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  Catilina's riddle

  ( Roma sub Rosa - 3 )

  Steven Saylor

  CATILINA'S RIDDLE

  Steven Saylor

  CONTENTS

  Maps

  Part One NEMO

  Part Two CANDIDATUS

  Part Three CONUNDRUM

  Part Four NUNQUAM

  Epilogue Author's Note

  NOMENCLATURE

  The Latin name Catilina is sometimes spelled Catiline, especially in older texts, just as the Latin Pompeius is more familiarly rendered Pompey and Marcus Antonius becomes Mark Antony. Scholars nowadays tend to prefer original Latin spellings, which I have followed in the case of Catilina, if only for its euphony. The stress falls on the third syllable, which has a long i.

  I have also used contemporary Latin names for a number of cities. Some of these (with their more familiar names) include: Faesulae (Fiesole), Arretium (Arezzo), Massilia (Marseille), and Horentia (Florence).

  Dates are given according to the Roman calendar before it was reformed by Julius Caesar. These are the months of the year (with English names and spellings, if different, in parentheses, along with their number of days): Januarius (January, 29 days), Februarius (February, 28 days), Martius (March, 31 days), Aprilis (April, 29 days), Maius (May, 31 days), Junius (June, 29 days), Quinctilis (July, 31 days), Sextilis (August, 29 days), September (29 days), October (31 days), November (29 days), and December (29 days).

  The Romans did not reckon the days of the months by consecutive numbers, as we do, but by their positions in relation to certain nodal days, namely the Kalends (the first day of the month), the Nones (the fifth or seventh day), and the Ides (the thirteenth or fifteenth day). The day of the month was reckoned by counting backwards from these days. I have tried to conform to this system in most cases.

  The story begins on the first day of June (the Kalends of Junius), 63 bc.

  Embossed upon the shield Aeneas saw The stony halls of the netherworld, the domain of the damned And the punishments they suffer. There Catilina clings to the edge of a sheer Precipice, cringing in terror while the Furies beat their wings about him…

  Virgil, The Aeneid, v: 666-669

  How haue we chang'd, and come about

  in euery doome, Since wicked CATILINE went out,

  And quitted Rome? One while, we thought him innocent;

  And, then accus'd The Consul for his malice spent;

  And power abus'd. Since, that we heare, he is in armes,

  We thinke not so: Yet charge the Consul, with our harmes,

  That let him goe. So, in our censure of the state,

  We still do wander; And make the carefull magistrate

  The marke of slander.

  ben jonson, Catiline his Conspiracy, act iv: 863–878

  What is truth?

  pontius pilatus

  The

  CLAUDIAN ESTATES

  in Etruria, together with maps of Rome & Northern Italy at the time of Cicero's Consulship, 63 B.C.

  Part One Nemo

  'According to Cato…' I said, and paused, squinting at the scroll. Bright summer sunlight from the 'window glared across the parchment, obscuring the faded black letters. Then again, at forty-seven, my eyes are not what they used to be. I can count the leaves on an olive tree fifty feet away, but the difference between O and 17, or even land L, is not as clear as it once was.

  'According to Cato,' I began again, holding the scroll at arm's length and reading silently. 'Well, this is ridiculous! Cato clearly says that the haymaking should have been done by now, yet here it is, the Kalends of Junius, and we haven't even begun!'

  'If I may interject, Master…' Aratus, standing at my elbow, cleared his throat He was a slave, not yet fifty, and had been foreman of the fcrm since long before my arrival the previous autumn.

  'Yes?'

  'Master, the blooms are not yet off the grass. It is not uncommon for the crop to be late. Why, last year it was just the same. We didn't harvest the hay until almost the end of Junius—'

  'And I saw how much of it went bad in the barn! Bundles and bundles rotted away during the winter, so there was hardly enough left to feed the oxen during the ploughing this spring.'

