Saturnalia

11

Rome awoke to the great, collective hangover of the day after Saturnalia. All over the city hundreds of thousands of bleary eyes opened, the merciless light of morning pierced through them, and a vast groan ascended unto Olympus. Patrician and plebeian, slave and freedman, citizen and foreigner, all were afflicted and were half certain that Pluto had them by the ankle and was dragging them toward the yawning abyss; and, on the whole, they viewed the oblivion of the trans-Stygian world as not such a bad prospect after all. Even Stoic philosophers were retching into the chamberpot that morning.

But not me. I felt fine. For once I had been moderate in my intake and what little I had imbibed I had sweated out in my flight through the city the night before. For the first time since leaving Rhodes I’d had a decent night’s sleep. I awoke clear-eyed, clear-headed, and ravenously hungry. The sun was high and it flooded through my window as though Phoebus Apollo were especially pleased with me.

“Hermes!” I bellowed. “Cato! Get up, you lazy rogues! The world is back to normal now!”

I got up and went into the little sitting room I use for an office. I threw open the latticed shutters and breathed in the clear air and listened to the songs of the birds and did all those things that I ordinarily despise. As a rule, morning is not my favorite time of day. I heard a slow shuffling behind me and Cato pushed the curtain aside.

“What do you want?” he asked grumpily. I’d seen livelier looking mummies in Egypt.

“Bring me some breakfast,” I ordered. “Where’s Hermes?”

“No sense calling for that wretch. He won’t be finished vomiting until noon. Those young ones don’t have the head or the stomach for proper celebrating.” He shuffled off chuckling, then moaning.

I unwrapped my bandaged hand and was pleased to see that the cut was almost healed. Everything seemed to be going well that morning. I took out one of my better tunics and my best pair of black, senatorial sandals. To these I added my second-best toga, since I was likely to be calling on some official people that day.

Cato brought in bread, cheese, and sliced fruit, and as I fueled myself for the day ahead I planned out my itinerary. In a city as sprawling as Rome, geography is the most important consideration. The idea is to avoid backtracking and, above all, climbing the same hill twice. In a city as hilly as Rome, this last is difficult. I dipped a piece of bread in garlic-flavored olive oil and thought about it.

I decided to try Asklepiodes first. He would be in the Transtiber, and I could stop at the Temple of Ceres on the way back into the City. Besides, as a man of moderate habits the Greek was unlikely to be in a homicidal mood this morning. I called for hot water and went through the unfamiliar act of shaving myself. It would not be a good day to entrust myself to the shaky hand of a public barber.

Dressed and freshly, if inexpertly, shaved, I went out into the uncommonly subdued streets of the City. Rome seemed to be half-deserted and looked as if it had been defeated in a major war. It was something of a miracle that no destructive fires had started during the uproarious celebrations. Everywhere people lay like the corpses of slain defenders, only snoring much more loudly. Discarded masks, chaplets, and wreaths littered the streets and public buildings.

On a hunch I took the Fabrician Bridge to Tiber Island. On a good many mornings Asklepiodes was to be found in the Temple of Aesculapius, and if he was there I would be spared the walk to the ludus where he had his surgery. The splendid bridge had been built four years earlier by the tribune Fabricius, who never did anything else, but who ensured the immortality of his name with this gift to the city. Relative immortality, anyway. I suppose in a hundred years another bridge will stand there bearing another politician’s name, and poor old Fabricius will be forgotten. For once, the beggars who ordinarily throng all the bridges of Rome were absent, sleeping it off with the rest.

The morning was unseasonably warm and children crowded the bridge’s abutments and supports, diving into the chilly water, screaming in delight, or more sedately fishing with long poles. While their elders slept off the excesses of the night before, the children of Rome had an extra holiday, free from supervision.

I paused in the middle of the bridge and savored the sight. To the east and south the City bulked behind its ancient walls, the gleaming temples atop the hills lending it the semblance of the home of the gods. The play of the children below me made the scene as idyllic as something from a pastoral poem. How deceptive it all was. But I could remember playing here myself as a child on the day after Saturnalia. The bridge was wooden then, but otherwise things were unchanged. There in the water had been the real holiday, when noble and common and slave and free and foreigner were all the same. We had yet to acquire the hard and bitter perspectives of adulthood.

Or maybe I was idealizing the memory. Children have their own cruelties to go with their own terrors. I continued my walk, knowing I was not made to be a poet.

The Temple of Aesculapius had the serenity possible only to a temple that is built upon an island. The majestic, dignified temple towered above the curiously ship-shaped walls that enclosed the long and tapering island, complete with ram and rudder, all of stone. The plantings of the temple grounds were among the finest to be seen anywhere in or near the City. The cedars, imported all the way from the Levant, were especially stately.

I arrived just as the priests and staff were finishing a morning ceremony that included the sacrifice of the traditional cock. The ceremony was in the Greek fashion and was conducted entirely in Greek, in the dialect of Epidaurus, whence the god had come to Rome. I spotted Asklepiodes among those attending and waited until the ritual was over.

“Ah, Decius,” he said, when I caught his eye, “I suppose you are in need of a morning-after remedy?”

“Not at all,” I said proudly.

“At last you learn moderation. That stay on Rhodes must have done you some good.”

“All the gods forbid it. No, I was just too busy last night to indulge. I came to speak with you about my investigation.”

“Wonderful. It was beginning to look like a boring day. Come with me.” We went outside and found a bench beneath one of the cypresses. Asklepiodes brushed a few leaves from it and we sat. “Now tell me all about it.”

I gave him Clodia’s description of the symptoms Celer had evinced prior to his demise, and he listened attentively.

