The River God

10

It was time for another long walk; and while the hour was late and the time of year dismal, it might as well have been Saturnalia. The push to high ground was in full force, but there was no panic. It takes a great deal to panic Romans, and a mere fiood was not among the things that upset them greatly. Even an approaching enemy only makes them a little nervous. A big fire or an earthquake will unnerve them completely, but little else. They do riot from time to time out of anger. At least they used to, before the First Citizen made things so tame.

But this time there was an odd, almost festive atmosphere to the dislocated populace. Whatever damage and devastation the event might portend, it was a break in routine, and such a break puts most people in a giddy mood. Men knew they would not have to go to their work tomorrow, if they had any. Their wives knew that they would not have to make the long trudge to the fountain for water, then carry the heavy jar up the steep stairs of the insula. Children knew that there would be no schoolmaster to face in the morning.

Perhaps there would be no home to return to afterward, but that was a worry for later on. For now they were doing something different, seeing friends and relatives they hadn’t seen in a while, maybe spending a few days in a garden or on a rooftop with strangers. There would be gambling and storytelling to pass the time. Perhaps the men would be drafted into work gangs to stave off damage or clear rubble. It would be something different in their otherwise dull lives.

The best thing about a fiood was that, unlike a fire or an earthquake, it killed few people outright. It was easy to get out of the way of rising water. Mortality would come later, from exposure and disease and, I greatly feared, contaminated water. Those clogged, backed-up drains, now overfiowing, would spread filth throughout the City. Anyone who has ever endured a siege knows that filth and pollution breed disease. This may be because, as some believe, evil spirits inhabit foul-smelling things or because uncleanliness angers the gods or for some reason entirely unrelated to the supernatural world; but it is irrefutable. It is well that these people are enjoying themselves, I thought, because many of them are going to die in the weeks and months to come.

The crowd thinned as we crossed the Forum. This, as I have mentioned, was once a swampy area, and already I saw murky, brown water bubbling from the street drains and a foul odor suffused the splendid place. Idly, I wondered what had become of old Charon and his boat. Doubtless, I thought, he had a refuge. He must have endured many fioods in his long years below the City.

The Forum Boarium and the area near the Circus Maximus were getting decidedly damp, and I was glad to climb the embankment and walk out onto the Sublician Bridge, which would remain well above the waterline throughout the fiood. The bridge was lined with gawkers, observing and commenting importantly upon the progress of Father Tiber’s rampage.

There was something unreal about the scene, and it wasn’t just the incongruously festive attitude of the citizens. I decided that it was the juxtaposition of the rising river with the clear sky and the unseasonable warmth. We always associate fioods with heavy rain. It was hard to believe that this was all the result of a wind from Africa and melting snow in mountains far away.

“If we cross the river,” Hermes said apprehensively, “we may not be able to get back to the City for days.”

“Nevertheless,” I assured him, “the Labyrinth is in the Trans-Tiber and that is where we must go. Don’t worry. The bridge will stay above water. If the river goes over the artificial embankment, it will settle in the low places. It may be deep in spots, but there will be little current. Look.” I pointed to the embankment, where already men were dragging small boats and barges cobbled together from scrap wood. “The river fishermen and other enterprising souls are already preparing to make some money ferrying people through the fiooded areas. We may have to get home by boat, but we will get home.”

While I spoke these reassuring words, I was studying the huge theater of Aemilius Scaurus, just a short distance upriver of the bridge. The water was well up the support works we had seen being set in place that morning, which now seemed so long ago. Thought of that time span made my stomach growl, reminding me that we had eaten nothing since pausing at the tavern after our visit to the lumberyard of Justus.

“Come along,” I said to Hermes, “enough sightseeing. We have important official business to see to.”

“In a whorehouse?” he asked.

“As it happens, yes.”

The Trans-Tiber area lay outside the walls and therefore outside the City proper, but the authority of the aediles extended to the first milestone on each of the roads leading away from Rome, and those were well out into farmland. Compared to the vast sprawl of cities like Alexandria and Antioch, Rome was a rather compact city, although disagreeably crowded.

As we walked, I informed Hermes of what I had learned at the widow’s house. “Why are you smiling?” I snapped.

