The King's Gambit (15 page)

He began to tell me of the events of the night before. He had been stomping through the streets at the head of his bucket-bearing men when a hysterical slave had run up to him and begged him to come at once. An important man had been killed, by violence.

"How was Paulus killed?" I asked.

"Strangled, sir, with a bowstring garrote, it looked like. Just like that freed gladiator a few days ago, now that I think about it."

"Say you so?" I commented. "What was the condition of his household?"

"Didn't check. I posted a guard at the door and ordered that no one was to leave; then I ran to your house. From there I came here. It hasn't been an hour since Paulus's slave stopped me."

I tried to think, a difficult process since I had not yet shaken off the effects of the previous night. What had Claudia slipped into the wine? I recalled the bitter undertaste now. It was just like a Claudian to adulterate one of the finest wines in existence. In an odd way, it was comforting to know that I had been drugged. It gave me an excuse for behaving like a demented satyr.

I returned to my father's side. "Father, I must conduct an investigation at once. May I borrow your lictors? I have to get there before the officials show up. The slaves will have to be confined until the murderer is identified. There will be a terrible scramble to lay hands on Paulus's wealth. I don't believe he had a son."

"Very well." Father gestured and two lictors joined us. "I shall be there myself sometime today, as Urban Praetor. What a tangled mess this will be. It always is when one of these rich freedmen dies. No proper family to lay claim to his property. Had he a wife?"

"I shall find out," I promised.

"Be off with you, then. Have a report ready for me when I arrive."

As we left Father's house, my clients trooping behind, I told one of the lictors, "Go to the ludus of Statilius Taurus and summon the physician Asklepiodes. Fetch him to the house of Sergius Paulus." The man marched calmly away. It is useless to demand that lictors run. They are too conscious of their own dignity.

At least now I had something to distract my mind from my ringing head and heaving stomach. The news would be all over the city soon. Murder was not uncommon in Rome, but the murder of prominent men is always a matter for scandal. There had been a time, not so many years before, when no one would have blinked at this.

During the proscriptions, Senators and
equites
had been slain in droves. Informers had been given a part of the seized property of a denounced traitor, so any rich man was at risk. But men have short memories and more recent years had been peaceful and prosperous. The murder of the richest freedman in Rome would occupy the conversation of idlers for days.

The vigile leaned against the doorpost of Paulus's house, half-asleep when we arrived. Blinking and yawning, he assured me that nobody had been past him since his captain had gone off in search of me. He stood aside and I passed through, along with my lictor and clients. I turned to Burrus, my old soldier.

"Check through every room. Find whether there are other exits or windows large enough for a man to crawl through." He nodded and strode purposefully off. A fat, distressed-looking man came rushing up, bowing and sweating.

"Sir, I am so glad you have come. This is terrible, terrible. My master, Sergius, has been murdered."

"So I've heard. "And you are...?"

"Postumus, the majordomo, sir. Please come--"

I cut him off with a wave of the hand. "Assemble all the house slaves at once in the peristylium," I ordered. "Has anyone left the house since the body was discovered?"

"Absolutely not, sir. And the household staff, are already gathered, if you will come with me."

"Excellent. Had Paulus a wife?"

"He had a slave-wife before he was emancipated, but she died before he was freed." Slaves, of course, cannot contract legal marriage, but only the hardest masters fail to recognize these slave liaisons.

"Any free children?"

"None, sir."

The vultures would be gathering with a vengeance, I thought. We entered the peristylium. Paulus's was a colonnaded courtyard without a pool but with a sundial in the center. The space was ordinary for a country house but extremely large for a town house. This was all to the good because there were at least two hundred slaves assembled there.

The tears were copious; the sobbing and shrieking would have done credit to a band of professional mourners. It might have been because Paulus had been a kind master, but more likely because they were terrified, and with good reason. They were trapped in a slave's worst nightmare. If it should happen that the master had been murdered by one of them, and should that slave not come forth to confess, or be exposed, every one of them would be crucified. It was one of our crudest and most detestable laws, but it stood, and should I not find the murderer, Cato (the repulsive Senator, not my excellent slave) would insist that it be put into effect. He probably would not bother to take into account that the victim had been a freedman rather than freeborn; a master was a master to Cato. He never passed up a chance to be as primitive and brutal as the ancestors he worshipped.