  'But that was because of the storm damage to the roof of the barn last winter, which let in the rain and so spoiled much of the hay. It had nothing to do with the late harvest last summer.' Aratus lowered his eyes and compressed his lips. His patience was near its end, if his subservience was not.

  'Still, Cato is explicit: "Cut the grass crop when the time comes, and

  take care that you are not too late in cutting it" Now, Marcus Porcius Cato may have been dead for almost a hundred years, but I don't suppose the ways of nature have changed in that tune.' I looked up at Aratus, who pursed his lips tightly.

  'And another thing…' I shifted through the scroll, seeking the passage that had leaped out at me the night before. 'Ah, here: "The chickpea is poisonous to livestock and thus should be pulled up when found growing among the grain." And yet, only the other day, I saw one of the slaves take the burnt portions of chickpeas from the kitchen and mix them in among the oxen's feed.'

  Did I catch Aratus rolling his eyes, or only imagine it? "The herbage of the chickpea is poisonous to livestock, Master, not the bean. Poisonous to men, as well, I suspect,' he added dryly.

  'Ah, well. Yes, that explains it then.' I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. 'As you say, if the bloom is not yet off the grass, I suppose we shall simply have to wait to begin the haymaking. The vineyard has begun to come out in leaf?'

  'Yes, Master. We have already begun to trim the vines and tie them to supports — just as Cato says to do. And since, as Cato advises, only the most skilled and experienced slaves should be engaged in the task, perhaps I should go and oversee the work.'

  I nodded, and he left.

  The room seemed suddenly stuffy and hot, though the hour was not quite noon. I felt a throbbing in my temples and told myself it was the heat, though it was more likely from squinting at the scroll and arguing with Aratus. I walked out into the herb garden, where the air was cooler. From within the house I heard a sudden shriek — Diana screaming, and then Meto shouting, 'I never touched her,' followed by a maternal scolding from Bethesda. I sighed and kept walking, through the gate and onto the path that led to the goat pens, where two of the slaves were engaged in mending a broken fence. They scarcely looked up as I passed.

  The path took me alongside the vineyards, where Aratus was already busy overseeingthe tying ofthe youngvines. I kept walking until I came to the olive orchard and paused in the cool shade. A bee buzzed by my head and flitted among the tree trunks. I followed it up the hillside to the edge of the orchard, to the ridge where a patch of virgin forest stood. A few naked stumps at the periphery-showed where an attempt had once been made to clear the high land, and then abandoned. I was glad the ridge had been left wild and wooded, though Cato would have advised clearing it for crops; Cato always seemed to prefer high places to the lowlands where mist might gather and ruin the crops with rust.

  I sat on one of the stumps and caught my breath beneath the shade of a gnarled, ancient oak. The bee buzzed by my ear again — perhaps it was drawn to the almond-scented oil that Bethesda had rubbed into my hair the night before. How grey my hair was becoming, half grey or more, mixed in with the black. Living in the countryside, I did hot bother to have it cut as often as in the city, so that the loose curls lapped onto my neck and over my ears, and for the first time in my life I had grown a beard — that also was half grey, especially around the chin.

  Bethesda, too, had been growing greyer, until she began to dye her hair with henna; the tint she had concocted was a deep, rich red, like t
he colour of a bloodstain. How beautiful her hair still was, thick and luxurious. As I had grown more careless with mine, she had grown more elaborate with hers. She never wore it down any more, except for bed. During the day she wrapped it into coils and pinned it atop her head, as haughty as any Roman matron — though her Egyptian accent would always give her away.

