Oracle of the Dead(83)

“It wasn’t me,” she maintained.

“Iola, come over here,” I said. Both women looked a bit startled, which was all to the good.

“Iola, you told me you came here from Thrace about seven years ago, but you were lying. According to the testimony of Floria, you were here ten years ago. You were a temple slave, or posing as one. Which was it?”

“The woman is lying. I was not here then and I was never a slave!”

“I believe you were here then, and that you were a slave, Iola. You see, the estimable Lucius Pedarius, whose family have been patrons of the Temple of Apollo for generations, has provided me with papers detailing the priests of Hecate as well as those of Apollo, their dates of accession and their deaths, providing some details of how they died. It also seems that there was a purchase of slaves twelve years ago including one young woman, unnamed, from Thrace. A lot seems to have started happening here right about that time.”

“That was not I!” she cried, her voice trembling on the edge of hysteria. “The sanctuary has always had slaves, and many of them are from Thrace because that is the homeland of the goddess. I was born a free woman and I came here as a priestess!”

“Yet I believe you to be this Thracian girl in the records. There is no record of her manumission. You know what that means, do you not?” Iola went dead pale. As a noncitizen, a foreigner and a slave, she was subject to judicial torture.

“At the time you arrived, the priest was one Agathon. He died within a year of your purchase, displaying symptoms identical to those of the late Manius Pedarius, whom I am firmly convinced was poisoned by another slave recently arrived in his household. The position was then taken by one Cronion, who died shortly thereafter from an unspecified fall which resulted in a broken neck. Next to take up this hazardous office was Hecabe, a priestess, who lasted quite a bit longer, several years, before being found dead in her chamber from what appeared to be some sort of seizure: face blackened, eyes bulged and red, foam at the lips, and so forth.”

“These were all natural deaths, Praetor,” Iola protested.

“One such might not arouse suspicion,” I admitted. “Even, perhaps, two. But three priestly deaths in a row that could easily be interpreted as violence or poisoning? This strains the limits of coincidence.” Iola looked as if she was staring directly at her doom. Porcia, for her part, was glaring at Iola. She knew the other woman would break first.

“Oh, yes,” I said, as if I had just remembered something, “there is a peculiarity about these records of the Pedarii. They go back for generations, kept by ancestors of the present generation of that family. They include fairly detailed records of their patronage of the Temple of Apollo. They also include much briefer records of the priesthood of the sanctuary of Hecate, since it seems there was a limited patronage of that cult, probably because both occupy essentially the same property. However, these record only such things as the accessions and deaths of the high priests and priestesses and, very occasionally, of large purchases of property such as slaves, this I presume because the Pedarii contributed some of the purchase money as partial patrons. These details of how the priests and the priestess died occur only in the records kept by Manius Pedarius, and only for the last ten to twelve years. Why do you think that might be?” I looked back and forth from Iola to Porcia. The crowd was utterly silent. I had them now.

“I will tell you what I think. I believe that Manius Pedarius was a man with a great deal of pride and very little money. His was once one of the great patrician families of Rome. They fell upon hard times, as have many other fine families, through no fault of their own but through bad luck or the malice of some god.” Here I made one of the gestures to ward off the unwelcome attention of the immortals. It was repeated by everyone present, along with some local variants.

“Rather than continue dwelling in Rome as virtual paupers among the great families, they chose to remove to the south of Campania, where they prospered modestly and upheld the obligations of a patrician family through patronage of this unique double temple. It is not one of the great temples of Italy, but even its modest requirements strained the finances of the Pedarii.

“Some years ago, the priests of Apollo approached Manius Pedarius. The temple was in need of restoration. Could he undertake the costs incurred by this project? He could not, but he was too proud to say no. His patron and my friend General Pompey,” here I gestured toward that resplendent figure, “very generously offered to underwrite the entire expense, and not even place his name on the pediment, the usual custom of one paying for such a project.” There was applause for this largesse, which Pompey acknowledged with a slight inclination of his head.