The Venus Throw (29 page)

But the slave at the door was Barnabas, fast asleep. He sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, his head tilted back so that by the faint starlight which seeped in from the atrium I could see his face with its joined eyebrows. There was something gathered about him on the floor, a puzzling shape which I slowly realized was the body of Chrysis, asleep with her head nestled on his lap. In the utter stillness I could hear their quiet breathing.

Clodius had promised to see me safely home, which I took to mean an escort. It was only reasonable that I should wake Chrysis or Barnabas and teil them what I needed. But their repose was so perfect that I feared to move, not wanting to disturb them.

A hand touched my shoulder. I turned and stared into the darkness. The Ethiop was so dark that for a moment I couldn’t see him at all.

“My master said I was to take care of you if you woke up,” he said, with an accent I could barely understand.

“Clodius is still here?”

The giant nodded.

“And Clodia?”

“She came, while you slept.”

“Perhaps I should see her before I leave.”

“They’ve gone to bed.”

“Are they asleep?”

“What difference does that make?” By the faint light, I couldn’t tell whether the giant was grinning down at me or gritting his teeth. The garlic on his breath was overpowering. Gladiators and strong-armers eat it raw to give themselves strength.

He unbolted the door and swung it open, letting it bang against the sleeping figures on the floor with a smirk of disdain. Chrysis let out a sleepy whimper. Barnabas grunted. “Poor excuse for a door slave,” the Ethiop sneered. “She’s too soft on her slaves. Well, go on. I’ll be right behind you.”

“No,” I said. “I’ll go alone.” The man made me uneasy.

The Ethiop crossed his arms and looked at me grimly. “The master gave me specific orders.”

“I’ll see myself home,” I said. It was suddenly a battle of wills.

At last the Ethiop made a face of disgust and shrugged his brawny shoulders. “Suit yourself,” he said and closed the door on me.

It was such a short way to my house, and the night was so silent and so deep, surely there was nothing to fear.

R
ome slept. The great houses and apartment buildings of the Palatine were dark. The streets were silent, except for the sound of my own footsteps. What was the hour? Dusk and dawn seemed equally distant, like opposite shores impossible to make out from the middle of a vast, black sea. I felt utterly alone, the last man awake in Rome.

Then I heard footsteps behind me.

I stopped. The footsteps stopped a heartbeat later.

I took a few steps. The footsteps behind me resumed.

Gordianus, I whispered to myself, you’ve finally done it, taken the final risk of a lifetime full of foolish risks. You’ve fallen into the lazy habit of relying on Fortune’s favor, always assuming that the goddess will make allowances for your foolishness and shield you at the last moment because the singular drama of your life for some reason intrigues her and she wishes it to continue. Now Fortune’s interest has wand; she’s turned her attention elsewhere for as long as it takes to blink an eye, and you will be snuffed out, removed from the world’s story for good.

A part of me believed this and steeled for the worst. But another part of me knew that it was impossible for me to die just yet, and merely gave lip service to the possibility, to let Fortune know that I wasn’t taking her for granted,
and to gently remind her she had better do something, and quickly.

The footsteps behind me speeded up. I fought the urge to run and instead turned around. I refused to end up as one of those corpses found with knife wounds in the back.

The street was narrow, the shadows deep. The figure moved toward me with a slightly unsteady gait. The man was alone, and unless I was mistaken, had been drinking too much wine. It’s the poet Catullus after all, I thought, the man whom Clodius told me not to fear.

Unless, of course, it was Marcus Caelius, drunk and coming after me with a knife. Or some nameless henchman of King Ptolemy. Or a garlic-eating gladiator sent by Pompey. Or someone else with a reason to kill me, thinking I knew something I didn’t.

He stopped several paces away. I still couldn’t make out his face, but it obviously wasn’t the Ethiop; the man wasn’t big enough. He appeared to be of medium height, with a slender build. When he spoke, I recognized Catullus’s voice.

“So she’s gotten tired of picking apples off the tree the moment they’re ripe. Now she’s poking around in the mulch heap.” He sounded only slightly drunk, sarcastic but not particularly threatening.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” I said.

“Aren’t you awfully old to be warming a spot in her bed?”

“Whose bed? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He came a few steps closer. “We should find a patch of light so I can watch your face while you lie to me. You know whose bed.”

“Maybe. But you’re mistaken.”

“Am I? The damned gallus carries messages back and forth between you, takes you to her horti. You go riding around in her litter with the curtains closed, and stay at her house until the middle of the night. You must be her new lover.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

He backed off a bit and began to circle around me. I suddenly realized that he might be more frightened of me than I was of him. He was the one who had turned to flee on the Ramp.

“At least she’s finished with Caelius, though I can’t see why she’d throw him over for the likes of you.”

“You insult me,” I said. “Shall I go on insisting on the truth—that I’m not Clodia’s lover—and let the slur against my manhood stand? Or shall I tell a lie to refute the insult, say that Clodia
is
my lover and tells me nightly that I’m twice the man Caelius is, and four times the man that you are, Gaius Valerius Catullus.”

I thought I might have pushed him too far, but my instinct was true: he came to a stop and barked out a laugh. “You must be a nit-picking orator, like Caelius. One of those word-murdering, truth-twisting advocates from the Forum. Why haven’t I heard of you before, old man?”

“Because I’m not an orator. I’m a Finder, Catullus.”

“Well, you found out my name. What’s yours?”

“Gordianus.”

He nodded. I saw him more clearly now. He still had the scraggly beard on his jaw, despite his trip to the baths. The tragic look had returned to his eyes, even when he smiled.

“Are you thirsty, Gordianus?”

“Not particularly.”

“I am. Come with me.”

“Where?”

