A Gladiator Dies Only Once (6 page)

“If you say so, Master. Being a mere slave, I wouldn’t know much about
earning
and
owning.”

Her tone expressed no empathy for Eco at all, and certainly no remorse. I became more determined than ever to make good on my pledge to Eco to solve the mystery of his disappearing monsters.

That night, after Bethesda was asleep, I slipped out of bed and stole to the garden at the center of the house, which was lit by a full moon. In an inconspicuous spot beside one
of
the columns of the portico, I located the purchase I had made earlier that day on the Street of the Plastermakers. It was a tightly woven linen bag containing a handful or so of plaster dust. Carrying the bag, I slipped through the curtained doorway into Eco’s room. The moonlight that poured in through the small window showed Eco soundly asleep on his cot. Reaching into the bag, I scattered a very fine layer of plaster dust onto the floor in front of the niche that contained his figurines. The dust was so fine that a tiny cloud rose from my hand and seemed to sparkle in the moonlight.

My eyes watered and my nose twitched. I slipped out of Eco’s room, put away the bag of plaster dust, and stole back to my bed. I slipped under the covers beside Bethesda. Only then did I release a sneeze that broke the silence like thunder.

Bethesda murmured and rolled onto her side, but did not wake.

The next morning I woke to the sound of birds in the garden—not pleasant singing, but the shrill cawing of two magpies squabbling in the trees. I covered my ears with my pillow, but it was no good. I was up for the day.

Stepping out of bed, I inadvertently kicked a shoe—one of the pair that Bethesda had brought home from the cobbler the previous day—and sent it skittering under the bed. Dropping to my hands and knees to retrieve it, I was stopped short by the sight of four objects on the floor beneath the bed, directly underneath the space where Bethesda slept, against the wall. They were clustered in a little group, lying on their sides. Joining the missing figurines of Cerberus, the Minotaur, and the Hydra was a fourth, Eco’s one-eyed Cyclops.

Well, well, I thought, getting to my feet. Sprinkling the plaster dust had been superfluous, after all. Or had it? If Bethesda wouldn’t own up to pilfering Eco’s figurines, the evidence of her footsteps in the dust, and of the dust adhering to soles of her shoes, would compel her to do so. I couldn’t help but smile, anticipating her chagrin. Or would she maintain her fiction that the figurines had walked off by themselves, with the curious goal, as it turned out, of congregating beneath our bed?

Whistling an old Etruscan nursery tune and looking forward to a hearty breakfast, I strolled across the garden toward the dining room at the back of the house. Above my head, the magpies squawked in dissonant counterpoint to my whistling. Bast sat in a patch of sunlight, apparently oblivious of the birds, cleaning a forepaw with her tongue.

No sooner had I settled myself on the dining couch than Eco came running out of his room, a look of confusion and alarm on his face. He ran up to me and waved his arms, making inchoate gestures.

“I know, I know,” I said, raising one hand to calm him and gently restraining him with the other. “Don’t tell me—your Cyclops has gone missing.”

Eco was briefly taken aback, then frowned and peered at me inquiringly.

“How do I know? Well. . .”

At that moment, Bethesda appeared from the kitchen, bearing a bowl of steaming porridge. I cleared my throat.

“Bethesda,” I said, “it seems that another of Eco’s figurines has vanished. What do you say to that?”

She put the bowl on a small tripod table and began to ladle porridge into three smaller bowls. “What would you have me say, Master?” She kept her eyes on her work. Her face was utterly expressionless, betraying not the least trace of guilt or guile.

I sighed, almost regretting that she had forced me to expose her little charade. “Perhaps you could begin . . .” By
apologizing to Eco,
I was about to say—when I was abruptly interrupted by a sneeze.

It was not Bethesda who sneezed. Nor was it Eco.

It was the cat.

Bethesda looked up. “Yes, Master? I could begin by saying . . . what?”

My face turned hot. I cleared my throat. I pursed my lips.

