The Venus Throw - Roman Sub Rosa 04

by Steven Saylor

  "How long was this before the noise you heard later, when the assassins came?"

  "Oh, quite a while before."

  "But when you heard those noises and went to investigate, you told me you thought they might have been the sounds of Dio and Zotica ... "

  He shrugged. "I thought she might have slipped back into his room. But she hadn't. When we were breaking down the door to Dio's room, Zotica was off in the slave quarters with the other girls. There's no question about that. She woke some of the slaves with her weeping when she came in, then kept them awake with her sobbing, even when they threatened to beat her. There's no doubt that she was with the other slaves when Dio was stabbed."

  "Still, I should dearly like to have a talk with her. Tell me, when you broke into the room, what exactly did you see?"

  Philo was thoughtful. "Chair and tables overturned. Window shutters open. Dio on the couch, dead."

  "How did you know he was dead?"

  "The look on his face!" Philo turned pale, remembering. "Such a look—his eyes and mouth wide open with a look of pure horror, as if he'd seen the face of Cerberus himself."

  "Pure horror—and yet you never heard him cry out?"

  "Never."

  "But to have such a look on his face, he must have known he was under attack, he must have felt the blows. Why did he not scream?" "I don't know. I only know I never heard him." "Did you see the wounds?"

  "Very clearly. I helped undress him later, when the men from the necropolis came to take him away."

  "How many times was he stabbed?"

  "Six or seven times, I think. Maybe more. All in the chest, close together."

  "How close?"

  He held up his palms side by side. "Two hands could have covered the wounds."

  "But surely he thrashed about. A frightened man startled from sleep, horrified. He's stabbed the first time—surely he cries out. Surely he thrashes and twists to avoid the next blow."

  "Perhaps his arms were held down and his mouth was covered."

  "How many men would that take?"

  "The room was a mess. Perhaps there was a whole gang of them milling around in there."

  "Perhaps. I suppose there was blood everywhere, on the walls and carpet?"

  Philo wrinkled his brow. "Not really."

  "And the sleeping tunic he wore—that must have been soaked with blood."

  "Around the wounds, yes."

  "But not—"

  "Philo! I thought you were showing Gordianus to the door." Coponius appeared at the far end of the hall. He crossed his arms. "Yes, Master!"

  "There was something I forgot to ask him," I said. "Just a small detail—"

  "Farewell, Gordianus."

  I took a deep breath. "Farewell, Titus Coponius."

  Belbo was waiting for me outside the front door, sitting in a patch of warm sunshine. Together we took a silent walk through the streets of the Palatine, breathing in the smells of midday cooking, listening to the noises that echoed up from the Forum. I walked merely to walk, with no particular goal. I needed to think.

  I was beginning to discover a side to Dio that I had never guessed at. This disturbed me. I had also begun to piece together the sequence of his final days and hours. The gory drama of his death seemed forthright enough; it only remained to determine who had broken into his room that fateful night. Yet I could not put aside a nagging feeling that some-thing was very, very wrong.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The girl is important.

  I'm not sure how, but I can't help thinking so." "What girl?" said Eco. "The slave girl, Zotica.

  The one Dio was ..."

  "Important?" said Eco. "But how? If she'd been in the room when the killers broke in, she'd be a witness, though I doubt they would have left her alive. Unless of course she was in on their plan, in which case they'd have had no need to break in the shutters—she'd have let them in.

  But then they'd have broken the shutters and killed her anyway, to keep her from talking . . . but all this takes away from what we know, which is that the girl was not in the room when Dio was killed." "Still ..."

  I had finally tired of walking and thinking and had gone home for something to eat, to find that Eco and his family had dropped by. While the women and children visited in the garden at the heart of the house, Eco and I sat in the little atrium just off the foyer, basking in a narrow shaft of warm sunlight. I told him all I had learned that morning from my visits to Lucceius and Coponius.

  "It's too bad that Cicero's entered the picture," said Eco. He shook his head. "Imagine, Cicero taking on Marcus Caelius's defense, after the bad blood between them!"

