John Roberts - The Year of Confusion

“Nothing of the sort,” I assured him. “We are not barbarians. We respect embassies. Now, will you summon your people?”

Relieved but mystified, he went to do my bidding. A short time later we had almost a hundred people lined up before the house. I immediately dismissed the women, the young boys and the older men to go about their duties. This left about fifty men of an age to be dangerous. Hermes and I began looking them over, paying special attention to their hands. As at the town residence, there were some tough-looking specimens, all of the same tribe as the guard I had questioned there.

Toward the end of the line was a smaller man, dressed in a rough, dark-colored tunic. As we neared him, he looked about, his face whitening.

“There’s a shifty one,” Hermes said. He left the man he had been questioning and made for the suspicious one. The servant whirled and dashed off with surprising alacrity.

“Action at last!” Hermes said, grinning. He took off in pursuit, and I found myself wishing that I had someone to place a wager with. Hermes was an excellent runner and in top condition, but fear had lent the fleeing man the winged feet of Mercury. It would be a close thing.

“Are you a betting man, Themistocles?”

“Eh? I am sorry, Senator, what did you say?”

“Never mind. Who is that man?”

“Just one of the locals I hired to help in the stables. When we arrived here we required a few servants who knew both the area and the language. It was easier than buying slaves that we would have to sell when we leave. May I know what this is about?”

“All in good time. How long has he been here?”

“Not long, perhaps ten days. Is he wanted for some crime in Rome?”

“If he wasn’t before, he is now,” I said. “If he’d just brazened it out I probably wouldn’t have suspected him. That’s what a guilty conscience will do to a man. He condemned himself without a word.”

“I daresay,” Themistocles said, swallowing. “Will there be trouble over this?”

“That remains to be seen. I believe I’ll go find my assistant. Maybe by now he’s run the rogue to ground. Don’t go anywhere.”

I went off in the direction the two had gone. In moments I saw pursuer and pursued, made tiny by distance. The fleeing man leapt a low stone wall with great agility and Hermes cleared it moments later. All that money I spent sending him to the ludus was proving to be a sound investment. I didn’t hurry. In this sort of tortoise-and-hare situation, I preferred to play the tortoise.

The hours are short in winter, and I spent the better part of one catching up with Hermes. He lay upon the ground, sweating abundantly and breathing heavily. I saw no wounds on him.

“Shame on you, Hermes,” I said. “Letting an amateur like that get away from you.”

“Amateur?” he gasped. “That man is a trained runner. I’m a trained fighter. There’s a difference.”

I sat down beside him. “I don’t think that was our killer.”

“I don’t think so either,” Hermes wheezed. “The killer would have made a fight of it.”

“You’re right. Pride would have demanded it. Our murderer is a superlative craftsman in the art of homicide. This one is just a flunky.”

“One of the torturers?” he hazarded.

“He didn’t look that brutish to me. Who is another missing man in this business?”

He thought about that for a while as he got his breathing under control. “The servant on the Tiber Island, the one who summoned all the astronomers to meet with Polasser, and then couldn’t be found.”

“That may be it. He was already established here. As a free laborer, he wouldn’t need a pass to leave the estate. He just went down the via Aurelia to the Cestian Bridge, across to the island, did his job, then hurried back here while we were all gaping at Polasser’s body.”

“Was the killer with him, do you think?” He tried to sit up, then fell back, groaning.

“Unlikely. I suspect that his task was arranged by a go-between. If he could identify the assassin by sight, he would have been killed as soon as he was no longer useful.”

This time he managed to sit. “He looked local.”

“That’s what the steward said he was.”

“So he’s not one of Cleopatra’s people.” He felt his abdomen gingerly.

“Can you get up?” I said, rising myself.

With my help, he managed to struggle to his feet and stay upright. He retched a bit, then steadied. “Let’s take it easy going back, all right?”

So we ambled back to the villa, admiring the pleasant countryside.

“So is Archelaus our main suspect now?” Hermes asked.

“I don’t think so. Archelaus knew I was coming out here to inspect his staff, yet he didn’t warn the man to get out quickly. Apparently he had no idea he was harboring someone involved with the murders.”

“But there has to be some connection,” Hermes protested. “Out of ten thousand hiding places near Rome, he picked the Parthian embassy.”

“It bears thinking about,” I agreed.

When we arrived at the villa, Themistocles had assembled the servants who had worked with the fugitive.

“His name is Caius,” the steward said.

“That’s not very imaginative,” I said. “It’s the most common of Roman names.”

We questioned the servants but they all said the same thing, exactly what I suspected: They barely knew him. He did his work and kept to himself.

Just like all the thousands of humble, near-invisible people all around us.

“You let him get away?” Julia said witheringly.

“I didn’t let him get away,” I protested. “Hermes did.”

“The man ran like a gazelle,” Hermes said defensively. “I was catching up to him at first, but he vaulted the field walls without slowing down a bit. I had to take them slower. In the end I ran out of wind, and he didn’t.” We were back at the house. It was late afternoon.

Julia looked from one to the other of us as if at a pair of not-too-bright children. “And that doesn’t tell you something?”

“Enlighten us,” I said, nettled.

“It means he’s probably a highly trained athlete. Maybe even a professional. If so, he probably trains at a gymnasium. There are only a few in Rome. Check them all. Someone may know him.”

“I was about to suggest the same thing,” I said. She just snorted disgustedly. “All right, what else are we missing? Does the torture and death of Postumius suggest anything to you?”

She thought about that for a while. “Your friend Felix was right. It went on far too long just for information extraction. Whatever he knew, he must have spilled at the first threat. He had no sense of honor or loyalty, and what was anyone going to do to him that could be worse than what was coming? Someone was very, very displeased with Postumius.”

“You have a gift for understatement,” I commended, “but where does that leave us? Men like Postumius always have enemies. People resent being cheated, and sometimes they get carried away in their eagerness for revenge. It went far beyond mere punishment, but a touchy sense of honor causes some people to lose their sense of proportion.”

“That suggests patrician involvement,” Julia said. “Plebeians rarely have so extreme a sense of honor.”

“Back to Fulvia again,” Hermes said. “She may be shameless and scandalous, but you just can’t get more patrician.”

“That is true,” Julia concurred, “and she is just the sort to enjoy such a thing. She probably made use of a pair of hot pliers herself.”

“Let’s not make unwarranted assumptions,” I cautioned. “Just because you dislike Fulvia is no reason to place her in that room, wielding torture instruments with style and panache.”