When Julia didn’t come out for several minutes, I decided that we had found our woman. I wasn’t used to dancing attendance in such a fashion and I fidgeted uncomfortably, wondering what to do. When I left Hermes this way, he usually sneaked off somewhere for a drink. I always upbraided him for this habit, but now it seemed like an excellent idea. I was looking around for a promising booth when Julia called to me to come inside.
The woman was neither old nor young. She wore a coarse woolen gown about the same shade of brown as her gray-shot hair. She sat amid the usual baskets of dried herbs and jars of unguents.
“Good day to you, sir,” she said with a thick Oscan accent.
“Decius, this is Ascylta,” Julia told me, although by that time I scarcely needed to be informed. “Ascylta is a wise woman. She is learned in the lore of vegetation and animals.”
“Ah, just the lady we have been looking for,” I said, unaware of how much Julia had told the woman.
“Yes, but you are not here for my herbs. You are the senator who is asking about Harmodia.”
“She guessed,” Julia said, smiling sheepishly. “But we’ve been having a nice talk.”
“You people don’t need to wear your fine clothes for us to know who you are,” Harmodia said. “The way you talk is enough. The highborn people send their slaves when they just want herbs for the household. They come personally only for poisons or abortions. No woman brings her man along when she wants to get rid of a child.”
“A wise woman indeed,” I said.
“You are not an official from the aedile’s office,” she said. “Why do you want to know about Harmodia?” To these market people the aediles were the totality of Roman officialdom.
“I think that she sold poison to someone, and I think that the buyer had her killed to silence her. I am looking into the death of a most important man, and I have been warned not to look into her death. My life has been threatened.”
She nodded gloomily. I studied her as closely as I could, trying to remember whether I had seen her out on the Campus Vaticanus. I tried to picture her without her clothes, her hair streaming wildly, dancing frantically to the music of pipe and drum. She did not look familiar, but there had been so many.
“It is Furia and the Marsi and the Etruscans who want you to stay away, is that not so?”
“It is,” I said. “Was Harmodia one of them? I know that she was from Marsian country, but was she a member of their … their cult?”
Her gaze sharpened. “You know about that, do you? Aye, she was one. Some say she was their leader, and now Furia has taken her place as high priestess.”
“Do you know whether Harmodia sold poisons?” I asked.
“They all do. The strigae, I mean, not honest saga like me. It isn’t such an uncommon trade. Usually, it is a wife who wants to rid herself of a husband who beats her or a son impatient for his inheritance. Sometimes it is just someone who is tired of life and wants a painless way to die. Everyone knows it is dangerous to sell to the highborn, to the people who talk like you two. That is what brings the aediles down upon us. But many are greedy. Harmodia was greedy.”
“How greedy?” Julia asked.
Ascylta seemed puzzled by the question. “Well, everyone knows that the highborn can afford to pay better than others. A seller will charge them ten, twenty, even a hundred times what they would demand from a peasant or a villager. To one who would inherit a great estate or be rid of a rich, old husband to marry a rich, young lover, the money is trifling.”
“I understand,” Julia said. “What I meant was, do you think Harmodia was greedy enough to be dissatisfied with even an exorbitant price for her wares? Might she have heard of the murder and demanded money for her continued silence?” Once again, my wisdom in bringing Julia along was vindicated. I had not thought of this.
“I cannot say, but I certainly would not put it past her. She was the one who dealt with the aediles, you know.” Her mouth twisted in sour distaste. “She was the one who passed along the fees to them. We were all assessed, and no small part of our monthly dues stuck to her fingers.”
“Shocking!” Julia muttered. In some ways she was remarkably naive.
“You have no idea whether the poison buyer was a man or a woman?” I asked her.
“I could not tell you who bought it nor when it was bought. But between the October Horse festival and the night she died, she was spending more freely than before. Her booth had new hangings and her clothes were all new. I heard she had bought a farm up near Fucinus.”
So far this wasn’t getting us anywhere. “Tell me this, Ascylta. Do you know of a poison that produces death in this way?” And I described the symptoms of Celer’s death as they had been described to me by Clodia. Following my recitation, Ascylta thought for a few minutes.
“There is a poison we call ‘the wife’s friend.’ It is a combination of herbs carefully blended, and it produces death as you describe, almost impossible to distinguish from a natural passing.”
“I would think it would be the most popular poison in the world,” I observed.
“It is not an easy one to make. It requires many ingredients and even I know only a few of them. Some of the ingredients are quite rare and costly. It is not easy to administer because it has a most unpleasant taste.”
“Does it work swiftly?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Very slowly. And it is cumulative. It must be given in small doses over a period of many months, in constantly increasing doses.”
“Why ‘the wife’s friend’?” I asked. “Why not ‘the heir’s friend’? I would think it was ideal for someone impatient to come into a legacy.”
She looked at me as if I were simple-minded. “Sons do most of the inheriting. How many men take food or drink daily from the hand of a son?”
“Would Harmodia have known how to mix this poison?” Julia asked.
