In the stillness of the night, through the closed door, I heard their muffled voices and the clump of their heavy footsteps on the stairway. These sounds quickly faded, and the empty street seemed almost preternaturally quiet. The cold suddenly penetrated my cloak, making me shiver. I walked back to my house taking quick, careful steps. Everything was bland oyster-white and fathomless black shadow. Cold moonlight had turned the world to stone.
I slipped back into bed. I might have stayed awake for a long time, staring into the darkness above, but Bethesda rolled toward me and snuggled against me, and I fell asleep almost at once.
As planned, my son Eco came calling before daybreak. Belbo brought horses from the stable, and the three of us set out through the quiet gray streets of the waking city. We took the Flaminian Way and passed through the Fontinal Gate, leaving the dangers and deceits of the city behind us, at least for a while.
Chapter Six
The journey was without incident, except for a brief but wave-tossed crossing from Fanum Fortunae, at the terminus of the Flaminian Way, across to the Illyrian shore. In winter there are only a handful of boatmen who will ferry passengers across the Adriatic Sea, and on this trip we discovered why, for we very narrowly escaped a sudden squall that easily could have sent boat, Belbo, horses, Eco and myself to the bottom of the sea.
Before we left Fanum Fortunae, I had insisted on visiting the famous grounds consecrated to the goddess Fortune and leaving a few coins at her temple. 'Better spent tipping the boatman,' Eco had muttered under his breath. But after surviving the wet, windy crossing, it was Eco who suggested we give thanks at the nearest temple of Fortune. Pounding rain turned the wooden roof into a drum. Inside the rustic little temple incense swirled, coins jangled, and the goddess smiled, while the trembling in my knees and the queasiness in my stomach gradually subsided.
With our feet back on solid ground, even the arduous, rain-soaked journey up the rugged coastline and over the windswept hills to Caesar's winter quarters seemed like a holiday.
After he became a soldier in the legions of Gaius Julius Caesar in Gaul, I didn't see my son Meto for months at a time, though we conversed often by letter. This was fortuitous in a way that I could never have foreseen.
Meto's letters came to me by military messengers. This is a common way to send all sorts of correspondence, since only very wealthy men can afford to have slaves merely for the purpose of carrying letters, while military messengers range far and wide throughout the empire and are more reliable than merchants or pleasure travelers. Letters leaving Caesar's camp, as it turned out, were not entirely private; the messengers who carried them usually read them to make sure that they contained no compromising information. One of Caesar's most trusted messengers, impressed by Meto's style and observations, passed a copy along to one of Caesar's most trusted secretaries, who thought it worthwhile to pass it along to Caesar himself, who then moved Meto out of the tent where he had been ordered to polish newly minted armor and into the com-mander's staff.
Between conquering Gaul and vying for control of Rome, it seems that the great man finds time in his busy schedule to keep a minutely detailed journal. While other politicians leave their memoirs as monuments to posterity, Caesar intends to distribute his (so Meto suspects) as a tool in his election campaigns. The people of Rome will read of Caesar's extraordinary skills of leadership and his triumphs in spreading Roman civilization, and then rush to support him at the polls- provided, of course, that things continue to go as Caesar wishes in Gaul.
Caesar has slaves to take his dictation, of course-Meto says the commander often dictates while on horseback riding from camp to camp, so as not to waste time-and he has slaves to assist in the collation and compilation of his notes, but as my own experience has often borne out, the rich and powerful will make use of other men's talents wherever they find them. Caesar happens to like Meto's prose style-never mind that Meto was born a slave, received only sporadic tutoring in mathematics and Latin after I adopted him, and has no experience at practicing rhetoric. Ironic, too, is the fact that Meto, who chose to be a soldier against my wishes, now finds himself a tent-bound literary adjutant in-stead of a sunburned, wind-bitten legionary. It would be hard, I imagine, for one of his humble origins to rise much higher, with so many patricians and sons of the rich vying for honor and glory in the upper ranks.