“Well, I was right this morning! The theater really is made of bad timber and by the same people who built that insula!“

“You might take less satisfaction in the knowledge. Now I’m caught between two millstones. My Games could end in unprecedented catastrophe, or my family could disown me. It’s hard to choose.”

“Too bad we can’t torch the place,” he said.

“You would think of a criminal answer to this. Not only is arson the most heinous crime on the law tables, but that place would make a bigger, hotter fire than the Circus Maximus. Half the City would burn down.”

“I was just speculating idly,” he said, the scheming little rogue.

The relatively new Trans-Tiber district was a lively place. Over the centuries, successive censors and aediles had tried to expel from the City those elements seen to be parasitic or corrupting. These were the actors and gladiators, the whores, mountebanks, fortune tellers, and purveyors of foreign cults, in short, all the most interesting and entertaining people.

The result of these purification efforts was to make the Trans-Tiber the most raffish district of Rome, where the entertainment facilities were concentrated. It was also where most of the rivermen lived, or at least stayed, while they were in Rome. It lacked the concentration of wealth, power, and politics that was to be found clustered around the Forum, and it had no important temples or other sacred sites, but the inhabitants did not seem to miss these things. It was less crowded as well as more lively.

Best of all for my purposes that evening, most of it lay on higher ground than the eastern bank, and it did not suffer from the problem of jammed sewers and drains.

Of all the lupanaria in Rome, within or without the walls, the Labyrinth was the most famed. It was the largest, had the most harlots, offered the widest variety of entertainments and perversions (depending upon your interpretation of that word, of course), and enjoyed the greatest and most varied clientele. People came from all over the world to see the place. There was nothing in Alexandria, Antioch, or, for all I know, India or Babylon to match it. If whorehouses were temples, the Labyrinth would be the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

It sat in the center of a sizable square, surrounded by fruit trees planted in enormous ornamental tubs instead of the clutter of monuments that crowded every public space in the City within the walls. It was four stories high and painted a glaring scarlet. Most of the buildings nearby were small taverns and inns catering to the rivermen’s trade, as well as to foreign visitors who wanted to escape the high prices and general squalor of the opposite bank.

The sign that let you know you had found the right place was infamous throughout the world. It was named the Labyrinth for the maze beneath the palace of Minos, and the sign was a statue depicting the most notorious queen of that palace, the insatiable Pasiphae. That queen, you will recall, was caused by Poseidon to conceive an inappropriate passion for an exceptionally beautiful bull, which her husband, Mi-nos, had refused to sacrifice to the god. Pasiphae sought the aid of Daedalus in consummating this difficult lust, which he accomplished by building a lifelike wooden cow and concealing the queen therein. The bull was deceived, the queen was presumably satisfied, and the result was the birth of the bull-headed Minotaur.

The statue depicted this bizarre coupling, but the artificial cow was represented symbolically by a pair of horns bound to the queen’s brow and cleft hooves covering her hands and feet. Otherwise, the voluptuous queen was depicted as nude, and the bull was more than merely realistic. Both figures were life sized and rendered in the most exacting detail. This day had turned into an extended art lesson.

“Come in, dears, come in!” cooed a woman in a blonde wig and a fiame-colored gown. In the subdued light, it took me a second look to realize that she was actually a man. “The Labyrinth features something for everyone!” as this person demonstrated amply. We joined the group of people of both sexes passing within. Nobody here was worrying about any trifiing fiood.

We passed through a tunnel lined with niches. In each niche burned candles, illuminating small statues of couples and groups engaged in ecstatic copulation. Above each niche was painted the name of its particular variation, in Latin and Greek. Thus you could make a selection and name your pleasure when you negotiated with the management of this uninhibited place of business.

From the tunnel, we emerged into a vast courtyard filled with tables, overlooked by the galleries of the three upper stories. There was constant traffic between the courtyard and the upper fioors, with whores of both sexes leading their customers, also of both sexes although predominantly male, to the rooms conveniently provided by the management.

Everywhere, torches burned in sconces, lamps stood on stands, and candles burned by the hundreds. Here was one place where candles, rare elsewhere in Rome, were used in abundance. By their light, I could see that the decor, like the statue outside, conformed, after a fashion, to the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The wall paintings illustrated the doings within the original Labyrinth. The legend relates that the Athenians each year had to pay as tribute seven youths and seven maidens to be given to the Minotaur. The legend is not specific concerning what use the Minotaur made of these youths and maidens, but the paintings left no doubt. The Minotaur, though manlike in form, inherited more than just his father’s head.

