The Venus Throw (15 page)

I winced. “Just so. But even if I had agreed to Dio’s request, I would’ve been too late to save him. By the time I woke up the next morning—no, even before I fell asleep that night—he was already dead.”

“But what if you had said yes to Dio? What if you had agreed to begin looking after his safety the next morning, helping him decide whom to trust and whom to fear? Wouldn’t you have felt some obligation after his death, to try to bring his murderer to justice?”

“Perhaps . . .”

“And do you feel no such obligation now, simply out of respect for an old friendship? Why do you hesitate to answer?”

“Doesn’t everyone know who was behind Dio’s murder?”

“Who?”

“King Ptolemy, of course.”

“Was it King Ptolemy who slipped poison into Dio’s coup in the house of Lucceius? Was it Ptolemy himself who stole into Dio’s room and stabbed him to death?”

“No, of course not. It was someone acting on the king’s behalf—”

“Exactly. And do you feel no obligation to see that this person is punished, if only to give solace to Dio’s shade?”

“Asicius has already been tried for the crime—”

“And acquitted, the swine!” Her eyes flashed. “Nemesis will have to deal with him in her own fashion. But there’s another man, even more culpable than Asicius, who has yet to be brought to justice. You could help, Gordianus.”

Though there was no chance that the men in the river could overhear, still I lowered my voice. “If you mean Pompey—”

“Pompey! Do you think I would send
you
against Pompey? That would be like sending a one-armed gladiator into the arena to take on an elephant.” Her laughter was like sand in my face. “No, Gordianus, what I want from you is very simple, and well within your capabilities. How many times have you investigated the circumstances of a murder? How many times have you helped an advocate find evidence that would prove a man guilty or innocent of such a crime? That’s all I want from you. I’m not asking you to topple a king from his throne or pull down a colossus. Only help me bring down the wrath of the law on the man who killed Dio by his own hand. Help me punish the cold-blooded killer who plunged a dagger into Dio’s breast!”

I expelled a heavy breath and turned to stare at the sunlight on the river.

“Why do you hesitate, Gordianus? I’ll pay you for your labors, of course, and generously. But I expected you to leap at this opportunity, out of your respect for Dio. Is his shade not whispering in your ear even now, pleading for vengeance? He asked for your help once before, while he was still alive—”

“These days, in a case such as this—in a matter of murder—I usually defer to my son Eco. He’s younger, stronger, quicker. Those things often matter when the stakes are so high. Sharp ears and eyes can mean the difference between life and death. An old fellow like myself—”

“But your son never knew Dio, did he?”

“Even so, I think it’s Eco you want.”

“Well, never having seen him, it’s hard for me to say
whether I would want him or not. Does he look like a younger version of you?” She looked me up and down, as if I were a slave on the auction block. I bit my lip for having mentioned Eco, imagining him in my place, alone with such a creature. What was I thinking, recommending him to her?

“Both of my sons are adopted,” I said. “They look nothing like me.”

“They must be ugly, then,” she said, affecting a frown of disappointment. “Well, then, you’ re the man I want, Gordianus, and there’s no way around it. Will you help me or not?”

I hesitated.

“For Dio’s sake?”

I sighed, seeing no way out. “You want me to find out who murdered Dio?”

“No, no!” She spook her head. “Didn’t I make myself clear? We already know that. What I need from you is your help in collecting evidence to convict the man.”

“You know who murdered Dio?”

“Of course. You know him, too, I’m sure. Until a few days ago, he lived just up the street from you. His name is Marcus Caelius.”

I stared at her blankly. “How do you know that?”

She leaned forward, absently running her hands over her thighs. The movement pressed her breasts together and caused the sheer cloth which outlined her nipples to shimmer. “Until recently, Marcus Caelius and I were on rather intimate terms. He and my brother were also close. You might say that Caelius was almost like a brother to both of us.”

The way she said it, the implication was vaguely obscene. “Go on.”

“Not long before the poison attempt was made on Dio in the house of Lucius Lucceius, Caelius came to me asking to borrow a considerable sum of money.”

“So?”

“He told me he needed the money to pay for some games
being held in his home town, Interamnia. Apparently Caelius has an honorary post on the local council there. In return, there’s an obligation to help pay for local festivals; that’s the way Caelius explained it to me, anyway. It wasn’t the first time he asked to borrow money from me.”

“Did you always oblige him?”

“Usually. You might say I had developed a habit of indulging Marcus Caelius. He always repaid me, but seldom with money.”

“Then how?”

“With favors.”

“Political favors?”

Clodia laughed. “Hardly. Let’s just say that I had an itch and Caelius knew how to scratch it. But I’m digressing. As I said, the sum of money he asked to borrow was rather large—considerably larger than he’d ever requested before.”

“Enough to pay for an awful lot of scratching,” I said.

Her eyes flashed. “Why, yes, perhaps that’s what I was thinking when I foolishly agreed to give Caelius the loan. Afterward, I became apprehensive, and made some inquiries. Imagine my displeasure when I discovered that the games at Interamnia are held in the autumn, not the spring. Caelius’s pretense for the ban was a complete fiction.”

“He would hardly be the first young man to lie to a beautiful woman to get her money.”

Clodia smiled at this, and I realized that I had called her beautiful without even thinking; I had meant to say ‘an older woman,’ surely. The flattery was all the more sincere for being spontaneous, and I think she sensed this.

Her smile faded. “1 believe Marcus Caelius used the money to obtain poison and then to bribe one or more of Lucceius’s slaves to try to kill Dio with it.”

“You said it was a large sum of money.”

