“Not long, perhaps ten days. Is he wanted for some crime in Rome?”
“If he wasn’t before, he is now,” I said. “If he’d just brazened it out I probably wouldn’t have suspected him. That’s what a guilty conscience will do to a man. He condemned himself without a word.”
“I daresay,” Themistocles said, swallowing. “Will there be trouble over this?”
“That remains to be seen. I believe I’ll go find my assistant. Maybe by now he’s run the rogue to ground. Don’t go anywhere.”
I went off in the direction the two had gone. In moments I saw pursuer and pursued, made tiny by distance. The fleeing man leapt a low stone wall with great agility and Hermes cleared it moments later. All that money I spent sending him to the ludus was proving to be a sound investment. I didn’t hurry. In this sort of tortoise-and-hare situation, I preferred to play the tortoise.
The hours are short in winter, and I spent the better part of one catching up with Hermes. He lay upon the ground, sweating abundantly and breathing heavily. I saw no wounds on him.
“Shame on you, Hermes,” I said. “Letting an amateur like that get away from you.”
“Amateur?” he gasped. “That man is a trained runner. I’m a trained fighter. There’s a difference.”
I sat down beside him. “I don’t think that was our killer.”
“I don’t think so either,” Hermes wheezed. “The killer would have made a fight of it.”
“You’re right. Pride would have demanded it. Our murderer is a superlative craftsman in the art of homicide. This one is just a flunky.”
“One of the torturers?” he hazarded.
“He didn’t look that brutish to me. Who is another missing man in this business?”
He thought about that for a while as he got his breathing under control. “The servant on the Tiber Island, the one who summoned all the astronomers to meet with Polasser, and then couldn’t be found.”
“That may be it. He was already established here. As a free laborer, he wouldn’t need a pass to leave the estate. He just went down the via Aurelia to the Cestian Bridge, across to the island, did his job, then hurried back here while we were all gaping at Polasser’s body.”
“Was the killer with him, do you think?” He tried to sit up, then fell back, groaning.
“Unlikely. I suspect that his task was arranged by a go-between. If he could identify the assassin by sight, he would have been killed as soon as he was no longer useful.”
This time he managed to sit. “He looked local.”
“That’s what the steward said he was.”
“So he’s not one of Cleopatra’s people.” He felt his abdomen gingerly.
“Can you get up?” I said, rising myself.
With my help, he managed to struggle to his feet and stay upright. He retched a bit, then steadied. “Let’s take it easy going back, all right?”
So we ambled back to the villa, admiring the pleasant countryside.
“So is Archelaus our main suspect now?” Hermes asked.
“I don’t think so. Archelaus knew I was coming out here to inspect his staff, yet he didn’t warn the man to get out quickly. Apparently he had no idea he was harboring someone involved with the murders.”
“But there has to be some connection,” Hermes protested. “Out of ten thousand hiding places near Rome, he picked the Parthian embassy.”
“It bears thinking about,” I agreed.
When we arrived at the villa, Themistocles had assembled the servants who had worked with the fugitive.
“His name is Caius,” the steward said.
“That’s not very imaginative,” I said. “It’s the most common of Roman names.”
We questioned the servants but they all said the same thing, exactly what I suspected: They barely knew him. He did his work and kept to himself.
Just like all the thousands of humble, near-invisible people all around us.
11
“You let him get away?” Julia said witheringly.
“I didn’t let him get away,” I protested. “Hermes did.”
“The man ran like a gazelle,” Hermes said defensively. “I was catching up to him at first, but he vaulted the field walls without slowing down a bit. I had to take them slower. In the end I ran out of wind, and he didn’t.” We were back at the house. It was late afternoon.
Julia looked from one to the other of us as if at a pair of not-too-bright children. “And that doesn’t tell you something?”
“Enlighten us,” I said, nettled.
“It means he’s probably a highly trained athlete. Maybe even a professional. If so, he probably trains at a gymnasium. There are only a few in Rome. Check them all. Someone may know him.”
“I was about to suggest the same thing,” I said. She just snorted disgustedly. “All right, what else are we missing? Does the torture and death of Postumius suggest anything to you?”
She thought about that for a while. “Your friend Felix was right. It went on far too long just for information extraction. Whatever he knew, he must have spilled at the first threat. He had no sense of honor or loyalty, and what was anyone going to do to him that could be worse than what was coming? Someone was very, very displeased with Postumius.”
“You have a gift for understatement,” I commended, “but where does that leave us? Men like Postumius always have enemies. People resent being cheated, and sometimes they get carried away in their eagerness for revenge. It went far beyond mere punishment, but a touchy sense of honor causes some people to lose their sense of proportion.”
“That suggests patrician involvement,” Julia said. “Plebeians rarely have so extreme a sense of honor.”
“Back to Fulvia again,” Hermes said. “She may be shameless and scandalous, but you just can’t get more patrician.”
“That is true,” Julia concurred, “and she is just the sort to enjoy such a thing. She probably made use of a pair of hot pliers herself.”
“Let’s not make unwarranted assumptions,” I cautioned. “Just because you dislike Fulvia is no reason to place her in that room, wielding torture instruments with style and panache.”
“You are hopelessly naive. The woman is evil.”
“What of that? I’ve known a great many evil women in this city.”
“So you have,” she said ominously. It had been the wrong thing to say. She rose. “I am going to the evening ceremony at the Temple of Vesta. After that, I am joining Servilia and some other ladies for dinner and gossip. I’ll see if I can get anything useful from Servilia.”
“Excellent,” I said, happy for the change of subject. “If you see Brutus while you’re there, see if you can pump him about this transmigration of souls stuff. Something about what he’s been saying doesn’t add up.”
“I’ll do that. This has been a long day for you two. Don’t go out carousing. Get to bed early and look into the gymnasiums first thing in the morning.” She went out, followed by two of her serving girls.
“Between Julia and her uncle,” I said, “throwing in this mysterious assassin and the conspiracy that seems to surround him, I’m at a loss to know who terrifies me more.”
The next morning we set out to make the rounds of the gymnasiums. As Julia had said, Rome had only a few at the time. Recently the First Citizen has tried to revive interest in Greek-style athletics, but back then Roman men usually exercised at the baths, or went to the Field of Mars for military exercises like drilling and javelin-throwing or to the ludus for sword practice. The gymnasiums were patronized mainly by Greeks or people from Greek-influenced parts of the world.
The first we tried was located just outside the Lavernalis Gate, at the southwestern extremity of the city. It was always easier to find spacious, inexpensive land outside the walls than within, so if you needed generous grounds, that was where you went. Your place was likely to be destroyed if an enemy invaded, but that hadn’t happened for a generation, not since the Social War in Sulla’s day.
This one was located in a pleasant grove of plane trees and tall pines. In its forecourt was a fine statue of Hercules, the patron of athletes. A large field to one side offered facilities for those sports requiring space: running, the discus, and the javelin. Inside, it consisted simply of a long exercise yard floored with sand, where men and boys went through a number of exercises under the supervision of instructors. Here they vaulted, wrestled, and tossed the heavy ball.