"Who last saw the master alive?" I said loudly enough for all to hear. Hesitantly, a very large, pudgy eunuch came forward.

"I am Pepi, sir," he said in a fluting voice. "I always sleep across my master's doorway, to protect his rest and to come at his call should he need help in the night."

"You were not much help to him this night. Someone got past you."

"Impossible!" he insisted, with a eunuch's childlike indignation. "I wake at the slightest sound. That is why my master chose me for this duty. That, and because I am strong and could easily get him out of his bed and to the chamberpot when he was in no condition to do so himself."

"Excellent," I said. "That makes you the prime suspect." The almost-man went terribly pale, already feeling the nails in his flesh. "Was there anything unusual last night when he went to bed?"

"N-nothing, master. He had drunk much wine, as on most nights. I undressed him, put him into his bed and covered him. He was snoring before I left the room and closed the door. I lay on my pallet and went to sleep Like every other night."

"Was there nothing unusual? Did nothing wake you? Think hard, man, if you fear the cross."

He thought, sweat coming forth on his pale brow. His eyes widened a bit as a thought came into his dull mind. "Yes, there was something. Once, in the very early morning hours, something caused me to wake. I thought that the master might have called me, but there had been no sound. Then I knew that the master was no longer snoring, and that was why I woke. That happens sometimes. I went back to sleep."

"It makes sense," I said. "Dead men seldom snore. How did you know what the hour was?"

"From my pallet I can see down the hall into the peristylium. There was a very faint light, the light of the hour before dawn."

I addressed the slaves. "All of you are to stay in the house, and stay calm. Should anyone try to escape, that will be a confession of complicity and you will be crucified. Be of good heart. I will have the murderer soon, and I do not believe it is one of you." I had no such assurance, but I could not afford to have mass panic here. They looked at me gratefully, and with hope, making me feel like a wretched fraud.

Burrus entered the peristylium. "No other doors but the street door, sir," he said, then chuckled. "And we always wonder why so many die in fires. All the windows are too small for any but a child to pass through, like in most town houses. Of course"--he jerked a thumb at the wide opening over the courtyard--"you could drop an elephant through this
compluvium."

I crooked a finger and the majordomo sprang to my side. "Have a ladder fetched," I said. "I want to examine that roof." He snapped his fingers and a slave went running.

"Now I want to see Sergius Paulus," I said. I followed the majordomo down a short hall to an open door. The eunuch's pallet still lay on the floor, shoved aside and forgotten. Before going inside, I swung the door back and forth. It opened outward, into the hall. Eunuch and pallet would have to be moved before anyone could get in. Also, it creaked loudly on unoiled hinges.

Inside, the room was surprisingly spare and unadorned for a man so rich. There was a small table and a low bed just large enough for his corpulent body. I have noted this about ex-slaves many times. A bedroom is no more than a place for exhausted sleep. Paulus's pleasures were those of the table and the bath.

He lay on the bed, his face contorted, a deep, livid line encircling his neck. Despite his expression, there were no signs of a struggle. He had gone to bed drunk and probably never woke up. The cord had not been left in place.

High on the wall opposite the door was a window which measured no more than a foot on each of its four sides, perhaps even a little less. Only a boy could have entered that way. I suspected that one had. I left and gave orders that no one was to enter.

I was standing on the ladder, examining the roof, when I heard someone call my name. I looked down and there stood my father with a knot of other officials.

"Why are you standing on a ladder like a housepainter when you should be attending to official business?" he demanded.

"I am attending to official business," I said. "I am examining this roof. It's in shocking condition. Decrepit tile and moss everywhere. Why be as rich as Paulus if you can't have a decent roof?"

"Approving of construction standards may be your duty when you are a quaestor. Not now."

