in horrified fascination at the ruin that had been its head. There was a neat hole about the width of Tero’s little finger over the left eye. A small stream of blood ran down over Epirius’ face to join the pool beneath his head. Already flies were beginning to buzz about it.
Bad as that was, it was far from the worst. Whatever had drilled through Eprius’ forehead had smashed out through the back of his head, tearing his skull open: Much of the left rear quadrant of his head was a sickening soup of brain, pulverized bone, scalp, and hair. It was that which had stained the wall; blood cemented the gory fragments to the plaster.
The hobnails of Larcius Afer’s sandals clicked on mosaic tiles as he came up. Dread was on his face; his fingers writhed in a sign to avert evil. “It was Jupiter’s thunderbolt that slew him.” Afer said. “Two or three of the neighbors heard him cry out, and then the terrible roar of the thunderbolt itself-and not a cloud in the sky. His man Titus had the evening free and when he got home, he found this.”
Tero had never been one to fear the gods unduly, but he felt the little hairs on the back of his neck trying to rise as he listened to Afer. Surely nothing in his experience could have produced the ghastly wound he saw. To have Kleandros throw back his head and laugh was unbelievable. Tero wondered if the doctor had taken leave of his senses, and Afer stared at him indignantly.
“How many men has either of you known to be killed by the gods?” Kleandros demanded. “I’ve been a doctor for twenty years now, and I’ve never seen one yet.”
“There’s always a first time,” Afer said.
“I suppose so,” Kleandros conceded. “But Clodius Eprius? Good heavens, man, use your head for something more than a place to hang your hair. The worst thing Clodius Eprius did in his whole life was to drink so much wine friends had to carry him home. If the gods started killing everybody who did that, why, there wouldn’t be five men left alive in the empire by this time tomorrow. No, I’m afraid that if the gods left it to Nero to kill himself and soldiers to do away with Caligula, they wouldn’t have much interest in Clodius Eprius.
Afer was still far from convinced. “What did kill him then?” he demanded.
“I haven’t the slightest idea right now, but I intend to find out instead of moaning about Jupiter.”
The physician’s healthy skepticism gave Tero the heartening he needed to shake off his superstitious fear and begin thinking like a vigil once more. He quizzed Eprius’ neighbors, but learned nothing Afer had not already told him. There had been shouts and then a crash, but nobody had seen anyone fleeing Eprius’ home. Titus proved even less informative than the neighbors. He was grief-stricken and more than a little hung over. When Eprius had given him the night off, he had not questioned his master, but headed straight for the wine and girls of Aspasia’s lupanar, where he had roistered the night away. When he came back and found Eprius’ body, he rushed out to get Kleandros, and that was all he knew. Tero left him sitting with his head in his hands and went back to the dining room.
“Learn anything?” Kleandros asked.
“Nothing. Maybe Jupiter did kill him.”
Kleandros’ one-word reply was rude in the extreme. Tero managed an answering grin, but it was strained. His eyes kept going back to the blood-spattered wall. In the middle of the spatters was a ragged hole. “What’s this?” he said.
“How should I know?” Kleandros said. “Maybe Eprius used to keep a tapestry nailed there and was clumsy taking it down.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been here more than once, and I don’t remember any wall hangings.” Tero took a knife from his belt and chipped away at the plaster, enlarging the hole. At its bottom was a little button of metal. No, not a button, a flower, for as Tero dug it out he saw that little petals of lead had peeled back from a brass base. Never in all his years had he seen anything like it. He tossed it up and down, up and down, whistling tunelessly.
“Give me that!” Kleandros said, grabbing it out of the air. He examined it curiously. “What is it, anyway?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I couldn’t begin to, any more than I could begin to tell you what killed Eprius.”
Something almost clicked in Tero’s mind, but the thought would not come clear. “Say that again!” he demanded.
Kleandros repeated.
He had it. “Look,” he said, “where did we find this strange thing?”
“Is this your day to do Sokrates? Very well, best one, I’ll play along. We found this strange thing in a hole in the wall.”
“And what was all around the hole in the wall?”
“Clodius Eprius’ brains.”
“Very good. Bear with me one more time. How did Clodius Eprius’ brains get there?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be standing here pretending to be Euthyphron,” Kleandros snapped. “I’ve seen a fair number of dead men, but never one like this.” He looked at the piece of metal in his hand, and his voice grew musing. “And I’ve never seen anything like this, either. You think the one had something to do with the other, don’t you?”
Tero nodded. “If you could somehow make that thing go fast enough, it would make a respectable hole-it didn’t make a bad hole in the wall, you know.”
“So it didn’t. It probably used to have a tip shaped more like an arrowhead, too; that lead is soft, and it would get smashed down when it hit. See what a brilliant pair we are. We only have one problem left: how in Zeus’ holy name does the little hunk of metal get moving so fast?”
“Two problems,” Tero corrected. “Once you get the little piece of metal moving, why do you use it to blow out Clodius Eprius’ brains?”
“Robbery, perhaps.”
“Maybe. Titus should know if anything is missing. Until he can figure that out, I think I’m going home and back to bed. Wait a moment; what’s this?” Almost out of sight under one of the couches was a small leather bag. Tero stooped to pick it up and exclaimed in surprise. It was far heavier than he’d expected. He knew of only two things combining so much weight with so little bulk, lead and- He opened the bag, and aurei flooded into his hand.
“So much for robbery,” Kleandros said, looking over his shoulder. The images of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius looked mutely back, answering none of the questions the two men would have put to them. The only time Tero had ever held so much gold at once was when he’d gotten his mustering-out bonus on leaving his legion.
He looked up to find Kleandros still studying the coins, a puzzled expression on his face. “What now?” Tero asked.
It was the doctor’s turn to have trouble putting what he saw into words. “Does anything strike you as odd about this money?” he said at last.
“Only that no robber in his right mind would leave it lying under a couch.”
“Apart from that, I mean. Is there anything wrong about the money itself?”
“An aureus is an aureus,” Tero shrugged. “The only thing wrong with them is that I see them too seldom.”
Kleandros grunted in exasperation. He plucked an aureus of Trajan from the pile in Tero’s hand and held it under the vigil’s nose, so close that Tero’s eyes started to cross as he looked at it. Tero shrugged again; to him it seemed like any fresh-minted goldpiece. He said so.
“To me, too,” Kleandros said. “And that is more than a little out of the ordinary, since Trajan has been dead- what is it? Thirty years now, I think. I was somewhere in my teens when he died, and I’m far from a youth now, worse luck. Yet here is one of his coins, bright and unworn. More than one, in fact,” he said, picking out three or four more. They lay in his hand, alike as peas in a pod.
And that was wrong, too. No coin had the right to be identical to its fellows; they were stamped out by hand, one at a time. There were always differences, sometimes not small ones, in shape and thickness. Not here, though. Both men noticed it at the same time, but neither was as disturbed as he would have been a few hours before. “Everything we’ve found here is impossible,” Tero said, “and this is just one little impossibility among the big ones.”
It was growing light outside. Tero swore disgustedly. “I might as well stay up now. Care to join me for an early cup of wine?”
“Thank you, no. But if you don’t mind, I’ll cadge a meal from you and Calvina this evening. We can talk more