“This tells me very little, I fear. I wish I could confer with Ariston of Lycia, but as you may have heard he is unavailable.”

“All too true. I had hoped to question him closely. Not only about the events surrounding Celer’s death but whether he had been treating him for any other condition. Clodia wouldn’t necessarily know.”

“They were not close?”

“It would be fair to say that.”

“I had little liking for Ariston. He was over fond of money and may have strayed from the strict Hippocratic path in his pursuit of it.”

“I have my suspicions of the man as well.” I told him of Harmodia’s murder and its uneasy propinquity to the supposed drowning of Ariston. “Did you happen to examine his body after it was found?”

“No. I attended his funeral, but there was no suspicion of foul play so we all assumed it to be an ordinary drowning. He had an injury on the side of his head, but it was assumed that he had fallen over the parapet and struck his head on one of the bridge supports before landing in the water. It was after a banquet, and if he had imbibed too much, such a fate is hardly a matter for suspicion.”

“He was our family physician, but I don’t think I ever saw him. He probably attended my mother in her final illness, but I was in Spain at the time.”

“You would have remembered him if you had seen him. He was a striking man, very tall and thin. He smiled more often than necessary to show off his expensive Egyptian dental work.”

My spine sang like a plucked bowstring. “Egyptian dental work?”

“Yes. Right here”-he pulled down his lower lip with one finger-”he had two false teeth bound in with gold wire. Excellent work, I might add. There is no one in Rome skilled in that craft. You have to go to Egypt, and Ariston was always fond of reminding people that he had lectured at the Museum of Alexandria. As,” he added complacently, “have I.”

But I wasn’t listening. I silenced him with a raised hand and told him what I had learned from Ascylta, and he all but clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together with glee. Then, of course, he had to have the rest of the story out of me, and he chuckled with each horrible new revelation. Sometimes I wondered about Asklepiodes.

“This is marvelous!” he proclaimed. “Not a mere sordid poisoning but an ancient cult of human sacrifice and filthy politics as well!”

“Not to mention,” I pointed out stiffly, “what now looks like the involvement of the medical profession.”

That soured his face. “Yes, well, that is rather scandalous. It is a greater straying from the path of Hippocrates than I ever suspected Ariston of undertaking.”

“What about this poison, the one Ascylta called ‘the wife’s friend’?”

“I have never heard of it, but there is no medical reason why it cannot exist. The presence of foxglove alone would make it potent.”

“Did Ariston have assistants, students or others familiar with his practice?”

“Assuredly. I usually saw him with a freedman named Narcissus. Ariston’s offices were near the Temple of Portunus. If Narcissus plans to assume Ariston’s practice, he may still be there.”

“Will you accompany me?” I asked as I stood.

“Decidedly.” He grinned. We left the island and walked back into the city through the Flumentana Gate. The district was not one of Rome’s better ones, despite the presence of some of Rome’s most ancient and beautiful temples. The dwellers there were involved mainly in the port trade: wharfage, warehousing, barge hauling, and so forth. More foreigners lived there than in any other district within the walls of Rome. Worst of all, the district was directly adjacent to the outlets of Rome’s two largest sewers, including the venerable cloaca maxima. The smell that morning was dreadful, although not as lethal as on a hot summer day.

Ariston’s surgery was located on the upper floor of a two-story building that faced the Forum Boarium. The ground floor was a shop selling imported bronze furniture. The stairway was external, running up the side of the building to an open terrace surrounded on three sides by planter boxes full of ivy and other pleasant greenery. The railing of the stair and the corners of the parapet around the terrace were decorated with sculptured symbols of the medical profession: serpents, the caduceus, and so forth.

We found Narcissus on the terrace, examining a patient in the bright light of morning. He looked up with surprise at out arrival.

“Please, do not let us intrude,” Asklepiodes said.

“Master Asklepiodes!” said Narcissus. “By no means. In fact, if you would do me the courtesy, I would greatly appreciate a consultation.”

“Of a certainty,” Asklepiodes said.

“Good day, Senator … my apologies, but I feel that I should know you.” Narcissus was a handsome, serious-looking young man with dark hair and eyes. Around his brows he wore the narrow hair fillet of his profession, tied at back in an elaborate bow.

“You have treated members of his family,” Asklepiodes said. “This is the senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.”

“Ah! The facial features of the Metelli are indeed distinctive. Welcome, Senator Metellus. Are my services required by your family?”

“I take it then that you’ve assumed the practice of the late Ariston?”

“I have.”

“No, I have some questions about your former patron and mentor. But please attend to your patient first.”

Narcissus turned and clapped his hands. A hungover slave appeared from the penthouse that formed the fourth side of the terrace. “Bring a chair and refreshment for the senator,” the physician ordered.

The man in the examining chair was a stout specimen in his thirties, whose head was a bit malformed on one side. He wore a somewhat sleepy, dazed expression.

“This is Marcus Celsius,” Narcissus said. “He is a regular patient of mine. Last night, during the celebrations, he passed by a tenement where a party was being held on the roof. A tile was dislodged from the parapet and fell four stories, striking him on the head.”

The slave brought me a chair and a cup of warmed wine, and I sat down to watch the proceedings with interest.

“I see,” Asklepiodes said. “Was he carried here or did he walk?”

“He walked and he can speak, although his words grow disjointed after a while.”

“So far, so good then,” Asklepiodes said. He went to the patient and felt the man’s skull with long, sensitive fingers. He probed and poked for a few minutes, during which the patient winced slightly, and only when he touched the minor lacerations of the scalp. Satisfied, Asklepiodes stepped back.

“You are of course familiar with the On Injuries of the Skull of Hippocrates?” Asklepiodes said. He had switched to Greek, a language in which I was tolerably fluent.

