Saturnalia (20 page)

“Have you anything better to do?” she asked impatiently.

“Well, it is a holiday, and I had a rough night. I had planned to indulge in a little debauchery …”

She pushed off the railing with her hands and landed lightly on her dainty, highborn feet. “Come along, Decius, let’s go look for her.”

Julia’s sprightly energy depressed me. Undoubtedly, she had enjoyed a good night’s sleep. Perforce, I concluded that wandering around the city was as good a way as any to spend the day, and we certainly would not lack for distractions. So off we went, peering into booths and tents, pausing to take in some of the innumerable performances or allow a chain of dancing celebrants to wind its mindless way past us.

The fortune-teller’s establishments were everywhere. Instead of being concentrated in one area as on ordinary days, they were set up wherever they could find space. And there were far more of them than usual, because the practitioners from all the villages and towns for many miles around Rome had come to town for the holiday. They had come from as far as Luca to the north and Capua to the south.

It seemed as if most of the Italian peninsula had crammed itself into Rome that day. And there was the usual crowd of foreigners, come to the center of the world to gawk, everything from Syrians in long robes to check-trousered Gauls and Egyptians with their eyes outlined in kohl. Somehow, Rome had become a cosmopolitan city. I suppose you can’t be the capital of the world without a lot of aliens hanging about.

By early afternoon we had exhausted the possibilities of the Forum Romanum so we decided to try the Forum Boarium,
the cattle market. There the relative lack of monuments, platforms, podia, and the like made it easier to explore, as the many small merchants had established a sort of tent city, like a legionary camp, with an almost orderly grid of streets. There were fewer fortune-tellers and more people selling merchandise: ribbons, children’s toys, figurines, small oil lamps, and other things of trifling value to be passed along as gifts.

Julia acted as if she were in the great marketplace of Alexandria, exclaiming over every new display of tawdry trash as if she had just discovered the golden fleece hanging in a tree in Colchis. I think it was Colchis.

“Julia, I never knew you had this streak of vulgarity,” I said. “I approve. It makes you seem … well, you seem more Roman.”

“You do have a way with compliments.” She picked up a little terra-cotta group: two ladies gossiping with pet dogs in their laps.

I selected a lively little Thracian gladiator, poised to strike and painted in lifelike colors. He held a tiny bronze sword and his helmet sported a crest of real feathers.

“I like this one,” I proclaimed.

“You would, being not only vulgar and Roman, but male. Carry these.” She handed me her purchases and quickly added a half-dozen others. I thought she had forgotten her mission to locate Ascylta, but Julia had a rare ability to divide her attention. While she was trying to decide between a scarlet scarf and a purple one, she spotted a garish tent covered with floral designs.

“Let’s try that one,” she said, walking away and leaving me trying to juggle all her junk. I bought the red scarf in order to wrap them all up. I caught up with her at the entrance to the tent. “You stay out here,” she said. “If it’s the woman
we’re looking for, I want to speak with her alone for a while. I’ll call you when I need you.” She pushed the door covering aside and went in.

When Julia didn’t come out for several minutes, I decided that we had found our woman. I wasn’t used to dancing attendance in such a fashion and I fidgeted uncomfortably, wondering what to do. When I left Hermes this way, he usually sneaked off somewhere for a drink. I always upbraided him for this habit, but now it seemed like an excellent idea. I was looking around for a promising booth when Julia called to me to come inside.

The woman was neither old nor young. She wore a coarse woolen gown about the same shade of brown as her gray-shot hair. She sat amid the usual baskets of dried herbs and jars of unguents.

“Good day to you, sir,” she said with a thick Oscan accent.

“Decius, this is Ascylta,” Julia told me, although by that time I scarcely needed to be informed. “Ascylta is a wise woman. She is learned in the lore of vegetation and animals.”

“Ah, just the lady we have been looking for,” I said, unaware of how much Julia had told the woman.

“Yes, but you are not here for my herbs. You are the senator who is asking about Harmodia.”

“She guessed,” Julia said, smiling sheepishly. “But we’ve been having a nice talk.”

