Oracle of the Dead(6)

“Don’t speak foolishly!” Iola said. “The sacred black bitches of Hecate would never let a priest of Apollo approach the holy precincts. The very scent drives them wild.”

“Be that as it may,” I said, “the man is dead and may have been murdered. As praetor, I will investigate this.”

“Ah, noble Praetor Metellus,” Plotius said diffidently, “you are praetor peregrinus, in charge of cases involving foreigners. There seem to be none but natives here.”

“Nonsense,” I said, gesturing toward the black-clad devotees of Hecate, “these creatures are as foreign as a pack of Britons. I will take charge.”

“As you wish,” Plotius sighed.

“I want this body carried above into daylight,” I ordered. “Now, everyone, back up that tunnel, and I’d better not smell any smoke that doesn’t come from a torch or lamp.”

“But, Praetor,” Iola said, all but wringing her hands, “there are ceremonies we must perform. This holy place has been contaminated by death. There are lustrations and sacrifices . . .”

“Do them later,” I told her. “I want none of your people to leave before I have questioned them, either.”

She bowed in an almost Oriental fashion. “As you wish, Praetor.”

So we made the long trudge back up the strange tunnel, but this time I had no leisure to ponder its oddity. What could this possibly portend? In spite of my matter-of-fact pose, I was almost as unsettled as the rest. First, the whole alien ritual and the descent into the uncanny tunnel, the weird river with its putative goddess, and now a man we had met so recently, dead in an unfathomable fashion. It was enough to unsettle a philosopher.

Then I cheered up. I had been getting bored, and now there was something interesting to do.

Clean air and sunshine quickly restored everyone’s spirits, except for Iola’s.

The slaves laid the body of the late Eugaeon upon the ground and I took a closer look at him. “Remove his clothing,” I instructed the slaves.

“Decius!” my wife cried, shocked. “That is terribly undignified!”

“Oh, he shouldn’t mind being naked. He’s Greek, isn’t he? Was Greek, I should say.” She whirled and stalked off, taking the other women of the party with her. Except for Antonia, of course, who came closer to get a better look.

With his clothes off, the man looked shrunken. He was not fat, as so many priests are. His face and body were typical for a man of about forty years, rather spare, but not underfed. The only thing strange about him was that he was completely depilated.

“Not a hair on him,” I remarked. “Is this required of priests of Apollo?”

“I wish more Roman men would do that,” Antonia said. “I think it’s attractive. I have all my slaves depilated.” Something else I really didn’t need to know about Antonia.

“Has someone gone to fetch the other priests? Maybe they can tell me if they’re supposed to be hairless.” One of my assistants ran off to fetch them. I could see no mark of violence on the front of the body. “Turn him over,” I told the slaves. No mark on the back, either.

“He must have drowned,” Hermes said.

“Not necessarily,” I said. “There are plenty of ways to kill a man that leave no mark on the body: poison and asphyxiation come immediately to mind.”

“Maybe he was frightened to death,” somebody suggested.

“He doesn’t have a frightened expression on his face,” somebody else pointed out.

“I never saw a corpse that wore any sort of expression at all,” I told them, “and many of the deceased were plenty frightened immediately prior to expiring.”

A moment later the boy sent to fetch the priests came running back. His name was Sextus Lucretius Vespillo, the son of a friend. He was about fourteen, had recently shaved his first beard for his manhood ceremony, and was rather easily excited. “They’re all gone!” he shouted. “Not a sign of them.”

“Well,” I said, “I suppose that tells us who killed the bugger.”

“But we don’t know he was murdered,” Plotius cautioned.

“Then why did they run off like Persians at the sight of a Roman?” I asked. “That looks like guilty behavior to me. I want a thorough search made for those priests. And I want all of you men mounted and out looking for those priests. Also for some way that Eugaeon got into that water. There has to be an access to the underground river somewhere nearby. It’s probably hidden, but don’t let that stop you.”

Julia returned when she saw that the body had been decently covered. “Ah, my dear, you can be of great assistance to me in this matter.”