The Venus Throw

Chapter Twenty Seven

I woke late the next morning. My head felt as if a whole toga had been stuffed inside it; I could taste scratchy wool on my tongue. Dunking my head in cold water helped. So did eating a bit of food. I stepped shakily into the garden at the heart of Eco's house and found a place to sit in the sun. After a while Menenia walked by, beneath the portico. She acknowledged my presence with a nod but did not smile. A little while later Eco sauntered out to join me.

"You came in awfully late last night, Papa." "Who's the son here, and who's the father?" "Can we talk now?" "I suppose so."

"About Dio, and how he died. You never told me yesterday what you think."

I sighed. "You were right, about the poison in my house being used to kill him."

"But who did it?"

I took a deep breath, then another. It was hard to say it aloud. "Bethesda."

Eco looked at me steadily, less surprised than I expected him to be. "Why?"

I told him about the conversation I had overheard in my house, between Clodia and Bethesda. "It must have been Dio she was talking about. Dio was the powerful, respected man who owned her mother. She

never said anything about it to me. Never! Not a single word! But she must have recognized Dio the moment she saw him." "Did he recognize her?"

"He looked at her strangely, I remember. But she was hardly more than a child when he last saw her, and he had a great many things on his mind. No, I don't think he knew who she was. But she surely recognized him. I think back now and realize how oddly she behaved that night. I thought it was because I was going away! What I find so appalling is how quickly she must have made the decision to kill him — no deliberation, no hesitation. She got the poison, fixed the dinner, made a special portion for the guest and then watched him eat it, right in front of me!"

"You have to talk to her, Papa."

"I'm not ready. I don't know what to say."

"Tell her you know what she did. Go on from there."

"Go on, as if it makes no difference that my wife is a murderer? That she compromised the honor of my house by killing a guest? She should have come to me."

"Before or after she poisoned Dio?"

"If not before, then certainly after! There, you see how angry it makes me to talk about it? No, I'm not ready to go home to her yet. I wonder if I ever will be."

"Don't talk that way, Papa. You must understand why she did it. Look, I wasn't taken entirely by surprise by what you've just told me. I had a lot of time to think on the ride up from Puteoli, wondering how Dio could have been poisoned in your house and by whom. Bethesda does the cooking, Alexandria was a common thread-I figured she might somehow be responsible. So I've had more time to think about this than you have, and to make up my mind that it makes no difference. I was with Zotica all that time, seeing what the brute did to her. I can't be sorry that someone killed him. If it was Bethesda, and if she had as much reason to hate the man as Zotica did, then what is there to forgive?"

"But it was murder, Eco! Cold-blooded, calculated, committed in secret. Does my name and my household stand for nothing? We are not murderers!" I stood and began to pace around the garden. "Talking does no good. I need to be alone again. I need to think."

"Not another walk?"

"Why not?"

"You'll wear out the streets, Papa. Where will you go?"

A completely unrelated thought entered my head. "I'll take care of my last bit of business with Clodia. The money I gave you for your trip south-you must have a lot left over."

"Quite a bit."

"It's Clodia's money. It was meant to bribe me so that I'd testify for her, or else it was meant to pay for the slaves of Lucceius. Who knows what she really had in mind? Either way, she didn't get what she paid for, did she? Never say I'm like Caelius, that I took money from Clodia and didn't return it. Go fetch it, will you? I'll take it back to her right now. At least I can wash my hands of that affair and put it behind me for good."

Eco went into the house and returned with a purse full of coins. "By the way, how is Zotica doing?" I said. "Now that she's rested, is she any calmer?"

Eco lowered his eyes. "Is something wrong?"

"After we talked to her yesterday, Menenia showed her to a place where she could sleep, and left her alone. It was a mistake to let her out of the locked pantry. When I came home from the Forum… "

"Oh, no!"

"She ran away, Papa. I can't say I'm surprised. I told you, she's turned wild, like an animal. I doubt that we'll ever see her again."

