Rubicon (2 page)

Davus reached inside his tunic. I handed him the shoes and he handed me the dagger in its sheath.

I nodded. "What do you notice about this sheath, Davus?"

He frowned, suspecting a test of some sort. "It's made of leather."

"Yes, but what sort of leather?"

"Black." He saw that I was unimpressed and tried again. "It's decorated."

"How?"

"It's stamped— and the same pattern is carved on the wooden hilt of the dagger."

"Yes, a pattern of interlocking triangles."

Davus peered at the shoes in his hands. "The same pattern as on his shoes!"

"Exactly. Meaning?"

Davus was stumped.

"Meaning," I said, "that whatever shop made the shoes also made the dagger. They're a set. Rather unusual, don't you think, that the same shop should produce such dissimilar goods?"

Davus nodded, pretending to follow my thoughts. "So— are you going to pull out the dagger and cut open the shoes, or not?"

"No, Davus I am going to
unlock
the shoes." I left the blade in its sheath and studied the hilt, which was carved from the hard black wood of the Syrian terebinth, attached to the metal by bosses of ivory. The triangle design ingeniously concealed the hidden compartment in the hilt, but it slid open easily once I found the right place to press with my thumb. Inside the compartment was a tiny key, hardly more than a sliver of bronze with a little hook near one end.

"Son-in-law, hold up the shoes with the heels facing me." I started with the shoe on my left. The irregularity in the heel, the two breaks I had noticed in the center layer of leather, proved to be a narrow door, with a hinge at one side and a keyhole at the other. I inserted the tiny key into the tiny hole. After a bit of fiddling, the door gave a little snap and sprang open.

"Extraordinary!" I whispered. "What workmanship! So delicate— yet sturdy enough to be trod on." I took the shoe from Davus, held it under the sunlight and peered down into the narrow chamber. I saw nothing. I turned the shoe over and knocked it against my palm. Nothing came out.

"Empty!" I said.

"We could still cut into it," said Davus helpfully.

I gave him a withering look. "Son-in-law, did I not say that we must put back all of Numerius's things exactly as they were, so that Pompey's men will see no signs of our tampering when they come to fetch him?"

Davus nodded.

"That includes his shoes! Now hand me the other one." I inserted the key and fiddled until the lock sprang open.

There was something inside. I withdrew what appeared to be several pieces of thin parchment.

"What does it say, father-in-law?"

"I don't know yet."

"Is it Latin?"

"I don't know that yet, either."

"I see Greek letters and Latin letters both, all mixed together."

"Clever of you, Davus, to spot the difference." Davus had lately been taking instruction from Diana, who was determined to teach him how to read. His progress had been slow.

"But how can that be, Greek and Latin letters both?"

"It's in some sort of code, Davus. Until I figure out the code, I can't read it any better than you can."

We had stepped from the garden into my study, and now sat across from each other at the little tripod table by the window, peering down at the thin pieces of parchment I had extracted from Numerius's shoe. There were five pieces in all, each covered with writing so tiny that I had to squint to make out the letters. At first glance, the text appeared to be pure nonsense, a collection of random letters strung together. I suspected the use of a cipher, with the added complication of mixing Greek and Latin characters.

I tried to explain to Davus how a cipher worked. Thanks to Diana, he had mastered the basic idea that letters could represent sounds and collections of letters could represent words, but his hold on the alphabet was tenuous. As I explained how letters could be shuffled arbitrarily about, then unshuffled, his face registered mounting bewilderment.

"But I thought the whole point of letters was that they didn't change, that they always stood for the same thing."

"Yes. Well ..." I tried to think of a metaphor. "Imagine the letters all taking on disguises. Take your name: The D might masquerade as an M, the A as a T, and so on, and altogether you'd have five letters that didn't look like any sort of word at all. But figure a way to see through those disguises, and you can unmask the whole word." I smiled, thinking this was rather clever, but the look on Davus's face was now of confusion verging on panic.

"If only Meto were here," I muttered. The younger of my two adopted sons had turned out to have a genius for letters. His natural gifts had served him well in Caesar's ranks. He had become the general's literary adjutant. To hear Meto tell it, he had done much of the actual writing of Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars, which everyone in Rome had been reading for the last year. No one was more brilliant than Meto at cracking codes, anagrams, and ciphers.

