The Tribune's curse

9

The stretch of the Tiber between the Aemilian and Sublician Bridges was rich with history, for these were our oldest bridges and the scene of legendary battles. It was also rich with smell, for the great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, discharged its effluent into the river at this spot, along with some of the lesser sewers. The adjacent Forum Boarium, together with the Circus Maximus and all its attendant stables, had to be cleaned daily, and the resulting product, if not sold to farmers for fertilizer, was dumped by the wagonload into the murky water between the bridges.

All this enrichment of the otherwise nutrition-poor water resulted in abundant schools of fish, making this intrapontal stretch of river the most desirable fishing ground anywhere near the City. The fishing was dominated by a few families who had for generations defended their territory against all interlopers. They had their own customs, sacrificed to their own gods and to Tiberinus, the personified river. They even spoke in a dialect of their own.

There were, roughly speaking, three groupings of these families: those who fished from the banks and bridges with poles, those who fished with nets from boats during the day, and those who fished at night, with nets and torches.

At dawn on the morning after the near-riot, I waited on the riverbank, grateful that the coolness of winter kept the stench within tolerable boundaries. We Romans are inordinately proud of our sewers, but they came about more or less by accident. The Forum was on swampy ground, so the early settlers dug a ditch to the river to drain it. From the Etruscans they learned how to encase the trench in vaulted stone and cover it. It turned out to be a convenient place to throw all the city’s waste, and now we have a whole system of sewers, although the City always seems to grow a little faster than the capacity of the sewers to keep it clean.

The day-fishermen were readying their boats to go out as the night-fishermen came in, and as the latter began to unload their fish, I accosted an older man who seemed to be in charge of several of the fishing craft.

“I am Decius Metellus, iudex appointed to investigate the murder of the tribune Ateius. I need to speak with whoever found the body.”

The gray-haired fisherman spoke slowly, and I will not try to reproduce here his river-fisherman’s dialect. “Was young Sextus, the one we call Cricket, that spotted the corpse; then we all rowed over for a look. Would’ve left it till morning and reported it then, but the other Sextus, the one we call Mender because he’s so handy mending the nets, he leaned close with a torch and sang out. The dead man was wearing a strange robe and looked like lions had been at him. We’d all heard talk about the crazy tribune who’d cursed Crassus, so I went over to the gate and reported it right away.”

“Admirable. Which bank was he on?”

The man turned and pointed to the far bank, opposite the City. “The Tuscan.”

“Did you carry him in?”

He shook his head vehemently. “No, we don’t touch no corpses. You do that, you’ll never catch no fish till you’re purified by a priest. The gate captain rounded up some night-cleaning slaves from the Forum Boarium, and they carried him through the gate. By that time, word was spreading fast. There was already a crowd waiting at the gate.”

“An excellent report,” I told him. “I am obliged to you.” I turned to go, but he spoke up.

“Senator?”

I turned back. “Yes?”

“You’re up for aedile next year, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“You get elected, the big sewer’s clogged real bad, been needing cleaning for years.”

“I’ll remember,” I said, sighing with resignation. I would be paying for my predecessors’ neglect. Scouring the sewers was one of the very worst jobs on the aedile’s docket. We usually employed condemned criminals to do it.

“Do it as soon as you’re in office,” he admonished me. “Or it’ll be too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“Flood coming next year, a big one. We’ve seen all the signs,” he nodded dolefully.

“I’ll see to it. Thanks for the warning.”

I made my way toward the Campus Martius, brooding over the prospect of the year ahead. I didn’t doubt the man for an instant. This wasn’t an old woman seeing warnings from the gods in every bird that flew past her window. These were people who lived their lives on the river and knew all its moods. If they said a flood was coming, then, barring freakish circumstances, it would come.

