A Gladiator Dies Only Once (17 page)

“Only by reputation,” I said. “We’re visitors to Neapolis, but I’ve heard of your master’s devotion to poetry and philosophy. I was shocked to learn of his sudden death.” I spoke only the truth, after all.

The slave nodded. “He was a man of learning and talent. Still, few have come to pay their respects. He had no family here. And of course there are many who won’t set foot inside the house of a suicide, for fear of bad luck.”

“It’s certain that he killed himself, then?”

“It was I who found him, hanging from a rope. He tied it to that beam, just above the boy’s head.” Eco rolled his eyes up. “Then he stood on a chair, put the noose around his neck, and kicked the chair out of the way. His neck snapped. I like to think he died quickly.” The slave regarded his master’s face affectionately. “Such a waste! And all for the love of that worthless boy!”

“You’re certain that’s why he killed himself?”

“Why else? He was making a good living here in Neapolis, enough to send a bit back to his brother in Alexandria every now and again, and even to think of purchasing a second slave. I’m not sure how I’d have taken to that; I’ve been with him since he was a boy. I used to carry his wax tablets and scrolls for him when he was little and had his own tutor. No, his life was going well in every way, except for that horrible boy!”

“You know that Cleon died yesterday.”

“Oh, yes. That’s why the master killed himself.”

“He hung himself
after
hearing of Cleon’s death?”

“Of course! Only . . .” The old man looked puzzled, as if he had not previously considered any other possibility. “Now let me think. Yesterday was strange all around, you see. The master sent me out early in the morning, before daybreak, with specific instructions not to return until evening. That was very odd, because usually I spend all day here, admitting his pupils and seeing to his meals. But yesterday he sent me out and I stayed away until dusk. I heard about Cleon’s death on my way home. When I came in, there was the master, hanging from that rope.”

“Then you don’t know for certain when he died—only that it must have been between daybreak and nightfall.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Who might have seen him during the day?”

“Usually pupils come and go all day, but not so yesterday, on account of the games at the gymnasium. All his regular students took part, you see, or else went to watch. The master had planned to be a spectator himself. So he had canceled all his regular classes, you see, except for his very first of the day—and that he’d never cancel, of course, because it was with that wretched boy!”

“Cleon, you mean.”

“Yes, Cleon and his sister, Cleio. They always came for the first hour of the day. This month they were reading Plato on the death of Socrates.”

“Suicide was on Mulciber’s mind, then. And yesterday, did Cleon and his sister arrive for their class?”

“I can’t say. I suppose they did. I was out of the house by then.”

“I shall have to ask Cleio, but for now we’ll assume they did. Perhaps Mulciber was hoping to patch things up with Cleon.” The slave gave me a curious look. “I know about the humiliating episode of the returned poems the day before,” I explained.

The slave regarded me warily. “You seem to know a great deal for a man who’s not from Neapolis. What are you doing here?”

“Only trying to discover the truth. Now, then: we’ll assume that Cleon and Cleio came for their class, early in the morning. Perhaps Mulciber was braced for another humiliation, and even then planning suicide—or was he wildly hoping, with a lover’s blind faith, for some impossible reconciliation? Perhaps that’s why he dismissed you for the day, because he didn’t care to have his old slave witness either outcome. But it must have gone badly, or at least not as Mulciber hoped, for he never showed up to watch the games at the gymnasium that day. Everyone seems to assume that it was news of Cleon’s death that drove him to suicide, but it seems to me just as likely that Mulciber hung himself right after Cleon and Cleio left, unable to bear yet another rejection.”

Eco, greatly agitated, mimed an athlete throwing a discus, then a man fitting a noose around his neck, then an archer notching an arrow in a bow.

I nodded. “Yes, bitter irony: even as Cleon was enjoying his greatest triumph at the gymnasium, poor Mulciber may have been snuffing out his own existence. And then, Cleon’s death in the pool. No wonder everyone thinks that Eros himself brought Cleon down.” I studied the face of the dead man. “Your master was a poet, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” said the slave. “He wrote at least a few lines every day of his life.”

“Did he leave a farewell poem?”

The slave shook his head. “You’d think he might have, if only to say good-bye to me after all these years.”

“But there was nothing? Not even a note?”

