The Tribune's Curse (6 page)

“Decius Caecilius! Allow me to be first to congratulate you on your election!” He grasped my hand and clapped me warmly on the shoulder, a sure sign that he wanted something from me. I was pretty sure I knew what it was.

“You are being a bit precipitate, but thank you anyway.”

“Nonsense. We both know you’re going to win, Metellus that you are, eh?” He grinned, a ghastly sight that exposed teeth as long as my fingers.

“Ah, so rumor has it.” I had always disliked and feared Crassus, but this senile attempt at geniality was doubly unsettling. The Senate was full of dotty old men, but we didn’t entrust the fate of legions to them.

“Exactly, exactly. Not a cheap office, aedile. Games, upkeep of the streets, walls, and gates—they’re in shocking disrepair, you know. Next year is going to be a bad one on the aediles. Several of them have already come to me to help them with the burden.”

“And I am sure that you received them with your famed generosity.” He was as well-known for miserliness as for wealth, and he never turned a
sestertius
loose without expecting a fat return. Naturally, the irony sailed right past him.

“As always, as always, my boy. And I could do as much for you.”

This was getting to be the theme of the day. The prospect was not made less tempting through repetition. I longed to grasp at it, but the repulsion Crassus always inspired in me made me draw back.

“But then you would expect my support in the Senate for your war, Marcus Licinius.”

He nodded. “Naturally.”

“But I oppose it. At least the Gauls and the Germans gave
Caesar some slight excuse to make war on them. The Parthians have done nothing.”

He looked honestly puzzled. “What of that? They’re rich.” Always a good-enough reason for Crassus and his like.

“Call me old-fashioned, Consul, but I think Rome was a better state when we only made war to protect ourselves and our allies, and to honor treaty obligations. We’ve filled the City with other people’s wealth and ruined our farmers with a flood of cheap, foreign slaves. I would like to see an end to this.”

He leered hideously. “You are living in the past, Decius. I am far older than you, and I remember no such Rome. My own grandfather did not serve such a Rome. The wars with Carthage taught us that the biggest wolf with the sharpest teeth rules the pack. If we cease warring long enough for a single generation to grow up in peace, our teeth will grow dull and a younger, fiercer wolf will eat us.” His voice steadied, and his eyes cleared, and, for a moment, I saw the young Marcus Licinius Crassus who had clawed his way to the top of the Roman heap during the City’s bloodiest and most savage period, the civil wars of Marius and Sulla.

“The subjugation of Gaul will provide us with insurrections to put down for many years to come,” I said. “Caesar is even talking about an expedition to Britannia.”

“Caesar is still young enough to be thinking about such things. There is still one war to be fought in the East, and I intend to win it and come back to Rome and celebrate my triumph. Other members of your family have not been so delicate in their feelings for foreign kings. I strongly suggest that you consult with the greater men among them before making any unwise decisions. Good evening to you, Metellus!” He snapped out this last in a vicious whisper; then he whirled and stalked off.

I maintained my insouciant pose, but I was all but trembling in my toga. Yes, we still wore togas to dinner parties back then.
It was Caesar who introduced the far more comfortable
synthesis
as acceptable evening wear, and that was only after his stay at Cleopatra’s court. Milo found me standing like that, and he wasn’t fooled. He knew me far better than anyone else, except, perhaps, Julia.

“You look like a man with a viper crawling under his tunic. What did the old man say to you?”

I told him succinctly. I had few secrets from Milo, and we cooperated on most political matters.

“Personally,” he said, “I don’t know why you don’t take him up on it. It really costs you nothing, and he’s sure to die before he makes it back home, no matter how the war goes. His deterioration these last two years has been shocking.”

“Clodius said almost the same thing to me earlier today.”

“Even that little weasel is capable of wisdom from time to time.”

“I’d rather not be known as another of Crassus’s toadies, even if some of the other Caecilians have given in.” My family, although still powerful in the Assemblies, had produced no men of great distinction recently. Metellus Pius was dead and his war against Sertorius all but forgotten. The conquest of Crete by Metellus Creticus really hadn’t amounted to much. The Big Three understood that only
recent
glory counted for anything.

