by Mike Ashley
In the days that followed, I kept my ears perked for any news of developments at the house of Poplicola, but there was only silence. Was the old man plotting some horrible revenge on his son and wife? Were they still plotting against him? Or had the three of them somehow come together, with confessions of guilt and forgiveness all around? I hardly saw how such a reconciliation could be possible after such a total breach of trust.
Then one morning I received a note from my friend Lucius Claudius:
Dear Friend, Dinner Companion, and Fellow Connoisseur of Gossip,
We never quite finished our discussion about Poplicola the other day, did we? The latest gossip (horrible stuff): On the very eve of the great purge in the Senate, one hears that certain members are planning to mount a prosecution against the censor’s son, Lucius Gellius, accusing him of sleeping with his stepmother and plotting to kill Poppy. Such a trial will stir up a huge scandal – what will people think of a magistrate in charge of morals who can’t stop his own son and wife from fornicating and scheming to do him in? Opponents (and likely targets) of the purge will say, “Clean up your own house, Poplicola, before you presume to clean ours!”
Who knows how such a trial might turn out? The whole family will be dragged through the mud – if there’s any dirt on any of them, the prosecutors will dig it up. And if Lucius is found guilty (I still can’t believe it), they won’t allow him exile – he’ll be put to death along with Palla, and to save face Poplicola will have to play stern paterfamilias and watch while it’s done! That would be the death of Poppy, I fear. Certainly, it would be the end of his political career. He’d be utterly humiliated, his moral authority a joke. He couldn’t possibly continue as censor. No purge of the Senate, then, and politics can go on as usual! What an age we live in.
Ah well, come dine with me tonight. I shall be having fresh pheasant, and Cook promises to do something divine with the sauce . . .
The pheasant that night was succulent. The sauce had an intriguing insinuation of mint that lingered teasingly on the tongue. But the food was not what I had come for.
Eventually we got around to the subject of the censor and his woes.
“There’s to be a trial, then,” I said.
“Actually . . . no,” said Lucius Claudius.
“But your note this morning –”
“Invalidated by fresh gossip this afternoon.”
“And?”
Lucius leaned back on his couch, stroked Momo, and looked at me shrewdly. “I don’t suppose, Gordianus, that you know more about this affair than you’re letting on?”
I looked him in the eye. “Nothing that I could discuss, even with you, my friend, without violating an oath.”
He nodded. “I thought it must be something like that. Even so, I don’t suppose you could let me know, simply yes or no, whether Lucius Gellius and Palla really – Gordianus, you look as if the pheasant suddenly turned on you! Well, let no one say that I ever gave a dinner guest indigestion from pressing an improper question. I shall simply have to live not knowing. Though in that case, why I should tell you the latest news from the Forum, I’m sure I don’t know.”
He pouted and fussed over Momo. I sipped my wine. Lucius began to fidget. Eventually his urge to share the latest gossip got the better of him. I tried not to smile.
“Very well, since you must know: Poppy, acting in his capacity as censor, has convoked a special Senate committee to investigate his own son on a charge of gross immorality – namely this rumour about adultery and attempted parricide. The committee will take up the investigation at once, and Poppy himself will preside over it.”
“But how will this affect the upcoming trial?”
“There won’t be a trial. The investigation supersedes it. It’s rather clever of Poppy, I suppose, and rather brave. This way he heads off his enemies, who would have made a public trial into a spectacle. Instead, he’ll see to the question of his son’s guilt or innocence himself, behind closed doors. The Senate committee will make the final vote, but Poppy will oversee the proceedings. Of course, the whole thing could spin out of his control. If the investigating committee finds Lucius Gellius guilty, the scandal will still be the ruin of Poppy.” He shook his head. “Surely that won’t happen. For Poppy to take charge of the matter himself, that must mean that his son is innocent, and Poppy knows it – doesn’t it?” Lucius raised an eyebrow and peered at me expectantly.
“I’m not sure what it means,” I said, and meant it.
The investigation into the moral conduct of Lucius Gellius lasted two days, and took place behind the closed doors of the Senate House, where none but scribes and witnesses and the senators themselves were allowed. Fortunately for me, Lucius Claudius was among the senators on the investigating committee, and when the investigation was done he invited me once again to dine with him.
He greeted me at the door himself, and even before he spoke I could tell from his round, beaming face that he was pleased with the outcome.
“The committee reached a conclusion?” I said.
“Yes, and what a relief!”
“Lucius Gellius was cleared of the charges?” I tried not to sound sceptical.
“Completely! The whole business was an absurd fabrication! Nothing to it but vicious rumors and unfounded suspicions.”
I thought of the dead slave, Chrestus. “There was no evidence at all of Lucius Gellius’s guilt?”
“No such evidence was presented. Oh, so-and-so once saw Palla and Lucius Gellius sitting with their legs pressed together at the Circus Maximus, and another so-and-so saw them holding hands in a marketplace one day, and someone else claims to have seen them kiss beneath some trees on the Palatine Hill. Nothing but hearsay and rubbish. Palla and Lucius Gellius were called upon to defend themselves, and they both swore they had done nothing improper. Poplicola himself vouched for them.”