I skirted the edge of the Forum Boarium and went out through the Carmentalis Gate and took the long street that led to Pompey’s Theater. The street was lined with some of our smaller but nonetheless most beautiful temples. Pompey had had the street widened and improved to facilitate access to his theater, which was the first permanent theater built in Rome. For centuries, the Censors tried to keep degenerate Greek influences out of the City, regarding them as a danger to public morals.

The great complex of interconnected buildings bulked up from the flat plain of the Campus Martius like a beached whale. At one end was the vast theater with the temple atop it, and from it stretched the extravagant portico and the Senate meetinghouse, all surrounded by splendid gardens. Pompey could do some things right, if he hired someone competent to think it up for him.

I passed into the theater and stood within the great half circle of seats, said to have a seating capacity of forty thousand. On the stage, an acting troupe was rehearsing what appeared to be a tragedy, the actors looking strange without their masks. At the top of the seats, before the temple, I could see a small crowd gathered. I began to climb, feeling like a slave at the Games, relegated to the highest seats with the most distant view of the action.

A pack of thugs stood as a sort of honor guard around the mangled remains of the late, unlamented Ateius Capito. I didn’t bother to look him over, since I had come here to get a professional opinion. Instead, I admired the temple, which I had not seen since it had been completed.

The Temple of Venus Victrix was, of necessity, rather small. You do not build a truly huge temple atop a theater, even if you are inclined by nature to such odd architectural juxtapositions. Its proportions, however, were exquisite. The slender, delicately fluted Corinthian columns, topped with their sprays of acanthus leaves, were especially pleasing.

“No signs of action from the City?” I asked the man in charge of the thugs, one I vaguely remembered seeing with Clodius’s escort.

“No. My guess is, everyone will hold off till the funeral. The other tribunes will give a rousing funeral oration and carry on just like they didn’t hate his guts. Then, if you haven’t found the killer or killers, they’ll start taking the place apart.”

“There’ll be no end of fun if that happens,” agreed another. These men were connoisseurs of mobs and riots.

I wandered over to the edge of the top terrace next to the temple and looked over the waist-high railing. The building with its tiered rows of arches below me looked like a huge marble drum. Statues stood inside every arch, all of them specially commissioned for the theater. We had looted all the Greek cities so thoroughly that there was little original artwork left worth taking, so now we brought in expert sculptors to make copies for us of famous sculptures.

I leaned out for a better look, bracing a hand against one of the masts set in massive, bronze sconces at intervals along the top of the outer wall. On days of theatricals, these masts supported the velarium, a huge awning. Pompey’s velarium was striped with purple, because he was never shy about reminding people of his military glory. Of course, the stripes were not made with the true, Tyrian purple used for the triumphator’s robe. That much Tyrian dye would have cost more than the whole theater complex. Rather, it was made with dye extracted from the common trumpet-shell and mixed with various native dyes. I learned this from an old dye merchant of Ostia. The effect was almost the same as that of the true purple, but unlike Tyrian dye this imitation faded with age and exposure to the sun.

Beyond the theater stretched the sprawling buildings of the Campus Martius. They were not stacked as high as those crowded within the walls and so gave a finer sense of space. Largest of them was the Circus Flaminius. It was smaller than the Circus Maximus, but constructed largely of stone, while the Maximus was mostly of wood. Between the clusters of buildings were broad stretches of greenery. This part of Rome was actually far more pleasant to live in than Rome within the pomerium, but a native just didn’t feel that he was in Rome unless he was within the walls.

“An imposing view, is it not?”

I turned to see Asklepiodes behind me. He was a small man, wearing a traditional physician’s robe, his gray hair and beard dressed in the Greek fashion, with a fillet of plaited silver encircling his brow. He was physician to the gladiatorial school of Statilius Taurus and an old friend. He was also, by his own modest claim, the world’s leading authority on wounds inflicted by weapons. In this professional capacity he had aided me in many investigations. In his other capacity he had bandaged, stitched, and anointed me more times than I could readily count. I took his hand, which was astonishingly strong for a man his size.

