games.'
'And after the gladiators have fought their matches?' I said, suspecting what the answer would be.
'Every slave in this household will be publicly executed.'
'Can you imagine?' murmured Gelina. 'Even the old and the innocent; all of them will be killed. Have you ever heard of such a law?'
'Oh, yes,' I said, 'a very ancient and venerated law, handed down by our forefathers: if a slave kills his master, all the slaves in the household must die. Such harsh measures keep slaves in their place, and there are those who would argue that having seen another slave murder their master, even the meekest slave is contaminated by the knowledge and can never be trusted again. These days the application of the law is a matter of discretion. The slaying of a master by a slave is a rare atrocity, or was, before Spartacus. Faced with a choice of killing every slave in a household or punishing only the miscreants, most heirs would choose to preserve their property. Crassus has a great reputation for greed; why would he choose to sacrifice every slave on the estate?'
'He wants to make a point,' said Mummius.
'But it means the death of children and old women,' protested Gelina.
'Let me explain it so that you will understand, Gordianus.' Mummius looked like a glum commander addressing his troops before a dubious battle. 'Crassus has come to Campania and the Cup gathering support for his bid to be awarded the military command against Spartacus. The Senate's campaign has been one long disaster — Roman armies defeated, generals humiliated and sent home in disgrace, consuls forced out of office by public outrage, the state left leaderless. So much havoc, wrought by a ragtag army of escaped criminals and slaves! All of Italy quakes with fear and outrage.
'Crassus is a fine commander; he proved that under Sulla. With his wealth — and the defeat of Spartacus to his credit — he's well on his way to the consulship. While lesser men are fleeing from the job, Crassus sees the command as an opportunity. The Roman who stops Spartacus will be a hero. Crassus intends to be that man.'
'Because otherwise that man will be Pompey.'
Mummius made a face. 'Probably. Half the Senators in Rome have run off to their villas to try to save their own property, while the other half bite their nails and wait for Pompey to return from Spain, praying the state can survive that long. As if Pompey were another Alexander! A qualified commander is all that's needed to put an end to Spartacus. Crassus can do it in a matter of months if the Senate will only give him the nod. He can gather up the remnants of the surviving legions here in Italy, add to them his own private army raised largely from his clients here in the south, and make himself the Saviour of the Republic overnight.'
I looked out at the bay and Vesuvius beyond. 'I see. That's why the murder of Lucius Licinius is more than just a tragedy.'
'It's an incredible embarrassment, that's what it is!' said Mummius. 'To have slaves murdering and running free from one of his own households, even as he's asking the Senate to hand him a sword to punish Spartacus — in the Forum, they'll laugh until they weep. That's why he feels compelled to exact the sternest judgment possible, to fell back on tradition and ancient law, the harsher the better.'
'To turn an embarrassment into a political boon, you mean.'
'Exactly. What might have been a disaster could turn into just the sort of propaganda victory he needs. 'Crassus, soft on runaway slaves? Hardly! The man slew a whole household of them down in Baiae, men, women, and children, showed no mercy at all, made a public spectacle of it, a feast day — just the sort of man we can trust to take on Spartacus and his murderous rabble!' That's what people will say.'
'Yes. I see.'
'But Zeno and Alexandros are innocent,' said Gelina wearily.
'I know they are. Someone else must have murdered Lucius. None of the slaves should be punished, yet Crassus refuses to listen. Thank the gods for Marcus Mummius, who understands. Together we convinced Crassus to at least let me summon you from Rome. There was no other way to get you here in time, except to send the Fury; Crassus made a great show of his generosity in allowing me to use it. He offered to pay for your services as well, just to humour me. I can ask no more favours of him, no postponements. We have so little time. Only three days until the funeral games, and then-'
'How many slaves are there in all, not counting Zeno and Alexandros?' I asked.
'I lay awake last night counting them: ninety-nine. There were a hundred and one, counting Zeno and Alexandros.'
'So many, for a villa?'
'There are vineyards to the north and south,' she said vaguely, 'and of course the olive orchards, the stables, the boathouse…'
'Do the slaves know?' I asked.
Mummius looked at Gelina, who looked at me with her eyebrows raised high. 'Most of the slaves are being kept under guard in the annexe on the far side of the stables,' she said quietly. 'Crassus won't allow the field slaves to go out, and he's let me have only the essential slaves here in the house. They're in custody, they know that, but no one has told them the whole truth. Certainly you must not tell them. Who knows what might transpire if the slaves suspected
I nodded, but I saw no point in secrecy. Except for young Apollonius in the baths, I had hardly glimpsed the face of a single slave in the household, only a succession of bowed heads and averted eyes. Even if they had not been told, somehow they knew.
We took our leave of Gelina. The interview had exhausted her. As we left the semicircular room, I glanced back to see her silhouette reaching for the ewer to replenish her cup with wine.
Mummius led us back to the atrium and showed me where the letters SPARTA had been scrawled into the flagstones. Each letter was as tall as my finger. As Mummius had said, they appeared to have been hastily made, crudely scraped rather than chiselled. I had stepped right over them without noticing when Faustus Fabius had first shown us into the house. In the dim light of the hallway they were easily overlooked. How strange the hallway and atrium suddenly seemed, with the death masks of the ancestors staring from their niches, the piping faun prancing in his fountain, the dead man on his ivory bier, and the name of the most dreaded and despised man in all of Italy half-scrawled on the floor.
The light in the atrium was beginning to grow soft and hazy; it would soon be time to light the lamps, but there was still enough sunlight before dinner to ride out and see where the bloodied cloak had been found. Mummius summoned the boy Meto, who fetched the cloak and the slave who had found it, and we rode out past the pylons onto the northern road.
The cloak was as nondescript as Gelina had indicated, a dark, muddy-coloured garment neither tattered nor new. There was no decoration or embroidery to indicate whether it might be locally made or from far away, the cloak of a rich man or a poor one. The bloodstain covered a great deal of it, not just in one place but spattered and smeared all about. One corner appeared to have been cut away — to eradicate an identifying insignia or seal?
The slave had found it along a secluded, narrow section of road that clung to a steep cliff above the bay. Someone must have cast it from the cliffs edge, trying to throw it into the water below; the crumpled cloak had been caught on a scraggly tree that projected from the rocky hillside, several feet below the road. A man on foot or horseback could not have seen it without stepping to the edge of the cliff and peering over; the slave, mounted atop a high wagon, had barely glimpsed it on his way to market, and indeed had left it there until his return from Puteoli, when he took a closer look and realized that it might be important.
'The fool says that he wasn't going to bother getting it, because he could see it had blood on it,' said Mummius under his breath. 'He figured it was ruined and of no use to him; then it occurred to him that the blood might have come from his master.'
'Or from Zeno or Alexandros,' I said. 'Tell me, who else knows that this cloak was found?'
'Only the slave who found it, Gelina, and the boy, Meto. And now yourself, Eco, and I.'
'Good. I think, Marcus Mummius, that there may be some cause for hope.'
'Yes?' His eyes lit up. For a hardened military man who could treat his galley slaves so harshly, he seemed oddly eager to save the slaves of Gelina's household.
'I say this not because I have any solution, but because things as they stand are more convoluted than they should be. For instance, though it has not been found, it appears that the killer used a bludgeon of some sort to murder Lucius Licinius. Why, when a knife was at hand?'
