The Venus Throw - Roman Sub Rosa 04

by Steven Saylor

  "Papa! No, don't hug me, please. I'm filthy. And sore! I rode all night, knowing the trial must have already started. It's not over,

  is it?"

  "Not yet. Another full day of speeches—" "Good. Perhaps there's still time, then." "Time for what?" "To save Marcus Caelius."

  "If he needs saving," I said, thinking Caelius was doing a pretty good job of defending himself. "If he deserves to be saved."

  "I only know that he doesn't deserve to be punished for Dio's murder."

  "What are you saying?"

  "Caelius didn't kill Dio."

  "You're certain?"

  "Yes. I found the slave girl, Zotica, the one who was with Dio the night he died ... "

  "If it wasn't Caelius and Asicius, then who?"

  "I brought the girl back with me . . ."

  Eco suddenly looked very

  tired.

  "The girl killed Dio?" I frowned. We had considered and rejected that possibility already. "No."

  "But she knows who did?"

  "Not exactly." Why would Eco not look me in the eye? "All I can say is that your intuition was right, Papa. The girl was the key."

  "Well? What did you find out?"

  "I think you'd better talk to her yourself, Papa."

  The crowd behind us laughed at something, then laughed again, louder. I looked over my shoulder. "Caelius is just getting to the heart of his speech. Then Crassus will speak, then Cicero —"

  "Still, I think you'd better come, Papa. Quickly, before the trial gets any further along."

  "Can't you just tell me what the girl told you?"

  His face darkened. "I don't think that would be wise, Papa. It wouldn't be fair."

  "To whom, the slave girl?"

  "Please, Papa! Come with me." The look on his face convinced me. What terrible secret had so unnerved my son, who had seen all the corruption and duplicity that Rome had to offer?

  He had left the girl at his house in the Subura. We walked there as quickly as we could, threading our way through streets crowded with food vendors, acrobats and merry-makers.

  "Where did you find her?" I asked, stepping out of the way of a drunken band of gladiators coming up the street. They snarled at Belbo as they passed.

  "In one of the hill towns of the far side of Vesuvius, miles from Puteoli. It took some looking. First I had to find the brothel-keeper who'd bought the allotment of slaves that included Zotica. Do you have any idea how many establishments like that there are down on the bay? One after another told me he'd never seen Zotica, and they all wanted a bribe just to tell me that much, and even then they all seemed to be lying just to spite me. Finally I found the man who'd purchased her. But she'd been useless to him, he said. 'Worse than useless—nobody wants a girl with scars on her,' he told me, 'not even the mean ones.' Besides that, she'd turned wild." "Wild?"

  "That's what he calls it. I suppose a man like that tends to see slaves in conditions that most of us don't, or not very often. Her mind isn't quite right. Maybe she was always a little addled; I don't know. I think she must have been treated well enough in Coponius's house at the beginning, though the other slaves tended to pick on her. Then Dio came along. The girl was innocent, naive, maybe even a virgin. She had no idea of the kinds of things that Dio had in mind for her. She couldn't understand why he wanted to punish her when she'd done nothing wrong. She kept quiet about it at first, too afraid ofDio to resist him, too ashamed to tell anyone. When she finally did complain to the other slaves, some of them tried to intercede for her, but Coponius couldn't be bothered. Then, after Dio was killed, Coponius couldn't get rid of the girl fast enough. Since then she's been traded from hand to hand, abused, ill treated, unwanted. It must have seemed like a nightmare from which she couldn't wake up. It's done something to her mind. She can be perfectly lucid sometimes, but then . . . you'll see. It's made her unfit to be any kind of slave. When I finally found her she was living in the fields outside a farmer's house. He'd bought her for a kitchen slave and found her useless even for that. 'The girl's a scratcher and a biter,' he told me. 'Scratches and bites for no reason, like an Egyptian cat. Even beating won't do any good.' No one around would buy her, so the farmer turned her loose, like people do to old or crippled slaves, making them fend for themselves. I didn't even have to pay for her. I just had to find her, and then make her come with me. I thought I'd gained her trust, but even so she tried to run away twice, first outside of Puteoli and then again as we got close to Rome this morning. You see why it's taken me so long to get home. And I thought you were sending me on an easy job, Papa!"

