raged and rioted until a special commission was set up. The case was retired. All three Vestals were condemned.'
Licinia's face grew long. Her eyes glinted in the lamplight. 'Do you know the punishment, Gordianus? The lover is publicly scourged to death; a gruesome matter, but simple and quick. Not so with the Vestal. She is stripped of her diadem and linen mantle. She is whipped by the Pontifex Maximus. She is dressed like a corpse, laid in a closed litter and carried through the Forum attended by her weeping kindred, forced to live through the misery of her own funeral. She is carried to a place just inside the Colline Gate, where a small vault is prepared underground, containing a couch, a lamp, and a table with a little food. A common executioner guides her down the ladder into the cell, but he does not harm her. You see, her person is still sacred to Vesta; no man may kill her. The ladder is drawn up, the vault sealed, the ground leveled. It is left to the goddess to take the Vestal's life…'
'Buried alive!' Fabia whispered hoarsely. The girl remained in the shadows, her hands now nervously touching her lips.
'Yes, buried alive.' Licinia's voice was steady, but cold as death. After a long moment, she glanced down at her lap, where the scroll of Sappho lay crushed in her hand.
'I think it is time now to explain to Gordianus why he was called here.' She put aside the scroll and stood. 'An intruder entered this house, earlier tonight. More precisely, two intruders, and possibly a third. A man came to visit Fabia after dark, on her invitation, he claims-'
'Never!' said the girl.
Licinia silenced her with a withering look. 'He was discovered in her room. But worse than that-you shall see for yourself, Gordianus.'
She picked up the lamp and led us through a short passageway to another room. It was a simpler and more private chamber than the one in which she had greeted us. Ornamental curtains draped the walls, their color a rich, dark red that seemed to swallow the light of the brazier in one corner. There were only two pieces of furniture, a backless chair and a sleeping couch. The couch, I noticed, looked freshly made up, its pillows fluffed and straightened, its coverlets neatly spread. The man who sat in the chair looked up as we entered. Contrary to the prevailing fashion, he was not clean-shaven but wore a neat little beard. It seemed to me that he smiled, very faintly.
He appeared to be a few years younger than myself-about thirty-five, I guessed, close to Cicero's age. Unlike Cicero, he was quite remarkably attractive. Which is not to say that he was particularly handsome; if I conjure up his face in my mind's eye, I can only remark that his hair and beard were dark, his eyes a piercing blue, his features regular. But in his actual presence there was something indefinably appealing, and a contagious playfulness in his eyes that seemed to dance like sparkling points of flame.
'Lucius Sergius Catilina,' he said, standing and introducing himself.
The patrician clan of the Sergu went back to the days of Aeneas; there was no more respectable name in the Republic.
Catilina himself I knew by his reputation. Some called him a charmer, others a rogue. All agreed that he was clever, but some said too clever.
He gave me an odd half smile that suggested he was inwardly laughing at something-but at what? He cocked his head. 'Tell me, Gordianus: what do five of the people in this room have in common?'
Puzzled, I glanced at Rufus, who scowled.
'They are still breathing,' said Catalina, 'while the sixth… is not!' He stepped toward the curtain hung across the far wall and pulled it back to reveal another passageway. Upon the floor, contorted in a most unnatural way, lay the body of a man who was surely dead.
Rufus and Licinia looked sternly disapproving of Catilina's theatricality, while Fabia was close to tears, but none of them betrayed surprise. I drew in a breath, then knelt and studied the crumpled body for a long moment.
I drew back and sat in the chair, feeling slightly ill. The sight of a man with his throat cut is never pleasant.
'This is why you called me here, Licinia? This is the disaster Cicero spoke of?'
'A murder in the House of the Vestals,' she whispered, 'Unheard-of sacrilege!'
I fought back my queasiness. Rufus had produced a cup of wine, which he pressed into my hand. I gratefully drank it down.
'I think we had best begin at the beginning,' I said. 'What in Jupiter's name are you doing here, Catilina?'
He cleared his throat and swallowed; a smile flickered or his lips and vanished, as if it were only a nervous tick. 'Fabia summoned me; or at least that's what I thought.'
'How so?'
'I received this, earlier tonight.' He produced a scrap of folded parchment:
COME AT ONCE TO MY ROOM IN THE HOUSE OF THE VESTALS. IGNORE THE DANGER, I BEG YOU.
MY HONOR IS AT STAKE AND I DARE NOT CONFIDE IN ANYONE ELSE.
ONLY YOU CAN HELP ME. DESTROY THIS NOTE AFTER YOU HAVE READ IT.
FABIA
I pondered it for a while. 'Did you send this note, Fabia?'
'Never!'
'How was it delivered to you, Catilina?'
'A messenger came to my house on the Palatine, a hired boy from the streets.'
'Are you in the habit of receiving messages from Vestals?'
'Not at all.'
'Yet you believed this message to be genuine. Were you not surprised to receive such an intimate communication from a Vestal?'
He smiled indulgently. 'The Vestals live a chaste life, Gordianus, not a secluded one. It shouldn't surprise you that I know Fabia. We're both from old families. We've met at the theater, in the Forum, at private dinners. I have even, though rarely, and always in daylight and in the presence of chaperones, visited her here in the House of the Vestals; we share an interest in Greek poets and Arretine vases. Our behavior in public has always been above reproach. Yes, I was surprised to receive her message, but only because it was so alarming.'
'Yet you chose to do as it requested-to come here in the middle of the night, to flout the laws of men and gods?'
He laughed softly. The blackness of his beard made his smile all the more dazzling. 'Really, Gordianus, what better excuse to break those laws could a man ever hope for, than to come to the rescue of a Vestal in distress? Of course I came!' His face grew sober. 'I realize now that I probably did not come alone.'
'You were followed?'
'At the time, I wasn't sure; walking alone in Rome at night, one always tends to imagine lurkers in the shadows. But yes, I think I may have been followed.'
'By one man, or many?'
He shrugged.
'By this man?' I indicated the corpse.
Catilina shrugged again. 'I've never seen him before.'
'He's certainly dressed for stalking-a black cloak with a black hood to cover his head. Where is the weapon that killed him.'
'Did you not see it?' He pushed back the curtains again and indicated a dagger that lay in a pool of blood farther down the passage. I fetched a lamp and examined it.
'A very nasty-looking blade-as long as a man's hand and half as wide, so sharp that even through the blood the edge glitters. Your knife, Catilina?'
'Of course not! I didn't kill him.'
'Then who did?'
'If we knew that, you wouldn't be here!' He rolled his eyes and then smiled, as sweetly as a child. At that moment it was hard to imagine him slitting another man's throat.
