A Point of Law (21 page)

“But this is so splendid!” Asklepiodes said, not at all abashed. “Over the years you have investigated hundreds of murders”—a gross exaggeration, but he was a Greek—“and I have aided you in many of these. But this is the first to involve scholarship, mathematics, a cipher—it is all just wonderful! Now, let me tell you what I know.”

“Please do.” I helped myself to some more of his speech lubrication.

“Aristobulus—he didn’t call himself ‘of Croton’ at home since they are all from Croton there—”

“That is understood.”

“Aristobulus was a small man, advancing in years but not in fortune. He wore rather shabby clothes, but he tried to pretend that this was a virtue, as philosophers so often do. He was not argumentative, neither was he talkative. Rather, he was aloof, as if the company were unworthy of him. But I learned that he never passed up one of these weekly dinners, which were not paid for by subscription from the members of the club but by the testaments of wealthy members in times past.”

“I never knew a philosopher to turn down a free meal,” I said, nodding.

“Anyway, when the time came for the symposium after dinner, Aristobulus drank his share and more, and he grew more talkative. This often consisted of boasting about his discoveries in the mathematical field. He had some rather radical ideas, as the learned lady has tried, without success, to explain to you.”

“I never claimed to understand mathematics. When I had charge of the Treasury I had slaves and freedmen for that, fortunately.”

“He was never mocked by the rest of the company, but he was regarded with, shall we say, a healthy scepticism,” Asklepeodes commented. “The last time I attended that gathering but one was the last time I saw him alive—he was better-dressed.” He paused and took a sip, waiting for my reaction. Asklepiodes always did that.

“Well? What did this signify?” I was never good at restraining my impatience.

“He did not precisely boast, but he hinted heavily that he had acquired a patron, a highly placed person who understood the importance of his work. His clothes were not gaudy, you understand. He adhered to the principles of philosophical simplicity. But they were new and of excellent quality. And, for the first time since I had known him, he wore jewelry: a ring.” That maddening pause again.

“Ring! What sort of ring? Quit stalling!”

“There was a massive seal ring on the index finger of his right hand. Eumolpus the Cynic, a rather acerbic gentleman as you might gather from his appellation, took note of this new adornment and made comment that it contrasted oddly with Aristobulus’s customary, not to say flaunted, austerity. Aristobulus replied that it was a gift from his patron, that he used it as a seal on all his correspondence with this mysterious benefactor, and that he must wear it as a symbol of their mutual pledge.”

“Did you get a good look? Can you describe it?”

“As it occurs, Aristobulus reclined to my immediate left during that banquet, and I was able to examine the ring closely. It was of massive gold and had an exotic, finely granulated surface. It was set with a handsome sapphire. I have spent much of my life in Egypt, and I know Egyptian stone when I see it. It was carved intaglio with a
gorgoneion
.”

This was more than I had expected. “Did he say anything else? Anything that might identify his patron or the business they had together?”

“Nothing definite,” Asklepiodes said. “And you must remember that I was not giving this matter any special attention. I was far more involved with my more congenial friends. I do remember that he hinted his patron was a powerful Roman, not a Greek, and that the man was interested in ‘the truly important things,’ by which I presume he meant the arcane field of mathematics that consumed him.”

“If so,” I said, “he was flattering himself. Philosophers are prone to do that in my experience. His patron was interested in one thing only: an unbreakable cipher he could use to keep secret his doings and those of his coconspirators. Aristobulus’s absurd ‘symbol for nothing’ was used for no greater purpose than separating the words in a text. He might as well have simply left a space between the words.”

“That might have made the code easier to break,” Asklepiodes pointed out. “As it is, a mind less penetrating than Callista’s might
never have divined the implication. Then the code would have been truly incomprehensible.”

“I suppose so. Anyway, how did the man come to be murdered?”

“When I accompanied the troupe to Croton two months ago, I attended the club dinner as usual. Aristobulus had never been my favorite among that company so it was only after the dinner and well into the drinking bout that I noticed he was not there. I asked where he might be, and the others said he had been murdered and were surprised that I had not known about it. Apparently the killing gained some degree of notoriety in the southern part of the peninsula.