“No slaves were called to testify?”
“This was an investigation, Gordianus, not a trial. We had no authority to extract testimony under torture.”
“And were there no other witnesses? No depositions? Nothing regarding the poisoned cake that was rumored?”
“No. If there had been anyone capable of producing truly damning evidence, they’d have been found, surely; there were plenty of senators on the committee hostile to Poppy, and believe me, since the rumors first began, they’ve been scouring the city looking for evidence. It simply wasn’t there.”
I thought of the poison dealer, and of the blond girl who had waited on me at the bakery shop. I had tracked them down with little enough trouble; Poplicola’s enemies would have started out with less to go on, but surely they had dispatched their own finders to search out the truth. Why had the girl not been called to testify, at least? Had no one made even the simple connection between the rumour of the poisoned cake and the bakery shop which produced Poplicola’s favourite treat? Could the forces against the censor have been so inept?
Lucius laughed. “And to think of the meals I left untouched, fretting over Poppy! Well, now that he and his household have been vindicated, he can get on with his work as censor. Tomorrow Poppy will post his list of senators who’ve earned a black mark for immoral conduct. Good riddance, I say. More elbow room for the rest of us in the Senate chambers!” He sighed and shook his head. “Really, all that grief, and the whole thing was a farce.”
Yes, I thought warily, so it had ended up – a farce. But what role had I played in it?
The next day I went to the street of the bakers, thinking finally to taste for myself one of the famous almond sweet cakes baked by the Baebius family – and also to find out if, indeed, no one from the Senate committee had called upon the blond girl.
I strolled up the narrow, winding little street and arrived at the corner with a shock. Instead of the blond girl’s smiling face behind the serving counter, I saw a boarded-up storefront. The sign bearing the family name, there for three generations, had been obliterated with crude daubs of paint.
&nbs
p; A shopkeeper down the street saw me gaping and called to me from behind his counter.
“Looking for the Baebii?”
“Yes.”
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“No idea.”
“When?”
He shrugged. “A while back. Just up and left overnight, the whole lot of them. Baebius, his wife and daughter, the slaves – here one day, all gone the next. Poof! Like actors falling through a trapdoor on a stage.”
“But why?”
He gestured that I should step closer, and lowered his voice. “I suspect that Baebius must have got himself into serious trouble with the authorities.”
“What authorities?”
“The Senate itself!”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just a day or two after he vanished, some pretty rough-looking strangers came snooping up and down the block, asking for Baebius and wanting to know where he’d gone. They even offered money, but nobody could tell them. And then, a few days after that, here come more strangers asking questions, only these were better dressed and carried fancy-looking scrolls; claimed they were conducting some sort of official investigation, and had ‘senatorial authority.’ Not that it mattered; people around here still didn’t know what had become of Baebius. It’s a mystery, isn’t it?”
“Yes . . .”
“I figure Baebius must have done something pretty bad, to get out of town that sudden and not leave a trace behind.” He shook his head. “Sad, though; his family had been in that shop a long time. And you’d think he might have given me his recipe for those almond cakes before he disappeared! People come by here day and night asking for those cakes. Say, could I interest you in something sweet? These honey-glazed buns are fresh out of the oven. Just smell that aroma . . .”
Is it better to visit a poison dealer on a full stomach or an empty one? Empty, I decided, and so I declined the baker’s bun and made my way across the Forum and the cattle market to the riverfront, and thence to the seedy little tavern frequented by Quintus Fugax.
The interior seemed pitch-dark after the bright sunshine. I had to squint as I stumbled from bench to bench, searching among the derelicts. Only the most hardened drinkers were in such a place at that time of day. The place stank of spilled wine and river rot.
“Looking for someone?” asked the tavern keeper.
“A fellow called Fugax.”
“The scarecrow with the rheumy eye and the bad breath?”
“That’s him.”
“You’re out of luck, then, but not as out of luck as your friend.”
“What do you mean?”
“They dragged him out of the river a couple of days ago.”
“What?”
“Drowned. Poor sod must have fallen in; not my fault if a man leaves here too drunk to walk straight. Or maybe . . .” He gave me a significant look. “Maybe somebody pushed him in.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Fugax had been strutting around here lately, claiming he was about to come into a big sum of money. Crazy fool! Saying a thing like that in this neighbourhood is asking for trouble.”
“Where was he going to get this money?”
“That’s what I wondered. I asked him, ‘What, are you planning to sell your garden villa on the Tiber?’ He laughed and said he had something to sell, all right – information, important information that powerful people would pay a lot for; pay to get it, or pay to keep others from getting it. Not likely, I thought! ‘What could a river rat like you know that anybody would give a fig to find out?’ He just laughed. The fellow was half crazy, you know. But I figure maybe somebody heard him bragging, tried to rob him, got angry when they didn’t find much, and threw him in the river. The dock workers that found him say it looked like he might have hit his head on something – hard to tell with all those scabs and rashes. Did you know him well?”
I sighed. “Well enough not to mourn too much over his death.”
The tavern keeper looked at me oddly. “You need something to drink, citizen.”
