by Mike Ashley
Poplicola took me to see the body. Chrestus looked to have been fit for his age. His hands were soft; his master had not overworked him. His waxy flesh had a pinkish flush, further evidence that the poison had been bitter-almond.
Poplicola summoned the doorkeeper, whom I questioned in his master’s presence. He proved to be a tight-lipped fellow (as doorkeepers should be), and added nothing to what Poplicola had already told me.
Visibly shaken, Poplicola withdrew, with instructions to the doorkeeper to see me out. I was in the foyer, about to leave, when a woman crossed the atrium. She wore an elegant blue stola and her hair was fashionably arranged with combs and pins into a towering configuration that defied logic. Her hair was jet black, except for a narrow streak of white above her left temple that spiraled upward like a ribbon into the convoluted vortex. She glanced at me as she passed but registered no reaction. No doubt the censor received many visitors.
“Is that the censor’s daughter?” I asked the doorkeeper.
“No.”
I raised an eyebrow, but the tight-lipped slave did not elaborate. “His wife, then?”
“Yes. My mistress Palla.”
“A striking woman.” In the wake of her passing, a kind of aura seemed to linger in the empty atrium. Hers was a haughty beauty that gave little indication of her age. I suspected she must be older than she looked, but she could hardly have been past forty.
“Is Palla the mother of the censor’s son, Lucius?”
“No.”
“His stepmother, then?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” I nodded and took my leave.
I wanted to know more about Poplicola and his household, so that night I paid a visit to my patrician friend Lucius Claudius, who knows everything worth knowing about anyone who counts in the higher circles of Roman society. I intended to be discreet, honoring my oath to the censor, and so, after dinner, relaxing on our couches and sharing more wine, in a roundabout way I got onto the topic of elections and voting, and thence to the subject of census rolls. “I understand the recent census shows something like eight hundred thousand Roman citizens,” I noted.
“Indeed!” Lucius Claudius popped his pudgy fingers into his mouth one by one, savoring the grease from the roasted quail. With his other hand he brushed a ringlet of frizzled red hair from his forehead. “If this keeps up, one of these days citizens shall outnumber slaves! The censors really should do something about restricting citizenship.”
My friend’s politics tend to be conservative; the Claudii are patricians, after all. I nodded thoughtfully. “Who are the censors nowadays, anyway?”
“Lentulus Clodianus . . .” he said, popping a final finger into his mouth, “. . . and old Lucius Gellius Poplicola.”
“Poplicola,” I murmured innocently. “Now why does that name sound familiar?”
“Really, Gordianus, where is your head? Poplicola was consul two years ago. Surely you recall that bit of unpleasantness with Spartacus? It was Poplicola’s job as consul to take the field against the rebel slaves, who gave him a sound whipping – not once, but twice! The disgrace of it, farm slaves led by a rogue gladiator, thrashing trained legionnaires led by a Roman consul! People said it was because Poppy was just too old to lead an army. He’s lucky it wasn’t the end of his career! But here it is two years later, and Poppy’s a censor. It’s a big job. But safe – no military commands! Just right for a fellow like Poppy – been around for ever, honest as a stick.”
“Just what do the censors do?”
“Census and censure, their two main duties. Keep the roll of voters, assign the voters to tribes, make sure the patrician tribes carry the most weight in the elections – that’s the way of it. Well, we can hardly allow those 799,000 common citizens out there to have as much say in electing magistrates as the thousand of us whose families have been running this place since the days of Romulus and Remus; wouldn’t make sense. That’s the census part.”
I nodded. “And censure?”
“The censors don’t just say who’s a citizen and who’s not; they also say what a citizen should be. The privilege of citizenship implies certain moral standards, even in these dissolute days. If the censors put a black mark for immoral conduct by a man’s name in the rolls, it’s serious business. They can expel a fellow from the Senate. In fact . . .” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to emphasize the gravity of what he was about to say. “In fact, word has it that the censors are about to publish a list of over sixty men they’re throwing out of the Senate for breach of moral character – taking bribes, falsifying documents, embezzling. Sixty! A veritable purge! You can imagine the mood in the Senate House. Everyone suspicious of everyone else, all of us wondering who’s on the list.”
