Last Seen in Massilia (13 page)

It was a kind of blasphemy to treat works of art, especially images of the gods, in such a fashion, with no respect for their unique power and singularity. I shuddered.

“Why in Hades have you brought me here?” I asked Publicius.

“You’ll see,” he said in hushed voice. “You’ll see!”

We were led at last to the garden at the house’s center, where an immensely fat man in a red tunic rose from a bench to greet us. A fringe of white hair circled his perfectly round head. A strand of tiny pearls and lapis beads peeked out from between the folds of fat that circled his neck. Rings of silver and gold glittered on his fingers. Among them I saw what looked like an iron citizen’s ring. Verres had
no right to wear it. The court’s verdict had stripped him of his citizenship.

“Publicius! Minucius! How good to see you again. Welcome to my house.”

“I swear to Artemis, he gets bigger each time we see him,” said Publicius under his breath in a tone more full of wonder than disdain, and then, louder, “Gaius Verres! How kind of you to welcome us. We bring two guests, newly arrived from Rome.”

“Ah! Rome….” Verres’s beady eyes glimmered. “So near, yet still so far away. Some day….”

“Yes, some day,” Publicius agreed wistfully. “And perhaps not so long from now, from the look of things. The world has turned upside-down.”

“And shaken out these two,” said Verres, regarding Davus and me.

“Ah, yes, let me introduce you. Gaius Verres, this is Gordianus, called the Finder. The father of Meto,” he added in a hushed voice.

If Publicius expected our host to be impressed, the fat man disappointed him. Verres looked me up and down as if appraising an object newly offered for acquisition. His rudeness was almost refreshing after the obsequious fawning of the Catilinarians. “When I was last in Rome, you were known as Cicero’s hunting dog,” he said gruffly. He spat the name Cicero as if it were an epithet.

“Perhaps,” I said, staring at him coldly. “But you haven’t been in Rome for a very long time, Gaius Verres.” The Catilinarians winced. “At any rate, I had nothing to do with your trial.”

Verres grunted. He turned his attention to Davus and raised an eyebrow. “And this big fellow?”

“Davus is my son-in-law.”

Verres crossed his arms and pulled at his several chins. “A model worthy of the great Myron himself. I should like to see him naked. But with what sort of props? He’s too grown-up for Mercury. His features are not intelligent enough to pass for Apollo. Not coarse enough for Vulcan, or old and worn enough to be Hercules, though perhaps some day…. No, I have it! Give him a helmet and a sword and he could be Mars. Yes, especially scowling like that….”

Misreading Davus’s frown of consternation as anger, Publicius hurriedly spoke up. “Gordianus and Davus arrived in the city only a few days ago. It was the day of the battering-ram—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Verres. “Everyone in Massilia has heard the story by now. Two Romans swam in through a flooded rat hole and were scooped up by the scapegoat, who’s now fattening them up—though why, no one can imagine, since it’s the scapegoat who’ll wind up as the main course one of these days.”

This casual impiety induced an uncomfortable silence in the two Catilinarians. Publicius bit his lip. Minucius lowered his eyes. Clearly, of the three, Verres had by far the strongest personality. A tyrant he had been, and a tyrant he remained, even if his shrunken kingdom extended only as far as the walls of his own house.

“Well, then,” Verres went on, “I suppose I can guess why you’ve come. Not to see my ivory Jupiter from Cyzicus, or the Apollo I brought back from Syracuse; nor to savor the beauty of my Ephesian Alexander, or experience the very rare sight of my miniature Medusa, which was executed by a student of Praxiteles. Did you know that the snakes on her head were carved from solid carnelian? Incredibly delicate! The largest is no thicker than my little finger. The Syracusans said the snakes were sure to break if I dared to move her, but not one of them suffered even a chip when I shipped her to Rome…and then here to Massilia.”

“Fascinating, Gaius Verres,” said Publicius, in a tone that indicated he had heard the tale more than once. “But what we actually came to see—that is, what we came here to show Gordianus, so that he might behold it once again with his own eyes—”

“Yes, yes, I know why you’ve come. It’s why you always come.”

Verres called for a slave, spoke to him in a whisper, and sent him from the room. The slave returned with a bronze key, a big, bulky thing with numerous notches, and a flickering lamp. Why a lamp, when the sun was still up? Verres took the key and the lamp and dismissed the slave. “Follow me,” he said.

We left the garden. A long hallway led to the back of the house, where a flight of stairs descended steeply to a subterranean level.

The underground passage was so narrow that we had to proceed in single file. Verres and the Catilinarians went ahead of me, with Davus in the rear. The floor was treacherous and uneven. The wavering flame from Verres’s lamp was too weak to light our feet, but it did illuminate the masses of spiderwebs above our heads. In places the ceiling sagged; Publicius and Davus, the tallest among us, had to stoop.

