A Point of Law (10 page)

The door to the balcony was flanked by a pair of large, latticed windows and beneath one of these was his desk. It was a very fine one, Egyptian work of ebony inlaid with ivory. Next to it was a wooden honeycomb that held scrolls, rolled papers, and wax tablets. A silver-mounted horn tube held reed pens, and a fine crystal stand held different colors of ink in little pots shaped like lotus flowers.

Lying on the desk, half unrolled as if put down in the midst of reading, was a book whose excellent parchment was supple and slightly ragged at the edges, a clear sign that this was a favorite work, often read. It appeared to be a speech or collection of speeches arguing points of law. Such books were the inevitable texts for training aspiring lawyers.

Folded on a cupboard next to the desk lay his wardrobe. Among the tunics, most bore the narrow purple stripe of an
eques
, but two had the broad stripe to which a senator was entitled. There were two togas.
One was white, doubtless the one he’d worn when berating me in the Forum the previous day. The other was the
toga praetexta
, with the broad purple border of curule office.

“He came prepared,” I remarked. “And he certainly had confidence. He expected admission to the Senate and a curule chair. Like that Greek athlete who showed up at Olympia with his statue already made. At least he didn’t lay in a supply of
tnumphator’s
robes. I suppose even his presumption had limits.”

“Look at this,” Hermes said. Accomplished thief that he was, he’d found a small drawer cleverly hidden among the decorative carvings of the desk. It held a signet ring; a massive thing of solid gold, its surface oddly but attractively granulated. Its large stone was pure sapphire with a Medusa head carved intaglio. It looked to me like Greek work. I examined it briefly and tossed it back to him.

“The man was full of surprises, wasn’t he? Can his correspondence be less interesting?” I began to pull papers out and spread them on the desk. “Well, I might have expected it,” I said disgustedly.

“That’s Greek, isn’t it?” said Hermes. He could read and write Latin well enough, but he had never learned to read Greek, although, like me, he could speak conversational Greek passably. Anyone who traveled widely has to learn some Greek, as it is spoken everywhere. But poetic and literary Greek is another matter. Many educated men, like Cicero, were as comfortable with Greek as with their native language, but I was not among them. I could piece my way through a simple letter in Greek if given enough time, but I could see that my schoolboy Greek wouldn’t serve me here.

“It isn’t just Greek,” I told him, “it’s in some sort of cipher.”

“Someone coming,” Hermes muttered. I heard footsteps on the stairs. The noise from the street outside had masked the sounds of someone entering the house. I swept up the documents I’d spread out and stuffed them inside my tunic even as Hermes shut the tiny drawer. By the time the men shouldered their way into the room, we had assumed poses of dignified innocence.

“What are you doing here?” demanded the first one through. He was the red-haired lout, and he wasn’t alone. Behind him was the one Hermes had pummeled, and there were others on the stair. “How did you get in?”

“Same as you, through the front door,” Hermes said. “It wasn’t locked.”

“As for what we’re doing here,” I said, “I came here to see these putative witnesses against me. But we’ve found no sign that anyone was ever here except Marcus Fulvius, despite your claim to the praetor Juventius this morning.” Actually, we had not yet had time to examine the top floor, but by now I was convinced that these witnesses were entirely fictitious.

“You’re a liar!” shouted the battered one. “You came here to steal!”

“How about you?” I said, going immediately on the counterattack. “Thought you’d take advantage of your friend’s death, did you? Thought you’d just run over here and lift whatever’s loose and easily fenced before his relatives showed up, eh? Well, you won’t get away with it this time!” Meanwhile, we were sidling toward the door.

“Don’t be absurd!” said the red-haired one. “Stop them!”

Immediately, we reversed direction. We had no way of knowing how many might be on the stairway and in the rooms below. I sprang for the balcony as Hermes drew his dagger and covered my retreat. One of the political perquisites of age, dignity, and high office was that you could let someone else do most of your fighting and concentrate on saving your own hide. In my younger days, engaging in street fights was seen as merely one of the ordinary activities of Republican political life. It was, however, thought to be beneath the dignity of a candidate for praetor or consul.

