And then there was the question of my disobeying a direct order of the governor. In a Roman province the governor is a virtual king. To go against an order of his is to align oneself against Rome. Never in my short life had I contemplated doing such a thing. Were those green eyes and that golden hair worth this risk?
“I don’t see any sign of anyone else,” Timothy said as we approached the walls of old Smyrna. “Do you think the witch will come out here tonight?”
“I doubt it. I’m sure she and her people had planned to move Chryseis and Melissa by night away from Smyrna. But I saw them talking in the dining room of the inn after the governor promulgated his order that everyone must stay there tonight. They were obviously irritated.”
“They do have local contacts,” Timothy said. “They could turn the business over to them.”
“I suppose so. But all is quiet, so I think we should count ourselves fortunate and not waste any more time speculating about other people’s plans. Let’s carry out ours and let them worry about us.”
This time we rode right up to the ruined temple. The moon, just past full, gave enough light for us to walk around the base of the temple until we found an entrance to the storerooms under it. Damon struck a flint to light one of the torches we had brought, and Timothy and I descended into the ruin. Damon stayed with the horses, his shepherd’s sling ready.
The stairway was reasonably wide, since it was used for moving items in and out of storage during festivals and sacrifices. In the basement of the building we found a long passageway with rooms opening off one side of it. The rats registered their objections to our presence, squeaking and scurrying in all directions. The doors of most of the rooms—made of heavy wood—were still intact. Some stood open; others were closed. The first two that we looked into were empty, looted long ago of anything of value.
In the third room we found the carcass of a dog, one of the witch’s Molossian hounds. It had been stabbed several times in the throat and stomach. The blood was dry but it was clear the beast had died within the last day. The flies and rats had barely begun their work on him. There was blood on his teeth, suggesting he inflicted injury on someone before his death.
Turning a corner we came upon a door that was blocked. A beam of wood had been braced between the door and the base of the opposite wall.
“I wonder what’s in there,” I said.
“Another dog?” Timothy said nervously.
“A very quiet one then. There’s no barking. Give me a hand.” I threw my shoulder against the beam and Timothy reluctantly pitched in. As soon as we made a noise with it we heard a hard thump against the door from inside the room.
Timothy jumped back. I took out my sword as the thump resounded again.
“I don’t think it’s a dog,” I assured Timothy. “These monsters bark at anything.”
One more jolt knocked the beam loose and we opened the door. The torchlight fell on the pitiful sight of Melissa, lying on the floor gagged and with her hands tied behind her and her gown bunched up around her waist. A quick glance around the room confirmed my worst fear: Chryseis wasn’t here. I knelt, pulled Melissa’s gown down, and untied her.
“My lord!” she cried as soon as I had the gag out of her mouth. “Thank God you’ve come. They’ve taken Chryseis. I couldn’t stop them.” She began to cry.
As I freed her hands it seemed to me that the knot was loosely tied. For a moment I couldn’t help but wonder if she might have tied herself up. She had betrayed my trust once; I intended to be hard to fool again.
“What happened?” I said when I had freed her. “Tell me everything, slowly and from the beginning.”
“Could we please get out of here?” she begged. “It’s so dark, and the rats. . .” She shuddered.
I supported her as we made our way back to the stairs, stopping to pick up her bag and Chryseis’, and up into the night air. She took a few steps away from the temple and sat on a fallen block of marble.
“Douse the torch,” I told Timothy. “No need to send a beacon to advertise our presence to anyone else.” He rubbed the flame in the dirt. “Now, tell us what happened,” I said to Melissa.
The slave woman’s olive complexion glistened in the moonlight, especially the tears on her cheeks. Her eyes stood out almost like an animal’s. She fixed them on me but said nothing. I decided to give her a start on her story, like priming a pump.
“You made arrangements with Anyte to help you and Chryseis escape, didn’t you?”
She drew a deep breath, then began to recount what had happened. Her voice was not so much soft as toneless, with no spirit to it.