“How may we entertain you?” The questioner was a young whore wearing a beautiful smile and little else.

“If we are to have the strength to go on,” I said, “we’ll have to eat. Then we can see about stronger entertainment.”

“This way.” We followed her twinkling, white buttocks to a small table in a corner. As we made our way, I scanned the somewhat loud but generally orderly crowd. Aside from the professionals, the clientele included more than just the rivermen and visiting foreigners. I saw a few of my fellow senators there as well, none of them taking any pains to conceal their identities.

I took a seat at the table indicated, and without needing to be told, Hermes pulled up a stool behind me. Since I was there in my official capacity, there was no question of the two of us sitting together as we had at lunch that afternoon. There is an unspoken but understood protocol in these matters. Immediately, slaves set food and wine on the table.

“Be so good as to send the owner to me,” I told the whore.

She looked me over doubtfully. “And who might I say is making this request? It’s most unusual.” She spoke like a native of Cyprus. It is more musical than most foreign accents.

“The Plebeian Aedile Metellus,” I said. Her winglike false eyebrows went up a bit, but she did not challenge me. Perhaps, I thought, the dingy old toga hadn’t been such a good idea, after all.

The food and wine were uniformly excellent. There were shellfish in garlic sauce, bread baked with fennel seed, cheeses and dried fruits, most of the foods being the ones believed to stimulate the carnal appetites. For once I went easy on the wine, which was Cossian.

I was pushing the dishes aside, when I saw a woman coming across the courtyard toward me. She paused from time to time to speak with the customers seated all around, smiling, caressing a shoulder here, a bald head there, clearly the madame making sure all her guests are happy and well looked after. Crossing that distance, passing seated people, I understood how tall she was only when she was a few paces from my table.

Andromeda, the famous proprietress of the Labyrinth, was taller than all but the very tallest men in Rome, a good six inches taller than I, and I was not considered short. Adding to her already imposing height was an amazing wig made from the hair of several different German and Gallic women, golden, fiaxen, and red locks mixed together and piled high. She did not wear the peplos of a respectable woman, but rather the feminized toga Roman law requires prostitutes to wear when in public. Unlike the plain, citizen’s toga, hers was a brilliant aquamarine with a Greek fret embroidered on the hem in gold thread. Her many jewels were worth a good-sized country estate.

She stopped at my table, placed the back of one hand in the palm of the other, and bowed gracefully. “Aedile, you do us an unexpected honor.”

“I am here on a matter of official business,” I said. “Please be seated.” She folded her long form into a chair, leaned forward, and patted me. I thought she was being fiirtatious, then her fingers dug in at my waist. She withdrew the hand and sat back, wearing a serious expression.

“You came ready for a fight,” she said. “The ludus is three streets away. This is a place for joy, for abandoning everyday cares. Yet you come here with weapons in your belt and armor under your tunic and a toga cast off by your poorest freedman.”

I fingered the worn wool. “Oh, come now, it’s not that bad. I’ll not prevaricate. The times are dangerous, and, like every public personage these days, I have enemies. I may have to fight, and I may have to run.”

She nodded. “That is understandable. But I’ll have no disorder in my establishment.” She inclined her head toward an alcove in the painted wall. There were several such and in each stood a huge man with a heavy cudgel thonged to his wide, nail-studded belt. They were gladiators from the nearby ludus, earning extra money as bouncers. “I insist on good behavior; and at the first sign of trouble, I throw the troublemaker out, whether sailor or senator. My girls are clean, my wine is unadulterated, and I keep plenty of water and sand handy in case of fire, more than the law requires. I pay all my fees on time, and if your fellow officeholders think I should give them a little more, I don’t argue.” Her look was defiant, but she had the wrong idea about why I was there.

“From what I hear, things aren’t always peaceful here.”

This took her aback. “But I just said-oh, there was a murder here awhile back, but it was just one murder in the six years I’ve been in business. Other than that, no more than an occasional bloody nose or black eye, maybe a cracked pate if one of my boys has to get rough, nothing worse.”

