The Venus Throw - Roman Sub Rosa 04

by Steven Saylor

  "Extraordinary," I whispered. Beside me Belbo stared up at the statue dumbly, a look of religious awe on his face.

  "Do you think so?" said Trygonion. "You should see the one at her house in the city." He turned and walked on, humming a hymn to Cybele. His mood seemed to lighten with each step that brought him closer to the river, and to the red and white striped tent pitched on the bank.

  We stepped out of the trees and into the sunlight. A mild breeze stirred the lush grass. The tent stood out in dazzling relief against the bright green grass, the darker green of the river beyond, and the glaring azure sky above. Its fine silk panels shivered in the delicate breeze. The red stripes wavered like slithering snakes against a field of white, then, by a trick of the eye, the illusion was reversed and the stripes became white snakes against a field of red.

  From somewhere I heard the sound of splashing, but the tent and the high trees on either side blocked my view of the river.

  "Wait here," said Trygonion. He stepped inside. A little later he stuck his head out the flap. "Come in, Gordianus. But leave your body-guard outside."

  As I moved toward the flap it was pulled aside by an unseen slave within. I stepped into the tent.

  The first thing I noticed was the scent, a perfume I had never smelled before—elusive, subtle and intriguing. The instant I first smelled it, I knew I would never forget it.

  The red and white silk softened the bright sunlight, filling the tent with a warm glow. The panels facing the river had been rolled up, letting in the view and framing it like a picture. Sunlight danced on the green water and cast lozenges of light into the tent, where they flitted and danced across my hands and face. I heard the sound of splashing again and now I saw its source, a group of young men and boys, fifteen or more, who frolicked in the water just beyond the tent. Some of them wore bright-colored scraps of cloth about their loins, but most were naked. Beads of water clung to their sleek flesh; in the sunlight they glimmered as if chased with jewels. When they moved into the shade beneath trees they became dappled, like spotted fauns. Their splashing caused the lozenges of light to dance wildly inside the tent.

  I walked toward the center of the tent, where Trygonion awaited me with a beaming smile on his face. He stood beside a high couch strewn with red and white striped pillows, holding the hand of the woman who reclined upon it. The woman was turned so that I could not see her face.

  Before I reached the couch a figure suddenly appeared before me. She looked hardly older than a child but wore her auburn hair coiled atop her head and was dressed in a long green gown. "Mistress!" she called, keeping her eyes on mine. "Mistress, your guest is here to see you."

  "Show him to me, Chrysis." The voice was sultry and unhurried, deeper than Trygonion's but unmistakably feminine.

  "Yes, Mistress." The slave girl took my hand and led me before the couch. The smell of perfume grew stronger.

  "No, no, Chrysis," her mistress said, laughing gently. "Don't put him directly in front of me. He's blocking the view."

  Chrysis tugged playfully at my hand and pulled me to one side.

  "That's better, Chrysis. Now run along. You, too, Trygonion—let go of my hand, little gallus. Go find something for Chrysis to do up at the house. Or go look for pretty stones along the riverbank. But don't let one of those river satyrs catch either one of you or who knows what might happen!"

  Chrysis and Trygonion departed, leaving me alone with the woman on the high couch.

  Chapter Ten

  “The young men you see in the river wearing loincloths are mine. My slaves, that is—my litter bearers and bodyguards. I let them wear loincloths here at the horti. After all, I can see them naked anytime I wish. Also, it makes it easier for me to pick out the others. Any young Roman worth being seen naked knows that he's allowed to come swimming along my stretch of the Tiber anytime he wishes—so long as he does it in the nude. They come down from the road along a little pathway hidden beyond those trees and leave their tunics hanging on branches. At the height of summer on a hot afternoon there are sometimes more than a hundred of them out there, diving, splashing each other, sunning themselves on the rocks — naked by my decree. Look at the shoulders on that one ... "

