On the floor between us sat a basket. My mother insisted on sending food with us, as though we were on some sort of pleasure outing. She assured me that she would not release Apollodoros from his room before I returned. I doubted that, but I knew she wouldn’t let Daphne out, so the two of them shouldn’t have a chance to come to blows.
“It’ll be interesting to see if a seven-hundred-year-old man has finally met his match,” Tacitus said as we set off.
I was sorry he had brought that whole business up because we had to explain to Chloris what we had read about Aristeas and what Apollodoros claimed about him. She took it all in and asked several questions. She seemed as agile with her mind as she was with her hands and mouth. I could see why my uncle would enjoy talking to her. That would make the trip to Laurentum worth it.
But I wanted to change the subject. “I used to hear my uncle talk about the Licinius family. What do you know about them?” Small-town magistrates, especially those living close to Rome, can be either ambitious men who want to advance their careers to the capital or men whose ambitions and abilities will never carry them more than a few miles from where they were born. My uncle had had nothing but contempt for this clan.
“I know that Licinius Strabo likes to take me from behind,” Chloris said. “And he’d sooner part with one of his balls than an extra denarius.”
Over Tacitus’ laughter I said, “I was thinking in ... larger terms. What sort of men are they?”
Tacitus elbowed me. “I think she just told you a lot about this Strabo.”
Chloris touched the ring my uncle had given her, as if to reassure herself of something. “The Licinius family think the post of duovir is their personal property, and I guess it is. Nobody has challenged them in years. This year Quintus Licinius Strabo and his father, Lucius Scaevola, have it. Strabo runs the show. His father is just there because there have to be two.”
That certainly wasn’t the impression they’d given when they came to my house, but Chloris saw them in different situations than I did. “They must have some wealth.”
“They own two of the baths and two of the taverns.”
The raeda drew quite a bit of attention as we pulled up in front of Saturninus’ shop. Jaws dropped when Chloris stepped down. Like a lady accustomed to traveling in such style, she ignored the gawkers and led us into the shop.
“Good morning, sirs,” Saturninus said. “I’m glad you come so early.”
I stopped to inhale the glorious aroma of his cheeses before I returned his greeting. “Did you deliver my note to the duovirs?”
“Yes, sir. That I did. And they was none too happy about it, especially Strabo. He told me to let him know the moment you arrived.”
“Let’s pretend that moment isn’t here yet. I would like some time to examine the body before I have to deal with an annoyed local official.”
Saturninus shook his bald head woefully. “It’s a terrible sight, sir. Terrible. Don’t know why you want to get yourself involved in this business.” He gave Chloris a disapproving glance but otherwise did not acknowledge her. I had to ask myself again why he rented rooms to women whom he so obviously despised.
“I have more reason to be involved than you know. I hope you won’t be in too much of a hurry to notify Strabo.”
“I’m an old man, sir. I can’t hurry, but news of your raeda will get to him before I do. We don’t see contraptions that fancy around here every day.”
“Let’s get to work then,” I said to Tacitus and Chloris. She pulled out her key to the room and we followed her out of the cheese shop.
Chloris and Myrrha lived in three windowless rooms on the back of Saturninus’ building. Given the stench from the alley leading to the back of the building, the lack of windows was probably a blessing.
“Just a moment,” Chloris said as she unlocked the outer door, which faced west. It led into a common room, with a bedroom off to each side. The whole place, in spite of colorful frescos with old-fashioned geometric shapes, was as dim as a cave, but I could make out a table and two chairs in the center of the room.
Moving as comfortably as a blind man in his own surroundings, Chloris found and lit a small oil lamp for each of us. With even that little light, I could see a pair of feet at the end of Myrrha’s bed.
“He’s still here, thank the gods,” I said.
Tacitus pinched his nose. “The smell and the flies testify to that.”
The aroma of the women’s perfume and cosmetics could not mask the stench of death emanating from Myrrha’s room. Instead of making it bearable, the sweetness made the reek even more nauseating.
