The King's Gambit (27 page)

The room was too small to start a proper run. Drastic measures were called for. My vision was darkening and I could hear a great rushing sound in my ears. Crouching low, I bent my knees deeply. With all the strength I had left, I sprang up and forward. As my feet left the ground, I threw my body forward so that I hurtled into a forward somersault. Taking flight, I tried to will myself to weigh more, in order to come down harder.

I landed with a gratifying crash, shattering a small table in the process. The cord loosened and I dragged in a great, ragged breath of air more delicious than the finest Falernian. The legs had loosened from my waist and I twisted around, my hand going beneath my tunic and emerging with the
caestus
, which I was about to use for the second time that day. I raised my fist to my ear, then hesitated in amazement.

"Who's this?" said Milo from the doorway. The noise had drawn him.

"This," I said, looking down at my now-unconscious attacker, "is our strangler, our burglar, our 'Asian boy.' Her name is Chrysis and I daresay she's the most multi-talented woman in Rome."

Milo chuckled. "Won't the boys in the Subura be furious when they find out it was a woman doing so well!"

"Sir," said Burrus, "wasn't it the Lady Claudia you were here to see?"

I looked around but she was gone, naturally. I got shakily to my feet and picked up my dagger from where it lay. "Claudia, Claudia," I whispered. "Such a ruthless player in the big game, and you didn't have the presence of mind to stab me when the little slut gave you the chance."

"Excuse me, sir?" Milo said.

"Nothing. Milo, I don't want that woman to escape before I get her to court. Just tying her up may not work."

"No problem," he said. With one huge hand he grasped both her wrists; with the other, her ankles. He straightened and slung her across his shoulders like a goatherd carrying a strayed kid. "She won't get away from me."

I rubbed my neck. I was alive only because she had not been prepared. She had used her long hair to strangle me, not her usual bowstring. She began to regain consciousness, trying to raise her head. I remembered that there was a formula I was supposed to employ.

Clapping a hand on her shoulder, I intoned: "Chrysis, arrest you. Come with me to the praetor."

The house was far too large to search for Claudia, and I had already stayed too long. "To the Forum," I ordered.

As we left, we could hear Publius's mob bringing him home, so we took the opposite direction. Romans are accustomed to strange sights in their streets, but we drew our share of wide eyes and dropped jaws. I was noticeably disheveled and the cut in my side had opened, soaking not only my tunic but my toga with blood. My eyes were almost as red from the near-throttling. Behind me walked the grinning, towering young man who carried a wiry woman over his shoulders. Struggle as she might, she wasn't about to escape from those hands. Before me strode Burrus, shoving people aside and bellowing, "Make way for the Commissioner Decius Metellus!"

We walked into the Forum, which was still recovering from the recent brawl. Spilled fruit and rattling teeth still lay on the pavement among splotches of blood and shattered vendors' stalls. We were greeted by cheers and curses, showing that the citizenry were still divided in their affections toward me, although it seemed to me that the cheers predominated. We crossed the Forum and went straight up the steps of the Basilica Aemilia, followed by a growing crowd hard on our heels.

There was a boisterous trial going on when we arrived, but the hubbub quickly died down and all eyes turned toward us. From his curule chair, my father glared at us, enraged.

"What is this?" he shouted.

I stepped forward, bloody toga and all. "Fa-Praetor, I bring the foreign woman Chrysis, resident in the house of Publius Claudius Pulcher, before this court. I charge her with the murder of Marcus Ager, formerly the gladiator Sinistrus, and that of Sergius Paulus, freedman."

Father stood, his face flaming. "If you don't mind, Commissioner, I have another case before me just now. You yourself have already been charged with starting a riot!"

"By whom?" I demanded. "The flunkies of Publius Claudius? Piss on them! This takes precedence." My eloquence received warm applause. Roman jurisprudence in my youth was a rough and colorful business. "This bitch throttled Sinistrus and Paulus, and she just tried to do the same to me!" I tore off my scarf and displayed my luridly marked neck, exciting gasps of admiration.

"I can scarcely wait to find out how
that
came about!" my father said.

"She is an acrobat and contortionist," I said, praying that nobody would ask how I knew of her extreme suppleness. "That is how she was able to insert herself, reptile-fashion, through Paulus's bedroom window. The eunuch is innocent! Turn him loose!"

One of the formerly contending lawyers who had been arguing before my father rose to the bait. "Do you mean to claim," he yelled, "that this little Asiatic bint strangled a very large professional killer?"

I grasped the breast of my toga with one hand and thrust the forefinger of the other skyward, just like Hortalus when he was making his crucial point. "At that time, she used a bowstring with a cunning Oriental slipknot. If you wish I will summon the physician Asklepiodes to demonstrate it, preferably on you." This drew claps and whistles. I was providing far more entertainment than the property case they had been witnessing.

