I followed the rim road to Cicero's house and stopped in the deserted street. There was no one to be seen. I had been wrong, after all, I thought- and then heard a hissing from the opposite side of the street, where the cedars and cypress trees had been thinned to allow a view of the Capitoline Hill.
"Master! Over here!"
I peered into the underbrush of shaggy bushes dotted with tiny red berries. "I can't see you."
"Of course not. You said to hide." It was Mopsus.
"He said for me to hide." That was Androcles.
"No, I was to hide, and you were to run back and tell him."
"No, you were to run back, while I stayed to watch."
"Boys," I interrupted, "you can both come out now."
One head emerged, then another. Both had bits of twigs and red berries stuck in their unruly hair. "Isn't that right, Master?" said Mopsus. "I was to stay and watch, and Androcles was to run back and tell you."
I sighed. "Meto says that one mark of a great general is that he never gives an unambiguous order. Clearly, I'm no Caesar. And you two are as bad as Domitius Ahenobarbus and Pompey Magnus, squabbling like that instead of doing what needs doing."
"Did you hear that?" said Mopsus to Androcles, emerging into the street and swaggering a bit. "He compared you to Redbeard, and me to the Great One!"
"He did not. I'm Pompey and you're Domitius!"
"Boys, enough! Tell me where the fellow went and what you saw."
"We followed him here, to Cicero's house," said Androcles, eager to deliver the news ahead of his older brother.
"And he went in the door?"
"Not exactly…"
"They let down a ladder from the roof. He climbed up. Then they drew back the ladder," explained Mopsus.
I nodded. "Thank you, boys. You both did a good job. Better than Pompey and Domitius seem to be doing, anyway. Now you can both run along home."
"And leave you alone, Master?" said Mopsus, alarmed. "But isn't the fellow terribly dangerous? A thief or a murderer?"
"I don't think so." I smiled at the thought of mild, bookish Tiro as an assassin.
Once the boys were off, I banged on the door. There was no answer. I stepped back and surveyed the roof, but saw no signs of life. I banged on the door again. At last, the peephole opened and a brown eye peered out.
"No one's home," said a gruff male voice.
"You are," I said.
"I don't count. The Master's gone. The house is closed."
"Even so, I have business with someone inside."
The eye disappeared, then reappeared some moments later.
"Who-?"
"My name is Gordianus. Cicero knows me. I saw him the night before he left Rome."
"We know who you are. Who is it you want to see?"
"The man who arrived ahead of me. The one you let up by ladder."
"No such person."
"He wasn't a phantom."
"Maybe he was."
"No more games! Tell Tiro I need to see him."
"Tiro? The Master's secretary is away in Greece. Too sick to travel-"
"Nonsense. I know he's here. Tell him that Gordianus needs to see him."
The eye disappeared and was gone for a long time. I stood on tiptoes and tried to peer inside through the peephole, but could see only shadows. Something moved among the shadows. I drew back. The eye reappeared.
"No, there's no Tiro here. No one by that name."
I banged on the door. The brown eye gave a startled blink and drew back. "Tiro!" I shouted. "Let me see you! Or shall I stand here in the street, shouting your name until every wretched soul left in Rome knows that you're back? Tiro! Tiro!"
A hissing issued from the peephole. "All right, all right! Stop shouting."
"Very well, then, open the door."
"Can't."
"What? Tiro!"
"Shhhh! Can't open the door."
"Why not?"
"It's barricaded shut."
"Barricaded?"
"Boards nailed across the door, and sandbags piled behind the boards. I have to crawl through a tunnel just to get to this peephole! Step back into the street."
I backed up to the middle of the street and looked up. A few moments later two men appeared on the roof. I recognized them as the two guards who had been posted at Cicero's door the night I last saw him. Together they lowered a long wooden ladder to the street.
"Don't tell me Cicero's wife and his pregnant daughter go up and down this thing every time they leave the house!" I eyed the spindly steps and felt the brittleness in my bones.
"Of course not," said the older one. It was he who had been addressing me from behind the door. "The Mistress and Tullia left days ago. Stayed with Cicero's friend Atticus here in the city for a while, then went to join the Master down at the villa in Formiae, on the coast. There's nobody at all in the house now, except some of us slaves left behind to guard the valuables."
"Nobody else?" I said.
"Nobody except me." The speaker stepped into view between the two men on the roof, put his hands on his hips and looked down at me. He wore a green tunic and a dark cloak. I suddenly realized that I must have been mistaken all along, or else they were playing another game with me. The man was Tiro's height and bore a rough resemblance to him, but had to be younger. His skin was as dark as an Egyptian's, his hair had a reddish tinge without a hint of gray, he was slender as a youth and he wore a neat little beard of the sort that Tiro had despised ever since Catilina made it popular.
"I'm not sure what you're playing at," I said, "but I mean to find out." I stepped onto the ladder.
"No, don't come up," said the stranger. "I'll come down."
I backed away as he descended. His movements on the spindly steps gave him away; he wasn't nearly as young as he looked at a distance. By the time he reached the bottom rung and turned to face me, the stranger had been transformed back into Tiro- Tiro with skin stained and hair dyed with henna, with a thinner face and sporting a very unlikely beard, but Tiro nonetheless.
"You seem to have made a miraculous recovery," I said. "How did you get here from Greece so swiftly- riding Pegasus?"
He silenced me with a finger to his lips. Behind us the ladder withdrew. The two guards vanished.
"We can't talk here," he said. "But I know of a quiet place, where the host never eavesdrops…"
VIII
Directly across the road from Cicero's house, amid the shrubbery where Mopsus and Androcles had hidden themselves, Tiro pulled back a branch covered with little red berries and appeared to step into empty space.
"Mind that the branch doesn't fly back and hit you," he cautioned. "And watch your step on the trail. It's steeper than it looks."
That hardly seemed possible. The trail was hardly a trail at all, just a descending series of little cleared spots large enough for a man to place his foot amid the gnarled trees and thorny bushes sprouting out of the western face of the Palatine Hill. Directly below us was the congested warehouse district.
"Tiro, where are you taking me? If we're heading down, why not take the Ramp?"
"Too much risk of being recognized."
"But you don't avoid the Ramp. I've seen you on it twice myself."
"Oh, I'm not worried about being recognized. But you would be. And then someone would start to wonder, 'Who was that swarthy bearded fellow I saw with Gordianus the Finder today?' "
"Then why not talk privately inside Cicero's house?"
"The guards, for one thing. They tend to hear things they shouldn't. Then they talk."