at me and wrinkling his brow. 'Thought you were retired, not even living in Rome anymore. Seems somebody told me you'd left it all for a farm in Sicily.'
'Etruria, actually. But that was a while ago. I've been back in Rome for several years now.'
'Still retired?'
'Yes and no. I take on simple cases now and then, just to keep myself busy. Rather like you writing your history, I imagine.'
From the flash in his squinting eyes, I saw that Lucceius took his role as historian more seriously than his self-deprecation indicated. 'So,' he said curtly, 'Cicero has sent you around to collect my statement. Afraid it's not ready.'
I stared at him blankly.
'Well, so much else to do,' he said. 'That is why you're here, isn't it? This business about young Marcus Caelius being brought to trial by those rascals claiming he tried to do in Dio?'
'Yes,' I said slowly. 'That is why I'm here.'
'Surprised me-well, surprised everybody, I imagine-when I heard that Cicero was going to handle the boy's defense. Thought those two had fallen out for good, but there you have it. Things get dicey and the naughty schoolboy goes running back to his tutor. Rather touching, really.'
'Yes, it is,' I said quietly. Was it really possible that Cicero had taken on Caelius's defense? The news was startling, but made perfect sense. Cicero had successfully defended Asicius, probably to please Pompey. Pompey would be pleased to see Caelius acquitted as well, and Cicero was the man to do it. As for the feud between Caelius and Cicero, the same pragmatism that can make friends into enemies in the blink of an eye can do the reverse as well. 'So your statement for Cicero isn't ready yet?' I said.
'No. Come back tomorrow. Actually, surprised he sent you to fetch it instead of that secretary of his, the one who picks over all the tiny details.'
'Tiro?'
'That's the one. Clever slave.'
'Yes, well, I suspect Tiro will be the one who comes to collect your statement eventually. But as long as I'm here, perhaps I could ask you a few questions.'
'Go on.'
'About Dio.'
He waved his hand. 'It will all be in the statement.'
'Still, perhaps it could save us all some time-you, me, Tiro, Cicero-if you could give me an idea of what exactly will be in the statement.'
'Just what I told Cicero. Dio was my houseguest for a while, and then moved on. As simple as that. All this nonsense about poisoning- 'Nasty rumors spread like olive oil, and leave a stain like red wine.' '
'But there was a death in this house, wasn't there? Dio's slave, his taster-'
'Worthless slave died of natural causes, and that's the end of it.' 'Then why did Dio move on to the house of Titus Coponius?' 'Because Dio was frightened by his own shadow. Saw a stick on
the ground, swore it was a snake.' Lucceius snorted. 'Dio was as safe here as a virgin in the House of the Galli. That's the beginning and end
of it.'
'And yet, Dio believed that someone in this house tried to poison
him.'
'Dio had no damned sense. Look what happened to him at Coponius's house, then tell me where he was safer!'
'I see your point. You were good friends, then, you and Dio?'
'Of course! What do you think, I'd ask an enemy to sleep under my roof? He'd sit here during the day, where you're sitting now, and we'd talk about Aristotle, or Alexandria, or Carthage in the days of Hannibal. Gave me some good ideas for my history.' Lucceius looked aside and bit his lip. 'Wasn't a bad fellow. Sorry to see him go. Of course he did have some nasty habits.' He smiled grimly. 'Picking the fruit before it's ripe and all that.'
'What do you mean?'
'Never mind. No point gossiping about the dead.' ' 'Picking the fruit…'?'
'Liked them young. One of those. Nothing wrong in that, except a man should keep his hands off what belongs to his host. I'll say no more.' From his face I could see that he meant it.
'You said that Dio's slave died of natural causes. What killed him?'
'How should I know?'
'But a death in the house — '
'The death of a slave, and another man's slave at that.' 'Surely someone noted the symptoms.'
'What do you think, I summon a fancy Greek physician every time a slave has a stomach ache? Slaves take ill every day, and sometimes they die.'
'Then you can't be sure that it wasn't poison. Dio thought so.'
'Dio thought lots of things. Had quite an imagination-made a better philosopher than historian.'
'Still, if someone in the household could tell me exactly how the slave died, what he complained of before the end-'
I was stopped by the look on Lucceius's face. He stared at me for a long moment. His bushy eyebrows gathered above his squinting eyes. 'Who sent you here?'
'I'd rather not say.'
'Wasn't Cicero, was it?'
'I come as a friend of Dio's.'
'Meaning that I wasn't? Get out.'
'My only interest is discovering the truth about Dio's death. If you were truly his friend-'
'Get out! Well, go on. Up! Out!' Lucius Lucceius picked up a stylus and waved it like a dagger, glowering at me as I stood and walked to the door. I left him bent over his scrolls, muttering angrily to himself.
The slave who had shown me in was waiting in the hallway to show me out, but before we reached the foyer a formidably large woman stepped into the hallway and blocked our path.
'Go on, Cleon,' she said to the slave. 'I'll show the visitor out myself.' From the tone of her voice she was clearly the mistress of the house, and from the slave's obsequious manner as he backed away I gathered she was not the sort of Roman matron who allowed her slaves much latitude.
Lucceius's wife was as ugly as her husband, though she looked nothing like him. Instead of bristling eyebrows she had only two lines painted above her eyes. Her hair might have been as white as his, had it not been dyed red with henna. She wore a voluminous green stola and a necklace of green glass with matching earrings. 'So, you're Gordianus the Finder,' she said abruptly, appraising me with a caustic gaze. 'I heard the slave announce you to my husband.'
'What else did you hear?' I said.
She appreciated my bluntness. 'Everything. You and I should talk.' I looked over my shoulder.
'Don't worry,' she said, 'no one eavesdrops on me in this house. They know better. Come this way.'
I followed her into another wing of the house. I might as well have entered another world. Where Lucceius's study had been an austere museum of war trophies and musty documents, his wife's quarters were flamboyantly decorated with intricately embroidered hangings and precious objects of metal and glass. One long wall was painted to show a spring garden in bloom, all pale greens and soft pinks and yellows.
'You deceived my husband,' she said wryly.
'He thought I came from Cicero. I didn't contradict him.'
'So you merely let him believe what he wanted to believe. Yes, that's the best way to handle Lucius. He wasn't intentionally lying to you, you know. He's convinced himself that nothing untoward took place in this house. Lucius has a hard time dealing with the truth. Like most men, most of the time,' she said under her breath. She walked about the room, picking things up and putting them down.
'Please, go on,' I said.
'Appearances matter more than facts to Lucius.
To have had a houseguest poisoned under his roof, or even a houseguest's slave, is thinkable to him. So it simply never happened, you see.
