Steven Saylor - The Venus Throw

"The subject is distasteful to me," said Coponius. "Indeed, this whole conversation has begun to tire me. I should think that you've already found out more than you need to know."

"More than I intended to, anyway."

"Then perhaps you should be going. Here, I'll summon a slave to show you out." He clapped his hands.

The slave who came running was Philo. Coponius didn't notice. Having dismissed me, his mood abruptly darkened. He didn't even bid me farewell as he walked to the window and gazed out at the sunny courtyard, idly fingering the newly broken latch with one hand.

In the foyer I put my hand on Philo's shoulder and drew him aside. "The slave girl we were talking about-what's her name?"

"Zotica. But she's not here anymore."

"I know. Your master sold her to a dealer. You wouldn't know which dealer, would you?"

The slave hesitated, scrutinizing me. He peered up the hallway and bit his lip. "The master sold her to a man down on the street of the Scythemakers," he finally said. "I don't know his name."

I nodded. "Let me make sure I understand: when you broke into his room and found him dead, Dio was alone. Zotica wasn't with him."

"That's right."

"What about earlier that night?"

He looked at me and then peered up the hallway again. "Oh, all right, why not tell you? She's gone now, anyway, the poor child. Yes, Zotica was with Dio earlier that night. He came in wearing that ridiculous outfit, dressed up in a stola, if you can believe it, and in a foul mood, even fouler than usual. He snapped his fingers at Zotica and told her to come tend to him in his room. 'To help him take off his makeup,' quipped one of the other serving girls. 'No, just to help him take off!" said one of the others. They were always mean to Zotica because she was the youngest, and the prettiest, but I think they were also glad that Dio had settled on using her instead of them."

"So Dio went to his room and took the girl with him."

"Yes, but later he must have sent her away."

"Why do you say that?"

"The rest of the household had gone to bed. I was standing watch at the front door. I heard something in the hallway and went to have a look. It was Zotica walking up the hall, away from Dio's room. She was naked, clutching her gown and hiding her face in her hands, sobbing."

"Clutching her gown? Why wasn't she wearing it?"

"Why do you think? I figured the old man had ripped it off of her and torn it too badly to wear. I asked her what was wrong, but she just shook her head and ran toward the slave quarters. I figured he'd finished with her early, and been even rougher than usual."

"How long was this before the noise you heard later, when the assassins came?"

"Oh, quite a while before."

"But when you heard those noises and went to investigate, you told me you thought they might have been the sounds of Dio and Zotica… "

He shrugged. "I thought she might have slipped back into his room. But she hadn't. When we were breaking down the door to Dio's room, Zotica was off in the slave quarters with the other girls. There's no question about that. She woke some of the slaves with her weeping when she came in, then kept them awake with her sobbing, even when they threatened to beat her. There's no doubt that she was with the other slaves when Dio was stabbed."

"Still, I should dearly like to have a talk with her. Tell me, when you broke into the room, what exactly did you see?"

Philo was thoughtful. "Chair and tables overturned. Window shutters open. Dio on the couch, dead."

"How did you know he was dead?"

"The look on his face!" Philo turned pale, remembering. "Such a look-his eyes and mouth wide open with a look of pure horror, as if he'd seen the face of Cerberus himself."

"Pure horror-and yet you never heard him cry out?"

"Never."

"But to have such a look on his face, he must have known he was under attack, he must have felt the blows. Why did he not scream?" "I don't know. I only know I never heard him." "Did you see the wounds?"

"Very clearly. I helped undress him later, when the men from the necropolis came to take him away."

"How many times was he stabbed?"

"Six or seven times, I think. Maybe more. All in the chest, close together."

"How close?"

He held up his palms side by side. "Two hands could have covered the wounds."

"But surely he thrashed about. A frightened man startled from sleep, horrified. He's stabbed the first time-surely he cries out. Surely he thrashes and twists to avoid the next blow."

"Perhaps his arms were held down and his mouth was covered."

"How many men would that take?"

"The room was a mess. Perhaps there was a whole gang of them milling around in there."

"Perhaps. I suppose there was blood everywhere, on the walls and carpet?"

Philo wrinkled his brow. "Not really."

"And the sleeping tunic he wore-that must have been soaked with blood."

"Around the wounds, yes."

"But not-"

"Philo! I thought you were showing Gordianus to the door." Coponius appeared at the far end of the hall. He crossed his arms. "Yes, Master!"

"There was something I forgot to ask him," I said. "Just a small detail-"

"Farewell, Gordianus."

I took a deep breath. "Farewell, Titus Coponius."

Belbo was waiting for me outside the front door, sitting in a patch of warm sunshine. Together we took a silent walk through the streets of the Palatine, breathing in the smells of midday cooking, listening to the noises that echoed up from the Forum. I walked merely to walk, with no particular goal. I needed to think.

I was beginning to discover a side to Dio that I had never guessed at. This disturbed me. I had also begun to piece together the sequence of his final days and hours. The gory drama of his death seemed forthright enough; it only remained to determine who had broken into his room that fateful night. Yet I could not put aside a nagging feeling that some-thing was very, very wrong.

The girl is important.

I'm not sure how, but I can't help thinking so." "What girl?" said Eco. "The slave girl, Zotica.

The one Dio was…"

"Important?" said Eco. "But how? If she'd been in the room when the killers broke in, she'd be a witness, though I doubt they would have left her alive. Unless of course she was in on their plan, in which case they'd have had no need to break in the shutters-she'd have let them in.

But then they'd have broken the shutters and killed her anyway, to keep her from talking… but all this takes away from what we know, which is that the girl was not in the room when Dio was killed." "Still…"

I had finally tired of walking and thinking and had gone home for something to eat, to find that Eco and his family had dropped by. While the women and children visited in the garden at the heart of the house, Eco and I sat in the little atrium just off the foyer, basking in a narrow shaft of warm sunlight. I told him all I had learned that morning from my visits to Lucceius and Coponius.

"It's too bad that Cicero's entered the picture," said Eco. He shook his head. "Imagine, Cicero taking on Marcus Caelius's defense, after the bad blood between them!"

"There's a lot at stake," I said. "The charges are serious-serious enough to send even a brash fellow like Caelius running back to his old teacher. I'm sure Cicero made him promise to be a good boy from now on and always support the status quo. It must have been quite a coup for Cicero, bringing the errant sheep back into the fold."

"And, provided Cicero gets him off the hook, Caelius will get a chance to betray his old mentor all over again," observed Eco.

I laughed. "Exactly. I suppose the two of them deserve each other."

"Still, too bad it's Cicero for the defense. Even if you do find compelling evidence against Caelius — "