“I am, but like my former patron I commonly deal with illnesses rather than injuries.”

“What we have here is a fairly simple depressed skull fracture. The detached cranial fragment moves rather freely and should only need to be lifted back into place and perhaps set with silver wire. I cannot say until I see the fracture exposed, but it may be possible to raise the fragment with a simple probe. Otherwise, it may be done with a screw. My Egyptian slaves are very skilled in both procedures.”

Actually, Asklepiodes did much of his own cutting and stitching, but that was not considered respectable by the medical community, so in public he pretended that his slaves did it all. “The injury is common among the boxers who wear the caestus, so we have a few such cases after almost every set of games that feature athletic contests.

“It is of course impossible to predict these things with certainty,” he went on, “but I see no reason why a complete recovery may not be effected. Have him carried to my surgery at the Statilian ludus and we shall operate this afternoon.”

“I am most grateful.”

Narcissus called in a pair of muscular assistants and they bore off the unfortunate Marcus Celsius. No mention was made of fees, such things being forbidden. But physicians, like politicians, have their own ways of arranging favor for favor.

“Now, Senator,” Narcissus said, “how may I be of service?”

“Your former patron, Ariston of Lycia, attended my kinsman, the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, in his final illness. Did you accompany him on that occasion?”

He nodded gravely. “I did. He was a most distinguished man. His passing was a great misfortune to Rome.”

“Indeed. Did Ariston remark at the time upon, oh … any irregularities in the manner of Celer’s passing?”

“No, in fact he stated rather emphatically that the symptoms were those common to death from natural, internal disorders such as attend a great many common deaths. This time, he declared, the only unusual circumstance was the seemingly robust health enjoyed by the deceased.”

“You said ‘seemingly robust health,’ “I pointed out. “May I know why you qualify it thus?”

“Well, first of all, he was dead. This alone means that he was not as healthy as he had seemed.”

“Clearly, unless said good health was terminated by an outside agent. Poisoning has been freely conjectured.”

Narcissus nodded, a puzzled expression on his fine, serious features. “I know. It made me wonder why Ariston never told the widow or the close relatives about Celer’s previous visits.”

My scalp prickled. “Previous visits?”

“Yes. I said nothing at the time because that would have been in violation of the confidentiality that must always exist between physician and patient. But since both Celer and Ariston have passed on, I see no reason why I should withhold evidence that should lay to rest these rumors of poison.”

“None indeed,” I said encouragingly. “Please, do go on.”

“Well, you see, the distinguished consul came here about a month before the termination of his period in office, needing urgently to confer with my patron.”

“Wait,” I said, “he came here?”

“Oh, yes. Ordinarily, of course, a physician is summoned to attend upon so prominent a client. But in this instance, the consul called after dark, dressed as an ordinary citizen. Truly, this is not a terribly uncommon occurrence. You must understand,” he glanced back and forth between Asklepiodes and myself, “that the confidentiality I mentioned sometimes calls for clandestine meetings between physician and patient.”

“To be sure,” I affirmed. More than once I had called upon Asklepiodes to patch me up after some extra-legal encounters.

“So it was in this instance. The consul had been suffering severe pains in the chest and abdomen. He was a strong and soldierly man and was able to conceal this infirmity from even his closest companions. Apparently even his wife was unaware of it.”

“Not a difficult bit of deception considering how much they saw of each other,” I commented.

“And you must understand why he did not want his condition to become known?”

I nodded, much becoming clear. “Exactly. He had been given the proconsular command everyone has been drooling over for the last year or two: Gaul. He couldn’t afford to appear unfit for the command.”

“It was not the first time a man of great public importance came to Ariston for confidential treatment of a condition potentially injurious to a career, rather as women often resort to the clandestine treatment of a saga for the well-known condition so injurious to marriage.”

“And did Ariston provide a satisfactory treatment for the consul’s condition?” Asklepiodes asked.

“As you know, Master Asklepiodes, the symptoms evinced in this case are the classic signs preceding death from apoplexy, although men may suffer them for many years before the inevitable happens. However, Ariston provided a medication sufficient to suppress the painful symptoms.”

“I see,” Asklepiodes said, apparently full of professional interest. “Do you know what the contents of this prescription might have been?”

Narcissus frowned slightly. “No, Ariston insisted that I was not yet advanced enough in my studies to entrust with that particular formula.” That flicker of disloyalty told me why Narcissus was willing to discuss Ariston’s questionable behavior. “I do know that each time Celer was given a supply sufficient to last for a matter of weeks.”

“He had some on hand at the time of the first visit?” I asked.

“Yes. I heard him instruct the consul to take it each morning. Celer said that he would mix it with his morning pulsum.”

“I see. This way the vinegar would disguise the taste of the medicine?”

He looked puzzled. “No. He told Celer that the medicine was nearly tasteless. But the consul was a man of regular habits, and the pulsum would ensure that he took it regularly every morning.”

I glanced at Asklepiodes and he raised his eyebrows quizzically.

“How many times did Celer call here?” I asked.

“Three times that I am aware of. The last time was about half a month before his death.”

I stood. “You have been most helpful, Narcissus. I am grateful.”

He stood as well. “It is nothing. Consider it a part of my service to the illustrious Metelli.” Reminding me that he, and he alone, would follow in the footsteps of Ariston of Lycia as physician to the Metelli. Asklepiodes and I made our way down the stairs.

“What do you think?” I asked when we were out on the street. Before us lay the cattle market, where even the livestock looked hung over.