I looked over the low railing, picked the softest-looking patch of pavement below, and—encumbered by my toga—scrambled over the rail, hung by my fingers a moment, then dropped. I landed without incident, grateful not to have slipped in one of the many noxious substances
that coat Rome’s streets. One good thing about recent sea duty: It keeps the knees supple.

Hermes, show-off that he was, flourished his dagger, gave a last, defiant shout, then actually
leapt
over the railing, dropped ten feet, and landed on the balls of his feet, as easily as a professional tumbler. He grinned at me and resheathed his dagger while passersby gaped. They didn’t gape all that much though. Senators flying out of windows and off balconies were not all that rare a sight. Caesar had once flown thus, stark naked with his nose streaming blood, broken by an aggrieved husband.

“What now?” Hermes asked.

“Would’ve served you right if you’d slipped in a pile of shit,” I said, unreasonably jealous that he’d cut so much better a figure than I had in our escape.

“I see no one’s pursuing us,” he said, casting a wary eye toward the front door of the house.

“It’s not what they were there for,” I said, “and they don’t want to make a public fuss about it right now.” I studied the angle of the sun. We still had some hours of daylight left. I patted the front of my tunic, causing a reassuring crackle of papyrus. “I got some of those letters. Let’s go find someone who can translate them for us.”

“Maybe we can find out about this, too.” He made a magician’s flourish and the massive signet ring lay in his hand. He’d deftly palmed it as he’d shut the hidden drawer.

“Sometimes,” I admitted, “I’m glad I didn’t raise you right.”

T
HE GOLDSMITHS
’
QUARTER IN THOSE
days lay in a small block of houses and shops on the Via Nova just across from the ancient Mugonia Gate, near the eastern end of the Forum. Unlike other quarters of the City, this one had its own wall, low but strong, its heavy gates guarded by club-wielding slaves whose loyalty was guaranteed by their excellent terms of service: five years of duty followed by freedom and a large enough stake to buy a house or a small shop. The Goldsmiths’ Guild had a special license for their little fortress and its arrangements, granted by the censors and renewed every five years as long as anyone could remember. The jewelers and other dealers in precious materials had similar arrangements with the censors. Rome was so full of thieves that they needed these special precautions to practice their trade at all.

The headquarters of the guild was in a modest house just within
the main gate. They needed nothing more pretentious because they held their annual banquets at the nearby Temple of the Public Penates.

Next to the old gate Hermes and I paused long enough to buy snacks from a street vendor, our narrow escape having given us an appetite. We bought grilled sausage and onions wrapped in flat bread and doused with
garum
. From another vendor we got cups of cheap wine, and we sat beneath the shade of a fine plane tree to discuss matters before consulting with the goldsmiths.

“The furnishings of that house,” I said, “the desk and the inkstand, for instance—those were the sort of things wealthy men give to one another as gifts for Saturnalia or as guest gifts or to celebrate the naming of sons. What was a man like Fulvius doing with such possessions?”

“Maybe they were loaned to him,” Hermes said, around a greasy mouthful, which he finally swallowed. “If Marcellus lent him the house, why not the furnishings as well?”

“But why would he do that? Why did he want Fulvius to put up such a fine front?”

“You could go ask him.”

“Something tells me that would not be a wise move just now.” I weighed the ring in my hand. The fine, strange granulation of its surface gave it an exotic look. I knew I had seen such metal work before, but I did not remember where. “You could buy a decent house with this and have enough left over to staff it with slaves. How did he get it, and why wasn’t he wearing it?”

Hermes thought about this. “Could be he was waiting to gain the reputation to go with it, just like the senator’s tunic and the
toga praetexta
. A nobody like him standing for tribune or quaestor would look like a fool wearing such a ring. It would be right at home on a praetor’s hand.”

“That’s a thought. It makes me wonder who could dangle such prizes in front of him.”

“Caesar could,” Hermes said. “Or Pompey. They’ve both been known to raise obscure men to high office and power.”

“Ridiculous!” I said. “Those two would never—”

“I just meant,” Hermes went on, “that they are the
type
of men to do such a thing. And there are more ways of rising in the world than through birth or politics. Look at me. All my life I was a slave. Now I am a citizen with the name of a great family, which my descendants will inherit. This happened because
you
wanted it to. The lives of humble men are there for great men to make use of. We needn’t wonder that it is done. We just need to discover the reason.”

