“So,” Asklepiodes said, “today Senator Balbus came to me and told me of his dream. I knew instantly that our problem was solved.” He smiled with insufferable smugness.
“Well!” I said, ready to tear my thinning hair out. Even Cleopatra was coming our way.
“Do you remember why Hercules was sent after Hippolyta?” Balbus asked.
“He wasn’t after her,” I said. “As one of his labors he was sent to fetch her girdle, which I always thought was a rather transparent metaphor for something indecent.”
“And in art,” Asklepiodes said, “how is the girdle of Hippolyta depicted? As a sash!”
“This meaning?” I said.
“Let me demonstrate.” He looked around. “Queen Cleopatra, do you have a slave I can borrow? A young male, by preference. Marvelous party, by the way.”
“Certainly.” She snapped her fingers and a sturdy young fellow stepped to her side. “Please don’t kill him. He’s an excellent bodyguard.” She looked at me. “He’s no replacement for poor Appolodorus, but who would be?” Appolodorus, her bodyguard since childhood and the finest swordsman I had ever known, had died of a commonplace fever some years before.
“Observe,” Asklepiodes said. “Young man, turn away from me.” He took a long scarf from within his tunic and in an instant whipped it around the slave’s neck. “You see how I grip both ends and have crossed my wrists?” The slave’s face darkened and his eyes began to bulge. Asklepiodes, small though he was, had hands like steel, as I knew to my sorrow. He had demonstrated his homicidal skills on me more than once.
“Now, see how, when I twist thus, the knuckles of my hands press against his spinal column from opposite sides, two above, two below, just as we saw the marks on the dead men.” He jerked his hands violently and the slave’s eyes all but popped from their sockets. “With just a bit more pressure, I could break his neck easily.” Abruptly he released one end of the scarf and the slave dropped to his hands and knees, gasping and retching. People made noises of wonder and dismay. “The wide scarf immobilizes the neck and provides leverage to bring the full strength of the hands and arms against the victim’s spine, but it leaves no ligature mark as a cord would.”
“It occurred to me,” Balbus said, “that you could save a second or two by tying a weight into one end of the scarf. Then instead of having to lower it over your victim’s head, you could just whip it around from behind.”
“A weight,” I mused, things whirring and clicking inside my head, “something like this?” I felt around in the purse tucked inside my tunic and came out with the massive brass coin.
“That would do nicely,” Asklepiodes said.
“It did,” I told him. To my astonishment, Callista snatched the coin from my hand and stared at it wonderingly.
“Where is it from?” She turned it over.
“India,” I told her.
She closed her eyes. “Senator, please forgive my stupidity. This is the lettering I was trying to remember. I saw it in some books in my father’s library when I was a child. They were written on palm leaves and they were from India.”
“And this is the sort of writing you saw on Ashthuva’s charts?” I thought about the Indian astronomer, Gupta. I remembered how he stood over Polasser’s body, his long hair streaming, his turban unwound.
I turned to Hermes. “‘The easterner, the star man’! Domitius wasn’t talking about Polasser, he was talking about Gupta!” But Hermes wasn’t listening. He made a strangled sound and bolted through the crowd, pushing people aside right and left. His toga slowed him but he was making very good speed anyway.
“Must need to puke,” Balbus said.
“No,” I told him, “I think he just saw somebody he knew and wants to renew the acquaintance. I think he saw Domitius.”
“Not Ahenobarbus?” Balbus said. “Is it Domitius the banker?”
“No, this is another Domitius, a very fleet-footed one. We’ll see if he can run through a villa as fast as he can cross-country. Queen Cleopatra, the man Hermes is chasing is a spy planted in your house by some very evil people.”
“I would very much like to know what this is all about,” said that monarch. A moment later there came a tremendous commotion from another part of the villa, with roaring and splashing that boded very ill for someone. Hermes returned, drenched and looking disgusted.
“We won’t be getting any answers from Domitius,” he said. “I almost had him, but he slipped on some wet pavement and fell into the hippo pool. They had rare sport with him for a few seconds. I don’t think there are any pieces left worth burning.”
“I think we have most of the answers we need anyway,” I said.
“What is happening?” The voice was quiet but unmistakable.
“Caius Julius,” I said, “I am about to give you the man who killed Demadus and Polasser. He’s here in the villa somewhere. He is the Indian astronomer, Gupta, and I believe he is the most highly skilled assassin I have ever encountered. He certainly has the deadliest turban in Rome. He also has an accomplice. She lives just up the hill from here, near the old fort.”
“Ashthuva?” Julia said.
“Oh, hello, niece,” Caesar said absently. “Your husband seems to be turning in results for me in his usual eccentric fashion. I’ve seen him at his work before, but it has never involved strangled slaves and rampaging hippos before.” Then he amended, “I do remember an occasion with stampeding elephants, though.”
While we spoke Cleopatra was barking orders in what I realized was Macedonian Greek, her native tongue. Soon hard-looking armed men were swarming all over the place. Caesar looked unsteady and Cleopatra became suddenly solicitous and tried to lead him off, but he insisted on staying until the guard captain returned with the news that Gupta was nowhere to be found and nobody reported seeing him leave.
“I know where he’s gone, and it’s not far,” I told Caesar. “Let’s not have any mob scenes. I’ll take Hermes and Senator Balbus and a couple of your lictors if you’ll permit me, and we’ll arrest them.”
“This man is deadly,” Cleopatra protested, “and for all we know the woman is too. Take my whole guard.”
“We don’t need foreign soldiers,” Balbus said, taking a sword from a guardsman. “Armed Roman men are an entirely different proposition from unsuspecting astronomers.”
“Quite so,” Caesar said, “and, Decius Caecilius, if you have to kill them, make sure you get the whole story first.”
We left and the party continued behind us. Outside, Balbus took a deep breath of fresh air. “Decius Caecilius, this is outrageous fun! I am so glad I ran into you at the ludus a few days ago.”
Hermes passed me my dagger and caestus. “Maybe a few guardsmen wouldn’t have been such a bad idea, though,” he said, “no sense taking chances.”
“Cleopatra might have slipped them orders to kill our suspects. I haven’t cleared her from suspicion yet. It was her steward that hired Domitius. He didn’t just come up here and knock on the gate and ask for a job.”
The two lictors, fasces shouldered, fell in behind us. We had been walking for a few minutes before I realized there were six of us, not five. I called a halt. “Who are you?” I asked the dark-swathed figure.
Callista lowered her shawl. “I feel terrible for not recognizing that writing instantly. I may be able to help, and I really feel that I must witness the end of this.”
“I can’t be responsible for your safety,” I told her.
“Nor should you be. A philosopher is always responsible for his own life and his own death.”
“Come along then,” I said, too tired to argue. One more to worry about. I hadn’t really cleared her of suspicion either.