“Much is now made plain, but much is obscure. In the first place, Celer may not have had a fatal condition at all. Narcissus is correct in naming the symptoms as those of a preapoplectic condition, but they could as easily reveal ulceration of the stomach or esophagus, not uncommon conditions among men who spend their careers arguing with people.”

“The condition is hardly material. What is important is that it provided an excuse to introduce poison into the daily ingestion of a man who rarely needed medication. I think there is no doubt that we have our poisoner here.”

“The question is one of motive,” Asklepiodes said. “Why would a man like Ariston want to poison Celer? He was unscrupulous, I admit, but this is rather extreme.”

We were walking along the street, our heads down and our hands behind our backs, like two academic philosophers conferring on abstruse points of logic. Or was it the peripatetics who walked around like that?

“Cicero has expounded to me upon a very basic principle of criminal law, a question the investigator must ask himself and a prosecutor expound to the jury in every case of anomalous wrongdoing: Cui bono? Who stands to benefit from this?”

“As you have said, Celer was not a man without enemies.”

“Envious enemies. Noisiest and most colorful among them being the tribune Flavius.”

“Their public rows were the talk of Rome last year,” Asklepiodes said. “But Roman politics are usually boisterous. And yet it seems to me that Flavius accomplished his ends without resorting to poison.”

“Not for certain. The very day he dropped, Celer was going to court to sue for the return of his Gallic command. Flavius still stood to lose.”

“But by that time Flavius was out of office,” Asklepiodes pointed out.

“Out of the office of tribune. But he was standing for the office of praetor for next year, and it wouldn’t have looked good if his coup against Celer failed. Besides, their conflict went far beyond ordinary partisan politics and into the realm of personal insult and violence. Plain revenge could play a part here.”

“That much makes sense,” Asklepiodes admitted. “But how would he have known that Celer would need to be treated by Ariston?” Learned as Asklepiodes was, he did not extrapolate very well, probably the result of receiving wisdom from long-dead Greeks.

“Ariston told him. You heard Narcissus say that the medication was supposed to be tasteless?”

“And was puzzled by the statement. It scarcely agrees with what the woman Ascylta said.”

“That is because the first time Celer visited he was given a legitimate medication, at least one that was not harmful. Once Ariston realized the possibilities, he went shopping for someone needing his services. In the case of Celer, there was probably no shortage of buyers.”

“That was extraordinarily cold-blooded.”

“I suspect that it was not the first time. He knew exactly where to go to find the poison he needed. He may have been a regular patron of Harmodia’s little stall. A list of Ariston’s late patients might make for some interesting reading. Who is in a better position than a physician to surreptitiously hasten one’s transport to the realm of shades?”

“Assuredly,” he murmured, “this is a most exceptional case.”

“I don’t doubt it a bit. Still, from now on I shall be very careful in my choice of physicians. I am, of course, more than fortunate in having a friend such as you to patch me up while I am in Rome.”

“Will your stay be a lengthy one this time?” he asked.

“No, everyone wants me away while Clodius is tribune. My father wants to pack me off to Gaul with Caesar.” An involuntary shudder ran down my spine. “I must find some way out of it.”

“If I may make so bold, certain men have come to me desirous of avoiding hazardous service. The usual expedient is to amputate the thumb of the right hand and pretend that it occurred in an accident. I am quite skilled at the operation, should you …”

“Asklepiodes!” I said. “How utterly unethical!”

“This presents a problem?”

“No, I’d just rather not lose my thumb.” I held up that unique digit and exercised it. “It comes in handy. Nothing like it for jabbing a man’s eye in a street fight. No, I’d feel incomplete without it. Besides, nobody would believe it was accidental. I’d be accused of cowardice and barred from public office.”

“Even heroes resort to stratagems to avoid particularly onerous or foolhardy military adventures. Odysseus feigned madness, and Achilles dressed as a woman.”

“People already think I’m insane. Anyway, if I dressed like a woman, everyone would think I was just one of Clodia’s odd friends.”

“Then I fear I run short of suggestions. Why not go? You might find it amusing, and a countryside filled with howling savages is no more dangerous than Rome in unsettled times.”

“Yes, why not? Shall I suggest to Caesar that you accompany the expedition as army surgeon?”

“And here I must leave you,” he said, turning abruptly. “I must go prepare to operate on the unfortunate Marcus Celsius.” He walked off in the direction of the Sublician Bridge.

I proceeded to the Forum, where Rome was beginning to come shakily to life. Most of the drunks had risen like animated corpses to totter off and seek dark corners to continue their recovery. The business of the City was resuming, after a somewhat late start. Everywhere, state slaves were listlessly but steadily plying their brooms and mops, repairing the wreckage of Saturnalia.

I went to the basilicas and asked questions and eventually ended up in the Basilica Opimia, where several of the praetors-elect were conferring, making their final arrangements for the ordering of their courts. Some of them had already assumed the purple-bordered toga of curule office; others were waiting until the beginning of the new year.

A slave pointed out the man I was seeking. He was one of the stripe wearers, tall and craggy-featured, with unruly, graying hair that stuck out from his scalp in stiff waves. His beak of a nose was flanked by the sort of cold, blue eyes you don’t want to see looking at you over the top of a shield. I walked up and presented myself for his attention.

“Lucius Flavius?” I asked, not bothering with his title since he had yet to assume office.

“That is correct,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.”

“Then you are a man of distinguished lineage.” Clearly, his warmth toward the Metelli was limited.

“I am looking into the circumstances surrounding the death of Metellus Celer. I understand you had some rather notable run-ins with him.”

“That was last year. I am busy preparing for next. By whom have you been commissioned to investigate?”

“By the tribune Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica and …”

“A tribune is not a curule officer,” he snapped. “He cannot appoint an iudex.”

