Imperium

to subpoena them if we lose the election.” He threw the ball higher and caught it with a swiping motion. “You were right about one thing, though, Quintus.”
    “Was I really?” said Quintus bitterly. “How kind of you to say so.”
    “Crassus’s action has nothing to do with his enmity for me. He would not spend twenty million simply to frustrate my hopes. He would only invest twenty million if the likely return were huge . What can it be? On that issue I must confess myself baffled.” He stared at the wall for a while. “Tiro, you always got on well with young Caelius Rufus, didn’t you?”
    I remembered the shirked tasks which I had been obliged to complete for him, the lies I had told to keep him out of trouble the day he stole my savings and persuaded me not to report his thieving to Cicero. “Reasonably well, senator,” I replied cautiously.
    “Go and talk to him tomorrow morning. Be subtle about it. See if you can extract any clues from him about what Crassus is up to. He lives under the same roof, after all. He must know something.”
    I lay awake long into the night, pondering all of this, and feeling increasingly anxious for the future. Cicero did not sleep much either. I could hear him pacing around upstairs. The force of his concentration seemed almost to penetrate the floorboards, and when sleep at last came to me, it was restless and full of portents.
    The following morning I left Laurea to deal with Cicero’s press of visitors and set off to walk the mile or so to the house of Crassus. Even today, when the sky is cloudless and the mid-July heat feels oppressive even before the sun is up, I whisper to myself, “Election weather!” and feel again that familiar clench of excitement in my stomach. The sound of hammering and sawing rose from the Forum, as the workmen finished the erection of the ramps and fences around the Temple of Castor. It was the day on which the bribery bill was to be put to the vote of the people, and I cut through behind the temple and paused to take a drink from the tepid waters of the fountain of Juturna. I had no idea what I was going to say to Caelius. I am a most inexpert liar—I always have been—and I realized I should have asked Cicero to advise me on some line to take, but it was too late now. I climbed the path to the Palatine, and when I reached the house of Crassus I told the porter that I had an urgent message for Caelius Rufus. He offered to let me wait inside but I declined. Instead, while he went off to fetch the young man, I crossed the street and tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible.
    Crassus’s house, like the man himself, presented a very modest façade to the world, although I had been told that this was deceptive, and that once you got inside it went back a long way. The door was dark, low and narrow but stout, flanked by two small barred windows. Ivy climbed across peeling walls of light ocher. The terra-cotta roof was also ancient, and the edges of the tiles where they overhung the pavement were cracked and black, like a row of broken teeth. It might have been the home of an unwise banker, or some hard-up country landowner who had allowed his town house to fall into disrepair. I suppose this was Crassus’s way of showing that he was so fabulously rich, he had no need to keep up a smart appearance, but in that street of millionaires it only drew attention to his wealth, and there was something almost vulgar in its studied lack of vulgarity. The dark little door was constantly opening and shutting as visitors scurried in and out, revealing the extent of the activity within; it put me in mind of a buzzing wasps’ nest, which shows itself only as a tiny hole in the masonry. None of these men was recognizable to me until Julius Caesar stepped out. He did not see me, but walked straight off down the street in the direction of the Forum, trailed by a secretary carrying a document case. Shortly afterwards, the door opened again and Caelius appeared. He paused on the threshold, cupped his hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun, and squinted across the street toward me. I could see at once that he had been out all night as usual, and was not in a good humor at being woken. Thick stubble covered his handsome chin, and he kept sticking out his tongue, swallowing and wincing, as if the taste was too horrible to hold in his mouth. He walked carefully toward me and when he asked me what in the name of the gods I wanted, I blurted