“It is not characteristic of you Romans,” Asklepiodes agreed. “Your flair for careful planning is, of course, world-famed. But you are not known for your subtlety. This is almost, how should I put this? Almost Greek.”
“Exactly. You know, I can’t begin to count how many conspiracies and even military operations I know of that have come to grief because correspondence, reports, or dispatches have been intercepted. The Catilinarian conspirators were so inept that the most illustrious men actually appended their personal signatures and seals to letters sent to prospective allies.”
“Perhaps you Romans have not been literate long enough to understand the perils hidden in the written word. The great kings of Persia have been using ciphers for centuries, although I confess I have no idea how such codes work.”
“I just wish I knew whether Pompey is involved. I rather doubt it. Subtlety was never his style.”
At that moment Hermes burst in, breathing hard, sweating and grinning. “Oh, good! I’ve caught you before you could get away!”
“You’ve learned something important?” I turned to Asklepiodes. “I sent him to the house of Caius Marcellus to bribe some information out of the man’s slaves.”
“I may have, but that’s not why I ran all the way to Callista’s and then here. You’ve got to come to the Forum. There’s a show going on there you won’t want to miss!”
“What?” I was totally mystified.
“Last night someone attacked Curio and tried to murder him!”
“Is he dead?” I got to my feet. This had to be tied to my own difficulties.
“No, just knocked about and cut up a bit. But the real show is Fulvia. She’s gone down to the Forum like a blood-soaked Fury, and she’s baying for vengeance.”
“Jupiter preserve us all,” I groaned. “The last time Fulvia put on a show, the mob burned the Curia and half the buildings around it.”
“This I must see,” Asklepiodes said, gleefully. “Let’s take my litter. I can get us there far more speedily than the two of you can make it on foot.”
10
ORDINARILY, A LITTER GETS YOU where you are going no more quickly than if you had walked. It just gets you there in style and much cleaner than if you had braved Rome’s unsanitary streets. The litter of Asklepiodes was different.
First, there were his bearers. They were all powerful men and trained runners. The physician often had to rush to the site of an emergency and did not want to waste time. He used eight of them, instead of the more common four or six, so that each would bear a lighter load. Perhaps even more important, though, was the flying wedge of gladiators that cleared the way before us. Rome’s narrow streets were easily jammed, and they tended to get more so as you approached the Forum, especially if there was something interesting happening there, as there was on this morning.
For obvious reasons the gladiators of Statilius Taurus prized their surgeon and were always willing to do anything to keep him happy. Up front we had a dozen of them, all huge men who positively loved hard, physical contact. Thus we were able to cross the City at a running pace.
“All right,” I said to Hermes, as we lounged behind the closed curtains, “tell me what you learned.”
Hermes mopped his face with a fold of his tunic. His sweat was testimony to his exertions that morning. He was in superb physical shape, and it took a strenuous sprint to bring perspiration to his brow.
“I managed to catch some of Caius Claudius’s slaves on their way to the fruit and vegetable market. One of them was the cook who had been assigned to the house of Fulvius. There were six of them assigned, and I was lucky to catch this one because the others were all Syrians barely able to understand Latin.”
“Didn’t I tell you these were careful plotters?” I said to Asklepiodes. “The slaves they lent their man were foreign, so that they wouldn’t be able to understand or repeat what they overheard. Too many people blab as if their slaves weren’t there.”
Hermes nodded agreement. “But the cook had to know Latin because she had to do the marketing. Unfortunately, she was mostly confined to the kitchen and didn’t hear much. But the man had callers at all hours of day and night, and the conversations out front got pretty heated.”
“Had she any idea who the visitors were?”
“She said they mostly had low-class accents, but a few were high class, and it was most often those voices she heard arguing.”
“She didn’t hear any details of their conversations at all?”
“None she was willing to talk about. Remember, she is still a slave.”