The Venus Throw

Chapter Eighteen

The wrath ofAchilles would pale beside the wrath ofBethesda.

Her anger runs cold, not hot. It freezes rather than scalds. It is invisible, secretive, insidious. It makes itself felt not by blustering action, but by cold, calculated inaction, by words unspoken, glances unreturned, pleas for mercy unheeded. I think Bethesda shows her anger in this passive way because she was born a slave, and remained a slave for much of her life, until I manumitted and married her to bear our daughter in freedom. Her way is the way of slaves (and the hero of Homer's Iliad): she sulks, and broods, and bides her time.

It was bad enough that I had sent Belbo home alone from Clodia's house, leaving myself without a bodyguard to cross the Palatine by night. Bad enough, too, that I eventually came home smelling of cheap wine and the rancid smoke of tavern lamps. But to have spent the night with that woman!

This was ridiculous, of course, and I said so, especially as I hadn't even seen Clodia all night.

How then did I explain the lingering smell of perfume on me?

A smarter man (or even myself, less worn out and sleepy) would have thought twice before explaining that the perfume came from a blanket that the lady in question must have put over him when he unwittingly dozed off in her garden-

That was that. I spent what little remained of the night trying to find a comfortable position on a cramped dining couch in my study. I'm used to sleeping with a warm body next to me.

I'm also used to sleeping until at least daybreak, especially after having stayed up half the night. This was not to be. It wasn't that Bethesda woke me; she simply made it impossible for me to go on sleeping. Was it really necessary to send the scrub maid to clean my study before dawn?

Once I was awake, Bethesda didn't refuse to feed me. But the millet porridge was lumpy and cold, and there was no conversation to warm it up.

After breakfast, I shooed the scrub maid from my study and shut the door. It was a good morning, I decided, to write a letter.

To my beloved son Meto, serving under the command ofGaius Julius Caesar in Gaul, from his loving father in Rome, may Fortune be with you.

I write this letter only three days after my last; Martius is gone and the Kalends of Aprilis is upon us. Much has happened in the meantime, all revolving about the murder of Dio.

Our neighbor Marcus Caelius (now our former neighbor; Clodius evicted him) has been accused of the murder of Dio, and related crimes having to do with the harassment of the Egyptian envoys, as well as a previous attempt (by poison) on Dio's life. I have been hired by friends of the prosecution to help find evidence against Caelius. My only interest is to determine who killed Dio, so that I can put this nagging affair to rest, for my own peace of mind if not for justice's sake.

I will attempt to explain the details later. (Perhaps after the trial, which begins the day after tomorrow.) What is foremost in my mind now, what I would long to discuss if you were here with me, is something else.

What is this madness which poets call love?

What power compels a man to thrust himself against the lacerating indifference of a woman who no longer loves him? What drives a woman to seek the absolute destruction of a man who rejects her? What cruel appetite makes a man of rational intellect crave the debasement of his helpless partners in sex? How does a eunuch, supposedly impervious to love, become enamored of a beautiful woman? Is it natural for a brother and sister to share a bed, as we are told the gods and goddesses of Egypt sometimes do? Why do the worshipers of the Great Mother emasculate themselves in religious ecstasy? Why would a woman steal a lock of her lover's pubic hair to cherish as a keepsake?

You must wonder if I'm mad to pose such questions. But in fact they may have as much to do with the murder of Dio and the upcoming trial of Caelius as do the intrigues of Egyptian politics, and I find myself baffled. I fear I have become too old for this kind of work, which requires a mind in empathy with the world around it. I like to think I am wiser than I used to be, but what use is wisdom in making sense of a world that follows the dictates of mad passion? I feel like a sober man on a ship of drunkards.

We say it is the hand of Venus that compels these strange behaviors, as if that put the matter to rest, when in fact we say "the hand of Venus" precisely because we do not understand these passions and cannot explain them, only suffer them when we must and watch, perplexed, the suffering of others…

There was a rapping at the door. I steeled myself for a chill wind and called, "Come in." But it was not Bethesda who entered. It was Diana.

She closed the door behind her and sat in the chair across from my writing table. There was a shadow on her face. Something was troubling her.

