The Venus Throw (12 page)

(I’ ve suddenly remembered that old conundrum, which Dio posed to me as a young man in Alexandria: Is it better to be beloved in life and despised after death, or despised in life and revered after death?)

So the debate in the Senate over the Egyptian situation grinds on, freshly fueled by this shameful outrage. Meanwhile a charge of murder was recently brought against one Publius Asicius.

I must say that I was not surprised to see Asicius accused of Dio’s murder. Dio himself suspected this young man of being involved in the failed poisoning attempt at the house of Lucius Lucceius, and told me as much when he visited me. On the very day that Dio’s food taster died of poison, Asicius had paid a visit to Lucceius. By itself, this is a merely circumstantial connection. But then, after Dio left my house, and probably not long after he was stabbed in his bed, I happened to encounter Asicius and our neighbor M.C. in the street, and while I overheard them say nothing directly incriminating, the circumstances, at least in retrospect, struck me as highly suspicious.

So when I heard that the charge had been brought against Asicius, I felt greatly relieved, thinking that if he was guilty, then perhaps the whole ugly truth would be given a chance to come out—and without having to become involved myself. (I imagine you sometimes feel the same relief in your work for Caesar, when an odious task is unexpectedly accomplished without any effort on your part, as if some friendly god had decided to do you a favor.)

But the gods can be fickle with their favors.

Who do you think stepped forward to defend Asicius? Yes, the best defense advocate in Rome, our old friend Marcus Cicero.

When I heard that news, my hope abruptly dwindled. Many things may happen in a trial where Cicero is one of the advocates, but the emergence of the truth is seldom one of them. If justice triumphs, it happens in spite of Cicero’s smoke and mirrors, and will have nothing to do with whether or not the truth was spoken.

They say that Cicero and Asicius were both away from Rome, down the coast, when Asicius was arraigned—Cicero in Neapolis, Asicius across the bay at his family’s villa in Baiae. To discuss the case,
Asicius went to fetch Cicero and took him back to Baiae in his magnificent fitter. Well, not
his
, exactly, but a litter lent to Asicius by—can you believe it?—King Ptolemy.

(The complicity is absolutely damning! You would think that a man accused of murdering King Ptolemy’s enemy would hide his connections with the king rather than flaunt them, but like most men of his generation, Asicius can’t seem to resist any opportunity to show off.)

The litter was an enormous eight-man affair, elaborately decorated (Egyptian fitters make the most elegant Roman conveyances look plain) and attended by no fewer than a hundred armed bodyguards, also lent to Asicius by King Ptolemy. (If the king supplied the bodyguards for Asicius’s physical defense, who can help but conclude that it was also the king who hired Cicero for Asicius’s legal defense?) Can you see it in your mind—Cicero and Asicius discussing the upcoming murder trial while they proceed along the shore borne aloft in a lifter, lolling about in Egyptian luxury with a hundred swordsmen in their train?

I missed the trial; a relapse of the cough which plagued me in Illyria kept me from venturing down to the Forum. Bethesda went to watch, but you can imagine the sort of report she same back with—I was informed that Asicius is quite good-looking, if a bit wasted and pale (Bethesda has heard that he drinks to excess); that Asicius’s friend, our handsome young neighbor M.C., was nowhere in light; and that Cicero was as long-winded and boring as ever.

And oh, yes, that Asicius was
acquitted
of murdering Dio.

I now regret having missed the trial, for I should like to have heard with my own ears the evidence presented. But I do not regret having missed whatever
devious conjurer’s tricks Cicero used to distract, disorient and ultimately persuade the judges. I don’t need the aggravation.

So, for better or worse, the matter has come to a conclusion. Poor Dio shall go unavenged, but his legacy may yet prevail—

I lifted my stylus from the parchment, distracted by a knock. I turned in my chair and saw Belbo in the doorway.

“The messenger’s come back, Master. He says he must have your letter now if he’s to take it for you.”

I grunted. “Show him in. No need to make him wait in the hallway.” I returned to the letter.

I must close abruptly. Caesar’s message bearer has returned.

I have foolishly spent this precious hour recounting Forum gossip and left myself no time to speak of family matters. Know that all is well. Bethesda is as always, and Diana becomes more like her mother every day (more beautiful, more mysterious). Eco continues to prosper, though I often wish I could have taught him a less dangerous trade than his father’s, and his beloved Menenia has proved herself a woman of surpassing patience, especially in bringing up the uncontrollable twins. Imagine having
two
four-year-olds squabbling and stubbing their toes and catching colds. . . .

I must close. The messenger has entered the room and stands before me, glancing over his shoulder at the statue of Minerva in the sun-filled atrium, tapping his foot impatiently.

Take care, Meto!

I dusted the parchment with fine sand, then pursed my lips and gently blew the sand away. I rolled the parchment,
slipped it into a leather jacket and sealed the cylinder with wax. As I handed it reluctantly to the messenger, thinking of things left unsaid, I took a closer look at the man. He was dressed in a soldier’s regalia, all leather straps and clinking steel and blood-red wool. His jaw was stiff and his countenance stem.

“How old are you, soldier?”

“Twenty-two.”

Meto’s age exactly; no wonder the fellow looked to me like a child playing soldier. I studied his face, searching for some sign of the horrors he must have beheld already in his young life, and saw only the bland innocence of youth framed by a soldier’s helmet.

His stem expression abruptly softened. He looked puzzled. I realized he was swing beyond me at someone in the doorway.

