Feeling a bit peeved, I pulled the scroll from its pigeonhole and unrolled it, wanting to check its condition. The scroll was intact, but several loose pieces of parchment had been rolled up inside it. I removed these extraneous pages and saw that they were covered with writing in Hieronymus's hand. I had only to scan a few lines to realize that I had found what appeared to be a private journal, kept hidden inside the scroll of Numa.
I felt a sudden chill. I sensed a presence in the room and slowly turned around, almost certain I would see the lemur of Hieronymus standing behind me.
I saw no one. I was alone.
Still, I felt an uncanny sensation of being watched, and in my head I seemed to hear Hieronymus's voice: "How predictable you are, Gordianus! You saw your precious copy of Numa and felt compelled to check at once that I hadn't damaged it-you did exactly as I intended! You found my private notes, intended for my eyes only, while I lived. But now that I'm dead, I wanted you to find my journal, Gordianus, tucked inside your precious Numa…"
I shuddered and put the pieces of parchment aside.
I looked through all the other scrolls, but found no more hidden documents. There was one scroll, however, that piqued my curiosity. It was quite different from anything else in the bookcase. It was not a work of history or poetry or drama. It was not even a book, properly speaking, but a collection of odd-sized pieces of parchment stitched together. The various documents did have a common theme: astronomy, if I could judge the enigmatic notations and drawings rightly. The movements of the sun, moon and stars, and the symbols used to represent them, were not things I knew much about. Hieronymus's taste in reading had not run to the scientific, yet these notations appeared to have been made by his own hand.
I gathered up the scrolls which had belonged to me. I decided to leave the other scrolls, for the time being, except the astronomical miscellany, which I wanted to study further. I added that scroll to the others I was taking, along with Hieronymus's private journal.
I stepped outside the apartment and locked the door behind me.
III
"You went to that woman's house, alone?" Bethesda greeted me in the vestibule with her hands on her hips. "You should have taken Rupa with you for protection. Or at least the two troublemakers, if only to get them out of my hair." She referred to our two young slaves, the brothers Mopsus and Androcles, who were not quite boys anymore but not yet men, either.
"Protection? I hardly needed any. People say the city is quite safe now, with Caesar back in residence and his officers in charge, and with half the citizenry dead or in exile. Caesar himself is said to go strolling about the city with no bodyguard at all."
"Because Venus protects him. But what goddess looks after you?" Bethesda scowled at me. "You're an old man now. Old men make tempting targets for cutthroats and thieves."
"Not as old as that! Why just today, a young slave engaged in a rather obvious and completely unsolicited flirtation with me. Said that I-"
"She probably wanted something from you."
"As a matter of fact-"
"Promise me you won't stir from the house again without taking someone with you."
"Wife! Did we not survive the civil war and the darkest days of the chaos here in Rome? Did we not survive a terrible storm at sea, and a rocky landing in Egypt, and a separation of many months, and my own intention to drown myself in the Nile, when I mistakenly thought that you must have met such a fate? How can you suggest that no gods watch over me? I've always assumed that my life must be providing them with considerable amusement; how else can you explain the fact that I'm still alive?"
She was not impressed. "The gods may have been amused when you were Gordianus the Finder, always sticking your nose where it didn't belong, exposing so-called great men and women as conniving thieves and killers, daring the Fates to strike you down. But what have you done to amuse them lately? You sit at home, play with your grandchildren, and watch the garden grow. The gods have grown bored with you."
"Bethesda! Are you saying that you are bored with me?"
"Of course not. Quite the opposite. I hated it when you were always putting yourself in danger. It seems to me that now is the best time of our lives, when you've finally settled down and no longer have to work. You belong in the garden, playing with Aulus and looking after little Beth. Why do you think I became so upset when I found that you'd left the house to go visit that woman and taken no one with you for protection?"
Tears welled in her eyes. Since our return to Rome, it seemed to me that a change had come over her. What had become of the strangely aloof young slave girl I had taken as my concubine, then married? Where was the self-contained, autocratic matron of my household, who kept a cool exterior and never showed weakness?
I took Bethesda in my arms. She submitted to the embrace for a moment, then pulled away. She was as unused to being comforted as I was to comforting her.
"Very well," I said quietly. "In the future, I shall be more careful when I leave the house. Even though the house of 'that woman,' as you insist on calling her, is only a few steps away." I decided not to tell her about my excursion to the seedy, dangerous Subura.
"You'll be going back there, then?"
"To Calpurnia's house? Yes. She's asked for my help."
"Something dangerous enough to pique the gods' interest in you, no doubt?" said Bethesda tartly, having recovered from her tears. "Something to do with all those scrolls you've brought home with you?" She eyed the bag slung over my shoulder with the suspicion of those who have never learned to read.
"Yes. Actually… there's something I need to tell you. Something I need to tell everyone. Can you gather the family in the garden?"
They reacted more strongly to the news of Hieronymus's death than I had anticipated.
Bethesda wept-perhaps that was to be expected, given her new propensity for tears-but so did my daughter, Diana. At the age of twenty-four, she was quite the most beautiful young woman I had ever known (even allowing for a father's prejudice), and it pained me to see her loveliness marred by an outburst of weeping.
Davus, her hulking mass of a husband, held her in his brawny arms and wiped the mist from his own eyes. The last time I had seen him weep was when Bethesda and I arrived home unexpectedly from Egypt and found that everyone feared that we were dead. Poor Davus, thinking we might be lemures, first was scared half out of his wits-of which he had few enough to spare-then cried like a child.
Their five-year-old son, Aulus, was perhaps still too young to understand the cause of their grief on this occasion, but seeing his mother in tears he joined in with a piercing wail that set off an even more piercing cry from his little sister, Beth, who had recently learned to walk and tottered to his side.
My son Rupa was the newest addition to the family (by adoption, as anyone could tell by seeing the two of us side by side; he had the blue eyes, golden hair, and muscular frame of a handsome Sarmatian bloodline). Rupa had hardly known Hieronymus. Nonetheless, caught up in the family's grief, he opened his lips and, despite his muteness, let out a sound of despair as poignant as any line ever uttered by Roscius on the stage.