But Meto was not in Rome— not yet, anyway, though expectations of Caesar's imminent arrival continued to mount day by day, causing jubilation in some quarters, terror in others.

"There are rules about solving ciphers," I muttered aloud, trying to remember the simple tricks that Meto had taught me. " 'A cipher is simply a puzzle, solving a puzzle is merely a game, and—"

" 'And all games have rules, which any fool can follow.' "

I looked up and saw my daughter standing in the doorway.

"Diana! I told you to stay in the front of the house. What if little Aulus—"

"Mother is watching him. She'll keep him out of the garden. You know how superstitious she is about dead bodies." Diana clicked her tongue. "That poor fellow looks awful!"

"I wanted to spare you the sight."

"Papa, I've seen dead bodies before."

"But not ..."

"Not strangled like that, no. Though I have seen a garrote before. It looks a lot like the one used to murder Titus Trebonius a few years ago, the fellow you proved was strangled by his wife. You kept the garrote as a souvenir, remember? Mother threatened to use it on Davus if he ever displeased me."

"She was joking, I think. Such weapons are as common as daggers these days," I said.

"Davus, are you doing a good job of helping Papa?" Diana moved to her husband's side and laid a slender arm over his brawny shoulders, then touched her lips to his forehead. Davus grinned. A strand of Diana's long black hair fell across his face, tickling his nose.

I cleared my throat. "The problem appears to be a cipher. Davus and I have practically solved it already. Run along, Diana, back to your mother."

"Isis and Osiris, Papa! How can you possibly read such fine writing?" She squinted at the parchment.

"Contrary to prevailing opinion in this household, I am neither deaf nor blind," I said. "And it is unseemly for girls to speak impiously in front of their fathers, even if the deities invoked are Egyptian." A passion for all things Egyptian was Diana's latest rage. She called it a homage to her mother's origins. I called it an affectation.

"I'm not a girl, Papa. I'm twenty years old, married, and a mother."

"Yes, I know." I looked sidelong at Davus, who was completely absorbed in blowing wisps of his wife's shimmering black hair away from his nose.

"If solving a cipher is the problem, Papa, then let me help you. Davus can go stand watch in the garden, to make sure no one else comes over the rooftop."

Davus brightened at this suggestion. I nodded. He strode off at once. "You, too, Diana," I said. "Off with you!" Instead, she took Davus's place in the chair across from me. I sighed.

"It needs to be done quickly," I said. "The dead fellow out there is a relative of Pompey's. For all I know, Pompey may have already sent someone looking for him."

"Where did these pieces of parchment come from?"

"They were hidden in a secret compartment in his shoe."

Diana raised an eyebrow. "This fellow was one of Pompey's spies?"

I hesitated. "Perhaps."

"Why did he come here? Why did he want to see you, Papa?"

I shrugged. "We hardly spoke before I left him alone for a moment."

"And then?"

"Davus came into the garden, found his body, and raised the alarm."

Diana eagerly reached for a sheet of parchment. "If we look for vowels, and common consonant combinations—"

"And common words, and case endings."

"Right."

"Or likely words," I added.

"Likely?"

"Words likely to occur in a document carried by Pompey's spy. Such as ... such as 'Pompey,' for example. Or more likely, 'Magnus'—
Great One.
"

Diana nodded. "Or ... 'Gordianus,' perhaps?" She looked at me askance.

"Perhaps," I said.

Diana fetched two styluses and two wax tablets for scribbling notes. We studied our separate pieces of parchment in silence. Out in the garden, Davus paced back and forth in the sunlight, whistling tunelessly and scanning the roof. He pulled Numerius's dagger from its scabbard and cleaned his fingernails. From the front of the house came more screams from Aulus, and then the sound of Bethesda crooning an Egyptian lullaby.

"I think ..."

"Yes, Diana?"

"I think I may have found 'Magnus.' I see the same sequence of letters three times on this piece. Look, there it is on your piece, too."

"Where?"

"There: λVΨCΣQ

"So it is. By Hercules, these letters are small! If you're right, that gives us λ for M, V for A ..."

"Ψ for G ..."

