Milo took her hand. "I am the man who is going to rule Rome, as your father did, my lady."
She smiled up at him. "Wonderful. Men of ordinary ambition are so common."
"I believe we are related," I said. "Wasn't your mother a Caecilia Metella?"
"How long have you been in Rome, Titus Annius?" she asked, utterly ignoring me. Well, it wasn't that much of a relationship. My family produces even more daughters than sons.
"A little over eight years, my lady." After his initial burst of arrogance, he seemed almost tongue-tied, a marvel I never expected to behold.
"Titus Milo, you say? I believe I've heard the name. Don't your followers get into street battles with the men of Clodius Pulcher?"
"Not lately," Milo said, bashful at receiving such praise.
"How enthralling. You must tell me all about it."
"Well, I'll leave you two to get acquainted," I said. They ignored me. I gave it up as a futile task and walked away from them. I had discharged my duty as Eros.
Full-bellied and with the balance of a fine day ahead of me, I decided to make another call on a friend, this time with more than social aims in mind. I headed down the Palatine toward the river. I had a call to pay at the Temple of Aesculapius.
For the first time I crossed the splendid new stone bridge that linked the bank with the island. This had been built the year before by the tribune Fabricius. At the temple I inquired after the physician Asklepiodes and found that he was once again in residence at the Statilian School, which had been displaced by the building of Pompey's new theater. The new school was situated in the Trans-Tiber district. Armed with directions, I crossed to the far bank into the city's newest district, which, unconstrained by walls, sprawled over a sizable patch of ground without the suffocating closeness of the old city.
The new school was a splendid affair, with none of the prisonlike air that so many such institutions have. The walk leading to the school was paved with stone and lined with statues of champions of years past. An archway tunneled through the building, leading to a wide exercise yard whence came the clatter of weapons as the men went through their arms drill. I paused to admire the spectacle, and possibly calculate odds for the next games. The trainees fought with practice weapons, but the senior veterans actually used sharp weapons. The blade artistry of some of these men was wonderful to see. No soldier ever gains this sort of expertise, because soldiers spend much time practicing formation fighting and even more on labor details, digging and building. Gladiators do nothing but train for single combat.
Most of the men trained with the large shield and the straight gladius or with the small shield and the curved sica, and some practiced with the spear, but there was a new category, one that had appeared during Caesar's aedileship.
Caesar had borrowed heavily to put on games of unprecedented magnificence, going so far as to give munera in honor of a deceased female relative when he ran out of dead male ancestors. He bought up so many gladiators that his enemies in the Senate panicked, thinking that he was buying a private army. They quickly passed legislation limiting the number of gladiators one citizen could exhibit at any given set of games. Since he could not show as many as he wanted, he began to use bizarre new types: men who fought from elephants, chariot fighters, horsemen and others. Strangest of all were the netmen.
Nobody knew what to make of them when they first marched into the arena. They looked like fishermen from the Styx with their nets and their three-pronged harpoons. Nobody thought they could be fighters because they wore no armor. We thought perhaps we were to see some new dance. Then a group of big-shield fighters came in and paired off with the netmen. At first, we expected to see the netmen slaughtered. But this was not toe-to-toe fighting of the sort we were used to. The net-men darted all over the arena, casting their nets, running away if they missed, only to return to the fight after retrieving the net by its cord. After a lot of laughter and hooting, the audience began to get into the spirit of the thing and cheered on the combatants. To everyone's surprise, more netmen than swordsmen won their fights. It was all so unexpected that there was no way to decide whether anyone had fought really well or badly, so the crowd withheld the death signal, although a few fighters died later of their wounds.
Caesar had intended this to be a novelty act for that one set of games, but the crowd's fancy was taken and they began to demand the net fighters. Now I saw that Statilius Taurus had added them to his regular categories of fighters. Traditionalists like my father found them entirely too exotic, and Cato, predictably, said it was a disgrace to the tradition of mortal combat.
A slave guided me to the quarters of the resident physician, and there I found my friend Asklepiodes, the world's greatest expert on mortal wounds. We spent several minutes exchanging greetings, for which he had a Greek's fondness. We swiftly brought each other up to date on our doings of the past year or so; then I broached my current business, telling him of the events of the previous night.
"Ah, Decius, how like you!" Asklepiodes said. "Back in Rome only three days and already involved in a murder!"
"One successful," I said. "The other, fortunately, merely attempted." I handed him the wrapped parcel of pastries. "Is there some way to test these, short of feeding them to a slave?"
"I will try an animal. It is difficult to induce a dog to eat sweet pastries, but perhaps a pig will oblige. These tests are not infallible, I must warn you. There are substances deadly to humans but harmless to animals."
"If it is a poison," I asked, "is there any way to determine what sort?"
"That is extremely difficult unless you use a human subject, who can describe his symptoms. I am, of course, forbidden to do any such thing."
"I wouldn't ask you to," I said. "Do you think you could get a look at Capito's body? Unfortunately, I have no official position just now."
"I am acquainted with the most prominent undertakers. There should be no difficulty. From your description, no detailed examination should be necessary. A quick look should suffice. I shall attend to it this evening."
"I shall be grateful," I told him.
"My friend Decius, life is always so much more interesting when you are in Rome. Please feel free to call upon my services."
"I'll be back tomorrow," I told him.
"Try to live that long," he urged. Asklepiodes had a strange sense of humor, but one must make allowances for Greeks.
As I walked back across the river toward my home in the Subura, I began to regret that I had not thought to arm myself before going out that day. I had been so elated at the prospect of attending my first Senate meeting that it had caused me to be less than cautious. It is forbidden to bear arms within the pomerium and doubly forbidden to carry them into the Curia, but I was prepared to risk censure. A recent attempt on my life always lowered my respect for custom.
Now here I was wandering alone through streets that might harbor Clodius's minions. Even as I thought this, I was struck by something else: Poison was not his style. Whatever else you could say about Clodius, he was always perfectly willing to kill his enemies with his own hand, right out in public.
But who else was my mortal enemy? I hadn't offended anyone lately. Only madmen like Clodius nurse grudges year after year, awaiting a chance to strike. I had made my peace with most of my enemies, and the rest of them seemed to have forgotten me. It was all a great puzzle.
I managed to reach my house without homicide and sent for Hermes. My aged slave Cato clucked dolefully.
"Nothing good will come of having that young lout in the house, master. He's destined for the cross."
"Most likely. But until that sad day, let's see what use we can get out of him. Send him in."