'Well, he certainly knows how to run his own affairs,' the man agreed. 'His wealth speaks for that. They say he wants the command against Spartacus, and I hope those fools in the Senate for once have the wisdom to give the right job to the right man. He's a tough nut, no doubt about that; it takes a hard man to put a household of his own slaves to death, and that's just the sort we need right now — a stem hand to deal with the Thracian monster! My dear, could you pass me one of those green olives? And perhaps a spoonful more of the apple sauce for my calf s brains? Delicious! Alas, that Crassus should have to put such splendid cooks to death, as well!'
'But he's going to do it, even so. That's what I've heard — and poor, pitiful Gelina shaking her head the whole time and wishing it wasn't so. She's always had a soft heart, just like Lucius had a soft head, and you see what's come of that! But not Marcus Crassus — hard head and an even harder heart. He allows not a single exception to Roman justice, and that's as it should be. You can't make exceptions in times like these.'
'No, you certainly can't. But a man would have to be as unflinching as Cato to put to death a cook who can create a dish as exquisite as this.' The man smacked his lips.
'Shhh! Don't speak the word.'
'What word?'
'Death. Can't you see the serving girl is just over there?' 'So?'
'It's bad luck to say the word out loud where a doomed slave can hear.'
They were quiet for a moment, then the woman spoke again. 'Draughty in here, isn't it?' 'Now, woman, don't start…'
'The food gets cold having to come so far from the kitchens.' 'I think you're eating fast enough that you needn't worry about that.'
'Well, even so, that self-satisfied Designator might have put us in one of the better rooms if you'd had the nerve to ask, as I told you to.'
'My dear, don't start on that again. The food's the same, I'm sure, and you can't complain about that.'
'The food, maybe, but you can't say the same for the company. You're twice as rich as anybody in this room! We really should have been put closer to Crassus, or at least in the middle room with Gelina.'
'There are only so many rooms and so many couches,' sighed the man. 'And there are more people here than I've seen at a funeral banquet in many a year. Still, you have a point about the people in this room. Not exactly the cream, are they? Look over there, at that philosopher fellow who lives here. Dionysius, I think he's called.'
'Yes, like half the Greek philosophers in Italy,' the woman grunted. 'This one's not particularly distinguished, from what I hear.'
'Strictly second-rate, they say. I can't imagine why Lucius kept him on; I suppose Gelina picked him out, and there's no accounting for her taste, except in the matter of cooks. With Lucius gone, he'll be hard-pressed to find a situation as comfortable as this one. Who needs a second-rate philosopher about the house, especially a Stoic, when there are so many good Epicureans to choose from, especially here on the Cup? A disagreeable fellow — and rather uncouth as well. Just look at him! Making faces and sticking out his tongue like that — really, you'd think he was only half-civilized!'
'Yes, I see what you mean. He's making quite a spectacle of himself, isn't he? More like a buffoon than a polymath.'
Dionysius hardly seemed the type to display bad table manners, even if he was piqued at his placement. I turned my head to have a look for myself. He did indeed appear to be making faces, wrinkling his nose and pushing his tongue in and out of his mouth.
'But he does look funny,' the woman admitted. 'Like one of those hideous masks in a comedy!' She started to laugh, and her husband joined her.
But Dionysius was not striving for comic effect. He clutched at his throat and pitched forward on his couch with a spastic jerk. He sucked in a wheezing breath and then, with his tongue half out of his mouth, tried to speak. The garbled words were barely audible from where I sat. 'My tongue,' he gasped, 'on fire!' And then: 'Air! Air!'
By now others had begun to notice him. The slaves stopped serving and the guests turned their heads to watch as Dionysius went into convulsions. He drew his arms stiffly to his chest, as if trying to control the spasms, and kept pushing out his tongue, as if he could not bear to have it in his mouth.
'Is he choking?' asked the woman.
'I don't think so,' said her husband, who then snorted in disapproval. 'Really, this is too much!' he protested, as Dionysius bent forward and began to vomit onto the little table set before his couch.