At last the winding subterranean passage terminated in a bronze door. There was a scraping noise as Verres pushed the key into a keyhole and worked it back and forth. The walk had required no special exertion, yet Publicius and Minucius both took labored breaths. By the flickering lamplight I saw that they trembled.

Davus took my arm and whispered in my ear. “Father-in-law, I don’t like this. Who knows what’s in that room? It might be a prison. Or a torture chamber. Or…”

Or a hiding place, I thought. The Catilinarians had spoken of Meto. He had come to them, they said, sought them out. They told me they had something to show me, something I could see only at the house of Verres. I felt a sudden rush of irrational excitement and found myself breathing as heavily as the others.

The door swung inward on creaking hinges. Verres stepped inside, leaving the rest of us in darkness. “Well, then, come on,” he said. Publicius and Minucius stepped forward, visibly shaking. Davus insisted on stepping in front of me so as to enter ahead of me. I was the last to step inside the long, narrow room.

It was neither a prison nor a torture chamber, but the most obvious and logical thing to be found behind a bronze door beneath a rich man’s house: a treasure room. The chamber was crowded with ornately decorated jewelry boxes and urns heaped with coins, small silver statuettes and talismans carved from precious stones. On the walls were mounted antique weapons and military regalia of the sort collectors fancy. Amid this clutter, my eyes were drawn to something at the far end of the room. It stood apart, with space cleared around it so that it could be seen clearly.

I recognized it at once and felt a sudden, painful stab of nostalgia. I had first seen it in a setting in some ways similar to this, illuminated by lamplight in a place of darkness. It had been in a mine north of Rome where Catilina and his inner circle were hiding. The thing was made of silver, perched atop a tall pole festooned with a red and gold pennant. Through the gloom, I peered up at the eagle with its beak held high and its wings spread. But for the glimmer of silver it might have been a real bird, frozen in glory.

“The eagle standard of Catilina,” I whispered.

“You remember!” said Publicius.

Of course I did. How could I forget? I had last seen it tumbling to earth at Pistoria, lost in the chaos of the battle, marking the spot where Catilina fell.

Publicius touched my arm and whispered in my ear, “This was what your son came here to find. That was his true mission to Massilia!”

I gazed up at the eagle, fascinated by the play of light and shadow across its spread wings. “What are you saying? I don’t understand.”

“Before Catilina, it was Marius who carried the eagle standard—Marius the mentor and hero of Caesar—in his campaign against the Teutones and the Cimbri, here in Gaul.”

“That was a long time ago,” I said.

“Yes, even before Caesar was born. Marius defeated the Teutones and the Cimbri. He returned to Rome in triumph with the eagle standard. Years later he prepared to carry it into war once again, against Mithridates in the East. But then Sulla, who had been his lieutenant, turned against him and waged civil war. Sulla marched on Rome itself! In the end, Marius died, and the eagle standard fell into Sulla’s bloodstained hands. He made himself dictator—but only for a while, because Sulla soon died, consumed by worms that grew out of his own flesh. A horrible death, but no more than he deserved; the gods dealt with him justly. And then—no one quite knows how—the eagle standard came into the possession of Catilina.”

“The Deliverer!” cried Minucius, clutching his breast.

“For many years Catilina hoarded it in secret, biding his time,” Publicius continued.

I nodded. “Cicero claimed that Catilina kept the eagle of Marius in a hidden room and bowed down to worship it before plotting his crimes.”

“The criminal was Cicero!” said Publicius vehemently. “Such a man could never understand the true power of the eagle standard. Catilina kept it safely hidden until the time came to carry it into battle again, against the same forces that Marius had fought, the oppressors of the weak, the defilers of the pure, the false pretenders who fill the Senate and mock the virtues that once made Rome great.”

Minucius, in a breathless, impatient voice, took up the story. “But the time was not yet right—Catilina was premature; his cause was doomed. Only we few who fled to Massilia were left to preserve his memory, and for a while longer the gods allowed the serpents who ruled the Senate to hold sway. The murderers of Catilina cut off the Deliverer’s head and showed it off as a trophy…but they never found
the eagle standard! If they had, they would have destroyed it, melted it down, reduced it to a shapeless lump, and cast it into the sea. But the eagle eluded them.”

“For years we searched for it,” said Publicius, pressing his colleague aside, clutching at me and pushing his face close to mine. “We hired agents, offered rewards, followed false leads—”

“Those who tried to dupe us and cheat us lived to regret it!” cried Minucius.