“So Poplicola is not exactly the most popular man in the Forum these days?”
“To put it mildly. Don’t misunderstand, there’s plenty of support for the purge. I support it myself, wholeheartedly. The Senate needs a thorough housecleaning! But Poppy’s about to make some serious enemies. Which is ironic, because he’s always been such a peacemaker.” Lucius laughed. “Back when he was governor of Greece in his younger days, they say Poppy called together all the bickering philosophers in Athens and practically pleaded with them to come to some sort of consensus about the nature of the universe. ‘If we cannot have harmony in the heavens, how can we hope for anything but discord here on Earth?’ ” His mimicry of the censor’s reedy voice was uncanny.
“Census and censure,” I murmured, sipping my wine. “I don’t suppose ordinary citizens have all that much to fear from the censors.”
“Oh, a black mark from the censor is trouble for any man. Ties up voting rights, cancels state contracts, revokes licenses to keep a shop in the city. That could ruin a man, drive him into poverty. And if a censor really wants to make trouble for a fellow, he can call him before a special Senate committee to investigate charges of immorality. Once that sort of investigation starts, it never ends – just the idea is enough to give even an honest man a heart attack! Oh yes, the censorship is a powerful office. That’s why it has to be filled with men of absolutely irreproachable character, completely untainted by scandal – like Poppy.” Lucius Claudius suddenly frowned and wrinkled his fleshy brow. “Of course, there’s that terrible rumour I heard only this afternoon – so outrageous I dismissed it out of hand. Put it out of my mind so completely that I actually forgot about it until just now . . .”
“Rumour?”
“Probably nothing – a vicious bit of slander put about by one of Poppy’s enemies . . .”
“Slander?”
“Oh, some nonsense about Poppy’s son, Lucius, trying to poison the old man – using a sweet cake, if you can believe it!” I raised my eyebrows and tried to look surprised. “But these kinds of stories always get started, don’t they, when a fellow as old as Poppy marries a woman young enough to be his daughter, and beautiful as well. Palla is her name. She and her stepson Lucius get along well – what of it? People see them out together now and again without Poppy, at a chariot race or a play, laughing and having a good time, and the next thing you know, these nasty rumours get started. Lucius, trying to poison his father so he can marry his stepmother – now that would be a scandal! And I’m sure there are those who’d like to think it’s true, who’d love nothing better than to see Poppy pulled down into the muck right along with them.”
The attempted poisoning had taken place that afternoon – and yet Lucius Claudius had already heard about it. How could the rumour have spread so swiftly? Who could have started it? Not Poplicola’s son, surely, if he were the poisoner. But what if Poplicola’s son were innocent of any wrongdoing? What if he had been somehow duped into passing the deadly cake by his father’s enemies, who had then gone spreading the tale prematurely . . .
Or might the speed of the rumour have a simpler explanation? It could be that Poplicola’s doorkeeper was not nearly so tight-lipped as his terse answers had led me to think. If the doorke
eper told another slave in the household about the poison cake, who then told a slave in a neighbor’s house, who then told his master . . .
I tried to keep my face a blank, but Lucius Claudius saw the wheels spinning in my head. He narrowed his eyes. “Gordianus – what are you up to? How did we get on to the subject of Poplicola, anyway? Do you know something about this rumor?”
I was trying to think of some way to honour my oath to the censor without lying to my friend, when I was saved by the arrival of Lucius Claudius’s beloved Momo. The tiny Melitaean terrier scampered into the room, as white as a snowball and almost as round; lately she had grown as plump as her master. She scampered and yapped at Lucius’s feet, too earthbound to leap on to the couch. Lucius summoned a slave, who lifted the dog up and placed it on his lap. “My darling, my sweet, my adorable little Momo!” he cooed, and in an instant seemed to forget all about Poplicola, to my relief. Bitter-almond is a difficult poison to obtain. I am told that it is extracted from the pits of common fruits, but the stuff is so lethal – a man can die simply from having it touch his skin, or inhaling its fumes – that most of the shady dealers in such goods refuse to handle it. The rare customer looking for bitter-almond is usually steered into purchasing something else for his purpose, “Just as good,” the dealer will say, though few poisons are as quick and certain as bitter-almond.