“Poison isn’t cheap; the stuff has to be reliable, and so does the person selling it. Nor is it cheap to bribe the slaves
of a rich master to commit such a crime.” Clodia spoke with authority, as if she had personal knowledge of such matters. “The connection occurred to me only later, after Dio was dead. Little things—the tone of Caelius’s voice and the look on his face whenever the subject of Dio arose, cryptic comments he would make, my own intuition.”

“These are hardly evidence.”

“Evidence is. what I want from you, Gordianus.”

“Whatever the truth of the matter, it wasn’t the poison attempt that killed Dio. What about the stabbing?”

“Early on the evening of the murder, Caelius was at my house, which isn’t far from that of Titus Coponius, where Dio was killed. Caelius was carrying a knife, concealed inside his tunic.”

“If it was concealed, how—”

“I assure you, nothing on Marcus Caelius’s person was hidden from me that night,” she said with a brittle smile. “He was carrying a dagger. He was also nervous and fretful, in a state such as I had never seen him in before, and drinking more than was good for him. I asked what was wrong; he said there was an unpleasant task ahead of him, and that he would be relieved when it was done. I pressed him to tell me what it was, but he refused. You men, with your little secrets. I said, ‘This unpleasant task which you dread so much—I hope it’s not the task I asked you here to perform.’ ‘Of course not!’ he said, and proceeded to demonstrate as much. But our lovemaking that night was a disappointment, to say the least. Caelius was about as effectual as one of our shriveled friends in the river today. Later, when his friend Asicius came by to collect him, Caelius was eager to leave. Well then, I thought, let the boys go off and play with each other. A little later that night—only moments after the two of them left my doorstep, I imagine—Dio was stabbed to death.”

I paused for a long moment before speaking, puzzled not by the details of Clodia’s story but by her whole manner of
speaking. I had never heard a woman talk of her sexual relations in such frank terms, and with such acid in her voice. “You realize that everything you’ve told me connecting Caelius with Dio’s murder is merely circumstantial.”

“Then here is another circumstance: the next night, when Caelius came calling on me, he brought me a little gift—a silver necklace with lapis and carnelian baubles—and boasted that he could now repay every sesterce of the money he had borrowed from me.”

“And did he repay you?”

She laughed. “Of course not. But from the way he talked, I had no doubt that he had come into some money. He had performed his task, you see, and been handsomely paid off.”

“Is this merely your assumption?”

Clodia wasn’t listening. She stared at the roof of the tent, remembering. “Our lovemaking that night was quite the reverse of the previous evening. Caelius was a veritable Minotaur—horns rampant, eyes aflame, his flanks glossy with sweat . . .”

I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could interrupt her it was done for me by the approaching sound of a man’s laughter, deep and throaty, accompanied by splashing footsteps. Clodia snapped out of her reverie and sat forward on her couch. On her face was a look of pure joy.

I turned to see a man taking high steps through the shallows along the riverbank, striding toward the tent. Like the other men in the river he was naked. The light of the lowering sun glittered on the water behind him, casting him in shimmering silhouette; beads of water on his shoulders and limbs sparkled like points of white flame outlining the dark mass of his body. As he emerged from the river he raised his hands and pressed the water from his hair, showing the sleek muscularity of his shoulders and arms. On dry land his stride became a swagger, and though his features were still shadowed in silhouette, I could see the flash of a broad smile on his face.

“Darling!” The word emerged from Clodia’s lips like a breath made audible, as uncalculated as a moan or a sigh. There was no pretense or teasing in her voice, no slyness or innuendo. She sprang from the couch to meet the man as he stepped into the tent. It was hard to say which of them looked more naked, the sinewy, long-limbed man wearing nothing but beads of water, or Clodia in her gown of transparent yellow silk. They embraced and kissed each other on the mouth.

After a moment Clodia drew back and took his hands in hers. Where her gown had become wet from being pressed against his body, the silk was even more transparent and was molded to her like a second skin. She turned her head, saw me gaping and laughed. The man did likewise, as if he were her mirror image.

“But darling,” she said, squeezing his hands and giggling like a girl, “why didn’t you simply come in through the tent flap? What on earth were you doing out in the water with the others? And when did you join them? How could I not have noticed?”

“I only just arrived,” he said, with a laugh deeper than Clodia’s but uncannily similar. “I thought it would be fun to slip in among your admirers and see if I could attract your notice. Which I didn’t, apparently!”

“But I was distracted, darling, by something very important!” She nodded toward me and affected a sober expression. The teasing tone had returned to her voice. She was performing again, but for whom? “It’s about Dio, darling, and the trial. This is Gordianus, the man I told you about. He’s going to help us punish Marcus Caelius.”

The man turned his beaming smile on me. I recognized him now, of course. I had seen him at a distance in the Forum on many occasions, haranguing his mob of followers or keeping company with the great powers of the Senate, but never naked and wet with his hair slicked back. How very much like his sister Publius Clodius looked, especially when one saw the two of them together, side by side.

I
remember something you used to tell me, Papa, when I was starting out on my own: ‘Never accept a commission without obtaining some sort of retainer, no matter how small.’ ” Eco cocked his head and gave me a penetrating look.

“What is your point?” I said.

“Well, when you left Clodia’s horti this afternoon, was your purse heavier than when you arrived?” This was his way of asking if I had accepted Clodia’s commission to investigate the murder of Dio—how typical of Eco to get directly to the heart of the matter!

Despite the summerlike warmth of the day, darkness had fallen early; it was still the month of Martius, after all. By the time I left Clodia’s horti, shortly after her brother’s arrival, the sun was already sinking, turning the Tiber into a sheet of flaming gold. It was twilight by the time Belbo and I reached home, trudging back across the bridge, through the shut-down cattle markets and back up the Palatine. Night fell, with a slight chili in the air. After a hurried meal with Bethesda and Diana, despite the tiredness of my legs I again set out with Belbo across the city to take counsel with my elder son.