Heading to Clodia's house by the shortest way would have taken me by my own front door, so I took a roundabout route. The day was hot and the way was steep. I arrived sweaty and winded.

I rapped on the door. After a long pause I rapped again. Finally the peephole opened. A dispassionate eye observed me. "My name's Gordianus," I said. "I have business with your mistress."

The peephole was shut. After a long wait it opened again. The eye that now perused me was penciled with makeup. From the other side of the door I heard a familiar but unexpected voice. "It's all right, I know him. We can let him in."

The door swung open to reveal the gallus Trygonion. After I stepped inside he motioned to the slave to shut the door behind us. "What business could you possibly have with Clodia?" he said tersely. He walked at a hurried clip toward the garden and I followed. "Did she forget to pay you?"

"As a matter of fact, she overpaid me; gave me money for expenses I didn't incur." I jiggled the bag of coins. "I'm here to return it."

Trygonion looked at me as if I were mad, then nodded and sighed. "I understand. You wanted an excuse to see her again." "Don't be ridiculous!"

"No, really, I do understand. But I'm afraid you can't see her."

"Why not?"

"She's gone." "Where?"

He hesitated. "Down to her villa at Solonium. She left early this morning, before dawn. She wanted to slip out of the city without being seen." We arrived at the steps leading down to the garden and stopped beneath the giant Venus. I found my eyes wandering to the pedestal, where Catullus had said she kept her trophies in a secret compartment. Trygonion noticed.

"She emptied it before she left. She burned everything that could be burned. You can see the ashes in that brazier over there. The things that wouldn't burn-jewels and necklaces and such-she took with her. To throw into the sea, she said."

"But why?"

He shrugged. "How can a eunuch understand these things?" He walked to the fountain. Suddenly the sound of chanting echoed through the garden, coming from the House of the Galli.

"Why aren't you with them?" I said.

"I'll join them soon enough. She sent a messenger for me in the middle of the night, saying she needed my help. 'I have to leave,' she said. 'I can't stand it here.' She always goes south for a month right after the Great Mother festival, like a lot of rich people do. Down to Baiae, usually. But she wasn't waiting for the festival to be over, and she wasn't going to Baiae. 'Solonium,' she said. 'It's closer, and nobody ever goes there. I never want to see anybody again.' " He smiled ruefully. "I thought she intended for me to go with her."

The chanting grew louder and faster. Trygonion closed his eyes and moved his lips with the words, then blinked and gazed at the sunlight reflected in the fountain. "But she didn't want me to go with her. 'I need someone to close up the house for me,' she said. 'I'd ask Clodius, but he mustn't come near this place, not for a while. You'll do it for me, won't you, Trygonion? Make sure the windows are all shuttered and locked, put the good wine away so the slaves can't get to it, dispatch some last-minute letters for me, that sort of thing.' I said, 'Yes, of course. Have a good trip.' "

Together we studied the broken sunlight on the water. "Right before she left, as she was going out the door, she turned back. She called my name. I ran to her. She said, 'Oh, and don't tell anyone where I've gone.' I said, 'Of course I won't.' But I suppose it's all right to tell you, Gordianus. You can keep a secret. You are the most honest man in Rome, aren't you?" His lips curled into a sardonic smile.

"Did a visitor come, late last night?"

Trygonion gave me a blank look, then smiled wanly. "Oh, you mean the poet, the one who recited that awful thing about Attis at the party. Yes, one of the slaves told me he came beating on the door in the middle of the night, drunk and demanding. Bad timing; Clodia was in no mood to be harassed. She sent Barnabas and some of the burlier freedmen to run him off. I think he got away with nothing worse than a broken nose."

I thought of poor Catullus, lying alone in his dreary little room with his books, hung over with a bloody nose. "And a broken heart. She's a cold woman."

Trygonion looked at me sharply. "You're like all the rest. You think she feels nothing. Of course she feels everything. How could she not, being who she is? She feels everything. It amazes me that she can bear it."

