The King's Gambit (14 page)

She seemed to find this absurdly funny as well, and she tossed the weapons into a corner before she came back into my arms. Our breathing grew ragged and our movements became more urgent. I felt intimately involved yet detached at the same time, and some of the things happening did not seem quite real. When I reached to the shoulder-clasps of her dress, my hands were as clumsy as if they were half-frozen, yet the dress fell away from her shoulders anyway. Another moment, I was dressed only in a loincloth, yet I had no memory of removing my tunic. Gaps began to appear in events, while other things had a clarity such as one ordinarily experiences only when taking part in a unique event, such as an initiation into one of the great Mysteries.

I remember Claudia standing before me naked in the lamplight. Like those of many highborn ladies of that time, her body had been plucked of every hair below the scalp and her skin smoothed by rubbing with pumice. She looked almost like a Greek statue of a goddess, yet I could see every individual pore in her flesh. Slowly she turned and she became my Artemis sculpted by Praxiteles.

Other things were not so clear. Sometime in the night, I felt Claudia's flesh with my palms, but realized that there were too many hands on me. I opened my eyes to see Chrysis lying with us in the welter of cushions, a smile of malignant sensuality on her foxlike features. By that time I was too far gone to protest anything. I had lost all rational faculties and became a being of pure sensation.

The night dissolved into a phantasmagoria of tangled limbs, sweaty cushions, guttering light from untrimmed lamps, bitter-tasting wine. I touched and tasted and thrust and I lost all ability to discern where my own body left off and another began. My world became a place of thighs and breasts, of mouths and tongues and fingers that stroked and penetrated in endless combinations. I would be buried in one woman with the other's thighs gripping the sides of my head and I could not tell which was which. There are libertines who esteem this sort of omnisexual activity to be the most gratifying possible, but I found this occasion not merely confusing but difficult to remember afterward. Since experiences one does not remember might as well not have happened, I have never made a regular practice of such entertainments.

I woke with a ringing head and that much-esteemed gray light of the Roman dawn streaming through the small, high windows onto my upturned face. With loins inert and stomach heaving, I struggled to my feet and fought to keep a precarious balance. My fair companions of the previous night were gone. Standing there, naked, sick and disgusted, I felt thoroughly used. But to what purpose?

I rummaged around the large room, finding my clothes in the oddest places. My weapons were still in the corner where Claudia had tossed them. I tucked them beneath my girdle and looked to see if I had forgotten anything. My memories of the night before were so unclear that I did not remember whether I had been in any of the other rooms, so I decided to explore them just in case.

One room was a tiny, dark kitchen. The stove looked as if it had never been used, although there was charcoal in the storage niche beneath it. Claudia probably had food brought in when she used the place. Next to the kitchen so as to share the same water pipes was a small bathroom, with a lion-footed bronze tub, also looking unused.

There were two small bedrooms, one for Claudia and one for Chrysis, I guessed, although neither contained any personal objects. The last room was a storeroom containing a disassembled litter. I closed the door and turned away, when something about the litter tickled my recently malfunctioning memory. I turned back and opened the door again.

The light was quite dim, since storerooms never have windows, and the windows of the other rooms of the apartment were very small, as is customary with windows opening onto the street. There is no real need to put out a welcome sign for housebreakers. I went back into the larger room and examined the smoky lamps until I found one with a wick still smoldering. With the point of my dagger I teased the twist of tow from its bath of perfumed oil, blowing on it gently until a tiny flame sprang into life. When the flame was well established I carried the lamp back into the storeroom.

The litter was like a thousand others in Rome: a light framework of olive wood with a woven leather bottom like the suspension of a bed. There were leather loops in the sides for the carrying-poles to pass through and spindly rods forming a frame from which to drape the hangings. It was the hangings that interested me. They had probably been wetted by rain on their last outing, because someone had spread them over drying-rods. I pulled a fold close to the lamp and studied it. It was colorfully embroidered with silk thread in a design of twining, flowering vines and stylized birds. This was the Parthian fashion, and I knew where I had seen such a palanquin before. It had been when I left the house of Sergius Paulus and was engaged in conversation by the priest of the little Temple of Mercury. A litter very like this one had left Paulus's house, bearing a veiled person.