“Many a senatorial mansion cannot boast of so clean a record,” I told her, “but it is that very murder I have come to discuss. An aedile named-”

She held up a hand for silence. “No! A private citizen named Aulus Lucilius was found dead here. If he had previously been an aedile, that means nothing once he was out of office, you know that perfectly well.”

“I grant your point. Anyway, I want to hear about the circumstances surrounding that gentleman’s death. Be so good as to enlighten me.”

“But the urban praetor’s man questioned me about that long ago,” Andromeda protested. “Why don’t you just read his report?”

“I don’t trust other people’s reports,” I told her. “They don’t ask the right questions in the first place, and then they make mistakes when they record the results. After that, often as not, the report gets misfiled or lost or destroyed altogether, so why don’t you just tell me what happened?”

She smiled and blinked her gilded eyelids. “Your business is far more disorderly than mine, Aedile. Well then, on the night this happened, Lucilius arrived awhile after sunset. It was dark and the lamps were lit, just like now. He had his toga pulled over his head, but I recognized him from the year before, when he’d inspected twice.”

“Had he ever been here as a customer?”

“Not to my knowledge, but look around you. We have a hundred customers on a slow night, a thousand or more during the big festivals. I try to give them all personal attention, but that’s futile. The ones I know by sight are the regulars.”

“I see. Go on, please.”

“Well, a girl named Galatea met him at the door. She led him to a table over in that corner,” she pointed to one opposite from where we sat. “There was already a man seated there, wearing a cloak with the hood pulled over his head.”

“Do your customers usually hide their identities like that with togas and cloaks? I would think that would arouse your suspicions.”

“Hardly. Remember, this was between the nones and the ides of December. Everyone was pretty well wrapped up, that being one of the colder winters of recent memory. I remember Galatea was wearing a wool gown. The girls don’t go around naked until spring, normally. They’ve only left their clothes off these last few nights because of this African wind that’s made it so warm.”

“All right. So the girl Galatea conducted Lucilius to the table of the cloaked man. What then?”

On a stage in the center of the courtyard, beneath an enormous candelabra in the shape of the Hydra with multiple candles atop each of its heads, a troupe of Iberian dancers appeared like a vision and began to perform the famous dances of Gades to the frantic music of fiutes and the rhythm of the little, wooden clappers they held in their palms. These women, like most of the inhabitants of Gades, were of mixed Greek-Phoenician ancestry and had all the most salacious qualities of those nations.

The girls of the dancing families were raised from birth to perform in public, and their dances were the most lubricious imaginable. Actually, they also performed sacred dances with perfect decorum, but not in the Labyrinth, needless to say. Each woman was not only a dancer, but an acrobat and contortionist, a combination I have always liked.

“Aedile, are you listening?” Andromeda waved her fingers before my eyes.

“Eh? Of course. Just got distracted a bit, that’s all.”

She laughed. “They’re pretty distracting, all right. That’s the troupe of Eschmoun, the oldest of all the Gadean dance troupes. They’re on their way to dance at the Great Dionysia in Athens, and then to the court of Ptolemy before they return to Iberia. That beauty on the top of the pile is Yeroshabel, said to be the finest dancer in the world.”

“I can believe it,” I said, my throat gone oddly dry. I took a hefty slug of wine to wet it. I considered myself to be more worldly than most, and I had seen Gadean dancers before; but these women were doing the most shockingly orgiastic things I had ever beheld. The strangest thing was that it was all in pantomime, but with none of the broad, farcical gestures you see when Italians practice that art. The women’s faces remained as serene as those of sculptured Muses, their movements had swanlike grace, and nothing was really happening if you looked closely enough (I did). They simply left you with the impression that you had seen something only gods should look upon without being struck blind.

When the performance ended, I jumped to my feet and applauded as vociferously as the rest. Even the most hardened whores were struck with admiration, and I instructed Hermes to go and toss some coins onto the stage. He complied eagerly, before they could get away.

I resumed my seat. “Now, where were we?”

“Would you like to meet Yeroshabel? I can arrange it.”

“Alas, duty forbids, not to mention my wife.”

“Most men don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?” I was still slightly befuddled by the spectacle. I know it wasn’t the wine. “Mention their wives, you mean? I suppose not. Well, mine is Caesar’s niece, and she shares many of his qualities.”

She whistled. “I’d be careful around a woman like that, too. Caesar has been among my patrons, too. One of the best, in fact.”