“But the eagle had vanished. We despaired—”

“Some of us lost hope—”

“We feared that our enemies had found it after all, and destroyed it.” Publicius sucked in a breath and turned his head to gaze up at the silver eagle. “Yet all along, here it was! Here in Massilia, safe and sound in this vault! Hidden underground, in darkness, behind a bronze door. As if the eagle had known where to rendezvous with its next owner.”

I looked up at the eagle, then past Publicius and Minucius to Verres, who pursed his lips but said nothing.

“Then Gaius Verres is now your leader?” I asked.

“Not at all!” said Publicius. “Verres is merely the keeper of the standard, holding it in trust for its next, true owner. What better place for it to reside, temporarily at least, than here, forgotten by the world at large and safe from its enemies?”

I nodded. “And who is this next, true owner?”

“But surely that’s obvious! Caesar, of course. Caesar will complete what Marius and Catilina began. Caesar will abolish the Senate; he’s already driven them into exile. Caesar will remake the Roman state—”

“Remake the world!” cried Minucius.

“That is his destiny. And he’ll do it under this standard. When the walls of Massilia fall and the city opens her gates to Caesar, and the imperator himself strides in, resplendent in glory, the eagle shall be here, waiting for him. Do you think it was merely coincidence that Massilia was Caesar’s first destination after taking Rome? Oh, no! Rumors had already reached him that the eagle standard of Marius was here in Massilia. He came here to find it. But the Timouchoi sided with
Pompey and closed their gates to Caesar. The fools! To obtain what is rightfully his, Caesar was forced to lay siege. But a man like Caesar has recourse to more subtle tools than catapults and siege towers. He also sent your son here—Meto, who once fought beside Catilina—to confound Caesar’s enemies and search for the missing eagle standard.”

“And now
you’ve
come,” whispered Minucius. “The father of Meto! You, too, fought beside the Deliverer. When Caesar returns to claim Massilia,
you
shall be here to witness the moment he takes possession of the eagle standard. Do you see how the gods bring all things to a head? The strands they weave out of our mortal lives are like a pattern visible only from the heavens; we here on earth can only guess at their designs.” He shook his head and smiled, bemused by the wonder of it all.

The narrow vault suddenly seemed airless and cramped, and the treasures strewn about the room as tawdry as the masses of crowded statues in the rooms above our heads. The eagle standard itself, briefly invested with magic by the sheer enthusiasm of the acolytes, was merely another object after all, beautiful and precious but made by human hands for an all-too-human purpose, now reduced to one of a thousand items in the inventory of a shamelessly greedy miser.

I shook my head. “What does any of this matter to me? My son is dead.”

Publicius and Minucius exchanged a significant glance. Publicius cleared his throat. “But you see, Gordianus, that’s where you’re wrong. Your son is
not
dead.”

I looked at him dumbly. From the corner of my eye, a flicker of light created the illusion that the silver eagle stirred. “What did you say?”

“Meto is not dead. Oh, yes, everyone
thinks
he is; everyone but us. We alone know better. Because we’ve seen him.”

“Seen him? Alive? Where? When?”

Minucius shrugged. “More than once, since he supposedly drowned. He appears when we least expect it. Part of his mission is to prepare the way for Caesar, and for that, of course, the silver eagle must be ready—”

“To Hades with the silver eagle!” I shouted. Davus gripped my arm to restrain me. “To Hades with Caesar, where he can join Catilina for all I care! Where is Meto? When can I see him?”

They recoiled as if struck, gazed up at the eagle, and then averted their eyes, as if ashamed to have brought a blasphemer into its presence. “You’ve suffered much, Gordianus,” said Publicius through gritted teeth. “We acknowledge your sacrifice. Still, there can be no excuse for such impiety.”

“Impiety? You bring me into this…into such a”—I could not think of a word to describe the house of Gaius Verres—“and you accuse me of impiety! I want to see my son. Where is he?”

“We don’t know,” said Minucius meekly. “He comes to us at the time and place of his own choosing. Just as Catilina does—”

“What?”

“Oh, yes, we see Catilina quite often here in the streets of Massilia.” Minucius shook his head. “You say he’s in Hades, but you’re wrong. His lemur has never rested, never left the earth since the battle of Pistoria. As he planned to come here in life, so his lemur journeyed here in death. He sometimes affects the guise of a soothsayer, hiding himself in a cloak and cowl so that no one can see his face or the scar of the wound that separated his head from his shoulders….”

I remembered the soothsayer who appeared out of nowhere at the temple of the
xoanon
Artemis and rode with us as far as the ruined forest outside Massilia, the one whom the Roman soldiers jokingly called Rabidus. The cowled figure had said to me:
Nothing in this place is what it appears to be. Nothing!
And later, to the soldiers:
I know why the Roman has come here. He’s come to look for his son. Tell the Roman to go home. He has no business here. There’s nothing he can do to help his son….