“It is good to see you again,” I said, studying him. “You’re a little grayer, but otherwise unchanged.”

“You are likewise the same except for a few new scars. Young Hermes tells me the two of you have been conquering Gaul virtually without help.”

“He’s young and inclined to boast. Right now it seems as if someone is trying to start a good-sized war right here in Rome.”

“Truly? How might that be?”

“You haven’t heard of what’s been happening? The departure of Crassus and the curse and last night’s murder?”

“I heard some rumors at the school, but I am very busy and pay little attention to the political life of Rome. I am a foreigner and cannot vote, so what would be the point?” We strolled toward the catafalque, and he looked over the temple with a critical eye. “This is a very strange place to build a temple, is it not?”

“You don’t know that story, either?”

“There is much about Rome that I do not understand, long though I have lived here.”

“Well, for centuries the Censors have fought any attempt to build a theater in Rome. They say that plays are a passing frivolity, and besides, they’re foreign and degenerate and, if you will forgive me, Greek. So Pompey, when he wanted to polish up his reputation by giving us a permanent theater, put this temple at the top of the seats so he could say that the seats are actually a stairway leading to the temple.”

He smiled. “That is a tortuous subterfuge, considering the reputation you Romans have as a straightforward people.”

“We have our moments.”

“And your concept of corrupting influence mystifies me. I spend my days patching up the men who fight in your funeral Games, who die by the score in those spectacles and whose practice bouts are as bloody as some conventional battles. You enjoy chariot races that are scarcely less dangerous than wars and are conducive to mob violence. Yet you fear contamination from Sophocles and Aeschylus?”

“But the munera are religious services in placation of our dead,” I told him.

“Drama and comedy are likewise celebrations to honor the gods.”

“But,” I pointed out, “they encourage the softer emotions, like fear and pity, whereas our Games encourage the virtues of sternness and manliness. Believe me, with the way we’ve treated the rest of the world, if we show a moment’s softness, we’ll have Persians and Syrians and Libyans and Iberians at our throats in seconds, and that’s not mentioning the Gauls and Germans, who are halfway to our jugulars already.”

“If you insist,” he muttered, grumpily. “But how you can reconcile your abhorrence of human sacrifice with dosing the shades of the dead with human blood challenges my powers of rationalization.”

“But the gladiator has a better-than-even chance of coming out of the fight alive,” I told him. “You see? It’s different.” Sometimes I just don’t understand Greeks.

“I shall defer to your command of the subject. Now, let’s have a look at this unfortunate politician.” He clapped his hands, and two men came running up the steps. They were his slaves-Egyptians who spoke only the native tongue of that land and who were expert surgeons in their own right. They had a skill of bandaging possible only to the people who invented mummies. At Asklepiodes’ wordless gesture they peeled the ragged cloak and clothing from the corpse, leaving it all but naked. Unlike Romans, they had no superstitious dread of touching corpses. The thugs looked on curiously.

“You may have consulted the wrong man, Decius,” said Asklepiodes. “I treat the gladiators, not the bestiarii. ” He referred to the men whose specialty it was to fight wild animals in the Games. It was a much lower calling than that of swordsman.

“Do you think it was an animal? Caesti and spiked clubs can leave wounds similar to these.”

“Who is the expert here?” he said, testily. “Actually, I think it might be several animals. There are claw marks and teeth marks, and there is a wound here,” he indicated a huge slash that slanted across the unfortunate man’s ribs, “that looks like it was made by a great whip.” He bent closer and had his slaves turn the body over on its belly. “There are other marks here, cuts and-” he mumbled some foreign words, and one of the slaves probed delicately at a bloody depression on the back of the skull “-a depressed fracture that might have been made by a club. It is as if he was attacked with weapons from behind and by beasts from in front.”

“Like a condemned man pushed to the lions by men with spears?”

“Possibly, although these attacks from behind were more than mere proddings. How did this man come to rate so colorful and thorough a demise?”

