“Everybody does. Anything else?”
“Lately he’s been working for someone else as well. Someone he calls ‘the easterner’ or ‘the star man.’”
“Polasser!” I said, thumping the table with my fist. “Worked for him, all right, but he set him up to be murdered.”
“Maybe he’s the killer,” Hermes suggested.
“I thought about that, but somehow I doubt it. I didn’t get a good long look at him, but I don’t think he had the hands and arms of a wrestler. Pure runner, that’s all. Did you get anything else?”
“Just that he hasn’t been by for more than ten days, which they think odd. I didn’t press it. They already thought I was being suspiciously snoopy, even though I was buying the drinks.”
“A conscientious lot,” I said. “Most men will sell you their mothers as long as you keep the free wine flowing.” I told him of my little meeting with Caesar and the queen of Egypt.
“So maybe he really is sick,” Hermes mused.
“Or maybe Cleopatra is just being oversolicitous of his health and insists on having a physician present, and Caesar would trust nobody but that Greek. It’s like her. Still, he didn’t look all that well. Not really sick, but lacking in his usual vigor, like that day in the Senate when he was so undiplomatic with Archelaus.”
“Do you think Caesar will live long enough to take his expedition to Syria?”
“If King Phraates has any brains at all,” I said, “he’s sacrificing to Ahura-Mazda right now that he will not.”
13
It was barely midafternoon when we set out for Callista’s. Respectable gatherings always began early. Only disreputable ones went on after dark. Of course, this party was going to move to one of the most dissolute households in Rome. I mentioned this strange juxtaposition to Julia as we were carried off.
It annoyed me that she insisted that I ride in the big litter she reserved for the most pretentious occasions, as if my own feet would no longer carry me. She thought it was beneath my dignity to walk after the sun was low over the rooftops. Of course, the ostentatious conveyance wasn’t for the visit to Callista’s, for which her everyday litter was adequate. It was for the trip to Cleopatra’s.
Not that everyone was riding. Two of Julia’s girls were trailing us, along with Hermes and a couple of my rougher retainers, men handy with their fists and with bronze-studded truncheons tucked into their cinctures. Anything could happen.
We found a small mob in the street outside Callista’s house, and more gathered in the courtyard. There were litters like ours and slaves and attendants and bodyguards more numerous and rougher-looking than mine.
“That’s Servilia’s litter!” Julia said as we were carried into this carnival. “And there is Atia’s!”
“This should prove to be an interesting evening,” I said as the bearers set us down on the pavement of the courtyard. I got out and helped Julia from the elegant but awkward vehicle. As I did this I gazed around the courtyard. Callista’s servants circulated, carrying trays of refreshments for the attendants who had to wait without. Greater houses than this one might not have bothered.
I hoped that the presence of these scheming women might add interest to what promised to be a dull evening. Much as I esteemed the company of Callista, I had never been able to abide the droning lectures of philosophers, and I had endured many such, as Julia had dragged me around from one learned gathering to another. She had a wholly lamentable taste for such high-toned, edifying entertainments, whereas I much preferred a good fight or chariot race.
Hermes nudged me. “Look who’s here now.”
The litter that entered the courtyard was unmistakable. It was Fulvia’s. The bearers were her usual matched Libyans with their outlandish, colorful costumes and their hair dressed in innumerable plaits. First to emerge was Antonius himself. The lady herself emerged, dressed, so to speak, in a gown of Coan cloth that resembled smoke drifting about her voluptuous little body.
“She’s holding up well for her age,” Julia observed.
“So she is. Shall we go in? It’s getting a bit crowded out here.”
Echo met us at the door and conducted us inside, with Antonius and his wife right behind us. The inner courtyard, with its small, tasteful fountain and pool, had been set with numerous chairs and couches. At a dinner party there would have been couches for nine, but there was no such customary limitation on salons like this. The women crowded together near the fountain to gossip and sound one another out while the men gathered in a corner to commiserate. I was headed that way when Antonius came up to me.
“Dreadful business eh, Decius?” he said, grabbing a cup from a passing servant. I did the same. “I wouldn’t mind if it was like a Greek symposium, where everybody’s drunk by nightfall, but Callista’s little dos aren’t like that. All very refined. I hope I can last until we go to Cleopatra’s. Then things should liven up.”
“This is the sort of thing we must do if we prize domestic harmony,” I told him.
“There’s such a thing as too much harmony, if you ask me,” he groused, burying his beak in his wine. “Ahh, Corinthian. Haven’t tasted it in years.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever tried it. I thought I knew them all.” I tasted the wine and it was decent enough but it had that resinous flavor I’ve always found objectionable in Greek wines. “I thought so. It’s the sort of stuff women serve to keep the men from drinking too much.”
“It won’t stop me,” Antonius said. “Odd sort of group, isn’t it?”
I studied the guests and was surprised that I knew many of them. Brutus was there, doubtless escorting his mother although he was a known habitue of these events. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was there as well. Caesar had picked him as Master of Horse for that year, an office previously held by Antonius himself. As the dictator’s second-in-command he supposedly held a powerful office, but Caesar was such a hands-on dictator in all his doings that the office was little more than an empty honor, pretty much reduced to presiding over the Senate on days when Caesar did not feel like attending. I noted with little joy that Sallustius was oozing his way among the more illustrious guests, ferreting out secrets, no doubt. Cassius Longinus was with his wife, looking like a man who wished lightning would strike him. I didn’t spot Cicero.
“More politics here than philosophy,” I agreed, “but at least there’s that lot.” I nodded to where the astronomers were chatting among themselves. Sosigenes was among them, along with the Indian and the Arab and the other Greeks. “Caesar just told me he’s sending them back to Alexandria. Maybe this is Callista’s send-off for them.”
“If she keeps the wine coming I can endure it,” he said.
“Stay by me,” I advised. “Hermes has a skin of Massic under his toga.”
“Good for you. I was wondering why he was wearing a toga.” By that time men rarely ever wore the toga except for sacrifices and Senate meetings, voting, and other formal occasions. Antonius and I and most of the other men wore the much lighter synthesis, a garment popularized by Caesar back when he was setting the fashion for Roman men. Nevertheless, the toga remained better for concealing things. Besides the wine, Hermes had our weapons beneath his.
The general hubbub stilled as Callista made her entrance from the back of the house. She was dressed as usual in a modest Greek gown of the finest wool. It was deep blue, with a simple fret embroidered at the hem. Her hair was parted in the middle, gathered at her nape and hung to her waist in back. Her only jewelry was a pair of serpent armlets. The men in the room had eyes only for her. In her austere simplicity she outshone the great beauties of Rome.
“My guests,” she said amid the silence, “please forgive me for not greeting each of you personally. Certain matters demanded my attention elsewhere. I pray you all be seated.” We all took seats, women to the front, men to the rear. Some picked at snacks proffered by the servants, but more for the sake of form than from hunger. We all knew we would be gorging ourselves to stupefaction at Cleopatra’s.