I replaced the hanging and the lamp and left the house. Up the street, a barber was setting up his stool and basin, laying out his tools on a folding table. I rubbed a palm over my bristled face and decided it was time for a shave.

In my younger days, most men in public life made a point of being shaved by street barbers like any ordinary citizen. This morning, though, I had a better reason than usual for seeking out one of these humble businessmen. Barbers are, notoriously, the best-informed gossips in the city. Most of them disdain any such luxurious frippery as a shop, and carry out their trade right on the public thoroughfare from which point of vantage they shave half the citizenry while observing the other half.

"A shave, good sir?" the man asked as I staggered up to him. "Please be seated," he said, as grandly as if he were offering the Consul's place to an honored guest. I sat on the stool and braced myself for the ordeal to come. Along with early rising, old Romans professed to find great virtue in enduring the dull razors of the public barbers.

"Had a rough night, eh?" he said, winking and nudging my shoulder. "Shaved many a young gentleman after such a night, I have. You won't be the first, sir, never fear." He stropped his razor on a palm as horny as Milo's. "Now, unlike some, sir, I know what it's like being shaved with a hangover. Like having your skin stripped by the executioner, ain't it, sir?" He chuckled. "Well, rest assured that I do better than that. The secret's in mixing curdled ass's milk with your oil. Leaves your skin smooth as a baby's bottom." So saying, he began to anoint my face with this potion. Every barber had his secret recipe, and this one had an odd yet not unpleasant smell.

"Tell me," I said as he began his ministrations, "how long has that
insula
been there?" I pointed at the one where Claudia had her apartment. Now I could see that it was only four stories high, not large by the standards of the time.

"Why, that one was built only last year." He began to scrape at my beard. Whether it was the sharpness of his razor or the efficacy of his lotion, it was almost as smooth as being shaved by my father's
tonsores,
a Syrian slave of legendary skill. "The old place on that site burned, sir. It was a most fearsome fire and had the whole neighborhood in an uproar. Luckily the vigiles were nearby, though most of the time they're useless. We got the water pipes up out of the street and had the fire doused before it could spread. Building was a loss, though."

"Who built the new one, do you know?" I asked as he scraped his blade down my neck.

"Some freedman. One of the big, rich ones, so they say. What's his name? Let's see, now." He began to shave the back of my neck. "They say the bugger's almost as rich as Consul Crassus, and owns as much property in the city."

I didn't want to put ideas in the fellow's head, but I had to know whether my suspicion was right. "I think I know the one you mean. He has the same nomen as that old Consul, doesn't he? I mean the one who was Varro's colleague when Hannibal met the army at Cannae?"

The barber spat on the cobbles. "Curse the day. But aye, you're right. The fellow's name is Paulus. Sergius Paulus, that's it. Richest freedman in Rome, they say, and that's saying something. Owns half the city, including that
insula
there. Damn shame when freedmen are so rich and a common citizen has to work all day to make a living."

"With the legions, were you?" I asked absently. I knew the type.

"Fifteen years with General Sulla," he said proudly. "So what if we didn't get the land we were promised? They were good years. I can see you're no stranger to the Eagles, either. That's a fine scar you've got there, sir, if you don't mind my saying."

I rubbed the scar. The man had done a neat job of shaving around it. "Spain. With General Metellus. Not the big fights with Sertorius, but the mountain fighting with his Catalan guerrillas."

The barber whistled. "Rough fighting, that. We had some like it in Numidia. There, sir, how's that?" He held out a bronze mirror and I admired myself in reflection.

The man had done a very creditable job, considering the material he had been presented with.

"Splendid," I assured him. "Tell me, that
insula
--do you know anything about the people who live in it?"