“This is an informal investigation requested by my family,” I told him. “Including Metellus Nepos, who would appreciate your cooperation.”

That gave him pause. “I know Nepos. He’s a good man.” As long as both supported Pompey, they would be colleagues. Flavius put a hand on my shoulder and guided me to a relatively uncrowded alcove of the vast, echoing building. “Is it true that Nepos will stand for next year’s consular election?”

“It is.”

He rubbed his stubbly chin. He hadn’t dared to trust a barber that morning either. “It will be an important year to have such a man in office, if he wins.”

“He will win,” I said. “When a Metellus stands for consul, he usually gets the office. It’s been that way for more than two centuries.”

“All too true,” he mused. “Very well, what do you want to know?”

“I understand that your disputes with Celer were occasions of public violence.”

“Not all of them, but a few times. What’s unusual about that? If our debates didn’t involve a little blood on the pavement from time to time, we’d all turn into a pack of effeminate, philosophy-spouting Greeks.”

“We certainly wouldn’t want that. Do I understand correctly that the gist of your dispute was the land settlement for Pompey’s veterans?”

“You do. And a more just and politically wise policy could hardly be imagined. Celer was the leader of the loony end of the aristocratic party. They’d rather face civil war than give public land to hungry veterans who’ve earned it. And for all their protestations, it’s because they’ve been using that land themselves at a nominal rent or wanted to buy it up cheap. They …”

I held up a hand. “I know the argument, and I am fully in sympathy with the land settlements.”

He settled his ruffled feathers. “Well, even Cicero supported the settlement, once he’d added some amendments concerning compensation for former owners, and Cicero is a notorious supporter of the aristocrats.” He shook his head and snorted through his formidable nose. “Those last weeks in office Celer seemed scarcely in control of himself once he got angry.”

His last month in office Celer had been taking Ariston’s medication. I wondered whether this might have affected his judgment and self-control.

“He was especially indignant over your depriving him of the proconsulship of Gaul?”

“Who wouldn’t be? But I considered his behavior in office disgraceful and urged the Popular Assemblies to overrule the Senate and that was that.”

“Except that he was suing to get the command returned to him,” I commented.

“Yes. But he died before he could win his case. What difference does it make? If he hadn’t died in Rome he’d have died in Gaul, and it would be some legate tidying up the paperwork to hand it over to Caesar right now.” The way he pronounced Caesar’s name told me what he thought of him.

“I think Celer would not have died if he had gone to Gaul.”

“Why should that be?”

“I now know for a fact that Celer was poisoned.”

“That’s unfortunate, but he never should have married that slut.”

“No, I am nearly certain that Clodia is entirely innocent, for once.”

“Then what is this all about?” he asked suspiciously.

“When you urged the assemblies to strip Celer of his imperium in Gaul, did you also try to get it transferred to Pompey?”

“Of course I did! Pompey is the most capable general of our age. He would settle that Gallic business quickly, efficiently, and at the minimum cost to Rome.”

I knew better than to argue Pompey’s merits, or rather lack of them, with one of his rabid supporters.

“So Pompey was the man with the most to lose if Celer was given back Gaul,” I said.

“What are you implying?” His face went dark. “Pomptinus was continued in command in Gaul until the matter could be settled, so he gains. Caesar is to have the whole place for five years, so he gains. Pompey is serving here in Italy on special civilian commissions and has made no move at all to take Gaul from Caesar. If you are looking for a poisoner, Senator Metellus, you are looking in the wrong place! Go look into Caesar’s doings! Good day to you, sir, and if you come to me again with unfounded allegations I shall have my lictors drag you into court!” He whirled and stalked off.

I sighed. One more powerful man in Rome disliked me. I would just have to live with it. I had borne up beneath such burdens before. I walked out into the sunlight and went to provoke somebody else. Back across the Forum and past the Circus Maximus and up the slope of the Aventine to the Temple of Ceres. The elderly freedman and the slave boy I had encountered two days before were still there, but there were no aediles present. I asked after Murena, fearing that he would still be home in bed, nursing an aching head like much of the City.

“The aedile Caius Licinius Murena,” the freedman said importantly, “is in the jeweler’s market this morning.”

So I went to find him. Outside, on the temple steps, I paused in case the slave boy should run out with more information to sell. After a reasonable interval I set off for another trudge: back past the circus, back past the cattle market, and through the Forum. No matter how I tried to plan, I always seemed to be retracing my steps.

The jeweler’s market sold a great deal more than jewelry, but all of the wares displayed there were expensive luxury goods: silks, perfumes, rare vases, furniture of exquisite workmanship, and a great many other things I couldn’t afford. There the merchants did not operate from tiny booths and tents that they set up and took down every day. The jeweler’s market was a spacious, shady portico where the dealers could display their wares to wealthy patrons in gracious ease. No raucous-voiced vendors cried their wares, and even the most elegant ladies could descend from their litters and browse through the great arcade without being jostled or forced into proximity with the unwashed. The splendid portico was owned by the state, and the merchants secured their enviable accommodations through payment of regular fees, some small part of which usually stuck to aedilician fingers.

Murena was easy to spot in the rather thin crowd that morning. As a curule aedile he was entitled to wear the purple-bordered toga, and when I came upon him he was speaking with a Syrian who displayed a dazzling assortment of golden chains, from hair-thin specimens for a lady’s neck to massive links suitable for shackling a captive king. Doubtless, I thought, Murena was squeezing out a few more bribes before having to fold up his curule chair and doff his toga praetexta.

“May I have a moment of your time, Aedile?” I asked. He turned, smiling. Murena was a man a few years older than I, with an engagingly ugly face. “How may I help you, Senator?”

