Free The Venus Throw by Steven Saylor Page A

of recounting a battle, was salted with crude soldier’s slang—could this really be the boywhose prose Caesar found so admirable? Relaxing in his quarters, it was Meto’s custom to wear the same garment day after day, a dark blue, much-washed woolen tunic. I raised an eyebrow at his slovenliness but said nothing, even when I noticed the numerous murky spots, large and small, which stained the fabric in various places. Then I realized that the stains were clustered where his armor joined and around the edges of his leather coat. The spots were bloodstains, made where the blood of other men had soaked through his battle gear.
    Meto told us of mountains he had crossed and rivers he had forded, of Gallic villages with their peculiar sights and smells, of Caesar’s genius at outwitting the tribes and putting down their rebellions. (Much of the commander’s behavior sounded like gratuitous cruelty and base treachery to me, but I knew better than to say so.) He confirmed that the Gauls were uncommonly big, many of them veritable giants. “They think of us as a midget race, and make fun of us to our faces,” he said. “But they don’t laugh for long.”
    He was eager for news of Rome. Eco and I shared with him all the gossip we could remember, including the latest maneuvers regarding the Egyptian situation. “Pompey and your beloved commander seemed to have matched scores in the latest round,” Eco noted, “extorting equal hoards of silver from King Ptolemy in return for bribing the Senate to smile on his claim to the Egyptian throne. It’s Crassus who’s been left out.”
    “And what does Crassus need from Egypt?” said Meto, who had his own reasons to dislike the millionaire quite apart from his loyalty to Caesar. “He’s rich enough.”
    “Crassus will never be rich enough for Crassus,” I said.
    “If he wants to keep his hand in the contest,” said Meto, absently reaching for his short sword and fiddling with the handle, “Crassus will need to wrangle another military command from the Senate and score some victories to impress the people. Silver buys votes, but only glory buys greatness.”I wondered if these words came from Meto himself or from Caesar, whose finances become more precarious even while the list of his conquests grows longer.
    “But Pompey has pacified the East, and now Caesar is pacifying Gaul,” said Eco. “What’s left for Crassus?”
    “He’ll simply have to look further afield,” said Meto.
    “Well, Egypt is as far as I care to cast my thoughts,” I said, and proceeded to relate what I had learned from Dio on the night before I left Rome. From his proximity to Caesar and his staff, Meto already knew a little about the murders of the Alexandrian envoys, but had not realized the scale of the scandal. He seemed genuinely appalled, and I found myself wondering how someone who had become so inured to the carriage of battle could be alarmed any longer by mere murder. The thought made me uneasy, as I suddenly felt the growing distance between Meto and myself. Then, as I continued to describe the peculiar circumstances of Dio’s visit and my guests’ absurd disguises—the philosopher as a woman, the gallus as a man—Meto burst out laughing. His laughter encouraged me to pile on more details, which made him laugh all the harder. Suddenly the stubbly jaw and the bloodstains faded from my sight. The harrowing tales and the crude soldier’s slang were forgotten. I saw the face of the laughing little boy I had adopted years ago, and found what I had come searching for.
    As it turned out, Eco and I were gone from Rome for almost a month, and did not return until after the Ides of Februarius. First a snowstorm detained us. Then I fell ill with a cough in my chest. Then, just as I was well enough to travel, Belbo fell ill with the same complaint. While some men might scoff at postponing a trip to coddle a slave, it made no sense to me to go traveling over dangerous back roads with a sick