The King's Gambit(74)

For the first time, her self-assurance slipped. She had thought she had all the answers, and I had said something that indicated otherwise.

“What do you mean?” She frowned. “You make no sense.”

I took out the camel’s head amulet and held it before her, dangling on its ribbon. “It was you, Claudia. I had thought Claudius, even Pompey or Crassus, but it was you who had Paramedes of Antioch murdered, and Sinistrus, and Sergius Paulus. In my district.”

Her face went white and her mouth began to tremble. Not in fear, which I do not think she was capable of feeling, but in rage. “I told that little …” She shut herself off like a tavernkeeper turning a tap.

“There are rules to successful conspiracy, Claudia,” I said. “First: Put nothing in writing. Second: Never trust a subordinate to dispose of evidence. They will always keep something back, to blackmail you with later.”

She got herself under control. “You have nothing. It means nothing.”

"Oh, but I think it does. I think I could take you and this little amulet into court and convince a jury that you are guilty of murder. As far as I am concerned you are also guilty of treason, but expert counsel assures me that, technically, you are not. Not yet, at any rate. So you may escape being hurled headforemost from the Tarpeian Rock. Considering your birth and the influence of your family and the fact that our current Consuls and one of the Consuls for the next year are also involved, you may be let off with mere banishment. Out of Rome forever, Claudia. Out of the game.”

“You have nothing,” she reiterated, running out of eloquence.

“The remarkable thing,” I said, “is that I might never have examined this thing after I took it from the house of the late Paramedes. How could a little bronze amulet be significant? I only became curious after you had it stolen from my room, having me knocked on the head in the process. You shouldn’t have balked at one more murder, Claudia; it ill becomes a would-be player in the great game.”

I held the amulet before my eyes, watching it rotate on its ribbon. “A token of hospitium. A fine old custom, is it not? I received one myself, just a few days ago, from a very honorable and old-fashioned soldier. I suppose only old-fashioned people are honorable anymore. The times really are disgracefully decadent, as my father never tires of telling me. This one identifies you and Paramedes of Antioch as hospites. Where did you meet him and exchange tokens, Claudia?”

“On Delos,” she said. “As if it makes any difference. You not only have no proof to use against me, you may not live to leave this house. The slave market on Delos. I was tired of Rome, and my older brother, Appius, was sailing to Asia to join Lucullus. I persuaded him to take me to see the Greek islands. I’d always heard of the great pirate slave market on Delos and I was eager to see it, so when we passed near I asked to be put ashore, to sail home from there.”

“Sightseeing in a slave market,” I mused. “You really are a woman of unusual tastes, Claudia.”

She shrugged again. “Each of us finds his pleasures where he will. Anyway, I met Paramedes there. I saw immediately that, with his pirate contacts, he could be of great use to me. We exchanged tokens and a few months later he arrived in Rome, in the role of an importer of wine and oil.”

“But he needed a city patron to hold property and conduct his business here. Since patricians are forbidden to take part in commerce, you sent him to Sergius Paulus. What was Paulus’s part in all this? I confess that I haven’t been able to puzzle that one out.”

“Poor Decius. So something is beyond your logical faculties. I arranged for Paulus to take on Paramedes as patron. He was tremendously rich and had many such clients, so I thought he would take little interest in Paramedes. I gave him some generous presents, told him that he would be doing me a great favor by obliging me in this. Of course, he was to be discreet. He was never, never to hint that there was any connection between the house of Claudius and Paramedes. His activities as a pirate agent were quasi-legitimate, but there are some things that we should not be connected with. Paulus was eager to please. I positively fawned on the man,” she said with distaste. “No matter how rich or powerful they get, men like poor Sergius are always flattered by the attentions of patricians.”

"Poor Sergius,” I said. “Another counter, removed from the board.”

“He was nothing,” she said. “Just a freedman.”

“So it was you who told Crassus about Paramedes when he needed to spoil Spartacus’s arrangement with the pirates?” I asked.