“It’s time we talked. About her.”

“I didn’t say
why
. I said
where.”

“Where else, at this time of night?”

Take a winding pathway to the foot of the Palatine, to a spot just behind the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Turn left. Proceed down the narrow alley (stinking of urine, and black as pitch at night) that runs behind the buildings on the north
side of the Forum. As the slope of the Palatine curves away on the left-hand side, letting the alley open a bit, you will come to a cluttered area of little workshops and warehouses south of the Forum, east of the cattle markets and the river. Look for the little pillars which name the shops and businesses. As you draw near to the ninth signpost you will see the pool of light cast by the lamp hung outside, welcoming those who cannot or will not sleep, and who cannot or will not stop drinking, whoring and gambling. This is the place which Catullus called the Salacious Tavern.

Actually, the place has no name, or none to be read on the signpost outside. Atop the little pillar, instead of an inscription, is an upright marble phallus The lamp which casts such a lurid glow is carved in a similarly suggestive shape. Perhaps inspired by these fine examples of craftsmanship, less skilled artists have drawn crude graffiti on the wall outside, graphically depicting various uses to which such phalli might be put.

Catullus rapped on the door. A little trap opened. A bloodshot eye peered at us. The door swung open.

“They know me here,” said Catullus. “And I know them. The wine is wretched, the whores are lice-ridden, and the patrons are the lowest of the low. I should know. I’ve come here every night since I got back.”

We stepped into a long narrow room partitioned here and there by folding screens. The room was packed with patrons who stood in groups or sat on chairs and benches around little tables. The lamps were fueled by an inferior oil that created as much smoke as light, filling the room with an amber haze that made my eyes water. I heard laughter and cursing and the clatter of dice followed by hoots of triumph and groans of despair. The crowd was made up almost entirely of men. The few women were obviously there to ply their trade.

One of them suddenly emerged from the haze and wrapped herself around Catullus like a clinging wine. I blinked my
watery eyes and the vine resolved into a supple redhead with a heart-shaped face.

“Gaius,” she purred. “One of the girls told me you were back. And with a beard! Here, let me kiss it.”

Catullus stiffened and drew back with a pained expression. “Not tonight, Ipsithilla.”

“Why not? It’s been a whole year since I’ve made a meal of you. I’m famished.”

Catullus managed to smile. “Not tonight.”

She drew back, lowering her eyes. “Still pining for your Lesbia?”

He winced and took my arm, leading me to a bench that had just been vacated. A slave brought us wine. Catullus was right; the quality was wretched, especially after the honeyed wine that Clodius had given me. But Catullus drank without hesitation.

Next to us, clustered around a little table, a group of rough-looking young men were playing with dice of the old-fashioned kind, made from the rectangular anklebones of a sheep, with numbers—I, III, IV, VI—painted on each of the four long sides. Each man in turn would scoop the four dice up in a cup, rattle them, cry out the name of a deity or his mistress, and cast them on the table. A referee figured out the combination and shouted the name of the throw, which would be followed by cries of gloating or derision.

“When I was young, the laws against gambling were more strictly enforced,” I said, “except of course during the Saturnalia.”

“It’s always Saturnalia inside the Salacious Tavern,” quipped Catullus.

“Hercules!” shouted one of the gamblers. The box rattled, the bones clattered. “A Taurus Throw!” declared the referee—three ones and a six.

The next gambler cried a woman’s name and tossed the dice. “Dogs!” cried the referee. “Four ones—nothing
lower!” The player groaned at such bad fortune, and cursed the mistress whose name he had called out for luck.

Catullus stared blearily at the crowd. The haze was so thick I could hardly make out faces, let alone recognize anyone. “You wanted to talk,” I said.

“I’ve lost my tongue for it. I want more wine.”

“Then I’ll talk. Was it you who followed me up the Ramp two nights ago?”

“Yes.”

“Who sent you?”

“No one.”

“Then why follow me?”

“I was following you before that. Perhaps you’re not as sharp as you think. I was outside her house when you came calling that afternoon with Trygonion. I’d just gotten back into town.”

“You’d just arrived and you went straight to Clodia’s house?”

He put a finger to his lips. “In this place, call her Lesbia.”

“why?”

“It’s my secret name for her. In the poems. In places like this.”

“Why ‘Lesbia’?”

“Lesbos was the island of Sappho, who understood love better than any poet before or since. And Homer called the women of Lesbos ‘the most beautiful women in the world.’ ”

“Wasn’t Homer blind?”

He gave me a sour look. “Agamemnon speaks the line.”

“Very well: Lesbia. When you went to Lesbia’s house that day, didn’t they tell you she’d gone out?”

“No. I didn’t knock on the door. I was waiting. Watching. I wasn’t ready to see her again, not face to face.”

“Waiting and watching from where? It’s a dead-end street.”

“There are doorways deep enough to hide in. Then you came along with your bodyguard and the little gallus. I was
close enough to overhear the word ‘horti,’ so when you headed off, I followed. What did the two of you get up to, alone inside her tent?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“More to the point, what did the three of you do after Lesbius showed up, naked and dripping from the river?”

“Lesbius?”

“You know whom I mean.”

“You saw him come into the tent?”

“I hid among the trees and bushes on the riverbank.” He grinned bleakly. “You must think I’m an utter fool.”

“Did you follow me when I left?”

“All the way to your house, then over to that other house in the Subura, then back. You never knew until the Ramp, did you? You set a trap for me at the top, you and your bodyguard, so 1 made like a rabbit. If you’re like most of the low-lifes she takes for lovers, I figured you might be pretty dangerous.”

“I told you, I’m not her lover. Just her ‘hireling,’ as Clodius calls me.”