"I'll tell him," I said, "but not just yet."
"What are you going to do?" she asked, alarmed at my tone or my appearance.
"What I should have done sooner," I told her. "I'm going to the temple to get that poor girl. At least I have legal cause now."
She nodded and Hermes grinned. "Lictors!" he bellowed. Julia draped me in my formidable toga and we trooped off to the beautiful temple of Apollo. A hundred yards from the temple we could hear a woman screaming.
Julia grabbed my arm. "Don't run. It's undignified. That woman is being beaten and she won't die of it before we get there." I was not so certain. After the thrashing Hermes had described, could Charmian survive another as savage? In the courtyard behind the temple we found them.
Diocles the priest looked on coldly while a big slave wielded a whip on a young woman tied to a post. Her back and buttocks were crisscrossed with ugly stripes, and blood ran to her heels and formed a spreading puddle beneath her feet. But the screaming victim wasn't Charmian. It was the big German girl, Gaia.
"Stop this at once!" I yelled. One of my lictors knocked the whip wielder sprawling with his fasces.
Diocles turned to look at me, seeming almost dazed by this turn of events. "Praetor? By what authority do you interfere with my conduct of my own household?"
"By my authority as praetor peregrinus of Rome. Diocles, you are a suspect in the murder of Gaeto of Numidia. I demand that you surrender to me certain slaves of your household for questioning in this case and in the matter of your daughter's death. You will turn over to me the girl Charmian and this girl Gaia, and while you're at it, give me the other one, Leto, before you whip them all to death."
The old man turned paler than he already was, and his head began to tremble. "Gaeto? Dead? Well, what is that to me? So the Numidian swine is dead. How dare you accuse me of murdering him, if the killing of such a man can be considered murder?"
"You had the greatest motive to kill him, since you believe his son murdered your daughter. As a resident alien he was under the protection of Roman law and I administer that law. Now fetch Charmian!" I was out of patience and the defiance went out of him.
"I can't," he admitted, seeming to shrink.
"Are you saying she's dead?"
"No, she escaped from the ergastulum. And that German slut-" he jabbed a finger toward the suffering girl "-let her out! That is why she is being punished. And you have no right to interfere." He seemed to regain a bit of his defiance.
"For the moment," I told him, "my power here is absolute. You may bring suit against me after I leave office in the fall. Of course, I may already have had you beheaded by then, so don't count on it."
I walked to the post. Under Julia's solicitous direction, Hermes and the lictors had unbound the girl and lowered her to the ground. Her screams had subsided to a continuous moan.
"She won't be talking for a while," Julia said. "I'll have her carried to the villa and looked after." She snapped her fingers and pointed. A lictor rushed back to the villa for help. They never stepped that lively for me.
"When did Charmian escape?" I asked the priest.
"The night before last, but I only learned of it this afternoon. Gaia had been taking her meals to her and concealed the fact that she had let the bitch out. When I sent for Charmian-"
"Why did you send for her?"
"I had some questions to put to her."
And a whip ready, no doubt, I thought. "Where is the other one? Leto?"
He summoned a slave and sent him to fetch the girl. "Are you really serious about regarding me as a suspect?"
"Serious as Jupiter's thunderbolt," I assured him. "Something very unpleasant is going on here in southern Campania. I came here expecting a pleasant, unexciting stay and you people have disappointed me sorely. This puts me in a vengeful mood, and I am ready to inflict as many executions and exiles as it will take to set things back in order."
"You make much over the death of a nobody," he almost whispered.
"He was somebody," I assured him. "He was a resident alien under my protection. His death and your daughter's were connected and I will have the truth. Should I decide that you are that connection, my lictors will be calling on you."
"Surely you cannot think that I was involved in my own daughter's murder?" His indignation sounded genuine, but some people are experts at faking such things.
"Should I decide so, you will be in need of an inordinately sympathetic jury."
Leto appeared, trembling and almost faint with apprehension. She stared at poor, bloodied Gaia with huge eyes and would have collapsed had Hermes not caught her.
Julia took her hand. "Be calm, girl. You are coming to our house and no one will harm you."
By this time I was beginning to wonder about my ability to protect anyone from harm.
8
It didn't look like much of a weapon, lying on the table in the impluvium. A messenger had delivered it while we were occupied at the temple. Julia had taken the German girl and Leto to quarters where they could be cared for. I wasn't going to be questioning Gaia for a while, but I hoped to get something coherent from Leto, if she could just overcome her terror.
Antonia picked up the sticker and examined it. The Egyptians had cleaned it before it was sent to me. It was made of a single piece of steel, the handle shaped like that of a miniature dagger. The blade part was triangular in cross section, tapering to a needle point and no more than five inches long. It resembled a writing stylus more than a weapon.
"He was killed with this little thing?" she said.
"It was sufficient," I told her. "It's all in the placement. As any legionary sword master will tell you, a puncture an inch deep in a man's
jugular will kill him just as dead as hacking him clean in two. Same thing with this. Put it in the right place, and death is all but instantaneous."
She twirled it in her fingers, fascinated. "I could use something like this. Most often, I strap a dagger inside my thigh when I go out, but it chafes after a while."
"You do?" Circe said. "I usually carry mine down here." She poked a finger into her own ample cleavage. As usual, every new thing I learned about Roman women alarmed me.
"It weighs practically nothing," Antonia observed, tossing it high, end over end, catching it adroitly by the handle on the fall. "You could hide it in your hair. That way, it would still be handy when you're wearing nothing at all."
"Enough of that, ladies," Julia said, entering the room.
"Actually," I pointed out, "little daggers similar to this are sometimes earned by prostitutes, hidden in their hair, as Antonia suggests. They carry them to protect themselves from cruel or violent customers. Assassination is not the point. Such women know how to, ah, distract a man by stabbing him in an intimate spot."
"You two are having a bad influence on my husband," Julia said. "But if it's a prostitute's trick, doubtless Gaeto had a number of them in his slave barracks."
"The murderer came from outside-we've established that," I told
her.
"If you can rely on the word of an old cavalryman," she said. "If he made up some details to make himself seem more important, he wouldn't be the first."
"I trust him," I said. "Now what have you learned from the girls?"
"Leto is shattered and not a hand has been laid on her. Gaia is made of stronger stuff and that girl Charmian must have been made of iron to escape after the beating she took. I've dosed both the girls in our custody with poppy juice. I hope they can talk for a few minutes before they pass out."
"They'd better,'' I said. "I have to find Charmian. Surely she must have had someplace to run to."
"You should send out word that she is to be brought to you when she's found," Circe advised. "Otherwise she'll be turned over to Diocles for the reward and he'll probably kill her. That old man is entirely too fond of the whip."