The chanting became dreamlike, magical. The bits of sunlight on the water were dazzling. "And you, Trygonion? Are you the same? Everyone thinks you feel nothing, but in reality — "

He looked at me steadily, his eyes swimming with tears, daring me to go on, but I left the rest of the thought unspoken.

I took the same circuitous route back to Eco's house.

"Perhaps you should write a letter to Meto," Eco suggested. "Doesn't that often help to clear your head?"

"I don't think it would be wise to put incriminating information about my wife in a letter."

"You can always burn it afterward. Don't you often do that, anyway?"

I sometimes think my sons know me too well. I asked Eco to show me where he kept his writing tools.

I sat in his little study and stared at the blank parchment for a long time, then finally wrote:

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

I write this letter on the Nones of Aprilis, the second day of the Great Mother festival…

I put down the stylus and stared again at the parchment. There was a sound from the doorway. I looked up and saw Meto looking back at me. The gods delight in catching us off our guard. The threads of our lives weave back and forth across one another, intersecting in a pattern no mortal can discern: my thoughts had turned to Meto and now he stood before me in the flesh, as if my desire had conjured him up.

"By Hercules!" I whispered. "What are you doing here?"

His older brother suddenly appeared behind him. They both burst out laughing.

"You knew, Eco!" I said. "He was already here when you suggested I write the letter!"

"Of course! I couldn't resist the joke. Meto arrived right after you left for Clodia's house. When we heard you coming back, I made him go and hide. You should see the look on your face!"

"Playing tricks on your father is despicable."

"Yes, but at least you're smiling," said Eco.

I pushed the parchment away from me. "A good thing you're here, Meto. Writing it all down would have been impossible!"

He smiled and sat down beside me. "I'm lucky to be here in one piece."

I put my hand over his and drew in a breath. I was always worried for him, knowing the dangers he faced in Gaul. But that wasn't what he meant.

"The riot, over near the Forum," he explained.

"Surely it's still going on. Didn't you see it on your way back from the Palatine?" "I took a roundabout route… "

"There's a play being put on for the festival," Eco interjected. "Apparently some of Clodius's hooligans commandeered the stage and set off a riot. Instant revenge for the nasty things that were said about him at the trial yesterday."

"Put a man like Clodius in charge of a festival and he'll use it for his own petty ends," said Meto in disgust. "Politicians are all the same. But what's this business about a trial?"

I tried to explain as succinctly as I could, but after a moment Meto held up his hand. "It's all too complicated. Give me military strategy any day!"

I laughed. "But what are you doing in Rome? Is Caesar here?"

"He's up in Ravenna, actually, but you never heard me say that. Having a secret meeting with Crassus. Then he's going to Luca to meet with Pompey. Caesar wants to appoint more generals and raise four legions; he'll need the help of those two to get the Senate to approve the expenditures and to quash complaints that he's becoming too powerful. If you ask me, the three of them are going to resurrect the Triumvirate, and make it work this time. It's inevitable. Sooner or later, the Senate will become entirely defunct. The Senate can't rule itself, much less an empire! It's nothing more than a hindrance now, another obstacle in Caesar's way. A rotten limb that needs to be pruned. All this judicial haggling, politicians constantly dragging each other into court-this nonsense has to stop sooner or later. From what you've said, this trial of Caelius is just one more example of how far the standard has fallen." "But what's the alternative?" said Eco.

Meto looked at his brother blandly. "Caesar, of course."

"You're talking about a dictator, like Sulla," I said, shaking my head.

"Or worse," said Eco, "an outright king, like Ptolemy."

"I'm talking about a man who can lead. I've seen with my own eyes what Caesar can do. All this petty squabbling in Rome seems quite absurd when you're up in Gaul, watching Romans conquer the world."

"Pompey and Crassus are hardly petty," I said.

"That's why a triumvirate is the answer," said Meto. "Temporarily, anyway. But you never heard me say that."

"What about men like Clodius and Milo?" said Eco. "Or Cicero, for that matter? Or Caelius?"

