The King's Gambit(46)

Father indicated, in that way that powerful men have, that he would rather be alone, and Rutilius, Opimius and the others went off, pretending to be investigating.

“Son,” said Decius Caecilius Metellus the Elder to De-cius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, “perhaps you should come to Spain with me. Serve on my staff. This is not a bad time to be out of Rome. Besides, a little experience in provincial administration will be good for you. Best to see some work in the lower levels before the Senate drops a whole province on your shoulders.”

The old man was, in his way, being solicitous. He wanted to spare me the consequences of my own folly, as long as it could be done under the aegis of duty.

“I’ll consider it, Father,” I said. “But first I have a murderer to catch, perhaps several.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “But keep a sense of proportion. You have some murder victims in your district, but what are they? A manumitted gladiator, the lowest of scum; an obscure Greek-Asiatic importer, now a freedman. Admittedly a rich freedman, but an ex-slave nevertheless. Don’t endanger your career, your future, your very life, for the likes of these.”

I looked at him, and for the first time saw a rather frightened old man, but still a man who cared about his son. “Free citizens have been murdered in the Subura, Father,” I said. “The Subura is my district. I will see justice.”

There was nothing he could say to that. A Roman magistrate could no more deny duty than he could deny the gods. It was unfair of me, of course. I had no stake in the Roman order in those days, without wife or children or high office. I belonged to the most expendable group of citizens—the wellborn young men who traditionally made up the junior officer corps. But in that moment I felt quite virtuous, and so miserable that I cared not whether I lived or died. I do not know whether this was because of my heedless youth, or was just the spirit of the times. Most of the rising men of my generation behaved as if they held their own lives as cheap as they held the lives of others. Even the richest and best-born would resort unhesitatingly to desperate action, knowing that their lives would be the forfeit of failure. In that moment, I was as reckless as any.

A few minutes later Asklepiodes arrived. The place was growing as crowded as the Senate chamber during a war debate. Two quaestors had arrived with their secretaries and were making an inventory of the house with the aid of the majordomo. Two lictors had arrived to take the unfortunate eunuch to the prison beneath the Capitol, there to await his fate.

“Another murder?” Asklepiodes asked.

“And an odd one,” I told him. “Please come with me.”

We went to the bedroom, the only part of the house that was not swarming. Asklepiodes knelt by the bed and examined the victim’s neck.

“I would like to see the back of his neck, but I will need aid in turning him.”

I turned to my clients, who stood just outside the doorway. “Help him lift the body.” They shook their heads and backed away. Romans will do awful things to a live man’s body, but they are afraid to touch a dead one, for fear of some unspecified contamination. “Fetch some slaves, then,” I ordered. A few minutes later they had the body on its side and Asklepiodes exclaimed triumphantly and pointed at a round indentation in the ring of darkened skin encircling the neck.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The knot. It is typical of the bowstring garrote, as used by the Syrians.”

A new shadow blocked the doorway and I turned to tell whoever it was to be off, but I wisely refrained from doing so. It was the Consul, Pompey the Great. With all of his lictors and attendants, I thought, the house must be about to erupt like a volcano, its walls bursting outward onto the streets outside.

“Greeting, Metellus the Younger,” he said. Pompey was a handsome, square-faced man of excellent bearing, but he always looked uncomfortable in a toga, as if armor suited him better.

“Your Honor,” I said, straightening from where I crouched by Paulus. “I didn’t expect to see you here at a murder investigation.”

He barely glanced at the corpse. “When one as rich as this one dies, the whole Roman economy is in danger. There’s a great crowd out in the street. Now they’ve seen me here, things will calm down. The citizenry are like troubled children. When they see one who is known as a successful general, they think everything will be all right.”

It made sense. “Will his death cause such an uproar?” I asked.

“When I passed through the Forum, the slave speculators were already asking each other what it would do to the price of slaves. The man must have owned thousands. If they all go on the market at once, the prices will plunge. No one yet knows how much land and livestock he owned, how many ships and cargoes. I know he had an interest in some mines in Spain, although he owned none outright.”