“I can believe that,” I assured her, now thoroughly relaxed in this woman’s company. It was her profession to be agreeable, I suppose.

“Actually, he usually came here when he was entertaining important foreigners. In sizable parties most often. He saw to their entertainment, but his own feats weren’t quite up to his reputation, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I suppose his inroads among senatorial wives left him with little energy.” Somehow, I felt I should come to his defense.

“I think little excites him except that which increases his power. He doesn’t care a bit about food, wine, or comfort, you know, despite his reputation as a rake.”

“I know that better than most,” I said ruefully. “I’ve campaigned with him in Gaul.”

“It’s the same with women or boys. He’ll go through the motions of being congenial, but I think he’s always planning his next election or campaign.”

“You judge men shrewdly, Andromeda.” I, too, was always on the lookout for contacts who could be of use to me. It struck me that this woman was uniquely placed to ferret out useful information about important men, both residents and visitors. Some have held that such information would be unworthy of the dignity of a Roman official. I’d never thought that way.

“How long would I last if I didn’t?” She seemed to be thinking along the same lines as I. Well, we were both at the peak of our professions. “A man like you, on your way up, needs to know such things. You understand, I have to be discreet about certain of my patrons, the regulars and the ones in a position to do me real harm.”

“But you can always use a friend and protector, can’t you?”

“I can never have too many of those. But I am a professional woman, accustomed to charging for my services.”

“Understood. I am never reluctant to pay for good value. But the matter we were discussing comes under the heading of an official investigation.”

She sighed. “Just so you don’t get in the habit of expecting free information. Anyway, those two men talked for a while. At one point they started to argue, and a bouncer went over and rapped on their table with his stick. They quieted down, and that was the end of it.”

“Send the bouncer to me,” I said. “He might have overheard something.”

She thought for a moment. “You’re out of luck. It was Astyanax, and he was killed at the funeral games for Terentius Lucanus in Capua four months ago.”

“Why did it have to be a clumsy swordsman?” I groused. “Oh, well, no help for it.”

“A short time after that the man in the hooded cloak got up and left.”

“He left?”

“Went right out through the front door. So Lucilius went upstairs with Galatea-”

“Wait a moment. Was Galatea with them the whole time?”

She thought about that. “No. She led Lucilius to the cloaked man’s table, then she went off. She went back to the table either just before the cloaked one left or just after. I wasn’t keeping a close eye on all this, you know. I had plenty of other patrons to attend to, even at that time of year.”

“All right. She went upstairs with Lucilius. Did she murder him?”

Andromeda shrugged her white shoulders. “I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t up there with them. Late in the evening there was a commotion. Another of the girls was taking a customer upstairs and she rapped on the door, didn’t get any answer, and went on in. She started screaming, and I ran up there. Lucilius was on the fioor, alone and dying from a stab wound.”

“Where was Galatea?”

“Nowhere to be found, then or later.”

“And you didn’t see her go?”

“This isn’t a prison. It’s not hard to leave. She could have just wrapped up in a palla and gone out.”

“In most lupanaria,“ I said, “the girls are kept locked up when they aren’t on duty, and the door is guarded.”

She snorted contempt. “And you’ve seen what frightened, beaten, washed-out drudges they are, haven’t you? My customers come here for enjoyment and congenial companionship, and I provide it. They pay more here than anywhere else, but the girls and boys are skilled, good-looking, and willing. There’s something wrong with men who go to a prison for sex.”

“You’ll get no argument from me there. So he was still alive when you found him?”

“Not by much, but breathing. I sent for the physician and he did what he could, but it was too late. The man babbled a little, nothing I could understand, then he croaked.”

“Who was the physician?”

“The one from the ludus, Asklepiodes.”

“If you sent for him, Lucilius lasted more than a few minutes.”

“I didn’t have to send far for Asklepiodes,” she said. “He was right down here in the courtyard, like he is most nights.”

“Asklepiodes is a regular?” I asked, astonished.

“He ought to be. He’s the only man in Rome who gets his entertainment here for free. We have an arrangement. A place like this needs a physician’s attention regularly.”

So Asklepiodes had a special arrangement with Andromeda? Well, well. “Is he here tonight?”

