The King's Gambit (16 page)

I looked at him, and for the first time saw a rather frightened old man, but still a man who cared about his son. "Free citizens have been murdered in the Subura, Father," I said. "The Subura is my district. I will see justice."

There was nothing he could say to that. A Roman magistrate could no more deny duty than he could deny the gods. It was unfair of me, of course. I had no stake in the Roman order in those days, without wife or children or high office. I belonged to the most expendable group of citizens--the wellborn young men who traditionally made up the junior officer corps. But in that moment I felt quite virtuous, and so miserable that I cared not whether I lived or died. I do not know whether this was because of my heedless youth, or was just the spirit of the times. Most of the rising men of my generation behaved as if they held their own lives as cheap as they held the lives of others. Even the richest and best-born would resort unhesitatingly to desperate action, knowing that their lives would be the forfeit of failure. In that moment, I was as reckless as any.

A few minutes later Asklepiodes arrived. The place was growing as crowded as the Senate chamber during a war debate. Two quaestors had arrived with their secretaries and were making an inventory of the house with the aid of the majordomo. Two lictors had arrived to take the unfortunate eunuch to the prison beneath the Capitol, there to await his fate.

"Another murder?" Asklepiodes asked.

"And an odd one," I told him. "Please come with me." We went to the bedroom, the only part of the house that was not swarming. Asklepiodes knelt by the bed and examined the victim's neck.

"I would like to see the back of his neck, but I will need aid in turning him."

I turned to my clients, who stood just outside the doorway. "Help him lift the body." They shook their heads and backed away. Romans will do awful things to a live man's body, but they are afraid to touch a dead one, for fear of some unspecified contamination. "Fetch some slaves, then," I ordered. A few minutes later they had the body on its side and Asklepiodes exclaimed triumphantly and pointed at a round indentation in the ring of darkened skin encircling the neck.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The knot. It is typical of the bowstring garrote, as used by the Syrians."

A new shadow blocked the doorway and I turned to tell whoever it was to be off, but I wisely refrained from doing so. It was the Consul, Pompey the Great. With all of
his
lictors and attendants, I thought, the house must be about to erupt like a volcano, its walls bursting outward onto the streets outside.

"Greeting, Metellus the Younger," he said. Pompey was a handsome, square-faced man of excellent bearing, but he always looked uncomfortable in a toga, as if armor suited him better.

"Your Honor," I said, straightening from where I crouched by Paulus. "I didn't expect to see you here at a murder investigation."

He barely glanced at the corpse. "When one as rich as this one dies, the whole Roman economy is in danger. There's a great crowd out in the street. Now they've seen me here, things will calm down. The citizenry are like troubled children. When they see one who is known as a successful general, they think everything will be all right."

It made sense. "Will his death cause such an uproar?" I asked.

"When I passed through the Forum, the slave speculators were already asking each other what it would do to the price of slaves. The man must have owned thousands. If they all go on the market at once, the prices will plunge. No one yet knows how much land and livestock he owned, how many ships and cargoes. I know he had an interest in some mines in Spain, although he owned none outright."

Pompey, who owned many such mines, would be in a position to know. He glanced at Asklepiodes. "A trifle late to summon a physician, isn't it?"

"He is not here to treat the victim, but to examine him," I explained. "Master Asklepiodes is an expert in all manner of violent wounds. I've found his expertise to be most useful in my investigations."

Pompey raised his eyebrows. "That's a new idea. Well, carry on." He turned to leave, then turned back. "But I shouldn't waste a great deal of time on this. The real problem will be for the quaestors and praetors to sort out. The man himself amounted to nothing. The eunuch killed him. My advice is, just leave it at that."

"I will leave it," I told him, "when I am satisfied that the murderer has been caught."

"As you will." His look was not hostile, his words were not loud, but his tone was bone-chilling. He left a great silence behind him when he walked out of the bedroom.

"I still cannot understand it," I said to Asklepiodes. We sat in his spacious quarters at the Ludus of Statilius Taurus. I had never been in a physician's quarters before, and I suspected that his decor was odd by the standards of that profession. Every manner of weapon hung on his walls or stood in racks around the rooms. Many of them had scrolls affixed describing the various wounds they could inflict.

"That a man was strangled?" Asklepiodes said.

"No. I have three murders here, and one break-in and robbery, all of them somehow connected. And an arson, let's not forget that. Sinistrus undoubtedly killed Paramedes, but who strangled Sinistrus? And I can't believe that it was the same person who killed Sergius Paulus. Do we have three murderers here? And who broke into my house, cracked me on the head and stole that amulet? Macro said that must have been done by a boy, and he seems to be a foreigner." I paced the floor and walked to a window. From below came the clattering, the shouts and the labored breathing of the fighters practicing in the palaestra.

