"Ladies, if you will excuse us, I must see Decius out. He has pressing duties." Celer guided me out the door. "No man should be called upon to deal with both of them," he muttered.
To my surprise I found Hermes waiting for me outside the gate, but in well-bred fashion I ignored his presence while I made my farewells to my eminent relative, promising to arrive early the next day.
Hermes fell in behind me as I walked toward the Forum. "So that's the great Metellus?" he said. "Doesn't look like much."
"He is one of the greatest," I told him. "I, on the other hand, am only a little Metellus. I am, however, far greater than you, which means that you are to curb your insolence."
"As you say, master."
It had been an eventful day, this homecoming of mine. It was to be among the more tranquil.
Chapter II
The next morning I rose far too early and greeted my clients. I still had only a small number of them, but they are a necessary adjunct of social and political life. I had about twelve at this time, mostly from families long associated with mine or else retired soldiers who had served with me at one time or other. They had little to do except cheer me in the courts or protect me in times of danger, and I was bound to help them legally and financially. They would be asking more favors now that I was a Senator.
I dismissed them with thanks and gifts and then made my way to Celer's house. I found a great mob in his atrium. His clientage in Rome alone numbered in the hundreds, with thousands more in Italy and the provinces. Naturally, even the Roman crowd could not all call on him at the same time. I think they had some sort of system of on and off days.
I wandered among them, catching up with old friends and meeting a few new ones. People spoke mainly of Pompey's upcoming triumph, and what a splendid spectacle it was sure to be. It seemed all but certain that the Senate's muleheaded opposition could not last much longer. Among the crowd I found Caesar again.
"Two days in a row, Caius Julius?" I said. "Surely no Julian has ever been a Metellan client."
Caesar smiled his dazzling smile. "No, I do not come as a client, but as a homeless suppliant. I've come to beg your kinsman for a roof to shelter my head tomorrow night.'
"Didn't they ever fix the tiles on the pontiffs palace?" I asked. "They were working on that when I left Rome."
"No, the place is sound, but tomorrow night the rites of Bona Dea are to be held there, and I cannot be present."
"The date had escaped me," I admitted. "But then, I'm not married." This rite was performed in the house of the Pontifex Maximus under the supervision of his wife, and all the noblest ladies of Rome attended. It was absolutely forbidden to men, and women were forbidden to speak of it on pain of death.
"You mean even the supreme pontiff can't be there?" I said.
"It is true. I have regulatory power over all aspects of our religious practice, but this one rite I cannot touch, and my wife may not speak to me of it."
"Well, that's-" My words were cut off short when a man standing next to Caesar but with his back to me turned around. His face was malignant, dark and flushing darker. I should have recognized that squat, neckless form even from behind. Somehow I managed to control my natural impulse to reach for a weapon. Just as well, since I was unarmed.
"Why, Publius," I said, "I rejoice to see your face again." And indeed I did. It always did my heart good to look upon the scars I had put on that misshapen countenance.
"My sister said you were back." He almost strangled on the words, but perhaps he just suffered from croup. I swear I saw red veins shoot across his eyeballs like strokes of lightning. Then Caesar put a hand on his shoulder.
"Now, let us have no unseemliness," Caesar said, smiling. "This is the house of Metellus." At his touch and his words and his smile, Clodius ceased to tremble and his color faded. Wordlessly, he nodded. It was the most extraordinary performance. Had the idea not been so absurd, I would have sworn that Clodius was afraid of Caesar! I could not guess what the little scene meant, but I learned something from it that was to haunt me for years to come. I wanted never to see Caius Julius smile at me like that.
My kinsman Metellus Creticus was standing near and caught the unpleasant scene, and he moved in to provide a diversion.
"It's no wonder Decius is confused about the date," he said. "Everybody else is, too. The calendar's gotten all skewed again. That's your job, Caius Julius. When are you going to correct it?" Our calendar was lunar, and because the diurnal year doesn't quite come out even with the turnings of the moon, the calendar would get out of order and every few years the Pontifex Maximus would have to slip in an extra month to make it come out even. Caesar had ignored the problem since his election, probably because he was, basically, a lazy man.
"This creaky old calendar of ours is beyond redemption," Caesar said. "I propose to utterly reform the calendar so that it never needs adjusting again."
A good lazy man's solution, I thought. "How will you do that?" I asked him.
"I will assemble the best astronomers and mathematicians to be found and commission them to work out a sensible calendar in which the number of months always stays the same. I think it can be done if we accept the idea that not all the months will have the same number of days and they will have nothing to do with the phases of the moon."
"Sounds too radical to me," Creticus said. At the time I took it merely for more of Caesar's grandiose talk, but a few years later he actually did it, and we haven't had to adjust the calendar since. Even a man like Caius Julius can do something right once in a while.
By this time Clodius's friends had led him away, and it occurred to me that somebody, perhaps Clodia, had passed the word that we were to be kept apart. That was a juxtaposition I could live with. As I waited for Celer to appear, I noticed something that I had begun to suspect the day before, in the Forum: I had become very popular with the publicani. Most of these were prosperous equities, men in the building or tax-farming trade. They all were eager to make my acquaintance and they all asked pointedly after my father's health. As the Censors were in charge of letting the public contracts, I was clearly a man to cultivate. They hinted that, should I commend them to the old man, I could look forward to some generous gifts at Saturnalia. It looked as if I might finally escape my customary penury.
Mind you, this was not considered a matter of corruption, although our First Citizen would have it so. He claims that we were utterly corrupt in those days and that his "reforms" have fixed everything and corruption is no more. As usual, he flatters himself. He has merely ensured that a fat chunk of every bribe that is passed comes to him.
At one point, while having my ear abraded by a quarry owner, I found myself edging toward a little knot of men surrounding Clodius. I had keen ears, and I always loved to eavesdrop, especially upon conversations where my murder could be the main topic. They were not talking about me, though.
"But just what is it the women do at that ceremony, eh?" The voice of Clodius dripped with prurient insinuation. I had to admit, guiltily, that I had wondered exactly that myself.
"Every highborn husband in Rome wonders that," said a man who was obviously uneasy about what his wife would be up to the next night.
"But," said a very young man I did not recognize, "it can't be much, can it? I mean, they're all women, after all." The others drew back and made disdainful noises at such callowness.
"I'll wager it's worth seeing, eh?" said Clodius. I thought of stepping over and hitting him on the head with a vase or something. I just could not abide that voice. It wasn't just the subject. He could comment on the weather and it would come out sounding like that.
"Worth a man's life, you mean," said an older and presumably wiser man. Then conversation ceased as Celer arrived and began greeting the callers. When he got to me he put a hand on my shoulder in that gesture that always says that this is a private conversation. The others turned discreetly away.