“He was here earlier. I’ll find him for you if he’s still around.” She raised a hand to the back of her wig and a man appeared at her side. Apparently she had a system of secret signals. The man was well built, heavily bearded, and wearing a woman’s dress. “Find the Greek doctor. Send him here,” she said. The odd person disappeared.

“What did you do once he’d died?” I asked.

“As I said, I recognized him, so I sent a boy to find his house and tell his family, or whoever was there, but he just wandered around lost all night. Have you ever tried to find an unfamiliar house in the dark? Anyway, there wasn’t much to be done before daylight. After that the Libitinarii arrived, and then the praetor’s man to get my story.”

A moment later, Asklepiodes arrived, beaming. He bowed to Andromeda. “Beauteous hostess,” then to me, “distinguished Aedile, how may I be of service?” The order in which he ranked our relative importance did not escape me.

“Sit down, old friend,” I said. “We were just discussing a murder.”

“You rarely talk about anything else,” he said.

“You two know each other, I see,” Andromeda said.

“For a long time,” I told her. “I can see that he hasn’t been bragging of our friendship to raise his stock around here.”

“In this neighborhood, my intimacy with great champions of the arena gains me more esteem than the friendship of any number of senators.” He was perfectly unabashed. “Are you still investigating the killings you were looking into yesterday?”

“He’s looking into the death of that ex-aedile,” Andromeda informed him.

“As it occurs, I think that man’s death and the killing of Lucius Folius and his wife may be-”

“Folius!” Andromeda spat on the colorful tiles. “The day he and that sow died ought to be commemorated as a holiday, with sacrifices and rejoicing!”

“You knew Folius?” I asked, startled.

“Ha! Who didn’t?” She laughed without mirth. “When he moved up to Rome from whatever town must have kicked him out-”

“Bovillae, I understand,” I said.

“Bovillae, then. A happy town without that couple. Anyway, when he got here with all his money and his taste for blood and pain, he started working his way through all the lupanaria in Rome, starting with mine.”

“Rumor has it,” I said, “that you cater to every imaginable taste.”

“Not every one of them,” she insisted. “Think about it: If you rented horses, would you rent one to a man who’d beat it and run it until it collapsed and return it to you half dead?”

“Those girls and boys last year,” Asklepiodes asked, “Folius was the one?”

“Him and the woman both,” she said, nodding. “Thought they could buy me off with a few coins and come back for more of the same. I told them I’d leave orders with my men to knock them on the head and dump them in the river if they ever came back. I couldn’t keep a single girl here unchained if I let them be treated like that. I don’t mind a little playacting, no harm in that, and I have people specially trained for it. Those two wanted the real thing.”

“I saw how their household slaves were treated,” I admitted. “There really should be provision in Roman law to prevent such things.”

“I heard later that they found places to cater to them,” she went on grimly. “Slaves die all the time. Nobody looks into it.”

It occurred to me that I was looking into the very timely deaths of two people who might have been among Rome’s most illustrious mass murderers. They were merely careful about whom they killed, never doing away with anyone of rank. It was rare for rich equites to make themselves so repugnant to so many persons in so brief a time. Everybody from Proconsul Antonius Hybrida to madame Andromeda, yet their neighbors barely knew who they were!

“I want to see the room where Lucilius was killed,” I said.

“Whatever for?” she asked.

“You never know what such a place will tell you,” I answered.

“My friend has created his own branch of philosophy,” Asklepiodes assured her, “or perhaps a form of necromancy. Sometimes it is as if the spirits of the slain speak to him.”

Andromeda rubbed an ivory ring she wore on her forefinger and kissed it. “I want no dealings with the dead here, but I’ll show you the room.” She rose to her full, amazing height, and I followed her, with Asklepiodes at my side and Hermes padding along behind. I decided I’d better count my money when we got home. The boy might have slipped off with one of the girls while we conversed.

The stairways that connected the upper galleries were arranged in pairs. Those nearest the courtyard were for upward traffic, those next to the wall for descending. It was most orderly, almost like a theater. Some of the rooms we passed were illuminated, others were dark. From within came sounds of music and cries of passion and sounds that defied interpretation. It might have been amusing to pause and try to interpret some of these noises as an intellectual exercise, but duty called.