  I found myself staring at a woman of no few years—knowing that she was about five years older than her brother Publius Clodius, I calculated that she was probably forty, give or take a year. It was hard to say whether she looked her age or not. However old she looked, it suited her. Clodia's skin was certainly finer than that of most women of forty, the color of white roses, very creamy and smooth; perhaps, I thought, the filtered light of the tent flattered her. Her hair was black and lustrous, arranged by some hidden magic of pins and combs into an intricate maze of curls atop her head. The way that her hair was pulled back from her forehead gave emphasis to the striking angles of her cheekbones and the proud line of her nose, which was almost, but not quite, too large. Her lips were a sumptuous red which surely could not have been natural.

  Her eyes seemed to glitter with flashes of blue and yellow but mostly of green, the color of emeralds, sparkling as the sunlight sparkled on the green Tiber. I had heard of her eyes; Clodia's eyes were famous.

  "Look at the gooseflesh on them!" She laughed. "It's a wonder they can stand to go in the water at all. The river must still be frigid so early in the year, no matter how warm the sunshine. Look how it shrivels their manhoods; a pity, for that can be half the fun of watching. But notice, not one of them is shivering. They don't want me to see them shiver, the dear, brave, foolish boys." She laughed again, a low, throaty chuckle.

  Clodia reclined on her divan with her back against a pile ofcushions and her legs folded to one side beneath her. A long stola of shimmering yellow silk, belted below her breasts and again at her waist, covered her from her neck down. Only her arms were naked. Even so, no one could have called the costume modest. The fabric was so sheer as to be trans-parent, so that it was hard to tell, in the glittering light from the sun-spangled river, how much of the sheen of her contours came from the shiny silk and how much from the sleek flesh beneath. I had never seen a dress like it. This must have shown on my face, for Clodia laughed again, and not at the young men in the river.

  "Do you like it?" She looked steadily into my eyes as she smoothed her palm over her hip and down her thigh to the bend of her knee. The silk seemed to ripple like water before the advancing edge of her hand. "It comes all the way from Cos. Something new from a famous silkmaker there. I don't think any other woman in Rome has a dress like it. Or perhaps they're like me, not quite brave enough to wear such a garment in public." She smiled demurely and reached up to the silver necklace at her throat. She spread her fingers, and I could clearly see, thanks to the transparency of the silk, that while she rolled one of the lapis baubles between her forefinger and thumb, with her little finger she delicately stroked one of her large, pale nipples until it began to grow excited.

  I cleared my throat and glanced over my shoulder. The young men in the water were now throwing a leather ball back and forth among themselves, making a game of it, but every now and then they shot glances toward the tent. No wonder they had come to the river on the first warm day of the year, I thought. They came to look at her no less than she came to look at them. I cleared my throat again.

  "Is your throat dry? Did you walk all the way from the Palatine?" She sounded genuinely curious, as if walking for any distance outdoors was a feat she had watched her litter bearers perform but which she had never attempted on her own.

  "Yes, I walked."

  "Poor dear, then you must be thirsty. Here, look, before she left,

  Chrysis put out cups for us. The clay pitcher holds fresh water. The wine in the silver decanter is Falernian. I never drink anything else."

  The vessels were set on a little table beside her. There was no chair, however. It appeared that visitors were meant to stand.

  My mouth was in fact quite dry, and not entirely from the heat of the day. Clodia's cup
was already full of wine, so I reached for the pitcher of water and poured myself a cup, drinking it slowly before I poured myself another.

  "No wine?" She sounded disappointed.

  "I think not. It's bad for a man my age to drink wine after exerting himself in the heat of the day." If not bad for my bowels, I thought, then bad for my judgment in such company. What would the transparent silk dress begin to look like after a cup or two of strong Falernian?

  "As you wish." She shrugged. The silk pooled above her shoulders, then rippled like a sheet of water over her breasts.

  I finished the second cup of water and put it down. "There was a reason you sent the gallus for me?"