“Not a line. And that’s another strange thing, because the night before he was up long after midnight, writing and writing. I thought perhaps he’d put the boy behind him and thrown himself into composing some epic poem, seized by the muse! But I can’t find any trace of it. Whatever he was writing so frantically, it seems to have vanished. Perhaps, when he made up his mind to hang himself, he thought better of what he’d written, and burned it. He seems to have gotten rid of some other papers, as well.”

“What papers?”

“The love poems he’d written to Cleon, the ones Cleon returned to him—they’ve vanished. I suppose the master was embarrassed at the thought of anyone reading them after he was gone, and so he got rid of them. So perhaps it’s not so strange after all that he left no farewell note.”

I nodded vaguely, but it still seemed odd to me. From what I knew of poets, suicides, and unrequited lovers, Mulciber would almost certainly have left some words behind—to chastise Cleon, to elicit pity, to vindicate himself. But the silent corpse of the tutor offered no explanation.

As the day was waning, I at last returned to the house of Sosistrides, footsore and soul-weary. A slave admitted us. I paused to gaze for a long moment at the lifeless face of Cleon. Nothing had changed, and yet he did not look as beautiful to my eyes as he had before.

Sosistrides called us into his study. “How did it go, Finder?”

“I’ve had a productive day, if not a pleasant one. I talked to everyone I could find at the gymnasium. I also went to the house of your children’s tutor. You do know that Mulciber hanged himself yesterday?”

“Yes. I found out only today, after I spoke to you. I knew he was a bit infatuated with Cleon, wrote poems to him and such, but I had no idea he was so passionately in love with him. Another tragedy, like ripples in a pond.” Sosistrides, too, seemed to assume without question that the tutor’s suicide followed upon news of Cleon’s death. “And what did you find? Did you discover anything . . . significant?”

I nodded. “I think I know who killed your son.”

His face assumed an expression of strangely mingled relief and dismay. “Tell me, then!”

“Would you send for your daughter first? Before I can be certain, there are a few questions I need to ask her. And when I think of the depth of her grief, it seems to me that she, too, should hear what I have to say.”

He called for a slave to fetch the girl from her room. “You’re right, of course; Cleio should be here, in spite of her . . . unseemly appearance. Her grieving shows her to be a woman, after all, but I’ve raised her almost as a son, you know. I made sure she learned to read and write. I sent her to the same tutors as Cleon. Of late she’s been reading Plato with him, both of them studying with Mulciber . . .”

“Yes, I know.”

Cleio entered the room, her mantle pushed defiantly back from her shorn head. Her cheeks were lined with fresh, livid scratches, signs that her mourning had continued unabated through the day.

“The Finder thinks he knows who killed Cleon,” Sosistrides explained.

“Yes, but I need to ask you a few questions first,” I said. “Are you well enough to talk?”

She nodded.

“Is it true that you and your brother went to your regular morning class with Mulciber yesterday?”

“Yes.” She averted her tear-reddened eyes and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

“When you arrived at his house, was Mulciber there?”

She paused. “Yes.”

“Was it he who let you in the door?”

Again a pause. “No.”

“But his slave was out of the house, gone for the day. Who let you in?”

“The door was unlocked . . . ajar . . .”

“So you and Cleon simply stepped inside?”

“Yes.”

“Were harsh words exchanged between your brother and Mulciber?”

Her breath became ragged. “No.”

“Are you sure? Only the day before, your brother had publicly rejected and humiliated Mulciber. He returned his love poems and ridiculed them in front of others. That must have been a tremendous blow to Mulciber. Isn’t it true that when the two of you showed up at his house yesterday morning, Mulciber lost his temper with Cleon?”

She shook her head.

“What if I suggest that Mulciber became hysterical? That he ranted against your brother? That he threatened to kill him?”

“No! That never happened. Mulciber was too—he would never have done such a thing!”

“But I suggest that he did. I suggest that yesterday, after suffering your brother’s deceit and abuse, Mulciber reached the end of his tether. He snapped, like a rein that’s worn clean through, and his passions ran away with him like maddened horses. By the time you and your brother left his house, Mulciber must have been raving like a madman—”

“No! He wasn’t! He was—”

“And after you left, he brooded. He took out the love poems into which he had poured his heart and soul, the very poems that Cleon returned to him so scornfully the day before. They had once been beautiful to him, but now they were vile, so he burned them.”

