Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (130 page)

After the revolt was over and the countryside gradually returned to normal, I eventually had occasion to travel to Ravenna again. I rode out to the site of Ahala’s compound. The gate of bones was still there, but worn and weathered and tilted to one side, on the verge of collapsing. The palisade was intact, but the gate stood open. No weapons hung in the armoury. The animal pens were empty. Spider webs filled the slaughterhouse. The gladiator quarters were abandoned.

And then, many months later, from across the sea I received a letter on papyrus, written by a hired Egyptian scribe:

To Gordianus, Finder and Friend
,

By the will of the gods, we find ourselves back in Alexandria. What a civilized place this seems, after Rome! The tale of our adventures in Italy would fill a book; suffice to say that we escaped by the skin of our teeth. Many of our comrades, including Ahala, were not so lucky
.

We have saved enough money to buy passage back to our native land. In the country of our ancestors, we hope to find family and make new friends. What appalling tales we shall have to tell of the strange lands we visited; and of those lands, surely none was stranger or more barbaric than Rome! But to you it is home, Gordianus, and we wish you all happiness there. Farewell from your friends, Zuleika and her brother Zanziba
.

For many years, I have saved that scrap of papyrus. I shall never throw it away.

POPPY AND THE POISONED CAKE

‘Young Cicero tells me that you can be discreet. Is that true, Gordianus? Can you keep a confidence?’

Considering that the question was being put to me by the magistrate in charge of maintaining Roman morals, I weighed my answer carefully. ‘If Rome’s finest orator says a thing, who am I to contradict him?’

The censor snorted. ‘Your friend Cicero said you were clever, too. Answer a question with a question, will you? I suppose you picked that up from listening to him defend thieves and murderers in the law courts.’

Cicero was my occasional employer, but I had never counted him as a friend, exactly. Would it be indiscreet to say as much to the censor? I kept my mouth shut and nodded vaguely.

Lucius Gellius Poplicola – Poppy to his friends, as I would later find out – looked to be a robust seventy or so. In a time wracked by civil war, political assassinations, and slave rebellions, to reach such a rare and venerable age was proof of Fortune’s favour. But Fortune must have stopped smiling on Poplicola – else why summon Gordianus the Finder?

The room in which we sat, in Poplicola’s house on the Palatine Hill, was sparsely appointed, but the few furnishings were of the highest quality. The rug was Greek, with a simple geometric design in blue and yellow. The antique chairs and the matching tripod table were of ebony, with silver hinges. The heavy drapery drawn over the doorway for privacy was of plush green fabric shot through with golden threads. The walls were stained a sombre red. The iron lamp in the middle of the room stood on three griffin feet and breathed steady flames from three gaping griffin mouths. By its light, while waiting for Poplicola, I had perused the little yellow tags that dangled from the scrolls which filled the pigeonhole bookcase in the corner. The censor’s library consisted entirely of serious works by philosophers and historians, without a lurid poet or frivolous playwright among them. Everything about the room bespoke a man of impeccable taste and high standards – just the sort of fellow whom public opinion would deem worthy of wearing the purple toga, a man qualified to keep the sacred rolls of citizenship and pass judgement on the moral conduct of senators.

‘It was Cicero who recommended me, then?’ In the ten years since I had met him, Cicero had sent quite a bit of business my way.

Poplicola nodded. ‘I told him I needed an agent to investigate . . . a private matter. A man from outside my own household, and yet someone I could rely upon to be thorough, truthful and absolutely discreet. He seemed to think that you would do.’

‘I’m honoured that Cicero would recommend me to a man of your exalted position and—’

‘Discretion!’ he insisted, cutting me off. ‘That matters most of all. Everything you discover while in my employ –
everything
– must be held in the strictest confidence. You will reveal your discoveries to me and to no one else.’

From beneath his wrinkled brow he peered at me with an intensity that was unsettling. I nodded and said slowly, ‘So long as such discretion does not conflict with more sacred obligations to the gods, then yes, Censor, I promise you my absolute discretion.’

‘Upon your honour as a Roman? Upon the shades of your ancestors?’

I sighed. Why must these nobles always take themselves and their problems so seriously? Why must every transaction require the invocation of dead relatives? Poplicola’s earth-shattering dilemma was probably nothing more than an errant wife or a bit of blackmail over a pretty slaveboy. I chafed at his demand for an oath and considered refusing, but the fact was that my daughter, Diana, had just been born, the household coffers were perilously depleted, and I needed work. I gave him my word, upon my honour and my ancestors.

He produced something from the folds of his purple toga and placed it on the little table between us. I saw it was a small silver bowl, and in the bowl there appeared to be a delicacy of some sort. I caught a whiff of almonds.

‘What do you make of that?’ he said.

‘It appears to be a sweet cake,’ I ventured. I picked up the little bowl and sniffed. Almonds, yes; and something else . . .

‘By Hercules, don’t eat any of it!’ He snatched the bowl from me. ‘I have reason to believe it’s been poisoned.’ Poplicola shuddered. He suddenly looked much older.

‘Poisoned?’

‘The slave who brought me the cake this afternoon, here in my study – one of my oldest slaves, more than a servant, a companion really – well, the fellow always had a sweet tooth . . . like his master, that way. If he shaved off a bit of my delicacies every now and then, thinking I wouldn’t notice, where was the harm in that? It was a bit of a game between us. I used to tease him; I’d say, “the only thing that keeps me from growing fat is the fact that you serve my food!” Poor Chrestus . . .’ His face became ashen.

