your knowledge. Treasonable business.'
Crassus was silent for a long moment. 'Yes.'
'And someone knows of this besides ourselves, because someone was trying to conceal the evidence by hiding the weapons and booty underwater, just as someone cleaned the blood from the statue that killed Lucius — the same person who must have pilfered the incriminating records. Isn't it far more likely that this person was responsible for Lucius's death, rather than two harmless slaves who suddenly decided to run off and join Spartacus?'
'Prove it!' said Crassus, turning his back to me.
'And if I can't?'
'You still have a day and a night in which to do your work.' 'What if I fail?'
'Justice will be done. Retribution will be swift and terrible. I announced my pledge at the funeral, and I intend to fulfil it.'
'But, Marcus Crassus, the death of ninety-nine innocent slaves, to no purpose-'
'Everything I do,' he said slowly, emphasizing each word, 'has a purpose.'
'Yes. I know.' I bowed my head in defeat. I tried to think of some final argument. Crassus walked to one of the windows and gazed out at the funeral guests who milled about in the courtyard.
'The little slave boy — Meto, you call him — is running about, announcing to the guests that the banquet is about to begin,' he said quietly. 'It's time to trade our black garments for white. You'll excuse me while I go to my room and change, Gordianus.'
'One last word, Marcus Crassus. If it comes to the crisis — if what you have determined comes to pass — I ask that you consider the honesty of the slave Apollonius. He might have kept his discovery of the silver a secret-'
'Why, when he's scheduled to die tomorrow? The silver is of no value to him.'
'Still, if you could see your way to pardon him, and perhaps the boy Meto-'
'Neither of these slaves has done anything of extraordinary merit.'
'But if you could show mercy-'
'Rome is in no mood for mercy. I think you will leave me now, Gordianus.' While I left the room he stood stock-still, his arms crossed, his shoulders stiff, staring through the window at nothing. Just before I stepped through the door, I saw him turn and gaze at the little pile of silver coins I had left on the table. His eye glimmered and I watched the comer of his mouth quiver and bend into what might have been a smile.
The atrium was once again crowded with guests, some still in black, some already changed into white for the banquet. I made my way through the crush, ascended the steps, and walked towards my room.
The little hallway was deserted and quiet. The door to my room was slightly ajar. As I drew close I heard strange noises from within. I paused, trying to make sense of them. It might have been the sound of a small animal in pain, or the nonsensical babbling of an idiot with his tongue cut out. My first thought was that Iaia had committed some further sorcery in my room, and I approached cautiously.
I looked through the narrow opening and saw Eco seated before the mirror, contorting his face and emitting a series of uncouth noises. He stopped, scrutinized himself in the mirror, and tried again.
He was trying to speak.
I drew back. I took a deep breath. I walked halfway up the hall, then banged my elbow against the wall, to make a noise so that he would hear. I walked back to the room.
I found Eco inside, no longer before the mirror but sitting stiffly on his bed. He looked up at me as I stepped inside and smiled crookedly, then frowned and quickly looked out of the window. I saw him swallow and reach up to touch his throat, as if it hurt.
'Did Crassus's guards come to take your place at the boat-house?' I said.
He nodded.
'Good. Look, here on my bed, our white garments for the banquet, neatly laid out for us. It should be a sumptuous feast.'
Eco nodded. He looked out the window again. His eyes were hot and shiny. He bit his lip, blinked, and drew in a shallow breath. Something glistened wetly on his cheek, but he quickly brushed it away.
XIX
The banquet was held in three large, connected rooms along the eastern side of the house, each with a view of the bay. The guests flowed in like a ride of white sea foam. The murmur of the crowd hummed in the high- ceilinged rooms like a faint ocean roar.
As his final duty, the Designator assigned the seating and saw that a slave showed each guest to his place. Crassus, resplendent in white and gold, held court in the northernmost room, where he was joined by Fabius, Mummius, Orata, and the more important businessmen and politicians from the various towns around the Cup. Gelina presided over the central room, with Metrobius at her side, surrounded by Iaia and Olympias and the more prominent female guests.
To the third room, the biggest and the farthest from the kitchens, belonged those of us who belonged nowhere else, the junior partners and second sons, the leftovers and hangers-on. I was amused to see Dionysius assigned to our company; he balked when the slave showed him to his couch, quietly demanded to see the Designator, and was then summarily sent back to his place across the room from Eco and me, stuck away in a corner, not even beside a window. In any normal circumstance the household's resident philosopher would have been seated close to the master or mistress. I suspected it was Crassus who had instructed the Designator to stick Dionysius away in a dark corner, as a deliberate snub. He truly despised the philosopher.
Since the time was as near to midday as evening, Dionysius elected to have his green potion before rather than after the meal. To assuage his dignity, he made quite a show of demanding it immediately and was unnecessarily rude to the young slave girl who ran to the kitchens to fetch it for him. A few moments later she returned with trembling hands and set the cup on the little table in front of him.
I looked around the room, at the various couches clustered about the little tables. I saw no one I knew. Eco was pensive and withdrawn and had no appetite. I was content to nibble at the delicacies placed before me and contemplate my course of action over the remaining hours.
From where I lay, I could see straight into the farther rooms. If I rose onto my elbow I could glimpse Crassus sipping his wine and conferring with Sergius Orata. It was Orata who had first told me that Lucius Licinius had come into unexplained wealth; did he know more than he had told me? Could he indeed have been the shadowy partner involved in Lucius's smuggling scheme? With his round, blandly self-satisfied face, he hardly looked capable of murder, but I have often found that rich men are capable of anything.
Marcus Mummius, reclining close to Crassus, looked nervous and unhappy — and why not, considering that all his pleas for the salvation of Apollonius had been rebuffed by Crassus? It struck me as unlikely that Mummius could have been Lucius's shadow partner, given the bad blood between them over the matter of Apollonius. Yet it occurred to me that Mummius could have ridden up from the camp at Lake Lucrinus and back again on the night of the murder. What if he had done so, to give himself a chance to approach Lucius again about buying the slave? If Lucius was half as stubborn as his cousin, he would have refused once more to sell the slave; could that have sent Mummius into a murderous rage? If so, then by killing Lucius, Mummius would have inadvertently set in motion the destruction of the very person he desired, the young Apollonius — and the only way to save the boy would be to admit his own guilt. What a pit of misery that would plunge him into!
My eye fell on Crassus's 'left arm', Faustus Fabius of the haughty jaw and the flaming hair. He had met Lucius Licinius on the same occasions as Mummius, and thus had had the opportunity and the connections to have become Lucius's shadow partner and to embark on what must have been a fabulously lucrative, if extraordinarily dangerous, enterprise. Mummius had told me that Fabius came from a patrician family of limited means, but of his character I knew very little; such men face the world wearing masks more rigid than the waxen masks of their dead ancestors. The Fabii had been present at the birth of the Republic; they had been among the first elected consuls, the first to wear the toga trimmed with purple and to sit in the ivory chair of state wrested from the kings. It seemed presumptuous even to suspect a man of such high birth of treachery and murder, but then, such traits must run in
