Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

'By whom?'

'After the battle Antonius's reserves were sent to scour the hills. They were ordered to take any man prisoner who was willing to give himself up, and to offer battle only to those who offered it first. Do you know how many prisoners they came back with? Exactly two: yourself and Meto, both unconscious. Of all Catilina's army, only you two survived — such a curious omen that it was thought an augur should come to see it. I was summoned, and once I saw who it was, I put you under my protection and had you brought to my tent. When he awoke, Meto explained to me how you both came to be in Catilina's camp. He went out just a short while ago to look for something to eat.'

"Then I hope he brings something back with him,' I said, clutching my stomach. 'I don't know which feels emptier, my stomach or my head! Only we two, you say; then Catilina — '

'Gone, with all the rest. To a man, they died bravely, and took many lives with them. All morning the soldiers here in camp have been talking about it, saying they never before encountered so much resistance from such an outnumbered foe. Catilina's commanders all died in the front ranks. Each position was held fast until every man defending it was dead, and all their wounds were in front. They exacted a terrible toll: before it was over, all of Antonius's best fighters were dead or severely wounded.'

'And Catilina? How did he die?'

'He was found far from his own men, deep within enemy ranks among the bodies of his adversaries. His garments and armour and flesh were all the same colour, soaked red with blood. He was pierced by more wounds than could be counted, yet he was still breathing when they found him. They called me to hear his testament if he should speak; he never opened his eyes or uttered a word. But by his face you could see that he was himself to the end. Until his final breath he wore that expression of haughty defiance that caused so many men to hate him.'

'And made others love him,' I said quietly.

'Yes.'

'I know that expression. I should like to have seen his face.'

'You still may,' said Rufus. Before I could ask him what he meant, from outside we heard a sudden wail of grief so wrenching that it froze my blood. 'That's been going on all morning,' sighed Rufus. 'No cries of jubilation and victory, only lamentations. Men have been wandering about the battlefield, some to strip armour from the dead, others to see the scene by the next day's light, as men like to do in places where they've fought. They turn over the mangled corpses of the enemy and what do they find? The faces of friends and relatives and boys they grew up with. This has been a terrible and bitter victory.'

'Why did you come, Rufus?'

'To serve as augur, of course. To take the auspices before the battle.'

'But why you?'

'The Pontifex Maximus appointed me to do so,' he said, then looked at me shrewdly. 'Which is another way of saying that I came at Caesar's behest.'

'To be his eyes and ears.'

'If you like. As augur I can be privy to all that happens without staining my own hands with Roman blood. I sit in on the councils of war, but I do not make war. I only interpret the mood of the heavens.'

'In other words, you're here as Caesar's spy.'

'If a man can be a spy when everyone knows his role.'

'Does the intrigue never end?'

'Nunquam,' he said, gravely shaking his head. Never.

'I don't suppose Antonius ever showed the slightest hesitation about destroying his old colleague. Catilina had hoped he might waver.'

'He did, in his way. He was struck by a bad case of gout just before the battle, and put one of his lieutenants in charge. During the actual fighting Antonius was in bed with his tent flap tied shut. No one can say he failed to pursue his old friend Catilina, as he was charged to do by the Senate; nor can anyone say, strictly speaking, that he took part in Catilina's destruction. Soon the old goat will be off to enjoy the lucrative governorship in Macedonia he finagled from Cicero, and Rome will have one less hypocrite to clutter up the Forum.'

I shook my head, then winced at the lightning behind my eyes. 'My head feels like an overripe gourd.'

'And looks like one, too.' Rufus smiled. 'You have a knot on your forehead the size of a walnut.'

There was a noise at the tent nap. I turned my head too quickly and fell back against the cot, groaning. The sound must have been more alarming than the actual pain, for Meto was quickly at my side, clutching me and asking Rufus through clenched teeth, 'Is he—'

'Your father is well except for the pain in his head.'

I opened my eyes and saw Meto for only an instant before his image was blurred by tears. The tears seemed to carry away some of the ache behind my eyes, which was good, for I had many tears to spill. But tears would never make Meto the way he had been before. Rufus had said his wounds were minor, and by the scale of suffering around us he was correct, for Meto still walked and breathed and had all his parts. But the blade that had sliced away a bit of his left ear and cut a gash all the way to the corner of his mouth would leave him with a scar that he would carry forever.

It was impractical and inadvisable for Meto to speak, because the movement of his jaw pulled at the torn flesh of his wound. Rufus had fashioned for him a simple bandage to tie around his head, which kept his mouth shut and also covered the cut. When I first saw him, he had removed the bandage for a while to take a little food and water.

It was hardly easier for me to speak, or listen for that matter, because of the throbbing in my head. Perhaps it was just as well, for words could only have obscured the feelings that passed between us as he sat beside my cot, holding my hand.

I did manage to tell him about the new corpse which had appeared just before I left the farm, and also of my dream about the Minotaur, and what I had surmised from it, I knew now who had left the bodies on the farm, and why, and with whose assistance. Meto was taken aback at first, disbelieving, and questioned me through clenched teeth, but as I laid before him the bits of evidence that came to my mind, he was compelled to agree with what the dream had told me.

I longed to go home. Now that Meto was safe, I brooded over the safety of Bethesda and Diana, whom I had left at the mercy of the Minotaur. Had Eco come, as I asked him to? Even if he had, bringing Belbo and a dozen bodyguards with him, I feared that he might fail to protect them, not knowing what to protect them from The Minotaur was growing more desperate and more devious. But when I stood up and attempted to dress myself, I barely managed to stagger back to the bed. Riding a galloping horse would have been a torture impossible to bear.

Rufus offered me nepenthes for my pain and also to help me sleep. I refused him, telling him that there must be wounded men in the camp in far more agonizing pain than I was, who could use the same draught of forgetfulness to ease their release into death. Still, I think he must have put some poppy juice in the wine he brought me later, for despite my pain and the turmoil of my worries, I slipped into a fretless, healing sleep unhaunted by Minotaurs or any other monsters.

I woke only once in the night, to a darkness lit by a single small lamp and the sound of two voices quietly conversing.

'But the eagle at the Auguraculum, and Catilina's eagle—' I heard Meto say, his voice constricted by the bandage around his head.

'Yes, I agree, these were signs and you read them rightly,' said Rufus. 'It was the will of the gods that you should fight beside Catilina.'

'But I should have stayed with Papa! I only ended up taking him away from Bethesda and Diana when they needed him most — when they needed both of us to protect them. If something terrible has happened on the farm—'