‘I see. This Chrestus brought you the cake. And then?’

‘I dismissed Chrestus and set the bowl aside while I finished reading a document. I came to the end, rolled up the scroll, and filed it away. I was just about to take a bite of the cake when another slave, my doorkeeper, ran into the room, terribly alarmed. He said that Chrestus was having a seizure. I went to him as quickly as I could. He was lying on the floor, convulsing. “The cake!” he said. “The cake!” And then he was dead. As quickly as that! The look on his face – horrible!’ Poplicola gazed at the little cake and curled his lip, as if an adder were coiled in the silver bowl. ‘My favourite,’ he said in a hollow voice. ‘Cinnamon and almonds, sweetened with honey and wine, with just a hint of aniseed. An old man’s pleasure, one of the few I have left. Now I shall never be able to eat it again!’

And neither shall Chrestus, I thought. ‘Where did the cake come from?’

‘There’s a little alley just north of the Forum, with bakery shops on either side.’

‘I know the street.’

‘The place on the corner makes these cakes every other day. I have a standing order – a little treat I give myself. Chrestus goes down to fetch one for me, and I have it in the early afternoon.’

‘And was it Chrestus who fetched the cake for you today?’

For a long moment, he stared silently at the cake. ‘No.’

‘Who, then?’

He hunched his thin shoulders up and pursed his lips. ‘My son, Lucius. He came by this afternoon. So the doorkeeper tells me; I didn’t see him myself. Lucius told the doorkeeper not to disturb me, that he couldn’t stay; he’d only stopped by to drop off a sweet cake for me. Lucius knows of my habit of indulging in this particular sweet, you see, and some business in the Forum took him by the street of the bakers, and as my house was on his way to another errand, he brought me a cake. The doorkeeper fetched Chrestus, Lucius gave Chrestus the sweet cake wrapped up in a bit of parchment, and then Lucius left. A little later, Chrestus brought the cake to me . . .’

Now I understood why Poplicola had demanded an oath upon my ancestors. The matter was delicate indeed. ‘Do you suspect your son of tampering with the cake?’

Poplicola shook his head. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

‘Is there any reason to suspect that he might wish to do you harm?’

‘Of course not!’ The denial was a little too vehement, a little too quick.

‘What is it you want from me, Censor?’

‘To find the truth of the matter! They call you Finder, don’t they? Find out if the cake is poisoned. Find out who poisoned it. Find out how it came about that my son . . .’

‘I understand, Censor. Tell me, who in your household knows of what happened today?’

‘Only the doorkeeper.’

‘No one else?’

‘No one. The rest of the household has been told that Chrestus collapsed from a heart attack. I’ve told no one else of Lucius’ visit, or about the cake.’

I nodded. ‘To begin, I shall need to see the dead man, and to question your doorkeeper.’

‘Of course. And the cake? Shall I feed a bit to some stray dog, to make sure . . .’

‘I don’t think that will be necessary, Censor.’ I picked up the little bowl and sniffed at the cake again. Most definitely, blended with the wholesome scent of baked almonds, was the sharper odour of the substance called bitter-almond, one of the strongest of all poisons. Only a few drops would suffice to kill a man in minutes. How fiendishly clever, to sprinkle it on to a sweet almond-flavoured confection, from which a hungry man with a sweet tooth might take a bite without noticing the bitter taste until too late.

Poplicola took me to see the body. Chrestus looked to have been fit for his age. His hands were soft; his master had not overworked him. His waxy flesh had a pinkish flush, further evidence that the poison had been bitter-almond.

Poplicola summoned the doorkeeper, whom I questioned in his master’s presence. He proved to be a tightlipped fellow (as doorkeepers should be), and added nothing to what Poplicola had already told me.

Visibly shaken, Poplicola withdrew, with instructions to the doorkeeper to see me out. I was in the foyer, about to leave, when a woman crossed the atrium. She wore an elegant blue stole, and her hair was fashionably arranged with combs and pins atop her head into a towering configuration that defied logic. Her hair was jet black, except for a narrow streak of white above her left temple that spiralled upward like a ribbon into the convoluted vortex. She glanced at me as she passed, but registered no reaction. No doubt the censor received many visitors.

‘Is that the censor’s daughter?’ I asked the doorkeeper.

‘No.’

I raised an eyebrow, but the tightlipped slave did not elaborate. ‘His wife, then?’

‘Yes. My mistress Palla.’

‘A striking woman.’ In the wake of her passing, a kind of aura seemed to linger in the empty atrium. Hers was a haughty beauty that gave little indication of her age. I suspected she must be older than she looked, but she could hardly have been past forty.

‘Is Palla the mother of the censor’s son, Lucius?’

‘No.’

‘His stepmother, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see.’ I nodded and took my leave.

I wanted to know more about Poplicola and his household, so that night I paid a visit to my patrician friend Lucius Claudius, who knows everything worth knowing about anyone who counts in the higher circles of Roman society. I intended to be discreet, honouring my oath to the censor, and so, after dinner, relaxing on our couches and sharing more wine, in a roundabout way I got on to the topic of elections and voting, and thence to the subject of census rolls. ‘I understand the recent census shows something like eight hundred thousand Roman citizens,’ I noted.

‘Indeed!’ Lucius Claudius popped his pudgy fingers into his mouth one by one, savouring the grease from the roasted quail. With his other hand, he brushed a ringlet of frizzled red hair from his forehead. ‘If this keeps up, one of these days citizens shall outnumber slaves! The censors really should do something about restricting citizenship.’