I gave him an abbreviated version of the story, leaving out, of course, the part about the Secret Name of Rome.

“Ahh,” he said, clapping his palms together with delight at so utterly bizarre a story. “This is far better than the usual sordid murder for gain or for revenge. It is like something from one of the dramas,” he waved a hand toward the stage, where the actors still pranced through their paces. “In fact, thinking of them,” his face grew more solemn, “if I were a more religious man, or one more superstitiously inclined-” he let it taper off portentously.

“Then what?” I urged.

“The man committed a great offense against the gods. In the ancient tales immortalized in the great plays, the gods reserve an especially terrible punishment for those who offend them greatly.”

Against all reason, fear gripped my bowels. “You can’t mean the Fur-”

He held up an admonitory finger to silence me. “I mean, sometimes they release the Friendly Ones from the underworld to torment the sinner to his death.” He used the famous euphemism because to speak the name of those horrid creatures was to attract their attention. “These spirits of divine vengeance are said to be provided with natural weapons sufficient to wreak the sort of damage we see here.” He waved a hand airily. “That is, I might speculate thus were I of a superstitious turn of mind.”

His little qualification was too late for some of us. At his first suggestion the thugs were backing away from the otherwise inoffensive corpse, their eyes bugging out with dread. Two of them whirled and ran toward the exits so ingeniously designed to fill and empty the theater with greatest dispatch. Wonderful, I thought. Before nightfall, the City would be swept by yet another rumor: the Friendly Ones were loose in Rome!

“And I had always thought you the most rational of men,” I said.

“And so I am. I simply did not wish to leave any possibility unexplored.”

“I see. Well, leaving aside for the moment the nature of the creature that attacked him and adhering as closely as possible to mundane precepts, can you tell me anything at all about how he died?”

“To begin, he was probably not killed where he was found.”

“Why not?”

“He has been dead for at least two days, possibly as long as three. The cool weather has helped. In summer he would be very offensive by now.”

“He isn’t good company as it is, but I take your point.”

“He is largely drained of blood, as is only to be expected with such extensive wounds. These marks around his wrists,” he indicated livid lines encircling both joints, “indicate that he was bound at one point and struggling against his bonds.”

“That means there were at least two assailants,” I mused.

“Unless he cooperated in his binding, I would think that to be the case. It is not unheard of, but I would think it doubtful in this case. That, however, is your realm of expertise. And that,” he said, straightening, “is as much as I can tell you at this time. I shall consult with my colleague who tends to the wounds of the bestiarii, and, if I learn anything of value, I shall get word to you.”

“I am grateful for all your help.”

He waved my thanks aside. “The entertainment alone is worth the effort. This is much more interesting than stitching up conventional lacerations. In the course of your campaigning in Gaul, did you happen to encounter any unfamiliar weapons, anything capable of inflicting unusual wounds?”

So we talked shop for a while, and I told him about a really hideous new weapon we had found some of the Eastern Gallic tribes employing, called a falx. It had a handle long enough for two hands and sported a blade two feet or more in length, which was curved like a scythe and sharp on the inside curve. It could lop off a man’s leg with a single swipe. Asklepiodes showed great interest in this and expressed his regret that he had no opportunity to examine so impressive a wound. I promised him I would send him back a falx for his extensive collection of weapons.

At length we parted, promising to get together for dinner sometime soon. He called to his Egyptians, who seemed to be performing a prayer over the body of Ateius, as if they, too, saw in his sad condition some fearful manifestation of the vengeance of the netherworld gods.

By this time it was nearly noon. Without reluctance I took my leave of the late Ateius, who was now attended by only three or four intrepid supporters of Clodius, men apparently unafraid of maleficent underworld creatures.