“You people don’t need to wear your fine clothes for us to know who you are,” Harmodia said. “The way you talk is enough. The highborn people send their slaves when they just want herbs for the household. They come personally only for poisons or abortions. No woman brings her man along when she wants to get rid of a child.”

“A wise woman indeed,” I said.

“You are not an official from the aedile’s office,” she said. “Why do you want to know about Harmodia?” To these market people the aediles were the totality of Roman officialdom.

“I think that she sold poison to someone, and I think that the buyer had her killed to silence her. I am looking into the death of a most important man, and I have been warned not to look into her death. My life has been threatened.”

She nodded gloomily. I studied her as closely as I could, trying to remember whether I had seen her out on the Campus Vaticanus. I tried to picture her without her clothes, her hair streaming wildly, dancing frantically to the music of pipe and drum. She did not look familiar, but there had been so many.

“It is Furia and the Marsi and the Etruscans who want you to stay away, is that not so?”

“It is,” I said. “Was Harmodia one of them? I know that she was from Marsian country, but was she a member of their … their cult?”

Her gaze sharpened. “You know about that, do you? Aye, she was one. Some say she was their leader, and now Furia has taken her place as high priestess.”

“Do you know whether Harmodia sold poisons?” I asked.

“They all do. The
strigae
, I mean, not honest
saga
like me. It isn’t such an uncommon trade. Usually, it is a wife who wants to rid herself of a husband who beats her or a son impatient for his inheritance. Sometimes it is just someone who is tired of life and wants a painless way to die. Everyone knows it is dangerous to sell to the highborn, to the people who talk like you two. That is what brings the aediles down upon us. But many are greedy. Harmodia was greedy.”

“How greedy?” Julia asked.

Ascylta seemed puzzled by the question. “Well, everyone knows that the highborn can afford to pay better than others. A seller will charge them ten, twenty, even a hundred times what they would demand from a peasant or a villager. To one who would inherit a great estate or be rid of a rich, old husband to marry a rich, young lover, the money is trifling.”

“I understand,” Julia said. “What I meant was, do you think Harmodia was greedy enough to be dissatisfied with even an exorbitant price for her wares? Might she have heard of the murder and demanded money for her continued silence?” Once again, my wisdom in bringing Julia along was vindicated. I had not thought of this.

“I cannot say, but I certainly would not put it past her. She was the one who dealt with the aediles, you know.” Her mouth twisted in sour distaste. “She was the one who passed along the fees to them. We were all assessed, and no small part of our monthly dues stuck to her fingers.”

“Shocking!” Julia muttered. In some ways she was remarkably naive.

“You have no idea whether the poison buyer was a man or a woman?” I asked her.

“I could not tell you who bought it nor when it was bought. But between the October Horse festival and the night she died, she was spending more freely than before. Her booth had new hangings and her clothes were all new. I heard she had bought a farm up near Fucinus.”

So far this wasn’t getting us anywhere. “Tell me this, Ascylta. Do you know of a poison that produces death in this way?” And I described the symptoms of Celer’s death as they had been described to me by Clodia. Following my recitation, Ascylta thought for a few minutes.

“There is a poison we call ‘the wife’s friend.’ It is a combination of herbs carefully blended, and it produces death as you describe, almost impossible to distinguish from a natural passing.”

“I would think it would be the most popular poison in the world,” I observed.

“It is not an easy one to make. It requires many ingredients and even I know only a few of them. Some of the ingredients are quite rare and costly. It is not easy to administer because it has a most unpleasant taste.”

“Does it work swiftly?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Very slowly. And it is cumulative. It must be given in small doses over a period of many months, in constantly increasing doses.”

“Why ‘the wife’s friend’?” I asked. “Why not ‘the heir’s friend’? I would think it was ideal for someone impatient to come into a legacy.”

She looked at me as if I were simple-minded. “Sons do most of the inheriting. How many men take food or drink daily from the hand of a son?”

“Would Harmodia have known how to mix this poison?” Julia asked.

