"Draw that and I'll have you sentenced to the Sicilian sulfur mines."
"Why, Caius Julius Caesar, you do me great honor." He smiled widely, nodding and acknowledging greetings and well-wishers. I smiled back as gaily. We were two distinguished Romans, walking down the hill on this great day of Rome's triumph.
"Pompey wants you dead, and by all the gods, I never saw a man cooperate so wholeheartedly in his own assassination! How did a family of plodding drudges like the Metellans ever produce a specimen like you?"
"Oh, come now, Caius Julius, we may be a bit conservative, but we are scarcely-"
"Shut up and listen!" he hissed. "You might, just might, live to draw breath tomorrow if you will heed me. Pompey will be far too busy to concern himself with you for the next few days, what with his triumph and his games. Clodius thirsts for your blood, but while the celebrations are going on, he won't be able to get his men to do anything."
"Good," I said. "Just Clodius and me. That's the way I want it."
"Venus, my ancestress, deliver me from such fools!" Caesar cried, in one of his better theatrical gestures. "He has those Etruscans Pompey loaned him, and they don't care about Roman holidays."
"And I killed one of them last night," I said with satisfaction.
"Worse. Now it's personal. Decius, I will stand beside you on the Rostra for the great procession, and maybe they won't try to attack you. But when Pompey goes up to the Capitol, I will have to be there to preside over the sacrifice and then the banquet. Do Rome a favor and sneak away. Come back in a month or two, when Pompey has more immediate enemies to concern him."
We were almost to the Rostra by this time, and to all outward appearances we were conversing in greatest conviviality.
"I know what you were up to, Caius Julius," I said. "You and Pompey and Crassus. I wish I had been there. The sight of you three in women's gowns must have been rare spectacle."
I had expected him to be embarrassed. "Political expediency is not always consistent with one's highest vision of one's own dignity. But even that particular indignity is not to be despised. Glorious foreign conquest usually means months of lying on a verminous pallet, fever-ridden, covered with one's own blood and bodily effluvia, yet it can result in a triumph such as this." By this time we stood at the railing of the Rostra, and Caesar gestured toward the marching soldiers bearing standards and trophies, his golden bracelet flashing. I understood then that men such as I was up against had no more concept of shame than of conscience.
"Why are you so solicitous, Caius Julius?" I asked. "Why try to preserve me when your friends want me dead?"
He looked at me with open puzzlement. "Why do you call them my friends?"
"Cohorts, then. I know what you plotted, dividing the world among you, setting aside the constitution and the Senate, and I intend to destroy all three of you!" I never made such a reckless speech sober.
"How did you figure it all out?" Caesar said, smiling gently and obviously interested. I almost told him about Nero's letter, but decided that it might make me look less astute. I still had a young man's vanity, but more importantly, I had learned that it was best to maintain a sense of mystery about one's own capabilities. That was something Caesar had long known.
"To a logical mind," I said, "to one who knows how to see with clarity and think with penetration, the evidence was all there." That, I thought, was rather good.
"You are a truly remarkable man, Decius Caecilius," he said. "And that is why I go to so much trouble to preserve you from your own suicidal stupidity. I shall have work for you to do, in the future."
"What?" I said incredulously. "You won't have a future after this evening!"
"Look!" he said, pointing. "Here come the animals!"
So we watched the procession: the floats bearing treasures, the exotic beasts, the chained prisoners, the unthinkable booty Pompey had assembled in three separate conquests. And Pompey himself, of course. He stood like a statue in his toga picta and red paint. Getting a little pudgy, it seemed to me.
"Love your purple dress!" I shouted as he went past. Under the red paint I couldn't tell if he turned truly red In the uproar, I doubt if he or anyone else heard me.
As the crowd broke up, I noticed that Caesar was gone. It struck me, with a chill, that I was now on my own. I saw other Senators making their way up the Capitol, toward the banquet in Pompey's honor. I began to go that way myself. It was time to confront the three would-be tyrants before the assembled Senate and bring them low. Besides, I was hungry.
It was getting dark fast. I was perhaps halfway up the hill when I saw the first Etruscan. He lurked in a space between two buildings, and the last beams of the setting sun struck glimmers from his bronze hammer and steel dagger. One was no problem. I glanced at the other side of the street. Two more. Then I saw a small crowd behind the two. These were Romans, most likely followers of Clodius, taking a few minutes from the festivities to eliminate an enemy. I looked up toward the temple, which suddenly seemed to be very far away. I was already in plenty of trouble with the Roman courts, and the gods seemed to have deserted me, so I drew my sword.
"Two more!" I yelled. "I want two more of you pointy-bearded Tuscian slaves to pay for the blood of two Romans. The one I got last night wasn't enough!" No sooner asked for than received. The Etruscans attacked, howling. Even in the excitement of the moment I noted that the others weren't so eager. I would like to think that they were overawed by my heroics, but more likely they thought it unworthy to assist wretched foreigners in killing a Senator.
One came in, swinging a hammer. I ducked the blow and ran him through and then jumped on the next one before he had a chance to understand that it was I who was on the offensive. With a sense of the very finest irony, I poked him in the throat with the point of my gladius, just as my instructor had taught me years before, in the old Statilian ludus. I only wished that I had a hammer to whack him between the eyes with.
The others began to close in. I'd had my two. Rome was avenged. I turned and fled downhill, scattering citizens right and left. The pack baying at my heels caused further alarm. The press of celebrating citizenry got too dense to push through, and I turned to confront my pursuers. At that moment, something large and solid bowled into me, shoving me through a dense pack of ivy-wreathed celebrators and into an alley, down a flight of stairs and through a low doorway.
"Keeping you alive could call for the full-time attentions of a legion," said Titus Milo. People looked up from their tables. I smiled at them and sheathed my sword. They returned their attention to their food and wine.
"I have to get to the temple," I said.
"You won't. At least, not for a while. Let's wait here until things are quiet outside. I don't think they saw where we went."
"Good idea," I said. The tavern was like a hundred others in the city. By law they were not supposed to stay open to the public after sunset, but this was a holiday, and besides, nobody paid any attention to that law anyway. We found a table and within minutes were tearing into roast duck with fruit and white bread, which we helped down with rough local wine. I told Milo about the odd interlude with Caesar.
"He's a strange one, Caesar," he said. "But he's like one of those horses in the Circus that surprises you by coming out of nowhere to win, when you'd put your money on the flashy, quick ones."
"I think you're right," I said, helping myself to a handful of figs. "Until now, I'd dismissed him as a posturing buffoon. Everyone has. But he's been behind it all."
"Behind what all?" Milo said alertly.
I told him what I had learned from Nero's letter. "Clodius thinks it was his own doing, and doubtless Pompey and Crassus each thinks himself the dominant member of this-this triumvirate, but it is Caesar who holds the reins. He is the near trace horse." The familiar chariot-race image seemed the best way to describe Caesar's place in the arrangement.