A number of guests sprang to their feet. The commotion spread gradually into the middle room, like a ripple passing through a pond. Gelina frowned anxiously and turned her head. A moment later the whispers spread to the far room, where Crassus, laughing at one of Orata's jokes, turned and peered quizzically through the doorways. I caught his eye and waved at him urgently. Gelina rose to her feet. She hurried towards me. Crassus followed with measured steps.
They both arrived in time to witness the philosopher disgorge another spume of greenish bile onto a tray of what had been calf s brains with apple sauce, while a semicircle of alarmed guests looked on. I pushed my way through the crowd. Just as I stepped next to Crassus, the guests wrinkled their noses in unison and stepped back a pace. The philosopher had soiled himself.
Crassus made a face at the smelL Gelina hovered at the philosopher's side, trying to help but afraid to touch him. Dionysius suddenly convulsed and catapulted forward from his couch, falling against the little table of delicacies. The crowd drew back to avoid the flying calf s brains and bile.
The cup that had held Dionysius's herbal concoction tumbled through the air and landed at my feet with a clang. I knelt, picked it up and peered inside. There was nothing to see but a few green drops; Dionysius had drained it dry.
Crassus clutched my arm with a bruising grip. 'What in Hades is happening?' he demanded, clenching his teeth.
'Murder, I think. Perhaps Zeno and Alexandros strike again?'
Crassus was not amused.
Part Four
Funeral Games
XX
'One disaster follows another!' Crassus stopped pacing long enough to stare at me with one eyebrow raised, as if holding me responsible for complicating his life. 'For once I think I shall actually be glad to get back to the relative calm and security of Rome. This place is accursed!'
'I agree, Marcus Crassus. But cursed by whom?' I glanced at the corpse of Dionysius, which lay sprawled on the library floor where Crassus had ordered his men to put it for want of a better place, simply to get it out of sight of the dinner guests. Eco stood peering down at the dead man's contorted face, apparently fascinated by the way that Dionysius's tongue refused to recede into his mouth.
Crassus pinched his nose and made a wave of dismissal. 'Take it away!' he shouted to one of his bodyguards.
'But where shall we put him, Marcus Crassus?'
'Anywhere! Find Mummius and ask him what to do — just get the body out of here! Now that I no longer have to listen to the fool, I certainly don't intend to put up with his stench.' He fixed his stare on me. 'Poison, Gordianus?'
'An obvious deduction, given the symptoms and circumstances.'
'Yet the rooms were full of other people eating. No one else was affected.'
'Because no one else drank from Dionysius's cup. He had a peculiar habit of drinking some herbal concoction before his midday meal and again with his dinner.'
Crassus blinked and shrugged. 'Yes, I remember hearing him extol the virtues of rue and silphium at other meals. Another of his irritating affectations.'
'And an ideal opportunity for anyone who might wish to poison him — a drink which he alone ingests, and always at a prescribed time and place. You must agree now, Marcus Crassus, that there is a murderer at large, here in this house. Quite likely it's the same person who murdered Lucius, since only last night Dionysius publicly pledged to expose that person. This could hardly have been the work of Alexandros or Zeno.'
'And why not? Zeno may be dead, but we still don't kno
w where Alexandros is, or with whom he might be in contact. No doubt he has confederates in the household, among the kitchen slaves.'
'Yes, perhaps he does have friends in this house,' I said, but I was not thinking of slaves.
'Obviously, it was a mistake for me to allow any of the slaves to go on serving Gelina. As soon as the dinner is finished and the overnight guests are seen to their quarters, I shall have every slave rounded up and locked into the annexe. It would have to be done in the morning, anyway. Fabius!' He called to Faustus Fabius, who had been waiting in the hall, and issued instructions. Fabius nodded coolly and left the room without even looking at me.
I shook my head wearily. 'Why do you think it was one of the slaves who poisoned Dionysius, Marcus Crassus?'
'Who else had access to the kitchens, where no one would notice? I suppose that's where Dionysius kept his herbs.'
