Asklepiodes greeted me and insisted on going through the usual amenities with wine and cakes before he would enlighten me. Eventually, we sat by a wide window and looked down upon the men practicing below.
“Since we last spoke,” he said, “I have been flogging my brain to remember where I had seen that hammer wound. Yesterday I was sitting here, idly watching the men at practice, when I saw some new men arrive. They were to have direction of the munera Pompey will give after his triumph. Some were old champions paid enormously to come out of retirement to grace the games, but among them were some Etruscan priests. Have you ever seen the fights as they are conducted in the more traditional areas of Tuscia?”
My scalp prickled. “No, I have not.”
He beamed with satisfaction. “Well, the sight of these Etruscans reminded me. Some years ago, I accompanied a troupe to some funeral games near Tarquinia. There I witnessed something I had not seen before. Now, in the munera, what happens after a defeated man has received the death-blow, before the Libitinarii come to drag the body away?”
“The Charon touches the corpse with his hammer to claim it for the death-goddess, Libitina,” I said.
“Exactly. Have you ever wondered where he got his attributes? The long nose and the pointed ears, the boots and the hammer? These are not the attributes of the ferryman of the Styx who bears the same name.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “They are said to be Etruscan in origin, like the games themselves.”
“That is correct. In reality, he is the Etruscan death-demon, Charun, who claims the dead for the deity of the underworld, whom you call Pluto and we call Hades. Well, in Tuscia, he does not simply touch the corpse. He stands over the head and smashes the brow with his hammer.”
“And these men came from Pompey’s camp, you say?”
“That is an unhealthy and unseasonal sweat I see shining upon your forehead,” he observed.
“As long as you see no hammer mark there, I am satisfied,” I said. I took a long drink from my wine cup and he refilled it. Then I took a long drink from that one. “Something else falls into place,” I said. “Murders with an Etruscan stamp, just when Pompey has a collection of Etruscan priests outside the walls. And Crassus told me that Pompey has lent some of them to Clodius.”
“Ah! Pompey and Clodius. An unsavory pairing. What might all this portend?”
I told him what I knew, and he nodded sagely as he listened. He had that trick of nodding sagely when he had not the slightest idea what you were talking about. It was a faculty I, too, learned in time. When I described Caesar’s dispersal of the crowd before my door and our subsequent discussion in my house, he interrupted me.
“Just a moment. Caesar said that the goddess Libitina is the ancestress of his house? I have gone to hear him orate many times, and he has often named the goddess Aphrodite as his ancestress.”
“Venus,” I corrected him. “Yes, he’s taken to doing that a lot lately. That’s because you practically have to go back to the time of the gods to find a Julian who ever amounted to anything. But our Venus is a more complex goddess than your Aphrodite. Libitina is our goddess of death and funerals, but she is also a goddess of fields and vineyards and of voluptuous pleasures, in which aspect she becomes the dual goddess Venus Libitina. Thus Caesar can call either of them his ancestress without contradiction.”
“Religion is a thing of marvel,” Asklepiodes said.
I spun the rest of the tale, not gloating over my acuity but rather telling of my perplexity. When I had finished, he refilled our cups and we thought in silence for a while.
“So this investigation of yours, which was to seek out the guilt of Clodius, now involves Pompey and Caesar?”
“And Crassus,” I said. “Let’s not forget him. If the other two are involved, so is he.”
“What if the purpose of their plotting is to destroy Crassus?”
“That’s involvement, isn’t it?” I demanded.
“Excellent point,” he conceded.
I rose hastily. “I thank you. I see someone down there I should speak with.”
Asklepiodes followed my gaze and saw the young man who had just entered the exercise yard. “A handsome youth! And what striking coloring, almost like a German.”
“Fairness like that is extremely rare among Romans,” I told him. “It’s common only in a single patrician family, the gens Cornelia.”
“I forgive your hasty leave-taking. I might be so precipitous myself to greet a youth so comely.” He was, after all, a Greek.
The young man looked up when I approached him. His eyes were like Egyptian lapis. “I don’t believe we’ve met since we were children, but I saw you yesterday in Pompey’s camp. I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger. Are you not Faustus Cornelius Sulla?”