"Mother is angry at you," she said. "Is she? I hadn't noticed." "What are you doing?" "Writing a letter to Meto."

"Didn't you write to him just a few days ago?" "Yes."

"What does the letter say?"

"This and that."

"Is it about your work?"

"In a way. Yes, it's about my work."

"You're writing to Meto because you've sent Eco on a trip, and you need someone to talk to. Isn't that it?" "You're very perceptive, Diana."

She lifted her hand and pushed back a strand of hair that had fallen over her cheek. What remarkably lustrous hair she had, like her mother's before the strands of gray began to dull it. It fell past her shoulders almost to her breasts, framing her face and throat. In the soft morning light her skin shone like dusky rose petals.

"Why don't you share your troubles with me, Papa? Mother does. She tells me everything."

"I suppose that's the way of the world. Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons."

She looked at me steadily. I tried to look back at her, but found myself looking away. "The boys are older than you, Diana. They've shared my work, my travels." I smiled. "Half the time when I begin a sentence, Eco finishes it."

"And Meto?"

"Meto is different. You're old enough to remember some of what happened while we were on the farm-Catilina, the trouble between Meto and me, Meto's decision to become a soldier. That was a great test of the bond between us. He's his own man now and I don't always understand him. Even so, I can always tell him what I think."

"But Eco and Meto aren't even your flesh. You adopted them. I carry your blood, Papa."

"Yes, Diana, I know." Why then are you so mysterious, I thought, and why is there such a gulf between us? And why do I keep these thoughts to myself instead of speaking them aloud?

"Can I read the letter, Papa?"

This took me aback. I looked down at the parchment, scrutinizing the words. "I'm not sure you'd understand, Diana." "Then you could explain."

"I'm not sure I'd want to. If you were older, perhaps."

"I'm not a child anymore, Papa."

I shook my head.

"Mother says I'm a woman now."

I cleared my throat. "Yes, well, then I suppose you have every right to read your mother's personal letters."

"That's cruel, Papa. You know that Mother can't read or write, which is hardly her fault. If she had been raised as a Roman girl…"

Instead of an Egyptian slave, I thought. Was that what was disturbing Diana, her mother's origins, the fact that she was the child of a woman born in slavery? Diana and I had never really talked about this, but I assumed that Bethesda had discussed it with her, in some way. They certainly spent enough time talking to each other in private. Did Diana bear some resentment against me, for having bought her mother in an Alexandrian slave market? But I was also the man who had freed Bethesda. It all seemed terribly complicated, suddenly.

"Even most Roman women don't learn to read, Diana."

"The woman you're working for can read, I imagine."

"I'm sure she can."

"And you made sure I was taught to read."

"Yes, I did."

"But what good is the skill, if you forbid me to use it?" She looked at the letter in front of me.

It was uncanny, the way she used her mother's stratagems to get what she wanted-circular logic, stubborn persistence, the uncovering of guilts I hadn't known I felt. They say the gods can put on the guise of someone we know and move among us without anyone guessing. For a brief, strange moment a veil seemed to drop, and I sensed that it was Bethesda herself in the room with me, disguised to confound me. Who was this creature Diana, after all, and where had she come from?

I handed her the letter and watched her read it. She read slowly, moving her lips slightly. She had not been taught as well as Meto.

I expected her to ask the identity of the people I referred to, or perhaps for a clearer explanation of the passions I described, but when she put down the letter she said, "Why do you want so badly to find the person who killed Dio, Papa?"

"What is it I say in the letter? 'For my own peace of mind.' "

"But why should your mind be unsettled?"

"Diana, if someone who was close to you had been hurt, wouldn't you want to avenge that person, to redress the wrong done to them, if you could?"

She thought about this. "But Dio wasn't close to you." "That's presumptuous of you, Diana." "You hardly knew him."

"In a way, that's true. But in another way-"

She picked up the letter. "Is he the one you mean, when you speak of the 'man of rational intellect'?" "Yes, as a matter of fact." "Wasn't he a cruel man, then?" "I don't really know." "But in the letter, you say-"

"Yes, I know what I say." I cringed at the idea of hearing her read it aloud.

"How do you know such a thing about him?" She peered at me intently.

