The King's Gambit(77)

“Sir,” said Burrus, “wasn’t it the Lady Claudia you were here to see?”

I looked around but she was gone, naturally. I got shakily to my feet and picked up my dagger from where it lay. “Claudia, Claudia,” I whispered. “Such a ruthless player in the big game, and you didn’t have the presence of mind to stab me when the little slut gave you the chance.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Milo said.

“Nothing. Milo, I don’t want that woman to escape before I get her to court. Just tying her up may not work.”

“No problem,” he said. With one huge hand he grasped both her wrists; with the other, her ankles. He straightened and slung her across his shoulders like a goatherd carrying a strayed kid. “She won’t get away from me.”

I rubbed my neck. I was alive only because she had not been prepared. She had used her long hair to strangle me, not her usual bowstring. She began to regain consciousness, trying to raise her head. I remembered that there was a formula I was supposed to employ.

Clapping a hand on her shoulder, I intoned: “Chrysis, I arrest you. Come with me to the praetor.”

The house was far too large to search for Claudia, and I had already stayed too long. “To the Forum,” I ordered.

As we left, we could hear Publius’s mob bringing him home, so we took the opposite direction. Romans are accustomed to strange sights in their streets, but we drew our share of wide eyes and dropped jaws. I was noticeably disheveled and the cut in my side had opened, soaking not only my tunic but my toga with blood. My eyes were almost as red from the near-throttling. Behind me walked the grinning, towering young man who carried a wiry woman over his shoulders. Struggle as she might, she wasn’t about to escape from those hands. Before me strode Burrus, shoving people aside and bellowing, “Make way for the Commissioner De-cius Metellus!”

We walked into the Forum, which was still recovering from the recent brawl. Spilled fruit and rattling teeth still lay on the pavement among splotches of blood and shattered vendors’ stalls. We were greeted by cheers and curses, showing that the citizenry were still divided in their affections toward me, although it seemed to me that the cheers predominated. We crossed the Forum and went straight up the steps of the Basilica Aemilia, followed by a growing crowd hard on our heels.

There was a boisterous trial going on when we arrived, but the hubbub quickly died down and all eyes turned toward us. From his curule chair, my father glared at us, enraged.

“What is this?” he shouted.

I stepped forward, bloody toga and all. “Fa—Praetor, I bring the foreign woman Chrysis, resident in the house of Publius Claudius Pulcher, before this court. I charge her with the murder of Marcus Ager, formerly the gladiator Sinistrus, and that of Sergius Paulus, freedman.”

Father stood, his face flaming. “If you don’t mind, Commissioner, I have another case before me just now. You yourself have already been charged with starting a riot!”

“By whom?” I demanded. “The flunkies of Publius Claudius? Piss on them! This takes precedence.” My eloquence received warm applause. Roman jurisprudence in my youth was a rough and colorful business. “This bitch throttled Sinistrus and Paulus, and she just tried to do the same to me!” I tore off my scarf and displayed my luridly marked neck, exciting gasps of admiration.

“I can scarcely wait to find out how that came about!” my father said.

“She is an acrobat and contortionist,” I said, praying that nobody would ask how I knew of her extreme suppleness. “That is how she was able to insert herself, reptile-fashion, through Paulus’s bedroom window. The eunuch is innocent! Turn him loose!”

One of the formerly contending lawyers who had been arguing before my father rose to the bait. “Do you mean to claim,” he yelled, “that this little Asiatic bint strangled a very large professional killer?”

I grasped the breast of my toga with one hand and thrust the forefinger of the other skyward, just like Hortalus when he was making his crucial point. “At that time, she used a bowstring with a cunning Oriental slipknot. If you wish I will summon the physician Asklepiodes to demonstrate it, preferably on you.” This drew claps and whistles. I was providing far more entertainment than the property case they had been witnessing.

“And furthermore,” I said, deciding to press my luck while the audience was sympathetic, “she is only a part of a much larger—”

At that point, a hand descended on my shoulder from behind. I turned to see a lictor, fasces carried over his shoulder. “I arrest you, Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, for public riot. Come with me.” Other lictors grabbed my arms.