Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

'I don't have to justify myself to you, citizen,' I snapped, and then realized I was not angry at the man, but at what he had told me. So it now appeared that the one thing I had most scrupulously avoided would take place, and I would be in Rome for the consular election! The gods were having a joke at my expense, I thought. No wonder we had suffered no mishaps on the journey — the gods insisted I get to Rome so that I could suffer through the election! I started to laugh. I stopped myself) then realized that it felt good to laugh, and so I let the laughter out. The stranger started to laugh, too, interrupted by a loud burp.

He raised his fist again. 'To Catilina!'

My laughter stopped. 'To the day when this madness is finally over,' I said under my breath.

'What's that?' the man said, leaning towards me. I merely shook my head, slowed my horse, and waved as he moved on ahead of me.

We made slow but steady progress into the city. Great clouds of smoke and dust rose from the Field of Mars, where thousands of voters from outside Rome had pitched their camps; on a normal day one would have seen chariot racers practising or soldiers staging mock battles. The Villa Publica, the open space where voters gathered, and the adjoining voting stalls, built like a maze of sheep runs, were closed off and empty. Traffic slowed again at the Flaminian Gate, but once through its portals we were at last within the old walls of the city, in Rome itself

The sun was lowering in the west, casting a red haze over the rooftops, but Rome was still very much awake, especially on the bustling Subura Way. The notorious street took us into the beating heart of the city, not to the place where its temples and palaces are proudly gathered, but into the district of butcher shops and brothels and gambling dens. The smells of the city assaulted my nostrils — horse dung and furnace smoke, raw fish and perfume, a whiff of urine from a public privy mingling with the aroma of freshly baked bread. In a single block I saw more faces than I had seen all year in the countryside. I saw bodies that were old, fat, young, supple, clothed in costly tunics and gowns, or in rags, or almost naked. Women leaned out of the upper-storey windows of cheap tenements and gossiped with one another across the street. little boys played trigon in an open square, standing in a triangle and tossing their leather ball back and forth. An Ethiop in a red gown, her skin the colour of lustrous ebony, gathered water at ' the public fountain.

The fountain caught my eye. It was the chief ornament of the neighbourhood it served, with a trough below for horses and a spout above for people. The spout was made of marble, carved in the likeness of a kneeling dryad pouring water from an urn. The fountain had been there since I was a boy. More times than I could possibly count I had put my lips below the spout to get a cool drink of water, had filled my wineskin from it, had watered my horses from the trough.

Nothing on earth could be more mundane, yet the fountain, and not just the fountain but everything around me, seemed at once familiar and strange. I had left Rome for good, I thought, and now I was back, and there was no denying that no matter how far afield I strayed or how long I stayed away, it would always be home.

I looked back at the cart. Diana was exhausted. She lay curled up against her mother, fast asleep despite the bumpy ride. Bethesda held one of her small hands and stroked her hair. She felt my gaze, looked up and smiled back at me. I knew in that moment that we shared the same sensation of homecoming, but she was less afraid to feel it, and less afraid to show it. The city was our city, no matter how much I might deny it or how deeply I might bury myself in the countryside. I breathed in deeply and smelled the Subura; I opened my eyes wide and tried to see everything before me at once. I turned and saw that Meto was looking at me oddly, the way I must so often look at him when I see him staring at the world around him in wide-eyed amazement. There is no place in the world like Rome.

We arrived at my old house on the Esquiline Hill dirty, hungry, and exhausted. The fading daylight had turned from red to hazy blue. The lamps in the house had already been lit. We were later than I had expected to be, but Eco, knowing the chaotic state of the roads into the city, told me he was surprised to see us so soon.

‘You must have come by the Flaminian Way,' he said, clapping his hands to summon slaves to help with the unpacking. I nodded. 'A good thing,' he said. 'The bridges down by the Aurelian Way are said to be a complete nightmare. They say there are wagons with skeletons at the reins.'

'With skeleton oxen to pull them?'

Eco laughed and nodded. 'That's the joke they're telling down in the Subura.'

'So very typical of the Subura,' I said dryly. The macabre sense of humour was familiar yet strange, like the city itself, like the house in which I found myself. My house it had been for many years, and before that my father's. Here was the atrium and the garden where I had played host to so many callers over the years, and where I had first met my dear old friend, Lucius Claudius, when he came to consult me after seeing a dead man walking about in the Subura.

"The garden looks very well kept,' I said, with a slight catch in my throat.

'Yes, Menenia oversees the gardening herself. She's fond of growing things.'

'The walls have a new coat of wash. I see you replaced those loose tiles along the roof and straightened the hinges on the front door. Even the fountain seems to be working.'

Eco smiled and shrugged. 'I wanted everything to be just right for Meto's special day. Ah, here's Menenia now.'

My daughter-in-law approached with lowered eyes, greeting me with all the deference due a Roman patriarch. She had been quite a catch for Eco, considering his humble origins and the antiquity of her family name. He had picked a dark-haired beauty with olive skin, like Bethesda, which I think pleased his adoptive mother, whether she showed it or not.

The open sky above the garden quickly darkened to a deep blue pierced by stars that twinkled like bits of frost. Tables and couches were brought into the open air, and the slaves served a hearty meal fit for weary travellers, though we were almost too tired to eat it. Before the sky had turned from deep blue to black, everyone was abed except Eco and me.

Once we were alone he asked me a few questions about Nemo and about Catilina's visit. I answered him wearily, and once he learned that the situation seemed to have come to a harmless if not very satisfactory conclusion, he did not press me with questions. He did inform me that the latest word on the elections was that they would be held on the day after the morrow — in other words, on the day after Meto's toga ceremony, while we would still be in Rome.

'Ah, well,' I sighed, 'it can't be helped. Rome on an election day! We shall certainly get a full taste of the big city.'

He showed me to my old room, where Bethesda was already asleep, and which he and Menenia had vacated for our visit. Meto and Diana were sleeping in the room next door. Where Eco himself was going to sleep and how he had juggled his household slaves to make room for mine I was much too tired to try to figure out. I lay down beside Bethesda, who sighed in her sleep and shifted her hips to accommodate me, and I fell asleep as my head touched the pillow and my lips pressed against her scented hair.

A strange sobbing woke me.

I woke in slow, fitful stages, as men of my age do when drawn from the black sleep of utter weariness. For a moment I didn't know where I was — a strange thing to experience in a house where I had lived most of my life. The furniture had been moved about, that was the problem, and the bed was different.