'All sorts of people have been in and out of the kitchens all day. People were half-starved from waiting for dinner; guests dropped by to filch food or sent slaves to do it for them long before the meal began; the kitchen slaves were rushing about and could hardly be expected to take note of everyone who stepped in their way. And you're mistaken, Crassus; Dionysius gathered his herbs himself and kept them in his room. He sent fresh batches down to the kitchens to be prepared each day; he usually bundled them up first thing in the morning and gave them to a kitchen slave, but today he didn't deliver them until after the funeral. That means the herbs could have been tampered with in Dionysius's room this morning, while everyone was busy preparing for the funeral.' 'How do you know all this?'
'Because while you and your men were gathering up Dionysius's body and bringing it here, I asked a few questions of the serving girl who brought him the drink tonight. She says that he brought the herbs to the kitchen after returning from the funeral. As usual, they were already mixed and crushed and gathered up in a scrap of cloth. Apparently Dionysius made quite a ritual of measuring and preparing them in advance. She herself added the watercress and grape leaves, then boiled and strained the concoction just before the meal.'
'She could have added the poison as well,' Crassus insisted. 'You must know something of poisons, Gordianus. What do you think it was?'
'I would guess aconitum.'
'Panther's-death?'
'Some people call it that. It's said to be palatable, so he might not have noticed it in his concoction. It's the fastest of poisons. The symptoms match — a burning in the tongue, choking, convulsions, vomiting, loosening of the bowels, death. But who,' I wondered aloud, 'would have known enough of such things to have obtained the poison and administered a proper dose?' I glanced at Eco, who pursed his lips. He had napped while I browsed through the various herbs and extracts in the house of Iaia at Cumae, but I had told him about them later.
Crassus stretched his shoulders and grimaced. 'I hate funerals. Even worse than funerals are funeral games. At least this will all be over tomorrow.'
'If only Dionysius had been able to tell us what he knew about the murder of Lucius,' I said, 'if indeed he knew anything at all. I should like to have a look in his rooms.'
'Certainly.' Crassus shrugged. His mind had already wandered to other matters.
I found the boy Meto in the atrium and instructed him to show us to the philosopher's chambers. We passed the dining rooms.
The meal had abruptly ended with the death of Dionysius and the withdrawal of the host and hostess, but many of the guests still lingered among the tables and couches. I paused and searched the crowd.
'Who are you looking for?' asked Meto.
'Iaia and her assistant Olympias.'
'The painter lady left already,' he said. 'Right after the philosopher started having his fit.' 'Left the room?'
'Left the house, for her own house at Cumae. I know, because she sent me to the stables to see that their horses were ready.'
'Too bad,' I said. 'I should very much like to talk with her.'
Meto led us farther up the hall and around a corner. 'Here it is,' he said, indicating the door to Dionysius's rooms.
The apartment consisted of two small rooms separated by a hanging curtain. In the outer room a round table was surrounded by chairs, set beside a window that faced the low wooded hills on the west. A clay urn was set atop a small table in one corner. When I lifted the lid I smelled the mingled scents of rue, silphium, and garlic. 'Dionysius's concoction. Poisoned or not, it should all be burned or emptied into the bay to be sure it harms no one else.'
The inner room, furnished with a Stoic's austerity, contained only a sleeping couch, a hanging lamp, and a large trunk.
'Not much to see,' I remarked to Eco, 'unless something has been hidden out of sight.' I started to open the trunk and found that it was clasped shut with a lock that required a key. 'We could break it open, I suppose. I doubt that Crassus would object, and we can ask the shade of Dionysius to forgive us. Indeed, it looks to me as if someone has already tried to force it open, and failed. See the scratches, and this scarred strip of metal, Eco? We shall need a strong, slender bar of steel to pry it open.'
'Why not use the key?' suggested Meto.
'Because we don't have it,' I said.
Meto smiled mischievously, then flattened himself on the floor, wriggled under the couch and emerged clutching a simple brass key in his tiny fist.
