Much of our hay for the winter had been blighted. We ran a grave risk of running short of water. I began to realize, with great uneasiness, that if another such disaster struck, I might be compelled to sell the farm. For a rich man, a farm in the country is a diversion, and if it loses money the loss is merely the cost of the diversion. But for me there was no fortune back in the city; the farm was the enterprise on which I had staked my future. Its success was essential; its failure would ruin me. That summer it seemed to me that the gods themselves were conspiring to rob me of what Lucius Claudius in his generosity had given me, and Cicero with his cleverness had secured for me by law.

Each day, Aratus fed a bit of well water to one of the farm animals, usually a kid. It did not kill them, but it did loosen their bowels and cause them to vomit. The water remained undrinkable.

I persevered with the building of the mill on the stream. Aratus had the slaves tear down a little unused shed to provide building stones and beams. Day by day the vision in my mind began to take shape. My old friend Lucius would have been surprised and proud, I thought.

I anticipated a visit from Catilina, or perhaps from Marcus Caelius, but for the rest of Quinctilis and well into the month of Sextilis I was undisturbed. In the meantime I posted slaves to act as watchmen each night, relieving each other in shifts, like soldiers in a camp. Whether this was the cause or not, we received no more rude surprises in the form of headless bodies. There was another unsettling event, however.

It was the just after the Ides of Sextilis, almost a month after our return from Rome. The day had been unusually busy. We had reached a critical pass in the construction of the mill; the gears would not mesh, though I had measured and remeasured the proportions and worked out all the calculations beforehand. Also, a thunderstorm had blown over us during the night, bringing no rain but scattering broken branches and other debris all over the property; the men had a full day's work cleaning up the mess. As the long summer afternoon dwindled to twilight, I at last had found time to rest for a moment in my study, when Aratus appeared at the door.

'I didn't want to disturb you before, because I thought it might pass, but as he's getting worse, I suppose I should tell you now,' he said.

'What are you talking about?'

'Clementus. He's ill — very ill, it appears. His complaints began this morning, but as they seemed to come and go, and as he appeared to be in no great distress, I saw no reason to bother you with it. But he's grown worse through the day. I think he might die.'

I followed Aratus to the little lean-to by the stable where Clementus slept at night and as often napped in the daytime. The old slave lay in the straw on his side, clutching his knees to his chest He moaned quietly. His cheeks were flushed, but his lips were slightly blue. A slave woman hovered over him, dabbing his race from time to time with a damp cloth. At intervals he was seized by a shuddering spasm, drew even more tighdy into a ball, and then slowly relaxed with a pathetic whimper.

'What's wrong with him?' I whispered.

'I'm not sure,' said Aratus. 'He was vomiting earlier. Now he can't seem to swallow, and when he tries to speak his words come out slurred.'

'Do any of the others share the same complaints?' I asked, thinking that a plague on the farm would be the final calamity.

'No. It may simply be because he's old.' Aratus lowered his voice. 'Such storms as we had last night are often harbingers of death to people of his age.'

As we watched, Clementus convulsed and stiffened. He opened his eyes and peered up at us with an expression more of puzzlement than pain. He parted his lips and released a long, rasping moan. After a moment the woman attending him reached out and touched his brow with trembling fingers. His eyes remained unnaturally open. The woman drew back her hand and crushed her knuckles to her lips. Clementus was dead.

He was quite old, of course, and the old are apt to die from many causes, and at any time. But I could not help remembering that it had been Clementus who had heard a muffled splash when Forfex was dropped into the well, and afterwards had witnessed a vague shadow walking about in the night.

XXVIII

The water mill would not work.

I told myself ruefully that I was not an engineer — any more than I was a farmer, added another voice in my head — and so should hardly have been surprised when my plans turned out not to be workable. I had kept the design as simple as I could. I had built a little model out of slivers of wood that seemed to work well enough. Aratus himself, never hesitant to inject a negative note, had deemed the idea practical and the construction sound. But when I set the slaves to turning the master wheel (for at midsummer in the month of Sextilis there was not enough force in the stream to turn it), the gears revolved only for a few degrees and then jammed fast. The first time this happened, the slaves kept pushing at the master wheel until two of the wooden axles split asunder with a great noise like a thunderclap. I was more careful the next time, and the next, but the mill simply would not function.

At night I dreamed of it. Sometimes I saw it as it should be, with the stream sliding along its banks, the master wheel spinning, and the crushing blocks gnashing together like teeth, with grain pouring from the outlet in endless abundance. In other, darker dreams I saw it as a sort of monster, living but malicious, spinning out of control, crushing hapless slaves in its gears and pouring blood from its mouth.

Why did I lavish so much energy and imagination on the completion of the mill? I told myself that it was a gift to the shade of my benefactor, Lucius Claudius. It was a sign of my full adjustment to country life, a signal that I had not simply accommodated myself to being a farmer but was mastering the elements around me. It was a gesture of defiance against Publius Claudius, who thought he could rob me of my water rights. It was all these things, true enough (besides being what it concretely was, or should be, a building of intrinsic value), but it was also a diversion. The mysteries of Nemo and Forfex remained unsolved. Rather than allow these failures to prey on me, I fretted over the continuing failure of the mill instead; rather than turn my fantasies to the professional satisfaction I would feel if I could somehow resolve these mysteries once and for all — an old, familiar satisfaction, as comfortable as a worn garment — I turned my fantasies to the technical triumph of a water mill that would actually work. In the same way, my obsession with the mill allowed me an escape from the problem of our dwindling water and the looming prospect of a winter without enough hay.

These crises seem small now when compared to the greater crisis that was brewing all around us — not only down in Rome and in Etruria, but all up and down the length of Italy. I might claim that I had no intimation of the catastrophes to come, but that would not quite be true. A man who turns his back on a fire can truthfully say that he cannot see the fire, but he can feel its heat against his back; he can see the lurid light that colours the objects around him and his own shadow cast before him. But if I had an inkling of where the struggle between Cicero and Catilina would lead, I chose to fret over my water mill instead.

Towards the end of the month of Sextilis, Diana reached her seventh birthday. The birthdays of little girls are not much celebrated among Romans, but this day — the twenty-sixth day of Sextilis, four days before the Kalends of September — was doubly special in our household, for it was not only the day that Bethesda had given birth to Gordiana, but also the day when Marcus Mummius had delivered Meto to us after rescuing him from his bondage in Sicily. We had made the day a family holiday and always celebrated with a special meal; several days beforehand Bethesda began overseeing Congrio's preparations in the kitchen. Eco had always been present for the event, and this year would be no exception. As we had journeyed down to Rome for Meto's toga day, so Eco and Menenia would come up from the city for the private celebration.