“Oh, yes. It is a specialty of the Marsian striga …” she cut short, as if a sudden thought had struck her. “Now I think on it, twice last year a Greek-looking man came to my booth for some dried foxglove. It’s used in several medicines, but it’s also one of the ingredients of that poison. The reason I recall this man is that he came to my stall from Harmodia’s. Hers was beneath the next arch but one, and I usually sit outside mine so I saw where he came from.”
“And you think she might have been selling him that poison, but was out of foxglove those two times?” I asked.
She shrugged. “It could be. He just stuck in my mind because he didn’t look like our usual customers.”
“Why so you say that?” Julia asked her. “You’ve said he was Greek-looking. What was unusual about him?”
“Well, he was very tall and thin, and he wore very expensive clothes in the Greek fashion, three or four gold rings and expensive amulets. And in the front of his mouth, on the bottom, he had a couple of false teeth bound in with gold wire the way they only do in Egypt.”
We spoke a while longer, but the woman was able to remember nothing more of any use to us. We thanked her and gave her some money and got out of the cramped little tent.
“What do you think?” Julia asked. “Have we learned anything?”
“We now have a likely poison, if he was poisoned at all. As for the bad taste, Celer was in the habit of taking a cup of pulsum every morning. That stuff is so vile someone could mix bat dung in it and you’d never notice.”
“So suspicion still points at Clodia. What about the Greek-looking man?”
“Could be a coincidence. Harmodia may have sold that poison to a number of customers, and the foxglove was just one ingredient anyway. As Ascylta said, the ones buying poison usually come personally. Not many want to trust a job like that to a confederate. And if Harmodia was killed because she was extorting the buyer, well, that bothers me too.”
“Why?” We were wandering back toward the Forum with no particular aim in mind.
“Urgulus said the woman was nearly beheaded. It takes a strong man to
do that with a knife. Somehow I feel that Clodia would have done something more discreet and tidy.”
“If she was covering her tracks, she’d deliberately want to direct attention away from herself, wouldn’t she? This city is full of thugs who would do such a thing for a handful of coins. If half the stories about her are true, she might have offered him payment in kind.”
There was something wrong with what she was saying, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Most likely, I was distracted by my craving for something to eat and some wine to wash it down with.
“You are letting your dislike of her color your judgment.”
“I think you are trying to find her innocent when that is the most unlikely conclusion possible. So what now?”
“I must talk to a few people: the ex-tribune Furius, with whom Celer had so many colorful rows last year; and Ariston, the family physician who attended him at the time of his death. But I don’t think I’ll be able to find them today.”
When we reached the Forum, a man approached me. He was a dignified individual whom I recognized vaguely as a prominent lawyer and one of my father’s clients. He gave me the usual formal salutation.
“Decius, your father instructs you to attend the slave banquet in his house this evening. You may bring your own staff. He says there are important matters to discuss. He couldn’t send a slave to fetch you today so I’m the errand boy.”
“And a splendid job you’ve done, my friend. I thank you. Io Saturnalia.”
He walked off and I grimaced. “His house! I was hoping to have mine at home. Then I could get the disagreeable business over with early.”
“It’s the oldest tradition of the holiday,” Julia chided. “The rest of it is meaningless without the banquet.”
“It’s all pretty meaningless, if you ask me,” I groused. “All this Golden Age posturing and fake leveling of classes. Who can take it seriously?”
“The gods, one presumes. Now quit whining. Your father probably has some important men to confer with you. This could be useful. I shall be attending at the banquet in the house of the pontifex maximus so I may be able to pick something up.”
She kissed me and bade me good-bye, and I stood pondering amid the monuments and the riotous crowd. This business had begun with great promise, and now I was awash in a sea of irrelevancies and meaningless complications, with a terrible feeling that I would probably never be able to find out what had happened. In such circumstances I did the only thing possible. I went to look for a drink. When all the other gods fail you, there is always Bacchus.
10
WITH HERMES, CATO, AND CASSANDRA, I walked through the streets to my father’s house. The slaves were in a good humor because they knew my father was able to set a far better table than I. I was less eager because my father had a lot of slaves. That, I decided, was why he had insisted that I come. He wanted me to help out.
We found the house laid out with the tables and couches set up within the peristyle, since the triclinium was far too small to hold them all. To my great relief father had persuaded some of his freedmen to help out. Most of these were men and women recently manumitted who had no slaves of their own to tend to.
Hermes was already half-drunk and when he crawled onto the couch he wiggled his feet at me insolently until I took his sandals. Just wait, I thought to myself. I felt better about serving Cato and Cassandra. They had served my family all their lives and hadn’t all that much time left to them. They rated a little indulgence.
For the next couple of hours we brought in the platters, kept the wine cups filled, and generally behaved as slaves. The banqueters, in turn, behaved like aristocrats and ordered us around. They observed certain unspoken limits though, all too aware that they would be slaves again tomorrow.
It was almost worth the bother to see Father, sour-faced old paterfamilias that he was, hurrying about, bringing platters from the kitchen, mixing water and wine in the great bowl, keeping a wary eye on the silver lest it wander away.
