Diana appeared in the doorway. 'You wanted to see me, Papa?'
'Yes.'
She looked grave for a moment, then brightened. 'Mother says that Meto is back.'
'Yes, for a short visit. He's at Eco's house. They'll all be coming over for dinner soon.'
'I can't wait to see him.'
I nodded and found myself unable to look at her. I watched the bees and butterflies instead. 'Did your mother tell you what I wanted to talk to you about?'
'Yes, Papa.' She suddenly hardened her voice, the way her mother always did at the beginning of an argument to show that she would not be shaken.
'When did your mother first tell you about Dio? About what he did to her?'
'Years ago, Papa. As soon as I was old enough to understand.' 'And yet she never told me!'
'It was between her and me, Papa. A thing for a mother to tell a daughter. Men have secrets they never share with women.'
'I suppose we do. So, when Dio came to the house that day-'
'When you introduced him, I had no idea who he was. Mother had never told me the man's name, only how wicked he was. But when I told Mother the visitor's name and where he was from, I saw from her face that something was terribly wrong. All at once I knew. 'It's him, isn't it?' I said. She couldn't be sure, so we went to have a look.'
'Yes, I remember the way you both looked at him, and the way he
looked at you. No wonder he was startled by the sight of you, especially when the two of you stood side by side! How much you look like her, when she was young. I saw every look that passed between the three of you, and yet I understood nothing-like a dog watching orators debate. And to think, I was the one who suggested that the two of you fix something for Dio to eat! Was it your mother who told you to get the poison?'
'No, Papa. I thought of it myself. I knew where the poison was-' 'Of course you did, because I made such a point of warning you about it when I got it from Eco. So dangerous, I thought, to have poison in a house with a child. Dangerous in a way I never considered! But your mother must have known when you mixed it into Dio's portion?'
'No. I did it while her back was turned, then made sure that I did the serving.'
'You did it all on your own! In the blink of an eye you made up your mind to kill a man, then fetched the poison, slipped it into his food, and… '
Diana lowered her eyes.
'All on your own!'
She nodded. I shook my head. 'When did Bethesda give you those old green-glass earrings of hers?'
Diana sighed. 'Ages ago, Papa. She tired of them, and there were scratches in the glass, so she let me have them. I wore them from time to time.'
'And I never noticed. Of course, Bethesda wears her hair up, showing her ears. You still wear your hair down, like a girl… '
'It's funny. I can't remember wearing them that day. I can't even remember using one of them to pry open the lock on the strongbox to get at the poison, but I suppose I must have. It's like it all happened underwater. I didn't realize until days later that I'd lost the earring. I looked everywhere for it. Everywhere but inside your strongbox. Finally I gave up on finding it. I gave the widowed earring to Titania.'
'Yes, Titania told me.' I shook my head. 'You left the lock just as it was, broken. You never even tried to replace the poison you'd taken, if only with something that looked similar.' I winced. 'That fact alone should have told me that Bethesda wasn't responsible. She would have covered her tracks! You behaved like a child, Diana, thinking you could leave such clues and not be found out. When did you tell your mother?'
'Not until just the other day, after Clodia's visit.'
'Why did you wait so long? I'm not surprised that you didn't tell me, but I thought you had no secrets from your mother?'
'I meant to tell her right after Dio left the house. I wanted to. But
I was suddenly afraid. Then I was confused. The next day, after you were gone, we heard that Dio had died. I could see that Mother was pleased, though she never spoke a word. But everyone said that Dio had been stabbed to death, and if that was so, how could I have poisoned him? Maybe the stuff was harmless, I thought, not poison at all, just a yellow spice. Maybe I had only imagined doing it. It all seemed so strange. I didn't know what to do. I just wanted to forget and be done with it.'
I nodded. 'So Bethesda didn't know the truth until after Clodia's visit. All her protests that Caelius was innocent were only statements of opinion! She was also sure that Caelius could never have poisoned Clodia. Well, she was wrong on both counts-Caelius tried his best to kill Dio and Clodia both. So much for Bethesda as a judge of character. So much for me, admiring Dio! What prompted you to finally tell her?'
'It was hearing her tell Clodia what happened to her and her mother when she was a girl. I was amazed to hear her talk about it to anyone but me. It made me cry. That was when I finally made up my mind to tell her I poisoned Dio, not because I was proud of what I did, but because I didn't want to have any secrets from her. So that night, after Clodia left, I told her. She said that we mustn't tell anyone. 'Not even Papa?' I said. 'Especially not him!'
'But a couple of days later, after the two of you came back from Clodia's house, Mother came into my room to tell me about the party, and then you burst in, shouting at her. You'd gone looking for the poison and found the broken lock and the empty pyxis. You threw the earring on the floor-and suddenly I realized where I had lost it. But what you said made no sense. You seemed to think that for some reason Mother had stolen the poison for Clodia… '
I groaned and shook my head. 'I accused her of deceiving me, and she admitted it-but we were talking about different things! I thought she had given the poison to Clodia behind my back, but the deception was something else-she knew you had poisoned Dio and kept it from me.'
Diana nodded. 'After you went storming out of the house, Mother told me, 'If he does figure out the truth, keep your mouth shut. Let me take the blame.' But you found me out, didn't you, Papa?' She spoke without recrimination, but rather with a hint of pride — of Bethesda for shielding her, of me for finding her out.
I looked at her face in the soft light from the garden and saw a girl-child with lustrous black hair and the beginnings of a woman's beauty. 'I don't know what to make of you, Diana. You're a mystery, like your mother. Why did you do it? What gave you the strength to go through with it?'
'How can you not understand, Papa? Do you remember when we were in this room the other day and I wanted to see the letter you were writing to Meto? It was a letter about the work you were doing, looking into Dio's death. I asked you why it was so important for you to know who killed Dio. You talked about peace of mind. You said to me, 'If someone who was close to you had been hurt, wouldn't you want to avenge that person, to redress the wrong that was done to them, if you could?' Of course, Papa! That's exactly what I did. I did it for Mother. I did it for the grandmother I'll never know. Would you have me undo it, if I could? If you could turn back time, would you have me do nothing, instead?'
I studied her face, confused, and tried to remember what I believed about murder and justice, right and wrong.
'Wouldn't you have done the same thing yourself, Papa?'
For an instant the veil of mystery dissolved. The eyes that looked back at me were as familiar and empty of secrets as my own eyes in a mirror. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her brow. From the garden came the noise of the family arriving for dinner-Eco, Menenia, Meto, the all- conquering twins. I drew back and looked into Diana's eyes again, and saw with a shiver of regret that the veil had returned. She was a mystery again, distinct and wholly of herself, another mortal adrift in the cosmos: out of my control, beyond my comprehension. The moment of recognition was fleeting, as such moments always are, like music which fills the void to overflowing and then vanishes in the twinkling of an eye.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
