The Venus Throw rsr-4

by Steven Saylor

  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 were 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?"

  "A hook."

  "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 man
y 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 the 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."

  I stared at him blankly, unable to make sense of what he was saying. He went on, nonetheless. "Then you missed Crassus's whole speech. Just as well, actually. Nobody had a climax there! Seems Crassus was trying to get Caelius off the hook for all those killings on the way up from Neapolis, but if you ask me, Crassus never did learn how to give a decent speech. Plodding, plodding! Words, words, words, and not a memorable pun among them. He should stick to what he knows, making piles of money, and simply bribe the judges instead of boring them to death with bad rhetoric. He made Caelius look as guilty as Caelius managed to make, himself look innocent! It's all up to Cicero now. Who's this?" "My son," I said absently, and introduced Eco.

  "Well, good, you're both here for the real speech. Cicero's about to begin. Come, let's see if we can't move up a bit…"

  We managed to move considerably closer, so that I was able to see quite clearly the figure now stepping before the judges. Slender and frail when I first met him long ago, Cicero had become plump and thick-jowled in the years of his prosperity. The political triumph of his con-sulship had been followed by near-ruin, when his enemies managed to banish him; counterlegislation passed by Cicero's allies eventually welcomed him back, but not before the great man passed eighteen months in exile, during which time much of his property was destroyed by the mob. In his months away from Rome, Cicero had grown lean with worry, or so it was said. From the way his toga clung to his frame as he swaggered before the court, it looked to me that he had made short work of regaining both his girth and his stature.

  Clodius had once been Cicero's political ally, then his nemesis. Even now Clodius was attempting to keep Cicero from rebuilding his ruined house on the Palatine, claiming that the property had been legally seized by the state and sanctified for religious use, and so could not be recovered by Cicero. The two enemies waged war against one another in every arena they could find-on the floor of the Senate, in courts of law, in the reading of omens by priests and augurs. Between them burned the kind of hatred that can be extinguished only by death.

  That was reason enough for Cicero to hate Clodia, perhaps, since she was her brother's staunchest supporter and a party to his schemes. But what of the vague rumor which Catullus had repeated, about a stunted love affair between Clodia and Cicero, back when her brother and Cicero were allies? Perhaps he hated Clodia for reasons that had nothing to do with politics, or with Clodius. That would help to account for what he did to her that day. Or perhaps, like a good advocate, he simply did whatever was necessary to make sure Marcus Caelius was acquitted of the charges against him.

  As I watched Cicero deliver the final oration of the trial-one of the finest of his career, some would later say-I felt as if I were watching a play. Like a play, the action seemed distant from me, the dialogue out of my control; I was a spectator, powerless to stop or alter the course of unfolding events. But a playwright strives to elucidate some truth, whether mundane and comic or grand and tragic. Where was the truth in this strange play? Who was the villain, and who the tragic figure? It seemed to me that I was witnessing the sort of play where the action becomes increasingly tangled and absurd, until there is no way out of the mess except to bring on a god or a messenger to deliver a speech that makes sense of everything. But the messenger from offstage had already arrived: Eco, bringing the slave girl up from the south. Now I knew the truth about Dio's death, but no one on the stage seemed to know-not Cicero, no
r Caelius, nor Clodia. For me to reveal what I knew, to play the part of the god from the machine, was impossible. How could I incriminate my own wife?

  I could only watch, helpless and mute, as the battle between Clodia and Caelius reached its climax. Poison, deception and false accusation had already been deployed to attack and counterattack. Now Cicero, like a hoary old general, was brought out to deliver the final assault. Words would be his weapon. She doesn't understand the power of words, Catullus had said of Clodia. She was about to learn, in front of all Rome.

  "Judges," Cicero began, bowing his head respectfully and surveying the long rows of the jurymen, looking from face to face. "If there should be anyone present here today unfamiliar with our law courts and their customs, he must wonder at the terrible urgency of this particular case, seeing that all other public business has been suspended for the holiday and this is the one and only trial being held in the midst of public festivities and games. Such an observer would undoubtedly conclude that the defendant must be quite a dangerous fellow, a hardened renegade guilty of some crime so terrible that the whole state will collapse unless his transgressions are dealt with at once!

  "One would explain to such an observer that we have a special law which deals with criminal behavior against the state. When traitorous Roman citizens take up arms to obstruct the Senate, or to attack magistrates, or to try to destroy the government itself, we are obliged to proceed with trying such men regardless of holidays. Our observer would surely not object to such a law, dedicated to the preservation of the state itself. But he would want to know exactly what sort of charges were involved in the present case. Just imagine his reaction at being informed that no real crime or outrage was before the court at all. Instead, a talented, vigorous, well-liked young fellow is being prosecuted by the son of a man against whom the defendant recently brought charges. Furthermore, the whole prosecution has been organized and financed by a whore."