I took a breath and walked to the center of the garden. Pompey heard the sound of gravel crunching under my feet and looked up. His plump, round face was made for laughter or casting sardonic glances; expressing grief, his features seemed all askew. I would scarcely have recognized him.
He loosened his embrace of the body, gazed at his kinsman's face for a moment, then looked back at me. "What happened, Gordianus? Who did this?"
"I thought you might have an answer to that question, Great One."
"Don't answer me in riddles, Finder!" Pompey released the body and got to his feet.
"You can see for yourself, Great One. He was strangled here in my garden. You see the garrote still around his throat. I was about to set out for your villa, to bring you the news myself—"
"Who did it?"
"No one in the household saw or heard anything. I left Numerius alone for a moment, to go into my study. And then ..."
Pompey clutched a fistful of air and shook his head. "He's the first, then. The first to die! How many more? Damn Caesar!" He glared at me. "Do you have no explanation for this, Finder? No explanation at all? How could it have happened, here in the middle of your house, without anyone knowing? Am I to believe Caesar can send down harpies from the sky to kill his enemies?"
I looked him straight in the eye. I swallowed hard. "Great One, you've brought armed men into my house."
"What?"
"Great One, I must ask you, first of all, to call off your bodyguards. There are no assassins lurking in my house—"
"How can you assure me of that, if you never saw the man who did this?"
"At least call your men out of my study. They have no reason to stand watch over my daughter and son-in-law. Please, Great One. A crime has occurred here, yes, but even so, I ask you to respect the sanctity of a citizen's house."
Pompey gave me such a look that for a long, dreadful moment I expected the worst. There were at least ten bodyguards in the garden. There might be more, elsewhere in the house. How long would it take them to ransack the place and kill everyone in it? Of course, they wouldn't destroy everything or kill everyone, only Davus and me. The things of value and the slaves would be confiscated. As for Bethesda and Diana ... I couldn't bear to follow the thought to its conclusion.
I looked into Pompey's eyes. In his youth he had been extraordinarily handsome— a second Alexander, people called him, just as brilliant and just as beautiful, a commander touched by the gods. With age he had lost his beauty, as his bland features receded amid the growing fleshiness of his face. Some said he had lost his brilliance as well; his lack of foresight and unwillingness to compromise had allowed the current crisis, with Caesar defying the Senate and marching on Rome while Pompey responded with indecision and uncertainty. Pompey was a man with his back against a wall, and at that moment he was in my house, furious with grief, accompanied by a large bodyguard of trained killers.
I looked at him steadily. I managed not to flinch. At last the moment passed. Pompey took a breath. So did I.
"You have nerve, Finder."
"I have rights, Great One. I'm a citizen. This is my home."
"And this is my kinsman." Pompey lowered his gaze, then stiffened his jaw and looked at the guard in the doorway to my study. "You, there! Call your fellows out of there. All of you, back into the garden."
"But Great One, there's a man in here with a dagger at his feet."
"And a very pretty girl in his arms," added a sniggering voice from inside.
"You idiots! Numerius wasn't killed with a dagger. That much is obvious. Come out of there and leave the Finder's family alone." Pompey let out a sigh, and in that moment it seemed to me that the worst possible outcome had been averted.
"Thank you, Great One."
He made a face, as if displeased at his own restraint. "You can show your gratitude by offering me a drink."
"Of course. Diana, find Mopsus. Have him bring wine." She looked at Davus, then at me, then went into the house. "You, too, Davus," I said. "Into the house."
"But father-in-law, don't you want me to stay and explain—"
"No," I said, grinding my teeth, "I want you to go with Diana. Look after Bethesda and Aulus."
"If he knows something, then he must stay!" snapped Pompey. He looked Davus up and down. "You look familiar. Oh, yes, it comes back to me now. You're the one I lent to Gordianus a couple of years ago, to guard his house while he was off down the Appian Way doing some work for me. Only you guarded his daughter a bit too well, as I recall. I'd have taken your hide off, and then your head. But Gordianus wanted you, and so I let him have you, and here you are. What do you know about this?"