  The thought made me laugh, and I realized that my headache was gone. I looked down on the valley and breathed in the smells of summer in the country: the odour of living beasts, of grass rustling in the dry breeze, of the earth itself dozing beneath the hot, baking sun. I studied the plan of the farm, like a picture laid before me: the red-tiled roof of the great house, hiding the bedrooms, kitchen, library, and dining room within; the higher roof that showed where the baths were installed; the formal courtyard just within the front door, with its fishpond and flowers; the second courtyard where the wine was fermented, with its kettles and vats; the third courtyard with its paved threshing floor open to the sky; the herb garden appended to the library, from which I had come. Close by the house were the sheds and pens and the well and the little house that held the olive press. The surrounding land was divided into various uses: fields for grains and other crops, vineyards, olive orchards. The boundary was marked on my left by a wooded stream, on my right by the road from Rome — the wide, paved Cassian Way — and in the far distance directly before me, beyond an expanse of cultivated fields, by a low stone wall that ran from the stream to the road. Stream to the left, road to the right, wall in the distance; and the fourth boundary was the ridge on which I sat. It was an idyllic setting, worthy of a poem or even of crusty old Cato's praise, I thought. It is the dream of every Roman, rich or poor, to have a firm in the countryside, to escape the turbulence and madness of the city. Against all expectations, I had done so at last. Why, then, was I not happy?

  ‘You don't belong here, Gordianus.'

  I gave a start and swung around. 'Claudia! You startled me.'

  'Good! Startled is better than bored and unhappy.'

  'And how, from behind, could you tell that I'm bored and unhappy?'

  My neighbour put her hands on her ample hips and looked at me askance. 'Feet and knees apart,' she observed. 'Elbows on knees, hands cupped together, chin on hands, head cocked to one side, shoulders slumped. If you were thirty years younger, Gordianus, I'd say you were miserably in love. In your case, it's what I've told you before: you simply don't belong in the countryside. Here, let me join you on this neighbouring stump and show you how someone who truly loves the country surveys such a magnificent scene.'

  She sat down on the stump, which was apparently a bit lower than she thought so that she bumped it with her well-padded bottom and let out a good-natured laugh. She spread her legs, slapped her palms on her knees and beamed at the vista before her. Had we been sitting on the opposite slope of the ridge, looking down on her own, she could not have looked more pleased.

  Claudia was the cousin of my late friend and benefactor Lucius Claudius, from whom I had inherited the farm. In appearance she was as much like him to have been his sister, and indeed in many ways seemed a female incarnation of Lucius, which predisposed me to like her from the first day she had come over the hill to introduce herself Like Lucius she was sausage-fingered, plum-cheeked, and cherry-nosed. She had considerably more hair than Lucius, who had grown quite bald before his death, but like his, her hair was orange-red (faded with age and mixed with strands of silver) and of the same wispy, frazzled texture; she wore it atop her head in a careless clump from which stray tendrils escaped to waft about her friendly, round face. Unlike Lucius, she did not care for ornamentation, and the only jewellery I ever saw her wear was a simple gold chain around her neck. She disdained a woman's stola as impractical for farm life, and instead wore long woollen tunics in rustic colours, so that at a distance, given her general bulk and plain dress, she could be mistaken for a man, or even for a male slave, an ironic circumstance considering her high patrician blood.

  Her farm was on the other side of the ridge; when I say that it was hers, I mean it quite literally, for she owned the property outright without recourse to father, brother, or husband Like Lucius, Claudia had never married, but had somehow contrived to live independently and on her own terms. This would have been a notable feat even for a wealthy patrician matron in the city, but for a woman in the tradition-bound countryside it was nothing less than remarkable, and bespoke a strength of character and resolve of which Claudia's soft, round features gave no indication.

  How she had wrested her particular plot of land from the Claudian fortunes I did not know. Her farm was only a small part of the family's holdings in the region. Indeed, I found myself surrounded by Claudii on every side. Over the ridge from me to the south was Claudia's small farm, which was generally held to be one of the poorer tracts, given the rocky nature of the slope and the lowness of the valley, plagued in winter by those mists so dreaded by Cato. Across the wooded stream, to the west, were the holdings of her cousin Publius Claudius; from my high vantage I could just glimpse the roof of his massive villa above the treetops. Beyond the low wall to the north was the property of another cousin, Manius Claudius; because of the distance I could see little of his land and nothing of his house. Across the Cassian Way, to the east, the land became steep and rocky at the base of the mountain the locals called Mount Argentum, whose upper reaches were wreathed by a dark forest. This property was owned by Claudia's cousin, Gnaeus Claudius, and was said to be prime land for hunting boar and deer. There was also, drilled somewhere into the heart of the mountain, a deep silver mine. The mine, however, was said to have been exhausted long ago. I could clearly see the winding trail that led up the mountain's side and disappeared over a pine-studded shoulder; where once many slaves must have trekked in continuous labour, the way had become disused and overgrown and was now a path for goats.