I went through the usual introduction and explained the bare bones of my mission. “In my inquiries concerning possible vendors of poison I came across the name of Harmodia, a Marsian woman who had a stall beneath the arches of the Circus Flaminius. She was discovered on the morning of the ninth of November, murdered. A watchman from the circus reported the killing at the Temple of Ceres, and you went out to investigate. Upon your return you dictated a report to a secretary and it was filed. Is this correct so far?”

“I remember the incident. Yes, you are correct so far as my part in it goes. Why is the woman significant?”

“I have strong evidence that the woman sold the poison used in the murder I am investigating, and I believe she was killed to silence her.”

“Those people are notorious. The City would be improved if they were all driven off.”

“Perhaps so. Now,” I went on, getting to the heart of the matter, “about two or three days after the murder, you sent a slave to the Temple of Ceres to fetch your report of the woman’s death for a presentation to the praetor urbanus, is this correct?”

Murena frowned. “No, I made no such report.”

“You didn’t?” Another unexpected twist in a case already full of them.

“No, it was the last full month of the year for official business and the courts were extremely busy. Nobody was interested in a dead woman from the mountains.”

“And yet the report is missing.”

“Then it was misfiled, as often happens at the temple, or else the slave picked up the wrong report, as also happens rather commonly.”

“Possibly. Could you give me the gist of your report? It might have some bearing not only upon the murder but upon the reason for the report’s disappearance.”

“Inefficiency requires no reason, Senator Metellus,” he pointed out.

“Profoundly put. But, if you will humor me …”

“Very well. Let me see …” He concentrated for a while. “This was several weeks ago, and the incident was a trifling one, so please bear with me if my memory lacks its usual keenness.”

“Quite understandable. A mere murder, after all.” It was a pretty fair assessment of a homicide in Rome in those days, at least when the victim was a person of no importance. At the moment, though, I could feel little sorrow over the death of Harmodia. She was a seller of poisons. Ariston had been equally despicable. As far as I was concerned, their murders were just an impediment to my investigation. As, of course, they were intended to be.

“The murder was reported by one Urgulus …”

“I have spoken with him,” I said.

“Then you know the circumstances under which she was found and I was summoned. I went to the Flaminius and found the body of a fairly stout woman in her thirties or forties lying in a large pool of blood. The cause of death was a deep knife wound to the throat, nearly severing the head. Questioning revealed no witnesses to the deed, which had occurred several hours before, judging by the condition of the body.”

“Were there any other wounds?” I asked. “Urgulus was unsure.”

“While I was asking questions, the Marsian women prepared her for transport to her home for burial. They took off her bloody gown, washed her body, and wrapped her in a shroud. I saw no other wounds, but I suppose if she’d been knocked on the back of the head with a club there might have been no obvious sign of it.”

“No evidence found nearby? The murder weapon, that sort of thing?”

“In that district? Thieves would have stolen the blood if they could have gotten anything for it.”

“That is so. Anything else?”

He thought for a moment. “No, that is what I reported. As I said, there was very little to report. When I went to court that morning I made a brief mention of it for the morning report.”

“Yes, I found that at the tabularium. Tell me, Caius Licinius, weren’t you in Gaul a few years back?”

“Yes, it was four years ago, when Cicero and Antonius were consuls. I was legate to my brother, Lucius. I was left in charge when he returned to Rome for the elections. Why, were you there at the time?”

“No, it’s just that Gaul is on everybodies’ minds these days.”

“It may be on everybodies’ minds, but it’s in Caesar’s hands now, though he may come to regret that, and serve him right.”

“You favor Pompey then?”

“Pompey!” he expressed utter scorn. “Pompey is a jumped-up nobody, who earned his reputation over the bodies of better men. And before you ask, Crassus is a fat sack of money and wind who once, with help, beat an army of slaves. Is that satisfactory?”

“Eminently.”

“Those men want to be kings. We threw out our foreign kings more than four hundred years ago. Why should we want a home-grown variety?”

“You are a man after my own heart,” I told him. Indeed he was, if his sentiments were sincere. I took my leave of him and walked away, pondering. He was not what I had expected, but it is always foolish to expect people to fall into one’s preconceived notions. He certainly seemed plausible, even likable. But Rome was full of plausible, likable villains.

Flavius had been more the sort of man I expected to find involved in this: the kind of brutally aggressive tribune who made the lives of the senior magistrates such a torment. That made me want to believe that he was a part of the plot to poison Celer, and that, too, was a foolish line of thought. The will to believe is mankind’s greatest source of error. A philosopher told me that once.

I felt that I had come to a dead end and had learned all I was going to by asking questions. The year was dwindling, and I had satisfied no one. All I had really determined was that Celer had indeed been poisoned. Clodia’s guilt or innocence was unproven. Clodius would be growing impatient. So would the leaders of my family. Gaul was looking better all the time.

“Up so early?” A small, veiled figure stood at my side.

“Julia! I’ll have you know I was up before dawn … well, not long after dawn, anyway, and working diligently. How did you get away from Aurelia?”

“Grandmother is never quite well on the day after Saturnalia. Waiting on slaves upsets her.”

“How very un-Roman. I expect greater respect for our traditions from our distinguished matrons.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her that. Where can we talk?”

“There is no shortage of places. The Forum isn’t exactly thronged this morning.”

We ended up on the portico of the beautiful little Temple of Venus on the Via Sacra near the Temple of Janus. Like that of Vesta, Venus’s temple was round, in the shape of the huts in which our ancestors had lived. The place was deserted, for the goddess had no rites at that time of year. The portico was newer than the rest of the building and featured a long bench against the wall of the temple, where citizens could sit and enjoy the shade on hot days, which are numerous in Rome.