As I swung about I heard Belbo bluster, “Master, another guest—I told him to wait in the foyer, but he’s followed me anyway—”

At first I hardly saw the visitor, blocked as he was by Belbo’s bulk. Then he slipped into view, and what he lacked in stature was more than made up for by the gaudy splendor of his garb. He was covered from the neck down in a gown of vibrant red and yellow. Silver bracelets dangled from his wrists, a silver pectoral with glass beads hung from his neck, and his ears and fingers sported silver rings. His cheeks were painted white. On his head was a multicolored turban, from which his bleached hair hung down in wavy tresses. The last time I had seen him he had been dressed in a toga, not in the vestments of a priest of Cybele.

“Trygonion,” I said.

He smiled. “You remember me, then?”

“I do. It’s all right,” I said to Belbo, who continued to hover uncertainly, ready to interpose himself between the gallus and myself. Belbo could easily have lifted the little priest over his head and could probably have snapped him
in two, but he kept his distance, afraid to lay his hands on a holy eunuch. Trygonion had slipped into my study without missing a step, while a man three times his size blustered for him to stay back.

Belbo gave the gallus a disgruntled look and withdrew. Behind me I heard the clearing of a throat and turned to see the soldier slipping my letter into a leather pouch. “I’ m off, then,” he said, nodding to me and then looking at the eunuch with a mixture of curiosity and distaste.

“May Mercury guide you,” I said.

“And may the purifying blood of the Great Goddess spring from between her legs and wash over you!” added Trygonion. He pressed his palms together, making his bracelets jingle, and bowed his head. The soldier wrinkled his brow and hastily moved to depart, uncertain whether he had just been blessed or cursed. As he moved to slip out the narrow doorway, he turned sideways to avoid touching the eunuch, but Trygonion deliberately shifted his stance so that their shoulders brushed, and I saw the soldier shudder. The contrast was striking, between the stern, virile young Roman in his military garb and the diminutive, grinning, foreignborn gallus in his priestly gown. How odd, I thought, that the larger, stronger one, trained to kill and aefend himself, should be the one to shiver in fear.

Trygonion seemed to be thinking the same thing, for as the soldier stomped down the hallway the eunuch looked after him and made a trilling laugh. But as he turned back to me his smile quickly faded.

“Gordianus,” he said softly, bowing his head in greeting. “I am again honored to be admitted into your home.”

“It would seem I had little choice over whether to admit you or not, considering how giants give way before you and soldiers flee in panic.”

He laughed, but not in the trilling way he had used to mock the soldier. It was a throaty chuckle, such as men exchange over a witticism in the Forum. The gallus seemed
able to change his person at will, from feminine to masculine, never seeming wholly one or the other but something which was neither.

“I’ve been sent to fetch you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, imagine that—a priest of Cybele, dispatched like a messenger boy.” He cocked an eyebrow.

“Dispatched by whom?”

“By a certain lady.”

“Does she have a name?”

“Of course she does—many names, though I’d advise you to avoid the more scandalous ones and call her by the name her father gave her, unless you wish to have your face slapped. That is, until you get to know her better.”

“What name is that?”

“She lives here on the Palatine, only a few steps away.” He gestured toward the door with an ingratiating smile.

“Still, before I go off to see her, I think I should like to know her name and what business she might have with me.”

“Her business involves a certain mutual acquaintance. Two mutual acquaintances, actually. One living; one . . . dead.” He looked coy, then somber. Neither expression seemed quite genuine, as if he had exchanged one mask for another. “Two mutual acquaintances,” he repeated. “One, a murderer—the other, the murderer’s victim. One who even now moves through the Forum, laughing with his friends and flinging obscenities at his enemies, while the other moves through Hades, a shadow among shadows. Perhaps he will meet Aristotle there and debate him face to face, and the dead can decide which of them knew more about living.”

“Dio,” I whispered.

“Yes, I speak of Dio—and Dio’s killer. That’s the business I’ve come about.”

“Whose business?”

“The business of my lady. She has made it her business.”

“Who is she?” I said, growing impatient.

“Come and see. She
longs
to meet
you
.” He raised an eyebrow and leered like a pimp procuring for a whore.

“Tell me her name,” I said slowly, trying to keep my temper.

Trygonion sighed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, very well. Her name is Clodia.” He paused, saw the expression on my face, and laughed. “Ah, I see that you’ve already heard of her!”

O
n our way out, we passed Bethesda and Diana in the hallway.

“Where are you going?” Bethesda cast a chilly glance of recognition at Trygonion, crossed her arms and gave me the Medusa look. How could such a woman ever have been anyone’s slave, least of all mine? Diana stood alongside and slightly behind her mother. She too drew back her shoulders and crossed her arms, affecting the same imperious gaze.

“Out,” I said. Bethesda’s arms remained crossed; the answer did not suffice. “The gallus may have some work for me,” I added.

She stared at the little priest so intently that I would hardly have been surprised to see him turn to stone. Instead, he smiled at her. The two of them seemed impervious to each other. Trygonion was not intimidated; Bethesda was not charmed. “You’d better take Belbo with you” was all she had to say before uncrossing her arms and proceeding down the hallway. Diana followed, mimicking her mother’s movements with uncanny precision—until I swung around and tickled her under her arms. She let out a scream of laughter and ran forward, stumbling into Bethesda. They both turned and looked back at me, Diana laughing, Bethesda with one eyebrow raised and the merest hint of a smile on her lips.

“Take Belbo!” she repeated before turning her back and walking on. Now I understand, I thought: she remembers Trygonion from his visit with Dio, she knows about Dio’s murder, and now, seeing me leave with Trygonion, she fears for me. How touching!

The three of us—the gallus, Belbo and myself—stepped out into the bright afternoon sunshine. The warmth in my study had seemed mild and the air sweet, like early springtime; here in the street, the sun had heated the paving stones and the air was hot. Trygonion produced a tiny yellow parasol from the folds of his robe, opened it up and held it aloft.

“Perhaps I should have brought my broad-brimmed hat,” I said, squinting up at the cloudless sky.