"And furthermore," I said, deciding to press my luck while the audience was sympathetic, "she is only a part of a much larger--"

At that point, a hand descended on my shoulder from behind. I turned to see a lictor, fasces carried over his shoulder. "I arrest you, Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, for public riot Come with me." Other lictors grabbed my arms.

As I was dragged away, I shouted over my shoulder, "Chain her to a wall by a neck-ring! Double-riveted! She'll get out of anything else!"

The Mamertine prison was not one of the showplaces of Rome. It was a cave below the Capitol. I spent two days there, alone, which shows how diligent Roman authorities were in apprehending criminals. The place was cold and cheerless, its only light coming through the iron grating of the overhead hole through which I had been lowered. At least, for the first time since the whole mess had started, I had time to sit and think, free from distractions and assaults.

I spent much of this time cursing myself for being an idiot, especially where Claudia was concerned. The treacherous bitch had played me expertly, knowing a fool when she saw one. It had been the night in her hideaway, with the multi-talented Chrysis, that had thoroughly befuddled my investigation. Aside from the confusion and general embarrassment, the fact that they had both been with me the night Sergius Paulus was killed distracted my suspicion. But the eunuch had said that the earliest light of dawn was visible when the cessation of his master's snoring woke him. Chrysis had slipped away and killed him while I slept.

I found myself wondering how the Consuls would handle this. Marius would simply have had me killed by his thugs. Sulla would have put my name on a proscription list, to be killed by the first citizen who found an opportunity to do so and claim a part of my estate. But the times were more settled now, and they would probably wish to go by constitutional forms. Since I had not committed a capital crime, perhaps a discreet poisoning might be in order.

There was, of course, the possibility that Publius Claudius might die. Gratifying as the thought was, it would lay me open to a charge of murder. Unlike the magistrates, a mere commissioner had no immunity from prosecution. Freeborn men were rarely condemned to death for murder, especially if there was a brawl involved. Grown Roman men were supposed to be able to take care of themselves. If Publius couldn't manage to kill me first in a perfectly open and straightforward brawl, he deserved little sympathy from a court.

That would have been the case in normal times, at any rate. The only thing I had in my favor was that the Consuls were trying to maintain the pretense that these were normal times. I would most likely get off with banish-merit. To me, that seemed little better than a death sentence. I had always loathed being away from Rome. If I were to be banished, there was the prospect of an eventual return. Pompey and Crassus could easily fall out, or Hortalus might wish to curry extra favor with my family, or they might all die, which was not at all unlikely. Or, Lucullus might come home a
triumphator
and get himself a Consulship, and remember that I had tried to do him a good turn. One should never trust the gratitude of powerful men, but at that time I was desperate to find any sort of happy outcome to my predicament.

My jailer was a tongueless public slave who provided little company or diversion. I found myself wishing that some felon would be thrown down into the prison with me. Anything was better than being alone with my thoughts. A streetwise thug might know what was going on in the city, whether there was any public sentiment in my favor.

It had looked promising in the Forum and in the Basilica, but the Roman public is endlessly distractible. News of a defeat in the East or an earthquake at Messina would do it. If he wished to go to the expense, Crassus could suddenly remember a dead relative who had to be honored and declare a day of races in the Circus. That would cause the public to forget me entirely. At least the weather in recent days had been too cold and wet for racing. Besides, Pompey and Crassus were both Blues, and a victory for the Greens might be interpreted as a bad omen for them.

Of course, it never occurred to me that I might simply be too unimportant for them to worry themselves about greatly. Long after dusk on the second day, I heard a voice hailing me from above.

"Are you down there, idiot?"

"I haven't gone anyplace, Father," I answered.

"A rope is being dropped to you. Grab it and you will be pulled up."

It was black as the bowels of Cerberus, and I stumbled about on the straw for quite a while before I encountered the rope. I grasped one of the knots and tugged. Up I went like a water bucket as the rope creaked through its pulley. There was a hot wire of pain where my side had been cut but I was getting used to that. The room was illuminated by a small torch. By its light my father looked me over critically.

"You could do with a bath and a shave," he said.

"Bathhouses and barbers are in short supply down there," I pointed out.

He was not impressed. "That's unfortunate, because you are about to appear in the Curia."

That did not sound good. Late-night Senate meetings were rare, and they usually meant something dire. I straightened my bloody toga as well as I could and ran my fingers through my disheveled hair. We left the prison and began to walk toward the Curia, preceded by one of my father's slave boys, carrying a torch.

"You will be relieved to know that Publius Claudius is alive," Father said.

"Actually, the news rather saddens me. I trust he is at least seriously injured?"

"Just a sore head and a few dashing scars for his face.

What were you doing with a
caestus
anyway? That's not a gentleman's weapon."