“Yes, my lord. We were brought to the temple and left here with a dog for protection. I spent the day cutting Chryseis’ hair and trying to darken it and her skin so she wouldn’t stand out so much as we traveled east. I was going to disguise her as my son. The women were supposed to come back tonight and take us to another hiding place.
“But this morning three men discovered us hiding in the basement of the temple. The dog attacked them, but they managed to kill it. One of the men was bitten rather badly. They seemed confused when they found us. Their orders, one of them said, were to bring the blonde girl back. One, the one who had been bitten, wanted to kill me so I couldn’t identify them. Another objected. He didn’t agree to do a murder, he said, just to find the girl and bring her back. The leader said if he couldn’t kill me, he was at least going to have some fun with me. I begged him not to do it in front of Chryseis. Take me in another room, I said, and I would do anything he wanted without a fight. So he threw me into that room and two of them tied me up and—and they raped me.
“The one who didn’t want to kill me left me some food and water and loosened the rope enough that I could work my hands free in time. Somebody would find me in a few days, he said, but they would be far enough away by then that it wouldn’t matter.”
“Had you ever seen any of these men before?” I asked.
“No, my lord. I have no idea who they were. Believe me, I would tell you if I knew. It’s the only way we’ll get Chryseis back.”
“It sounds as though someone hired them,” Timothy put in.
“I agree,” I said. “Think carefully, Melissa. Did they say anything that might point to the person who hired them? Or anything about where they were going?”
“No, my lord. I’ve told you virtually every word they said.” She put her face in her hands and began to cry. I think women learn to do that on command so they can avoid saying anything more than they want in certain situations. That phrase ‘virtually every word’ left me uneasy. Would the words she had left out tell me something I needed to know?
Melissa rode behind Damon as we traveled back to Apelles’ house. Several of the women there took her under their wings and hustled her off to clean her up. When she returned to join us in the garden my first reaction was that she looked composed. As we talked I decided that ‘defeated’ might be a more accurate word.
“We all need to get some rest,” I told her. “My dilemma is whether I can trust you to stay in a room by yourself.”
She dropped to her knees in front of me and hung her head. “My lord, I promise you that I will stay put. My only hope of finding Chryseis is to cooperate with you.”
“You know punishments for runaway slaves can be severe. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to protect you. The governor is here now, and my influence over events has been reduced to practically nothing.”
She looked up. “What happens to me no longer matters, my lord. Just find Chryseis.”
We found a room on the interior of the house for her this time, as far from any exterior doors as possible. And I ordered Damon to sleep on a pallet outside her door in any case.
As I retired for the night I tried to put together some of the pieces of this puzzle which seemed to have appeared for the first time today. Florus suspected Luke, just because he was a doctor. That seemed ludicrous to me, but had I been taking the kindly old gentlema
n for granted? And Saturninus? He disappeared soon after Chryseis did. No one had seen him all day. He was, it turned out, a minion of Regulus’.
Had I been looking at the right hydra, just the wrong tentacle?
XIII
THE SUN WAS BARELY UP when a heavy pounding on the front door resounded through Apelles’ house like the blows of a battering ram. The servant who answered it found himself facing a small squad of Florus’ soldiers, fully armed and menacing. I, as is my habit, had awakened early and, with Damon, was waiting for Luke and Timothy in the atrium. Damon had assured me, on his life, that no one had gone into or out of Melissa’s room last night. I took a few steps toward the door, since I was sure that the soldiers had come for me.
The squad’s leader rested his hand on the hilt of his sword and announced, as though he were bellowing an order to a full legion, “His excellency, Lucius Mestrius Florus, proconsul of Asia, requires the presence of Gaius Pliny, the doctor Luke, and Timothy of Ephesus at the inquiry into the death of Lucius Manilius Cornutus, now convening in the inn of Androcles.”
I stepped forward. “I’m Gaius Pliny,” I said, suddenly nervous for some reason. I felt as if a chilly shadow had passed over me. Superstitious people might have said it was an omen of what was to come. But I’m not superstitious. “We’ll be ready to leave in just a moment. Let me get the others.”