  "If the girl told you what we needed to know, maybe you should have let her go."

  Darkness shadowed his face again. "No, Papa. I couldn't just repeat her story to you. I had to bring her back to Rome, so you could hear her for yourself."

  Menenia was waiting for us at the door, with folded arms and an uncharacteristically sour look on her face. I thought the look must be for Eco, for having brusquely rushed off to find me after dropping off the slave girl—young wives expect a bit more attention from husbands arriving home after a trip. But then I realized that the look was aimed at me. What had I done, except quarrel with my wife and not come home last night? Menenia couldn't possibly know about that already—or could she? Sometimes I think that the ground beneath the city must be honeycombed with tunnels where messengers constantly run back and forth carrying secret communications between the women of Rome.

  Eco had locked the girl in a small storage room off the kitchen. At the sight of us, she jumped up from the wooden chest where she'd been sitting and cowered against the wall.

  "I imagine she's frightened of Belbo," said Eco.

  I nodded and sent him out of the room. The girl relaxed, but only

  a little.

  "There's nothing to be afraid of. I already explained that to you, didn't I?" said Eco, in a voice more exasperated than comforting.

  Under better circumstances, the slave girl Zotica might have been at least passably pretty. She was far too young for my taste, as flat and bony as a boy, but one could see the delicate beginnings of a woman's face in her high cheekbones and dark eyebrows. But now, with her unwashed hair all sweaty and tangled and dark circles beneath her eyes, it was hard to imagine her as the object of anyone's desire. She certainly had no place in a brothel. She looked more like one of those furtive, abandoned children who haunt the city's streets looking for scraps of food and run in packs like wild beasts.

  Eco sighed. "Did you eat anything, Zotica? I told my wife to see that you were fed."

  The girl shook her head. "I'm too tired to eat. I want to sleep."

  "So do I. You can sleep soon. But now I want you to talk to someone."

  The girl looked at me warily.

  "This is my father," Eco went on, though I wondered what the word could mean to the child, who had probably never known a father. "I want you to tell him what you told me. About the man who came to stay at your master's house here in Rome."

  The very mention of Dio caused her to shiver. "About how he died, you mean?"

  "Not only that. I want you to tell him everything." The girl stared forlornly into space. "I'm so tired. My stomach hurts."

  "Zotica, I brought you here so that you could tell my father about

  Dio."

  "I never called him that. I never even knew his name until you told me."

  "He came to your master's house and stayed there for a time." "Until he died," she said dully.

  "He abused you."

  "Why did the master let him? I didn't think the master knew, but he did. He just didn't care. Then I was spoiled and he had to get rid of me. Now no one has any use for me."

  "Look at her wrists, Papa. The rope cut them so badly that you can still see the scars."

  "It's because I pulled at them," the girl murmured, rubbing at her wrists.

  "He tied them so tight, then put me over the hook."

  "The hook?" I said.

  "There w
ere metal hooks in the walls in his room. He'd tie my wrists and lift up my arms and trap me on the hook, so my toes barely touched the floor. My wrists would bleed. The rope would twist up even tighter when he'd turn me around. He would use me from the front, then the back. Beat and pinch and prod. Stuff things in my mouth to keep me quiet."

  "You should see the scars, Papa, but I'd be ashamed to make her lift up her dress to show you. You realize she's talking about Dio." Eco looked at me accusingly, as if I were responsible for the secret vices of a man I'd admired for so many years. My face turned hot.

  "A hook," I whispered.

  "What?"

  "Ahook."

  "Yes, Papa, imagine it!"

  "No, Eco, it's something else ..."

  "Yes, there's more. Go on, Zotica. Tell him about that final night."

  "No."

  "You have to. After that, we'll leave you alone, I promise. You can sleep for as long as you want."