“In any case, it seems that Aristobulus had left on a rather sudden trip to Baiae—”

“Baiae!” I cried triumphantly.

“Yes, I thought that would get your attention.”

“You have it already! Go on!”

“Calm yourself, my friend. Unrequitable passion has a deleterious effect on the bodily humors. He must have completed his journey to Baiae because he was on the road south, returning to Croton, when he was fallen upon and slain,” Asklepiodes said.

“ ‘Fallen upon’?”

“Yes, it appeared to be the work of bandits. They’ve become rare in the vicinity of Rome, but southern Italy is infested with them.”

“It always has been. Southern Italy is more like Africa than civilized Latium.” I wasn’t being quite fair to our southern brethren. Southern Italy was full of desperate, dangerous men because the peasants of that region were the most thoroughly ruined in the peninsula. The entirety of the land south of Capua and the whole island of Sicily had been turned into latifundia. Land that had supported thousands of peasant families had been converted into a few vast plantations worked by cheap slaves, leaving the dispossessed farmers to fend for themselves.

“So,” I went on, “how is it that the murder was attributed to bandits? I don’t suppose anyone came forward to confess?”

“Of course not. When does anyone confess to a crime save under
torture or when caught in the act? But, according to those who found his body, it bore all the signs of a bandit attack: He was discovered stripped to the skin, even his sandals taken. Also missing was the hired donkey he had been riding.”

“How was he dispatched?”

“Stabbed through the body. That is all I know of his fatal wound. Had I been able to examine the corpse, I might have discovered many revealing details. But he had been cremated more than a month prior to my visit. Apparently, it never occurred to the authorities to inquire into the incident. Bandit attacks are so common in the region that they saw no reason for an investigation.”

“And he was traveling alone? Not even a slave or two?”

“Apparently. As a penurious man of simple habits, he had only a rather elderly housekeeper.”

I mused for a while, studying the weapons on the wall. “Stabbed, eh? And through the body? Bandits usually favor a club to subdue their prey. It gets less blood on the clothes.”

“They might have forced him to strip before giving him his passage on the ferryboat.”

“Then why not cut his throat? It is the swiftest and surest method for dispatching a man with a knife. I’ll tell you why: These people can’t shake off their aristocratic habits. They want to make it look like bandits did it, but they have to stab their victim from in front, like gentlemen.”

“A strange sort of oversight, one would think,” Asklepiodes commented.

“They intend never to be called to account for their crimes,” I said. “It is to maintain their own good opinion of themselves and each other that they commit murder as if they were soldiers striking down an enemy. Doubtless these men tell each other that they are acting out of patriotic motives.”

“ ‘Patriotic’?” Asklepiodes gestured with his beautifully manicured hands like an actor in a comedy who is at his wit’s end. “But this
is so puzzling. Not only killing a very obscure Greek philosopher from patriotic motives but constructing so elaborate a conspiracy to prevent one man from attaining the office of praetor. I hope you are not offended that I wonder at this.”

“Oh, I’m under no such delusion. I am just the immediate and rather a minor target, I’m afraid. These men have designs on the whole Republic.”

“Ah,” he said, with satisfaction. “That is on a scale rather more grand. To my poor mind, though, the details remain wreathed in obscurity.”

“They are not very plain to me either, but I think I am beginning to see where this is all headed. Three men named Claudius Marcellus, two brothers and a cousin, are pushing us toward civil war. One of them is this year’s consul, another will be next year’s, the third will very likely be consul the year after. They are doing everything in their power to turn the whole Senate against Caesar. This is a plot made simpler by the fact that Caesar does so little to ingratiate himself with that body.

“Like good generals, these Claudii are making long-range war plans. They’ve assembled their forces, and probably not only in the Senate but all over our Empire. They’ve agitated among the people but without great success. The plebs love Caesar.” I thought about that for a moment. “They’ve probably had more success in the south. Their base is in Baiae, and the southern part of the peninsula is almost solidly for Pompey. His veterans have settled there.