I led the way into Myrrha’s room, which held only a bed, a small table beside it, and a chest. Except for the unsightly naked corpse, it appeared as neat as it did modest. Tacitus and I took up positions on opposite sides of the bed, while Chloris hung back in the doorway.
“I thought there would be a lot of blood,” Tacitus said, raising his lamp and running it over the bed and the wall.
“Yes, that is curious,” I said. I turned to Chloris. “Has anything been disturbed?”
She raised her lamp and glanced around. “No, sir.”
“You said your sister keeps a knife near her bed. Where is it?”
With her back touching the wall, Chloris edged her way around the bed to the table beside the head of the bed. Reaching under it, she pulled out a knife. “There’s a bracket under the table.”
“Out of sight, but very handy,” Tacitus said with admiration.
“Myrrha designed it herself. She’s as good as most men when it comes to things like that.”
I held the knife up to my lamp. It was extremely sharp. “There’s no blood on it.”
“I told you, sir, she didn’t do this. She couldn’t have. You’ve got to help me prove that.”
“The first thing I have to do is see if I can figure out how this man was killed. Then we’ll worry about who did it.”
Replacing the knife, I took Chloris’ lamp and set it on the table. I cast only a cursory glance at Aristeas’ head, enough to see his thin beard and satisfy myself that this was the man I’d found on my property and locked up in my stable. The only difference I could see was that he was no longer ‘lifeless but not dead.’
He was definitely dead.
Tacitus held his lamp over Aristeas’ torso. “I thought you said he had a mark like a raven’s head on his chest.”
I jerked my lamp over the man so quickly that I spilled some hot oil on him. If his gaping throat and the smell weren’t enough to convince me that he was dead, his lack of any reaction to the burning oil provided all the proof I needed.
“It was above his left nipple.” But there was no raven’s head, no mark of any kind, on either side of his chest. Leaning over and holding my lamp close enough to singe a few hairs, I still could not make out any trace of a raven’s head.
“You’re sure this is the same man?”Tacitus asked.
I straightened up, hoping the gloom concealed the consternation on my face. “Yes, I’m sure of it.” I waved my lamp over his face again. There was no mistaking him.
“It is, sir,” Chloris said. “That’s the man Myrrha and I met in the tavern and directed to your house. I didn’t see any mark on his chest, but I’d know him anywhere.”
“The mark must have been drawn on,” I said, “and he erased it before he died. Or whoever killed him erased it.”
Tacitus pursed his mouth and shook his head. “I don’t see any indication that anything was erased. There’s no redness.” Like a woman teasing a lover, he ran one finger across Aristeas’ chest. “One side feels the same as the other.” He wiped his finger on the bedding.
“Well, I saw it, and a number of my servants did, too. That’s all I know.”
“There’s no mark here,” Tacitus said. “That’s all I know.”
“Maybe it was his soul,” Chloris said from behind us.
“His soul?” I turned to face her. My lamp made her shadow flic
ker against the wall. “What are you babbling about?”
“Remember what your uncle wrote,” Tacitus said. “The soul of Aristeas was seen flying out of his mouth in the shape of a raven.”
“I remember that. Do you remember that my uncle dismissed the story as nonsense? And so do I.”
Chloris held out her hands, as though pleading with me. “But, sir, you should examine—”
“What I’m going to examine right now is the body of a dead man.” With my hand on her shoulder I guided her toward the door. “This space is too small for three of us, so please wait outside.”
“I want to know what you know, sir, if my sister is charged with killing him. And I might be able to answer questions for you.”
She had a point, and a good grip on the doorpost. I wasn’t going to be able to move her and I didn’t have time to persuade her to leave. The duovirs might arrive at any moment. “All right. Stand in that corner and keep out of our way.”
I turned to the business of examining Aristeas’ body from the feet up, with Tacitus holding the other lamp and leaning over from his side of the bed. Grasping one of the dead man’s ankles, I tried to raise his leg, but it wouldn’t bend.