  "There's a lot at stake," I said. "The charges are serious—serious enough to send even a brash fellow like Caelius running back to his old teacher. I'm sure Cicero made him promise to be a good boy from now on and always support the status quo. It must have been quite a coup for Cicero, bringing the errant sheep back into the fold."

  "And, provided Cicero gets him off the hook, Caelius will get a chance to betray his old mentor all over again," observed Eco.

  I laughed. "Exactly. I suppose the two of them deserve each other."

  "Still, too bad it's Cicero for the defense. Even if you do find compelling evidence against Caelius —"

  " — Cicero will probably make it go up in a puff of smoke while he takes the judges down some completely irrelevant path to Caelius's ac-quittal. Yes, I was thinking the same thing myself. Having worked for Cicero, we know just how thoroughly unscrupulous and damnably persuasive he can be. It's not much fun, being on the opposing side."

  Eco closed his eyes and leaned back against a pillar, letting the sun warm his face. "But the really bad news is about the slaves in Lucceius's kitchen being sent off to work the mines in Picenum. If Lucceius's wife is right, those two are at the very heart of the matter. If they were bribed to administer poison, they must have some idea of who paid them, or should at least be able to yield up a clue. They're the link in the chain, the ones you need to go to next. But there they are, away up in Picenum, and no matter what they know, it doesn't sound like Lucceius would ever let them testify."

  "Yes, it's frustrating. But I suppose someone could trek up to Picenum and try to get at them. Even if they can't testify, they might lead us to someone who could."

  Eco half opened one eye and peered at me sidelong. "I have no pressing business for the next few days, and it's always nice to get out of Rome. Just say the word, Papa."

  I smiled and nodded. "Perhaps. I suppose it is the next logical step. Still, I keep thinking about the girl ... "

  "The girl?"

  "The slave girl, Zotica. I should have a talk with her. She might know something."

  "I'm sure she knows a great deal, Papa. But do you really want to hear it?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Eco peered at me shrewdly, narrowing his eyes in the bright sunshine. "Tell me, Papa, do you want to talk to this Zotica to find what she knows about the murder, which is probably nothing—or do you wish to talk to her to satisfy your own prurient curiosity about the things that Dio did to her?"

  "Eco!"

  "If she told you that her treatment from Dio was not nearly as cruel as you've been led to think, you'd be relieved, wouldn't you?" I sighed. "Yes."

  "And what if the opposite happened? What if the things that Dio did to her were quite as appalling as you fear, and even worse? I know how you felt about Dio, Papa—the way he died, the fact that he came to you for help. But I also know how strongly you feel about those who abuse slaves in such a fashion."

  "Coponius may have been slandering Dio," I said.

  "It hardly sounds like it. From the way you tell it, Coponius talked about Dio's bedroom habits only reluctantly, and he was more embarrassed than judgmental, as if he was telling you that Dio was flatulent or snored. And what about the slave, Philo? He told the same story."

  "Slaves like to gossip as much as their masters." I shook my head. "I don't like having my
memories of Dio tainted by hearsay."

  "Ah, but from the girl's lips it wouldn't be hearsay."

  "So you think I want to find this girl for no other reason than to put my mind at rest about Dio?"

  "Isn't that it, Papa?" His sympathetic gaze made me feel suddenly unsure of myself.

  "Partly, yes. But that's not the only reason," I insisted. "There's something else, something I can't quite put my finger on."

  "Another intuition from the goddess Cybele, guiding you on?"

  "I'm serious. I can't help but feel that this Zotica knows something, or did something ... "

  "Or had something done to her," said Eco under his breath.

  "Eco, you said I could call on you if I needed help. This is what I want you to do: find this slave dealer on the Street of the Scythemakers. Find out what became of Zotica."

  "Are you sure, Papa? It seems to me that my time would be better spent trying to contact Lucceius's kitchen slaves. And if I'm to do that, I should get started. It will take me a day to get to Picenum, another day to get back, plus the time spent there. Since the trial is only four days away—"

  "No, find out about the girl first. You can get started this afternoon. It's too late to leave for Picenum today, anyway."

