'When and why Meto turned against Caesar, I don't know. Numerius said he had other incriminating documents, hidden somewhere. He demanded money, far more than I could pay. He refused to lower his price. He said he was about to leave Rome. Unless I paid, he would send the documents at once to Caesar. Caesar knows Meto's handwriting as well as I do! It would have been the end of him. I had only a moment to decide.'
Pompey curled his upper lip. 'The garrote around his neck…'
'A souvenir from a past investigation. Numerius waited in the garden. I went to fetch money from my study. But I brought back the garrote instead. He was standing at the foot of Minerva with his back to me, whistling at the sky. So arrogant! He was young, strong. I doubted my strength- but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.'
Another fireball shrieked above our heads, so close I flinched. By its lurid glare I saw the growing rage on Pompey's face. 'What happened to the document he showed you?'
'I took it to my study. I burned it in the brazier. That was when Davus came into the garden and found the body.'
'Then Davus knew the truth? All along?'
'No! I told him nothing of the blackmail, or the murder. I told no one, not even my wife or daughter. To protect them. If they'd known, and you suspected… but that wasn't the real reason. It was shame… guilt…'
I had come full circle. How could I expect a man like Pompey to understand? To slaughter hundreds or thousands in battle was a glorious thing, pleasing to the gods. To kill a single man was murder, a crime against heaven.
I had killed men before, but only in desperate self-defense, when the choice was no choice at all, my life or another's. Never from behind. Never in cold blood. When I killed Numerius, something in me died.
I had always secretly imagined myself to be better than other men. Men like Pompey or Caesar or Cicero would doubtless look down at me and laugh at such a conceit, but I had always taken pride and comfort from knowing that while others might be richer or stronger or higher-born, still I was
Yet Gordianus had done just that, strangling the life out of another man in his own garden.
In doing so, I had forfeited the thing which set me apart from other men. I had lost the favor of the gods. I felt it the instant Numerius Pompeius crumpled lifeless at my feet. The sun withdrew behind a cloud. The world became colder and darker.
That moment had brought me directly, inevitably, to this moment. I was prepared for whatever happened next. I resigned myself to the Fates.
Davus was rescued. I had seen Meto alive and well. Bethesda and Diana and Eco and their children were all safe, or as safe as anyone could be in a broken world. If it was true that Numerius had other documents that compromised Meto hidden away somewhere, my only regret was that I had not been able to find them and destroy them, for Meto's sake.
In my mind, along with my confession, I had also pictured what would follow. I had imagined Pompey summoning henchmen to dispose of me, out of his sight. I had never imagined him leaping on me like a wild beast, his hands tearing at my face. I covered my eyes. He seized me by the hair and knocked my head against the mast. My ears rang. I tasted blood in my mouth. He threw me to the deck. He screamed and kicked me wildly.
I somehow scrambled to my feet. I ran blindly, stumbling and tripping over coils of rope, colliding with cold armor, cutting my cheeks and arms and shoulders on arrows and spears. Amid the smoke and sea spray, faces looked back at me aghast. They were frightened, not of me but of the madman behind me. Every man on the ship teetered on the sword's edge of Mars, poised between life and death. The sight of their commander reduced to an insane rage unnerved them.
A fireball flew over the ship. It grazed the mainsail, tracing a fringe of flame along the top edge. Soldiers panicked. Scribonius cried out, 'Cut it loose! Cut it loose!' Men scurried up the mast, daggers flashing between their teeth.
Hands clutched my shoulders. I gave a start, then saw it was Tiro. 'Gordianus, what have you done? What did you say to him?'
By the light of the leaping flames above our heads, I saw Pompey no more than five paces distant. The look on his face turned my blood to water. In another instant he would be close enough for me to see my reflection in his eyes; it was a dead man I would see there.
I broke from Tiro, turned and ran. Somehow I sprouted wings. How else can I explain the leap that took me over the heads of the men who stood in close formation along the ship's rail? For a moment I thought I would fall short and be impaled on their spears. A spearpoint did pierce my shin and rip through the flesh, scraping the bone. I screamed at the pain. An instant later I plunged face-first into water so cold it stopped my heart and froze the scream between my lips.
A powerful current sucked me deep beneath the surface. This was the end. Neptune, not Mars, would claim me. My crime would be purified by water, not fire.
The cold was excruciating. The darkness was infinite. The current twisted me this way and that. It spun me about almost playfully, as if to prove I was powerless to resist. I lost all sense of direction. Suddenly I was startled to see brightly flickering spots ahead of me, like sheets of yellow flame. Had the current sucked me all the way down to the seabed, to a fissure that opened into Hades? That seemed impossible, for my senses told me that I was traveling upward, not down. The frigid current drew me closer and closer to the flames, until I felt the heat of the burning flotsam on my face.
Done with me, the hand of Neptune expelled me from the water. I emerged into a scorching, airless void of flame. I sucked in a desperate, burning breath.
I was to be purified by water and fire alike.
PART THREE
XXIII
Hunched forward in a chair pulled close to my bedside, Davus propped his chin on his hands and stared at me. I wondered what profound thought was crossing his mind.
'Speak,' I said.
The single word exacted an excruciating price. Bubbles of molten lead seemed to burst in my throat. I felt an urge to cough and struggled against it. Coughing caused unspeakable agony. I swallowed instead. Swallowing was a torment, but bearable.
Davus tilted his head and frowned. 'I was only thinking, father-in-law, how much better you looked when you had eyebrows.'
During endless hours of drifting in and out of consciousness, I had noticed a little mirror of polished silver hung on one of the walls, the room's only ornament. I had not yet asked Davus to take it down so that I could have a look at myself. Perhaps it was just as well.
I closed my eyes and drifted back into oblivion.
When I opened my eyes, Davus was just as he had been before.
I breathed in through my nose. My sinuses seemed to be lined with suppurating blisters. Still, it was less painful than breathing through my mouth. 'How long-?'
Davus cocked his head attentively.
