The Venus Throw (43 page)

Eco sighed. “Did you eat anything, Zotica? I told my wife to see that you were fed.”

The girl shook her head. “I’m too tired to eat. I want to sleep.”

“So do I. You can sleep soon. But now I want you to talk to someone.”

The girl looked at me warily.

“This is my father,” Eco went on, though I wondered what the word could mean to the child, who had probably never known a father. “I want you to tell him what you told me. About the man who came to stay at your master’s house here in Rome.”

The very mention of Dio caused her to shiver. “About how he died, you mean?”

“Not only that. I want you to tell him everything.”

The girl stared forlornly into space. “I’ m so tired. My stomach hurts.”

“Zotica, I brought you here so that you could tell my father about Dio.”

“I never called him that. I never even knew his name until you told me.”

“He came to your master’s house and stayed there for a time.”

“Until he died,” she said dully.

“He abused you.”

“Why did the master let him? I didn’t think the master knew, but he did. He just didn’t care. Then I was spoiled and he had to get rid of me. Now no one has any use for me.”

“Look at her wrists, Papa. The rope cut them so badly that you can still see the scars.”

“It’s because I pulled at them,” the girl murmured, rubbing at her wrists. “He tied them so tight, then put me over the hook.”

“The hook?” I said.

“There were metal hooks in the walls in his room. He’d tie my wrists and lift up my arms and trap me on the hook, so my toes barely touched the floor. My wrists would bleed. The rope would twist up even tighter when he’d turn me around. He would use me from the front, then the back.
Beat and pinch and prod. Stuff things in my mouth to keep me quiet.”

“You should see the scars, Papa, but I’d be ashamed to make her lift up her dress to show you. You realize she’s talking about Dio.” Eco looked at me accusingly, as if I were responsible for the secret vices of a man I’d admired for so many years. My face turned hot.

“A hook,” I whispered.

“What?”

“A
hook.”

“Yes, Papa, imagine it!”

“No, Eco, it’s something else . . .”

“Yes, there’s more. Go on, Zotica. Tell him about that final night.”

“No.”

“You have to. After that, we’ll leave you alone, I promise. You can sleep for as long as you want.”

The girl shuddered. “He came in dressed . . .” She made a miserable face and shrugged. “Like a woman, I suppose. He looked awful. He made me come to his room. He made me take off my gown. ‘Use it for a rag,’ he said. ‘Wipe off this silly makeup.’ He sat in a chair while I cleaned his face. He kept stopping me, fondling me, sliding his hand between my legs, making me bend over—acting just like always.” The girl shook her head and hugged herself.

“But then he pushed me away. He, made a face and grabbed his stomach. He crawled onto his bed and made me lie next to him. Because he was cold, he said. But he felt hot to me. He pressed himself against me naked and I felt like I was being burned wherever he touched me. Then he started shivering, so much that his teeth chattered, and he made me fetch him more blankets. He told me to lower the lamp because the light hurt his eyes. He tried to get up from the bed but he was too dizzy. I asked him if I should go for help, but he told me not to. He was afraid. More afraid than I’d ever seen anybody, even a slave about to be
whipped. So afraid I almost stopped hating him. He covered himself with the blankets and rocked back and forth on the bed, clutching himself, biting his hands. I stood across the room as far away as I could, hugging myself because I was naked and it was cold. Then he turned on his side and vomited on the floor. It was awful. He closed his eyes and wheezed and gasped for air. Then he was quiet. After a while I shook him, but he wouldn’t wake up. I just sat there on the bed, looking at him for a long time, afraid to move. Then it was over.”

“What do you mean, over?”

She looked me in the eye for the first time. “He died. I saw him die.”

“How could you be sure?”

