It was looking like another blind alley. “Did he quit or was he dismissed?” I asked him, all but discouraged.
“Hmm, let me see, there’s a notation here. Ah, he went on detached service. That is something we do frequently. A great house or business will lease a man from us fulltime, sometimes a whole company of our messengers, as you mention your legion in Gaul did.”
I felt a tingle. “Who hired him from you?”
“Let’s see-ah, yes, now I remember it. A foreign steward hired him for the household of Queen Cleopatra for the duration of her stay in Rome.”
I thanked him effusively and we went back outside. “I knew it!” I said.
“Knew what?” Hermes asked.
“I knew that scheming Egyptian was up to something.” Have a pygmy shoot me in the nose, would she? We’d see about that.
“But what is she up to? Do you think she ordered the murders?”
“Well, we don’t really know that, but she’s involved somehow.”
“We’ve suspected that for some time. In fact, we still really don’t know much at all, do we?”
“We know that Cleopatra hired Domitius. What we need to find out now is how he got from her household to the stables of Archelaus, and why.” I looked across the street to the tavern catering to the messengers. The painting to one side of the door featured, unsurprisingly, Mercury. On the other side was painted a gladiator. For reasons I have never been able to understand these luckless men have become a popular symbol of good luck and you see them painted everywhere, usually at entrances. “Hermes, I want you to come back here this afternoon when the tavern is crowded. Hang about and see if you can learn anything about our friend Domitius.”
He beamed. “Certainly.”
“You are to stay sober.”
“How can I do that without losing all credibility?”
“You’ll find a way. You are clever. That’s one reason that I gave you your freedom.”
“It wasn’t because of affection? Because of my years of hard work and faithful service? Not to mention the numerous occasions upon which I’ve saved your life or the awful perils we’ve gone through together?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. What now?”
By this time we had turned a corner and entered the Forum. It was even more noisy and chaotic than usual due to Caesar’s building projects. Great cartloads of marble rumbled along the pavement. Others carried wood or brick or the powdery cement which, mixed with gravel and water, made Rome’s uniquely ugly, pinkish concrete. People crowded one another and loudmouths sounded off from the bases of monuments. Unsupervised children darted between the legs of adults, bound upon missions of mischief. Farmers led asses piled with produce toward the vegetable markets beyond, peddlers hawked their wares in blissful violation of the laws banning such activities in the Forum. Mountebanks performed with equal contempt for the law, and fortune-tellers had their booths set up along the porticoes, tempting the anxious with prophecies of good luck and the favor of the gods.
It was a familiar, comforting scene, one I had enjoyed most days of my life. Had the heat and smells of summer contributed to the ambience, it might not have been so pleasant but, just then, it was the Forum the way I liked to see it. However, somewhere out there, perhaps in the Forum, certainly within the city or its suburbs, an assassin moved freely, concealed as a shark is concealed beneath the surface of the sea.
“What next?” I echoed. Over the roof of the Temple of Saturn I eyed the towering facade of the Archive, its rows of arches on three levels seeming from this angle to support the temples of Juno the Warner and of Jupiter Best and Greatest, which watched benignly over all. A pair of eagles circled high above the temple rooftops. Doubtless many idlers were reading an omen into the flight of these birds, despite the fact that eagles flew over the capitol all the time. “What, indeed?”
I had just espied a little knot of men gathered beneath a statue of Caesar and recognized them as some of the year’s tribunes of the Plebs. They were arguing loudly and drawing a minor crowd of their own. These men were understandably peeved that year. Their office was one of the most powerful, with the authority to introduce legislation to the Plebeian Assembly and to veto acts of the Senate, but not with a dictator in power. Now if they wanted to introduce a law it hadn’t a hope of passing unless it was proposed first by Caesar and their power of veto was suspended. They were barely even time servers.
“This looks like amusement in the making,” I said. “Let’s see.” So we made our way toward the disputatious legislators. They were growing red-faced, and one of them, a beak-nosed individual who looked vaguely familiar, was waving a gilded object that appeared to be made from thin metal. I barged in as if I had some business there. “What’s going on, gentlemen?” I asked jovially.
The beak-nosed one glared at me for a moment. “Oh, it’s you. You’re just another of Caesar’s lackeys. Stay out of this.”
I stuck my right hand into a fold of my tunic and slipped the bronze cestus over my knuckles, just in case. “No need to call names, ah, Flavus, is it?” At last I recognized him as Caius Caesetius Flavus, a tribune decidedly in the anti-Caesarian camp, meaning he was a man with few allies. One of these, another tribune named Marullus, now spoke up.
“You should have died with the rest of your family, Metellus. They were better men.”
I decided the bridge of his nose would do nicely for a target. One smack for him, then a half-turn and lay another one on Flavus’s jaw. I bet myself that I could put them both on the pavement in the same moment, but this time Hermes played peacekeeper.
“What’s that thing you’re waving around?” he asked.
Flavus held it up. “Last night someone put a crown on the head of Caesar’s statue!”
“What of it?” I asked. “The Senate has granted Caesar the right to adorn his statues with the Civic Crown and the Siege Crown.” I gestured around the Forum, where a minor crowd of Caesar’s statues stood in prominent places. He really was overdoing it in those days.
“This is not one of the crowns of honor,” Marullus hissed. “It is a diadem, a royal crown!”
“Put it back,” yelled yet another tribune. I did not recognize this one. You hardly saw them in the Senate since they lost their veto.
“Shut your mouth, Cinna!” Flavus bellowed. Cinna charged and for a while a good-sized brawl erupted at the base of the statue, with numerous bystanders taking part. Hermes and I kept out of it. A tattered golden object came flying from the pile of struggling men and Hermes caught it adroitly. I examined it and found it to be made of gilded parchment, not metal.
Eventually the disputants were separated. Flavus and Marullus were taken off to their houses, much the worse for wear. Cinna sat on the steps blotting at the blood running freely from his nose. I handed him a kerchief and he pressed it to his nose, tilting his head back for a while. When the bleeding stopped he stood.
“Many thanks, Senator Metellus.”
“Think nothing of it. You’re not Cornelius Cinna, I know him. Are you Cinna the poet?”
“Helvius Cinna, and yes, I flatter myself that I write verses of some merit. Come, I need a drink, and I’ll stand you to some wine as well.”
“Bacchus lays his curse on a man who turns down a free drink,” I said. “Lead on.”
We went down an alleyway that led to a small square with a fountain in its center. The tavern had outdoor tables covered by arbors that provided shade in summer. Just then the sun overhead and the buildings on all four sides kept the temperature tolerable for dining or drinking in the open.
He ordered a pitcher with some snacks to go with it, and we filled our cups, poured a libation on the ground, and pledged one another’s health. It was the raw red stuff of the country, a welcome change from the rather effete vintages I had been imbibing of late. At least so I told myself. The fact was, I would drink just about anything. Still do, for that matter. The girl came back with a large bowl of crisp-fried nuts and dried peas, liberally salted.