“Please be quick, sir.”
I met Luke, Timothy, and Melissa coming into the atrium. “We’d better go,” I said. “Florus has sent us an escort in full panoply. I’m worried that, if we take Melissa in with us, we’ll disrupt the proceedings and raise questions about where Chryseis is. I’d rather Florus focus on Cornutus’ murder. At the same time I don’t want to be accused of harboring an escaped slave.”
“She could stay here,” Luke said, “until later in the morning. The governor will want to know she’s been found but, you’re right, it might be better to save that news until a more auspicious time.”
“All right, we’re agreed then. Melissa, I’ll leave Damon here to accompany you. Come along to the inn in about two hours. And you will hold true to your word, I trust.”
Melissa nodded. “My lord, I have placed myself in your hands. I’ll do whatever you say.” Her voice was subdued, and she did not hold herself with the dignity I had noticed before, the carriage that would not let you identify her as a slave if you passed her in the street. She seemed shrunken.
I whispered quick instructions to Damon; then Luke, Timothy and I joined the eight soldiers for the walk to the inn. The soldiers surrounded us so that I felt more like a prisoner being transported than a person who was allowing himself to be escorted. We drew stares from the slaves setting out on their morning errands and the shopkeepers who were preparing to welcome their business. I’m sure they wondered what crime we had committed.
Our route took us down the Golden Street, through the agora with its unusual pillars of red-veined white marble, and then through some of the narrower side streets, where it became difficult for the soldiers to hold their formation. We turned into a disorganized knot of people sidestepping the garbage and waste. Had my uncle, in his Natural History, really called this place a ‘light of Asia’? He obviously had never been here, and had picked up the encomium from something he read.
A crowd of people was milling outside the door to the inn when we stamped into view. I could hear Androcles’ voice, protesting the loss of his morning business. Florus had taken over his dining room to hold his inquiry. The crowd outside the door, I gathered, consisted of his displaced customers. Squawk all he might, there was nothing Androcles could do. The governor of a province has the right to commandeer any facilities he needs to do his job. Androcles might soon wish he was still dealing with me and my pretenses of being a magistrate, rather than with the genuine item, backed by the might of Rome.
The soldiers quickly parted the crowd outside the door and allowed us entry. I thought I heard Luke mutter something to Timothy about the Red Sea, but I had no time for clarification. Florus, with Marcellus at his elbow, turned a lawyer’s smile on us. “Ah, Pliny. How nice to see you. I trust you slept well.” I wondered if he knew about the little ride we had taken.
“Yes, excellency, I did. Thank you.” I pretended not to notice the sarcasm, but I couldn’t fail to observe Marcellus’ smirk.
“Are you ready for the proceedings to begin then?”
“I am at your disposal,” I said with a slight bow of my head, “except that I’m not properly dressed. I apologize for not having my toga on.” Marcellus was wrapped in a toga so white I had to squint when I looked at him, with the senatorial stripe prominently in view. I didn’t want to appear any less majestic. “If you don’t mind the delay,” I said, “I will go upstairs and put it on.”
“Don’t be concerned about it,” Florus said, adjusting his own toga. “We aren’t in Rome. Let’s just get this business settled.”
He took his seat in a chair against one wall of the dining room. Normally a magistrate sits on a raised platform. He compensated for the lack of height by establishing a lot of open space around him. The slaves who served as his scribes sat to his right. The tables had been pushed back to the edges of the room, leaving a large open area where people would stand while being interrogated. The rest of us, and as many spectators as space permitted, sat or stood at whatever spots we could find on the periphery. Tacitus worked his way through the crowd to stand beside me. The eight soldiers who had accompanied us assured order by their grim visages and spears, like so many Priapus figures in a garden meant to frighten away malevolent spirits.