“His whole body suddenly shook with a terrible fit. He opened his eyes and his mouth gaped open, like he was going to scream, but nothing came out except a horrible rattle. I jumped up from the bed and stood against the wall. He seemed to have turned to stone just like that, with his eyes and mouth wide open. After a while I walked over to him and put my ear to his chest. There was no heartbeat. If you’d seen his eyes—anyone would know they were the eyes of a dead man.”

“But the stab wounds,” I said. “The window broken open, and the room a shambles—”

“Let her finish, Papa.” Eco nodded to the girl.

“I didn’t know what to do.” Her jaw quivered and she wiped her eyes. “All I could think was that the master would blame me, and punish me. He would think that I killed the old man somehow. So I cleaned up the vomit—I used my gown, the one he’d already made me use for a rag to clean his face. Then I crept out of the room.”

“Where the door slave Philo saw you in the hallway,” I said. “Naked and weeping, clutching your gown. He thought Dio had finished with you early. But Dio was already dead. Did you tell your master?”

She shivered and shook her head.

“But why not?”

“All that night I lay awake in the slave quarters, thinking about what had happened. The master would think I had poisoned the old man. I didn’t! But the master would think I did, and what would he do to me? I cried and cried, while the other slaves hissed at me to be quiet and go to sleep. But how could I sleep? Then there was an awful commotion from the old man’s room. The whole house came awake. They’d broken into the room and found him. Now they’ll come to me, I thought. They’ll kill me, right here and now! My heart pounded in my chest so hard I thought I’d die.”

She let out a sob, then twisted her lips into a crooked smile. “But something amazing had happened. They didn’t blame me at all. They thought the old man had been stabbed to death. Killers had broken into his room after I left him, they said, and cut him up with knives. I didn’t know what to think. But the master never blamed me, so I never told anybody what had happened. With the old man dead, I thought everything would be like it was before.” The smile vanished. “But instead everything changed. The master sold me. Everything just got more and more awful . . .”

“You’re safe now,” said Eco gently.

The girl sagged against the wall and closed her eyes. “Please don’t make me talk anymore. If only I could sleep . . .”

“No more talk,” Eco agreed. “Stay here for now. One of the slaves will come to show you where you can sleep.”

We left her weeping softly and muttering to herself, her face pressed against the wall as if she could somehow melt into it.

I followed Eco into the garden. “What does it mean?”

“It means that Dio was poisoned, Papa.”

“But the stabbing—”

“He was stabbed
after
he was already dead. You remarked yourself how little blood there seems to have been for so
many wounds, how the wounds were all close together in his chest and there was no sign that he put up a struggle. Because he was already dead.”

“But someone broke into the room that night and scattered everything about. Someone stabbed him Why?”

“Perhaps it was Titus Coponius himself, because he didn’t want it to get out that Dio was poisoned under his roof, and he wanted to make the death look like the work of assassins. But that’s not really the point, is it?”

“What do you mean, Eco?”

“The important thing is that Dio was poisoned.”

“But how? Where? By whom? We know that he would touch no food in Coponius’s house. And only a short time before, he left my house with a full stomach! As cautious as he was, he wouldn’t have eaten anything else that night.”

“Exactly, Papa.”

“Eco, say what you mean!”

“You needn’t shout, Papa. You must be thinking the same thing.”

I stopped pacing. We stared at each other. “Perhaps.”

“The symptoms the girl described: if it was poison, what do you think—”

“Gorgon’s hair,” I said.

“Yes, I thought the same thing. Some time ago I gave you some gorgon’s hair for safekeeping. I didn’t want the stuff in my house with the twins. Do you remember?”

“Oh yes,” I said. My mouth was dry.

“Do you still have it? Is it still where you put it?”

My silene gave him the answer. Eco nodded slowly. “The last meal Dio ate was at your house, Papa.”

“Yes.”

“That’s where he must have been poisoned.”

“No!”

“Did someone use the gorgon’s hair I gave you? Do you still have it or not?”