The barber finally decided that I was a little peculiar in my interest in that building. "Well, sir..."

"I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, of the Commission of Twenty-Six," I told him. "There have been complaints of irregularities in the construction and leasing of that
insula,
and I would like to know what the neighboring citizens think of it."

"Oh. In that case, sir, we know little. This fellow Sergius Paulus has leased the ground floors to some grand people and the uppers to tradesmen and such. Pretty fair digs, I hear, but they're new. In a few years it'll be a slum like most."

"I daresay. Do you know anything about a lady who owns one of the ground-floor apartments? She sometimes comes and goes in a rich litter carried by Numidians."

The barber shrugged. "You must mean the one who's had the decorators in these last few months. Never seen her myself, but there's some that says she keeps late hours. Never heard of any Numidians, though. Some said she was carried by Egyptians. Others say it's black Nubians."

So Claudia was leasing her bearers rather than using family slaves. There were agencies in the city that did such leasing, but it would be futile to check with them. In all probability, she borrowed litter bearers from friends as well. I would learn little by determining her means of locomotion in any case. I could ask the slaves where they had taken her, but in all likelihood, they would not remember. Why should they? And, practically, what would be the use? Slaves could testify in court only under torture, and nobody believed them anyway.

"I thank you," I said, paying the man an
as.
He was surprised at the munificence of the payment. A quarter
as
would have been more like it.

"Right, sir. Anytime you need to know about this part of the city, just ask for Quatrus Probus the barber."

I assured him that I would always rely upon him and began to make my way home. In future years, the old soldier turned barber became one of my better informants, although he always acted out of a citizen's duty, never as a self-seeking informer.

My clients ignored me elaborately as I staggered into my house. "Not a word," I said to Cato as he rushed up to me. "Everyone, to the praetor's. We are late."

We trotted off to my father's house. Old Cut-Nose himself called me aside as we arrived. "Where have you been?" he hissed. It was unusual to see him so agitated.

"I was out behaving like the worst degenerate," I told him.

"That I do not doubt. Well, the night was not uneventful, however you may have spent it."

"Oh?" I said. "How so?"

"There was a murder last night, and in your district!"

I felt a distinct chill, of the kind I used to feel when, as a boy, I realized that it was time to present my lessons to my Latin master, only to realize that I was unprepared.

"Bad enough that you were out carousing with your friends," he continued, "but you were not even at home to receive the report of the vigiles."

"And what of import did they have to communicate this morning?" I asked impatiently. "There's little enough most mornings."

"Just that one of the richest men in Rome has been murdered," my father said. The hairs upon my newly shaven nape began to stand. "Lowborn though he was, his murder will be a great nuisance."

"And his name?" I asked, already half-knowing.

"Sergius Paulus, richest freedman of the generation. You've no idea how difficult the scum's demise has made my job."

"And how, Father," I said through gritted teeth, "has this man's death made your task even more complicated?"

"It's Herculaneum," the old man groused. "That was his home town. Like so many of these freedmen, he made up for his humble early years by being a patron to his home town. You know how they do it... a great, ostentatious amphitheater erected to the memory of his putative ancestors, a theater, a Temple of Juno and so forth. Now all of these local magistrates will be flocking to my court, demanding to know how these projects are to be finished, now that the unfortunate Sergius Paulus is dead."

"Speaking of that unfortunate man," I said, "how did he meet his end?"

Father's eyebrows went up. "How should I know? You're the one who was not home to receive the vigile's report. Go ask the captain. He's here someplace."

I hurried off to push my way among Father's clients in search of the captain of the vigiles of my own ward. I found him sleepily downing some leftover cakes along with some elderly wine, heavily watered. I grasped his arm and whirled him to face me.

"What happened?" I demanded.

"Well, sir, you weren't home and so I came here to the home of the praetor your father, just as you said for me to do, should you not be able to--"

"Splendid!" I all but shouted, drawing some strange looks from Father's other clients. "You've remembered your duty admirably. Now, what happened last night?"