"Lucius Sergius Catilina," he said, standing and introducing himself.
The patrician clan of the Sergu went back to the days of Aeneas; there was no more respectable name in the Republic.
Catilina himself I knew by his reputation. Some called him a charmer, others a rogue. All agreed that he was clever, but some said too clever.
He gave me an odd half smile that suggested he was inwardly laughing at something-but at what? He cocked his head. "Tell me, Gordianus: what do five of the people in this room have in common?"
Puzzled, I glanced at Rufus, who scowled.
"They are still breathing," said Catalina, "while the sixth… is not!" He stepped toward the curtain hung across the far wall and pulled it back to reveal another passageway. Upon the floor, contorted in a most unnatural way, lay the body of a man who was surely dead.
Rufus and Licinia looked sternly disapproving of Catilina's theatricality, while Fabia was close to tears, but none of them betrayed surprise. I drew in a breath, then knelt and studied the crumpled body for a long moment.
I drew back and sat in the chair, feeling slightly ill. The sight of a man with his throat cut is never pleasant.
"This is why you called me here, Licinia? This is the disaster Cicero spoke of?"
"A murder in the House of the Vestals," she whispered, "Unheard-of sacrilege!"
I fought back my queasiness. Rufus had produced a cup of wine, which he pressed into my hand. I gratefully drank it down.
"I think we had best begin at the beginning," I said. "What in Jupiter's name are you doing here, Catilina?"
He cleared his throat and swallowed; a smile flickered or his lips and vanished, as if it were only a nervous tick. "Fabia summoned me; or at least that's what I thought."
"How so?"
"I received this, earlier tonight." He produced a scrap of folded parchment:
COME AT ONCE TO MY ROOM IN THE HOUSE OF THE VESTALS. IGNORE THE DANGER, I BEG YOU. MY HONOR IS AT STAKE AND I DARE NOT CONFIDE IN ANYONE ELSE. ONLY YOU CAN HELP ME. DESTROY THIS NOTE AFTER YOU HAVE READ IT.
FABIA
I pondered it for a while. "Did you send this note, Fabia?"
"Never!"
"How was it delivered to you, Catilina?"
"A messenger came to my house on the Palatine, a hired boy from the streets."
"Are you in the habit of receiving messages from Vestals?"
"Not at all."
"Yet you believed this message to be genuine. Were you not surprised to receive such an intimate communication from a Vestal?"
He smiled indulgently. "The Vestals live a chaste life, Gordianus, not a secluded one. It shouldn't surprise you that I know Fabia. We're both from old families. We've met at the theater, in the Forum, at private dinners. I have even, though rarely, and always in daylight and in the presence of chaperones, visited her here in the House of the Vestals; we share an interest in Greek poets and Arretine vases. Our behavior in public has always been above reproach. Yes, I was surprised to receive her message, but only because it was so alarming."
"Yet you chose to do as it requested-to come here in the middle of the night, to flout the laws of men and gods?"
He laughed softly. The blackness of his beard made his smile all the more dazzling. "Really, Gordianus, what better excuse to break those laws could a man ever hope for, than to come to the rescue of a Vestal in distress? Of course I came!" His face grew sober. "I realize now that I probably did not come alone."
"You were followed?"
"At the time, I wasn't sure; walking alone in Rome at night, one always tends to imagine lurkers in the shadows. But yes, I think I may have been followed."
"By one man, or many?"
He shrugged.
"By this man?" I indicated the corpse.
Catilina shrugged again. "I've never seen him before."
"He's certainly dressed for stalking-a black cloak with a black hood to cover his head. Where is the weapon that killed him."
"Did you not see it?" He pushed back the curtains again and indicated a dagger that lay in a pool of blood farther down the passage. I fetched a lamp and examined it.
"A very nasty-looking blade-as long as a man's hand and half as wide, so sharp that even through the blood the edge glitters. Your knife, Catilina?"
"Of course not! I didn't kill him."
"Then who did?"
"If we knew that, you wouldn't be here!" He rolled his eyes and then smiled, as sweetly as a child. At that moment it was hard to imagine him slitting another man's throat.
"If this dagger doesn't belong to you, Catilina, then where is your knife?"
"I have no knife."
"What? You went walking across Rome on a moonless night and carried no weapon?"
He nodded.
"Catilina, how am I to believe you?"
"Believe me or not. The House of the Vestals is only a short walk from my house, through what is, after all, one of the better neighborhoods in the city. I don't like to carry a knife. I'm always cutting my fingers." The half smile flickered on his lips again.
"Perhaps you should continue with your story of the night's events. A fabricated note summoned you here. You arrived at the entrance-"
"-to find the doors open wide, as usual. I must admit, it took some courage to step across the threshold, but all was quiet and so far as,I could tell no one saw me. I have some knowledge of the layout of this place, from visiting it in daylight; I came directly to this room and found Fabia sitting in her chair, reading. She seemed surprised to see me, I must admit."
"You must believe him," said Fabia, speaking chiefly to Licinia. "I would never have sent such a note. I had no idea he was coming."
"And then what happened?" I said.
Catilina shrugged. "We shared a quiet laugh together."
"You found the situation funny?"
"Why not? I'm always playing jokes on my friends, and they on me. I assumed that one of them had tricked me into coming here, of all places. You must agree it's rich!"
"Except that I see a dead body on the floor."
"Yes, that," he said, wrinkling his nose. "I was preparing to go-oh yes, I lingered for a few moments, savoring the delicious danger of the situation; what man would not?-and then there came a terrible cry from behind that curtain. The sort of sound a man makes, I suppose, when he's having his throat cut. I pulled back the curtain, and there he was, writhing on the floor."
"You saw no sign of the murderer?"
"Only the knife on the floor, still spinning about in that pool of blood."
"You didn't pursue the killer?"
"I confess that I was paralyzed with shock. A few moments later, of course, the Vestals began arriving."
"The cry was heard all over the house," said Licinia. "I arrived first. The others came soon after."
"And what did you see?"
"The body, of course; and Fabia and Catilina huddled together…"
"Can you be more precise?"
"I don't understand."
"Licinia, you force me to be crude. How were they dressed?"
"Why, exactly as they are now! Catilina in his tunic, Fabia in her vestments."
"And the bed-"
"-was just as you see it: unslept-in. If you are insinuating-"
"I insinuate nothing, Licinia; I only wish to see the event exactly as it occurred."
"And quite a sight it was," said Catilina, his eyelids droopy. "A bloody corpse, a dagger, six Vestals swooning all around- what an extraordinary moment, when you think of it! How many men can claim to have been at the center of such an wild and sensual tableau?"
"Catilina, you are absurd!" said Rufus, with disgust.
"No one saw the killer escaping? Neither you, Licinia, nor any of the others?"