'No, I think I'll stay here a while longer. Perhaps I'll follow Tongilius's example and simply dry myself and gp to bed.'
Catilina stepped from the tub. He took his towel from the niche in the wall, but did not bother to cover himself. He paused at the door to the cooling room 'Shall I call for a slave to bring another lamp?'
'No,' I said. 'The darkness suits my mood.'
Catilina nodded and shut the door behind him A moment later the light dwindled and died. I lay in the darkness, ruminating on Catilina and his crimes.
I must have dozed for just an instant, for suddenly I was awakened by a faint creaking noise, not from the door through which Catilina had just exited but from the door that led back to the warm bath and thence to the rest of the house. It was just such a noise as might be made by someone leaning against the door without meaning to. At the same instant a thin crack of light appeared at the top of the door frame.
Perhaps the door had moved on its own, swollen by the humidity and heat. Still, my heart began to beat more quickly, and the languid drowsiness of the hot bath was instantly dispelled. Perhaps it was Tongilius returning, I told myself — but why should he be skulking? Perhaps it was a slave come to replenish the extinguished lamp — but then why did the slave not enter?
I listened and heard nothing more from beyond the door, but I was convinced that someone stood there, waiting.
I rose from the water as quietly as I could and stepped from the tub. I reached for my towel, but not to cover myself. A simple towel, wound tightly like a rope, has many uses — as a shield against daggers, as a means of binding an enemy, as a weapon good for strangling or breaking necks. I walked on tiptoe to the door. I reached for the wooden handle, hesitated for a heartbeat, then pulled it open.
He tumbled towards me, staggering. I caught him in the twisted cloth, pinned his arms to his sides and spun him around. He tripped and lurched, but didn't struggle. He tilted his face towards mine.
I hissed a curse and released the towel. My captive stepped free and sucked in a quick breath, and then, as if what had just happened had been nothing more than a game, whispered, 'So Catilina did sleep with the Vestal!'
'Meto!'
'Sorry, Papa, but I couldn't sleep. My feet hurt from climbing the mountain! When I came to the door, I heard the two of you talking. It didn't seem right to step in on you, but I had to listen. You wouldn't have said anything different if you'd known I could hear, would you? And Catilina might not have said so much if I'd been in the room. I was awfully quiet, wasn't I? Did you really not know that I was there until just now? That was a mistake, leaning against the door like that…'
'Meto, when will you learn respect?'
Meto put his fingers to his lips and nodded towards the door to the cool plunge. I lowered my voice. "This habit of yours, skulking and spying, where did you possible learn such — ' I sighed. 'No, as a matter of fact, I had no idea you were there until the door creaked. Which means that you are young and agile while I am growing old and dull and possibly a little deaf I wonder, which of us is more in need of a good night's sleep?'
Meto smiled at me, and I couldn't help smiling back. I gripped the back of his neck and gave his head a firm shake, none too gently. It was time for bed, but before we turned to go I looked back at the thin bar of lamplight that shone from beneath the opposite door. A faint splashing came from the pool of cool water in the room beyond. As on the night before, soon everyone in the household would be abed and sleeping except Catilina, who would still be up, defying Morpheus and who knows what other gods to come and take him.
XIV
Morpheus must have come for Catilina at last, and claimed him until well past sunup, for it was not until mid-morning that Catilina and Tongilius appeared in the kitchen seeking food. They both looked a bit bleary-eyed from oversleep, but were quite cheerful — indeed, suspiciously self-satisfied, I thought. They muttered little jokes to one another, laughed out loud, and smiled at nothing. Their appetites were enormous, and they devoured everything Congrio set before them.
Once finished with his breakfast, Catilina announced that they would be leaving before noon. He and Tongilius dressed in blue riding tunics, gathered up their things, said farewell to Bethesda, paid their compliments to Congrio on his cooking, and loaded their horses in the stable.
I asked Catilina which way he was headed. To the north, he told me, saying he had more visits to pay in Etruria, compaigning among Sulla's old veterans, whom the dictator had settled on farmland seized from his enemies. I watched them ride off Despite having dreaded his visit so much, I was not as happy to see him leave as I'd thought I would be.
Curiously, when they reached the Cassian Way, Tongilius and Catilina turned not north but south, towards Rome. I would never have noticed, for I was no longer watching, but Meto was. He came running up to me outside the pigsties and pointed towards the two figures on the distant highway. 'What do you make of that, Papa?' 'Odd,' I said. 'Catilina claimed he was heading north. I wonder1—' 'I'll go and watch from the ridge,' Meto called back over his shoulder as he broke into a run. He was on the ridgetop long before I came
up huffing and puffing behind him He had already found the ideal lookout between two towering oaks, shielded from sight behind a dump of brambles. We could not be seen from the road, but had a clear view of everything that passed on the Cassian Way.
