The Venus Throw

Chapter Twelve

The next morning I rose early, ate a frugal breakfast of honey and bread, offered my beard to Belbo for a trim (I trust no one else to use anything sharp near my neck), donned my toga, since I intended to pay some formal visits, and stepped out of the house. The fresh, dewy air was bracing; the lingering chill of the night was tempered by the morning's warm sunshine.

I filled my lungs with a deep breath and headed up the street with Belbo beside me.

The Palatine seemed to me particularly lovely that morning. Of late, whenever I left the immediate vicinity of my house, I had been struck by how dirty and grubby so much of Rome had begun to seem, especially the Subura with its brothels and taverns and foul-smelling little side streets, and the Forum with its toga-clad hordes of politicians and financiers going about their frenzied business. How much more pleasant the Palatine was, with its shaded, well-paved streets, its quaint little shops, orderly apartments and handsome houses. One could breathe in such a neighborhood, and walk even in the busiest part of the day without knocking elbows with a hundred rude, shoving strangers.

I had gotten used to living in a rich man's neighborhood, I realized, and the adjustment had not been difficult at all. What would my father say, who had lived all his life in the Subura? Probably, I thought, he would be proud of his son's material success, however unconventionally I had acquired it. He would also probably remind me that I should keep my wits about me and never be deceived by appearances. The rare and beautiful things that wealth and power can buy are often only decorations to conceal the way that such wealth and power were attained. Yes, a man can breathe freely on the airy, spacious Palatine-and a man can also stop breathing. Something more awful than knocking elbows with strangers had happened to Dio. The quality of a man's bedsheets counts for nothing if his sleep is forever.

The way to the house of Lucius Lucceius took us past the apartment building from which Marcus Caelius had recently been evicted. As we passed I paused to take a look. Not only was the upper story deserted, but a sign

had been painted in handsome black letters on the corner of the building: FOR SALE BY OWNER, PUBLIUS CLODIUS PULCHER.

Beneath this was a drawing of some sort. I stepped across the street for a closer look and saw that it was a crudely rendered graffito showing a man and woman entangled in sexual intercourse. At first glance, it struck me that

their positions were absurdly acrobatic; on closer examination I decided that they were physically impossible. Running from the woman's gaping mouth was a scrawled caption, with almost all the words misspelled: THERE'S NOTHING LIKE A BROTHER'S LOVE!

The artist was too poor a draftsman to have captured any recog-nizable features, but I had no doubt whom the copulating figures were meant to represent. The graffito had probably been left by one of Milo's rabble, I thought, though Clodius and his sister had plenty of other enemies. Considering the misspellings, the vandalism could hardly be attributed to Marcus Caelius. Or could it? Caelius was wickedly clever enough to deliberately disguise his handiwork as that of a lesser intellect.

Belbo and I moved on. After numerous twistings and turnings down smaller side streets we reached the house of Lucius Lucceius. As befitted the domicile of a wealthy and respected senior senator, it presented an irreproachable facade. The only ornamentation was the massive wooden door, which looked very old and was carved with elaborate swirls and bound with massive iron clasps that had the savage look of the finest Carthaginian handiwork. It was not unlikely that the door had been brought back from the sack of Carthage itself; I have seen many such trophies in the homes of those whose families conquered Rome's rivals. Belbo, unawed by its history or design and seeing only a door, knocked upon it.

It was quickly answered by the door slave, with whom Belbo ex-changed the requisite formalities. A moment later I was admitted into the foyer, and then into a sparsely furnished study. The walls were decorated with Carthaginian war trophies-spears, swords, pieces of armor and even a pair of elephant tusks. The white-haired master of the house sat before a table littered with scrolls, styluses, wax writing tablets and bits of parchment.

"I can allow you only a moment," he said, without looking up. "I know who you are, of course, and I can guess what you're doing here. There's the chair. Sit down." At last he put down the scroll over which he had been poring and squinted at me. "Yes, I remember your face. First time I saw it was when Cicero pointed you out to me in the Forum- must have been fifteen years ago during the trials of the Vestal Virgins. Damned Catilina, corrupting a Vestal and getting away with it! It was I who prosecuted him for murder, you know, the year before he staged his little uprising. Didn't win that case, did I? Probably would have been better for everyone concerned if I had, Catilina included-he could be off somewhere enjoying his exile right now, buggering all the pretty boys in Massilia or wherever. By Hercules, you look fit! I'd have thought you'd gotten as old as me by now!" With that, Lucius Lucceius smiled broadly and pushed himself from the table. He was a remarkably ugly man with great bristling eyebrows and an unkempt mane of white hair.