“Clodia!” I whispered. “She wasn’t pretending to be
poisoned, then. The gorgon’s hair she showed me could have come from Caelius, after all. Certainly not from Bethesda—not if the gorgon’s hair in my house had already been used . . .”

“What are you whispering, Papa?”

“But Caelius couldn’t have killed Dio, not if he was poisoned first. You’re right, he’s innocent, of that crime at least . . .”

“I can’t hear you, Papa.” Eco shook his head, tired and exasperated. “The only thing I can’t figure out is why anyone in your household would have wanted to poison Dio in the first place. Who knew the man, much less had any reason to want him dead?”

I thought of my old Egyptian mentor, who secretly liked to tie up young slave girls and abuse them, and particularly liked to bind their wrists and hang them on hooks. I remembered the women in my garden, exchanging secrets about men who had raped them when they were young. I thought of Bethesda when she had been a slave in Alexandria, and the powerful, respected master who had used her mother so cruelly that he killed her, and would have done the same to Bethesda if she hadn’t fought back and found herself carted off to the slave market instead, where a poor young Roman smitten by her beauty emptied his purse to pay for her, never dreaming he would take her back to Rome and make her his wife, obliging her to serve dinner to his guests and to give the first heaping portion to an esteemed visitor such as Dio of Alexandria . . .

I had said to her,
You have deliberately deceived me! Do you deny it?

And she had answered,
No, husband, I do not deny it
.

“And I thought I understood!”

“Papa, speak up—”

“Cybele help us!” I shook my head. “I think I know the answer, Eco.”

E
co pressed me for an explanation, but I only shook my head. We made our way back to the Forum in silence through the hot, crowded streets of the Subura. The sky was cloudless and the sun directly overhead, casting a harsh, glaring light onto a world without shadows. Lit so brightly, objects became perversely indistinct. Edges ras together and views of the distance had no depth. The throngs of people going about their holiday business seemed faceless. I stared at them, not quite able to make them out. Old or young, male or female, smiling or frowning, standing quietly or shoving their way through the street, all seemed blurred together and equally strange. The city itself was unreal, dreamlike and slightly absurd. This feeling only intensified as we entered the Forum and rejoined the immense crowd attending the trial of Marcus Caelius.

Catullus was where I had left him. “You missed Caelius’s climax!” he said. “He did it into that little pyxis, to show everyone how. No, I’m only joking! But it was a good climax for all concerned. One thing about Caelius, he always strives to satisfy whoever he’s with, not just himself. No judges or spectators left hankering and unfulfilled at Nola’s walls, so to speak.”

I stared at him blankly, unable to make sense of what he
was saying. He went on, nonetheless. “Then you missed Crassus’s whole speech. Just as well, actually. Nobody had a climax there! Seems Crassus was trying to get Caelius off the hook for all those killings on the way up from Neapolis, but if you ask me, Crassus never did learn how to give a decent speech. Plodding, plodding! Words, words, words, and not a memorable pun among them. He should stick to what he knows, making piles of money, and simply bribe the judges instead of boring them to death with bad rhetoric. He made Caelius look as guilty as Caelius managed to make himself look innocent! It’s all up to Cicero now. Who’s this?”

“My son,” I said absently, and introduced Eco.

“Well, good, you’re both here for the
real
speech. Cicero’s about to begin. Come, let’s see if we can’t move up a bit . . .”

We managed to move considerably closer, so that I was able to see quite clearly the figure now stopping before the judges. Slender and frail when I first met him long ago, Cicero had become plump and thick-jowled in the years of his prosperity. The political triumph of his consulship had been followed by near-ruin, when his enemies managed to banish him; counterlegislation passed by Cicero’s allies eventually welcomed him back, but not before the great man passed eighteen months in exile, during which time much of his property was destroyed by the mob. In his months away from Rome, Cicero had grown lean with worry, or so it was said. From the way his toga clung to his frame as he swaggered before the court, it looked to me that he had made short work of regaining both his girth and his stature.