Andromeda led us to a door and rapped on it. There was no sound from within, so she pushed open the door. Light poured out, its source a fioor lamp that supported four wicks. The room was no larger than necessary for the activities inside. Its furnishings, beside the lamp, were a small table holding a basin, pitcher, and washing materials; a bronze brazier that held no coals that evening; and a rather commodious couch with ample cushions and a backrest.

“The larger rooms are on the ground fioor,” Andromeda said. “Some of them are for groups and have special equipment. Nothing fancy here.”

I walked over to the room’s single window. Its frame was of fragrant cedar, a luxurious touch. The inner shutter was likewise cedar, carved in an intricate fret to admit light and air. The solid, outer shutter was of painted pine. I opened both shutters and looked out. It was a straight drop to the paved square below. I could see no convenient place in the room for attaching a rope. The killer or killers must have left by the door.

“Are you certain this is the room?” I asked. “Except for those on the ground fioor, they must be much alike.”

Andromeda indicated the door, which was painted red and bore a stylized design of a lyre. “Most of the girls and slave staff can’t read, so I don’t use numbers. I use a different color door on each of the three upper fioors: blue for the second, yellow for the third, and red on this one. Each door has a symbol for one of the gods that everyone knows: lightning for Jupiter, a moon for Venus, a spear for Mars, a serpent staff for Mercury, and so forth. I tell a slave, ‘Go up to Yellow Hercules,’ he knows to go to the third fioor and find the door with the club on it.” She rapped the door with a knuckle. “Lucilius was killed in Red Apollo; I’m not likely to forget it.”

“A very logical system,” I commended. I studied the brazier. “Did this hold a fire that evening?”

“Certainly. I’ve said it was cold. But you saw the fire buckets standing outside the doors. I always-”

“Please,” I said, gesturing for silence, “I’ve told you I’m not here enforcing the fire regulations. Your precautions are exemplary. Asklepiodes, how did you find the victim?”

“Breathing his last. He had been stabbed beneath the ribs on the left side, consistent with a right-handed assailant. As near as I could discern by candlelight, the weapon had been a straight, double-edged dagger. The wound was approximately five inches long, slightly curved as the blade followed the contour of the rib cage. Viscera, also lacerated, protruded from the wound. It was certain death for any man.”

“But not immediate,” I commented.

“No, a man may linger for days with such a wound, depending upon which internal blood vessels have been severed. I saw immediately that his bleeding was severe. His toga was soaked-”

“He was still wearing his toga?”

“Yes, he was fully dressed.”

I took another look at the door, swung it on its hinges. It was set almost in the center of the wall, with about three feet of space on each side of it. This room had no window opening onto the balcony outside. I decided that the room had told me all that it was going to.

“Let’s go,” I said. As we descended into the courtyard, I asked, “Do you remember any other distinguished persons being here that night?”

Andromeda shook her head. “The killing pretty much drove everything else from my mind.”

“And you?” I asked Asklepiodes.

“I had been entertaining some friends from the Museum in Alexandria. They were on a visit to Rome, staying at the Egyptian Embassy. I am sure if there had been any Romans of distinction present, I would have pointed them out to my colleagues.”

“So much for that, then. Andromeda, please describe Galatea.”

“A pretty girl, but then all of mine are. About sixteen, dark hair, brown eyes. She’d only been here for a couple of days. She wasn’t from Rome, but she wasn’t from very far away either, to judge by her accent. A small town girl. I get a lot of those.”

“Were there any other disappearances at that time?”

“What do you mean?” Andromeda asked.

“Was there any other member of your staff here that night that you never saw again afterward?”

She looked at Asklepiodes. “What’s your friend getting at?”

He smiled happily. “Just bear with him. It often makes sense after a while. Like Socrates, he comes at the truth by asking questions rather than making pronouncements.”

“As you will. Now that I think of it, there was a bouncer I’d hired about the time I took Galatea on. He said his name was Antaeus and that he was from the south and had come up to Rome to fight in the big Games. He was a huge brute, like most of them, and wore a heavy beard, the way citizens hardly ever do.”

“And he disappeared after the murder as well?”

“Right. This is always part-time work for the funeral fighters. The only reason I noticed he’d gone was when he didn’t show up to collect a few night’s wages. I never connected it with the killing, though. These boys usually work during the day as bullies for one of the gang leaders, so they end up dead or laid up with wounds pretty often and I don’t take much notice.”