From where we sat, we could see the doors of the Temple of Janus. We could see one set of doors, I should say, for that temple has doors at each end. The doors were open, as usual. They were only closed in times of peace, when Roman soldiers were nowhere engaged in hostilities. This is to say that they were never closed.

“Now tell me what you’ve been up to,” Julia said. It seemed to me that she was growing all too accustomed to making such demands.

“The hours since we parted yesterday evening have been eventful and more than a little puzzling,” I informed her.

“Tell me. I can probably make more sense of it than you.”

I began with the meeting in my father’s house after the slave banquet. Julia frowned as I described the proceedings.

“You mean they treated that … that atrocity as if it were just another little political embarrassment?”

“These men look at everything that way,” I affirmed.

“But my uncle is pontifex maximus! How can he treat this flouting of our sacred laws so lightly?”

“My dear, the supreme pontificate has become just another political office. Caius Julius is widely known to have secured it through a campaign of bribery such as has seldom been seen in Rome, even in this decadent era.”

“I cannot believe that. But I confess to being shocked at his cavalier treatment of the matter. It must be that the Gaulish campaign weighs so heavily on his mind. I know what a burden it is, spending as much time in his house as I do. Lately he has been agitated and busy from long before dawn to long after dark. He just calls for lamps and keeps on working, interviewing prospective officers, dispatching letters all over … he has become distracted with work.”

“I can imagine the shock,” I said. Caesar had long been famed for his indolence. The sight of him actually working had to be a worthy spectacle. “It seems that I may be one of those lucky men who shall go out and win undying glory for him.”

“What?” Now she had to hear all about that.

“It’s true. He asked for my services and my father thinks it’s a good idea and now I’m cornered. I may spend the next few years among the barbarians, constantly under attack and eating the worst food in the world.”

“This is disturbing news,” she said. From somewhere within her mantle she produced a palm frond and fanned herself with it. In December. She had probably overdone it in disguising herself with cloaks and veils. “But surely he will assign you to administrative duties … embassies, payrolls, that sort of thing.”

“He’ll have quaestors for the payrolls,” I told her, “and embassy or envoy duty can be dangerous in that part of the world. Nations wishing to join a rebellion usually declare their loyalty by killing their Roman ambassadors. Envoys who deliver terms the Gauls don’t like are often slaughtered. The Germans are rumored to be even worse.”

“Well, I am certain that my uncle will keep you well away from danger. Your reputation has never been that of a soldier, after all.”

“I am touched by your faith.”

“Anyway, that is next year. What happened after the conference?” This time she got the story of my flight from my father’s house and the little battle near my house.

“It’s a good thing Milo assigned you such capable men,” she commented.

“I did pretty well for myself,” I said. “I settled for one and was about…”

“You would have been killed had you been alone,” she said flatly. “Do you think the men were Clodia’s?”

“No, and that is a part of all the things that have bothered me about this case. It’s not Clodia’s style.”

“Have you forgotten?” she said crossly. “I told you that she might do just such a thing to divert attention from herself.”

“I remember quite well. No, it’s the quality of the men. I’ve been in Clodia’s house quite a bit”-I caught her look and added hastily-”in the line of duty, of course. Everything Clodia owns, buys, hires, or in any way whatever associates with, is first class. Her clothes, her furniture, her collection of art, even her slaves all are of the very highest quality.”

“I’d like to get a look at her house some time,” Julia said wistfully.

“But Milo’s thugs said that the attackers were very inferior fighters from an inferior school. Even allowing for the customary school rivalry, they did seem less than adept. They were not very pretty either. If Clodia had hired assassins, she would have hired only the best.”

“No pursuit is so low that good taste cannot be observed,” Julia said. “I still think you’re trying to find her innocent in spite of all evidence.”

“Then listen to this.” I told her about the interview with Narcissus. She was enthralled by, of all things, Asklepiodes’s diagnosis of the injury caused by the falling roof tile.

“And he can actually open up a man’s head and heal so terrible an injury!” she said, dropping her fan and clasping her hands in delight. “Such a skill must truly be a gift from the gods.”

“Well, if anyone can do it, it must be Asklepiodes. Now pay attention. That is nothing.”

“Nothing!” she said before I could continue. “All you men spend your days scheming about how to injure people and you idolize the worst butchers, but you think it is nothing that someone can draw an injured man back from death like that!”

“I don’t go around injuring people,” I protested. “And I don’t admire people who do. Besides, we don’t know that he will pull through. Marcus Celsius may have the Styx lapping about his ankles this very moment.” How had we gotten off onto this? “Enough. Let me tell you about a less admirable physician.”

Julia listened open-mouthed as I described the activities of the late Ariston of Lycia.

“Oh, this is infamous!” she cried. “A physician, sworn to the gods by the oath of Hippocrates, deliberately poisoning his patients!”

“You think you’re shocked?” I said. “He was my family’s physician. Suppose I’d fallen ill?”

“Do you think you are important enough to poison?”

“Some people have deemed me quite worthy of homicide.”

“They might have stabbed you to death in the street, perhaps. That usually calls for a temporary exile. Poisoning brings a terrible punishment.”

“It is a puzzler, and that brings up another question. With all the suspicions about her, why would Clodia poison Celer? She had to know that she would be the most prominent suspect. If she, as you suggested, might wish to divert suspicion from herself, would she not have hired an assassin to strike him down in the city? Everyone would have automatically assumed that he had been killed by one of his multitude of political enemies.”

That gave her something to think about. “It does confuse things.”

