duty to make a pronouncement upon the danger of a corrupting, nonstate religion. In the meantime, you should go to your gangster friend Milo and get him to assign you some protection. Since they didn’t kill or blind you, they may be looking for you now.”

“I can’t go to Milo!” I said. “He is going to marry Fausta and he’s entirely irrational about her.
He
might kill me if I threaten to have her exposed!”

Father shrugged. “Then go to Statilius Taurus and borrow some of his gladiators. Now, come along. We must make our rounds.”

I accompanied him to a few more houses, but my heart simply wasn’t in the spirit of the season. He was also being unrealistic. What use would hired thugs be to me when the people I was dealing with specialized in spells and poisons? I wasn’t worried about any bumpkin daggermen as long as I was armed and on familiar ground. It was depressing to have to watch everything I ate or drank though. Luckily, for the duration of the holiday, food stalls were everywhere. They would have to poison the whole city to get me.

About spells I was not so sure. Like most rational, educated men I was extremely dubious of the efficacy, even the reality, of magical spells. On the other hand, recent events were causing my rationality to flake away like dandruff. Witches were supposed to be able to strike their enemies down with ailments of the heart, liver, lungs, and sundry other organs. They could cause blindness and impotence. But if they
could do all that, I wondered, how did it come about that they had any enemies at all?

By late morning I managed to break away from my father and his crowd, but as I wandered through the streets the gaiety of the season transformed itself before my eyes to the menacing and the sinister. Why did so many people wear masks if not to take on the personae of demons? What was the reason for the whole hilarious occasion but a primitive midwinter fear that, if we didn’t jolly the gods along a bit, they wouldn’t give us springtime next year?

I knew I was just being morbid. People wore masks, for the most part, because they were taking advantage of the confusion to mess about with other people’s wives and husbands. They were celebrating because, to Romans, any excuse for a party is a good one. The world-turned-upside-down aspect was just the unique fillip of Saturnalia. Even weirder things happened at our other rites. There was the
Lupercalia
, where a team of patrician boys ran through the streets naked, flogging women with thongs of bloody goatskin, and the
Floralia
, where respectable women and whores went out in public and tooted on trumpets. There were others on our year-round calendar of official holidays, each with its tutelary deities and singular rites. Saturnalia was the biggest of the year, that was all. Still, I could not shake my mood.

In the Forum the festivities were in full swing. On the judicial platforms before the basilicas, mimes were performing parodies of the trials ordinarily held there, rife with obscene gestures and indecent language. From the
rostra
men pretending to be the great statesmen of the day made speeches even more nonsensical than the real thing. On the steps of the Curia Hostilia a pair of men wearing outsized insignia of the censors solemnly forbade such activities as feeding one’s children,
observing the proper rituals of the state gods, serving in the legions, etc.

The music was cacophonous and deafening. People were dancing and reeling everywhere. Nobody seemed to be walking in a normal manner. I dearly wanted to consult some court and Senate records and interview a few officials and secretaries, but it was out of the question on such a day. I wandered about, scanning the crowds for faces from the ritual of the previous night. In so vast a throng it was futile. I could only be certain of the three patrician women I already knew, Furia, and perhaps one or two others.

I went to a booth next to the Curia and spoke with its proprietor long enough to establish that he was not Marsian and bought a loaf stuffed with grape leaves, olives, and tiny, salted fish, generously drenched with
garum.
To this I added just enough wine to settle my nerves and sat on the bottom step, wolfing it all down while the pseudocensors pronounced punishments for showing respect for one’s parents and forbidding senators to attend meetings when sober.

I was gratified to note that my recent harrowing experiences had not affected my appetite. Come to think of it, nothing ever affected my appetite. I was finishing up the final crumbs when the last person in the world I expected to see hailed me.

“Decius Caecilius! How good to see another man in Rome whom Clodius hates almost as much as he hates me.”

“Marcus Tullius!” I cried, standing up to take his hand. We knew each other well enough to use this familiar form of address. Cicero had aged since I had seen him last, but few of us grow younger. It was odd to see him entirely alone, for he was usually attended by a crowd of friends and clients. No one was paying him any attention, and it is entirely possible
that no one recognized the great and dignified orator dressed as he was in a dingy old tunic and cracked sandals, his bony knees and skinny legs exposed, his face unshaven, and with his hair untrimmed. He looked as mournful as I felt. Cicero’s military record was as undistinguished as my own, and in seeing him thus the reason was plain. He could never look like anything but a lawyer and a scholar.

“Surely all your friends have not forsaken you?” I asked.

“No, I just wanted to be able to wander around alone for a change, so I dismissed all my followers. This is the one day of the year when I am probably safe from attack. Not that Clodius is likely to try violence now. He wants the glory of driving me into exile as tribune. He’ll have it, too. Next year is his year, and even I am not inclined to fight it.”

“Go somewhere peaceful and get some studying and writing done,” I advised. “You’ll be recalled as soon as he’s out of power. For what it’s worth, I know that you had no choice in ordering those executions. Even Cato is on your side, and Jupiter knows he’s a stickler for the legalities.”

“I appreciate your support, Decius,” he said kindly, as if I were important enough for my support to mean something.

I waved up toward the forbidding crag of the Tarpeian Rock. “There are men walking free and safe today who deserved the rock for their part in that incident.”

“I know whom you mean,” he said ruefully. “Calpurnius Bestia and a dozen others. Most of them escaped through Pompey’s protection and the rest were cronies of Caesar and Crassus. No chance of calling them to account now. Never mind, we’ll get them for something else another time.”