By this time, we were at the courtyard entrance to the tunnel. “Andromeda, you have been of great assistance to me in this matter, and I hope to see more of you in the future.”

She smiled fetchingly, something she did well, since she did it for a living. “Aedile, you will always be welcome in the Labyrinth whether in or out of office.”

She left and Asklepiodes started to go, but I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Just another moment of your time, my friend.”

“Assuredly, as much of it as you wish.”

We began to stroll through the tunnel, Hermes close behind us. “There are a couple of matters I thought our hostess had no need to hear. She mentioned that Lucilius babbled something she couldn’t understand. Could you make anything out?”

“I cannot be certain. He seemed to be in the delirium that often precedes death and not in his best voice. It sounded to me like he was saying ‘?lthy dog, filthy dog.’ His teeth were tightly gritted, but that much was clear.”

“Are you certain he was using the masculine form?” I asked, thinking that the man might have been calling the treacherous whore a bitch.

“Yes, the word was masculine.”

“And the wound you describe: Not only did the dagger have to penetrate a heavy woolen toga and a layer or two of clothing beneath that, but it was dragged upward several inches. That takes a strong man.”

“Yes, I suppose it would,” he agreed, nodding.

“And it didn’t occur to you to point this out at the time?” I asked, exasperated. “A whore can easily murder a man, but first she gets him out of his clothes, relaxed and unsuspecting. Then she can stick a tiny knife into his jugular or slip a stiletto into his heart, and he’ll die practically without noticing it!”

“Yes, that makes sense. But, my old friend, I was summoned to give the man what aid I could, which was very little indeed. I was never questioned by an investigator.” This, to Asklepiodes, took care of everything.

I sighed. Sometimes I wondered whether I was the only man in the world who reasoned in the fashion I did. “And you’ve done well, if somewhat belatedly. Thank you. I thank you.”

“Always happy to be of assistance to Senate and People,” he assured me, and went off to rejoin his companion for the night, probably some painted, pretty boy. He was, after all, a Greek.

“I hope you’ve kept your ears open through all this,” I said to Hermes. He was purchasing a bundle of small torches from a vendor.

“Yes, though those dancers strained my eyes.” He ignited a torch at a wall sconce and preceded me back toward the bridge. “The whore Galatea sounds like she might have been that poor, whipped girl we saw at the insula.”

“My own thought. Andromeda said her accent sounded local but not Roman. Bovillae is only about thirty miles down the Via Appia. People there talk almost like Romans. And the bouncer, Antaeus-”

“The big slave. He was hiding behind the door. There was plenty of space there and no window in the wall on the courtyard side where someone might see what was going on inside.”

“I’ve taught you well, Hermes!” I commended him. Sometimes the boy was almost worth what he ate, drank, and stole. “Lucilius must have been attacked and stabbed as soon as the door was shut. Then the big slave and the girl would have left the room separately, after an interval. With all the comings and goings in a place like that, who would notice?”

“That’s why they went to work there a few days before the killing!” Hermes said, getting excited. “They needed to be there long enough so nobody would notice them, and they needed to pick a good room to carry it out. They settled on one way on the top fioor, with plenty of room behind the door and no window in the front wall! The big man went up there earlier; so if anyone knocked, he’d yell that the room was occupied.”

“You’re learning to think like a criminal, Hermes, but I suppose it must come naturally to you. Now I am wondering who the man in the hooded cloak might have been and why Lucilius went up to that room with Galatea.”

“The man in the hood was probably Folius,” Hermes said. “The girl and the big slave were his property. And as for going upstairs with Galatea, I know why I’d have been going up there with her.”

“No doubt. But you shouldn’t always jump at the easiest answer. There are too many people involved in this.”

“What, then?”

“I was thinking about Lucilius’s dying words.” Ahead of us I could see the torches burning along the parapets of the Sublician Bridge. Beneath them people were still watching the ominous rise of the river.

“You mean ‘?lthy dog?’ What-oh, I see what you mean.”

The boy still had much to learn. It had just occurred to him what had occurred to me the moment Asklepiodes had said it. The Greek physician, whose ear for Latin was not as perfect as he liked to think, had heard the gritted, dying words of Lucilius incorrectly.

He hadn’t been saying canis. He had been saying Caninus.