At last the slaves were replete and betook themselves to the streets to take part in the night-long festivities. I dropped my napkin on the floor and searched among the wreckage for something to eat. I was famished. I was also thirsty and I dipped out a good-sized cup of wine. It was too heavily watered for my taste, but I did not feel like searching out a fresh jug.
“Don’t get drunk,” Father said. “You are to speak with some important men. They should be here soon.” Like me, he was loading a plate from the scattered remnants of the slave banquet. The freedmen were helping themselves as well. Somebody turned up an almost complete tunny fish, and we divided it. There were also some first-rate olives and no shortage of bread. The slaves had gone straight for the meats and exotic fruits, things they seldom got to eat during the rest of the year.
I took a seat and began to munch. “Father,” I asked, “do you know where Ariston of Lycia lives? He attended Celer when he died and I have a few questions I want to ask him.”
“Never had any dealings with the man,” Father said, biting into an apple. “I was never ill in my life. My wounds were all treated by legionary surgeons. Besides, I think you’re too late. I heard he was dead.”
“Dead?” I said, dropping a piece of long-cold fish.
“That’s right, dead. It happens to most people if they live long enough. I heard he was found in the river back”—he paused to remember—”back around the Ides of November, if I recall correctly.”
The Ides of November. Harmodia was found dead on the morning of the ninth. I was willing to bet that Ariston had died a few days earlier than the Ides. Had he detected signs of poison? If so, why had he said nothing? Perhaps he was another blackmailer.
“Oh, well,” I said, “that’s one less to consult.”
“There may be no need anyway,” Father said. “If what you saw out on the Vatican is sufficient evidence, we may get similar results without having to prove a murder.”
“Cicero thinks I have almost no chance of bringing charges.” I did not tell him that Clodius wanted me to prove Clodia innocent. Things were complicated enough as it was.
“You told him about it?” Father said, irritated. “I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish by that. Cicero is a timid little novus homo with dreams larger than his talent. He told you that because he fears that he would not be able to secure a conviction in such a case. Cicero is like a man who goes to the races but will bet only on what he conceives to be a sure thing, the problem being that he is a wretched judge of horses.”
Much as it nettled me to hear it, there was no little justice in what Father said. I revered Cicero for his brilliance, but he was subject to frequent failures of nerve. His learning was vast, but he could never comprehend his place in the Roman power structure. This I attributed to his obscure origins. Always insecure, he idolized the long-established aristocracy, championed their cause, and thought that made him one of them. In the end, his indecision and self-delusion were to kill him.
I was still brushing crumbs from my tunic when our guests began to arrive. First to appear was the curule aedile Visellius Varro, an undistinguished man, rather advanced in years for the office he held. I read him as a plodding careerist with no great future, and I was right. Next came Calpurnius Bestia whom I already knew and disliked, but I also knew him to be an extremely capable man so I swallowed my distaste. He was wrapped in a tatty robe of off-purple color, probably dyed with sour wine. On his head was a voluminous chaplet of gilt ivy leaves, and his face was painted crimson like that of an Etruscan king or a triumphing general.
“I was chosen King of Fools at a big party on the Palatine,” he proclaimed, grinning. I restrained myself from saying that he had to be the only logical choice.
The final arrival came as a surprise.
“Caius Julius,” Father said, taking his hand, “how good of you to come. I know how busy you must be with your own preparations.”
“If the matter touches upon our religious practice, the pontifex
maximus must hear of it and rule upon it.” Caesar delivered this line without the faintest trace of irony. He could say the most incredibly pompous things and somehow manage never to sound either embarrassed nor overtly hypocritical. I never knew another man who could do this.
Father, like most of the Metelli, detested Caesar’s politics and everything else he stood for. On the other hand, Caesar had become one of the most promising contenders for power and might, against all odds, succeed to great prominence. As a family, we Metelli liked to place a bet on every chariot in the race. I had the discomforting suspicion that, as Nepos was the clan’s man in Pompey’s camp, I would be expected to play the same role with Caesar. My betrothal to Julia was a purely political maneuver as far as my family was concerned.
Father began. “Allow me to preface these proceedings by informing you that my son has been investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer.”
“ ‘Circumstances surrounding the death,’ “ I said. “I like that. It sounds much better than just, say, looking into the way the old boy croaked. I may use it myself when I …”
“I assure you, my friends and colleagues,” Father said, overriding me, “that his peculiar talent is the only reason I had for recalling my son to Rome.” He looked pained. Well, he was getting old.
“Tell us, young Decius,” Caesar said, “just how did you come to be out there on the Vatican field in the dead of night?”
I gave them a somewhat truncated account of my investigation, leaving Clodius’s semipeace treaty out of it. He had probably already told Caesar, but there was no reason for the others to know.
“Clodia!” Varro said. “That woman could destroy the Republic all by herself.”
Caesar smiled indulgently. “I don’t think the Republic is all that fragile. She is an embarrassment, no more.”
“More an embarrassment to you than to the rest of us, Caesar,” Bestia put in.
SPQR V: Saturnalia Page 16