Meto made an expression to show that such men were beneath contempt. What had his service to Caesar done to my son?

I had only a moment to ponder the question, for the twins suddenly rushed into the room in a burst of laughter and golden hair. Meto might know a thing or two about military strategy, but he was no match for his niece and nephew. Titania advanced from the left, Titus from the right. Each grabbed hold of an arm and climbed onto him.

"When did they get so big? And so strong!" Meto laughed.

"They intend to wrestle you, I think," said Eco, chagrined.

"Or at least immobilize you," I said.

"They've succeeded." Meto grunted. The twins squealed with triumph.

"You'd better give up now, while you can," I suggested. "Gaul-fighting Uncle Meto can take a lot rougher treatment than their delicate old grandpa, and they know it."

"I give up!" gasped Meto. The twins released him at once and then turned to mount a skirmish against me. Their attack turned out to be an assault of harmless hugs and kisses, to which I submitted without a struggle.

"But what's this?" I said.

"What?" said Titania.

"This piece of jewelry pinned on your tunic?"

"A gorgon's eye!" cried Titus. "It gives her magical powers, and I have to get it away from her, even if I have to chop her head off!"

"But where did it come from?" My mouth was suddenly dry. It was an earring of simple design, a silver crook with a green glass bead-the twin of the earring which had been used to force the lock of my strongbox, and which had been carelessly dropped inside when the poison was taken.

"It came from the land of Libya, where the Gorgons live," said Titania. "It can make you invisible. That's what Titus says."

"Yes, but how did you come to have it?" From the tone of my voice she knew I wanted a serious answer.

"She gave it to me," said Titania. "She told me she'd lost the other one and she didn't want it anymore."

"Who gave it to you?"

Titania told me. My heart sped up.

"And will it really make me invisible?" she said.

"No." My voice shook. "I mean, yes. Why not? The other earring made her invisible. To my eyes, anyway. It made me think I saw the truth, when I couldn't begin to see it. Oh, Cybele!"

Eco furrowed his brow. "Papa, what are you talking about?"

"I have to go home now. I think I may have been very, very wrong about something."

Belbo answered the front door. At the sight of me he broke into a grin. "Master! Thank the gods you're here!" "Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing at all… now that you're back." "Has her mood been that terrible?"

Belbo rolled his eyes in answer, then jumped at the voice from behind him.

"Whose mood?" Bethesda's voice was like frost in the springtime.

I nodded to dismiss Belbo, who quickly disappeared. Bethesda and I looked at each other in silence for a long moment. "Where have you been?" she finally said.

"I spent the night at Eco's house."

"And the night before that?"

"I was in bed with a drunken poet, actually."

She snorted. "Did you see the trial yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Quite a spectacle, wasn't it?" "You were there?"

"Of course. Belbo held me a place at the very front. I never saw you, though."

"I was standing at the back. I never saw you either." "Strange, isn't it, that we could be so close and yet not see each other." Her gaze softened a bit.

"Caelius was acquitted. I was glad." "So was I, I suppose."

"But what they did to Clodia was horrible." "Yes, it was appalling."

"I wanted to stop them. I would have stopped them, if I could have."

"I felt the same."

"Now she's left the city," said Bethesda. "How did you know that?"

Bethesda saw the look on my face and scowled. "Don't be so suspicious. Do you imagine there's some sort of secret conspiracy of women? A slave brought a note from Clodia this morning. I was supposed to visit her tomorrow, and she wanted to let me know that she wouldn't be home. She didn't say where she was going, only that she was leaving Rome at once."

She crossed her arms and walked into the garden. I followed. She kept her back to me. "I apologize for deceiving you, husband. You know the truth, don't you?"

"I think I do."

"I should explain. That man — Dio — I can hardly say his name. Back in Alexandria, before you bought me — " "I know." "How could you?"

"I overheard you talking to Clodia the other day, in the garden at the back of the house."