I threw up my hands. 'Meto, you are invaluable! Every household needs a slave like you.' He grinned and hovered over me as I stopped to fit the key into the lock. 'Indeed, Meto, I think you will grow up to be like those slaves in Plautus's plays, the ones who always know what's going on when their masters are too stupid or love-struck to see the truth.' Whoever had tried to force the lid had jammed the lock as well, so that I had to jiggle the key. 'Plautus's clever slaves always come in for a chiding from their jealous masters, but the world could never manage without them. Ah — there, it's open! What treasures did the philosopher find so valuable that he locked them safely away, I wonder?'
I pushed the lid up. Eco sucked in a breath. Meto started back.
'Blood!' he whispered.
'Yes,' I agreed, 'most assuredly, blood.' Atop the other scrolls that had been unrolled and laid flat within the trunk was a strip of parchment covered with tiny, crabbed writing, over which had been cast a great, spattered stain of blood.
'The missing documents?' I asked.
Back in the library, Crassus pored over the flattened sheets one by one. Finally he nodded. 'Yes, there are the records I was searching for, together with others I had no idea existed, full of all sorts of irregularities and cryptic references — expenditures and amounts received, itemized in some sort of secret code. I shall have to take them back to Rome with me after the funeral games. There's no way to make sense of it all without considerable time and study; perhaps my chief accountant can decode them.'
'I saw that the notation "A Friend" recurs several times, always connected to a sum of money, often a rather large sum. You don't suppose that could be a record of investments and disbursements relating to Lucius's silent partner?'
Crassus gave me a disgrunded look. 'What I really want to know is what these documents were doing in Dionysius's room.'
'I have a theory,' I said.
'I'm sure you do.'
'We know that Dionysius wanted to solve Lucius's murder, if only to impress you with his cleverness. Suppose he was ahead of us when it came to noticing the bloodstains on the statue that was used to kill Lucius, and had already concluded, even before I arrived, that Lucius was murdered in this room. Suppose also that he had some inkling of Lucius's shady dealings; after all, he lived in the house and might very well have noticed the flow of silver and arms, no matter how secretive Lucius might have been.' Crassus nodded. 'Go on.'
'Knowing these things, he must have purloined these documents himself, before you had a chance to find them, taking them from this room to his own where he could peruse them in secret and search for clues to the murderer's identity.'
/> 'Perhaps. But how do you account for this?' He pointed to the bloodstained scroll.
'Lucius must have been looking at it when he was killed. It must have been open, here on this table.'
'And the murderer, who was so careful to drag Lucius's body into the atrium, left this document for Dionysius to find the next time he came into the library? It seems to me that the killer would have destroyed it rather than leave it for Dionysius to ferret away. This would indicate that the document has nothing to do with the murder.'
Crassus stared at me grimly, then slowly smiled when he saw that I had no answer. He shook his head and laughed softly. 'I will say this, Gordianus — you are tenacious! If it makes you feel better, I'll admit that I myself am not entirely satisfied with what we know of the circumstances surrounding Lucius's death. It does appear, from the evidence you found in the water and from these documents, that my dear, foolish, accursed cousin was involved in smuggling weapons to someone — yes, perhaps even to Spartacus. But that only weakens your case and strengthens mine.'
'I don't see it that way, Marcus Crassus.'
'Don't you? When word arrived that I was coming on short notice, Lucius panicked and tried to sever his contacts with the representatives of Spartacus, the customers who bought his stockpile of weapons. Seeing they would get no more out of Lucius, they set about taking their revenge on him. Who could these criminals, these agents of Spartacus, have been? Who else but Zeno and the Thracian Alexandros, who were nothing less than Spartacan spies in this household. Yes, I see it quite clearly now — hear me out, Gordianus!
'They confronted Lucius here in the library, in the dead of night. Zeno, who helped keep his master's books, produced these various documents exposing Lucius's perfidy, and threatened to betray him to me if he didn't continue to smuggle arms to Spartacus. But even blackmail would not sway Lucius; he had decided to sever his ties with the Spartacans, and he would not be intimidated. So Zeno and Alexandros murdered him, using the statue, just as you said. To make his death more public, they dragged his body into the atrium and began to scrape out the name of their master, Spartacus.
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