“I daresay,” I said, remembering.
“Do we have visitors?” said Antonius, entering the courtyard from the direction of the street. He was dressed in his usual brief tunic, sweating abundantly, and covered with sand, straw, and grime.
“Marcus, have you been fighting again?” Fulvia said.
“Just wrestling. Hello Decius, Hermes.” With this perfunctory greeting he stepped into the pool, sat, and began washing himself down. The word informal does not begin to describe Marcus Antonius.
“Marcus, dear, Senator Metellus has been asking me about that murdered astrologer.”
“He’s been pestering everyone in Rome about the matter,” Antonius said. He ducked his head beneath the water and came up blowing like a porpoise. “But Caesar ordered him to do it so there’s no help for it. Are you any closer to finding the guilty party, Decius?”
“I hope so. I’ve learned a great deal, it’s just a matter of putting it all together coherently.”
“Well, that’s your specialty.” He stood up, dripping. “I just went three falls with Balbus.”
“Who won?” I asked. So much for Asklepiodes’ advice, I thought.
“He did. He’s the only man in Rome who can beat me consistently.”
“From the look of you, you weren’t wrestling at the baths or the gymnasium,” Fulvia noted.
“No, I encountered him at the cattle market and proposed a match right there.”
“How entertaining it must have been for the market idlers,” Fulvia said.
“I suppose it was. You don’t get to see two real experts contending every day. I don’t suppose there’s any wine in the house?”
“I will take my leave of you, then,” I said. “I must be about Caesar’s business.”
“Oh,” Fulvia said. “I just remembered.”
“Yes?”
“I remember now who told me about Polasser. It was Servilia.”
We left the house and I stood in the street a moment, pinching the bridge of my long, Metellan nose. “My head hurts.”
“This business is fit to give Hercules a headache,” Hermes said.
“Everywhere I turn I encounter Servilia, the one woman in Rome I don’t want to face without a legion at my back.”
“Not to mention she’s the woman Caesar doesn’t want you to suspect of complicity in the murders. If she doesn’t have you killed, he will.”
“You do know how to brighten my day. What are we to do now?”
“It’s as if we’ve walked down a blind alley with enemies chasing us,” Hermes said, “and there we are staring at a blank wall and no place to go.”
“A simile worthy of Homer,” I commended. “So, what do we do when we’re stuck in a blind alley?”
He grinned. “We duck into the nearest doorway.”
“Right. Let’s stop attacking this problem head-on and approach it obliquely.”
“Whatever that means, I’m all for it. What now?”
“I’ve set a number of things in motion. Let’s check on one of them. Let’s go down to the docks and visit Ariston.”
The big seaman looked surprised when we walked through his doorway. “Senator! This is convenient. I was just about to send a boy to track you down.”
“You’ve found something?” I said eagerly.
“I may have. Take a seat.” We sat and he bawled to a servant to bring wine for his distinguished guests. Moments later we were sipping a fine rose-colored Judean. These wines lack the body for drinking with meals, but they are an excellent light, refreshing afternoon pick-me-up.
“I put out the word as you asked,” he began, “and pretty soon a sailor named Glaucus came to me with an odd story. A year ago he was on a ship called the Ibis, that sails a regular route between Alexandria and Rome, going up the eastern seaboard to Greece, then across to Italy. Seems that in Tyre they picked up a pair of passengers, easterners of some sort, a man and a woman. The woman was so swaddled in veils that they couldn’t get a real idea of what she looked like. The man was tall and sort of willowy, in robes and a headcloth. The two of them spent a good part of each day sitting crosslegged on the deck, chanting long, monotonous prayers that got to setting the sailors’ nerves on edge.” He took a drink of his wine.
“Anyway, some of the men got to thinking it’d been a long time since they’d had a chance to visit the whores ashore, and here was this woman who wasn’t a citizen protected by any laws that applied at sea. They had no idea what she looked like under all those veils but…” he spread his hands eloquently.