She looked over her shoulder. Her eyes lit up as she comprehended, then became clouded. "But I never said his name! I made a point of not saying his name to Clodia."

"Even so…"

She nodded and turned her face away.

"You should have told me, Bethesda. You should have told me long ago." I stepped closer and put my hand on the back of her neck.

She reached up and touched my fingers. "Then you understand?"

"I can't be sorry that Dio's dead. When I think of what he did to you and your mother, and to who knows how many others… "

"Then say you forgive me."

"Forgive me first, Bethesda, for having had less faith in you than I should have."

"I forgive you, husband."

"And I forgive you, wife, for deceiving me."

"And for poisoning a guest in your house?" "You confess?"

She took a deep breath. "Yes."

I shook my head. "No. I can't forgive you for poisoning Dio." She stiffened.

"But I will forgive you for continuing to deceive me with a false confession."

She turned. From the way she looked up at me, searching my face for signs of what I knew, I was satisfied that I had found the truth at

last.

A little while later I was sitting in my library, looking out the open windows onto the garden. The vines and flowers were in bloom. Bees and butterflies flitted in the bright sunshine.

Diana appeared in the doorway. "You wanted to see me, Papa?"

"Yes."

She looked grave for a moment, then brightened. "Mother says that Meto is back."

"Yes, for a short visit. He's at Eco's house. They'll all be coming over for dinner soon."

"I can't wait to see him."

I nodded and found myself unable to look at her. I watched the bees and butterflies instead. "Did your mother tell you what I wanted to talk to you about?"

"Yes, Papa." She suddenly hardened her voice, the way her mother always did at the beginning of an argument to show that she would not be shaken.

"When did your mother first tell you about Dio? About what he did to her?"

"Years ago, Papa. As soon as I was old enough to understand." "And yet she never told me!"

"It was between her and me, Papa. A thing for a mother to tell a daughter. Men have secrets they never share with women."

"I suppose we do. So, when Dio came to the house that day-"

"When you introduced him, I had no idea who he was. Mother had never told me the man's name, only how wicked he was. But when I told Mother the visitor's name and where he was from, I saw from her face that something was terribly wrong. All at once I knew. 'It's him, isn't it?' I said. She couldn't be sure, so we went to have a look."

"Yes, I remember the way you both looked at him, and the way he

looked at you. No wonder he was startled by the sight of you, especially when the two of you stood side by side! How much you look like her, when she was young. I saw every look that passed between the three of you, and yet I understood nothing-like a dog watching orators debate. And to think, I was the one who suggested that the two of you fix something for Dio to eat! Was it your mother who told you to get the poison?"

"No, Papa. I thought of it myself. I knew where the poison was-" "Of course you did, because I made such a point of warning you about it when I got it from Eco. So dangerous, I thought, to have poison in a house with a child. Dangerous in a way I never considered! But your mother must have known when you mixed it into Dio's portion?"

"No. I did it while her back was turned, then made sure that I did the serving."

"You did it all on your own! In the blink of an eye you made up your mind to kill a man, then fetched the poison, slipped it into his food, and… "

Diana lowered her eyes.

"All on your own!"

She nodded. I shook my head. "When did Bethesda give you those old green-glass earrings of hers?"

Diana sighed. "Ages ago, Papa. She tired of them, and there were scratches in the glass, so she let me have them. I wore them from time to time."

"And I never noticed. Of course, Bethesda wears her hair up, showing her ears. You still wear your hair down, like a girl… "

"It's funny. I can't remember wearing them that day. I can't even remember using one of them to pry open the lock on the strongbox to get at the poison, but I suppose I must have. It's like it all happened underwater. I didn't realize until days later that I'd lost the earring. I looked everywhere for it. Everywhere but inside your strongbox. Finally I gave up on finding it. I gave the widowed earring to Titania."

"Yes, Titania told me." I shook my head. "You left the lock just as it was, broken. You never even tried to replace the poison you'd taken, if only with something that looked similar." I winced. "That fact alone should have told me that Bethesda wasn't responsible. She would have covered her tracks! You behaved like a child, Diana, thinking you could leave such clues and not be found out. When did you tell your mother?"