He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. "Need a break anyway. Working on my history of the Carthaginian wars. Great-great-great-grandfather helped Scipio Africanus put an end to Hannibal, left the family a pile of scrolls nobody's read in years. Fascinating stuff. When I've finished writing it I'll browbeat all the friends and family into buying copies. They won't bother to read it, but the work keeps me busy. Gordianus, Gordianus," he mused, staring at me and wrinkling his brow. "Thought you were retired, not even living in Rome anymore. Seems somebody told me you'd left it all for a farm in Sicily."

"Etruria, actually. But that was a while ago. I've been back in Rome for several years now."

"Still retired?"

"Yes and no. I take on simple cases now and then, just to keep myself busy. Rather like you writing your history, I imagine."

From the flash in his squinting eyes, I saw that Lucceius took his role as historian more seriously than his self-deprecation indicated. "So,' he said curtly, "Cicero has sent you around to collect my statement. Afraid it's not ready."

I stared at him blankly.

"Well, so much else to do," he said. "That is why you're here, isn't it? This business about young Marcus Caelius being brought to trial by those rascals claiming he tried to do in Dio?"

"Yes," I said slowly. "That is why I'm here."

"Surprised me-well, surprised everybody, I imagine-when I heard that Cicero was going to handle the boy's defense. Thought those two had fallen out for good, but there you have it. Things get dicey and the naughty schoolboy goes running back to his tutor. Rather touching, really."

"Yes, it is," I said quietly. Was it really possible that Cicero had taken on Caelius's defense? The news was startling, but made perfect sense. Cicero had successfully defended Asicius, probably to please Pompey. Pompey would be pleased to see Caelius acquitted as well, and Cicero was the man to do it. As for the feud between Caelius and Cicero, the same pragmatism that can make friends into enemies in the blink of an eye can do the reverse as well. "So your statement for Cicero isn't ready yet?" I said.

"No. Come back tomorrow. Actually, surprised he sent you to fetch it instead of that secretary of his, the one who picks over all the tiny details."

"Tiro?"

"That's the one. Clever slave."

"Yes, well, I suspect Tiro will be the one who comes to collect your statement eventually. But as long as I'm here, perhaps I could ask you a few questions."

"Go on."

"About Dio."

He waved his hand. "It will all be in the statement."

"Still, perhaps it could save us all some time-you, me, Tiro, Cicero-if you could give me an idea of what exactly will be in the statement."

"Just what I told Cicero. Dio was my houseguest for a while, and then moved on. As simple as that. All this nonsense about poisoning- 'Nasty rumors spread like olive oil, and leave a stain like red wine.' "

"But there was a death in this house, wasn't there? Dio's slave, his taster-"

"Worthless slave died of natural causes, and that's the end of it." "Then why did Dio move on to the house of Titus Coponius?" "Because Dio was frightened by his own shadow. Saw a stick on

the ground, swore it was a snake." Lucceius snorted. "Dio was as safe here as a virgin in the House of the Galli. That's the beginning and end

of it."

"And yet, Dio believed that someone in this house tried to poison

him."

"Dio had no damned sense. Look what happened to him at Coponius's house, then tell me where he was safer!"

"I see your point. You were good friends, then, you and Dio?"

"Of course! What do you think, I'd ask an enemy to sleep under my roof? He'd sit here during the day, where you're sitting now, and we'd talk about Aristotle, or Alexandria, or Carthage in the days of Hannibal. Gave me some good ideas for my history." Lucceius looked aside and bit his lip. "Wasn't a bad fellow. Sorry to see him go. Of course he did have some nasty habits." He smiled grimly. "Picking the fruit before it's ripe and all that."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind. No point gossiping about the dead." " 'Picking the fruit…'?"

"Liked them young. One of those. Nothing wrong in that, except a man should keep his hands off what belongs to his host. I'll say no more." From his face I could see that he meant it.