It was not hard to spot Catilina and Tongilius, as they were the only horsemen on the road. They seemed to have come to a halt at a spot not far from the pass between the ridge and the foothills of Mount Argentum, Why they should hesitate was unclear, until I realized that they were waiting for a team of oxen to pass by, heading north. Once over the rise, the oxen must have passed out of their sight — just as Catilina and Tongilius passed out of the oxherd's view. They looked stealthily about, then dismounted and led their horses into the underbrush on the eastern side of the road.
Their mounts secured somewhere out of sight, the two men reappeared, but only for a moment before they passed beneath the branches of a large tree and out of sight. Then I saw them again, stepping back onto the road, but only for a moment. So it went, with Catilina and Tongilius disappearing and reappearing, going back and forth along the roadside as if searching for something they had lost.
'What are they looking for?' asked Meto.
"The trailhead,' I said.
'What trailhead?'
'You must have run on ahead when Forfex explained it to me yesterday. There's another path that leads up to the mine, beginning somewhere along the Cassian Way. It's long been disused and overgrown. Catilina is trying to find the trailhead.'
'But why? He's already been to the mine.'
I made no answer. From the corner of my eye I saw Meto frowning at me, not because he was perplexed but because he sensed that I was withholding my thoughts from him. Together we watched as Catilina and Tongilius went in and out of the dense underbrush alongside the road. At length a team of slaves appeared from the south, linked by chains from neck to neck and driven along by freedmen wielding whips. Catilina and Tongilius disappeared for as long as it took the slaves to pass, then reappeared again when the way was clear.
Eventually they vanished into the brush and did not reappear for so long that I began to think they had found what they were seeking. Suddenly Meto clutched my sleeve. In the same instant I heard a rustling in the underbrush behind us, followed by a familiar voice.
'Not your usual spot — oh, please, I didn't mean to startle you! Oh, how rude of me, coming up on you like this. Gordianus, forgive me, I shouldn't laugh, but you gave such a start!' 'Claudia,' I said.
‘Yes, only me. And here's young Meto — so long since I've seen the boy. Oh, but I mustn't call you a boy, not for much longer, must I, young man? You turn sixteen this month, don't you?'
‘Yes,' said Meto, darting a glance over his shoulder, back down towards the road.
'A beautiful view from this side, isn't it? You really get the whole effect of the mountain, how vast it is, towering above the road like that.'
'Yes, quite impressive,' I said.
'But it's so uncomfortable here amid the brambles. Come, there's a spot close by with the very same view where we can all sit together on a log.'
I shrugged, trying not to look down at the road. My eyes fell on the basket in Claudia's hand.
'Oh, but you fear you'll be intruding on my lunch! Not at all, Gordianus. I have quite enough bread and cheese and olives for all of us. Come now, I won't have my hospitality refused.'
We followed her to a clearing a few feet away. As she had promised, the view was exactly the same, with the difference that we were in plain sight of the road, should anyone happen to look up.
'Now, isn't this better?' said Claudia, settling her plump bottom on the log and laying her basket before her.
'Much,' I said. Meto, I noticed, could not seem to keep from darting furtive but very obvious glances at the spot where we had last glimpsed Catilina and Tongilius. A good watcher he might be, but as an actor he was a disaster. 'However, Meto really needs to be getting back to the house.'
'Oh, Gordianus, you Roman fathers! Always so strict and demanding. My father was just the same, and I was a giri! Here it is, one of the last fine summer days of Meto's boyhood, and you would have him doing chores at midday. In a very short time hell be a man, and after that, summer days may be just as hot but they will never be as long and lovely and full of flowers and bees as they are for him at this very moment. Please, let Meto join us.'
At her insistence, Meto sat at Claudia's left and I at her right. She passed us food and waited for us to begin before taking some for herself. Once he was settled on the log with his mouth full ofcheese, Imust admit that Meto did a good job at feigning only casual interest in the doings at the foot of the mountain. More traffic passed on the Cassian Way — herds of sheep, slaves bearing bundles of wood on their backs, a long train of wagons ringed by armed men headed south towards Rome.
'Vases from Arretium,' declared Claudia.
'How can you tell?' said Meto.
'Because I can see right through the crates packed inside the wagons as if they were invisible!' said Claudia, then laughed when she saw that Meto seemed to be taking her seriously. 'I know, Meto, because those wagons have been coming down the Cassian Way since I was a girl, taking Arretine vases to Rome. They're awfully valuable — hence the armed guard, and the slow procession. If it were anything else valuable enough to justify the guards, the wagons would be going twice as fast. Gold and silver don't break, but fine clay vases do.'
The progress of the wagons did seem to take forever as they crept along the ribbon of road. There was no sign of Catilina.
Then Meto made an odd noise in his throat, and when I glanced at him, he made an almost imperceptible nod. I followed his gaze to a point on the mountain at least two hundred feet above the road, where a patch of blue the shade of Catilina's tunic flashed in a clearing amid the green canopy. The blue patch moved and was joined by another; I squinted, and the blue patches resolved quite clearly into two men moving about on the mountainside.
Claudia, busy leaning over her basket, did not see.