"Not until just the other day, after Clodia's visit."

"Why did you wait so long? I'm not surprised that you didn't tell me, but I thought you had no secrets from your mother?"

"I meant to tell her right after Dio left the house. I wanted to. But

I was suddenly afraid. Then I was confused. The next day, after you were gone, we heard that Dio had died. I could see that Mother was pleased, though she never spoke a word. But everyone said that Dio had been stabbed to death, and if that was so, how could I have poisoned him? Maybe the stuff was harmless, I thought, not poison at all, just a yellow spice. Maybe I had only imagined doing it. It all seemed so strange. I didn't know what to do. I just wanted to forget and be done with it."

I nodded. "So Bethesda didn't know the truth until after Clodia's visit. All her protests that Caelius was innocent were only statements of opinion! She was also sure that Caelius could never have poisoned Clodia. Well, she was wrong on both counts-Caelius tried his best to kill Dio and Clodia both. So much for Bethesda as a judge of character. So much for me, admiring Dio! What prompted you to finally tell her?"

"It was hearing her tell Clodia what happened to her and her mother when she was a girl. I was amazed to hear her talk about it to anyone but me. It made me cry. That was when I finally made up my mind to tell her I poisoned Dio, not because I was proud of what I did, but because I didn't want to have any secrets from her. So that night, after Clodia left, I told her. She said that we mustn't tell anyone. 'Not even Papa?' I said. 'Especially not him!'

"But a couple of days later, after the two of you came back from Clodia's house, Mother came into my room to tell me about the party, and then you burst in, shouting at her. You'd gone looking for the poison and found the broken lock and the empty pyxis. You threw the earring on the floor-and suddenly I realized where I had lost it. But what you said made no sense. You seemed to think that for some reason Mother had stolen the poison for Clodia… "

I groaned and shook my head. "I accused her of deceiving me, and she admitted it-but we were talking about different things! I thought she had given the poison to Clodia behind my back, but the deception was something else-she knew you had poisoned Dio and kept it from me."

Diana nodded. "After you went storming out of the house, Mother told me, 'If he does figure out the truth, keep your mouth shut. Let me take the blame.' But you found me out, didn't you, Papa?" She spoke without recrimination, but rather with a hint of pride — of Bethesda for shielding her, of me for finding her out.

I looked at her face in the soft light from the garden and saw a girl-child with lustrous black hair and the beginnings of a woman's beauty. "I don't know what to make of you, Diana. You're a mystery, like your mother. Why did you do it? What gave you the strength to go through with it?"

"How can you not understand, Papa? Do you remember when we were in this room the other day and I wanted to see the letter you were writing to Meto? It was a letter about the work you were doing, looking into Dio's death. I asked you why it was so important for you to know who killed Dio. You talked about peace of mind. You said to me, 'If someone who was close to you had been hurt, wouldn't you want to avenge that person, to redress the wrong that was done to them, if you could?' Of course, Papa! That's exactly what I did. I did it for Mother. I did it for the grandmother I'll never know. Would you have me undo it, if I could? If you could turn back time, would you have me do nothing, instead?"

I studied her face, confused, and tried to remember what I believed about murder and justice, right and wrong.

"Wouldn't you have done the same thing yourself, Papa?"

For an instant the veil of mystery dissolved. The eyes that looked back at me were as familiar and empty of secrets as my own eyes in a mirror. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her brow. From the garden came the noise of the family arriving for dinner-Eco, Menenia, Meto, the all-conquering twins. I drew back and looked into Diana's eyes again, and saw with a shiver of regret that the veil had returned. She was a mystery again, distinct and wholly of herself, another mortal adrift in the cosmos: out of my control, beyond my comprehension. The moment of recognition was fleeting, as such moments always are, like music which fills the void to overflowing and then vanishes in the twinkling of an eye.