“The full death stiffness has set in. He’s been dead at least twelve hours.” In his unpublished notes, my uncle had commented on how bodies gradually stiffen after death, remain stiff for a couple of days, then relax again. He had no explanation for the phenomenon, nor did I yet.
“What’s that mark on his ankle?” Tacitus asked. “Wait, on both ankles.”
We bent over and brought our lamps close to Aristeas’ feet. Bands of discolored skin ran around his ankles. “I think he was tied up.”
“What about his hands?” Tacitus asked.
We moved up to examine Aristeas’ hands and found similar, but lighter, marks around his wrists. His arms, straight down by his sides, were as stiff as his legs.
“Why do the marks around his ankles look so much darker?”
“Equally puzzling, why are there no dark splotches on the lower side of his body?”
“Are you sure your uncle was right about that? Whichever side of the body a person lies on after death, dark splotches develop there?”
“He noticed it a number of times, and I have yet to see otherwise.”
“So, if there are no dark splotches on any part of this man’s body, does that mean he died standing up?”
I looked at Aristeas’ ankles again. “No, he died hanging upside down.”
Behind us Chloris gasped.
Tacitus looked at me in disbelief. “Hanging ... by his feet?”
“Yes, like an animal being slaughtered. That’s why the marks around his ankles are darker, from his struggle and from his weight.”
I moved up to Aristeas’ head and focused on his throat for the first time. The gash across it was every bit as gruesome as the descriptions I’d heard. The flies buzzed in and out of it like bees going in and out of their hive. His head was barely still attached to his shoulders.
“He was hung by his feet and the blood drained out of his throat,” I concluded.
“Who would do such a thing?” Tacitus asked, shaking his head.
“The woman we have locked up,” a man’s voice said behind us.
We turned to see Licinius Strabo standing in the door of Myrrha’s room. Scaevola and several attendants lingered behind him.
“Good morning, duovirs.”
“What are you doing here?” Strabo demanded, omitting any pleasantries.
“I’m here to assist Chloris. She is—”
“I know who she is,” Strabo sneered.
And I know you like to take her from behind, I thought. “What you probably don’t know is that I count Chloris among my friends.”
Strabo understood what that meant, even if he couldn’t fathom why a man wearing the equestrian stripe would elevate a prostitute to that status. I had no doubt he would sacrifice one of his testicles to gain it. Probably cut the thing off himself. He looked from me to Chloris and back again.
“What are you doing here?” His tone still wasn’t friendly, but he had softened it, the way men do when they speak to someone from whom they might someday need to ask a favor. “And why did you send me that imperious note last night?”
“I’m sorry the note offended you, duovir. Chloris asked me to look into this matter. Since she is a friend, I am obliged to do so and—more importantly—happy to do so. I needed for this room to be undisturbed until I could get here.”
“And so it is,” Strabo said.
“Yes, it is. Thank you for acceding to my request.”
“What choice did I have?” he groused. “That old fool Saturninus locked the door and wouldn’t let anyone near it.” He surveyed the room. “Have you seen what you need to see?”
“We’re making progress.”
Scaevola still hadn’t spoken, but from behind he gave Strabo a barely perceptible nudge. “Well, I want to finish this business today,” Strabo said.
“Are you that far along in your inquiry? The body was just found yesterday evening.”
Strabo waved an arm in exasperation. “It’s a simple case. A man was found in Myrrha’s room with his throat slit. This time she won’t get away with it.”
“ ‘This time’? What do you mean by that?”
“Fifteen years ago a man was murdered in this same fashion. He was found in the old well behind this very building.”
I looked at Chloris, who seemed to be trying to make herself smaller in her corner. That was an important detail to fail to tell a friend.
“Now she’s murdered a man in her own bed,” Strabo went on. “This time she’ll meet the fate she deserves in the arena.”
“Before you pack her off to Rome, duovir, may I ask you one question?”
Strabo nodded smugly.
