As I told my long and unpleasant tale, Caius sat silently, staring into the coals. Not once did he raise his eyes to look at me. When I finished talking, the silence between us grew and stretched. The charcoal cracked and settled with a soft crunching sound and a puff of smoke and light ash. Finally he stirred and looked at me, heaving a great sigh and expelling it through pursed lips.
"And you never said a word, in all this time."
I shrugged my shoulders. "As I told you, I saw no advantage to you in knowing anything about it. I wasn't proud of it."
"I believe you, but were you satisfied with your vengeance?"
Again I gave a slight shrug. "I really don't know. I drew no pleasure from it, that much I can say with certainty."
"But you are sure you killed him."
"Of course I am! What kind of question is that? I don't kill many people. When I do, I'm usually aware of what I'm doing!"
He shook his head, a tightly controlled flick of annoyance. "I didn't mean that. What I meant was, are you sure he was dead when you left him?"
"As sure as I am that you're alive. I held the whoreson upright at arm's length, skewered on the end of my sword, and felt the life go out of him. I wanted to cut off his head — to execute him formally, I suppose — but I was too disgusted, so I just left him lying there. But he was dead, Caius."
"Mmm... And you left the signed confession right there?"
"Right there. Tucked beneath his arm."
"And you never heard about anything coming of what you had done?"
"No. Nothing."
"Did you not find that curious, or strange?"
"No, why should I? I knew what I knew. I knew what I had done, and I knew what must have happened once he was found. His family would have been informed of his disgrace and taken measures to ensure that the truth did not become widely known. They would have bought silence at whatever cost to protect themselves and their family name."
"You expected that? So you had no interest in establishing public disgrace?"
"No, none at all. What purpose would that have served? I merely wished him dead and his perfidy established and acknowledged among those who knew what was involved."
"Hmmm!" Caius rose to his feet and shook out the folds of the robe he was wearing, a draped garment cut and tailored to resemble the classical toga, but much lighter and more practical, opening down the front from neck to ankle, fastened with a series of small hooks and girdled with a belt of supple leather. He remained standing, bent forward and looking down towards his feet as he carefully readjusted the cloth and refastened the leather belt about his waist. I knew he was thinking deeply, using the activity as a mask for his deliberations. He was satisfied with his efforts, eventually, and turned towards the brazier, holding his hands out, absent-mindedly, towards the dwindling heat from the coals. I waited for him to speak, and at length he asked me a surprising question.
"Publius, do you remember our conversation on the first occasion that we met, that night in the desert in Africa?"
"Yes, I do. We spoke of many things that night."
"We did, and among them one thing that I had no wish to know of, at first. Do you recall?"
I smiled at him. "Clearly. The matter of the favour I had done for my commanding legate, the favour that earned me — how did you put it? — intercontinental and inter-legion transfer. You thought at first I had been involved in some kind of extra-legal chicanery."
"But I was wrong. You had been rewarded merely for 'straightening out' your commander's errant son. Young Seneca. What was his name?"
"The boy? Jacobus. I called him Jacob."
"Jacobus. That was my brother's name. What happened to him after you left, do you know?"
I shook my head. "I have no idea. I have not given him a thought since that night we talked of him. He was only the least of the Senecas. I presume he grew up and became a tribune; he had the makings of a fine officer, in spite of his family name. You will bear in mind that, in those days, I had no thought of Senecas as being different from anybody else."
"I remember." He heaved a deep, weary sigh. "We all learn through living."
The pause that followed was so long that I thought he had finished speaking, but just as I opened my lips to speak again, he resumed. "What would you say if I were to tell you he came to Britain?"
It was my turn to frown now, wondering what my friend was leading up to. "Jacob? I should be surprised that you would know of it and not have told me."
He answered me with a smile. "Even if I thought the knowledge might be both unwelcome to you and unnecessary?"
"How could you assume that? He and I were friends, once. But did he?"
"Yes, Publius, he did. He arrived with the army Theodosius sent to restore order after the rebellion of Magnus Maximus." There was no trace of a smile on Cay's face now. "He is now deputy commander of the garrison at Venta Belgarum — I have been keeping an eye on him, as you can see. He is a Seneca, after all. Jacobus started out here in Britain as a squadron commander at Aquae Sulis, and among his first duties was the task of responding to a mysterious summons concerning the missing Procurator of South Britain."
"What?" I felt the blood draining from my cheeks, and a roaring noise began building up in my ears. "Jacob? A Seneca found Seneca? How do you know this? And why wouldn't you tell me before now?"
He held up his hand to silence me. "I would have told you immediately, had there been any substance to the story I heard, but there was none. The details came to me in a letter from a friend in Glevum, Decius Lepido. Did you ever meet him?" I shook my head and he continued. "Well, anyway, he is now chairbound, like most ageing soldiers, near retirement and confined to administrative duties. According to Lepido, the event was a false alarm. A mysterious message came to the garrison commander at Aquae, informing him that the body of the missing Procurator, Claudius Seneca, could be found in a specific place, indicated on a hand-drawn map. A search party was sent out immediately, but all they found was the place and three bodies, one of them still alive, none of them the missing Procurator. The official report of the matter crossed Lepido's desk the following month. He told me about it in his next letter, several months after that, and the only reason he mentioned it at all was that the leader of the search party was Jacobus Seneca, the Procurator's nephew. He said it reminded him of the old saying about setting a thief to catch a thief." He paused again.
"I remember thinking at the time that you might be interested in the reappearance of your young charge from Africa, quite apart from the news of Seneca himself, but you were away on one of your journeys when the letter arrived and it was hardly a major piece of important news. By the time you came back I had forgotten about it. When I did think about it again, much later, it no longer seemed worth mentioning. You had apparently forgotten all about the Seneca clan, and I thought it better to let sleeping dogs lie. So I said nothing. I can see now I was wrong."
I had listened to the last part of his explanation without really absorbing it. My mind was filled with the import of what he had said before that: "Three bodies, one of them still alive, none of them the missing Procurator."
"But that's impossible!" My voice was choked with phlegm. Caius raised an eyebrow at me, saying nothing. I cleared my throat and began again. "You said ... your friend said, in his version of the story, that none of the three men was Seneca." Caius waited for me to continue. "But that's not true. He must have been mistaken."