I sighed. "From certain things I was told by the men who played host to him. Dio apparently took liberties with some of their slave girls. He may have been rather abusive. But I don't really know. People don't like to talk about that sort of thing."

"He wasn't that way when you knew him in Alexandria?"

"If he was, I knew nothing about it. I saw a very different side of

him."

She looked at me thoughtfully for a long moment. It was not a look she had learned from Bethesda. It was a keen, pensive look, very deep and entirely her own-or perhaps she had picked it up from me, I thought, flattering myself. How foolish and remote it suddenly seemed, that strange, disoriented moment when I had imagined she was her mother in disguise.

She stood and nodded gravely. "Thank you for letting me read the letter, Papa. Thank you for talking to me." Then she left the room.

I picked up the letter and read it through again. I winced at the catalogue I had made of other people's passions, and especially at what I had said of Dio:

What cruel appetite makes a man of rational intellect crave the debasement of his helpless partners in sex?

What had I been thinking, to put such thoughts in a letter?

I would wait until after the trial to write to Meto, when I had something of substance to relate. I called on one of the slaves to light a taper from the fire in the kitchen and bring it to me. When she returned I took the taper from her, put the parchment into the empty brazier and burned it to ashes.

I spent the day snooping.

If Caelius had indeed plotted to poison both Dio and Clodia, where had he obtained the poison?

Poisonings have become lamentably common in Rome, and in re-cent years I have become more familiar with deadly potions and powders than I would have dreamed possible. From time to time considerable quantities of various kinds of poison pass through my own hands, and I have a strongbox especially for storing them; clients, having seized a quantity of poison as evidence, prefer to safeguard the stuff with me rather than in their own homes, especially if they suspect a family member or a slave of wanting to do them in.

For a price, anyone can obtain poison in Rome, but the reliable, discreet sources-the sort to which I imagined Caelius would go-are relatively few. Over the years my work has acquainted me with most of them to one degree or another. Interviewing these creatures was a job I would rather have left to Eco, but since Eco was away I set out to do it myself, with a purse full of coins for bribes and Belbo for protection. It was a miserable task, rather like hunting for snakes under rocks. Since I happened to know which stones the snakes preferred, I simply went from one to the next, lifting them up and bracing myself for a succession of unpleasant encounters.

The search took me to a number of disreputable shops on the outskirts of the Forum; over to the old, run-down baths near the Circus Flaminius; to the waterfront shipyards and warehouses of the Navalia; and finally, following the advice of an informant, back to the place that Catullus had called the Salacious Tavern. By the light of day it had an air more decrepit than salacious; the gamblers were gone and the whores looked ten years older. The only patrons were a few unshaven drunkards who looked incapable of getting up from their benches; some, whom I recognized from the previous night, had apparently never left.

I had been told to seek out a man who called himself Salax ("The tavern is named after him," my source had joked). He was easy enough to spot, since in place of a real nose he wore a leather one. ("Whatever you do, don't ask him how he lost his nose!" I had been warned.) He admitted readily enough to knowing Marcus Caelius-a frequent visitor to the tavern-but about poisons he declared himself completely ignorant, and became no more knowledgeable even when I rattled my coin purse. Instead he pointed toward the idle whores and suggested another way to lighten my purse.

I had looked under all the rocks I knew. The snakes had all bared their fangs and hissed, but for better or worse not one of them had produced any poison.

It was possible, even likely, that Caelius had obtained poison not on his own but from the same source which had hired or compelled him to harass the Alexandrian envoys-directly from King Ptolemy, or per-haps from the king's friend Pompey. In that case I could expect no luck at all in tracking the poison. The network of spies and lackeys who worked for Pompey and the king would reveal nothing to an outsider.

If Caelius killed Dio at the bidding of Dio's enemies, why had he done so? Because he was in debt to Pompey? That seemed distinctly possible. If so, I might be able to find someone who at least knew of the debt. I returned to the Forum and sought out a different set of sources, more conversant with politics than poison. It was easy enough to find men willing to talk, but impossible to find hard facts. It was as Clodius had said: plenty of people professed to 'know' the 'truth' (Caelius tried to poison Dio and failed, then Caelius and Asicius together stabbed Dio), but no one seemed to have any real evidence.