  The girl shuddered. "He came in dressed . . ." She made a miserable face and shrugged. "Like a woman, I suppose. He looked awful. He made me come to his room. He made me take off my gown. 'Use it for a rag,' he said. "Wipe off this silly makeup.' He sat in a chair while I cleaned his face. He kept stopping me, fondling me, sliding his hand between my legs, making me bend over—acting just like always." The girl shook her head and hugged herself.

  "But then he pushed me away. He made a face and grabbed his stomach. He crawled onto his bed and made me lie next to him. Because he was cold, he said. But he felt hot to me. He pressed himself against me naked and I felt like I was being burned wherever he touched me. Then he started shivering, so much that his teeth chattered, and he made me fetch him more blankets. He told me to lower the lamp because the light hurt his eyes. He tried to get up from the bed but he was too dizzy. I asked him if I should go for help, but he told me not to. He was afraid. More afraid than I'd ever seen anybody, even a slave about to be whipped. So afraid I almost stopped hating him. He covered himself with the blankets and rocked back and forth on the bed, clutching himself biting his hands. I stood across the room as far away as I could, hugging myself because I was naked and it was cold. Then he turned on his side and vomited on the floor. It was awful. He closed his eyes and wheezed and gasped for air. Then he was quiet. After a while I shook him, but he wouldn't wake up. I just sat there on the bed, looking at him for a long time, afraid to move. Then it was over." "What do you mean, over?"

  She looked me in the eye for the first time.

  "He died. I saw him die."

  "How could you be sure?"

  "His whole body suddenly shook with a terrible fit. He opened his eyes and his mouth gaped open, like he was going to scream, but nothing came out except a horrible rattle. I jumped up from the bed and stood against the wall. He seemed to have turned to stone just like that, with his eyes and mouth wide open. After a while I walked over to him and put my ear to his chest. There was no heartbeat. If you'd seen his eyes— anyone would know they were the eyes of a dead man."

  "But the stab wounds," I said. "The window broken open, and the room a shambles—"

  "Let her finish, Papa." Eco nodded to the girl.

  "I didn't know what to do." Her jaw quivered and she wiped her eyes. "All I could think was that the master would blame me, and punish me. He would think that I killed the old man somehow. So I cleaned up the vomit—I used my gown, the one he'd already made me use for a rag to clean his face. Then I crept out of the room."

  "Where the door slave Philo saw you in the hallway," I said. "Naked and weeping, clutching your gown. He thought Dio had finished with you early. But Dio was already dead. Did you tell your master?"

  She shivered and shook her head.

  "But why not?"

  "All that night I lay awake in the slave quarters, thinking about what had happened. The master would think I had poisoned the old man. I didn't! But the master would think I did, and what would he do to me? I cried and cried, while the other slaves hissed at me to be quiet and go to sleep. But how could I sleep? Then there was an awful commotion from the old man's room. The whole house came awake. They'd broken into the room and found him. Now they'll come to me, I thought. They'll kill me, right here and now! My heart pounded in my chest so hard I thought I'd die."

  She let out a sob, then twisted her lips into a crooked smile. "But something amazing had happened. They didn't blame me at all. They thought the old man had been stabbed to death. Killers had broken into his room after I left him, they said, and cut him up with knives. I didn't know what to think. But the master never blamed me, so I never told anybody what had happened. With the old man dead, I thought every-thing would be like it was before." The smile vanished. "But instead everything changed. The master sold me. Everything just got more and more awful ... "

  "You're safe now," said Eco gently.

  The girl sagged against the wall and closed her eyes. "Please don't make me talk anymore. If only I could sleep ... "

  "No more talk," Eco agreed. "Stay here for now. One of the slaves will come to show you where you can sleep."

  We left her weeping softly and muttering to herself, her face pressed against the wall as if she could somehow melt into it.

  I followed Eco into the garden. "What does it mean?"

  "It means that Dio was poisoned, Papa."

  "But the stabbing —"

  "He was stabbed after he was already dead. You remarked yourself how little blood there seems to have been for so many wounds, how the wounds were all close together in his chest and there was no sign that he put up a struggle. Because he was already dead."

