Catilina's riddle

'In other words, you're here as Caesar's spy.'

'If a man can be a spy when everyone knows his role.'

'Does the intrigue never end?'

'Nunquam,' he said, gravely shaking his head. Never.

'I don't suppose Antonius ever showed the slightest hesitation about destroying his old colleague. Catilina had hoped he might waver.'

'He did, in his way. He was struck by a bad case of gout just before the battle, and put one of his lieutenants in charge. During the actual fighting Antonius was in bed with his tent flap tied shut. No one can say he failed to pursue his old friend Catilina, as he was charged to do by the Senate; nor can anyone say, strictly speaking, that he took part in Catilina's destruction. Soon the old goat will be off to enjoy the lucrative governorship in Macedonia he finagled from Cicero, and Rome will have one less hypocrite to clutter up the Forum.'

I shook my head, then winced at the lightning behind my eyes. 'My head feels like an overripe gourd.'

'And looks like one, too.' Rufus smiled. 'You have a knot on your forehead the size of a walnut.'

There was a noise at the tent nap. I turned my head too quickly and fell back against the cot, groaning. The sound must have been more alarming than the actual pain, for Meto was quickly at my side, clutching me and asking Rufus through clenched teeth, 'Is he—'

'Your father is well except for the pain in his head.'

I opened my eyes and saw Meto for only an instant before his image was blurred by tears. The tears seemed to carry away some of the ache behind my eyes, which was good, for I had many tears to spill. But tears would never make Meto the way he had been before. Rufus had said his wounds were minor, and by the scale of suffering around us he was correct, for Meto still walked and breathed and had all his parts. But the blade that had sliced away a bit of his left ear and cut a gash all the way to the corner of his mouth would leave him with a scar that he would carry forever.

It was impractical and inadvisable for Meto to speak, because the movement of his jaw pulled at the torn flesh of his wound. Rufus had fashioned for him a simple bandage to tie around his head, which kept his mouth shut and also covered the cut. When I first saw him, he had removed the bandage for a while to take a little food and water.

It was hardly easier for me to speak, or listen for that matter, because of the throbbing in my head. Perhaps it was just as well, for words could only have obscured the feelings that passed between us as he sat beside my cot, holding my hand.

I did manage to tell him about the new corpse which had appeared just before I left the farm, and also of my dream about the Minotaur, and what I had surmised from it, I knew now who had left the bodies on the farm, and why, and with whose assistance. Meto was taken aback at first, disbelieving, and questioned me through clenched teeth, but as I laid before him the bits of evidence that came to my mind, he was compelled to agree with what the dream had told me.

I longed to go home. Now that Meto was safe, I brooded over the safety of Bethesda and Diana, whom I had left at the mercy of the Minotaur. Had Eco come, as I asked him to? Even if he had, bringing Belbo and a dozen bodyguards with him, I feared that he might fail to protect them, not knowing what to protect them from The Minotaur was growing more desperate and more devious. But when I stood up and attempted to dress myself, I barely managed to stagger back to the bed. Riding a galloping horse would have been a torture impossible to bear.

Rufus offered me nepenthes for my pain and also to help me sleep. I refused him, telling him that there must be wounded men in the camp in far more agonizing pain than I was, who could use the same draught of forgetfulness to ease their release into death. Still, I think he must have put some poppy juice in the wine he brought me later, for despite my pain and the turmoil of my worries, I slipped into a fretless, healing sleep unhaunted by Minotaurs or any other monsters.

I woke only once in the night, to a darkness lit by a single small lamp and the sound of two voices quietly conversing.

'But the eagle at the Auguraculum, and Catilina's eagle—' I heard Meto say, his voice constricted by the bandage around his head.

'Yes, I agree, these were signs and you read them rightly,' said Rufus. 'It was the will of the gods that you should fight beside Catilina.'

'But I should have stayed with Papa! I only ended up taking him away from Bethesda and Diana when they needed him most — when they needed both of us to protect them. If something terrible has happened on the farm—'

'You can't blame yourself, Meto. There are forces greater than ourselves that drive us through this world, just as winds drive sailing ships or make feathery seeds go dancing on the air. To submit to the wind that brought you here was not a folly.'

'But if that was my destiny, I should have died fighting beside Catilina! It was what I thought would happen. I was ready; I didn't fear it. But when I saw Papa fall, I had to go to him. When I saw he was still alive, I couldn't leave him there. I left the battle and carried him to safety, meaning to return, but my strength deserted me and the enemy found me unconscious. I should fall on my sword in shame!'

'No, Meto. You told me something earlier, about the eagle standard. You said that just before you went to your father, you saw the standard totter and fall.'

'Yes, Tonguius was struck in the eye by an arrow. The standard fell and there was no one to pick it up.'

'Don't you see? An eagle appeared to us all at the Auguraculum, to signal the begi

'Do you really think so, Rufus?'

'I do.'

'And I'm not just a coward or a fool?'

'To follow a dream is never the act of a coward; to lay that dream aside in the fullness of time is the opposite of foolishness. To carry a man over your shoulders across a battlefield is not the act of a coward; to do so for the sake of your father marks you not as a fool but as a Roman, Meto. Ah, your rather seems to be stirring. Gordianus? No, I see he's still asleep. But look, he's smiling; his pain must have eased, for him to be having such pleasant dreams.'

The next morning I felt remarkably better. Long hours of sleep and the draught of nepenthes must have sorted out the jumbled humours in my head, and the walnut on my forehead had miraculously shrunk to a chickpea. Rufus fretted that I was not yet ready to travel, but when I insisted, he said he would supply horses for us.

'We're not prisoners, then? We're free to go?' I said.

Rufus smiled. 'Certain privileges are allowed to an augur who represents the Pontifex Maximus himself Let us say that, like nepenthes, I have been able to induce forgetfulness. Officially neither of you ever existed. No prisoners were taken at the battle of Pistoria; every one of Catilina's men died in combat. So the Senate will be told, and so the historians will record it. You're both remarkably lucky, not just to be alive but to have each other. Fortune smiles on you, Gordianus.'

"Then I pray she continues to smile,' I said, thinking of the farm and what might have transpired in my absence.

No one took any notice of us as we mounted our horses and made our way through the makeshift lanes and thoroughfares that threaded among the tents and bonfires. A sombre mood prevailed, but there was also that hint of anarchy that enters such encampments when the battle is won and danger has departed. Men sat about in groups, drinking wine, arguing over details of the battle, gambling and haggling over the loot they had stripped from the dead.