Domitius was unperturbed. "Tell him, Milo. Or else I will." Milo blanched. His face turned pale. A sheen of sweat covered his naked flesh. His shoulders heaved. He clutched his throat. "Little dove! Bring me my ewer. Quickly!"

Maniacally giggling, the blond slave girl put down the lamps, skittered across the room, disappeared for a moment, and then hurried back bearing a tall clay vessel with a wide mouth. Milo dropped to his knees, seized the arms of the ewer, and loudly vomited into it.

"For pity's sake, Milo!" Domitius wrinkled his nose in disgust. Davus seemed hardly to notice; his attention was riveted instead on the slave girl, who, leaning over to assist her master, was inadvertently revealing heretofore unseen portions of her lower anatomy. Plautus himself never staged a more absurd tableau, I thought. I wanted to scream from frustration.

Gradually, with the slave girl wiping his chin, Milo staggered back to his feet. He seemed considerably less drunk, if not exactly sober. He looked utterly wretched.

I couldn't resist. "A pity the judges at your trial never saw you in such a state. You might never have had to leave Rome."

"What?" Milo blinked and looked about, dazed.

"Meto," I said wearily. "Tell me about Meto."

His shoulders slumped. "Very well. Come, we'll sit in the study. Little dove, hand me one of those lamps."

The house was a cluttered mess. Clothes were strewn about the floor and festooned over statues, dirty bowls and cups and platters were stacked everywhere, unfurled scrolls overflowed from tables onto the floor. In the corner of one room a recumbent figure, presumably a bodyguard, lay noisily snoring.

Milo's study was the most cluttered room of all. There were chairs for all four of us, but first Milo had to clear away scraps of parchment, piles of clothing (including an expensive-looking but badly wine-stained toga), and a yowling cat. He dumped them all on the floor. Hissing, the cat fled the room.

"Sit," Milo offered. He pulled a wrinkled tunic over his head, sparing us the sight of his sweaty, corpulent chest. "So you want to know what's become of your son." Milo sighed and averted his eyes. "I suppose there's no reason why I shouldn't tell you the whole wretched story…

X

"Tell me, Gordianus, do you have any idea what your son was really up to these past few months?" Milo used his tunic to wipe a speck of vomit from his chin.

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Were you in on his little game or not? This mime show he attempted, passing himself off as a traitor to Caesar."

I looked him squarely in the eye. Outright lying has never come easily to me, but there are subtler ways of skirting the truth. "I know that Meto and Caesar parted ways when both of them were last in Rome. That was in the month of Aprilis, after Caesar ran Pompey out of Italy and Domitius was on his way here to Massilia. There was talk of a plot against Caesar, devised by some of his closest officers. Meto was said to be part of that plot. Supposedly the scheme was discovered and Meto had no choice but to flee."

Milo nodded. "That's what your son wanted us all to believe. Perhaps he even made you believe it." He raised a shrewd eyebrow. As his intoxication receded, a more familiar Milo came to the fore-the rabble-rousing gang-leader, the politician unafraid of violence, the blustering, unapologetic victim of a legal system as ruthless as himself. Despite his squalid circumstances and his physical decline, Milo was still a very dangerous man. He no longer averted his eyes. "Did you believe your son was a traitor, Gordianus?"

I spoke carefully, feeling Domitius's gaze on me. "At first it seemed impossible that Meto could turn against Caesar. There had always been a bond between them, a closeness-"

"We've all heard those rumors, as well!" Milo interjected. A barely stifled belch reminded me that he was still more drunk than sober.

I ignored his insinuation and pressed on. "But don't you see, that very closeness was what swayed me to accept that Meto had betrayed Caesar. Closeness can breed contempt. Familiarity can turn love to hate. Who might be more likely to be repelled by Caesar's ruthless ambition, his carelessness in destroying the Republic, than a man who shared the same tent with Caesar day after day, who helped him write his memoirs, who came to see exactly how his mind worked?" Indeed, such had been my reasoning when, for a while, I myself believed that Meto had turned traitor.

Milo shook his head. "If you don't know the truth, then truly I feel sorry for you. Redbeard here was taken in as well," he said, shrugging at Domitius. "So was Pompey, apparently. But not me. Not for a moment!"

"At last the braggart overtakes the drunkard," said Domitius dryly. They exchanged a chilly glance.

Milo went on. "All that talk of Meto changing sides was nonsense. I'm a shrewd judge of character. Don't forget, for years I ran the streets in Rome. It was my gang that did Pompey's dirty work so that he could keep his own hands clean. A friendly candidate needed a good turnout for a speech? My gang was there in full force. Clodius's rabble was hectoring a senator in the Forum? My gang could be there in minutes to clear the place out. An election needed to be postponed? My gang was ready to crack a few heads down at the voting stalls. All at the snap of my fingers." He tried to demonstrate, but his fingers fumbled and made no noise.

"The coins from your purse spoke louder," quipped Domitius. Milo frowned. "The point is, you don't become a leader of men without learning to judge a man's character, figuring out how best to persuade him, knowing his limits, what he will or won't do-getting under his skin. And I knew from the moment I laid eyes on him here in Massilia that Meto was no traitor. He wasn't dodgy enough. Didn't have the smell of a man who's out just for himself. And what reason did he have to turn on Caesar? All your high-flown talk about love turning to hate is just so much cow dung, Gordianus."

"Some men love the Republic more than they love their imperator," I said quietly.

"Show me one! Show me just one!" he barked, then fell to coughing. His forehead erupted in sweat. "I need a drink," he muttered.

So did I. My throat was so dry I could hardly swallow. "Go on," I said hoarsely.

Milo leaned back in his chair, lost his balance, and came close to falling. Domitius sniggered. Davus rolled his eyes.

Milo recovered himself and went on, unflustered. "Consider my position. Everything went wrong for me in Rome. My trial was a farce. Clodius's mob burned down the Senate House! They didn't even let Cicero finish his speech for me. They drowned him out, screaming for my head. The verdict was a foregone conclusion. Only one man could have saved me-but my dear friend, Gnaeus Pompey, the Great One himself, turned his back on me! After all I'd done for him…"

He picked up a discarded loincloth from the floor and mopped his forehead. "Even Fausta refused to come with me into exile. The bitch! Married me because she thought I was a rising star, then jumped off quicker than a flea from a drowning dog when things went sour. So here I landed in Massilia, a man without a country, without a family, without friends. Abandoned. Forgotten. `Don't fret, Titus,' Cicero told me. `Massilia is a civilized place full of culture and learning… admirable government… delightful climate… delicious food.' Easy for Cicero to say; he's never even set foot in this Hades-on-earth! He can admire Massilia from a distance, relaxing in his house on the Palatine or at one of his summer places in the countryside. I used to have summer houses…

He shut his eyes for a moment and sighed, then went on. "Now the whole world's been turned upside-down. Caesar and his outlaw armies are in control of Rome. Pompey and the Senate have fled across the water. Even Rome's oldest allies, these wretched Massilians, aren't safe. And where does that leave me? Milo, who was always loyal, even when it harmed his own prospects. Milo, who was abandoned by his friends, even the Great One, just because of a stupid, stupid, stupid incident on the Appian Way.