John Roberts - The Year of Confusion

Callista, imperturbable as always, acted as if this were an everyday occurrence. “Show him in, Echo, and see to the comfort of his lictors.”

Caesar swept in and on his arm was none other than Servilia, mother of Marcus Brutus. I wondered if Caesar was reigniting their old flame. Servilia was a few years older than Caesar, but she looked many years younger, and still one of Rome’s great beauties.

Callista stood, as did I. “Dictator, you do me too much honor. Lady Servilia, it has been too long.”

Servilia embraced her lightly and they exchanged a social kiss on the cheek. “You must have had an interesting morning,” Servilia said. “Here we find you with Rome’s most eccentric senator.” I wasn’t sure how to take this. The Senate contained some genuine lunatics.

“Decius Caecilius is a remarkable investigator,” Caesar said. “So what if his methods are unorthodox? He is looking into the death of a Greek scholar and I’ll wager that is what brought him here.” Very little escaped Caesar.

“I find that the senator has the most penetrating intellect in Rome,” Callista said, “save only for your own.” This was the highest possible praise, for Callista never stooped to flattery. Caesar acknowledged it with a slight inclination of his regal head. The gesture was made more impressive by the gilded laurel wreath he wore, to hide his baldness. He was not without his vanities.

“Decius Caecilius,” Caesar said, “you have duties and I will not detain you.”

I know when to take a hint. I took my leave of Callista and Servilia and Caesar and went outside. Caesar’s twenty-four lictors crowded Callista’s little courtyard sipping wine from small, tasteful cups, trying not to ogle the surpassingly beautiful girls who served them. Like Fausta, Fulvia, and Clodia, Callista had only beautiful servants, and all of Callista’s were women or young girls. Whereas with the others it was a matter of sensuality, with Callista it was a matter of pure Greek aesthetics. She would not have ugliness around her. Despite this concentration of pulchritude, there had never been a hint of scandal or unseemly behavior from her household.

I went to a lictor named Flavius, who had been one of my own lictors during my praetorship. “What brings Caesar across the river?” I asked him.

“Now, Senator, you know we are forbidden to discuss our magistrate’s affairs.”

“Not even a bit of gossip?” I wheedled.

“It would mean my hide on the curia door if I talked,” he said, taking a sip. “Not that there’s anything to talk about,” he amended hastily.

I gave it up for a bad job and left. I had a lot to think about.

Hermes found me at the tavern beside the old bathhouse just off the Forum, the one favored by senators. The hour was still rather early, but a number of senators were already fortifying themselves for their afternoon baths with some of the tavern’s excellent wine to accompany the specialty of the house, fried squid with a sauce compounded of garum, pepper, and mysterious ingredients known only to the old cook.

Hermes came in and sat and selected a neat, crisp-fried ring from the great heap of them on my plate and dipped it in the bowl of sauce and proceeded to chew ecstatically. The cook insisted that the squid and sauce must be kept separate lest the former become soggy and the flavor of the latter diluted. Any man, however highly placed, who simply poured the sauce over the squid would quickly find himself served sour wine and rancid fish.

“Do make sure you’ve had enough to eat before you render your report,” I said. “As always, your comfort is my highest goal.”

He ignored my sarcasm, as usual. “The praetor peregrinus the last two months of last year was Aulus Sabinus. The first was Publius Hirtus but he was killed at Thapsus.”

“On whose side?”

“Caesar’s.” He took another piece of squid and signaled the server for a cup. “Sabinus was appointed by Caesar personally.”

“One of the advantages of being dictator,” I noted, “is that you don’t have to observe the niceties of formal elections.”

He shrugged. “Rome needs praetors, and who would campaign for a praetorship of just two months?”

“It would have been at least five if Caesar hadn’t dropped his new calendar on us. Anyway, what did you learn?”

“Only that there was never a shade of a chance of anyone bringing suit against any of those astronomers. I talked to Junius, the praetor’s secretary last year. It seems that the astronomers are here as Caesar’s personal guests and he stands in the position of hospes to them. That means that in court-”

“I know what their legal status means,” I said, grabbing myself some squid while there was still any left. “In court, Caesar would be their personal representative. Imagine bringing suit against someone defended by a man who is not only one of Rome’s greatest lawyers but dictator to boot.”

“Your prospects would be pretty weak,” he said, watching as a server filled his cup from the pitcher that stood on the table.

“Was there any court gossip about any difficulties concerning the foreigners?”

He frowned into his cup. “There was one man who wanted to sue one of them, but it wasn’t Demades, it was Polasser of Kish, the fake Babylonian.”

“Oh? What was the man’s grievance?”

“He claimed that Polasser had sold him a fraudulent horoscope, one that encouraged him to invest heavily in grain futures. Last year’s harvest was huge despite the wars and Caesar got the Egyptian crop practically free from Cleopatra and the price of grain plummeted. The man lost a fortune. Sabinus told him who he was up against and said that he got off lightly, and he didn’t want his court time wasted by a gullible fool. The man slunk off like a whipped dog. That was all I could find concerning the astronomers.”

“Did you get the name of the man Polasser duped?” Hermes nodded. “Good. It’s not much, but I may wish to talk with him.”

“So what have you found out?” he asked. At one time this might have seemed presumptuous but I had long since learned that if he was to be of any use to me he had to know everything I did about an investigation we were working on together. I gave him an account of my talk with Callista.

“You didn’t get much more than me,” he said, “except that you got to enjoy Callista’s company and sit in a house that contains some of the most beautiful women in Rome.” He sipped and pondered, a habit he had learned from me. “I just can’t see how the doings of a bunch of boring old philosophers can have anything to do with something serious, like murder.”

“It’s a puzzle,” I admitted.

“It does seem that Caesar turns up everyplace.”

“So he does, but he’s involved in everything that goes on in Rome in a way that no other man is. He wants to be Caesar the Great but he may end up being remembered as Caesar the Ubiquitous. War, the law, religion, the calendar, huge building projects, he’s into everything.”

“Don’t forget women,” Hermes said. “Cleopatra, Servilia, there must be a dozen others. How can one old man be so busy?”

“He’s not that much older than I am,” I grumbled, “but then, I’m not trying to make myself the greatest man in history before I croak. That’s the sort of thing that ages a man.”

“Odd about the two Cinnas,” he said, “and Cassius turned up at the murder scene.”

I shrugged. “They’re all part of Caesar’s circle of close companions: Cinna, Cassius, Brutus, Servilia-it’s not unlikely that where you find one you find them all. Cassius hinted that the horoscope was for Caesar.”

“Why does Caesar make confidants of his enemies like Brutus and Cassius and Cinna when you’ve always been his friend and he treats you like an errand boy?”