"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."
That was true enough.
"And also…" Tiro hesitated, deliberating where next to put his foot. "To be candid, Cicero doesn't want people coming and going in the house while he's not there."
"You think I might snoop?"
"I didn't say that, Gordianus. But it's Cicero's house. While he's away, I'll obey his wishes."
A loose stone slipped from under my foot and skittered down the hillside. I gripped the branch of a cypress tree for balance, caught my breath, and cautiously sought the next foothold.
At last we reached the lower slopes of the Palatine, where the path gradually flattened and meandered amid trash heaps piled behind the warehouses. Tiro led me this way and that, undaunted by the maze of narrow alleys stinking of urine. At length we turned a corner and I saw ahead of us a familiar sign- an upright post surmounted by an erect marble phallus.
"Not the Salacious Tavern!"
"We ran into each other here after Milo's trial," said Tiro. "Remember? That was the last time I saw you- over two years ago."
"I remember the hangover," I said, but I was thinking of my last visit to the tavern, and the host's account of a swarthy, bearded foreigner…
Tiro laughed. "You were getting over a hangover the very first time we met. Do you remember that?"
"A bright-eyed young slave came to my house on the Esquiline Hill and asked if I'd help his ambitious young master defend an accused parricide."
"Yes, but before I could speak, you demonstrated a cure for your hangover."
"Did I? What was it?"
"Concentrated thought, so as to flush the brain with fresh blood. It was quite remarkable."
"You were hardly more than a boy, Tiro. You were easily impressed."
"But it was amazing! You deduced who'd sent me and why, without my saying a word."
"Did I? A pity I can no longer concentrate my mind so keenly. I can't begin to imagine, for instance, why Cicero's right-hand freedman is wandering about Rome incognito."
Tiro looked at me shrewdly. "You haven't grown less keen, Gordianus, just craftier. You could work it out, if you cared to, but you'd rather draw it out of me."
Over the door of the tavern, the hanging phallus-shaped lamp cast a faint glow to brighten the chilly, overcast afternoon. "A waste of oil," I remarked to Tiro, "considering the shortages in the city."