We scribbled on our wax tablets. Diana scanned her piece of parchment, put it down and scanned two others. "Papa, may I see your piece?"

I handed it to her. Her eyes moved down the page, then stopped. She sucked in a breath.

"What is it, daughter?"

"Look, there!" She pointed to a group of letters. They began with Ψ and ended with CΣQ— or, according to our cipher, began with a G and ended with nus— and had five letters between.

" 'Gordianus,' " she whispered.

My heart pounded in my chest. "Maybe. Forget the other pieces for now. Let's work together on this one."

We concentrated on the section of text immediately following my name. It was Diana who spotted the large numbers strewn throughout; rather than quantities, they appeared to be years, following Varro's fashionable new system of dating everything from the founding of Rome. The cipher letters for D and I (presumed already from GORDIANUS) turned out to stand as well for the numerals D (five hundred) and I (one). Deciphering the years also gave us the letters for C, L, X, and V.

Using our growing list of deciphered letters, we quickly spotted familiar names embedded in the text. There was METO, and CAESAR ... ECO (my other son) ... CICERO ... even BETHESDA and DIANA, who seemed more amused than alarmed at seeing her name in a dead man's document. As we made further progress, the most devious feature of the text became obvious: not only did the cipher mix Greek and Latin letters, but the text alternated between phrases in both languages, with a patchwork of truncated and irregular grammar. My Greek had grown rusty in recent years. Fortunately, Diana's Egyptomania had included brushing up on the language of the Ptolemies.

With her sharper eyes and quicker stylus, Diana drew ahead of me. Eventually, despite some remaining gaps here and there, she managed to make a hasty translation of the entire passage into Latin, scribbling it out on a long piece of blank parchment. When she was done, I asked her to read it aloud.

" 'Subject: Gordianus, called the Finder. Loyalty to the Great One: Questionable.' "

"A loyalty report!" I shook my head. "All these bits of parchment must constitute some sort of secret dossier on various men in Rome— someone's evaluation of where they each might stand in the event of a—"

"In the war that's coming between Pompey and Caesar?" How matter-of-factly Diana was able to say the words I choked on; she had no experience of civil war, no memories of Rome besieged and conquered, of enemy lists and seized property and heads on stakes in the Forum.

Diana read on. " 'Plebeian. Family origins obscure. No known military service. Age about sixty.' Then there's a sort of résumé, a chronological list of highlights from your illustrious career."

"Let's hear it."

" 'Little known of activities prior to Year of Rome 674, when he gathered information for Cicero for the parricide trial of Sextus Roscius. Earned gratitude of Cicero (his first major defense), enmity of the dictator Sulla. Numerous episodes of employment by Cicero and others in subsequent years, often related to murder trials. Travel to Spain and Sicily."

" 'Year of Rome 681: Vestal Virgins Fabia and Licinia accused of intercourse with Catilina and Crassus, respectively. Gordianus thought to have some hand in the defense, but his role obscure."

" 'Year of Rome 682: Employed by Crassus (on the eve of his command against Spartacus) to investigate the murder of a relative in Baiae. Again, his role obscure. His relations with Crassus strained thereafter."

" 'Year of Rome 684: Birth of his brilliant and beautiful daughter, Diana ...' "

"That's not in there!"

"No. Clearly, whoever compiled this little review doesn't know
everything.
Actually, the next entry reads: 'Year of Rome 690: Death of his patrician patron Lucius Claudius. Inherited Etruscan farm and moved out of Rome."

" 'Year of Rome 691: Played murky role in conspiracy of Catilina. Spied on Catilina for Cicero, or vice versa, or both? Relations with Cicero strained thereafter. Traded Etruscan farm for his current residence on the Palatine Hill. Assumed pretense of respectability.' "

"Pretense? Don't read that part to your mother! Go on."

" 'Year of Rome 698: Assisted Clodia in prosecution of Marcus Caelius for the murder of the philosopher Dio.' " There was a catch in her voice. " 'Further estrangement from Cicero (defending Caelius).' "

I grunted. "The less said about that case ..."

"... the better," concluded Diana, who shared with me a secret about the untimely death of Dio. She cleared her throat. " 'Year of Rome 702: Employed by the Great One to investigate murder of Clodius on the Appian Way. Service satisfactory.' "