“Where’s the blood?”
“What do you mean?”
“When a man’s—or an animal’s—throat is cut in this fashion, blood spurts everywhere. We’ve all seen an animal being sacrificed.”
Strabo rubbed his chin, still red from that morning’s shave, while he searched for an answer. Scaevola finally spoke. “Most of it is on the whore’s gown.”
“Are you suggesting,” Tacitus put in, “that a woman could cut this man’s throat without splattering blood on the walls and bed linens?”
“If she were sitting or standing right over him, I think she could,” Scaevola said. He stepped around Strabo and into the room.
“Why would she kill him?”
“Why do women do anything?” Scaevola shot Chloris a menacing glance. “In any case—blood or no blood—she killed him. Why else would the body be here?”
I pointed to Aristeas’ ankles. “Do you think she tied him up, too?”
“She’s a whore. I’m sure he wouldn’t be the first man she’s tied up.”
Once Scaevola began talking, Strabo fell silent and moved to the side of the room, deferring to his father just as he had at my home the previous night. I wondered if Chloris had been right in her perception of who was running things.
“With all respect, duovir, I don’t see any reason for Myrrha to have done this to a man who was a stranger. He’d been in Laurentum only a day or two. Myrrha and Chloris bought him some cheese. There’s no evidence of enmity between them, no reason for her to kill him.”
“She had no reason for enmity fifteen years ago either. The man she killed then frequented this ... place.”
“Why wasn’t she arrested then?”
“Because your uncle found witnesses—I won’t say he paid them—to testify to her innocence.”
I was only seven when all of that happened and had heard nothing about it. “No one was ever arrested for that crime?”
“No, no one.”
“Who was the man who was killed?”
“A nephew of mine, Marcus Licinius Macer.”
With each word out of his mouth I felt like Myrrha had taken another
step toward the arena.
X
“Have you seen enough, Gaius Pliny?” Licinius Scaevola said, leaving me in no doubt that I had indeed seen all I was going to be allowed to see.
“I guess I have. What do you intend to do with the body?”
“What does one do with any unwanted corpse? We’ll burn it as soon as possible and dispose of the remains.”
I couldn’t let that happen yet. “Let me offer to save you the trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“Two people who claim to be this man’s son and daughter are presently at my house.” Tacitus coughed, but I ignored him. “They should have an opportunity to perform the appropriate rites for their father. I’d like to take his body with me.”
To judge just from the number of attendants, like a pack of hounds, that I could see over Scaevola’s shoulder, I knew I would not be able to force the issue, but I did not want this body reduced to ashes so quickly. I had seen enough to conclude that Aristeas had died in a bizarre manner. The missing raven’s head mark was one question I had not yet answered. I wanted to examine his chest in full daylight and at my own leisure—or at least as much leisure as a decaying corpse afforded me.
The two duovirs looked at one another for an instant, then Scaevola nodded. “We have sufficient witnesses to the condition of the body. I see no reason to deny your request. We always try to be respectful of family obligations.” His tone was as oily as his hair. “I didn’t know this man had children.”
“I met them only yesterday,” I said.
“Where is my sister?” Chloris asked from the dimness of her corner. “May I see her?”
“That was to be my next request,” I said.
“She’s locked up,” Scaevola said. “I suppose we can make arrangements for you to talk with her before we send her to Rome. She’s a strong one, and a fighter. She’ll give them quite a show in the arena.”
Like any ambitious magistrate across the empire, Scaevola knew how to curry favor with Rome. Domitian has a voracious appetite for victims for the spectacles in his father’s amphitheatre. Punishment of criminals is not the only purpose of the games. The audience must be amused, and they have become so jaded that the quest for new types of entertainment has strayed into the realm of the bizarre. Women are now being forced to fight as gladiators or act out mythical scenes such as Minos’ wife Pasiphae mating with a bull. I couldn’t let an innocent woman be subjected to something as humiliating as that.
The Corpus Conundrum Page 14
