Katherine Brooks - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 106, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 648 & 649, October 1995

Eco slept despite the noise, but I tossed and turned until at last I decided to take a walk. The moon lit my way as I stepped out of the villa, made a circuit of the stable, and strolled by the slaves’ quarters. Coming around a corner, I saw two figures seated close together on a bench beside the portico that led to the kitchen. Though her hair was not in a bun but let down for the night, the moon lit up her face well enough for me to recognize Davia. By his bearish shape I knew the man who sat with one arm around her, stroking her face: Ursus. They were so intent on each other that they did not notice me. I turned and went back the way I had come, reflecting that the hand of Venus reaches everywhere, and wondering if Lucius was aware that his cook and his beekeeper were lovers.

What a contrast their silent devotions made to the couple in the room next to me. When I returned to bed, I had to cover my head with a pillow to muffle the sounds of them still arguing.

But the morning seemed to bring a new day. While Lucius, Eco, and I ate a breakfast of bread and honey in the little garden outside Lucius’s study, Antonia came walking up from the direction of the stream, bearing a basket of flowers.

“Antonia!” said Lucius. “I should have thought you were still abed.”

“Not at all,” she said, beaming. “I was up before dawn, and on a whim I went down to the stream to pick some flowers. Aren’t they lovely? I shall have one of my girls weave them into a garland for me to wear at dinner tonight.”

“Your beauty needs no ornament,” said Lucius. Indeed, Antonia looked especially radiant that morning. “And where is — mmm, dare I call him your king bee?”

Antonia laughed. “Still abed, I imagine. But I shall go and rouse him at once. This day is too beautiful to be missed! I was thinking that Titus and I might take along a basket of food and some wine and spend most of the day down by the stream. Just the two of us...”

She raised her eyebrows. Lucius understood. “Ah yes, well, Gordianus and I have plenty to occupy us here at the villa. And Eco — I believe you were planning to do some exploring up on the hill today, weren’t you?”

Eco, not quite understanding, nodded nonetheless.

“Well then, it looks as though you and the king bee will have the stream all to yourselves,” said Lucius.

Antonia beamed. “Lucius, you are so very sweet.” She paused to kiss his blushing pate.

A little later, as we were finishing our leisurely breakfast, we saw the couple walking down toward the stream without even a slave to bear their baskets and blanket. They held hands and laughed and doted on each other so lavishly that Eco became positively queasy watching them.

By some acoustical curiosity, a sharp noise from the stream could sometimes carry all the way up to the house. So it was, some time later, standing by Lucius in front of the villa while he discussed the day’s work with his foreman, that I thought I heard a cry and a hollow crack from that direction. Lucius and the foreman, one talking while the other listened, seemed not to notice, but Eco, poking about an old wine press nearby, pricked up his ears. Eco may be mute, but his hearing is sharp. We had both heard Titus’s raised voice too often over the last few days not to recognize it.

The spouses had not made up, after all, I thought. The two of them were at it again...

Then, a little later, Antonia screamed. We all heard it. It was not her familiar shriek of rage. It was a scream of pure panic.

She screamed again.

We ran all the way, Eco in the lead, Lucius huffing and puffing in the rear. “By Hercules,” he shouted, “he must be killing her!”

But Antonia wasn’t dying. Titus was.

He was flat on his back on the blanket, his short tunic twisted all askew and hitched up about his hips. He stared at the leafy canopy above, his pupils hugely dilated. “Dizzy... spinning...” he gasped. He coughed and wheezed and grabbed his throat, then bent forward. His hands went to his belly, clutching at cramps. His face was a deathly shade of blue.

“What in Hades!” exclaimed Lucius. “What happened to him, Antonia? Gordianus, what can we do?”

“Can’t breathe!” Titus said, mouthing words with no air behind them. “The end... the end of me... oh, it hurts!” He grabbed at his loincloth. “Damn the gods!”

He pulled at his tunic, as if it constricted his chest. The foreman gave me his knife. I cut the tunic open and tore it off, leaving him naked except for the loose loincloth about his hips; it did no good, except to show us that his whole body was turning blue. I turned him on his side and reached into his mouth, thinking he might be choking, but that did no good either.

He kept struggling until the end, fighting to breathe. It was a horrible death to watch. At last the wheezing and clenching stopped. His limbs unfurled. The life went out of his staring eyes.

Antonia stood by, stunned and silent, her face like a petrified tragedy mask. “Oh no!” she whispered, dropping to her knees and embracing the body. She began to scream again and to sob wildly. Her agony was almost as hard to watch as Titus’s death throes, and there seemed as little to be done about it.

“But how in Hades did this happen?” said Lucius. “What caused it?”

Eco and the foreman and I looked at each other dumbly.

“Her fault!” wailed Antonia.

“What?” said Lucius.

“Your cook! That horrible woman! It’s her fault!”

Lucius looked around at the scattered remains of food. Crusts of bread, a little jar of honey, black olives, a wineskin, a broken clay bottle — that had been the hollow crack I had heard. “What do you mean? Are you saying she poisoned him?”

Antonia’s sobs caught in her throat. “Yes, that’s it. Yes! It was one of my own slaves who put the food in the basket, but she’s the one who prepared the food. Davia! The witch poisoned him. She poisoned everything!”

“Oh, dear, but that means—” Lucius knelt. He gripped Antonia’s arms and looked into her eyes. “You might be poisoned as well! Antonia, do you feel any pain? Gordianus, what should we do for her?”

I looked at him blankly. I had no idea.

Antonia showed no symptoms. She was not poisoned, after all. But something had killed her husband, and in a most sudden and terrible fashion.

Her slaves soon came running. We left her grieving over the body and went back to the villa to confront Davia. Lucius led the way into the kitchen.

“Davia! Do you know what’s happened?”

She looked at the floor and swallowed hard. “They say... that one of your guests has died, master.”

“Yes. What do you know about it?”

She looked shocked. “I? Nothing, master.”

“Nothing? They were eating food prepared by you when Titus took ill. Do you still say you know nothing about it?”

“Master, I don’t know what you mean...”

“Davia,” I said, “you must tell us what was going on between you and Titus Didius.”

She stammered and looked away.

“Davia! A man is dead. His wife accuses you. You’re in great danger. If you’re innocent, the truth could save you. Be brave! Now tell us what passed between you and Titus Didius.”

“Nothing! I swear it, by my mother’s shade. Not that he didn’t try, and keep trying. He approached me at the master’s house in the city that night he first saw me. He tried to get me to go into an empty room with him. I wouldn’t do it. He kept trying the same thing here. Following me, trapping me. Touching me. I never encouraged him! Yesterday, while you were all down at the hives, he came after me, pulling at my clothes, kissing me. I just kept moving away. He seemed to like that, chasing me. When everyone finally came back, I almost wept with relief.”