  Of all these properties, it was generally agreed that that of Lucius Claudius, my benefactor, was much the best, and Lucius, by his will, had left it to me. The Claudii, in the name of young Gnaeus and represented by a veritable legion of advocates, had contested the will, but to no avail. I had had my day in a Roman court, and the farm was mine. Why was it not enough?

  'Truly, it's a beautiful place,' said Claudia, gazing down at the red tiled roof and the cultivated earth. 'When I was a girl, it was quite rundown; Cousin Lucius took no interest at all in the place, and let it run to ruin. Then, oh, about fifteen years ago — just after he met you and you had your first adventure together — he took a sudden interest in the place and began to come here quite often. He purchased Aratus and installed him as foreman, planted new vineyards and olive orchards, brought in new slaves, refurbished the house. He turned the farm into quite a lucrative enterprise, as well as a retreat from the city. We were all amazed at his success. And distressed at his sudden demise last year, alas,' she sighed.

  'And disappointed in his choice of an heir,' I added quietly.

  'Now, Gordianus, you must not bear a grudge. You can't blame my Cousin Gnaeus for bringing that suit against you; Lucius was his cousin, and we all expected Gnaeus to inherit, since his own property is good only for hunting, not for fanning, and the silver mine was long ago exhausted. Alas, Cicero put your case quite brilliantly, as usual — you're very lucky to have had access to the great man, and we all envy you. Swayed by Cicero's arguments, the court in Rome ruled that Lucius's will was valid, and that was that Lucius's fortune was not small; he had many other wonderful possessions, which he settled among his blood relations. I myself inherited his mother's jewellery and his town house on the Palatine Hill in the city. To you he gave his Etruscan farm. We have all reconciled ourselves to the fact'

  'I know that you have, Claudia, but I'm not so sure about your cousins.'

  'Why? Have they been harassing you somehow?'

  'Not exactly. I haven't seen either Gnaeus or Manius since our day in court, but each of them sent a messenger to tell my foreman to be sure to keep my sl
aves off their property — that is, unless I cared to have a slave returned to me with a limb missing.'

  Claudia frowned and shook her head. 'Regrettable. How about Publius? He's the oldest and has always had a level head.'

  'Actually, Publius and I may be going to court soon.'

  'No! But why?'

  'There seems to be some disagreement about the stream that marks the boundary of our two farms. The deed I inherited from Lucius clearly indicates that I have the right to use the stream and anything in the stream as I wish, but Publius recently sent me a letter in which he claims that such rights belong to him exclusively.'

  'Oh, dear!'

  'The lawyers will sort it out eventually. Meanwhile, yesterday some of my slaves were washing some clothes downstream from some of Publius's slaves, who deliberately stirred up the water so that it was full of mud, which prompted the women, on my side to hurl insults at the women on the opposite bank, until more than insults were hurled. The two foremen finally arrived to stop the altercation, but not until one of my women had been struck on the head by a flying rock’ 'Was she seriously hurt?’

  'No, but there was plenty of blood, and the wound will leave a scar. If I had a litigious nature I'd demand that Publius buy me a replacement,'

  Claudia slapped her hands on her knees. 'Intolerable! I had no idea that such provocations were being imposed on you, Gordianus. Really, I will have a word with my dear relatives and see if I can't intervene on behalf of good neighbourly relations, not to mention common sense and law and order!'

  She was so dramatically outraged that I laughed. 'Your intervention on my behalf would be most appreciated, Claudia.'