SPQR III: the sacrilege (26 page)

"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.

"Pompey is coming back down," the man said. "Word spread an hour ago that he is planning something extraordinary!"

"He's cut the banquet short!" I said. "It should go on until midnight!"

Milo grinned. "But then most of the citizens would be asleep and unable to admire their idol."

"I have to get up there!" I shouted. "If I can't get to the temple before the Senate breaks up, it will be days before they meet again!"

"And you don't have days to live, at this rate," Milo said. "Let's see what we can do." What Milo could do was considerable. He shouldered his way through the tight-tacked mob almost as if it weren't there, and I followed his broad back.

Feverishly, I thought about the usual triumphal honors enjoyed by a victorious general. Ordinarily, the day culminated with the banquet on the Capitol, at the end of which the
triumphator
descended the hill, escorted by the Senate, bearing torches to light his way. Lucullus, at the time of his triumph, had thrown his own banquet in his new garden, but I had not heard that Pompey had asked permission for a change of routine. Pompey, it seemed, was fond of his little surprises.

Halfway to the Capitol, we broke through the crowd. A mass of lictors held it back, holding their fasces obliquely, the way soldiers carry spears when they are controlling a mob.

"I must get to the temple!" I shouted at them.

"You may pass, Senator," said a lictor, "but not your friend." There is no one more officious than a lictor who has been given a little authority.

"You're on your own," Milo said cheerfully. "Try not to die foolishly."

I began to trot up the hill. There was a great deal of milling about going on up there. The heat built up rapidly beneath my heavy toga, but I dared not throw it off. Running heavily armed into the massed Senate could mean real trouble. I stopped to catch my breath and brush the sweat from my face; then I saw what I had feared the most: a double line of torches coming toward me. I cursed mightily and resumed running toward the lights, so agitated that I didn't notice that they moved rather oddly. As I neared them, I snatched the message tube from within my tunic and held it aloft.

"Noble Senators!" I screamed. "I must address you! Stop! Cnaeus Pompeius has no right to--" Then I stopped and gaped. The torches were not held by Senators wearing wreaths. The were carried by elephants, at least fifty of them.

Pompey had assembled his monsters atop the Capitol so that he could come down the hill in real style. Each elephant had a mahout straddling his neck, and behind each mahout was a wooden castle manned with youths and girls who were armed with baskets of flowers and trinkets to scatter among the onlookers.

The mahout on the lead elephant pointed at me with his goad and gabbled something. I stood transfixed by the bizarre spectacle, at risk of imminent trampling.

"Metellus, I knew you'd show up!" Broken from my trance, I looked up to see that the lead elephant's castle wasn't manned by any youths and maidens. It held Publius Clodius and some of his thugs. Whooping like a hunter who has started a hare, he snatched up a javelin and hurled it at me. I leapt nimbly aside, and the iron-shod point struck sparks from the pavement.

Toga flapping, I whirled and ran back down the hill. It seemed that I was spending a great deal of time running from Clodius these days, but an elephant gives a man an unfair advantage.

Another javelin sailed past me by a good margin. Clodius was always a wretched spearman. Of course, his swaying platform and the uncertain light could not have helped much. Ahead of me, the crowd of citizens and lictors gaped and pointed, at me and at the elephants. I couldn't pick out Milo's face among the mob.

I plowed through the lictors like a ship ramming through an enemy's battle line. They stumbled trying to get out of my way as the crowd heaved back, instinctively wanting to avoid the path of the trumpeting, torchbearing monsters. Another javelin missed me, but I heard a scream as it impaled some unfortunate citizen.

The uproar grew deafening as half the mob tried to run away from the oncoming beasts while the other half surged forward to get a closer look. It was like one of those circus riots where a panic starts and hundreds of people get trampled. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the huge gray beast towering above the mob as Clodius poised his arm for another throw. Behind him, cheerful young people mounted on other elephants waved and threw their flowers and trinkets into the mob. He missed again.

I got all the way down to the Forum in this hallucinatory fashion. The mob and the elephants spilled into the great plaza close behind me, and despite the best efforts of the mahouts, the animals lost all cohesion and began to scatter amid the confusion. People screamed or laughed. All Rome loves an event like this. There was much fleeing from before the beasts, unnecessarily. Terrifying as they are to behold, elephants are actually quite careful where they step and rarely inflict more than a crushed toe. War elephants have to be trained to trample enemies, as it is not their natural behavior. Needless to say, this was not common knowledge in the Roman streets.

An elephant passed by me, and its inhabitants showered things all around me. This turned out to be almost as deadly as the javelins Clodius was hurling, for it transpired that Pompey was not scattering mere trinkets this night. In the torchlight I saw gold coins, carved gem-stones, vials of perfume amid the flowers, and wherever they landed, fights broke out over possession.

