As I crossed the cattle market I glanced up and to my right and saw the beautiful Temple of Ceres low on the slope of the Aventine, glowing as by an inner light and looming, in some fashion, larger than was normal. I stood as one struck by a vision, jaw gaping, causing passersby to stare and point.
I knew what I had overlooked, what Julia and I had been discussing no more than two hours before. Had the investigation been a simple one, it would never have escaped me. It had been all those witches and their horrible rites and the presence of outlandish patricians and all the other anomalies that had cluttered up the case that caused me to overlook it. Or maybe Julia was right and I was sometimes dense.
Toga rippling in my self-made breeze, I ran all the way up to the temple and practically leapt down the stairs into the offices of the aediles. The aged freedman looked up in consternation.
“I need to borrow your boy!” I said.
“You’ll do no such thing!” the old man informed me. “He has work to do.”
“I am Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, son of Metellus the Censor. I am an important man, and I demand that you give me the use of that boy for an hour.”
“Bugger that,” the old man said. “I am a client of the state and in charge here, and you are just a senator with no stripe on your toga. Get elected aedile and you can order me around, not before.”
“All right,” I grumbled, rummaging around in my rapidly flattening purse. “How much?” We reached an accommodation.
Outside, the boy walked beside me, unhappy about the whole situation. “What do you want me for?”
“You said a slave came and requisitioned the report on the murder of Harmodia. Would you recognize that slave if you saw him again?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. He was just a state slave. They all look alike. I’m a temple slave.”
“There’s another silver denarius in it for you if you guide me to the right man.”
He brightened. “I’ll give it a try.”
We trudged around the basilicas, and the boy squinted at the slaves who stood around waiting for somebody to tell them what to do. Since the courts were not in session, this was not a great deal. That is one of the problems with Rome: too many slaves, not enough for them to do.
We started at the Basilica Opimia and the boy saw nobody he recognized. It was the same with the Basilica Sempronia. Finally, we went to the Basilica Aemilia and it looked as if that was going to be a dead end as well. I was beginning to doubt my new, god-bestowed vision when the boy tugged at my sleeve, pointing.
“There, that’s him!” The man indicated was short, balding, and middle-aged, dressed in a dark tunic like most slaves. He held a wax tablet and was taking notes, apparently enumerating some great rolls of heavy cloth at his feet, probably intended to make an awning for the outdoor courts.
“Are you sure?”
“I remember now. Come on.” We walked over to him, and the man looked up from his task.
“May I help you, Senator?”
“I hope so. Do you run errands for the law courts?”
“Nearly every day they are in session,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for twenty years.”
“Excellent. Around the Ides of November, did you go to the Temple of Ceres to fetch a report for the aedile Murena? It was for a report he was to make to one of the praetors, probably the urbanus.”
The slave tucked his stylus behind his ear and used the hand thus freed to scratch his hairless scalp. “I do so many things like that, and that’s awhile back. I don’t recall …”
“Sure you remember!” the temple boy urged. “You asked about the trials going on in the circus that day, and I told you the new Spanish horses the Blues had were the best ever seen in Rome and I’d been watching them all week. I remembered that when I saw you just now because I recognized that birthmark on your face.” There was a small, wine-colored patch just in front of the man’s left ear.
The state slave smiled a bit, the light dawning. “And you told me the two Blacks called Damian and Pythias were pulling trace and they were better than the Reds’ Lark and Sparrow. I won some money on that tip at the next races. Yes, I remember now.”
Trust a Roman, whatever his station in life, to remember the names of horses when he’s forgotten the names of his parents or the gods.
“Do you remember the report then?” I said, elated and at the same time wanting to throttle them both.
“Well, yes, but …” he tapered off as if something was impeding his rather limited powers of reasoning.
“But what?” I asked impatiently.
“Well, it wasn’t for the curule aedile Caius Licinius Murena, it was for the plebeian aedile Lucius Calpurnius Bestia.”