I stood up. “Eco, the first thing you must remember, if you ever wish to become a Finder like your father, is always to keep a cool head and never to jump to conclusions. Last night I laid a trap for our culprit. If we now examine the scene of the crime, I suspect we shall discover that she has left a clue behind.”

Or several clues, as it turned out, if one wished to call each tiny, padded paw print in the fine plaster dust an individual clue. The paw prints led up to the niche; the paw prints led away. Following a barely discernible trail of dusted prints, Eco and I tracked the thief’s progress out of his room, around the colonnaded portico, and into the room I shared with Bethesda. The trail disappeared under the bed.

I left it to Eco to discover the pilfered figurines for himself. He let out a grunt, scampered under the bed, and reemerged clutching the clay treasures in both hands, a look of mingled relief and triumph on his face.

Greatly excited, he put down the figurines so that he could communicate. He pinched his forefingers and thumbs beneath his nose and drew them outward, making his sign for Bast by miming the cat’s long whiskers.

“Yes,” I said. “It was Bast who took your figurines.”

Eco made an exaggerated shrug with his palms held upright.

“Why? That I can’t tell you. We Romans don’t yet know that much about cats. Not like the Egyptians, who’ve been living with them—and worshipping them—since the dawn of time. I suppose, like dogs and ferrets—and like magpies, for that matter—some cats display a tendency to pilfer small objects and hide them. One of those figurines would fit quite neatly between Bast’s jaws. I’m sure she meant no harm, as none of them seems to have been damaged. She obviously treated them with great respect.”

I glanced at the cat. She stood in the doorway beside Bethesda and peered back at me with a bland expression that admitted no guilt. She rubbed herself against Bethesda’s ankles, whipped her tail in the air, and sauntered back toward the garden. Bethesda raised an eyebrow and looked at me steadily, but said nothing.

That night, after a very busy day, I slipped into bed beside Bethesda. Her mood seemed a bit cool, but she said nothing.

The silence stretched. “I suppose I owe you an apology,” I finally said.

“For what?”

The best course, I decided, was to make light of my mistake. “It was foolish of me, really. Do you know, I almost suspected
you
of taking Eco’s figurines.”

“Really?” By the pale moonlight, I couldn’t quite decipher the expression on her face. Was she angry? Amused? Unconcerned?

“Yes, I actually suspected you, Bethesda. But of course it wasn’t you. It was the cat, all along.” The creature abruptly jumped onto the bed and crawled over both of us to settle between Bethesda and the wall, purring loudly.

“Yes, it was Bast who took the figurines,” said Bethesda. She rolled away from me and laid her hand upon the cat, who responded with a purring that was almost a roar. “But how do you know that it wasn’t I who put her up to it?”

For that, I had no answer.

THE WHITE FAWN

The old senator was a distant cousin of my friend Lucius Claudius, and the two had once been close. That was the only reason I agreed to see the man, as a favor to Lucius. When Lucius let it slip, on the way to the senator’s house, that the affair had something to do with Sertorius, I clucked my tongue and almost turned back. I had a feeling even then that it would lead to no good. Call it a premonition, if you will; if you believe that such things as premonitions exist.

Senator Gaius Claudius’s house was on the Aventine Hill, not the most fashionable district in Rome. Still, there are plenty of old patrician households tucked amid the cramped little shops and ugly new tenements that sprawl over the hill. The facade of the senator’s house was humble, but that meant nothing; the houses of the Roman nobility are often unassuming, at least on the outside.

The doddering doorkeeper recognized Lucius (could there be two men in Rome with his beaming round face, untidy red hair, and dancing green eyes?) and escorted us at once to the atrium, where a fountain gurgled and splashed but did little to relieve the heat of a cloudless midsummer day. While we waited for our host to appear, Lucius and I strolled from corner to corner of the little square garden. On such a warm day, the various rooms facing the atrium all had their shutters thrown open.

“I take it that your cousin has fallen on hard times,” I said to Lucius.

He pursed his lips. “Why do you assume that, Gordianus? I don’t recall mentioning it.”