  Eco shook his head at my stubbornness. "Very well, Papa. I'll go and see if I can track down this Zotica for you. If her story is awful enough, I suppose it may save me the bother of needing to go up to Picenum."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Well," Eco began, but he was interrupted.

  "If Dio was such a bad man, why are you bothering to find the person who killed him, anyway?"

  "Diana!" I turned and saw my daughter standing in the doorway.

  "Can't I come and be with you, Papa?" She walked to me and took my hand. Her long straight hair glittered blue-black in the sunlight. "The only thing Mother and Menenia talk about is the twins, and all the twins want to do is pull my hair and scream in my ears. They're such little monsters! I'd much rather be with you and Eco."

  "Diana, why did you say that?"

  "Because the twins are monsters — Titania is a harpy and Titus is a cyclops!"

  "No, why did you say what you said about Dio? No one said he was a bad man."

  Diana looked at me blankly.

  "I think," said Eco, "that someone has been eavesdropping, and for quite a while."

  "No I haven't!"

  "It's a very bad habit, Diana, especially when your brother and I are discussing business."

  "But I told you, I wasn't eavesdropping." She stepped back and crossed her arms, and gave me her version of the Medusa look.

  "Diana ... "

  "Besides, Papa, isn't eavesdropping what you and Eco do for a living? I don't see why you should pick on me for doing it, even if I was, which I wasn't."

  "It's a matter of showing respect to Papa," said Eco.

  "No one in this house seems to have any respect for me," said Diana. "Whenever the monsters come over I might as well be made of stone." She turned and left the room.

  "My, my," said Eco. "Is that what it's like to have a thirteen-year-old daughter in the house?"

  "Just wait," I sighed.

  "Perhaps you've been ignoring Diana."

  "I probably have. She's becoming difficult."

  "It was the same with Meto, remember?"

  "It started later with Meto, and that was different. That I understood, whether I liked it or not. But with Diana, I don't understand. Not at all. She's the only one of you who's actually of my own flesh and blood, but sometimes I think Bethesda created her all by herself."

  "She's more like you than you realize, Papa."

  "Yes, I'm sure you're right." I tried to remember what we had been talking about, but found myself musing instead on the scent of jasmine that lingered in the warm air. Diana had recently begun to use the same fragrant oil that Bethesda used to scent her hair, just as she had begun to occasionally use her mother's jewelry and scarves. I closed my eyes. I breathed in the fragrance; it might have come from either of them. Diana was becoming so much like her mother . . .

  I was interrupted by the sound of a cleared throat. I opened my eyes, blinking at the bright sunshine. "What is it, Belbo?"

  "A caller, Master. The little gallus again. He says that you must come with him at once."

  "Come with him?" I turned my face back to the sun and closed my eyes again. My legs ached from too much walking. The sunshine was making me sleepy.

  "Yes, you must!" piped a familiar voice. I opened my eyes to see Trygonion slipping past Belbo into the atrium. His silver bracelets jangled and glittered in the sunlight, and his red and yellow robes were dazzling. Eco raised his eyebrows. Belbo stamped his foot in frustration.

  "Clodia needs you," said Trygonion. "At once! It's a matter of life and death!"

  "Life and death?" I said skeptically.

  "And poison!" said Trygonion, exasperated. "The monster is planning to poison her!" "Who?"

  "Caelius! Clodia!"

  "Trygonion, what are you talking about?"

  "You must come at once. There's a litter waiting outside."

  I wearily got to my feet.

  "Do you want me to come with you, Papa?" said Eco. "No. I'd rather you got started finding Zotica." "Take Belbo with you, Papa."

  "No need to take along that hulking brute," said Trygonion. "You'll be in the litter. It's well guarded."

  "Shall I tell Bethesda you'll be back for dinner?" said Eco, raising an eyebrow.

  "Bait me all you like, Eco. I'm not letting you come along," I said. His laughter followed me out of the atrium.

