Finally she smiled. "Exactly. Well, I am sorry that Caius Julius is not here to speak with you, but I am pleased to have met you at last." She made to leave, but I did not want her to go.
"Stay, please," I said.
"Yes?" She was a little puzzled, as was I.
"Well." I groped for words. "Perhaps you could help me. Were you here that night?"
"Only married ladies attend the rites of Bona Dea. I am not married."
"I see." I was inordinately pleased to know that she was not married. "How wonderful. I mean, I am not happy that you were not here." My words were getting tangled again.
"I didn't say I was not here, just that I did not attend the rites."
"Ah. Well, it is a rather large house."
"You're going about this all wrong, you know. I fear that you disappoint me."
"I fail to understand," I said.
"Just going into great men's houses and asking direct questions. That's no way to get to the bottom of this matter."
I was a little crestfallen. After all, who was famed for this sort of thing?
"Well, it is a little different from investigating a throat-cutting in the Subura. Could you suggest a better method?"
"Let me help you."
"You have already very kindly made that offer," I reminded her.
"I mean, let me be your helper in this investigation. I can go places you cannot."
This took me greatly aback. "Why should you want to do that?"
"Because I am intelligent, well-educated, personable and bored to a state of Medea-like madness. I've followed your career for years by way of gossip among women and table discussion among my father and his brother and their friends. It is just the sort of activity I feel drawn to. I can go places you cannot. Let me help you." In true patrician fashion she demanded this as her right, but I could detect a pleading tone in her voice.
"This is most unexpected," I said. Immediately, though, I could see the advantages of such an arrangement. Among other things, it meant that I would see more of Julia. "But let's discuss it." She sat on a stone bench and patted the place beside her, which was only slightly damp. "Sit here with me." I looked around the garden. "We are not chaperoned.
Will your family think this is correct?" The men in noble old families could behave like goats or worse, but their women had to be chaste, or at least perceived as such.
Caesar's wife, etc.
"Gaze over my left shoulder," Julia said. "Do you see a shadow lurking beneath the colonnade?" I complied. "I see such a shadow."
"That is my grandmother, the lady Aurelia. Rest assured, if she sees anything untoward, she will interpose herself between me and dishonor. She has the eyes, the instincts and the claws of a bird of prey."
"Oh, good. Now we can plot. Just how would you go about being my assistant?"
"Colleague, if you please."
"Very well." This concession cost me nothing. "Most of the highly married ladies in Rome were here that night. I shall call upon some of them and pump them for information."
"Aren't they forbidden to speak of the rites to one who is not an initiate?"
"Certainly. But some of the most scandalous ladies of Roman society were there, women known for their indiscretions. Besides Clodia, I know that Fulvia and Sempronia were there, along with that whole lot from Lucullus's household: his wife Claudia and his ward, Fausta the daughter of Sulla, and your cousin Caecilia, the wife of the younger Marcus Crassus. If I can't get information out of some of those women, I'll take vows and become a Vestal."
"That would be valuable," I admitted. "But if your grandmother over there were to hear of you being in the company of any of those ladies, she would open her veins."
"I will be suitably cunning. I can contrive to run into them at some innocuous location-the baths, for instance."
In those days, there were several baths in Rome exclusively for women. The thought of Julia soaking in the caldarium with any of those notorious ladies instantly filled my head with distracting images.
"That seems safe enough," I allowed. "But stay away from Clodia. She is a truly dangerous woman, whereas the others are only mildly wicked. I have Celer's permission to question her myself, not that I expect to get much out of her. How will you get in touch with me?"
"Have you a slave you can trust?"
"I have a boy named Hermes, but he is a duplicitous rascal."
"Then I will send someone to you when I have something of worth to report."
"I would like to know one thing. Why are you doing this? Besides being bored, I mean."
"I find that quite sufficient reason. And, like most decent Roman women, I detest Clodia."
"That's intriguing. Most of the men feel the same way about her brother. Just keep clear of her."
"That will not be difficult. I am afraid of her."
"And well you should be. Personally, she terrifies me. She if far subtler than Publius." I debated telling her about the poisoning attempt, but restrained myself. I was being far too trusting as it was. I rose from the bench.
"I will take my leave, then, and hope to hear from you soon." She saw me out with all the usual courtesies, most of them, I presumed, for the eyes of the dragonlike grandmother.
I walked away greatly bemused. It might be wondered that I would even consider trusting someone from the family of Caesar. A major reason was that I wanted to trust her. This tendency to confuse desire with reason has landed me in more trouble than I care to remember. Nonetheless, my instincts, which were sometimes reliable, said that she was sincere.
In a way, it was not a good time for me to be so distracted, for my next stop was the house of the man I genuinely feared. Marcus Licinius Crassus and I had crossed paths more than once, and although our relations were cordial for the moment, I did not mistake this for any sort of permanent arrangement.
Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives was believed to be the richest man in the world, and his house did nothing to dispel the belief. It was not far from the house of Celer, on a broad stretch of ground that had once belonged to several enemies of Sulla's. Crassus had eliminated the owners for the Dictator and was given their estates as a reward. He had demolished the old structures and had built his own palace, surrounded by spacious grounds landscaped by the best Greek artists and populated with the most sumptuous statuary imaginable. The whole collection was something of an oddity in Rome, for Crassus had actually bought most of his treasures. He had acquired little of it decently through inheritance and almost none of it as loot from foreign wars. This was still a rather new concept in Rome, where we associated great purchasing power with wealthy equites and freedman.
Making money was a passion with Crassus, almost a sickness. Many of his contemporaries strove for power, believing that wealth would come to them as the natural concomitant of power. Crassus was the first Roman to understand that wealth was power. Others struggled for years to obtain high military commands so that they could win loot and glory in foreign lands. Crassus knew that he could buy an army at any time.
I was suspicious of Crassus at this time. Of course, it was all but impossible not to be suspicious of him. He was involved in so many intrigues, most of them involving money, that it was unthinkable to sort through them all. We all knew that he had dealings with Ptolemy the Flute-Player, the putative King of Egypt. But Ptolemy always needed money, so it was natural for him to court Crassus. Crassus was angling in the Senate for a war with Parthia. We had no particular quarrel with Parthia, but it was the last really rich nation on our borders and he wanted a chance at it before Pompey got it. Pompey's single-minded pursuit of military glory matched Crassus's passion for money. They hated each other, but they could cooperate on occasion.