Lucius will never, ever admit otherwise.'
'But such a thing did happen?'
She stepped to a small table covered with a number of identical clay figurines. They were about the size of a child's fist and brightly painted. She picked one of them up and idly turned it over in her hand. 'Who sent you here asking questions?'
'As I told your husband, a friend of Dio's.'
She snorted.
'Never mind. I can guess who sent you.'
'Can you?'
'Clodia. Am I right? Don't bother to answer. I can read your face as easily as I can read Lucius's.'
'How could you possibly guess who hired me?'
She shrugged and twirled the little clay figurine between her fore-finger and thumb. It was a votive statue of Attis, the eunuch consort of the Great Mother, Cybele, standing with his hands on his plump belly and wearing his red Phrygian cap with its rounded, forward-sloping peak. 'We have ways of sharing what we know.'
'We'?'
'We women.'
I felt a prickling sensation in my spine, a sense of having had the same conversation before-with Bethesda, when she told me that Clodia and Caelius were no longer lovers, and I asked her how she could possibly know such a thing: We have ways of sharing what we know. For an instant I had a glimmer of insight, as if a door had been opened just enough to let me catch a glimpse of an unfamiliar room. Then she started to talk again and the door was shut.
'There's no doubt that Dio's slave was poisoned. You should have seen the poor wretch. If Lucius had kept his eyes open instead of looking away when the man was dying, he might have a harder time making that glib pronouncement about 'natural causes.' But then Lucius has always been squeamish. He can write his little accounts of women being spitted on stakes and children being chopped into pieces at the fall of Carthage, but he can't stomach watching a slave throw up.'
'Was that one of the symptoms?'
'Yes. The man turned as white as marble and went into convulsions.'
'But if the slave was poisoned by tasting food intended for Dio, how did the poison get into the food?'
'It was put there by some of the kitchen slaves, of course. I think I know which ones.'
'Yes?'
'Juba and Laco. Those two fellows were always up to something. Too smart for their own good. Had fantasies of buying their freedom some day. Juba must have sneaked out of the house that afternoon, because I caught him sneaking back in, and when I questioned him he tried to get out of it by playing stupid and spouting a lot of double-talk, the way slaves do. He said he'd gone to the market to fetch something, I don't remember what, and even held up a little bag to show me. What nerve! It was probably the poison. Later I caught him whispering to Laco in the kitchen and I wondered what they were up to. They're the ones who prepared the dish that killed Dio's slave.'
'Dio told me your husband had a visitor that day.'
'Publius Asicius. He's the one who was later accused of stabbing Dio at Coponius's house, though they couldn't prove it at the trial. Yes, he came by to visit Lucius at just about the time Juba must have been sneaking out. But I don't think Asicius delivered the poison, if that's what you think. He didn't go near the kitchen slaves.'
'But he could have been here as a distraction, to keep your husband busy while Juba sneaked out of the house to get the poison from someone else.'
'What an imagination you have!' she said wryly.
'Where is Juba now? Would you let me speak to him?'
'I would if I could, but he's gone. Juba and Laco are both gone.'
'Gone where?'
'After his taster died, Dio was quite upset. He screamed and ranted and demanded that Lucius determine which of the slaves had tried to poison him. I pointed out the suspicious behavior of Juba and Laco, but Lucius wouldn't hear of any suggestion that there was poison involved. Even so, a few days later he decided that Juba and Laco-trained kitchen slaves-would be of more use doing manual labor in a mine. Lucius owns an interest in a silver mine up in Picenum. So off the slaves went, out of reach, out of mind.'
She held up the clay figurine of Attis and stroked it with her forefinger. 'But this is the most curious fact: when Lucius made his pronouncement about sending Juba and Laco to Picenum, they suddenly offered to buy their freedom. Somehow, from the few coppers Lucius gave them every year to celebrate the Saturnalia, the two ofthem had managed to save up their own worth in silver.'
'Was that possible?'
'Absolutely not. Lucius accused them of pilfering from the house-hold coffers.'
'Could they have done that?'
'Do you think I'm the sort of woman whose slaves could steal from her?' She gave me a look calculated to make a slave soil himself. 'But that was the explanation Lucius decided on, and nothing will ever sway him from it. He took the silver away from them, sent them off to an early death in the mines, and that was the end of it.'
'Where do you think the slaves obtained the silver?'
'Don't be coy,' she said. 'Someone bribed them to poison Dio, of course. Probably they received only partial payment, since they didn't finish the job. If I were the master of this house I'd have tortured them until the truth came out. But the slaves belong to Lucius.'
'The slaves know the truth.'
'The slaves know something. But they're far away from Rome now.' 'And they can't be compelled to testify anyway without their master's consent.'
'Which Lucius will never give.'
'Who gave them the silver?' I muttered.
'How can anyone find
out?'
'I suppose that's your job,' she said bluntly. She walked back to the little table and replaced the clay figurine of Attis. I drew alongside her and studied the tiny statues.
'Why so many, all alike?' I asked.
'Because of the Great Mother festival, of course. These are images of Attis, her consort. For gift-giving.' 'I never heard of such a custom.' 'We exchange them among ourselves.' ''We'?'
'It has nothing to do with you.'
I reached to pick up one of the figurines, but she seized my wrist with a startlingly strong grip.
'It has nothing to do with you, I said.' After a moment she released me, then clapped her hands. A girl came running. 'Now you had better go. The slave will show you out.'
Chapter Thirteen
The easiest route to the house of Titus Coponius, where Dio had died, took me back the way I had come. Passing the former residence of Marcus Caelius again, I noticed that the FOR SALE announcement was untouched, but the obscene graffito beneath it had already been daubed over with paint.
Clodius's henchmen could be accused of many things, but not idleness.
Titus Coponius saw me at once, and soon I was seated in his study with a cup of wine in my hand. If the study of Lucius Lucceius was a hoary homage to the conquest of Carthage, the study of Titus Coponius was a tribute to the enduring triumph of Greek culture. Black-on-red drinking cups, too ancient and precious for use, were displayed on shelves. Small statues of the great heroes and busts of the great thinkers were displayed on pedestals against the walls. A pigeonhole scroll case was full of cylindrical leather slipcases, and on the little colored tags hanging from each cylinder I glimpsed the names of the old Greek playwrights and historians. The room itself was
