possible menace. Looking through Hieronymus's notes on their single meeting, I saw references to the Gaul's appearance and state of mind, but the most important question was not addressed: Had Vercingetorix been allowed any contact at all with friends and family? If he had been kept in complete seclusion, as I suspected, then he could not be plotting against Caesar, nor have any knowledge of a plot. On the other hand, even during the most controlled visits from the outside he might have exchanged information in code or might simply have given inspiration to his visitors by a show of fortitude. Caesar had done his best to undermine any remaining Gallic resistance, partly by rewarding those who cooperated, but there must be many Gauls who hated him fiercely and wished him dead.
Hieronymus had not remarked on the question of outside contacts with Vercingetorix, perhaps because Calpurnia already had that information. Mostly he ruminated on the special attributes he possessed for winning the captive's trust:
The two of us have something in common, after all. As the Scapegoat in Massilia, impending doom hung over me every day, every hour. I tasted the torment that V. faces as his final day draws near. Because I escaped the Fates, he may deduce that I received special dispensation from the gods. For a man in his circumstances, it will be natural to draw close to me, hoping that some of that favor might rub off on him.
'Hieronymus, Hieronymus!' I whispered, shaking my head. 'You cheated the Fates for a time, but no man escapes them forever. The doomed Gaul still lives, while you lie on a bier in my vestibule. Did he have anything to do with your death?'
'Papa?'
Diana stepped into the garden. The sunlight sparkled and glimmered upon her dark hair. I was struck anew by her beauty-inherited entirely from her mother-but her face was grave.
'What is it, daughter?'
'There's a visitor who's come to pay respects to Hieronymus.'
'So soon?' Word of his death had already begun to spread, then, faster than I expected. The official entry had been registered by the undertakers, of course, and there are gossip vultures who follow those lists daily. Or had someone in Calpurnia's household spread the news? 'Who is it?' I asked.
'Fulvia. She says she'd like to speak to you.'
'Of course. Would you show her to the garden yourself, Diana? Have the boys bring refreshment.'
My association with Fulvia went back many years. It was safe to say that she was the most ambitious woman in Rome. But what had she gained by her ambitions except a widow's garments? First she married the rabble-rouser Clodius, whose mobs terrorized the city; but when Clodius was murdered on the Appian Way, Fulvia, as a woman, could do nothing with the tremendous political power her husband had harnessed. Then she married Curio, one of Caesar's most promising young lieutenants. When the civil war began, Curio captured Sicily and pressed on to Africa-where King Juba of Numidia made Fulvia a widow again and took Curio's head for a trophy. When I last saw her, before my departure for Alexandria, she was still beautiful, but bitter and brooding, lacking the one thing a woman in Rome needed to exercise power: an equally ambitious husband. In Alexandria, a woman like Cleopatra may exercise power alone, but Romans are not Egyptians. We may revert to having a king, but we have never submitted to the rule of a queen.
So far as I had seen, Fulvia did not figure in any of Hieronymus's reports to Calpurnia. Her ambitions thwarted, she had become irrelevant. But if Hieronymus had not visited her, why was she coming to pay her respects? Even as I recalled Hieronymus's reference to a threat 'from a direction we did not anticipate,' Fulvia stepped into my garden.
Appropriately for such a visit, she was dressed in a dark stola, with a black mantle over her head. But she had been similarly dressed when I last saw her, in mourning for Curio. Perhaps she had never put off her widow's garments. She was now in her late thirties; her face was beginning to show the strain and suffering she had endured over the years, but the fire in her eyes had not gone out.
Fulvia spoke first, as if she were the hostess and I the guest. That was like her, to take the initiative. 'It's good to see you, Gordianus, even if the occasion is a sad one. I had heard-'
'Yes, yes, I know-that I was dead.'
She smiled faintly and nodded.
'But you must have known that wasn't the truth, Fulvia. Surely you knew the moment I arrived back in Rome, from your famous network of all-seeing, all-hearing spies. I seem to recall, at our last meeting, that you boasted to me that nothing of importance could occur in Rome without your knowledge.'
'Perhaps your return to Rome was not of sufficient importance.'
I winced. Was this sarcasm? Her expression indicated that she was simply stating a fact.
'You came here to pay respects to Hieronymus?'
'Yes.'
'Did you know him well?'
She hesitated an instant too long, and chose not to answer.
'You didn't know Hieronymus at all, did you, Fulvia?'
She hesitated again. 'I never met him. I never spoke to him.'
'But you knew of Hieronymus-who he was, where he went, what he was up to?'
'Perhaps.'
'And somehow you knew about his death, ahead of nearly everyone in Rome, and of the presence of his body in this house. How could that be? I wonder. And why should you care enough about this stranger Hieronymus to come pay your respects?'
She drew back her shoulders and stood rigid for a moment, then released her tension with a short laugh. 'It's a good thing I have nothing to hide from you, Gordianus. With only two eyes and two ears, you perceive all. What a gift you possess! Very well: I know who Hieronymus was, because I have men who watch the House of the Beaks and report back to me on everyone who comes and goes-including your old friend, the so-called Scapegoat.'
'And your men were watching this morning, weren't they? They saw me arrive, with Cytheris, and at least one of them tracked me when I left. I knew someone was following me! The fellow must be very good. Try as I might, I couldn't trick him into revealing himself.'
'That's quite a compliment, coming from Gordianus the Finder. He'll be flattered.'
'And when your spy saw the cypress wreath on my door, he knew there must be a dead body in my vestibule.'
'The death of Hieronymus is a matter of public record now. My man had merely to check the registry.'
'And that gave you the pretext for this visit.'
'Yes. But I see now that I needn't have bothered with a pretext. I should simply have come to you… as a friend.'
This was exaggerating our relationship, but I let it pass. 'And as a friend, what would you ask of me, Fulvia?'
'Why did you visit Antony's house today? Who's employing you to spy on him?'
My response was equally blunt. 'Do your men merely watch the comings and goings at the House of the Beaks, or does someone follow Cytheris wherever she goes?'
Fulvia did not answer.
'Because, if one of your men was following Cytheris, he could tell you that she met me quite by chance outside the Temple of Tellus and invited me on the spot to come home with her.'
'I don't believe it. If you met Cytheris in the street, it didn't happen by chance but because you wanted it to happen. You were at Antony's house today because you meant to be there, Gordianus. And that would happen only because someone has hired you to investigate Antony. Either that or you're acting entirely on your own-in which case you must suspect that Antony had something to do with your friend's death.'
'Couldn't it simply be that I wished to inform Antony and Cytheris of Hieronymus's demise, knowing that he had been a guest in their home in recent months?'
She wrinkled her brow. 'Perhaps.' Her shoulders slumped. She was suddenly tired of sparring with me. I realized she was standing in the hot sunlight.
'Please sit, Fulvia, here beside me in the shade. There should be some wine on its way. I wonder where those useless boys have got to…'
As if they had been lurking out of sight, waiting to be prompted, Mopsus and Androcles appeared at once,
