At the sound of her husband’s voice, Calpurnia tottered into the room. Pliny spoke brusquely to her. An errand for her grandfather. Where? North. He would say no more. How long? Two or three days, he really couldn’t say.
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“Over miles of bumpy roads in your condition? I won’t hear of it, my dear. You’re best off here with Helen and Amatia to look after you. Here, I’ve written notes to the city prefect, the emperor, and to Martial. See that they’re delivered, will you?”
“But must you go today?” she persisted. “You don’t look well. You’re not yourself. What is the matter, you must confide in me.”
“Nonsense, I’ve had it in mind for some time.”
“You never said…” Tears suddenly overflowed her eyes.
“Really, Calpurnia, must I announce my every move ahead of time?” He turned from her abruptly and shouted up his bearers.
Awakened by the commotion, Amatia came out of her room. She put her arms around Calpurnia and held the girl tightly. “We’ll be fine on our own, won’t we darling? Enjoy your trip, Gaius Plinius, I’m sure you’ve earned a rest. By the way, last night while you were shut up in your office I received welcome news from home. A messenger sent ahead by my son-in-law just arrived by ship from Massilia. He has gathered the money for my initiation fee and will be arriving himself in just a few days. I’ll be able to make my devotions to the goddess and then I’ll no longer have to impose on your hospitality. You know the old saying, ‘After three days a guest and a fish begin to smell.’ And I’ve taken advantage of your kindness far longer than that.”
“Nonsense, dear lady. The advantage has been ours. You’ve done wonders for my wife. We will both miss you. I must say this messenger made remarkably good time.”
“And,” Calpurnia put in, “the poor man hurt himself on his journey, I think.”
“Oh, in what way?”
“He had a broken arm.”
The lumbering four-wheeler jounced over the paving stones of the Via Cassia, following the valley of the Tiber up into the Umbrian hills. Zosimus sat beside his master and unrolled a volume of Alexandrian lyrics, but before he had recited a dozen lines Pliny’s eyelids drooped. He was still sleeping when the setting sun lit their way into the courtyard of an inn where they would stop for the night.
Pliny was not the only one who had felt weary and oppressed that morning. Brooding in his bed, Lucius was prey to similar feelings. He had long since given up the morning salutatio since no one came any more. Deserted by the family clients, who smelled better pickings elsewhere, without friends or prospects, a virtual prisoner in his own house, he had nothing much to do but drink and sleep. As for those mysterious papers that his father had taunted him with, Lucius had long since given up the search. Clearly they weren’t in the house. For all his cunning, he had exactly nothing to show. The trial was not many days away and he would be lucky to escape with nothing worse than banishment for life, and that only because someone else—could it possibly have been the pitiful Scortilla?—had murdered the old bastard first.
These morose thoughts were interrupted by the knock of a trooper. Four tradesmen were at the door, dirty foreigners by the look of them. Should they be admitted? Lucius shrugged. He had nothing better to do. In an ill temper he pulled on a rumpled tunic and went out into the vestibule.
He looked sourly at the four characters, swarthy and bearded to the eyes, who loitered near the door. Three of them, he recognized. They were brothers, Syrians, whom his father had brought back with him from Judea and set up as rug dealers near the Forum. Lucius knew that his father had used these thugs to administer an occasional beating, or worse, to loosen a tongue; a regrettable, but necessary part of the informer’s trade. And because they would unavoidably hear things during these interrogations, Verpa had warned them not to learn Latin beyond a few basic words, not that they were likely to in the immigrant ghetto where they lived.
With them was another villainous character who introduced himself as Hiram, a friend of theirs. Hiram could speak Greek.
Lucius had been an indifferent student, his schoolboy Greek was rusty, but he could get by. “What do you want of me?” he asked curtly. “What’s in that box you’ve got with you?”
Hiram removed the soiled cloth in which it was wrapped and offered it for Lucius’ inspection. It was a doctor’s kit, made of sycamore wood, with a brass lock, which had been pried open, and a leather shoulder strap. Where had he seen this before?