Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

up huffing and puffing behind him He had already found the ideal lookout between two towering oaks, shielded from sight behind a dump of brambles. We could not be seen from the road, but had a clear view of everything that passed on the Cassian Way.

It was not hard to spot Catilina and Tongilius, as they were the only horsemen on the road. They seemed to have come to a halt at a spot not far from the pass between the ridge and the foothills of Mount Argentum, Why they should hesitate was unclear, until I realized that they were waiting for a team of oxen to pass by, heading north. Once over the rise, the oxen must have passed out of their sight — just as Catilina and Tongilius passed out of the oxherd's view. They looked stealthily about, then dismounted and led their horses into the underbrush on the eastern side of the road.

Their mounts secured somewhere out of sight, the two men reappeared, but only for a moment before they passed beneath the branches of a large tree and out of sight. Then I saw them again, stepping back onto the road, but only for a moment. So it went, with Catilina and Tongilius disappearing and reappearing, going back and forth along the roadside as if searching for something they had lost.

'What are they looking for?' asked Meto.

"The trailhead,' I said.

'What trailhead?'

'You must have run on ahead when Forfex explained it to me yesterday. There's another path that leads up to the mine, beginning somewhere along the Cassian Way. It's long been disused and overgrown. Catilina is trying to find the trailhead.'

'But why? He's already been to the mine.'

I made no answer. From the corner of my eye I saw Meto frowning at me, not because he was perplexed but because he sensed that I was withholding my thoughts from him. Together we watched as Catilina and Tongilius went in and out of the dense underbrush alongside the road. At length a team of slaves appeared from the south, linked by chains from neck to neck and driven along by freedmen wielding whips. Catilina and Tongilius disappeared for as long as it took the slaves to pass, then reappeared again when the way was clear.

Eventually they vanished into the brush and did not reappear for so long that I began to think they had found what they were seeking. Suddenly Meto clutched my sleeve. In the same instant I heard a rustling in the underbrush behind us, followed by a familiar voice.

'Not your usual spot — oh, please, I didn't mean to startle you! Oh, how rude of me, coming up on you like this. Gordianus, forgive me, I shouldn't laugh, but you gave such a start!' 'Claudia,' I said.

‘Yes, only me. And here's young Meto — so long since I've seen the boy. Oh, but I mustn't call you a boy, not for much longer, must I, young man? You turn sixteen this month, don't you?'

‘Yes,' said Meto, darting a glance over his shoulder, back down towards the road.

'A beautiful view from this side, isn't it? You really get the whole effect of the mountain, how vast it is, towering above the road like that.'

'Yes, quite impressive,' I said.

'But it's so uncomfortable here amid the brambles. Come, there's a spot close by with the very same view where we can all sit together on a log.'

I shrugged, trying not to look down at the road. My eyes fell on the basket in Claudia's hand.

'Oh, but you fear you'll be intruding on my lunch! Not at all, Gordianus. I have quite enough bread and cheese and olives for all of us. Come now, I won't have my hospitality refused.'

We followed her to a clearing a few feet away. As she had promised, the view was exactly the same, with the difference that we were in plain sight of the road, should anyone happen to look up.

'Now, isn't this better?' said Claudia, settling her plump bottom on the log and laying her basket before her.

'Much,' I said. Meto, I noticed, could not seem to keep from darting furtive but very obvious glances at the spot where we had last glimpsed Catilina and Tongilius. A good watcher he might be, but as an actor he was a disaster. 'However, Meto really needs to be getting back to the house.'

'Oh, Gordianus, you Roman fathers! Always so strict and demanding. My father was just the same, and I was a giri! Here it is, one of the last fine summer days of Meto's boyhood, and you would have him doing chores at midday. In a very short time hell be a man, and after that, summer days may be just as hot but they will never be as long and lovely and full of flowers and bees as they are for him at this very moment. Please, let Meto join us.'

At her insistence, Meto sat at Claudia's left and I at her right. She passed us food and waited for us to begin before taking some for herself. Once he was settled on the log with his mouth full ofcheese, Imust admit that Meto did a good job at feigning only casual interest in the doings at the foot of the mountain. More traffic passed on the Cassian Way — herds of sheep, slaves bearing bundles of wood on their backs, a long train of wagons ringed by armed men headed south towards Rome.

'Vases from Arretium,' declared Claudia.

'How can you tell?' said Meto.

'Because I can see right through the crates packed inside the wagons as if they were invisible!' said Claudia, then laughed when she saw that Meto seemed to be taking her seriously. 'I know, Meto, because those wagons have been coming down the Cassian Way since I was a girl, taking Arretine vases to Rome. They're awfully valuable — hence the armed guard, and the slow procession. If it were anything else valuable enough to justify the guards, the wagons would be going twice as fast. Gold and silver don't break, but fine clay vases do.'

The progress of the wagons did seem to take forever as they crept along the ribbon of road. There was no sign of Catilina.

Then Meto made an odd noise in his throat, and when I glanced at him, he made an almost imperceptible nod. I followed his gaze to a point on the mountain at least two hundred feet above the road, where a patch of blue the shade of Catilina's tunic flashed in a clearing amid the green canopy. The blue patch moved and was joined by another; I squinted, and the blue patches resolved quite clearly into two men moving about on the mountainside.

Claudia, busy leaning over her basket, did not see.

'Actually, Gordianus, I was hoping to run into you here on the ridge, for otherwise I should have had to come to pay a formal visit, and that would have been no fun at all. And I'm glad that you happen to be here as well, Meto, for I think this involves you, too.' She sat back and pursed her lips. For a moment I thought she was looking directly across the valley at Catilina and Tongilius, but she was only staring absently into the middle distance, thinking about what she had to say.

'What is it, Claudia?’

'Oh, this is so difficult…'

'Yes?'

'I had a visit this morning from my cousin Gnaeus. He says there were strangers on his mountain yesterday, men from Rome hiking up to visit the old mine.'

'Is that a fact?' I looked across the way and saw that Catilina and Tongilius had disappeared amid the foliage again.

'Yes. Some business about one of them wanting to purchase the old mine, or representing someone who might. Nonsense, if you ask me — the mine is worthless now. There's no more silver to be got from it. Anyway, Gnaeus was asking if I happened to have seen anyone traipsing about on the mountain yesterday — you can see quite a bit of the old trail from my house, you know, though it's a long way off. Well, as a matter of feet, no, I hadn't seen a thing, and none of my slaves had noticed anyone on the mountainside either.'

Claudia paused to chew an olive. 'Gnaeus says he didn't know any of these men, and only one of them bothered to introduce himself — one of the Sergii, up from Rome, as I said. But afterwards Gnaeus questioned the goatherd who had shown the men around, an old fool named Forfex, and do you know what the man told him?'