As I walked back toward the City, head down and hands clasped behind my back, I must have looked like one of those Peripatetic philosophers who did their cogitating while walking. Or maybe it was their talking that they did while walking. Some-thing like that, anyway. Great as was my abhorrence for philosophy and its practitioners, most of whom, in my opinion, might be better employed doing something useful, like herding geese, I found myself trying to break down my problem by categories and subcategories, as philosophers are so fond of doing while feeling very clever about it all, too.

I had two investigations to conduct: the first was into the source from which Ateius Capito learned the Secret Name of Rome. The second was to find the murderer or murderers of the same Ateius Capito. Thinking philosophically, either the two cases were connected, or they were not. This, I think, is called a syllogism. I am not certain, and I am not about to ask a philosopher.

If they were connected, might Ateius not have been murdered to conceal the identity of his informant? If so, find the murderer and I would find the betrayer of the Secret Name, and it would be all very tidy. Unfortunately, this case bore no discernible aspects of tidiness. On the contrary, it spread out in too many directions. It involved foreign war, domestic politics, the ambitions of men great and petty, and it involved the gods and spirits of the underworld.

But what if most of these elements were peripheral, and the true motivation behind all of it, the prime mover, if you will, was a single thing that they all had in common? This is what I call the nexus, and in discovering this nexus I have solved a number of investigations, although few as odd as this one. The nexus may be right out there in plain view. The trick is to ignore all the irrelevancies. That can be very difficult to do when the irrelevancies are as colorful and diverting as they were in this case. I had certainly never had to take the Friendly Ones into consideration before.

One thing I have learned that has never, to my knowledge, been articulated by any philosopher. It is that nobody thinks better for being hungry. Desiring to improve my mental powers, I went in search of something to eat.

It is a virtue of Rome that you never have to go far to find a wineshop. They are to be found on every corner, and almost all of them supply a few tables and benches where one may repose, ponder, and watch the passing show. I found just such an establishment a few streets off the Forum, took a table, and, with a forbearance not entirely characteristic of me, waited until the food arrived before I began making inroads upon the wine.

With the mental clarity induced by a full stomach, I sought inspiration (Bacchus being a very inspiring god). I tried to lay out the facts as I had received them. Where had all this begun?

First, Ateius had cursed Crassus. More specifically, he had cursed Crassus’s expedition, and all who took part in it. Not very helpful. Crassus was not a popular man, just a man to whom many people owed debts. His proposed war was not a popular one. But would these things inspire such hideous crimes? Would not assassinating Crassus be easier, quicker, and more to the point? And who profited from this catastrophe? First off, the king of Parthia, one Orodes by name, who had to my knowledge no adherents in Rome. Opposition in Rome had nothing to do with affection for the Parthians, who were just another pack of horse-eating barbarians. Once again, if Orodes wished to take preemptive action, why not hire a man with a dagger instead of a tribune with a curse? It would be cheaper and probably more effective.

And since Crassus was so roundly detested, why kill Ateius? Most of the men who opposed Crassus must have felt only delight at his discomfiture when his expedition was cursed. In the entire City, the only man I could think of who would kill Ateius for his actions was the younger Marcus Crassus, who keenly felt the insult to his family and had much to lose if his father’s war failed. He had expressed to me a quite reasonable and laudable desire to horsewhip Ateius as soon as he stepped down from office. Had he been concealing far-more-dire intentions? I rather doubted it. He had too much of his father’s unemotional, dispassionate nature. Still, I did not discount him as a possibility.

Then there was the curse, more specifically the Secret Name of Rome. Was Ateius murdered to protect the identity of the person who had divulged that name? This looked more promising. Also, it suggested a conspiracy. One thing I knew from long experience: it is easier to hide an elephant under the bed than it is to hide a conspiracy in Rome, especially one that involves not only important men, but foreigners like the sorcerers I had interviewed. Sometimes, it seems as if conspirators are actually eager to talk, if you can just give them an excuse.