“Never!”

“He had planned to attend the games at the gymnasium, to cheer Cleon on, but instead he waited until the contests were over, then sneaked into the vestibule, skulking like a thief. He came upon Cleon alone in the pool. He saw the statue of Eros—a bitter reminder of his own rejected love. No one else was about, and there was Cleon, swimming facedown, not even aware that anyone else was in the courtyard, unsuspecting and helpless. Mulciber couldn’t resist—he waited until the very moment that Cleon passed beneath the statue, then pushed it from its pedestal. The statue struck Cleon’s head. Cleon sank to the bottom and drowned.”

Cleio wept and shook her head. “No, no! It wasn’t Mulciber!”

“Oh, yes! And then, wracked with despair at having killed the boy he loved, Mulciber rushed home and hanged himself. He didn’t even bother to write a note to justify himself or beg forgiveness for the murder. He’d fancied himself a poet, but what greater failure is there for a poet than to have his love poems rejected? And so he hung himself without writing another line, and he’ll go to his funeral pyre in silence, a common murderer—”

“No, no, no!” Cleio clutched her cheeks, tore at her hair, and wailed. Eco, whom I had told to be prepared for such an outburst, started back nonetheless. Sosistrides looked at me aghast. I averted my eyes. How could I have simply told him the truth, and made him believe it? He had to be shown. Cleio had to show him.

“He
did
leave a farewell,” Cleio cried. “It was the most beautiful poem he ever wrote!”

“But his slave found nothing. Mulciber’s poems to Cleon had vanished, and there was nothing new—”

“Because I took them!”

“Where are they, then?”

She reached into the bosom of her black gown and pulled out two handfuls of crumpled papyrus. “These were his poems to Cleon! You never saw such beautiful poems, such pure, sweet love put down in words! Cleon made fun of them, but they broke my heart! And here is his farewell poem, the one he left lying on his threshold so that Cleon would be sure to see it, when we went to his house yesterday and found him hanging in the foyer, his neck broken, his body soiled . . . dead . . . gone from me forever!”

She pressed a scrap of papyrus into my hands. It was in Greek, the letters rendered in a florid, desperate hand. A phrase near the middle caught my eye:

One day, even your beauty will fade;

One day, even you may love unrequited!

Take pity, then, and favor my corpse

With a first, final, farewell kiss . . .

She snatched back the papyrus and clutched it to her bosom.

My voice was hollow in my ears. “When you went to Mulciber’s house yesterday, you and Cleon found him already dead.”

“Yes!”

“And you wept.”

“Because I loved him!”

“Even though he didn’t love you?”

“Mulciber loved Cleon. He couldn’t help himself.”

“Did Cleon weep?”

Her face became so contorted with hatred that I heard Sosistrides gasp in horror. “Oh, no,” she said, “he didn’t weep. Cleon laughed! He laughed! He shook his head and said, ‘What a fool,’ and walked out the door. I screamed at him to come back, to help me cut Mulciber down, and he only said, ‘I’ll be late for the games!’” Cleio collapsed to the floor, weeping, the poems scattering around her. “ ‘Late for the games!’ ” she repeated, as if it were her brother’s epitaph.

On the long ride back to Rome through the Campanian countryside, Eco’s hands grew weary and I grew hoarse debating whether I had done the right thing. Eco argued that I should have kept my suspicions of Cleio to myself. I argued that Sosistrides deserved to know what his daughter had done, and how and why his son had died—and needed to be shown, as well, how deeply and callously his beautiful, beloved Cleon had inflicted misery on others.

“Besides,” I said, “when we returned to Sosistrides’s house, I wasn’t certain myself that Cleio had murdered Cleon. Accusing the dead tutor was a way of flushing her out. Her possession of Mulciber’s missing poems were the only tangible evidence that events had unfolded as I suspected. I tried in vain to think of some way, short of housebreaking, to search her room without either Cleio or her father knowing—but as it turned out, such a search would have found nothing. I should have known that she would keep the poems on her person, next to her heart! She was as madly, hopelessly in love with Mulciber as he was in love with Cleon. Eros can be terribly careless when he scatters his arrows!”