I rubbed the scar. The man had done a neat job of shaving around it. “Spain. With General Metellus. Not the big fights with Sertorius, but the mountain fighting with his Catalan guerrillas.”
The barber whistled. “Rough fighting, that. We had some like it in Numidia. There, sir, how’s that?” He held out a bronze mirror and I admired myself in reflection. The man had done a very creditable job, considering the material he had been presented with.
“Splendid,” I assured him. “Tell me, that insula—do you know anything about the people who live in it?”
The barber finally decided that I was a little peculiar in my interest in that building. “Well, sir …”
“I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, of the Commission of Twenty-Six,” I told him. “There have been complaints of irregularities in the construction and leasing of that insula, and I would like to know what the neighboring citizens think of it.”
“Oh. In that case, sir, we know little. This fellow Sergius Paulus has leased the ground floors to some grand people and the uppers to tradesmen and such. Pretty fair digs, I hear, but they’re new. In a few years it’ll be a slum like most.”
“I daresay. Do you know anything about a lady who owns one of the ground-floor apartments? She sometimes comes and goes in a rich litter carried by Numidians.”
The barber shrugged. “You must mean the one who’s had the decorators in these last few months. Never seen her myself, but there’s some that says she keeps late hours. Never heard of any Numidians, though. Some said she was carried by Egyptians. Others say it’s black Nubians.”
So Claudia was leasing her bearers rather than using family slaves. There were agencies in the city that did such leasing, but it would be futile to check with them. In all probability, she borrowed litter bearers from friends as well. I would learn little by determining her means of locomotion in any case. I could ask the slaves where they had taken her, but in all likelihood, they would not remember. Why should they? And, practically, what would be the use? Slaves could testify in court only under torture, and nobody believed them anyway.
“I thank you,” I said, paying the man an as. He was surprised at the munificence of the payment. A quarter as would have been more like it.
“Right, sir. Anytime you need to know about this part of the city, just ask for Quatrus Probus the barber.”
I assured him that I would always rely upon him and began to make my way home. In future years, the old soldier turned barber became one of my better informants, although he always acted out of a citizen’s duty, never as a self-seeking informer.
My clients ignored me elaborately as I staggered into my house. “Not a word,” I said to Cato as he rushed up to me. “Everyone, to the praetor’s. We are late.”
We trotted off to my father’s house. Old Cut-Nose himself called me aside as we arrived. “Where have you been?” he hissed. It was unusual to see him so agitated.
“I was out behaving like the worst degenerate,” I told him.
“That I do not doubt. Well, the night was not uneventful, however you may have spent it.”
“Oh?” I said. “How so?”
“There was a murder last night, and in your district!”
I felt a distinct chill, of the kind I used to feel when, as a boy, I realized that it was time to present my lessons to my Latin master, only to realize that I was unprepared.
“Bad enough that you were out carousing with your friends,” he continued, “but you were not even at home to receive the report of the vigiles.”
“And what of import did they have to communicate this morning?” I asked impatiently. “There’s little enough most mornings.”
“Just that one of the richest men in Rome has been murdered,” my father said. The hairs upon my newly shaven nape began to stand. “Lowborn though he was, his murder will be a great nuisance.”
“And his name?” I asked, already half-knowing.
"Sergius Paulus, richest freedman of the generation. You’ve no idea how difficult the scum’s demise has made my job.”
“And how, Father,” I said through gritted teeth, “has this man’s death made your task even more complicated?”
“It’s Herculaneum,” the old man groused. “That was his hometown. Like so many of these freedmen, he made up for his humble early years by being a patron to his hometown. You know how they do it… a great, ostentatious amphitheater erected to the memory of his putative ancestors, a theater, a Temple of Juno and so forth. Now all of these local magistrates will be flocking to my court, demanding to know how these projects are to be finished, now that the unfortunate Sergius Paulus is dead.”