“So, having determined that the poison originated with Harmodia and that Ariston was the vector, as it were, by which it was transmitted to the victim, I have to sift through the rather numerous suspects to determine which one hired Ariston”.

“Must it be only one?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“As you’ve said, Celer had no dearth of enemies. Might Ariston not have shopped his services around to a number of them? He might have taken pay from more than one, and each would think that he was the only one who had hired Ariston.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted, intrigued by the idea. “It would present some interesting judicial problems in assigning guilt, wouldn’t it? I mean, if it wasn’t, technically, a conspiracy, how would the courts go about punishing them? Give each a portion of a death sentence? Find extremely tiny islands for them all?”

“Rein in your imagination,” she said. “Probably only the saga would get the full sentence of the law; perhaps the Greek physician as well. Those who hired him might get off with exile, since they were probably of the nobility. They would at least be given the option of honorable suicide.”

“Probably,” I mused. Then I shook my head. “It wouldn’t work anyway. The more people Ariston involved, the greater the chance of discovery. He was a cautious man, and poison is notoriously the weapon of a coward. I can’t imagine him being so bold as to dupe a number of murderously inclined men that way. I think he sold his services to one of them and deemed himself safe.”

“It is worth considering. Anything else?”

“Yes, I conferred with Flavius, the fire-eating tribune of last year.” I told her of my interview. “He was everything I’d hoped: violent, abrasive, obnoxious, and a firm supporter of Pompey.”

“So what is wrong?”

“He’s too good to be true. Besides, everything about him proclaims a willingness, even an eagerness, to shed his enemy’s blood with his own hands. I just don’t think poison is his style, although Celer’s death was awfully convenient for him, coming when it did. His anger when I brought up the subject of poisoning was too convincing. If he’d been expecting the accusation, I doubt he’d have been able to summon up that extravagant facial color on cue.”

“I am not convinced that your judgment of men is as accurate as you think, but where does that leave us?”

“It leaves us with the curule aedile Murena, who reported upon the death of Harmodia and then sent for the report, which has subsequently disappeared.”

“Have you found him?”

“I have. I told you I haven’t been wasting my time today.”

She patted my hand. “Yes, dear, I didn’t mean to imply that you are an irresponsible overgrown boy who drinks too much. Now proceed.”

I told her of my interview with Murena in the jeweler’s market, finishing with: “And then I walked out into the Forum and you found me.”

“Politically, he sounds just like you,” she observed.

“That’s the problem. I rather liked the man. But I won’t deny that I have been fooled before.”

“There are too many things that don’t fit together,” she said. “There has to be something we are overlooking.”

“Undoubtedly,” I said, gloomily. “I am sure it will come to me in time, but time is just what we’re short of. It’s going to do us little good if, six months from now, I wake up in a leaky tent in Gaul while the savages beat their drums and toot their horns all around the camp in their massed thousands and I cry, ‘Eureka!’ ”

“Yes, that would do us little good,” she agreed.

“Did you hear anything last night?”

“I may have. After the banquet was over and the slaves had departed for the festivities, we cleaned up the triclinium and the ladies of the various households visited among themselves, bringing gifts. It’s traditional.”

“I’m familiar with the custom,” I told her. “My father’s house has been without a lady since my mother died and my sisters married, but I remember them all flocking about on Saturnalia.”

“Since my uncle is pontifex maximus, we went nowhere. Everyone came to us. Only the family of the Flamen Dialis has as much prestige, and there hasn’t been one of those in almost thirty years.” The high priest of Jupiter was so bound by ritual and taboo that it was increasingly difficult to find anyone who wanted to assume the position, prestigious as it was.

“I know why Caesar wanted to be pontifex maximus,” I said. “His mother put him up to it. Aurelia just wanted to have every woman in Rome, even the ladies of the highest-ranking households, come to her and abase themselves.”

She punched me in the ribs. “Stop that! As usual, there was gossip. People speak more freely at Saturnalia than at other times. A lot of it was about Clodia.”

“Everyone assumes she poisoned Celer?”

“Of course. But there was more. It seems to be common knowledge that she is the brains behind her brother’s rise to political power. They are wildly devoted to one another; everyone knows that. She may do most of his thinking for him as well.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “Clodius certainly isn’t the brightest star in the Roman firmament.”

“Then,” she said, leaning close and being conspiratotial, “if someone wanted to eliminate Clodius without bringing the wrath of Clodius’s mob down upon him, wouldn’t it make sense to get rid of Clodia?”

“I thought you were of the opinion she is guilty,” I said.

“I’m trying to think like you, dolt!” Another punch in the ribs. “Now pay attention. By poisoning Celer, somebody hoped not only to eliminate him as an enemy, but to bring Clodius into disgrace as well, possibly to eliminate him entirely by getting the sister upon whom he depends sentenced to death by the state as a venefica. Even if Clodius is capable of handling his own career, the disgrace would be devastating. Does this plan eliminate a few suspects from your list?”

“It does that,” I admitted. “If Clodius was one of the real targets, then somebody wants to cut Caesar’s support in the City out from under him while he’s in Gaul.” I glanced at her suspiciously. “You didn’t brew this up just to make your uncle look innocent, did you?”

“I only search for truth and justice,” she said, with lamblike innocence. Then her eyes went wide with alarm. “Those men over there!”

I looked around, expecting assassins. “Where? Is someone after us? Me, I mean?” I reached into my tunic and grasped the hilt of my dagger. I could see no northern thugs or Marsian louts.

“No, idiot! Those two old slaves over there. They belong to my grandmother, and they’re looking for me.” She drew her veil aside and kissed me swiftly. “I have to run back. Be careful.” Then she was up and away, around a corner of the temple.