John Roberts - The Catiline Conspiracy

"My time will come after you have all sprung to arms," Bestia went on. "When the uprising is in full roar throughout Italy, from the tip of Bruttium to Cisalpine Gaul, and in Transalpine Gaul, when our new Consul is at the head of his army and marching upon Rome, then, as Tribune-elect, I shall call upon the people to rise up and oust the usurper Cicero. With me at their head, they will throw open the gates and welcome our new Consul to his curule chair in the Curia."

"Decius Caecilius," Catilina said, "you seem skeptical." Apparently, I had not been guarding my expression.

"Cicero is contemptible," I said, "but what of his colleague, Caius Antonius?"

"He will already be out of Rome," Catilina said. "He is so anxious to get to Macedonia and start looting that Cicero is all but threatening him with arrest to make him stay in Rome long enough to make a show of finishing his year in office." Catilina leaned back in his seat and laughed richly. The others quickly joined him. "He'll be summoned back to Rome, of course, but by that time we will be firmly in control, and he'll have no more luck than his brother Marcus had in Crete." He nodded toward Valgius. "Quintus, of our two youngest colleagues, you seem to be marginally better able to speak this evening. Tell us how you have fared among the laureled youth of Rome."

Valgius rubbed his bearded jaw ruefully. "If that flunky of Clodius's had kicked a little harder, I'd not be speaking until next Saturnalia. Marcus and I"-he nodded toward the bandaged Thorius-"have been untiring in our work among the young men of senatorial families. All of those who have spurned our Consul in the past, those who have sought to prosecute him and those who are sure to resist us when the uprising begins, have been marked out. Their sons will kill them in their beds as soon as they hear the trumpets sound."

Catilina caught my expression. "Oh, don't worry, Decius. We won't make you kill old Cut-Nose. He's never offended me and he'll come around as soon as he sees how the wind is blowing."

"That's a relief," I said to cover my confusion. "We have our differences, but things between us haven't deteriorated to that point yet."

"But then," said Cethegus, "you really must kill someone, Decius."

"I must?"

"Oh, but of course." Cethegus's tone was as sarcastic and insinuating as ever. "All of us have."

"It's a sort of initiation," Laeca said. "Rather like joining one of the mystery cults. Each of us proves his sincerity and loyalty to our cause by killing someone."

"You have to admit it's an effective and unquestionable display of solidarity." Still with that hint of inner amusement.

"I see. Anyone in particular?" I inquired.

"That's the easy and agreeable part," Catilina said. "You recall that once before, several of us discussed how we were all but ruined by the moneylenders?"

"I recall it," I said.

"Well, then, there you are. What can be more pleasant than to kill a creditor? You mentioned that you have had to borrow heavily to support your current office and against your future aedileship. To whom are you so deeply in debt?" He sat back, smiling.

I lifted my cup and drank slowly, frowning into the depths of the excellent Massic. It swirled red as blood in the lamplight reflected from the silver bottom. I was pretending to be pondering my answer. Actually, I was frantically trying to find a way out of this. If I couldn't come up with a credible answer, I might not walk from this place alive. Actually, it was almost pleasant not to have Aurelia on my mind.

Then inspiration struck. It was one of those moments of blinding insight that are sometimes granted by our guardian genii. Of course, there are philosophers who insist that each of us has two genii, one good and one evil, and it was from the latter that I had most of my near-suicidal inspirations, but they all seemed brilliant at the time. In any case, I was in no position to discriminate. I lowered my cup.

"Asklepiodes, the Greek physician," I said.

Everyone looked puzzled. "The doctor to the gladiators?" Curius said.

"Do you think that's all he is?" I said. "That's just for surgery. For medicine, he doctors the rich, like all Greek physicians. Why, people come from as far away as Antioch and Alexandria for his treatment." I looked around at them, as if we were all men of the world and understood these things. "Discreetly, of course. He specializes in those condition people prefer not to talk about. Lisas the Egyptian alone keeps him on a retainer of a million sesterces a year just to treat him for those diseases he's always picking up from his incessant perversions."

"I never would have guessed it," Umbrenus said.

"And," I said, leaning forward and speaking conspiratorially, an excellent way to speak in such a gathering, "do you think that being physician and surgeon to the gladiators is not a way to grow rich?" I paused and drank, letting the implications sink in. "He knows who is in top form and who isn't. And who better than their own physician to make sure that a champion isn't quite up to his next fight? That's the time to make the long-odds bets, my friends. And he doesn't give that information away, he sells it, or passes it along in return for favors."

"So that's why you win so often at the fights," Bestia said.

"It seems almost a shame to waste a resource like that," Laeca added.

"But I'm up to here in debt to the wretched Greek-ling," I said, raising a hand level with my bandaged scalp. "He only gives me tips in hope that I'll be able to pay him back a little of what I owe him."

"Yes," Catilina said, "let's not cheat Decius Caecilius out of his just revenge. A true Roman shouldn't bet on the munera anyway. They are supposed to be funeral games, after all. Races are the proper contests for gambling." He turned to me and smiled. "Very well, it's settled, then. Decius, you can kill Asklepiodes. But we have little time, so you must act soon-within two days. Is that agreeable?"

"Oh, decidedly," I assured him. "The sooner the better."

"Excellent. Now, Valgius, what about the fires?"

"Our teams have been assigned their sites," said the bearded one. "On the appointed night, the fires will begin all over the city. The authorities will have a busy time of it, I assure you all."

He resumed his seat and I drank, deeply this time. It was far worse than I had thought. Thus far, they had plotted treason, murder and parricide, serious crimes but not exactly uncommon. This was arson. Fire-raising was the most hated and feared crime in Roman law.

Arsonists taken in the act had reason to envy men who were merely crucified.

And yet, horrible as it all was, I had difficulty in crediting any of what I was hearing. I knew with certainty that these men had committed murder, I had seen the evidence. But revolution? This was like boys playing at war, naming themselves general, each pretending to be a cohort or century. Surely, this pack of strutting posers and babbling loons could not possibly hope to overthrow the majesty of the Roman government? And yet I had witnessed the effectiveness of some of their acts. It left me with one conviction: there was somebody else behind all this, somebody who was not about to appear personally before these lunatics.

I had questions to ask, but I wanted to ask them of Catilina, not these madmen. He was not without his own strain of insanity, but most of the great men of that day were mad to some extent or other. He was far more intelligent than the others, I was sure, although I had my suspicions about Bestia. But I was sure that Catilina was not going to risk everything with only the support of such as these.

A few others tendered their reports, each of them as vaporous and self-deceiving as the others. It was like a dream, except that I knew they were shedding real blood in their ramblings, the blood of citizens.