  "But someone broke into the room that night and scattered everything about. Someone stabbed him. Why?"

  "Perhaps it was Titus Coponius himself, because he didn't want it to get out that Dio was poisoned under his roof, and he wanted to make the death look like the work of assassins. But that's not really the point,

  is it?"

  "What do you mean, Eco?"

  "The important thing is that Dio was poisoned."

  "But how? Where? By whom? We know that he would touch no food in Coponius's house. And only a short time before, he left my house with a full stomach! As cautious as he was, he wouldn't have eaten anything else that night."

  "Exactly, Papa."

  "Eco, say what you mean!"

  "You needn't shout, Papa. You must be thinking the same thing."

  I stopped pacing. We stared at each other.

  "Perhaps."

  "The symptoms the girl described: if it was poison, what do you

  think—"

  "Gorgon's hair," I said.

  "Yes, I thought the same thing. Some time ago I gave you some gorgon's hair for safekeeping. I didn't want the stuff in my house with the twins. Do you remember?"

  "Oh yes," I said. My mouth was dry.

  "Do you still have it? Is it still where you put it?"

  My silence gave him the answer. Eco nodded slowly. "The last meal Dio ate was at your house, Papa."

  "Yes."

  "That's where he must have been poisoned." "No!"

  "Did someone use the gorgon's hair I gave you? Do you still have it or not?"

  "Clodia!" I whispered. "She wasn't pretending to be poisoned, then. The gorgon's hair she showed me could have come from Caelius, after all. Certainly not from Bethesda—not if the gorgon's hair in my house had already been used ... "

  "What are you whispering, Papa?"

  "But Caelius couldn't have killed Dio, not if he was poisoned first. You're right, he's innocent, of that crime at least ... "

  "I can't hear you, Papa." Eco shook his head, tired and exasperated. "The only thing I can't figure out is why anyone in your household would have wanted to poison Dio in the first place. Who knew the man, much less had any reason to want him dead?"

  I thought of my old Egyptian mentor, who secretly liked to tie up young slave girls and abuse them, and particularly liked to bind their wrists and hang them on hooks. I remembered th
e women in my garden, exchanging secrets about men who had raped them when they were young. I thought of Bethesda when she had been a slave in Alexandria, and the powerful, respected master who had used her mother so cruelly that he killed her, and would have done the same to Bethesda if she hadn't fought back and found herself carted off to the slave market instead, where a poor young Roman smitten by her beauty emptied his purse to pay for her, never dreaming he would take her back to Rome and make her his wife, obliging her to serve dinner to his guests and to give the first heaping portion to an esteemed visitor such as Dio of Alexandria . . .

  I had said to her,

  You have deliberately deceived me!

  Do you deny it?

  And she had answered,

  No, husband, I do not deny it. 'And I thought I understood!" "Papa, speak up—"

  "Cybele help us!" I shook my head.

  "I think I know the answer,

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Eco pressed me for an explanation, but I only shook my head. We made our way back to the Forum in silence through the hot, crowded streets of the Subura. The sky was cloudless and the sun directly overhead, casting a harsh, glaring light onto a world without shadows. Lit so brightly, objects became perversely indistinct. Edges ran together and views of the distance had no depth. The throngs of people going about their holiday

  business seemed faceless. I stared at them, not quite able to make them out. Old or young, male or female, smiling or frowning, standing quietly or shoving their way through the street, all seemed blurred together and equally strange. The city itself was unreal, dreamlike and slightly absurd. This feeling only intensified as we entered the Forum and rejoined the immense crowd attending the trial of Marcus Caelius.

  Catullus was where I had left him. "You missed Caelius's climax!" he said. "He did it into that little pyxis, to show everyone how. No, I'm only joking! But it was a good climax for all concerned. One thing about Caelius, he always strives to satisfy whoever he's with, not just himself. No judges or spectators left hankering and unfulfilled at Nola's walls, so to speak."