Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

'You remember, my neighbour's goatherd up on the mountain. He showed us the abandoned mine.'

'Oh, yes! Of course, Forfex. But dead, you say. Fell down your well. Polluted it, you say…'

'He wasn't discovered until several days later.'

'I shouldn't like to have seen it when you pulled him out.'

I nodded. 'The body was badly bloated and decayed.'

'But you were able to recognize him, despite that?'

'Despite what?' I looked at him carefully. Did he already know the body had been missing its head?

'The decay, I mean. I've seen what happens to corpses left to nature, especially in water.'

'We were able to figure out his identity, even so.'

'What was he doing on your farm, anyway?'

'We're not sure.'

'An unpleasant fellow, that neighbour of yours. He should keep his slaves on his own property.'

'You might have an easier task convincing Gnaeus Claudius of that if you hadn't gone trespassing on his land yourself'

'That's right, I suppose I did,' said Catilina with a laugh so genuine that I could scarcely believe he was hiding anything from me. 'And I took you with me, didn't I?' He slid back into the hot water with a hiss and shut his eyes. He was quiet for so long that I almost thought he was asleep. Then, opening his eyes, he announced: 'Too hot! But no cool plunge to follow,' he mused. 'Have you had enough, Gordianus?'

'I think so. Any more and Congrio will be serving me on a platter tomorrow with an apple in my mouth.'

'Well, then, let's cool oft’ in the open air,' suggested Catilina.

'I thought I'd simply dry myself—'

'Nonsense! It's a beautiful night. On the far side of the horizon where the sun descended, the god of the warm west winds is stirring in his sleep; he dreams of spring; he sighs, and the grasses sway. Let's take a walk and let Zephyrus dry us with his gentle breath.' He rose and stepped out of the tub. 'Come, join me, Gordianus.'

'What, without getting dressed? Without even drying ourselves?'

'Oh, we'll put on our shoes. Here, I've slipped mine on already. And I'll take these towels, in case we need something to sit on.'

I stepped from the tub. With his toe, Catilina pushed my shoes towards my feet I stepped into them, bent down and drew the straps taut.

'The hallway is dim,' he said, opening the door, 'but I think I remember the way.' He walked towards the atrium. Naked and wet, my skin hot from the bath, I followed.

The moon was bright and full, like a lamp set high above the atrium. Its white light shimmered in the pool and lit the columns along one side, casting stark shadows behind them. Thinking we had reached our destination, I stopped and looked down at my naked reflection foreshortened in the black water. The pool was so still that I could see the stars reflected in it. Reflected, too, was the bemused expression on my face — which abruptly gave a start at the sound of the front door creaking open.

'Catilina!' I said. But he had already slipped outside. All I saw was a naked arm beckoning me.

'Absurd,' I murmured to myself, but followed.

Outside, as Catilina had said, a gende zephyr was stirring across the valley. The wind was warm and dry, like a caress against my naked flesh. Ahead of me I saw Catilina, his glistening body as pale and sleek as marble beneath the bright moonlight Clouds of steam rose from his wet, warm flesh, so that he seemed to walk in a mist, with bits of ragged vapour trailing from his broad shoulders and muscular legs. I looked down and saw that my own body emitted the same warm mist. Nearby the oxen lowed in their pen, and a kid bleated sleepily.

'Catilina, where are we going?' I whispered loudly. He made no answer but walked on, gesturing for me to follow.

What a strange sight we must have made. I heard a noise from the roof of the stable and saw that the slave posted to keep watch for the night was staring down at us with an odd look on his face, uncertain, I suppose, whether we were naked men or spirits wrapped in vapour.

'Master?' he called in a low, uncertain voice. I waved, which seemed to satisfy him, though he kept gazing down at us with the same baffled look.

We walked past the pens, through the vineyards, into the olive orchard. I caught up with Catilina but no longer questioned him. I was too exhilarated by the strangeness of walking naked beneath the moon, by the kiss of the zephyr on my skin, by the dazzling flight of a huge white moth across our path. "This is mad’ I said.

'Mad? What could be less mad than for a man to walk naked across the face of the earth? What could be more piously in keeping with the will of the gods who made us after their image than to show ourselves to them thus?' We reached the foot of the ridge. Gatilina pressed on, striding carefully but quickly up the steep path. 'When I was young, after a hot bath on a mild night, I used to do this in the city.'

'In Rome?'

He laughed, remembering. 'On the Palatine Hill, outside my house. Sometimes alone, sometimes with another. We would take a long walk around the block, naked and steaming, letting the wind dry us. It's delicious, isn't it? Rome is full of naked statues which offend no one's dignity; why should a naked man? You might think it would have caused a scandal, but it didn't. Would you believe that no one ever complained?'

'Had you not been so good-looking, they might have,' I said.

'You compliment me, Gordianus.' We had reached the top of the ridge. Catilina dropped the towels and stepped atop one of the tree stumps to take in the view. I looked up at his heaving chest and the muscular arms crossed over it, his flat belly, his sturdy legs and the pendulous sex between.

'You are resplendent in your nakedness, Catilina!' I said, kughing and trying to catch my breath. I gazed at him openly, and not without envy. 'Truly, like a statue on a pedestal.' I felt a little drunk, not on wine any longer but on moonlight and the peculiar novelty of being naked out of doors. The wind had dried the steam from my body, but I was covered with a fresh sheen of sweat from the exertion of the climb.

'Do you think so? My lovers have said the same thing.' He looked down at himself) as if his body were familiar but separate from him, just another of the things he owned, like a finely crafted chair or a beautiful painting. 'Impressive for a man of forty-five, I suppose.' He complimented himself without irony or false modesty, but with the matter-of-factness of a man who has inhabited a body for a long time and is neither unduly impressed nor takes it for granted.

Below us the valley slumbered. I saw no lights from the distant houses of the Claudii, and from my own house only a single lamp was visible, set outside the front door by one of the slaves who must have seen us leave the atrium. Yet how could the world sleep, when the moon was so bright? The Cassian Way was a ribbon of purest alabaster skirting the base of the mountain. The roof of the house seemed to be made of tiles that glowed with a pale blue light. And when the zephyr sighed through the olive orchard below us, the rustling leaves shimmered black and silver. An owl hooted from a nearby tree.

Catilina sighed. 'I have never stinted myself of the pleasures that my body could take, nor stinted others of the pleasures it could give. Such a simple principle by which to live, don't you think? Yet even that has been turned against me by my enemies, twisted into something ugly and depraved. You were in the city during the final days of the campaign. You must have heard how they vilified me. The same as last year, but worse. Last year Cicero and his scheming brother Quintus tasted my blood; this year nothing would satisfy them but to tear out my heart and eat it.'

Catilina drew himself up and gazed down at the valley. When I had said he looked like a statue on a pedestal, I had meant it half in jest, but half in earnest. In his marmoreal nakedness, wearing a stern face, he might have been the image of a god. Not the gods of boyhood, Mercury or Apollo; Vulcan perhaps, or more likely Jupiter, master of order and shaper of the greater destinies, gazing firmly down from Olympus.