'How did you know?'
'The look on your face at the trial today. You couldn't help but en-joy hearing your phrases spoken aloud. That business about 'Clytemnestra-for-a-quadrans' and 'Medea of the Palatine'-it had to come from you. Likewise the reference to those lovers' trophies Clodia keeps in her secret treasure box under her statue of Venus. You told me no one knew about that but you, and you only found out by accident. I saw her face when Cicero mentioned it. So did you. That was the last straw for her, the moment she broke. He stripped her naked, and you helped. You knew the jokes that would hurt her the most. The crudest puns, the nastiest metaphors. Are you the poet of love, Catullus, or the poet of hate?'
' 'I hate and I love. If you ask me how, I do not know-' '
'Stop quoting yourself! Why did you do it?'
'Don't you know?'
'I thought you loved Clodia. I thought you hated Caelius.' 'Which is precisely why I had to help him destroy her.' 'You baffle me, Catullus!'
'She had to be destroyed. It was the only way. Now I can reclaim
her.'
'What are you talking about, Catullus?'
He clutched my arm. 'Don't you see? As long as she had this burning passion for Caelius, I could never get her back. She'd put up with anything from him, any abuse. But now he's gone too far. Now she can't possibly love him anymore, not after what they did to her at the trial today. Caelius and his advocates have made her the laughingstock of Rome! Yes, I helped. I went to Caelius the morning after we ran into him here at the tavern. I told him I had some ideas for his speech. Cicero was quite excited to have me along. The three of us had quite a time, going through the orations, adding jokes, wondering just how far we should go. That pun about the pyxis-'
'Don't make me hear it all again!'
'It's not that I'm proud. But it had to be done. She had to be brought down. She'd become too full of herself, too proud, too arrogant, ever since Celer died and she started running her own household. Now she's been broken, in the only way it could be done. We took everything that made her strong-her beauty, her pride, her love of pleasure-and turned it against her. Her own ancestors were turned against her, the ones she's always gloating about! She'll never be able to brag about the family monuments again without everyone snickering behind her back. She can't even turn to Clodius, not in public. It's me she'll turn to.'
I shook my head. 'Catullus, you are surely the most deluded man I ever met.'
'You think so? Come with me right now, to her house. You'll see.'
'No, thank you. Clodia's house is the last place on earth I'd care to be at this moment. No, that's not quite true. The last place I'd want to be is in my own house. But then, it's also the only place I want to be.'
'Now who's not making sense?' Catullus staggered to his feet. 'Are you coming with me or not?'
I shook my head, which seemed to go on spinning after I stood up. 'Farewell then, Gordianus.'
'Farewell, Catullus. And-' He turned and looked back at me blearily. '-good luck.'
He nodded and stumbled off into the darkness. I waited for my head to stop spinning and tried to figure out the direction to Eco's house. The Subura seemed a long way off.
Chapter Twenty Seven
I woke late the next morning. My head felt as if a whole toga had been stuffed inside it; I could taste scratchy wool on my tongue. Dunking my head in cold water helped. So did eating a bit of food. I stepped shakily into the garden at the heart of Eco's house and found a place to sit in the sun. After a while Menenia walked by, beneath the portico. She acknowledged my presence with a nod but did not smile. A little while later Eco sauntered out to join me.
'You came in awfully late last night, Papa.' 'Who's the son here, and who's the father?' 'Can we talk now?' 'I suppose so.'
'About Dio, and how he died. You never told me yesterday what you think.'
I sighed. 'You were right, about the poison in my house being used to kill him.'
'But who did it?'
I took a deep breath, then another. It was hard to say it aloud. 'Bethesda.'
Eco looked at me steadily, less surprised than I expected him to be. 'Why?'
I told him about the conversation I had overheard in my house, between Clodia and Bethesda. 'It must have been Dio she was talking about. Dio was the powerful, respected man who owned her mother. She
never said anything about it to me. Never! Not a single word! But she must have recognized Dio the moment she saw him.' 'Did he recognize her?'
'He looked at her strangely, I remember. But she was hardly more than a child when he last saw her, and he had a great many things on his mind. No, I don't think he knew who she was. But she surely recognized him. I think back now and realize how oddly she behaved that night. I thought it was because I was going away! What I find so appalling is how quickly she must have made the decision to kill him — no deliberation, no hesitation. She got the poison, fixed the dinner, made a special portion for the guest and then watched him eat it, right in front of me!'
'You have to talk to her, Papa.'
'I'm not ready. I don't know what to say.'
'Tell her you know what she did. Go on from there.'
'Go on, as if it makes no difference that my wife is a murderer? That she compromised the honor of my house by killing a guest? She should have come to me.'
'Before or after she poisoned Dio?'
'If not before, then certainly after! There, you see how angry it makes me to talk about it? No, I'm not ready to go home to her yet. I wonder if I ever will be.'
'Don't talk that way, Papa. You must understand why she did it. Look, I wasn't taken entirely by surprise by what you've just told me. I had a lot of time to think on the ride up from Puteoli, wondering how Dio could have been poisoned in your house and by whom. Bethesda does the cooking, Alexandria was a common thread-I figured she might somehow be responsible. So I've had more time to think about this than you have, and to make up my mind that it makes no difference. I was with Zotica all that time, seeing what the brute did to her. I can't be sorry that someone killed him. If it was Bethesda, and if she had as much reason to hate the man as Zotica did, then what is there to forgive?'
'But it was murder, Eco! Cold-blooded, calculated, committed in secret. Does my name and my household stand for nothing? We are not murderers!' I stood and began to pace around the garden. 'Talking does no good. I need to be alone again. I need to think.'
'Not another walk?'
'Why not?'
'You'll wear out the streets, Papa. Where will you go?'
A completely unrelated thought entered my head. 'I'll take care of my last bit of business with Clodia. The money I gave you for your trip south-you must have a lot left over.'
'Quite a bit.'
'It's Clodia's money. It was meant to bribe me so that I'd testify for her, or else it was meant to pay for the slaves of Lucceius. Who knows what she really had in mind? Either way, she didn't get what she paid for, did she? Never say I'm like Caelius, that I took money from Clodia and didn't return it. Go fetch it, will you? I'll take it back to her right now. At least I can wash my hands of that affair and put it behind me for good.'
Eco went into the house and returned with a purse full of coins. 'By the way, how is Zotica doing?' I said. 'Now that she's rested, is she any calmer?'
Eco lowered his eyes. 'Is something wrong?'
'After we talked to her yesterday, Menenia showed her to a place where she could sleep, and left her alone. It was a mistake to let her out of the locked pantry. When I came home from the Forum… '
'Oh, no!'
