his whole body was turning blue. I turned him on his side and reached into his mouth, thinking he might be choking, but that did no good either.
He kept struggling until the end, fighting to breathe. It was a horrible death to watch. At last the wheezing and clenching stopped. His limbs unfurled. The life went out of his staring eyes.
Antonia stood by, stunned and silent, her face like a petrified tragedy mask. 'Oh, no!' she whispered, dropping to her knees and embracing the body. She began to scream again and to sob wildly. Her agony was almost as hard to watch as Titus's death throes, and there seemed as little to be done about it.
'How in Hades did this happen?' said Lucius. 'What caused it?'
Eco and the foreman and I looked at each other dumbly.
'Her fault!' wailed Antonia.
'What?' said Lucius.
'Your cook! That horrible woman! It's her fault!'
Lucius looked around at the scattered remains of food. Crusts of bread, a little jar of honey, black olives, a wineskin. There was also a clay bottle, broken-that had been the hollow crack I had heard. 'What do you mean? Are you saying Davia poisoned him?'
Antonia's sobs caught in her throat. 'Yes, that's it. Yes! It was one of my own slaves who put the food in the basket, but she's the one who prepared the food. Davia! The witch poisoned him. She poisoned everything!'
'Oh, dear, but that means-' Lucius knelt. He gripped Antonia's arms and looked into her eyes. 'You might be poisoned as well! Antonia, do you feel any pain? Gordianus, what should we do for her?'
I looked at him blankly. I had no idea.
Antonia showed no symptoms. She was not poisoned, after all. But something had killed her husband, and in a most sudden and terrible fashion.
Her slaves soon came running. We left her grieving over the body and went back to the villa to confront Davia. Lucius led the way into the kitchen.
'Davia! Do you know what's happened?'
She looked at the floor and swallowed hard. 'They say… that one of your guests had died, Master.'
'Yes. What do you know about it?'
She looked shocked. 'I? Nothing, Master.'
'Nothing? They were eating food prepared by you when Titus took ill. Do you still say you know nothing about it?'
'Master, I don't know what you mean…'
'Davia,' I said, 'you must tell us what was going on between you and Titus Didius.'
She stammered and looked away.
'Davia! The man is dead. His wife accuses you. You're in great danger. If you're innocent, the truth could save you. Be brave! Now tell us what passed between you and Titus Didius.'
'Nothing! I swear it, by my mother's shade. Not that he didn't try, and keep trying. He approached me at the master's house in the city that night he first saw me. He tried to get me to go into an empty room with him. I wouldn't do it. He kept trying the same thing here. Following me, cornering me. Touching me. I never encouraged him! Yesterday, while you were all down at the hives, he came after me, pulling at my clothes, pinching me, kissing me. I just kept moving away. He seemed to like that, chasing me. When you all finally came back, I almost wept with relief.'
'He harassed you, then,' said Lucius sadly. 'Well, I'd believe that. My fault, I suppose; I should have told him to keep his hands off my property. But was it really so terrible that you had to poison him?'
'No! I never-'
'You'll have to torture her if you want the truth!' Antonia stood in the doorway. Her fists were clenched, her hair disheveled. She looked utterly distraught, like a vengeful harpy. 'Torture her, Lucius! That's what they do when a slave testifies in a court. It's your right-you're her master. It's your duty-you were Titus's host. I demand that you torture her until she confesses, and then put her to death!'
Davia turned as white as the moths that had flown from the hive. She fainted to the floor.
Antonia, mad with grief, retired to her room. Davia regained consciousness, but seemed to be in the grip of some brain-fever; she trembled wildly and would not speak.
'Gordianus, what am I to do?' Lucius paced back and forth in the foyer. 'I suppose I'll have to torture the girl if she won't confess. But I don't even know how to go about such a thing! None of my farm slaves would make a suitable torturer. I suppose I could consult one of my cousins…'
'Talk of torture is premature,' I said, wondering if Lucius would actually go through with such a thing. He was a gentle man in a cruel world; sometimes the world's expectations won out over his basic nature. He might surprise me. I didn't want to find out. 'I think we should have another look at the body, now that we've calmed down a bit.'
We returned to the stream. Titus lay as we had left him, naked except for his loincloth. Someone had closed his eyes.
'You know a lot about poisons, Gordianus,' said Lucius. 'What do you think?'
'There are many poisons and many reactions. I can't begin to guess what killed Titus. If we should find some store of poison in the kitchen, or if one of the other slaves observed Davia doing something to the food…'
Eco gestured to the scattered food, mimed the act of feeding a farm animal, then vividly enacted the animal's death-an unpleasant pantomime to watch, having just witnessed an actual death.
'Yes, we could verify the presence of poison in the food that way, at the waste of some poor beast. But if it was in the food we see here, why wasn't Antonia poisoned as well? Eco, bring me those pieces of the clay bottle. Do you remember hearing the sound of something breaking, at about the time we heard Titus cry out?'
Eco nodded and handed me the pieces of fired clay.
'What do you suppose was in this?' I said.
'Wine, I imagine. Or water,' said Lucius.
'But there's a wineskin over there. And the inside of this bottle appears to be as dry as the outside. I have a hunch, Lucius. Would you summon Ursus?'
'Ursus?But why?'
'I have a question for him.'
The beekeeper soon came lumbering down the hill. For such a big, bearish fellow, he was very squeamish in the presence of death. He stayed well away from the body and made a face every time he looked at it.
'I'm a city dweller, Ursus. I don't know very much about bees. I've never been stung by one. But I've heard that a bee sting can kill a man. Is that true, Ursus?'
He looked a bit embarrassed at the idea that his beloved bees could do such a thing. 'Well, yes, it can happen. But it's rare. Most people get stung and it goes away soon enough. But some people…'
'Have you ever seen anyone die of a bee sting, Ursus?'
'No.'
'But with all your lore, you must know something about it. How does it happen? How do they die?'
'It's their lungs that give out. They strangle to death. Can't breathe, turn blue…'
Lucius looked aghast. 'Do you think that's it, Gordianus? That he was stung by one of my bees?'
'Let's have a look. The sting would leave a mark, wouldn't it, Ursus?'
'Oh, yes, a red swelling. And more than that, you'd find the poisoned barb. It stays behind when the bee flies off, snagged in the flesh. Just a tiny thing, but not hard to find.'
We examined Titus's chest and limbs, rolled him over and examined his back. We combed through his hair and looked at his scalp.
'Nothing,' said Lucius.
'Nothing,' I admitted.
'What are the chances, anyway, that a bee happened to fly by-'
'The bottle, Eco. When did we hear it break? Before Titus cried out, or after?'
After, gestured Eco, rolling his fingers forward. He clapped twice. Immediately after.
'Yes, that's how I remember it, too. A bee, a cry, a broken bottle…' I pictured Antonia and Titus as I had last