“It’s a chancy time just now,” he admitted. “It’s hard to know exactly how to maneuver and how to vote. I find it all truly enjoyable, but a few years from now things are going to get vicious. Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus will all be heading for Rome and trying for the Dictatorship.”

“They wouldn’t dare!” I protested, with no great conviction.

He smiled indulgently. “Marius dared. Sulla dared. They’ll dare. It’s the main reason I support Cicero so strongly. He’s a strict constitutionalist. If Caesar becomes Dictator, he’ll get rid of me
and make Clodius his Master of Horse.” This ancient title meant the Dictator’s number-two man and enforcer.

“And if it’s Crassus or Pompey?”

“Then it’s exile or execution for Clodius and me both. As long as they’re engaged in foreign lands, they need men like us to control the City for them. With the Dictatorship they have it all, and they don’t need us.”

“You’re talking about the death of the Republic,” I said, shivering.

“It’s been dying for a long time, Decius. Now come along. Cast off this gloom. Let’s go talk to my men. Twenty of my best have agreed to fight in your funeral
munera
for Metellus Celer at a minimum charge, as a favor to me.”

This cheered me, and I tried to shake off my mood of foreboding. Milo had some great retired champions working for him, men who were accustomed to getting huge fees to come out of retirement to fight in special Games. I grabbed another cup as we walked back toward his meeting hall.

“Y
OU DRANK TOO MUCH AGAIN
,” Julia informed me as we crawled into our detestably expensive litter.

“Do you think I don’t know that, my dear? It’s been an unsettling evening.”

“You thought so? I had a wonderful time. Fausta has given me so many ideas.”

“I feared that,” I said, pinching the bridge of my long, Metellan nose.

“And Lisas is such an amusing dinner companion. You really must get us an invitation to the next reception at the Egyptian Embassy. I hear it is the most astonishing place.”

“Such an invitation will be forthcoming. Lisas is now cultivating
me, even though an aedile has nothing to do with foreign affairs.”

“He knows you’re on your way up,” she said, patting my knee complacently. “So what soured your evening?”

“A little interview with our esteemed consul.” I described our ominous conversation.

“That loathsome creature!”

“Oh, I don’t know, someday I’ll be old and decrepit, too, if the gods grant me a long life.”

“That is not what I mean, and you know it!” she said, swatting me with her fan. “I knew him when I was a little girl, and he was still only middle-aged and relatively handsome. He was loathsome even then, the money-grubbing miser!”

“We can’t all be patricians. As it occurs, I fully agree with your assessment of his character. Years ago, Clodia told me that Roman politics was a game in which all contended against all and there must eventually be one winner.”

“She is an odious woman.”

“But politically astute. It seems to be the general consensus that Crassus is soon to be removed from the playing board. All the rest have died or dropped out except for Caesar and Pompey. I fear civil war in the offing.”

“Nonsense. Pompey is a political dolt, and he has separated himself from his veterans for too long. If Uncle Caius is forced to assume the Dictatorship—which is, I remind you, a constitutional office—I am sure that he will take only whatever measures are necessary to restore the Republic. He will then dismiss his lictors and hand his extraordinary powers back to the Senate, like all our great Dictators of the past.”

So spoke the doting patrician niece. Her pessimistic, plebeian husband was far less confident. But he had many other things on his mind just then.

B
Y THE NEXT MORNING I WAS A BIT
fuzzy headed from the wine but otherwise ready to face another agreeable day of campaigning. Any day that began without the trumpets blowing to signal a dawn attack by the Gauls was a good day, as far as I was concerned. I left Julia snoring delicately and aristocratically behind me, splashed some water on my face, and went in search of breakfast. In my bachelor days I breakfasted in bed, but that luxury had gone the way of most of my bachelor habits.

Eating breakfast was one of those degenerate foreign practices to which I subscribed enthusiastically. Cassandra had laid a small table in the courtyard with melon slices, cold chicken, and warm, heavily watered wine. Nearby, Hermes, stripped to a loincloth, ran in place, warming up for a morning at the
ludus
. I noticed a slight hitch in his steps and looked for the cause.