“Observe the state of his house.”

“It’s a fine house. Gaius had it built when he was a young man and has lived here ever since.”

“It seems rather sparsely decorated.”

“You saw the busts of his noble ancestors lined up in their niches in the foyer,” said Lucius, his nose tilting up. “What more ornamentation does the house of a patrician require?” Despite his genial temperament, Lucius sometimes could not help being a bit of a snob.

“But I think your cousin is a great lover of art, or used to be.”

“Now why do you say that?”

“Observe the mosaic floor beneath our feet, with its intricate acanthus-leaf pattern. The workmanship is very fine. And note the wall paintings in some of the rooms around us. The various scenes are from the
Iliad,
I believe. Even from here I can see that they’re works of very high quality.”

Lucius raised an eyebrow. “Cousin Gaius does have good taste, I’ll grant you that. But why do you assume he’s fallen on hard times?”

“Because of the things that I don’t see.”

“Now, Gordianus, really! How can you walk into a house you’ve never entered before and declare that things are missing? I can see into the surrounding rooms as well as you, and they all look adequately furnished.”

“Precisely; the furnishings are adequate. I should expect something more than that from the man who built this house and commissioned those wall paintings and mosaics. Where is the finely wrought furniture? Everything I see looks like the common stuff that anyone can buy ready-made down in the Street of the Woodworkers. Where are the paintings, the portable ones in frames, the portraits and bucolic scenes that are so fashionable nowadays?”

“What makes you think that cousin Gaius ever collected such works?”

“Because I can see the discolored rectangles on the wall where they used to hang! And surely a rather substantial statue once filled that empty spot atop the pedestal in the middle of the fountain. Let me guess: Diana with her bow, or perhaps a discus-thrower?”

“A rather good drunken Hercules, actually.”

“Such valuables don’t vanish from a patrician household without good reason. This house is like a bare cupboard, or a fine Roman matron without her jewelry. Where are the urns, the vases, the precious little things one expects to see in the house of a wealthy old senator? Auctioned off to pay the bill-collector, I presume. When did your cousin sell them?”

“Over the last few years,” admitted Lucius with a sigh, “bit by bit. I suppose the mosaics and wall paintings would be gone by now as well, except that they’re part of the house and can’t be disposed of piecemeal. The Civil War was very hard on cousin Gaius.”

“He backed the wrong side?”

“Quite the opposite! Gaius was a staunch supporter of Sulla. But his only son, who was my age, had married into a family that sided with Marius, and was contaminated by his wife’s connections; he was beheaded when Sulla became dictator. He did leave an heir, however—Gaius’s grandson, a boy named Mamercus, who is now not quite twenty. Gaius took custody of his grandson, but also had to assume his dead son’s debts, which were crushing. Poor cousin Gaius! The Civil War tore his family apart, took his only son, and left him virtually bankrupt.”

I looked around. “The house itself looks valuable enough.”

“I’m sure it is, but it’s all that Gaius has left. The wealth has all fled. And so has young Mamercus, I fear.”

“The grandson?”

“Gone to Spain! It’s broken his grandfather’s heart.”

“Spain? Ah, so that’s why you mentioned Sertorius on the walk here. . . “

The Civil War had been over for six years. Marius had lost. Sulla had won, and had made himself dictator. He disposed of his enemies, reordered the state, and then retired, leaving his chosen successors in firm control of the senate and the magistracies. The Marians—those who had survived the proscriptions and still had their heads—were lying low. But in Spain, the last embers of resistance still smoldered in the person of Quintus Sertorius. The renegade general not only refused to surrender, but had declared himself to be the head of the legitimate Roman state. Disgruntled Marian military men and desperate anti-Sullan senators had fled from Rome to join Sertorius’s government-in-exile. In addition to his own legions, Sertorius had succeeded in rallying the native population to his side. Altogether, Sertorius and his forces in Spain constituted a considerable power that the Roman Senate could not ignore and had not yet been able to stamp out.