My peculiar line of work has acquainted me with all sorts of people, from the highest of the high, like Poplicola, to the lowest of the low – like a certain unsavoury dealer in poisons and potions named Quintus Fugax. Fugax claimed to be immune to every poison known to man, and even boasted that on occasion he tested new ones on himself, just to see if they would make him sick. To be sure, no poison had yet killed him, but his fingers were stained permanently black, there was a constant twitch at the corner of his mouth, his skin was covered with strange splotches, his head was covered with scabs and bald spots, and one of his eyes was covered with a rheumy yellow film. If anyone in Rome was unafraid to deal in bitter-almond, it was Quintus Fugax.
I found him the next day at his usual haunt, a squalid little tavern on the riverfront. I told him I wanted to ask some general questions about certain poisons and how they acted, for my own edification. So long as I kept his wine cup full, he agreed to talk with me.
Several cups later, when I judged that his tongue was sufficiently loosened by the wine, I asked him if he knew anything about bitter-almond. He laughed. “It’s the best! I always tell people so, and not just because I’m about the only dealer who handles it. But hardly anybody wants it. Bitter-almond carries a curse, some say. People are afraid it’ll turn on them, and they’ll end up the dead one. Could happen; stuff can practically kill you just by you looking at it.”
“Not much call for bitter-almond, then?”
“Not much.” He smiled. “But I did sell a bit of it, just yesterday.”
I swirled my wine and pretended to study the dregs. “Really? Some fishmonger wanting to do in his wife, I suppose.”
He grinned, showing more gaps than teeth. “You know I never talk about my customers.”
I frowned. “Still, it can’t have been anyone very important. I’d have heard if some senator or wealthy merchant died from sudden convulsions after eating a hearty meal.”
Fugax barked out a laugh. “Ha! Try a piece of cake!”
I caught my breath and kept my eyes on the swirling dregs. “I beg your pardon?”
“Customer wanted to know if you could use bitter-almond in an almond sweet cake. I said, ‘Just the thing!’ ”
“What was he, a cook? Or a cook’s slave, I suppose. Your customers usually send a go-between, don’t they? They never deal with you face-to-face.”
“This one did.”
“Really?”
“Said she couldn’t trust any of her slaves to make such a sensitive purchase.”
“She?”
He raised his eyebrows and covered his mouth, like a little boy caught tattling, then threw back his head and cackled. “Gave that much away, didn’t I? But I can’t say who she was, because I don’t know. Not poor, though. Came and went in a covered litter, all blue like her stola. Made her bearers stop a couple of streets away so they couldn’t see where she went and I wouldn’t see where she came from, but I sneaked after her when she left. Watched her climb into that fancy litter – hair so tall she had to stoop to get in!”
I summoned up a laugh and nodded. “These crazy new hairstyles!”
His ravaged face suddenly took on a wistful look. “Hers was pretty, though. All shiny and black – with a white streak running through it, like a stripe on a cat! Pretty woman. But pity the poor man who’s crossed her!”
I nodded. “Pity him indeed . . .”
The enviable corner spot on the street of the bakers was occupied by a family named Baebius; so declared a handsomely painted sign above the serving counter that fronted the street. A short young blonde, a bit on the far side of pleasingly plump but with a sunshiny smile, stepped up to serve me. “What’ll you have today, citizen? Sweet or savoury?”
“Sweet, I think. A friend tells me you make the most delicious little almond cakes.”
“Oh, you’re thinking of Papa’s special. We’re famous for it. Been selling it from this shop for three generations. But I’m afraid we don’t have any today. We only make those every other day. However, I can sell you a wonderful cheese and honey torte – very rich.”