  "Yes, there was." She turned her gaze from me and fixed it on the young men in the river. I watched her eyes flit back and forth, following the leather ball. Her face remained impassive.

  "Trygonion said it had something to do with Dio."

  She nodded.

  "Perhaps I should close the tent flaps," I said.

  "Then what would the young men in the river think?" The idea of scandal seemed to amuse her, as did my growing consternation.

  "If we need a chaperon, call back your handmaiden."

  "Do we need a chaperon?" The look in her eyes was unnerving. "You obviously don't know Chrysis; she would hardly qualify for the role."

  "Trygonion, then."

  At that she laughed aloud and opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. "Forgive me," she said. "When I have business to conduct with a good-looking man, I like to indulge in a little teasing first. It's a fault of mine. My friends have learned to overlook it. I hope that you'll overlook the fault as well, Gordianus, now that I've confessed it."

  I nodded.

  "Very well. Yes, I wanted to consult you regarding the untimely death of our mutual friend, Dio of Alexandria." "Ourmutual friend?"

  "Yes, mine as well as yours. Don't look so surprised, Gordianus. There are probably a great many things about Dio that you didn't know.

  For that matter, there are probably a great many things about me that don't know, despite all you may have heard. I'll try to be brief and to the point. It was I who suggested to Dio that he should go to your house to seek your help on the night he was murdered."

  "You?"

  "Yes."

  "But you don't know me."

  "Even so, I know of you, just as you undoubtedly know of me. Your reputation goes back a long way, Finder. I was a girl of seventeen, still living at home, when Cicero made such a splash defending that man accused of parricide. I remember my father talking about the case for long afterward. I didn't know of the role you played until many years later, of course, when I learned the details from Cicero himself—how Cicero loved to rehash that old case, again and again, until his triumph over Catilina finally gave him something even bigger to crow about! Cicero used to speak of you often to my late husband; on a few occasions he even recommended that Quintus seek out your services, but Quintus was always stubborn about using his own men for snooping and such. I shall be honest with you: Cicero didn't always speak highly of you. That is to say, from time to time when your name was brought up, he sometimes used words that should not be repeated aloud by a respectable Roman matron such as myself. But we've all had our fallings-out with Cicero, have we not? The important thing is that even when he was infuriated with you, Cicero always made a point of praising your honesty and integrity. Indeed, when Quintus was governor up in Cisalpine Gaul, Cicero and his wife Terentia came for a visit, and one night after dinner we all played a game of questions and answers; when Quintus asked Cicero what man he would trust to tell the truth, no matter what, do you know whom he named? Yes, Gordianus, it was you. So you see, when Dio asked us to whom he might turn for help, the name of Gordianus the Finder came to my mind at once. I didn't know at the time that you and Dio already knew each other; Trygonion told me about that after their visit to you."

  "I suppose I'm flattered," I said. "You know, then, that I met Dio in Alexandria, years ago?"

  "Trygonion explained it to me." "But how is it that you knew Dio?"

  "Because of his dealings with my brother Publius, of course." "What dealings?"

  "They met shortly after Dio arrived in Rome. The two of them had much to talk about."

  "I should think that Dio and Publius Clodius would have had a hard time finding common ground, considering that it was your brother who engineered the Roman takeover of Egyptian Cyprus."

  "Water under the bridge, as the Etruscans say. Far more important to Dio was my brother's opposition to Pompey. Publius offered Dio a much-needed ally in the Senate. Dio offered Publius a means to cheat Pompey of his ambitions in Egypt."

  "And your place in all this?"

  "There's something about sharp-witted older men that I find simply irresistible." She gave me another of her unnerving looks. "And what did Dio see in you?" I asked bluntly.

  "Perhaps it was my well-known love of poetry." Clodia shrugged elegantly, causing the sheer silk to catch and drag across her nipples.

  "If you and your brother were such great friends and supporters of Dio, why didn't he stay at your house where he'd be safe, instead of moving from one dubious host to another, staying barely ahead of his killer?"

