‘The “Iliad” guy, yes?’ I was frowning: Perilla wanting to be proved wrong? That wasn’t normal behaviour either, very far from it. I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this. ‘Sure. So?’
‘Well, I thought I might apply his principle, or something like it, anyway, to Surdinus’s bequest and his letter. That we shouldn’t look at things through our own eyes but through the writer’s.’
‘Sorry, lady, but you’ve lost me.’
‘Actually, when you have the trick of it, it’s quite simple. Horribly so. First of all, the book he left me — Hipparchus’s Commentary on the Phaenomina — was in Greek, so I thought perhaps that although Surdinus’s letter was in Latin he wanted us to keep the idea of Greek in mind when we read it. You see?’
‘Gods, Perilla …’
‘Just bear with me, dear, please. It sounds complicated, I know, but it does all make perfect sense. Unfortunately. Start with the author’s name. Hipparchus. Does that ring any bells?’
I sighed. ‘Look, lady, you’re the academic in this household. Until I saw his name on the book-tag, I’d never even heard of the bastard.’
‘No, not Hipparchus of Nicea, an earlier one. Much earlier, much more well-known. Historical, not literary.’ Then, when I looked blank: ‘Oh, Marcus! I told you, I need confirmation of the train of thought. Or, preferably, refutation. Athens? Just over five hundred years ago? Don’t make me say it myself, please!’
I’d my mouth open to say that I hadn’t heard of that bastard either, when I realized I had. About twenty-five years previously, thanks to a particularly vicious rhetoric teacher who’d beaten the name into me, plus the details of how he’d ended up, as an encouragement to morality achieved through abstention from drink and loose women. And with the name two things happened. The first was that I saw where the lady was headed; the second was that I felt a cold ball of ice forming in my gut.
I was now hoping that she was wrong, too. But I didn’t think she was.
‘The Athenian tyrant,’ I said. ‘Got himself-’
‘Yes. But leave it there for the moment, dear. Moving on to the letter. Surdinus calls your father “agreeable” and “the best of neighbours”.’
‘Yeah.’ I was frowning again. I remembered thinking at the time that that made no sense, because making himself agreeable wasn’t exactly Dad’s thing, and he sure as hell hadn’t lived anywhere near the Vatican. Where, I’d discovered early on, the Naevius family had been fixtures for generations. ‘So?’
‘So what would the Greek for that be?’ Perilla said. ‘“Agreeable” and “the best of neighbours”?’
‘Harmodios and …’ I stopped as the implication hit me. ‘Oh, shit! Oh, holy fucking Jupiter! Harmodius and Aristogeiton.’ Those two names you couldn’t not know, certainly not if you’d spent much time in Athens, as we had, because statues to them were all over the place, particularly where there was a good chance that a Roman or two would stroll past on a regular basis and get the intended message: the two tyrant killers, who’d done for Hipparchus and laid the foundations of Athenian democracy. ‘Surdinus was telling us there’s a plot to kill the emperor.’
‘Yes. It all makes sense, doesn’t it?’ Perilla said. She was perfectly calm now. ‘On your side as well.’
‘Yeah.’ Oh, sure, like I’d said, an assassination had always been on the cards, given the treason scenario, but it hadn’t been likely. However, if I was right about the guy who’d stopped me on the Sacred Way being a tribune, then six got you ten that the local military were involved, and in that case the conspirators’ chances of success had taken a spectacular hike. If some — or all — of the troops that were supposed to be acting as Gaius’s bodyguard were actually his potential killers, then this was a completely new ball-game right enough. ‘He has to be warned,’ I said.
‘I know.’
Bugger; this was not going to be easy. Or safe. If Gaius Secundus was right — and I’d no reason to disbelieve him — then the time when I could simply make an appointment with Gaius, stroll down to the palace and have a pleasant chat regarding conspiracies and homicidal Praetorians was over. I’d nothing against the guy, sure, nor him against me. If anything, it was the reverse: I’d done him quite a few favours over the years, and we’d always rubbed along pretty well together when our paths had crossed — but after all he was the most powerful man in the world who could have me chopped on the spot just for the fun of seeing what my insides looked like, and the terrible thing was that that eventuality was no longer remote enough for me to discount it, let alone laugh it off.
If I were to go to the emperor — or even bring myself to his notice indirectly — I’d have to do it with more proof than I had at present. Even if it meant I was too late.
Hell. Hell and damnation.
Well, we’d just have to see what my Praetorian pal had to say.
NINETEEN
It was just shy of the seventh hour next day when I got to Pollex’s. Not one of my favourite wine shops: the wines are only so-so in quality, seriously overpriced for what they are, and the décor’s Early Empire grunge. The Sacred Way being what it is, you get a mixed clientele, sure, but because it’s not too far from the city’s administrative hub, there’s always a fair sprinkling of broad- and narrow-striper mantles on their lunch break chortling over how old Marcus or Titus or Decimus has screwed up yet again over the stationery order. Good lad, Marcus or Titus or Decimus, but a bit past it these days, yah?
Still, wine and ambience wasn’t what I was here for. Luckily, the place was fairly quiet for a change, possibly because the bad weather was encouraging the mantles to stick closer to the Market Square area itself. I couldn’t see my tribune pal around yet, so I bought a half-jug of Massic and a plate of sliced sausage and took them plus two cups to a secluded corner table and sat down to wait.
The whys and wherefores of the meeting were pretty obvious, or at least I thought they were. Either the guy, in the course of his duties, had heard something that seriously worried him and wanted to pass it on, or he was involved in the conspiracy itself and had got cold feet. The second was by far the most likely, because it would answer the question of why me. He’d’ve had to get my name from somewhere, and the most likely source, given that I’d accidentally shown my hand as an interested party and potential problem at Longinus’s get-together, was an inside one. If he’d been a pure innocent who’d just stumbled across something that made him suspicious, I wouldn’t’ve figured as an option at all, and he’d just have passed the information on up the line, to someone he could trust.
Assuming, of course, he still knew who he could trust …
The problem was that I was working in the dark here. If there was a military component to this — and that, now, was pretty well beyond doubt — then what level were we talking about? Given that the only necessary criterion for success was that the assassin was within easy reach of the target and legitimately armed with a sword, it could just be the one guy. Oh, sure, under those circumstances it’d be suicide, but the world’s not short of fanatics, death-and-glory boys who’ll willingly sacrifice their own lives for an ideal. And since we already had a definite Stoic element figuring in this case, that was by no means impossible. It fitted with Surdinus’s Harmodius and Aristogeiton clue as well, because if I remembered the story correctly, they’d both ended up chopped.
On the other hand, if the conspiracy was at a fairly high level — and again, given that there definitely had to be at least one broad-striper involved, that was more than likely — then the chances of success and survival were a lot higher. Duty rotas could be arranged, the right men chosen, the situation stage-managed so the target was in a minority of one. In which case, if it got that far then Gaius was a dead man walking …