Стивен Сейлор: The Throne of Caesar

“Even so, I’m pretty sure the Etruscans had a word—”

“Then I challenge you, Gordianus, to come up with that word by the last day of Martius—no, sooner, by the day you turn sixty-six. That’s on the twenty-third day of the month, yes?”

“Now you’re showing off, Tiro. But as for this word, I suspect it will come to me before you leave my house—and if you continue to vex me so, that may be sooner rather than later.” I said this with a smile, for I was actually quite glad to see him. I had always been fond of Tiro, if not of his erstwhile master—on whose behalf, almost surely, Tiro had come to see me. Lightning again flashed in my temples, causing me to wince. “This ‘cure’ seems not to be working as well as it did when I was younger—perhaps because my wits are not as sharp as they used to be.”

“Whose are?” asked Tiro with a sigh.

“Or perhaps I’m drinking more than I used to. Too many long winter nights at the Salacious Tavern spent in dubious company—to the dreaded displeasure of my wife and daughter. Ah, wait! I remember now—not that elusive Etruscan word, but the little game of mental gymnastics I played with you the first time we met, which not only cured my hangover but quite impressed you with my powers of deduction.”

“That’s right, Gordianus. You correctly deduced the exact reason I had come to see you.”

“And I can do the same thing today.”

Tiro folded his arms across his chest and gave me a challenging look. He was about to speak when he was interrupted by Diana, who stepped from the shadows of the portico into the sunlight.

“I can do likewise,” said my daughter.

Tiro looked a bit flustered as he stood to greet the newcomer. He cocked his head. “Now I’m the one who’s having that feeling—that eerie sensation we need a word for. Because on the morning we first met, Gordianus, surely this very same ravishing female appeared from nowhere and took my breath away. But how can that be? Truly, it’s as if I’ve stepped back in time.”

I smiled. “ That was Bethesda, who joined us that morning. This is her daughter—our daughter—Diana.”

Diana accepted Tiro’s compliment without comment. And why not? She was ravishing—breathtaking, in fact—just as her mother had been, with thick, shimmering black hair, bright eyes, and a shapely figure that even her matronly stola did little to conceal.

She raised an eyebrow and gave me a disapproving glance. “Did you answer the door yourself, Papa? You know we have a slave for that.”

“You sound like your mother, too!” I laughed. “But you were just saying that you could deduce the reason for Tiro’s visit. Do proceed.”

“Very well. First, who sent Tiro?” She peered at him so intently that he blushed. Tiro had always been shy around beautiful women. “Well, that’s easy. Marcus Tullius Cicero, of course.”

“Who says that anyone sent me?” objected Tiro. “I’m a free citizen.”

“Yes, you could have come to visit my father on your own initiative—but you never do, though he invariably enjoys your company. You contact him only when Cicero asks you to.”

Tiro blushed again. A red-faced youth is charming. A red-faced man nearing sixty looks rather alarming. But his laugh reassured me. “As a matter of fact, you’re right. I came here at Cicero’s behest.”

Diana nodded. “And why has Cicero sent you? Well, almost certainly it has something to do with the Dictator.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Tiro.

“Because anything and everything that happens nowadays has something to do with Julius Caesar.”

“You are correct,” conceded Tiro. “But you’ll have to be more specific if you want to impress me.”

“Or if you want to impress me, ” I added. Diana was always seeking to demonstrate to me her powers of ratiocination. This was part of her ongoing campaign to convince me that she should be allowed to carry on the family profession—my father and I had both been called ‘the Finder’ in our respective generations—to which my invariable response was that a twenty-five-year-old Roman matron with two children to raise, no matter how clever she might be, had no business sorting out clues and solving crimes and otherwise sticking her nose into dangerous people’s business. “Go on, daughter. Tell us, if you can, why Cicero sent Tiro to fetch me this morning.”

Diana shut her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her temples, elbows akimbo, as if channeling some mystic source of knowledge. “The first time you met my father was in the second year of Sulla’s dictatorship. You came to ask for the Finder’s assistance to help Cicero uncover the truth behind a shocking crime—an unholy crime. Vile. Unspeakable. The murder of a father by his own son. Parricide!”

Tiro made a scoffing sound, but in fact he looked a bit unnerved by Diana’s mystic pose. “Well, it’s no secret that the defense of Sextus Roscius was Cicero’s first major trial, remembered by everyone who was in Rome at the time. Obviously, your father has told you about his own role in the investigation—”

“No, Tiro, let her go on,” I said, captivated despite myself by Diana’s performance.

Her eyelids flickered and her voice dropped in pitch. “Now you come again to ask for my father’s help, in this, the fifth year of Caesar’s dictatorship. Again, it’s about a crime, but a crime that has yet to be committed. A crime even more shocking than the murder of Sextus Roscius—and even more unholy. Vile. Unspeakable. The murder of another father by his children—”

“No, no, no,” said Tiro, shaking his head a bit too insistently.

“Oh, yes!” declared Diana, her eyes still flickering. “For hasn’t the intended victim been named Father of the Fatherland—so that any Roman who dared to kill him would be a parricide? And hasn’t every senator taken a vow to protect this man’s life with his very own—so that any senator who raised a hand against him would be committing sacrilege?”

Tiro opened his mouth, dumbfounded.

“Isn’t this the reason you’ve come here today, Tiro?” said Diana, opening her eyes and staring into his. “You want the Finder to come to Cicero and reveal to him whatever he may know, or be able to discover, regarding the plot to murder the Dictator, the Father of the Fatherland—the conspiracy to assassinate Gaius Julius Caesar.”

II

Tiro looked from Diana to me and back again. “But how could either of you possibly…? Has someone been spying on Cicero and me? And what is this plot you speak of? What do you know about—”

Diana threw back her head and laughed, delighted by his reaction.

I clicked my tongue. “Really, daughter, it’s unkind of you to disconcert our guest.”

“Is there a plot against Caesar, or isn’t there?” said Tiro. His worldly, commanding presence fell away and I had a glimpse of him as I had first seen him all those many years ago, bright and eager but easily alarmed, easily impressed.

I sighed. “I’m afraid my daughter has seen her father pull such tricks on visitors too many times over the years, and she cannot resist doing so herself. No, Tiro, there is no plot to murder Caesar—at least none that I know of. And Diana certainly knows no more than I do. Or do you, Diana?”

“Of course I don’t, Papa. How could I possibly know more than you do about what’s going on out there in the big, bad world?” She batted her eyes and put on a blank expression. Many times over the years I have been made aware that women, despite the constraints of their sheltered existence, do in fact have ways of discovering things that remain unknown and mysterious even to the fathers and husbands who rule over them. I could never be sure exactly what Diana knew, or how she came to know it.