“But their most forward-looking policy has been to arrange for a truly ingenious cipher to keep all their conspiratorial correspondence secret. I know of no other planners, military or civil, who have taken such a precaution.”

“It is not characteristic of you Romans,” Asklepiodes agreed. “Your flair for careful planning is, of course, world-famed. But you are not known for your subtlety. This is almost, how should I put this? Almost Greek.”

“Exactly. You know, I can’t begin to count how many conspiracies and even military operations I know of that have come to grief because correspondence, reports, or dispatches have been intercepted. The Catilinarian conspirators were so inept that the most illustrious men actually appended their personal signatures and seals to letters sent to prospective allies.”

“Perhaps you Romans have not been literate long enough to understand the perils hidden in the written word. The great kings of Persia have been using ciphers for centuries, although I confess I have no idea how such codes work.”

“I just wish I knew whether Pompey is involved. I rather doubt it. Subtlety was never his style.”

At that moment Hermes burst in, breathing hard, sweating and grinning. “Oh, good! I’ve caught you before you could get away!”

“You’ve learned something important?” I turned to Asklepiodes. “I sent him to the house of Caius Marcellus to bribe some information out of the man’s slaves.”

“I may have, but that’s not why I ran all the way to Callista’s and then here. You’ve got to come to the Forum. There’s a show going on there you won’t want to miss!”

“What?” I was totally mystified.

“Last night someone attacked Curio and tried to murder him!”

“Is he dead?” I got to my feet. This had to be tied to my own difficulties.

“No, just knocked about and cut up a bit. But the real show is Fulvia. She’s gone down to the Forum like a blood-soaked Fury, and she’s baying for vengeance.”

“Jupiter preserve us all,” I groaned. “The last time Fulvia put on a show, the mob burned the Curia and half the buildings around it.”

“This I must see,” Asklepiodes said, gleefully. “Let’s take my litter. I can get us there far more speedily than the two of you can make it on foot.”

O
RDINARILY, A LITTER GETS YOU
where you are going no more quickly than if you had walked. It just gets you there in style and much cleaner than if you had braved Rome’s unsanitary streets. The litter of Asklepiodes was different.

First, there were his bearers. They were all powerful men and trained runners. The physician often had to rush to the site of an emergency and did not want to waste time. He used eight of them, instead of the more common four or six, so that each would bear a lighter load. Perhaps even more important, though, was the flying wedge of gladiators that cleared the way before us. Rome’s narrow streets were easily jammed, and they tended to get more so as you approached the Forum, especially if there was something interesting happening there, as there was on this morning.

For obvious reasons the gladiators of Statilius Taurus prized their surgeon and were always willing to do anything to keep him happy. Up
front we had a dozen of them, all huge men who positively loved hard, physical contact. Thus we were able to cross the City at a running pace.

“All right,” I said to Hermes, as we lounged behind the closed curtains, “tell me what you learned.”

Hermes mopped his face with a fold of his tunic. His sweat was testimony to his exertions that morning. He was in superb physical shape, and it took a strenuous sprint to bring perspiration to his brow.

“I managed to catch some of Caius Claudius’s slaves on their way to the fruit and vegetable market. One of them was the cook who had been assigned to the house of Fulvius. There were six of them assigned, and I was lucky to catch this one because the others were all Syrians barely able to understand Latin.”

“Didn’t I tell you these were careful plotters?” I said to Asklepiodes. “The slaves they lent their man were foreign, so that they wouldn’t be able to understand or repeat what they overheard. Too many people blab as if their slaves weren’t there.”

Hermes nodded agreement. “But the cook had to know Latin because she had to do the marketing. Unfortunately, she was mostly confined to the kitchen and didn’t hear much. But the man had callers at all hours of day and night, and the conversations out front got pretty heated.”

“Had she any idea who the visitors were?”

“She said they mostly had low-class accents, but a few were high class, and it was most often those voices she heard arguing.”