Since Androcles had found the body, he was summoned first to tell what he knew, which was precious little. Those who slept in the surrounding rooms were asked if they had heard anything. They all, of course, claimed to have been sleeping like the dead. I knew that Gaius Sempronius had been debauching Androcles’ young daughter; I wondered how many others had been engaged in other activities besides sleeping. The questions were pointless. Cornutus had been poisoned before he even got into bed. Of that I was sure. There would have been little, if any, noise when his heart was cut out because he was long since dead when that happened. I wanted someone to ask if any of these people had any reason to want Cornutus dead. Had anyone quarreled with him in Syria and been biding his time until he could settle the score?
I had some trouble deciphering Marcellus’ role in this process. Sitting closer to the governor than anyone except the scribes, at a table with several pieces of papyrus scattered in front of him, he frequently interjected questions, with Florus’ blessing. But he wasn’t prosecuting or defending anyone—except perhaps himself. Roman law provides no formal procedure for such an inquest. The governor or other presiding magistrate has the power of inquisitio, the power to ask questions about any matter he chooses. But I had never seen a magistrate rely on a private citizen in this way.
I leaned over to Tacitus and whispered, “What do you make of Marcellus?”
“He and Florus had their heads together over dinner last night,” he whispered in return. “I think Florus knows he’s completely out of his depth here.”
A sick feeling took root in my stomach. Marcellus had had an entire evening to ingratiate himself with Florus, to put his version of Cornutus’ murder before him, to poison his mind, in a very real sense. Had I made a crucial mistake by not being present to offer an antidote? Now Melissa was going to walk into an enemy camp, defended only by my youthful enthusiasm for the truth. I should have just given her a horse and wished her well on her journey. But she wouldn’t have left without Chryseis.
Tacitus, Luke, and I were next asked to describe our observations of the body. I kept my comments brief and deferred to Luke on account of his expert medical knowledge. The three of us had pledged ourselves not to mention anything about poison. It was the only way we could lull the real killer into a false sense of security. When Luke finished, Florus turned to Marcellus with an eyebrow raised.
“Do
ctor,” Marcellus said, “in your opinion, what caused Cornutus’ death?”
“After hearing my description, sir, I’m surprised you would ask that question.”
I mentally applauded him for his neat evasion of the issue and his jab at Marcellus. Marcellus smirked. I was sure he thought that not even the doctor was aware that Cornutus had been poisoned.
With the conclusion of Luke’s testimony, the process seemed at a standstill. We had learned nothing I didn’t already know. Florus appeared to be at a loss as to where to go. He looked expectantly at Marcellus, who was shifting the pieces of papyrus on his table.
Before Marcellus could say anything, a stir ran through the crowd as Melissa and Damon squirmed through them and into the makeshift courtroom. Marcellus fixed on Melissa at once and pointed dramatically at her. “There, excellency,” he intoned, “is one of the keys to finding the person who committed this heinous crime.” Florus half rose out of his chair.
To keep him from convicting her on the spot, I stepped forward and took her by the arm. “Excellency, this is Melissa, the slave and concubine of Cornutus. I found her last night. She has returned of her own volition to assist in this inquiry.”
“A slave has no volition of her own,” Marcellus said.
Florus raised his hand for silence. “I thought there were two missing slaves. Wasn’t there also a girl?”
“Yes, excellency,” I said. “The girl Chryseis is still missing. Three men found her hiding place yesterday morning and took her away. They left Melissa to die.” The crowd murmured, starting a new wave of rumors that would be all over Smyrna before lunch.
Marcellus began to sound and handle himself more and more like a lawyer in court. “Excellency, are we expected to believe such nonsense?” he snorted. “How convenient that three men, who I’m sure can’t be identified, have taken the girl to some unspecified place. The only way we’re going to get reliable information out of this woman is to torture her. Her and all the rest of Cornutus’ slaves. Gaius Pliny has been very fastidious to see that Roman usage was followed in his investigation of Cornutus’ death, but he conveniently neglected the requirement that a murdered man’s slaves be tortured for information and then put to death if the culprit cannot be identified. Now there is a complicating factor of a runaway slave to be dealt with.”
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