Steven Saylor - The Venus Throw

The inscription wasn't hard to find. In the fading light I read the chiseled letters with a feeling of odd detachment:

PTOLEMAIOS THEOS PHILOPATOR PHILADELPHOS NEOSDIONYSOS FRIEND AND ALLY OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE

When all else was said and done, King Ptolemy was the reason behind everything: Dio's journey to Rome and his gruesome death, the Egyptian machinations of Pompey and Clodius and the rest of the Roman Senate, the impending trial of Marcus Caelius. But as the philosophers point out, the single trunk of a tree, so clear to see at its base, becomes increasingly obscure the farther one proceeds into the branches.

I didn't have to look up to know that Clodia had finished her business in the temple and was silently descending the steps toward me. I smelled her perfume.

I stepped from Clodia's litter onto the street in front of my house just as the last of the day's light was retreating from the rooftops into the ether. The red and white striped litter departed. The stamping feet of Clodia's bodyguards left a haze of dust in their wake, which made the empty, twilit street even murkier. I rapped on my door, but Belbo was slow in opening it.

Some apprehension-a tap on the shoulder from Fortune, as they say-caused me to glance over my shoulder. Across the street I saw the figure of a man. He wore a toga, and from his pose he appeared to be standing still and watching me. I turned and rapped on the door again. I tried the latch, just in case the door might have been left unbarred. It had not. I looked over my shoulder again.

The figure had moved closer, into the middle of the street. In the dimness and dust I could make out nothing but a silhouette.

Where was Belbo when I needed him? No need to take along the hulking brute, Trygonion had told me when I left the house. You'll be in the litter. It's well guarded. Now I found myself alone on my own doorstep, without a bodyguard, without a weapon. I rapped on the door again, then turned to face the man. If I was to be stabbed, I'd prefer to look him in the eye rather than have my back turned. Of course, the man was probably just some passing stranger, I told myself, even as I went through the catalogue in my mind of all those who might want to put a stop to any further investigation into the murder of Dio — King Ptolemy, Pompey, Marcus Caelius, Clodius's enemy Milo, whose gang had just threatened Clodia in the Forum-men notorious for using whatever means were necessary to snuff out their opposition.

The figure drew nearer, taking halting steps. It was the way he walked that frightened me. If he knew me, why didn't he simply walk up to me, or call my name? If he was merely passing by, crossing the street on his way to some destination, why did he approach in such a hesitant fashion?

I suddenly remembered the stalker who had followed us up the Ramp on the previous night, the figure who had abruptly turned and fled back into the darkness.

"Citizen," I said, finding my voice. "Do I know you?"

A puff of wind caused the dust that hung in the air to swirl and disperse. Somewhere far above the earth a bit of cloud caught a dying ray of light and cast a faint glow into the gloomy street, and I caught a glimpse of the stranger's face. Surely not an assassin, I thought. Not with a face like that…

Still, my heart began to pound in my chest.

The door rattled. From inside I heard the sound of the bar being lifted. The door swung open and I quickly stepped back, colliding with something and turning to see Belbo smiling down at me sheepishly. "Sorry to take so long, Master. The mistress insisted that I come help her-"

"Never mind, Belbo. Do you know that man?"

"What man, Master?"

The figure had vanished, as quickly and surely as the dust in the air swirled and vanished at the least puff of wind. I peered up and down the street.

"Who was it, Master?"

"I don't know, Belbo. Perhaps nobody."

"Nobody?"

"A stranger, I mean. A man who just happened to be passing by. No one at all."

Even so, later that night I found myself remembering the young man's face-a dark, gaunt face with a scraggly beard and piercing eyes. It was a face marked by some terrible catastrophe, with the kind of look one sees on men of a fallen city, numb with despair except for eyes suffused with a hopeless longing too poignant to bear. The memory of it made me shiver. It was not a face I would care to see again.

I was in time for dinner. Bethesda received my compliments on her ragout of lamb with lentils with a barely perceptible nod and commented that Diana had done most of the cooking.

A courier from Clodia arrived some time later, bearing the silver she had promised. She must have counted out the coins herself. They smelled faintly of her perfume.

As we prepared for bed, Bethesda asked me how my work was going. Suspecting that Diana had reported everything she had overheard me discussing with Eco, I gave as perfunctory an answer as I could without telling an untruth.

"And what did that woman want with you this afternoon?" she said, unbelting her stola.

"She wanted to hear what I had to report." I said nothing about the alleged new poison plot or Clodia's scheme to send me to the Senian baths.

"That woman has sent you down the wrong path, you know."

"The wrong path?"

"Going after Marcus Caelius."

"But Bethesda, 'everybody knows' that Caelius is involved."

Bethesda let the stola fall and stepped out of it, standing nude for a moment. "You tease me by pretending that I would believe a thing simply because it's gossip. Why? Because I'm a woman? You're the one paying heed to gossip." She reached for her sleeping gown and pulled it on. I tried to imagine her in a gown made of transparent silk from Cos. Bethesda saw the look on my face and softened a bit. "You have no reason to suspect Caelius, only that woman's word for it. It would be a terrible thing for a young man to be punished for a crime he did not commit."

"And if he did commit the crime?"

She shook her head and began to pull out the various pins and clasps that held her hair up. She sat down in front of her mirror at the little table that held her boxes of cosmetics and unguents, and began to brush her hair. She seemed a little surprised but made no protest when I took the brush and began to do it for her. Nor did she protest when I put down the brush and ran my hands over her shoulders, then bent down to press my lips to her throat.

We made love that night with a heat that staved off the chill in the room. I tried very hard not to think of Clodia. I might have succeeded had it not been for her perfume. It had permeated my clothing and my skin. It had gotten onto my hands from touching her silver and thus onto Bethesda. The smell was faint, elusive, insidious. As soon as I would forget about it, lost in the tangle of Bethesda's hair, there it would be again, filling my head and conjuring up images beyond my control.

The next morning Eco came by with news of the slave girl Zotica. The previous afternoon, while I had traversed the city in Clodia's litter, he had made his way to the Street of the Scythemakers and located the slave dealer.

"Zotica is no longer in Rome," he said. "The dealer claims he tried to place her in a rich man's household, figuring he could fetch the highest price by returning her to the type of place she came from. But apparently the marks on her body were a little more apparent than Coponius let on. Nobody wanted her for a serving girl or a handmaiden. The man ended up selling her to another dealer who specializes in pleasure slaves."

"So she ended up in a brothel?"

"Maybe, but not in Rome. The second dealer hemmed and hawed and held out his hand for some coins and finally remembered that he had her sent with a consignment of slaves down to an establishment in Puteoli."