I watched the color drain from Davus's face. Pompey spoke to him in a tone suitable for addressing a slave, and Davus responded subserviently out of ancient habit. He lowered his eyes. "It's as my father-in-law says, Great One. There was no scream, no cry. No one heard footsteps, or anything else. The assassin came and went in silence. The first I knew of it was when my father-in-law gave a yell and I came running."
Pompey looked at me. "How did you come to find him?"
"As I said, I left him alone here in the garden while I stepped into my study for a moment—"
"Only a moment?"
I shrugged and gazed down at the dead man.
"What was he doing here? Why did he come to visit you?" asked Pompey.
I raised an eyebrow. "I thought
you
might be able to answer that question, Great One. Did you not send him to me?"
"I sent him into the city to deliver some messages, yes. But not to you."
"Then why did you come here, if not to find him?"
Pompey scowled. "Where is that wine?"
The slave boys appeared, Androcles bearing cups and Mopsus a copper flask. Casting furtive wide-eyed glances at the corpse, they made a mess of pouring the wine. I joined Pompey in his first cup, but he drained his second cup alone, downing it without relish as if it were medicine. He wiped his mouth, handed his cup back to Androcles and dismissed the boys with a curt wave of his hand. They ran back into the house.
"If you must know," he said, "I came here straight from Cicero's house up the road. I sent Numerius to Cicero with a message earlier today. According to Cicero, Numerius's next stop was your house. I didn't expect to still find him here. I only thought that you might know where he'd gone next. What business did he have with you, Finder?"
I shook my head. "Whatever it was, he's silenced forever now."
"And how in Hades did anyone get in and out of this garden? Do you think a man could have come down from the roof and then retreated the same way? I don't see how it's possible. The roof is above any man's reach, and the columns are too recessed to be of any use for climbing onto the roof. Not even an African ape could have done it!"
"But two men might have," noted Davus. "One to boost the other, and then to be hoisted up in turn."
"Davus is right," I said. "Or one man alone could have done it, with a sufficient length of rope."
Pompey's scowl intensified. "But who? And how did they know to find him here?"
"I'm sure, Great One, if you make inquiries—"
"I've no time for that. I'm leaving Rome tonight."
"Leaving?"
"I'm heading south before dawn. So will anyone else with a shred of sense, or an iota of loyalty to the Senate. Is it possible that you haven't heard the latest reports? Do you never come out of that study of yours?"
"As seldom as possible these days."
He flashed me an angry look that held a glimmer of envy. "You do know that six days ago Caesar crossed the Rubicon River into Italy with his troops, and occupied Ariminum. Since then he's taken Pisaurum and Ancona, and sent Marc Antony to take Arretium. He moves like a whirlwind! Now there's word that both Antony and Caesar are marching on Rome, closing on us like a vise. The city is defenseless. The closest loyal legion is down in Capua. If rumors are true, Caesar could be here in a matter of days, perhaps even hours."
"Rumors, you say. Perhaps they're only that."
Pompey looked at me suspiciously. "What do you know about it, holed up here in your garden? You have a son with Caesar, don't you? That boy who used to be one of Crassus's slaves, and claims to have fought with Catilina. He sleeps in the same tent with Caesar, I'm told, and helps him write those pompous, self-serving memoirs. What sort of contact does he keep with you, Gordianus?"
"My son Meto is his own man, Great One."
"He's Caesar's man! And whose man are you, Finder?"
"It took many years and a great many Romans to conquer Gaul, Great One. Many a citizen has a relative who's served in Caesar's legions. That hardly makes us all partisans of Caesar. Look at Cicero— his brother Quintus is one of Caesar's officers, and his protégé Marcus Caelius has run off to join Caesar. Even so, no one would ever call Cicero a Caesarian." I refrained from pointing out that Pompey himself had been married to Caesar's daughter, and it was only after Julia's death that their differences became irreconcilable. "Great One, I served you loyally enough when you hired me to investigate the murder of Clodius, did I not?"
"Because I paid you, and because in that instance there was no choice to be made between Caesar and me. That's not loyalty! Loyalty comes from slaves and soldiers— from beatings, bloodshed, and battle. Those are the only ties that truly bind men together. 'The most honest man in Rome,' Cicero called you once. No wonder no one trusts you!"
