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.
And I have never taken kindly to the murder of citizens, nor even of resident foreigners under Rome's protection. Some of the victims may not have been particularly savory, but others had been upright members of the community. At any rate, people who do not die in the natural course of things have a right to die by their own hand, or else be put to death only after the proper deliberations of state. That is why we have crosses and arenas. They should not die violently at the hands of malefactors and I have never been able to tolerate such criminal behavior.
If ambitious men wanted to kill one another in the pursuit of power, they had my full blessing to do so. Every such demise made the world a better place. But in doing so they had no right to kill ordinary citizens guilty of no more than going about their everyday lives. If their armies wished to follow their generals and slaughter one another in furthering the ambitions of those men, I was satisfied. I yield to none in my admiration of the Roman legionary, but soldiers are men who bear arms, kill and die as a profession. That does not constitute a right to victimize those who merely go about their lawful occupations.
The truth was that I was not a man of greatness as that age, which now seems almost as remote as the days of Homer, judged such things. I had no ambition to lead armies, to conquer new provinces, to come home a triumphator. I was a Roman in the old sense of the word. I was a citizen of a hill town on the Tiber that had, through an astonishing set of circumstances, found itself to be master of the world. I wanted to live with my neighbors, govern over them as my birth and education gave me competence, and, when necessity dictated, fight in their defense to the extent that my less than heroic capabilities allowed.
I enjoyed parties at the Egyptian embassy where the mighty of the world gorged and connived, but I also enjoyed the celebrations of Subura workmen where a whole guild had to pool their dues to buy an amphora of decent Falernian and the loaves were the only white bread those men ate all year. The corner temple of Jupiter near my house, where I attended sacrifices on most mornings, had only five priests. One of these was free-born, two were freedmen and two were slaves. That was the Rome I loved, not the imperial fantasy that the likes of Crassus and Pompey and so many other fought over. It was men like these who had destroyed the old Rome. Now Catilina wanted to be one of them.
And yet, for all his foolishness and brutality, I could not help liking Catilina, in a grudging sort of way. He was like an importunate puppy, or a rambunctious boy who insists upon barging in on the debates and solemnities of his elders, waving his wooden sword and shouting his shrill battle cries, annoying everybody and impossible to ignore. He had hubris in plenty, as the Greeks define such things, but he had little meanness and even less pretentiousness. I sincerely hoped that, after all his murders and treasons, he would be given a quick, easy and dignified death.
The drinking went on for some time after the serious talk was over. We walked out into the street and made our farewells as personal slaves were released from the rear of the house to accompany their masters home. Thorius, bandaged head and all, crawled into a litter borne by a matched team of Nubians, which I assumed must be borrowed. Since he had come by his wounds in my ostensible defense, I felt it incumbent upon me to be solicitous.