I took a tile at the edge of the
compluvium
and shook it. Fragments of decayed tile dropped into the gutter that drained rain from the courtyard. There were no other fragments on the ground. I descended the ladder. "Whoever it was didn't come in over the roof. The moss and the tiles would show that."

"Why this philosophical interest in such details?" someone asked. I saw that it was my colleague Rutilius. Opimius was there as well.

"I want to find out who the murderer was."

"It's obvious," Opimius said. "That fat eunuch killed him. The window's too small to let in a housebreaker, and the slave slept across the door. Who had a better opportunity?"

I looked at him disgustedly. "Don't talk like an idiot."

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

"Even a blockhead like that would know better than to use a garrote," I said. "Or a dagger or any other weapon. You've seen how big he is. With Paulus in a drunken stupor, he'd just smother him with a pillow. The next morning it would look like he'd died naturally, the way fat men who drink too much often die. I'll bet many a master who was too free with the whip was helped along in such a fashion."

"Don't speak so!" said Rutilius, deeply shocked.

"Why not? We all live in fear of being murdered in our beds by our own slaves. Don't tell me you haven't thought of it. Why else do we crucify a whole houseful of them for one murder? Why else did Crassus crucify six thousand rebel slaves last year?"

They were all shocked and deeply offended. I was speaking of something far more sensitive than their wives' chastity. It was the secret fear we all live with and deny. On a better day, I would not have spoken so loosely, but this was definitely not one of my good days.

"If not the eunuch, then who?" my father said, dragging us back to the matter at hand.

"I don't know, but..." I realized that I was admitting uncertainty at the wrong time, to the wrong people. I sought to cover my gaffe. "I have strong, almost certain suspicions. However,"--I looked around and lowered my voice--"now is not the time or place to say anything, if you know what I mean." Of course they didn't, but they nodded sagely. All Romans love a conspiracy.

"Carry on, then," Father said. "But don't take too long at it." He turned and bellowed, "Secretary!" in the voice that had once struck terror into a veteran legion. An ink-fingered Greek came running. "Did Paulus leave a will?" Father demanded.

"Yes, Praetor. Copies are filed at the Archives and in the temples of Vesta and Saturn. The master always made out a new will in January of each year."

"A new one each year?" Father said. "Had a hard time making up his mind, did he? Well, a testament will simplify things greatly."

Rutilius snorted. "Forgive me, Praetor, but it will do no such thing. If he'd come from a great family, with many important relatives to uphold it, who would contest such a will? But when it was a mere freedman, and so much property at stake? The fighting will be vicious and will go on for a long time."

"You are probably right," Father said. "Perhaps we can get the reading delayed until after the new year and the next board of magistrates can handle it. I'll be in Hither Spain and out of all this." In those days, when the new praetors for the year entered office, the Senate decided what their propraetorian provinces should be when they left office. They would govern these provinces for a year, or perhaps two or three years. Even for an honest administrator, there were legitimate opportunities for growing very rich in such an office. Father had drawn Hither Spain as his province. It wasn't one of the real plums, but it wasn't bad at all.

Father indicated, in that way that powerful men have, that he would rather be alone, and Rutilius, Opimius and the others went off, pretending to be investigating.

"Son," said Decius Caecilius Metellus the Elder to Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, "perhaps you should come to Spain with me. Serve on my staff. This is not a bad time to be out of Rome. Besides, a little experience in provincial administration will be good for you. Best to see some work in the lower levels before the Senate drops a whole province on your shoulders."

The old man was, in his way, being solicitous. He wanted to spare me the consequences of my own folly, as long as it could be done under the aegis of duty.

"I'll consider it, Father," I said. "But first I have a murderer to catch, perhaps several."

"That's fine," he said. "But keep a sense of proportion. You have some murder victims in your district, but what are they? A manumitted gladiator, the lowest of scum; an obscure Greek-Asiatic importer, now a freedman. Admittedly a rich freedman, but an ex-slave nevertheless. Don't endanger your career, your future, your very life, for the likes of these."