Pompey turned from me in disgust and knelt beside his kinsman. He observed the body more closely than he had in his initial shock. "Here's his moneybag, with coins in it— the killer was no thief. And here's his dagger, still in its sheath. He didn't even have time to draw it. It must be as you said— the killer came silently and took him from behind. He never saw the face of the man who murdered him!"
In truth, Numerius had been without his dagger when he died; Davus had taken it from him, and replaced it after we searched the body. I could explain none of this to Pompey. He was right not to trust me.
Pompey touched the dead man's face with his fingertips. He gritted his teeth, fighting back his grief. "Someone must have followed him here when he left Cicero's house. Perhaps they followed him from the moment he left my villa this morning, waiting for the chance to strike. But who? Someone from Caesar's camp? Or one of my own men? If there's a traitor in my household ..."
He lifted his angry gaze to the statue of Minerva looming over us. The goddess of wisdom was portrayed in battle gear, ready for war, an upright spear in one hand and a shield in the other, with a crested helmet on her head. An owl perched on her shoulder. A snake coiled at her feet. She had been toppled and broken in two during the Clodian riots. I had spent a small fortune to have the bronze repaired and freshly painted. The colors were so lifelike that the virgin goddess seemed almost to breathe. She looked directly at us, and yet her gaze remained aloof, oblivious of the tragedy at her feet.
"You!" Pompey rose to his feet and shook his fist. "How could you allow such a thing to happen, right before you? Caesar claims Venus for an ancestor, but you should be on my side!"
There was a rustle among the bodyguards, made uneasy by their master's impiety.
"And you!" Pompey turned to me. "I charge you with finding the man who did this. Bring me his name. I'll see to justice."
I shook my head, averting my eyes from Pompey's wild gaze. "No, Great One. I can't."
"What do you mean? You've done such work before."
"Very little since I last worked for you, Great One. I have no stomach for it anymore. I made a promise to myself to retire from public life if I managed to reach sixty years. That was a year ago."
"You don't seem to understand, Finder. I'm not
asking
you to find Numerius's killer. I'm not
hiring
you. I'm ordering you!"
"By what authority?"
"By the authority vested in me by the Senate's Ultimate Decree!"
"But the law—"
"Don't quote the law to
me,
Finder! The Ultimate Decree empowers me to do whatever is necessary to preserve the state. The murder of my kinsman, acting as my agent, is a crime against the state. Discovering his killer is necessary to protect the state. The Ultimate Decree empowers me to enlist your assistance, even against your will!"
"Great One, I assure you, if I had the strength, and if my wits were as sharp as they once were—"
"If you need a helper to guide you about like blind Tiresias, call on your other son. He's here in Rome, isn't he?"
"I can't draw Eco into this," I said. "He has his own family to look after."
"As you wish. Work alone, then."
"But, Great One—"
"Say no more, Finder." He stared at me coldly, then turned his gaze to Davus. "You there! You still look to be a healthy fellow."
"Never sick a day, Great One," said Davus warily.
"And not a coward."
"Certainly not!"
"Good. Because one of the powers granted to me by the Ultimate Decree is to muster fresh troops. You, Davus, shall be my first recruit. Get your things together. You're leaving Rome with me tonight."
Davus's jaw dropped. Diana, who had been watching from the doorway, ran to his side.
"This isn't right, Great One," I said, as calmly as I could. "Davus is a citizen now. You can't coerce him into—"
"A citizen, yes, but also a freedman, and a freedman has obligations to his former master. I've pledged to raise a certain number of troops from among my own dependents. Davus shall be among them."
"But he's no longer of your household. You gave him to me, as payment for my services. I manumitted him."
"Ah, but he still has certain obligations to his original master."
"Not legal obligations."
"Yes, legal obligations! If you don't think so, I suggest you examine the contract you signed when I handed him over to you, notably the clause regarding previous servitude and contingent future obligations in case of martial emergency. It's a standard clause in every contract when I sell or release a slave; otherwise I might see my former slaves being used to fight against me, instead of for me. This is a martial emergency, and Davus must submit to military service, when and where and how I choose. And
you
would presume to quote the law to
me!
"