The vault was suddenly as cold as a tomb. I shuddered and clenched my teeth to stop them from chattering.

“Meto comes to you, then—” There was a thickness in my throat that made it hard to speak. “Meto comes to you as a lemur. Like Catilina?”

Publicius shrugged. His voice was quiet now, no longer angry. “Who can say? What does it matter? Meto played his role in the story of the eagle standard, as did Catilina before him; as yet may you, Gordianus. Why else did the gods send you here to Massilia?”

“Why, indeed?” I muttered. I felt hollow, as I had felt in my lowest
hours at the scapegoat’s house, drained of anger, of hope, even of the disdain I felt for these simpering disciples and their strange cult. I looked past them to Verres, who gazed back at me with a sardonic expression, barely able to contain his amusement. I could not even muster the energy to feel disgust for him. I felt nothing.

“Take me away from here, Davus,” I whispered. “I need air.”

We stepped out of the room, but Verres held the lamp, and without it the passage was pitch-black. I was reminded of the flooded tunnel and felt dizzy. We waited while Verres locked the bronze door, then pressed ourselves against the wall while he awkwardly squeezed ahead of us to lead the way out. The forced contact with his corpulent body repulsed me. The smell of his perfume, mixed with his sweat and the smoke from the lamp, was nauseating.

We ascended the stairs, emerged into the house, and proceeded to the garden, then to the foyer, without a word. At the door, the Catilinarians hesitated. If they had more to say, I was in no mood to hear it.

“You needn’t escort me back to Hieronymus’s house,” I said. “Davus and I can find the way.”

“Then we shall leave you now,” said Minucius.

They each clasped one of my hands and looked into my eyes. “Have strength, Gordianus,” said Publicius. “The moment of our deliverance is coming very soon. All questions will be answered.” Then the two of them departed.

I swayed, feeling a bit dizzy. Davus held my arm.

Behind me, Verres laughed. “They’re both completely mad, of course,” he said. “And they’re not the only two. There are quite a few of those fanatics here in Massilia, clinging to Catilina and his so-called dream. Can you believe it? Completely mad, every one of them.”

I turned to face him. “And you, Gaius Verres? What word would you use to describe yourself?”

He shrugged. “Acquisitive, I suppose. And shrewd—I hope. Ten years ago, when one of my contacts in Italy offered to sell me that eagle standard, I thought it might be a good investment—a unique acquisition, certainly—but I had no idea it might someday purchase my return to Rome.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mad our two friends may be, but they’re right about one thing: Caesar
does
want the eagle standard. Oh, not for some mystical purpose. And not for political reasons, either; all the old Marian supporters have already rallied to his side. No, he wants it for sentimental reasons. Marius was his mentor, after all, and a kinsman; and Catilina was his friend. I’ve always suspected that Caesar would have openly supported Catilina, if the moment had been right.”

“Those two think that Caesar headed straight for Massilia to claim the thing.”

Verres laughed. “Anyone who can read a map knows why Caesar made a detour to this spot: Massilia happens to be on the way to Spain, where Caesar must first dispose of Pompey’s troops before he can make any further moves. Nonetheless, he wants the eagle standard—and I happen to own it. Surely such a prize will be worth the redemption of a single harmless exile such as myself.”

“You expect Caesar to restore your citizenship in return for the eagle?”

“A fair bargain, I should think.”

“You’re merely using the Catilinarians, then?”

“As they hope to use me. They disgust me. I suppose I disgust them. But we have one thing in common: We’re all homesick. We want to go back to Rome. We want to go home.”

“So do I, Gaius Verres,” I whispered. “So do I.”

Davus and I headed back toward the scapegoat’s house. My mind was in a tumult. The Catilinarians, casually claiming to have seen Meto since his fall into the sea, had cruelly raised my hopes, then dashed them. They were mad, as Verres had said. And yet…a part of me clutched at even this tattered shred of hope that Meto might somehow be alive. Was it because I hadn’t seen his dead body with my own eyes that I couldn’t accept the hard fact of his death? Uncertainty allowed for doubt, and doubt allowed for hope; but false hope was surely crueler than the grief of certain knowledge.

What was I to make of the two acolytes’ reference to visitations
from a hooded figure they claimed to be the restless lemur of Catilina, whose appearance sounded strangely similar to the hooded soothsayer the Roman guards had called Rabidus? Could it truly have been the spirit of Catilina I met in the wilderness outside Massilia? Had Catilina himself tried to warn me away from the city, knowing that my son was already dead?