“You’re uncommonly thoughtful today,” I said, taken a little aback.

“Well, I don’t carry your bath things around anymore, so I might as well do some of your thinking for you.”

I brushed crumbs from my hands and downed the last of the wine. “Come on, let’s see if we can find someone who can tell us about this ring.” We gave our cups back to the vendor and walked across the street.

The year’s guild master, a man named Laturnus, recognized me the moment I walked in. His office was laid out almost like a shop: a single, long room opening onto a courtyard, the whole upper half of the wall on that side open to admit maximum light. Except for chairs, the only furnishing of the room was a single, long table. It held a balance and selection of official weights, a touchstone, and a case holding samples of pure gold and silver and all the alloys of those metals. I could see that most of the business done here consisted of settling disputes concerning the purity of gold being sold in Rome. There were very strict laws regulating this, and the guild was held responsible for its members’ honesty.

“Senator! Or should I say Praetor?” He took my hand and guided me to a comfortable chair. “How good it is to see you!” He was a fat man with keen eyes and nimble hands, both requirements of his craft. “I suppose you’ve come to discuss next year’s legislation?”

My mind, distracted by other matters, failed to grasp his meaning. “Legislation?”

He was puzzled. “Why, yes. You will surely be holding court next year. And we will also have new censors. If Appius Claudius is elected censor, and surely he shall be, he plans to institute a new slate of antiluxury laws. I, and the members of my guild, feel that these laws will be a very bad idea.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “But the praetors have no power over acts of the censors. Since you goldsmiths deal in the marketplace, your cases are heard by the aediles and they will be enforcing any decrees of the censors.”

“Of course, you are right,” he said, with a flutter of the fingers, “but the aediles and the praetors often work closely together, as your jurisdictions sometimes overlap.”

“Certainly,” I said, “and I assure you that I shall look with great leniency on frivolous accusations of luxury-law violations. Somehow I do not believe that the prime threat to the Republic comes from how many rings a man wears or the weight of gold around his wife’s neck. I plan to dismiss out of hand all cases except those involving serious crime.”

“We shall all be most grateful,” he assured me, meaning that he would pass the word and I could expect a fine price break for any jewelry I bought from a guild member.

“Your best bet though,” I advised him, “is to cultivate the other censor. He can overrule Appius’s acts.”

“Oh, believe me, we are doing just that. Calpurnius Piso is most likely to be elected, and he is a man, how shall we say, amenable to persuasion. But he will have very weighty matters on his mind next year, and he may be fully occupied trying to protect his friends whom Appius Claudius plans to expel from the Senate.”

“The Senate is in severe need of pruning,” I said. “But I’ve recently spoken with Appius, and he seems far more concerned about the indebtedness of the senatorial class than about luxury per se.”

“Let us hope,” said Laturnus.

“Now, my friend,” I said, “what I came here to inquire about is this.” I took the heavy ring from my tunic and handed it to him. “Can you tell me anything about this?”

He took it, stepped closer to the open wall to catch the best light. “A lovely piece. It’s very old.”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s Etruscan work. This granulation of the surface is quite unique, and the art of making it has been lost for generations.”

That explained it. I’d seen that surface before, many times, on old bronze lamps and vessels, always of Etruscan make. “Why is it no longer done?”

“It was probably only done by a few families, and the families died out without passing the secret on. The granulation is not chased onto the surface with gravers, as such surfaces are done now. First, they made thousands of minute, gold beads, all exactly the same size. That, too, is a lost art. Then the roughened surface of the piece—the ring, in this case—was prepared with a layer of the finest solder.” His voice grew wistful, explaining the arcana of his vocation.

“Then the tiny beads were laid atop the solder, one at a time. This task was so demanding that it is said only children could do it properly. No one older than ten or twelve at the oldest, had the eyesight and the lightness of touch to accomplish it. Then, without disturbing the surface preparation, the piece was put into a furnace. It had to be removed the instant the temperature was perfect. Remove it too soon and the solder would not hold. Leave it too long and the solder would run off, taking the granulation with it. There were a hundred stages at which work this delicate could be ruined. It is amazing that any saw completion at all. But, when done properly, the effect is incomparable. Modern granulation work done with a graver or chisel is gross and coarse by comparison.”