I found men who had attended the trial of Asicius and talked with them at length. The common knowledge was that Asicius was guilty and everyone knew it, but among the judges the weak-minded had been dazzled by Cicero's defense and the weak-willed bribed by King Ptolemy's gold-together, a safe majority. Yet, when I questioned these men about the trial itself, about the speeches and the witnesses who had given evidence, it seemed to me that the prosecution had been able to come up with little more than I had-hearsay and innuendo. Perhaps the judges had simply acquitted Asicius for lack of proof. It was a frustrating day.

The sun was beginning to set as Belbo and I trudged up the Ramp. I suddenly realized that I had seen nothing of Catullus all day. Perhaps I had finally convinced him that I was not his rival in love. The absurdity of the notion made me smile.

But my smile stiffened when we reached the top of the Ramp and I saw what was in front of my house.

"Belbo, I must be seeing things. I hope so."

"What do you mean, Master?"

"Do you see a group of idle bodyguards lounging outside my front door?"

"Yes, Master."

"And do their faces look familiar?" "They do, Master. An ugly lot."

"And is that not a litter in their midst, set against the wall while the bearers relax in the street?" "It is, Master."

"And does the litter not have red and white striped curtains, drawn back so that we can see that the box is empty?" "That is so, Master."

"Do you know what this means, Belbo?" He quailed at the realization. "I think so, Master… " "Cybele, spare my manhood! Clodia is in my house-and so is Bethesda."

One of Clodia's bodyguards had the temerity to challenge me outside my own front door. Fortunately the man's captain recognized me. He berated his underling and then actually had the manners to apologize to me. Not all of Clodius's gangsters were completely uncivilized, but every one of them looked capable of killing a man without blinking. Seeing them gathered outside my house set my teeth on edge.

Once inside, I drew aside a slave girl who was passing through the foyer. "Is your mistress here?"

"Yes, Master. In the garden."

"Shhh. Keep your voice down. Do I have a visitor?" "There is a visitor, Master, yes."

"Tell me that your mistress is napping in the garden, and that my visitor is quietly secluded in my study."

The slave looked at me, perplexed. "No, Master. The mistress is entertaining the visitor in the little garden at the back of the house." "Oh, dear. Has the visitor been here long?"

"Quite some time, Master. Long enough to have finished the first ewer of wine and sent for another."

"Have you heard… shouting?" "No, Master." "Harsh words?"

She frowned. "Please, Master, I never eavesdrop."

"But you'd notice if your mistress had, say, strangled the other woman, or vice versa?"

The girl looked at me strangely, then managed an uneasy laugh. "Oh, you're making a joke, aren't you, Master?"

"Am I?"

"Shall I go tell the mistress that you're home?"

"No! Just go on about your business, as if I'd never come in."

I quietly made my way to the back of the house. It was possible, from a little passageway off my bedroom, to look through a screen of ivy into the small private garden where Bethesda and Clodia were sitting. They were not alone. Chrysis sat on a pillow at her mistress's feet. Diana was seated next to her mother, holding her hand. Their voices were low, hardly more than a murmur. Their tone was somber. They seemed to be deep in serious discussion. That was the last thing I had expected. What on earth could these women have in common?

I reached out with my forefinger and pushed aside an ivy leaf to get a better look at Clodia. Even in an unassuming stola of soft gray wool she was stunningly beautiful. At least she'd had the sense to put on decent clothing before she came calling at my house. I looked at Bethesda, expecting to see jealousy on her face. Instead her expression was pensive and melancholy, mirroring that of the other women.

Clodia's voice was so low that I had to strain to hear.

"With me, it was an uncle, not blood-kin, but one of my step-mother's brothers. Like you, I kept it a secret. I was fifteen, a bit older than your Diana. My father had just betrothed me to my cousin Quintus, but with Father away from Rome the wedding had to wait. That was quite all right by me. I wasn't eager for marriage, like some girls. But of course, if I had been married, then perhaps… " She took a breath and went on. "Uncle Marcus had always looked at me in a certain way. You know what I mean." The other women nodded sympathetically. "Perhaps it was the betrothal that set him off, thinking that once Quintus took me he would never have the chance again. One day, at the family horti, he caught me alone." She took a deep breath. "Afterward, one wonders how the gods could allow such a thing to happen."