  "Dio couldn't stay at my house for the same reason that you may not lower the flaps of this tent, Gordianus. A man and a woman together, you understand. Dio's position with the Senate was precarious enough without having it further eroded by sexual innuendos. Nor could he have stayed with Publius; imagine the rumors that would have set off, about the Egyptian troublemaker hatching plots with the famous rabble-rouser. Notoriety exacts a price. Sometimes our friends must stay at arm's length, for their own good."

  "Very well, Dio was your friend, or ally, or whatever, and you sent him to me for help. I had to refuse him. A few hours later he was dead. You and your brother didn't do a very good job of protecting him, did you?"

  Her lips tightened and her eyes flashed. "Nor did you," she said icily, "who had known him far longer than I had, and whose obligations must have run far deeper."

  I winced. "Just so. But even if I had agreed to Dio's request, I would've been too late to save him. By the time I woke up the next morning—no, even before I fell asleep that night—he was already dead."

  "But what if you had said yes to Dio? What if you had agreed to begin looking after his safety the next morning, helping him decide whom to trust and whom to fear? Wouldn't you have felt some obligation after his death, to try to bring his murderer to justice?"

  "Perhaps ... "

  "And do you feel no such obligation now, simply out of respect for an old friendship? Why do you hesitate to answer?"

  "Doesn't everyone know who was behind Dio's murder?"

  "Who?"

  "King Ptolemy, of course."

  "Was it King Ptolemy who slipped poison into Dio's soup in the house of Lucceius? Was it Ptolemy himself who stole into Dio's room and stabbed him to death?"

  "No, of course not. It was someone acting on the king's behalf—"

  "Exactly. And do you feel no obligation to see that this person is punished, if only to give solace to Dio's shade?"

  "Asicius has already been tried for the crime—"

  "And acquitted, the swine!" Her eyes flashed. "Nemesis will have to deal with him in her own fashion. But there's another man, even more culpable than Asicius, who has yet to be brought to justice. You could help, Gordianus."

  Though there was no chance that the men in the river could over-hear, still I lowered my voice. "If you mean Pompey—"

  "Pompey! Do you think I would send you against Pompey? That would be like sending a one-armed gladiator into the arena to take on an elephant." Her laughter was like sand in my face. "No, Gordianus, what I want from you is very simple, and well within your capabilities. How many times have you investigated the circumstances of a murder? How many times have you helped an advocate find evidence that would prove a man guilty or innocent of such a crime
? That's all I want from you. I'm not asking you to topple a king from his throne or pull down a colossus. Only help me bring down the wrath of the law on the man who killed Dio by his own hand. Help me punish the cold-blooded killer who plunged a dagger into Dio's breast!"

  I expelled a heavy breath and turned to stare at the sunlight on the

  river.

  "Why do you hesitate, Gordianus? I'll pay you for your labors, of course, and generously. But I expected you to leap at this opportunity, out of your respect for Dio. Is his shade not whispering in your ear even now, pleading for vengeance? He asked for your help once before, while he was still alive—"

  "These days, in a case such as this—in a matter of murder—I usually defer to my son Eco. He's younger, stronger, quicker. Those things often matter when the stakes are so high. Sharp ears and eyes can mean the difference between life and death. An old fellow like myself—"

  "But your son never knew Dio, did he?"

  "Even so, I think it's Eco you want."

  "Well, never having seen him, it's hard for me to say whether I would want him or not. Does he look like a younger version of you?" She looked me up and down, as if I were a slave on the auction block.

  I bit my lip for having mentioned Eco, imagining him in my place, alone with such a creature. What was I thinking, recommending him to her? "Both of my sons are adopted," I said.

  "They look nothing like

  me."

  "They must be ugly, then," she said, affecting a frown of disappointment. "Well, then, you're the man I want, Gordianus, and there's no way around it. Will you help me or not?"