I looked for Clodius and saw him standing in his little castle, looking all over for me. I saw that his beast was about to pass close by the Rostra. I got to the fringes of the mob and ran toward the old monument and dashed up its back steps. There I threw off my toga, consigning the expensive thing to unavoidable oblivion, crossed the base and stepped out onto one of the bronze ship's rams that decorated the marble front of the platform.

As the elephant jostled by, I jumped into its castle, my sword bare in one hand and a
caestus
on the other. The men whirled around with looks of shock and I smashed my bronze-spiked left fist into the jaw of one, in the next instant slashing another across the face. Both men tumbled screaming to the pavement fifteen feet below. Now it was just Clodius and me.

Screaming, he leapt on me before I could rebrace myself. I had not anticipated the rocking of the platform beneath my feet and I swung my arms wide to regain balance. That gave him the chance to grasp both my wrists as he closed, trying to knee me in the crotch. I spent several seconds jockeying to protect myself. He tried to bite my nose off again, but I tucked in my chin and butted him in the face instead.

As he staggered back, the platform began to rock violently. I spared a glance down and saw that scores of Clodius's thugs had rallied to him and were trying to scramble up the sides of the elephant to rescue their master. The poor beast trumpeted with alarm, waving its torch-laden trunk about and scorching several bystanders.

At last, the strain proved to be too much for the unstable castle. The elephant stumbled sideways and the girth parted. The tower lurched and fell, landing on a set of steps amid a great splintering of wood and rending of wicker. We were thrown violently apart, and I somehow managed to retain my grip on my weapons. I lurched to my feet to see Clodius's whole mob a few steps away, but they had the look of abashed schoolboys and did not climb the stair as they helped Clodius, shaking his head groggily, to regain his feet. I looked to see who had cowed them and saw, standing in the doorway behind me, the lady Aurelia, Caesar's mother, livid with rage.

"Who dares to bring bloodied weapons to the house of the
Pontifex Maximus
?" she screeched. Hastily, I re-sheathed my sword and thrust my smeared
caestus
beneath my tunic.

"If you will excuse me, my lady," I said, "these men are trying to kill me. May I come inside?" I could see Julia standing behind her.

"If you enter this house, I will demand your public flogging!" said the old bat.

"Let him in, Grandmother!" Julia pleaded.

"Never!"

Clodius grinned and came for me again, and I was about to draw when a clopping of hooves interrupted us. From a courtyard beside the house came Caius Julius and a sizable retinue, all mounted. This was a rare sight in the city, especially after nightfall. Well, it was a night for strange sights.

"What is this?" Caesar shouted. He wore a military tunic and boots.

"This man," his mother said, pointing at me, "has violated your house. Have him executed at once, my son!"

Caesar smiled. "Now, Mother, calm yourself. This is Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, and the gods keep special watch over such as he. I, the
Pontifex Maximus
, have said so." He turned to Clodius. "Publius, call off your dogs."

But Clodius had gone into his gorgonlike rage. "Not this time, Caesar! He is mine!"

"Decius, come here," Caesar said. I stepped over to him, keeping a wary eye on Clodius. Caesar leaned from his saddle, an eyebrow sardonically arched. In a low voice, he said: "Decius, just how badly do you want to get out of Rome alive tonight?"

"Rather badly," I admitted.

"The only way you are going to do it is to ride out with me. I am on my way to Spain, and my men are all veterans of long experience. Clodius won't dare attack. But I want something from you first."

"Is that what you do these days, Caius Julius?" I said bitterly. "Make bargains, like some
publicanus
angling for a government contract?"

"It's the way of the new Rome," he said. "Be quick about it."

"What do you want?"

"Many things, but right now what you must give me is your evidence." He held forth his hand.

I looked at the enraged Clodius and his murderous men. Nowhere could I see Milo or his thugs. I was alone and I could measure my life expectancy in seconds. I took the message tube from my tunic and placed it in Caesar's hand.

"Is this all?" he demanded.

"It is," I said, sick at heart. He snapped his fingers, and a man led up one of the remounts and helped me scramble onto its back. He had a hard, scarred, veteran's face.

"Attack if you will, Clodius," Caesar said, radiating contempt. Clodius and his men fell back as we rode through them. I looked back at the doorway and Julia waved shyly. I waved back, rejoicing in my survival, sickened at my defeat. It was an odd sensation, and the situation was rather like one of those tedious Greek dramas.

We passed through the Forum, which was still alive with its surging mobs and its miniature elephant stampede. This night would be remembered for some time to come. I didn't see Pompey. As we rode through the streets, Caesar read the letter by the light of a torch held by one of his men. When he was finished, he stuffed it into a saddlebag.