"You said that Dio's slave died of natural causes. What killed him?"

"How should I know?"

"But a death in the house — "

"The death of a slave, and another man's slave at that." "Surely someone noted the symptoms."

"What do you think, I summon a fancy Greek physician every time a slave has a stomach ache? Slaves take ill every day, and sometimes they die."

"Then you can't be sure that it wasn't poison. Dio thought so."

"Dio thought lots of things. Had quite an imagination-made a better philosopher than historian."

"Still, if someone in the household could tell me exactly how the slave died, what he complained of before the end-"

I was stopped by the look on Lucceius's face. He stared at me for a long moment. His bushy eyebrows gathered above his squinting eyes. "Who sent you here?"

"I'd rather not say."

"Wasn't Cicero, was it?"

"I come as a friend of Dio's."

"Meaning that I wasn't? Get out."

"My only interest is discovering the truth about Dio's death. If you were truly his friend-"

"Get out! Well, go on. Up! Out!" Lucius Lucceius picked up a stylus and waved it like a dagger, glowering at me as I stood and walked to the door. I left him bent over his scrolls, muttering angrily to himself.

The slave who had shown me in was waiting in the hallway to show me out, but before we reached the foyer a formidably large woman stepped into the hallway and blocked our path.

"Go on, Cleon," she said to the slave. "I'll show the visitor out myself." From the tone of her voice she was clearly the mistress of the house, and from the slave's obsequious manner as he backed away I gathered she was not the sort of Roman matron who allowed her slaves much latitude.

Lucceius's wife was as ugly as her husband, though she looked nothing like him. Instead of bristling eyebrows she had only two lines painted above her eyes. Her hair might have been as white as his, had it not been dyed red with henna. She wore a voluminous green stola and a necklace of green glass with matching earrings. "So, you're Gordianus the Finder," she said abruptly, appraising me with a caustic gaze. "I heard the slave announce you to my husband."

"What else did you hear?" I said.

She appreciated my bluntness. "Everything. You and I should talk." I looked over my shoulder.

"Don't worry," she said, "no one eavesdrops on me in this house. They know better. Come this way."

I followed her into another wing of the house. I might as well have entered another world. Where Lucceius's study had been an austere museum of war trophies and musty documents, his wife's quarters were flamboyantly decorated with intricately embroidered hangings and precious objects of metal and glass. One long wall was painted to show a spring garden in bloom, all pale greens and soft pinks and yellows.

"You deceived my husband," she said wryly.

"He thought I came from Cicero. I didn't contradict him."

"So you merely let him believe what he wanted to believe. Yes, that's the best way to handle Lucius. He wasn't intentionally lying to you, you know. He's convinced himself that nothing untoward took place in this house. Lucius has a hard time dealing with the truth. Like most men, most of the time," she said under her breath. She walked about the room, picking things up and putting them down.

"Please, go on," I said.

"Appearances matter more than facts to Lucius.

To have had a houseguest poisoned under his roof, or even a houseguest's slave, is thinkable to him. So it simply never happened, you see.

Lucius will never, ever admit otherwise."

"But such a thing did happen?"

She stepped to a small table covered with a number of identical clay figurines. They were about the size of a child's fist and brightly painted. She picked one of them up and idly turned it over in her hand. "Who sent you here asking questions?"

"As I told your husband, a friend of Dio's."

She snorted.

"Never mind. I can guess who sent you."

"Can you?"

"Clodia. Am I right? Don't bother to answer. I can read your face as easily as I can read Lucius's."

"How could you possibly guess who hired me?"

She shrugged and twirled the little clay figurine between her fore-finger and thumb. It was a votive statue of Attis, the eunuch consort of the Great Mother, Cybele, standing with his hands on his plump belly and wearing his red Phrygian cap with its rounded, forward-sloping peak. "We have ways of sharing what we know."

'We'?"

"We women."

I felt a prickling sensation in my spine, a sense of having had the same conversation before-with Bethesda, when she told me that Clodia and Caelius were no longer lovers, and I asked her how she could possibly know such a thing: We have ways of sharing what we know. For an instant I had a glimmer of insight, as if a door had been opened just enough to let me catch a glimpse of an unfamiliar room. Then she started to talk again and the door was shut.