“Oh, yes. It is a specialty of the Marsian
striga
…” she cut short, as if a sudden thought had struck her. “Now I think on it, twice last year a Greek-looking man came to my booth for some dried foxglove. It’s used in several medicines, but it’s also one of the ingredients of that poison. The reason I recall this man is that he came to my stall from Harmodia’s. Hers was beneath the next arch but one, and I usually sit outside mine so I saw where he came from.”

“And you think she might have been selling him that poison, but was out of foxglove those two times?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It could be. He just stuck in my mind because he didn’t look like our usual customers.”

“Why so you say that?” Julia asked her. “You’ve said he was Greek-looking. What was unusual about him?”

“Well, he was very tall and thin, and he wore very expensive clothes in the Greek fashion, three or four gold rings and expensive amulets. And in the front of his mouth, on the bottom, he had a couple of false teeth bound in with gold wire the way they only do in Egypt.”

We spoke a while longer, but the woman was able to remember nothing more of any use to us. We thanked her and gave her some money and got out of the cramped little tent.

“What do you think?” Julia asked. “Have we learned anything?”

“We now have a likely poison, if he was poisoned at all. As for the bad taste, Celer was in the habit of taking a cup of
pulsum
every morning. That stuff is so vile someone could mix bat dung in it and you’d never notice.”

“So suspicion still points at Clodia. What about the Greek-looking man?”

“Could be a coincidence. Harmodia may have sold that poison to a number of customers, and the foxglove was just one ingredient anyway. As Ascylta said, the ones buying poison usually come personally. Not many want to trust a job like that to a confederate. And if Harmodia was killed because she was extorting the buyer, well, that bothers me too.”

“Why?” We were wandering back toward the Forum with no particular aim in mind.

“Urgulus said the woman was nearly beheaded. It takes a strong man to do that with a knife. Somehow I feel that Clodia would have done something more discreet and tidy.”

“If she was covering her tracks, she’d deliberately want
to direct attention away from herself, wouldn’t she? This city is full of thugs who would do such a thing for a handful of coins. If half the stories about her are true, she might have offered him payment in kind.”

There was something wrong with what she was saying, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Most likely, I was distracted by my craving for something to eat and some wine to wash it down with.

“You are letting your dislike of her color your judgment.”

“I think you are trying to find her innocent when that is the most unlikely conclusion possible. So what now?”

“I must talk to a few people: the ex-tribune Furius, with whom Celer had so many colorful rows last year; and Ariston, the family physician who attended him at the time of his death. But I don’t think I’ll be able to find them today.”

When we reached the Forum, a man approached me. He was a dignified individual whom I recognized vaguely as a prominent lawyer and one of my father’s clients. He gave me the usual formal salutation.

“Decius, your father instructs you to attend the slave banquet in his house this evening. You may bring your own staff. He says there are important matters to discuss. He couldn’t send a slave to fetch you today so I’m the errand boy.”

“And a splendid job you’ve done, my friend. I thank you.
Io
Saturnalia.”

He walked off and I grimaced. “His house! I was hoping to have mine at home. Then I could get the disagreeable business over with early.”

“It’s the oldest tradition of the holiday,” Julia chided. “The rest of it is meaningless without the banquet.”

“It’s all pretty meaningless, if you ask me,” I groused.
“All this Golden Age posturing and fake leveling of classes. Who can take it seriously?”

“The gods, one presumes. Now quit whining. Your father probably has some important men to confer with you. This could be useful. I shall be attending at the banquet in the house of the
pontifex maximus
so I may be able to pick something up.”

She kissed me and bade me good-bye, and I stood pondering amid the monuments and the riotous crowd. This business had begun with great promise, and now I was awash in a sea of irrelevancies and meaningless complications, with a terrible feeling that I would probably never be able to find out what had happened. In such circumstances I did the only thing possible. I went to look for a drink. When all the other gods fail you, there is always Bacchus.

W
ITH HERMES, CATO, AND
C
ASSANDRA
, I walked through the streets to my father’s house. The slaves were in a good humor because they knew my father was able to set a far better table than I. I was less eager because my father had a lot of slaves. That, I decided, was why he had insisted that I come. He wanted me to help out.