I was beginning to get impatient with Bacchus when he tapped me with one of those inspirations: I had been concentrating on the cursed man and the murdered man, but suppose these were just minor casualties of an attack aimed at Rome itself? This seemed promising and got my patriotic, republican feathers ruffled. After all, the indignation over the curse was not because of its assault on Crassus, whom nobody liked, but because it endangered Rome. Orodes again? But the business of the curse seemed incredibly subtle for some long-sleeved, trousers-wearing barbarian tyrant. Unless, of course, he had the aid of a Roman traitor.

I realized that I was trying too hard to pin the blame on a foreign enemy. I did not want to believe that, once again, Romans were engaged in fratricidal, internal warfare. A will to believe or disbelieve something is the enemy of all rational thought.

Somehow, I knew that I was overlooking something. I was sure that there was a motivating factor that I was missing, as well as a unifying center, a sort of double nexus at which all the tangled strands of this maddening business crossed. I slammed my cup on the table in frustration.

“Is something wrong, Senator?” asked a plump young serving woman.

“I am receiving insufficient inspiration,” I told her.

“I thought maybe it was because your jug’s empty.”

I looked into the lees swirling in the bottom of the jug. “So it is. Well, that’s easily rectified. Bring me another.”

She took the empty and returned with a full jug. “I can’t promise inspiration, but the wine’s good.”

It may be that I was walking a trifle unsteadily when I made my way back through the Forum. Even for the greatest gossiping spot in the world, it was in something of an uproar. Self-appointed public orators were haranguing knots of idlers from the bases of monuments; people were babbling away as if they were actually well informed about the affairs of the world; senators stood around on the court platforms and the steps of the great public buildings, arguing vehemently about one thing or another.

“Decius Caecilius!” It was Cato, standing in the portico of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. He was with Sallustius Crispus, the hairy oaf I’d met at the baths a few days before. Just what I needed. The man who had been one of my least favorite Romans for many years was friendly with my latest object of dislike. Oh, well. After shaking Clodius’s hand in public the night before, I could smile my way through this.

“Any progress on the investigation?” Cato asked. He smelled like a wine cask, but then so did I. For a moment I wondered which investigation he meant, then I realized he might not know about the first.

“Things are coming along nicely,” I lied. “I was looking for Milo to make my report.”

“Have you heard the rumor that’s sweeping the City?” Sallustius said. “People have reported seeing the Furies right here in Rome!” He grinned, apparently proud of his bravery in speaking the name right out loud. “They are described as having the heads of hags with snakes for hair and long fangs, vulture bodies, huge claws, and tails like serpents.”

“I always knew they’d look just like the pictures on Greek vases,” I said.

“Word has it they came to destroy Ateius Capito for his sacrilege,” Sallust said.

“Asklepiodes says he’s been dead at least two days,” I told them. “Why are they still hanging about?”

“What I want to know is how such a rumor got started,” Cato said in ill temper. “As if people weren’t enough on edge already.”

“I’m sure I have no idea,” I told him, my second lie in as many minutes.

A lictor came up the steps and stopped in front of me, unshouldering his fasces. “Senator, the consul Pompey wishes to speak with you. Please come with me.”

“I am summoned,” I said. “Will you gentlemen excuse me?”

“Do not let us detain you,” said Cato.

Perhaps I should explain our ironic tone. In these days of the First Citizen, subservience is the rule, but back then Roman senators resented being summoned like the lackeys of an Oriental despot. A consul had the right to convene a meeting of the Senate, but he had no power over individual members of that body. We all chafed at Pompey’s high-handed methods, which may have resulted from his ignorance of constitutional forms. Pompey was, as I have said, a political lummox.

I followed the lictor to the temporary Grain Office established in the Temple of Concord. Here Pompey and his staff had their headquarters, and from here he amended and controlled the grain supply of Rome and all its possessions. We passed through a foyer where slaves, freedmen, and their supervisors went over the heaps of documents that arrived daily by special courier. These were sorted, reduced to manageable size, and reported to Pompey and his closest advisers. The messengers would be sent back out with orders for the many local Roman governors and purchasing agents all over the world. It was a formidably efficient organization.