  The litter in front of my house was far more impressive than I would have expected even Clodia to send for a mere hireling. The box was draped with red and white striped silk, like Clodia's tent on the Tiber. The poles were of polished oak, borne aloft by a team of bare-chested slaves with oxlike shoulders, dressed in white loincloths and thick-soled sandals. Every one of them was blond—Scythians, perhaps, or captured Gauls from Caesar's conquests. I had seen them before, among the young men cavorting in the river at Clodia's horti. A small retinue of bodyguards stood behind, probably recruited from Clodius's gang. I didn't like the looks of them, which meant they had the right look for a bodyguard.

  Trygonion snapped his fingers. With well-practiced efficiency, the bearers lowered the box. A slave put down a block of wood so that we could step inside.

  I gestured for Trygonion to enter but he shook his head. "I have business elsewhere. Go ahead, climb in!"

  I stepped onto the block and parted the curtains. A melange of exotic scents issued from within. Jasmine was among them, along with frankincense and sandalwood and more elusive scents—Clodia's smell. The inner draperies were of some heavy, opaque fabric, making the interior of the box seem very dark after the bright sunlight of the street. I was already inside, settling back against the cushions and being lifted aloft, before I realized that I was not alone.

  "Thank you for coming." A hand touched my arm. I sensed her presence, smelled her scent, felt the warmth of her body.

  "Clodia!"

  She stirred beside me. Her leg brushed against mine. She laughed softly and I smelled her breath, warm and moist against my face and vaguely smelling of cloves.

  "You sound surprised to see me, Gordianus."

  "I thought the litter was empty." As my eyes adjusted to the dimness I saw that there was yet another occupant. Across from us, settled against the cushions at the front of the box, was the auburn-haired handmaiden, Chrysis. She smiled and nodded.

  "A woman learns early never to step into a litter without knowing who's inside," said Clodia. "I should think men could profit from the same rule, though the danger may be different."

  The ride was impeccably smooth. I parted the nearest curtain and saw that our pace was very quick. From behind us I could hear the sound of the bodyguards trotting to keep up.

  "We don't seem to be headed toward your house, Clodia."
r />   "No. What I have to tell you is best discussed away from curious ears." She saw me glance at her handmaiden. "Don't worry about Chrysis. No one is more loyal than she." Clodia extended her leg and touched her bare foot against the slave's. She leaned forward, as did Chrysis. When their faces met Clodia gave the girl a kiss upon the forehead and gently stroked her cheek.

  Clodia leaned back. I felt her warmth next to me again. "It's too dark," she murmured.

  "Chrysis, beloved, open the inner curtains."

  The slave girl moved nimbly about the compartment, pulling back the heavy inner curtains and tying them to hooks at each corner. The box remained private, concealed by the translucent red and white striped curtains, which wavered in the breeze. The sounds of the street rose and fell as we swiftly passed by. From time to time the chief of the litter bearers whistled to signal a turn or a stop or a change in pace, but the box never pitched or swayed. A lethargic sense of luxury crept over me, the feeling of being borne effortlessly aloft in a private world from which the squalor of the street was excluded.

  The sudden, unexpected nearness of Clodia's body was intoxicating. She was so close that I could see her only in sidelong glances, never all at once; like an object held too close before the eyes, she dominated my senses even while she eluded them. In the filtered glow of sunlight through silk curtains, the flesh of her arms and face appeared as smooth as wax, but radiant with an inner warmth. Her stola was as transparent as the one she had worn before, but was of a different shade, a creamy white the exact color of her flesh. As we passed through dappled patches of sunlight and shadow, the illusion that she was naked was sometimes uncanny, until she moved, whereupon the dress moved with a life of its own, as if the shimmering fabric, provoked by her touch, sought to caress all the hidden places of her body.

  The box was suspended so as to stay level when the poles were tilted, but I could tell when we began the sharp descent down the western slope of the Palatine toward the Forum Boarium. The noises from outside grew louder as we passed through the great cattle market. The congested streets forced the bearers to come to numerous stops, and the smells of roasted flesh and live beasts for sale intruded on Clodia's perfume. The spell within the box slackened. I felt as if I were waking from a dream.