Which is not to say that he no longer faces danger. Caesar himself takes extraordinary risks-this is said to be one of the keys to the hold he has over his men, that he faces the enemy alongside them-and no matter what his day-to-day duties, Meto has seen plenty of battle. His role as one of Caesar's secretaries simply means that during quiet times, instead of building catapults or digging trenches or making roads, Meto labors over his commander's rough drafts. Just as well; Meto was never very good at working with his hands or his back. But when the crisis comes and the enemy must be faced, Meto puts down his stylus and takes up his sword.
Meto had plenty of hair-raising tales to thrill his older brother and set his brooding father's teeth on edge. Ambushes at dawn, midnight raids, battles against barbarian tribes with unpronounceable names-I listened to the details and wished I could cover my ears, as images ran riot through my head of Meto in hand-to-hand combat against some hulking, hairy Gaul, or dodging a rain of arrows, or leaping off a catapult consumed by fire. Meanwhile I watched him wide-eyed, at once amazed, appalled, proud and melancholy at how thoroughly the boy had vanished and the man taken his place. Though he was only twenty-two, I counted a few gray hairs among the shock of unruly black curls on his head, and his jaw was covered with stubble. His speech, especially in the excitement of recounting a battle, was salted with crude soldier's slang-could this really be the boy whose prose Caesar found so admirable? Relaxing in his quarters, it was Meto's custom to wear the same garment day after day, a dark blue, much-washed woolen tunic. I raised an eyebrow at his slovenliness but said nothing, even when I noticed the numerous murky spots, large and small, which stained the fabric in various places. Then I realized that the stains were clustered where his armor joined and around the edges of his leather coat. The spots were bloodstains, made where the blood of other men had soaked through his battle gear.
Meto told us of mountains he had crossed and rivers he had forded, of Gallic villages with their peculiar sights and smells, of Caesar's genius at outwitting the tribes and putting down their rebellions. (Much of the commander's behavior sounded like gratuitous cruelty and base treachery to me, but I knew better than to say so.) He confirmed that the Gauls were uncommonly big, many of them veritable giants. 'They think of us as a midget race, and make fun of us to our faces,' he said. 'But they don't laugh for long.'
He was eager for news of Rome. Eco and I shared with him all the gossip we could remember, including the latest maneuvers regarding the Egyptian situation. 'Pompey and your beloved commander seemed to have matched scores in the latest round,' Eco noted, 'extorting equal hoards of silver from King Ptolemy in return for bribing the Senate to smile on his claim to the Egyptian throne. It's Crassus who's been left out.'
'And what does Crassus need from Egypt?' said Meto, who had his own reasons to dislike the millionaire quite apart from his loyalty to Caesar.
'He's rich enough.'
'Crassus will never be rich enough for Crassus,' I said.
'If he wants to keep his hand in the contest,' said Meto, absently reaching for his short sword and fiddling with the handle, 'Crassus will need to wrangle another military command from the Senate and score some victories to impress the people. Silver buys votes, but only glory buys greatness.' I wondered if these words came from Meto himself or from Caesar, whose finances become more precarious even while the list of his conquests grows longer.
'But Pompey has pacified the East, and now Caesar is pacifying Gaul,' said Eco. 'What's left for Crassus?'
'He'll simply have to look further afield,' said Meto.
'Well, Egypt is as far as I care to cast my thoughts,' I said, and proceeded to relate what I had learned from Dio on the night before I left Rome. From his proximity to Caesar and his staff, Meto already knew a little about the murders of the Alexandrian envoys, but had not realized the scale of the scandal. He seemed genuinely appalled, and I found myself wondering how someone who had become so inured to the carnage of battle could be alarmed any longer by mere murder. The thought made me uneasy, as I suddenly felt the growing distance between Meto and myself. Then, as I continued to describe the peculiar circum-stances of Dio's visit and my guests' absurd disguises-the philosopher as a woman, the gallus as a man — Meto burst out laughing. His laughter encouraged me to pile on more details, which made him laugh all the harder. Suddenly the stubbly jaw and the bloodstains faded