We passed out onto a roofed terrace, and Pompey looked up from a broad, papyrus-strewn desk. “Ah, you found him. The rest of you, give us leave.” The other men filed out of the terrace like dismissed soldiers, and the two of us were alone.

“What progress, Senator?” Pompey asked. I told him what little I’d learned so far that day, and he shook his head in exasperation. “Whatever killed the wretch, I am sure it wasn’t some snaky-headed Greek harpy.”

“I believe the harpies are supposed to live above ground,” I said, “and while mischievous, are not so fearsome as the Friendly Ones. Prettier, too, if we’re to believe the paintings.”

“I know that. I am just not interested in tales to frighten children. I need somebody to throw to that mob before they get out of hand.” This was an uncommonly blunt statement, even for Pompey.

“I’ll have a name for you soon,” I said.

“Not unless you go easier on the wine.”

“It’s never interfered with my attention to duty,” I said, fuming. Bad enough to be summoned like a straying slave by this jumped-up soldier, but I had to listen to him berate me as well.

“Now, what about your other investigation?”

“Other investigation?” I said innocently.

“Yes,” he said impatiently, “the one that charges you to discover who betrayed the Secret Name of Rome.”

“Well, so much for the Pontifical College being able to keep a secret.”

“Are you serious? Three of the men at that meeting told me all about it within the hour.”

I told him of my investigation and whom I had interviewed so far. “It all seems rather far-fetched, and I suspect I am pursuing the wrong people altogether,” I said untruthfully. Actually, I was very sure that I was close to something, but I felt no need to tell him anything prematurely.

“Most likely. Syrian mountebanks! Cumaean scholars! Forget about them. Find me some aristocrat who’s plotting against Crassus, and most likely against me and probably against Caesar, too. I know the Senate’s packed with them, and your family is not backward in that regard.”

“When my family has opposed you, Cnaeus Pompeius, we have never plotted behind your back. We have spoken out in public.” Doubtless the wine made my tongue a little freer than it should have been.

He reddened, but quickly regained composure. “So you have. Well, not everyone in the august body is so courageous, and no few members proclaim themselves my friends but plot my ruin and that of my colleagues. I suspect it was one or more of them who put Ateius up to it, and who probably got rid of him immediately afterward.”

Like most men who rise to great power over the bodies of other men, Pompey saw plots and conspiracies everywhere. Of course, when you behave as he and Caesar and Crassus had, you create plots and conspiracies against yourself.

“I can’t say whether this was aimed at you personally,” I told him, “but I suspect you may be right in thinking he was eliminated by his confederates rather than by an enemy. I spoke with the man only once, but he struck me as unstable, not somebody a conspirator would want to keep around once he’d been used.”

“And murdering a tribune got the whole City in hysterics, distracting everyone from the real business at hand, which was the curse itself.”

“Very true,” I admitted. This interview might not be so unproductive after all.

“Well, get back to it. Let me know the instant you’ve found out something substantive.” He returned his attention to the papers on his desk. I resisted the urge to salute and whirl on my heel like a dismissed soldier. Instead, I strolled out, wondering if Pompey had been sharing his own musings, or if he had been sowing confusion for reasons of his own. Since I was disinclined to think any good of Pompey, I was biased toward the latter possibility.

As I went out onto the temple steps, something that had been tickling the back of my mind without result suddenly came up for my inspection. Ateius’s body had been found on the Tuscan side of the river. Why there? He was wrapped in that strange robe, but he hadn’t been seen since delivering his curse. Had he really fled all the way from the Capena Gate to the river and across one of the bridges without being seen while wearing that eye-catching outfit in broad daylight?

I glanced at the angle of the sun. There was still plenty of time left before nightfall. I needed a walk to clear my head, anyway. I set out for the Capena Gate.