I pretended to hem and haw and finally nodded. “Yes, give me one of those. No, make it three – hungry mouths at home! But it’s too bad you don’t have the almond cakes. My friend raves about them. He was by here just yesterday, I think. A fellow named Lucius Gellius.”
“Oh yes, we know him. But it’s not he who craves the almond cakes, it’s his father, the censor. Old Poplicola buys one from every batch Papa bakes!”
“But his son Lucius was here yesterday?”
She nodded. “So he was. I sold him the sweet cake myself and wrapped it up in parchment for him to take to his father. For himself and the lady he bought a couple of little savoury custards. Would you care to try –”
“The lady?”
“The lady who was waiting for him in the blue litter.”
“Is she a regular customer, too?”
The girl shrugged. “I didn’t actually see her; only got a glimpse as Lucius was handing her the custard, and then they were off towards the Forum. There, taste that and tell me it’s not fit for the gods.”
I bit into the cheese and honey torte and feigned an enthusiastic nod. At that moment, it could have been ambrosia and I would have taken no pleasure in it.
I made my report to Poplicola that afternoon. He was surprised that I could have concluded my investigation so swiftly, and insisted on knowing each step in my progress and every person I had talked to. He stood, turned his back to me, and stared at the sombre red wall as I explained how I came to suspect the use of bitter-almond; how I questioned one of the few men who dealt in that particular poison, plied him with wine, and obtained a description that was almost certainly of Palla; how the girl at the bakery shop not only confirmed that Lucius had purchased the cake the previous day, but saw him leave in a blue litter with a female companion.
“None of this amounts to absolute proof, I admit. But it seems reasonably evident that Palla purchased the bitter-almond in the morning, that Lucius was either with her at that time, and stayed in the litter, or else joined her later, and then the two of them went to the bakery shop, where Lucius purchased the cake. Then one or both of them together sprinkled the poison on to the cake –”
Poplicola hunched his gaunt shoulders and produced a stifled cry, a sound of such despair that I was stunned into silence. When he turned to face me, he appeared to have aged ten years in an instant.
“All this is circumstantial evidence,” he said, “not legal proof.”
I spoke slowly and carefully. “Legal proof is narrowly defined. To satisfy a court of law, all the s
laves involved would be called upon to testify – the litter bearers, your doorkeeper, perhaps the personal attendants of Palla and Lucius. Slaves see everything, and they usually know more than their masters think. They would be tortured, of course; the testimony of slaves is inadmissible unless obtained by torture. Acquiring that degree of proof is beyond my means, Censor.”
He shook his head. “Never mind. We both know the truth. I knew it all along, of course. Lucius and Palla, behind my back – but I never thought it would come to this!”
“What will you do, Censor?” It was within Poplicola’s legal rights, as paterfamilias, to put his son to death without a trial or any other formality. He could strangle Lucius with his own hands or have a slave do it for him, and no one would question his right to do so, especially in the circumstances. He could do the same thing to his wife.
Poplicola made no answer. He had turned to face the wall again, and stood so stiff and motionless that I feared for him. “Censor . . .?”
“What will I do?” he snapped. “Don’t be impertinent, Finder! I hired you to find out a thing. You did so, and that’s the end of your concern. You’ll leave here with some gold in your purse, never fear.”
“Censor, I meant no –”
“You swore an oath, on your ancestors, to speak of this affair to no one but me. I shall hold you to it. If you’re any sort of Roman –”
“There’s no need to remind me, Censor,” I said sharply. “I don’t make oaths lightly.”
He reached into a pouch within his purple toga, counted out some coins, laid them on the little table before me, and left the room without saying another word.
I was left to show myself out. On my way to the foyer, addled by anger, I took a wrong turn and didn’t realize it until I found myself in a large garden surrounded by a peristyle. I cursed and turned to retrace my steps, then glimpsed the couple who stood beneath the colonnade at the far corner of the garden, their heads together as if engaged in some grave conversation. The woman was Palla. Her arms were crossed and her head was held high. The man, from his manner towards her, I would have taken to be her husband had I not known better. Lucius Gellius looked very much like a younger replica of his father, even to the chilly stare he gave me as I hastily withdrew.