"There's no doubt that Dio's slave was poisoned. You should have seen the poor wretch. If Lucius had kept his eyes open instead of looking away when the man was dying, he might have a harder time making that glib pronouncement about 'natural causes.' But then Lucius has always been squeamish. He can write his little accounts of women being spitted on stakes and children being chopped into pieces at the fall of Carthage, but he can't stomach watching a slave throw up."

"Was that one of the symptoms?"

"Yes. The man turned as white as marble and went into convulsions."

"But if the slave was poisoned by tasting food intended for Dio, how did the poison get into the food?"

"It was put there by some of the kitchen slaves, of course. I think I know which ones."

"Yes?"

"Juba and Laco. Those two fellows were always up to something. Too smart for their own good. Had fantasies of buying their freedom some day. Juba must have sneaked out of the house that afternoon, because I caught him sneaking back in, and when I questioned him he tried to get out of it by playing stupid and spouting a lot of double-talk, the way slaves do. He said he'd gone to the market to fetch something, I don't remember what, and even held up a little bag to show me. What nerve! It was probably the poison. Later I caught him whispering to Laco in the kitchen and I wondered what they were up to. They're the ones who prepared the dish that killed Dio's slave."

"Dio told me your husband had a visitor that day."

"Publius Asicius. He's the one who was later accused of stabbing Dio at Coponius's house, though they couldn't prove it at the trial. Yes, he came by to visit Lucius at just about the time Juba must have been sneaking out. But I don't think Asicius delivered the poison, if that's what you think. He didn't go near the kitchen slaves."

"But he could have been here as a distraction, to keep your husband busy while Juba sneaked out of the house to get the poison from someone else."

"What an imagination you have!" she said wryly.

"Where is Juba now? Would you let me speak to him?"

"I would if I could, but he's gone. Juba and Laco are both gone."

"Gone where?"

"After his taster died, Dio was quite upset. He screamed and ranted and demanded that Lucius determine which of the slaves had tried to poison him. I pointed out the suspicious behavior of Juba and Laco, but Lucius wouldn't hear of any suggestion that there was poison involved. Even so, a few days later he decided that Juba and Laco-trained kitchen slaves-would be of more use doing manual labor in a mine. Lucius owns an interest in a silver mine up in Picenum. So off the slaves went, out of reach, out of mind."

She held up the clay figurine of Attis and stroked it with her forefinger. "But this is the most curious fact: when Lucius made his pronouncement about sending Juba and Laco to Picenum, they suddenly offered to buy their freedom. Somehow, from the few coppers Lucius gave them every year to celebrate the Saturnalia, the two ofthem had managed to save up their own worth in silver."

"Was that possible?"

"Absolutely not. Lucius accused them of pilfering from the house-hold coffers."

"Could they have done that?"

"Do you think I'm the sort of woman whose slaves could steal from her?" She gave me a look calculated to make a slave soil himself. "But that was the explanation Lucius decided on, and nothing will ever sway him from it. He took the silver away from them, sent them off to an early death in the mines, and that was the end of it."

"Where do you think the slaves obtained the silver?"

"Don't be coy," she said. "Someone bribed them to poison Dio, of course. Probably they received only partial payment, since they didn't finish the job. If I were the master of this house I'd have tortured them until the truth came out. But the slaves belong to Lucius."

"The slaves know the truth."

"The slaves know something. But they're far away from Rome now." "And they can't be compelled to testify anyway without their master's consent."

"Which Lucius will never give."

"Who gave them the silver?" I muttered.

"How can anyone find

out?"

"I suppose that's your job," she said bluntly. She walked back to the little table and replaced the clay figurine of Attis. I drew alongside her and studied the tiny statues.

"Why so many, all alike?" I asked.

"Because of the Great Mother festival, of course. These are images of Attis, her consort. For gift-giving." "I never heard of such a custom." "We exchange them among ourselves." "'We'?"

"It has nothing to do with you."

I reached to pick up one of the figurines, but she seized my wrist with a startlingly strong grip.

"It has nothing to do with you, I said." After a moment she released me, then clapped her hands. A girl came running. "Now you had better go. The slave will show you out."