"It is a difficult problem." Asklepiodes toyed with a decorated silver stylus. "But why do you think it was not the same person who killed Paulus and Sinistrus?"

I sat on a fine couch and rested my chin on a fist. "You were in Paulus's bedroom. You saw the window. I don't believe that the eunuch killed him. And I doubt that he would have let anyone else past, knowing that it meant his own crucifixion. So the murderer came in through the window. The boy who broke into my house might have done it. Very well, there is nothing logically wrong with that. It would be no great task to strangle a drunken, snoring fat man."

"I follow you so far," Asklepiodes said. He was wearing the plaited silver hair-fillet I had given him on the last occasion. I reminded myself to choose another present for him.

"But the boy could not have strangled Sinistrus, who was a large, powerful man and a trained fighter. So there must be two murderers, both expert with the bowstring."

Asklepiodes set down the stylus and gave me a superior, knowing smile. "Why do you think that a man of exceptional strength must have strangled Sinistrus?"

This drew me up short. "Why, it seems... how could it not be so?"

The physician shook his head. "The garrote is not the same thing as simply wrapping your hands around a man's neck and squeezing. Allow me to demonstrate." He got up and crossed to one of the walls and took a short bow from a peg. It was unstrung, the stout cord wrapped around the lower limb. Stripping the string from the bow, he stood before me with the string draped between his hands. "This is the most conventional way to use the garrote," he said, wrapping a turn of the cord around each hand. "You are far larger and stronger than I am. Even so..." He stepped around behind me. A hand flashed in front of my face and I felt the cord biting into my neck. Even though I had been expecting it, I panicked immediately. There is no more shocking sensation than having a breath cut in half and knowing that you cannot breathe. I reached behind me and I could feel the physician pressed tightly against my back. I could grasp his clothes, but I could not secure a strong grip on his body to pull him loose. I began to charge at a wall, ready to twist so that I could crush him between my body and the wall, but instantly both the man and the cord were gone.

"You see?" he said as I sat and drew in great, ragged breaths. "One need not be terribly strong to throttle even a powerful man. Unconsciousness comes in less than a minute. Death in five or six."

"But why," I said when I had breath, "did Sinistrus not crush the boy against a wall?"

"He may have been too shocked, or too stupid, but I think it may have been another reason." His fingers worked nimbly on the string, fashioning a knot. "You remember the spot on the back of Paulus's neck I showed you?"

I nodded. Asklepiodes stepped up to me and his hands moved swiftly. Then I was strangling again, only this time the Greek was standing before me, hands behind his back and smiling. My hands went to my neck, clawing at the cord, but it was buried in the flesh and I couldn't get them under it. Black spots appeared before my eyes and the inside of my head thundered like the Nile cataracts. I could feel the strength draining from my knees and I fell to all fours, no longer able even to feel my hands. I felt hands at the back of my neck and, suddenly, breath filled my lungs, sweet as water to a man dying of thirst.

Asklepiodes helped me to the couch and handed me a cup of watered wine. "You see," he said, holding the bowstring before my clearing eyes, "it is a noose rather than a true garrote. The Syrian slipknot tightens and will remain tight after it is released. Yet one who has the skill may loosen it in an instant."

"You must be the terror of your students," I croaked. "I hope you don't demonstrate the sword that way."

"I have found that a strong object lesson need not be repeated."

I had indeed learned not one but two valuable lessons, one of which was that it was unwise to rely upon my own limited assessment of any situation in which the circumstances were bizarre or unprecedented. At such times there is always a tendency to give one's own ignorance and prejudice the weight of knowledge. I vowed always to seek out informed and expert opinion, as one customarily does in legal, medical and religious matters.

I thanked Asklepiodes for half-killing me and departed. My puzzle had now been simplified to a small degree. The murderer of Sinistrus had also slain Sergius Paulus, and it was the same foreign boy who had broken into my house and attacked me. At this point, even a minor simplification was desirable.

My anger, on the other hand, was growing. Great men were conspiring to thwart my investigation. Claudia had, in some way I could not yet fathom, made use of me. Most illogical of all, I was angry at Paulus's murder. I had met him only once, and I suspected him of involvement in conspiracy, but I had liked the man. In a city of self-seeking politicians and military brigands who styled themselves patriots, I had found him a refreshingly honest vulgarian, a man devoted to the acquisition of property and the pleasures of the flesh as only one raised in slavery can be.

I had questioned many of Paulus's slaves before I left his house. They had been, of course, terrified at the prospect of crucifixion should the murderer not be found. They seemed to wish the eunuch no ill, but I could tell that they hoped he would be found guilty, because then they might be spared. Through all this, there was a pathetic hope in them, for Paulus had promised many that they would be freed in his will, should he die untimely.