"You never told your stepmother?" said Bethesda.

"I hated her then. I hated her even more after what Uncle Marcus did. He was her brother, after all. I didn't trust her. I thought she might take his side."

"What about your own brothers?" said Diana.

"I should have told them. I did tell Publius, but not until many years later, after Uncle Marcus was dead."

"But your sisters-surely you told them," said Bethesda.

"My half sisters were closer to their mother than to me. I couldn't trust them not to tell her. No, the only person I told was an old slave woman who had been with my father since long before I was born, and I told her only when I began to realize that Uncle Marcus had planted a baby in me. She showed me what to do, but she warned me that if I aborted the child I might never be able to have sons."

"A Roman superstition!" Bethesda clucked her tongue.

"Still, it proved to be true. That was another reason I never told my husband about what Uncle Marcus did to me, and what followed; Quintus would have blamed me for giving him a daughter instead of a son. He would probably have blamed me for tempting Uncle Marcus. It's the way men think. Quintus knew he wasn't the first, but he never knew about Uncle Marcus. He died, never knowing."

I listened, disturbed, and then astonished by what Clodia did next: she leaned forward and took Bethesda's hand, the one Diana was not already holding, and pressed it between her palms. "But you said that it was the same with you, Bethesda-that you kept it a secret."

Bethesda lowered her eyes. "Who could I have told? A free Roman girl might have recourse to law or family-but an Egyptian slave girl in Alexandria? The man had done the thing often to my mother while she lived; she told me that the master's abuse would kill her in the end, and it finally did. After she died, he turned to me. I was much younger than you were, Clodia, not even old enough to bear a child. He did the thing to me only once, or tried to. I suppose he thought I would be docile, like my mother, but after the things she had told me I knew what to expect and I decided I would die before I let him have his way with me. He tied my wrists with a rope, the way he had tied her so many times. He liked to hang her on a hook on the wall. I had seen her like that, seen what he did to her, and when he tried to do the same things to me a kind of madness came into me, the madness the gods put into men and women to give them strength beyond their bodies. I was more limber than he realized. I wriggled free. It turned into a battle. I bit him as hard as I could. He threw me against the wall, so hard I thought I'd been crushed like a beetle. I couldn't breathe. My heart stopped beating. He could have had his way with me then. He could have killed me. He was a powerful, respected man. No one would have thought the less of him for the death of a slave. No one questioned the death of my mother. No one would have questioned my death."

"Oh, Mother!" Diana drew closer to her. Clodia bit her lip. Chrysis bowed her head. Bethesda's eyes glittered, but her cheeks remained dry. "I lay on the floor, stunned. I couldn't move, not even a finger. I waited for the sky to fall. But do you know what he did? He turned as white as a cloud, mumbled a curse and left the room. I think the shade of my mother must have spoken in his ear, shaming him. Instead of having me killed, he simply got rid of me. He sent me to the slave market. I was not a very satisfactory slave, apparently." She managed a brittle smile. "Men would buy me and return me before the day was done. I was sent back to be resold so many times that the man at the slave market made a joke of it. I was still young. I suppose I was beautiful-almost as beautiful as you, Diana. But word spread among the buyers that I was poison, and no one would bid on me. Finally, of course, the right man came for me. I think it must have been a whim of the goddess the Romans call Venus that sent him to the slave market that day, with barely enough coins in his purse. I was the cheapest slave on the block, and still he could barely afford me!"

The other women laughed at that, even as they wiped their eyes.

"And your husband knows nothing of what happened to you before you met? Of what the man did to you, and your mother?" said Clodia.

"Nothing. I never told him, and I think I never will. I told my daughter, because I thought she should know what befell her grand-mother. And now I have told you."

I was appalled, bewildered, dumbfounded-not only at what Bethesda had said, and the fact that she had kept such a secret from me, but at the unaccountable intimacy between the women in my garden. What strange alchemy had transpired to make them so unguarded with one another? Where were the normal barriers of slavery and status that should have separated them? The world seemed to tremble beneath my feet, just as my fingers trembled as I closed my spy-hole in the ivy and silently fled to my study.