“Come here, boy,” I said. Apprehensively, he came to my
table, and I saw that he had a fresh, two-inch cut high on his left thigh, neatly stitched.

“That’s Asklepiodes’ needlework, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes. He said it’s nothing, just a skin cut. Didn’t even nick the muscle. In fact—”

I brought my palm crashing down on the table, nearly upsetting my wine, which Hermes rescued. “I have ordered you
never
to train with sharp weapons! I’ll not have my property risked needlessly!”

“But all of the top men of the school—”

“You are none such! Practice with sharp weapons is strictly for veterans, the victors of many combats. They are men who earn fortunes by their skill and have no prospect of a future. As long as you belong to me, you are to stick to wooden swords. Sharp swords are for when we’re in a war zone.”

“It won’t happen again, I promise,” he said contritely. The evil little wretch was planning to disobey me at the first opportunity. He always did.

“It was Leonidas, wasn’t it?”

He looked surprised. “How did you know?”

“That backhand slice with the tip of the
sica
is his trademark. You were leading with your left leg and holding your shield too high. He always watches for that. If it had been a serious fight, he could have taken your leg off. The man’s won thirty-two fights that I know of. You have no business sparring with him. Stick to the regular trainers and students of your own level. Do you understand me?”

He hung his head with total insincerity. “Yes, sir.”

“Then be off with you, and thank all the gods that you don’t have to attend my morning calls.” He was out the front door without bothering to put on his tunic. I returned to my breakfast, not totally displeased. If a champion like Leonidas thought Hermes was worth sparring with, he must be coming along nicely. Leonidas
could behead flies buzzing around his helmet. The nick on the thigh had been a well-meant warning.

My clients met me in my atrium, and we went off to my father’s house. As always it was mobbed with his clients. Since I was standing for office, I usually just paid my respects at the door, but this time his steward said that the old man wanted to speak with me. Knowing that this boded ill, I went in.

My father, the elder Decius, was one of the head men of
gens
Caecilia. He had held every public office including the Censorship and had commanded armies in the field, and his voice was one of the most respected in the
curia
. It was his continued longevity that kept me a legal minor. He could have manumitted me with a simple ceremony, but the old villain wasn’t about to relinquish his hold. I found him alone in his study.

“Good morning, Father! How—”

He whirled around, his face red except for the great, horizontal scar that almost bisected his face and gave him his nickname: Cut-Nose.

“Did you really refuse Crassus’s offer to cover your debts yesterday?”

“Well, yes.”

“Twice, I understand?”

“How word does get around! Yes, I did. The second time to his face. You can’t count the first time. That was to Clodius, and I’d never give him a positive answer.”

“Idiot! You know how hard your family has worked to smooth relations with him, and with Caesar and Pompey!” These took the form of marriage ties: a son of Crassus married a Caecilia, I married Caesar’s niece, and so forth. The fact that Julia and I actually wanted to marry had no bearing on the political matchmaking.

“I know you and the others have alienated Pompey.”

He waved his big-knuckled hand. “No matter. He can manage the grain supply as long as he likes. He’s done a wonderful
job. We just have to keep him from command of the legions. Caesar has turned into a wild man, and he must be dealt with eventually, if he lives. But Crassus is vastly wealthy, and he could come back from Parthia a
triumphator!
”

“Everyone seems to think that he’ll die before he gets home.”

“How did I ever beget such a moron! No wonder you lose so much money at the races if that’s how you place your bets!”

“Lose money? Me?” I cried, stung. “Just last month in Mu-tina I won—”

“Silence!” He leaned across his desk, supporting his weight on his knuckles, thrusting his head forward as he glared at me. “I know your memory is short, but I remember when Caius Marius returned from his last war. He was even older than Crassus and madder than Ajax! He seized power in the City and proceeded to kill more Romans than Hannibal! If Crassus comes back with a triumph and the wealth of King Orodes added to what he already has and a heart full of bile toward everyone he even imagines has offended him, a lot of us are going to die!”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted, chastened.