I had declined the baker’s bun, but I accepted the tavern keeper’s wine.
The doorkeeper at Poplicola’s house tersely informed me that his master was not receiving visitors. I pushed past him and told him I would wait in the red study. I waited for quite a while, long enough to peruse a few of the scrolls in Poplicola’s little library: Aristotle on ethics, Plato on the examined life. There was a movement at the green curtain drawn over the doorway. It was not Poplicola who entered, but Palla.
She was shorter than I had thought; her elaborate turret of hair gave an illusion of height. But she was actually more beautiful than I had realized. By the reflected light of the red walls her skin took on a smooth, creamy luster. The bland youthfulness of her face was at odds with the worldliness in her eyes. Seeing her so close, it was harder than ever to calculate her age.
“You must be Gordianus,” she said.
“Yes.”
“My husband is physically and emotionally exhausted by the events of the last few days. He can’t possibly see you.”
“I think he should.”
“Has he not paid you yet?”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m not an instrument to be used and then disposed of. I helped him discover the truth. I brought him certain information. Now I find that an innocent family has been driven into hiding, and another man is dead, very likely murdered to keep him quiet.”
“If you’re talking about that wretch Fugax, surely the whole city is better off being rid of such a creature.”
“What do you know about his death?”
She made no answer.
“I insist that your husband see me,” I said.
She looked at me steadily. “Anything you might wish to say to Poppy, you may say to me. We have no secrets from each other – not any more. Everything has come out into the open between us.”
“And your stepson?”
“Father and son are reconciled.”
“The three of you have worked it all out?”
“Yes. But that’s really none of your business, Finder. As you say, you were hired to find out a thing, and you did. There’s an end of it.”
“An end of Chrestus, and of Fugax, you mean. And who knows what’s become of the baker and his family.”
She drew a deep breath and gave me a bemused look. “The slave Chrestus belonged to my husband. His death was an injury to my husband’s property. Chrestus was old and slow, he pilfered from his master’s food and might not have survived another winter; his market value was nil. It’s for Poppy and Poppy alone to seek recompense for the loss, and if he chooses to overlook it, then neither you nor anybody else has any business poking further into the matter.”
She crossed her arms and paced slowly across the room. “As for Fugax, as I say, his death is no loss to anyone. A public service, I should think! When the trial began to loom, and then the investigation, he tried to blackmail us. He was a stupid, vile, treacherous little man, and now he’s dead. That, too, is none of your business.”
She reached the far corner and turned around. “As for the baker and his family, they were paid a more than adequate compensation for their trouble.”
“The man’s family had been in that shop for generations! I can’t believe he left of his own free will.”
She stiffened her jaw. “ ‘True, Baebius was not completely cooperative, at first. A certain amount of pressure was required to make him see reason.”
“Pressure?”
“A black mark from a censor could have made a great deal of trouble for Baebius. Once that was explained to him, Baebius saw that it would be best if he and his family left Rome altogether and set up shop elsewhere. I’m sure his almond cakes will be just as popular in Spain as they were here in Rome. Poppy shall miss them, alas.” She spoke without a shred of irony.
“And what about me?”
“You, Gordianus?”
“I knew more than anyone.”
“Yes, that’s true. To be candid, I thought we should do something about you; so did my stepson. But Poppy said that you had sworn an oath of secrecy upon your ancestors, that you gave him your word, Roman to Roman. That sort of thing counts for a great deal with Poppy. He insisted that we leave you alone. And he was right; you kept silent. He expects you to remain silent. I’m sure you won’t let him down.”
She flashed a serene smile, without the least hint of remorse. It struck me that Palla resembled a bit of poisoned cake herself. “So you see,” she said, “it’s all worked out for the best, for everyone concerned.”
Legally and politically, the affair of Poplicola and the poisoned cake was at an end. The court of public opinion, however, would continue to try and retry the case for years to come.
There were those who insisted that the Senate investigation had been rigged by Poplicola himself; that vital witnesses had been intimidated, driven off, even killed; that the censor was morally bankrupt, unfit for his office, and that his happy household was a sham.
Others defended Poplicola, saying that all the talk against him originated with a few morally depraved, bitter ex-senators. There were even those who argued that the episode was proof of Poplicola’s wisdom and profound sense of judgment. Upon hearing such shocking charges against his son and wife, many a man would have rushed to avenge himself on them, taking their punishment into his own hands; but Poplicola had exercised almost superhuman restraint, called for an official inquiry, and ultimately saw his loved ones vindicated. For his patience and cool-headed perseverance, Poplicola was held up as a model of Roman sagacity, and his loyal wife Palla was admired as a woman who held her head high even when enduring the cruellest slanders.
As for his son, Lucius Gellius’s political career advanced more or less unimpeded by the scandal. He became more active than ever in the courts and in the Senate House, and openly expressed his ambition to be censor someday, following in his father’s footsteps. Only rarely did his unproved crimes come back to haunt him, as on the occasion when he sparred with Cicero in a rancorous debate and threatened to give the great orator a piece of his mind – to which Cicero replied, “Better that, Lucius Gellius, than a piece of your cake!”
