A Point of Law s-10 Read online

  “And was Octavia there?”

  “She was. So why is she lying about it now? Why does she want to pretend she has nothing to do with her brother?”

  “I intend to find out.”

  9

  The night had been a long one, but I woke early and fully alert for a change. Time was getting short, and I had none of it to waste. I rousted Hermes, and Julia and the slaves got me presentable and out the door before full daylight broke over the City.

  “To the Archive again, Hermes,” I said.

  “Again?”

  “Yes. Today, it’s the Land Registry.”

  This was located on the ground floor with several of its rooms dug back into the side of the Capitoline Hill. Since nothing was more important than ownership of landed property, these documents got the most stringent protection from fire.

  In charge of this department was an old freedman from Athens named Polyneices. We found him at his desk in the gloomy interior of the huge building. He was white as a grub from spending his days entombed within the sacred soil beneath the Capitol. The only illumination came from oil lamps that burned in locked lanterns with lenses of inch-thick glass. The lamps had to be lighted outside, then locked before being carried within. To kindle a light within these rooms meant crucifixion for a slave, beheading for a free man.

  “This is most irregular,” Polyneices said, not quite as peevishly as Androcles, whose offices were two floors above.

  “What constitutes regularity in this place?” I asked him. “I just need to find the title history of a piece of City real estate. It’s a tedious job, I’ll grant you that, but I’ll make it worth your while. Don’t bother trying to tell me you’re unbribable. You are a Greek, after all.”

  “Do I look like I need money?” he asked. “I’ve already paid for my funeral, and I’ve bought a very decent tomb for my family out on the Via Tiburtina.”

  “Everybody needs money!” Hermes protested.

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “However, I shall be praetor next year, and very few men never need a favor, if not for themselves, then for some family member. How about it, Polyneices? I am sure you are all very respectable people, but surely you have the odd scapegrace, the inevitable ne’er-do-well, among your kin? My own father has bailed me out of the lockup more than once in my young and foolish days.”

  He thought, stroking his jaw in that odd Greek fashion. “Well, I do have a grandson who causes me to lose sleep. He’s caused his mother endless worry, and he’s getting old enough to get into serious trouble.”

  “If he’s arrested in the coming year, have his mother call on me and remind me that he’s your grandson. I’ll let him off for a first offense, as long as it doesn’t involve bloodshed or robbing a temple.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t do anything that serious, Senator. Just youthful foolishness. Let me see what I can do for you.” He disappeared into the gloom of the underground chambers like one of Pluto’s minions.

  “Will you really let him off?” Hermes wanted to know.

  “Surely. If it is just youthful foolishness, the scare will do him a great deal of good. If he’s a born offender, he’ll be back and I won’t spare him a second time.”

  A short while later, Polyneices emerged with a deed engraved on plates of copper. Some old Roman families used these copper plates as further insurance against fire, water, hungry insects, and simple age. Lead plates were sometimes used for this purpose, but lead melts at a low temperature, making it a false economy. Copper is more expensive, but it lasts forever. I carried the plates to the doorway, where enough light made its way in for me to read them.

  The deeds were for the house lived in by the late Fulvius and owned by Caius Claudius Marcellus. But Marcellus had owned it only for the last four years. Before that, the owner was Caius Octavius.

  “How was this property transferred from Octavius to Marcellus?” I asked Polyneices. “Was it purchased? A gift?”

  “I have no idea, Senator. The law requires a record of transfer of ownership, but it does not require disclosure of the manner of transfer. Caius Octavius states that this property now belongs to Marcellus and he appends his seal. That is it. I would not want to be the one to ask such a man to furnish particulars.”

  “True,” I said. “Aristocrats are touchy when vulgar subjects like money are brought up. They love to acquire it, but they hate to talk about it. I don’t suppose you might have records of holdings in Baiae here?”

  “Are you joking, Senator? Deeds pertaining to the City and surrounding countryside give us enough trouble. We need a new tabularium as it is. No, I’m afraid you’ll have to go to Baiae if you want to see those deeds.” A malicious gleam came into his eye. “You plan to be consul in a few years don’t you, Senator? You could make your name immortal by giving us a new archive. You could call it the Tabularia Caecilia Metella. The land just above this building is wide open. Caesar is going to give us a huge new basilica, you know. It will be called the Basilica Julia, and it will be the largest building in Rome. But your tabularium will be on higher ground and will look more impressive.”

  “If I get a chance to loot Parthia in my propraetorian year, I’ll consider it. But if I give the City an archive, I’ll have it organized like the Museum in Alexandria. It will put memorizers like you out of work.”

  “What do I care? I’ll be retired by then.”

  Outside, Hermes and I watched the Forum warm up in the morning sunlight.

  “I suppose we could try the censor’s records again,” Hermes said. “Caius Octavius might have declared ownership of that estate in Baiae, if it was his.”

  “It might be a lot of work for nothing,” I told him. “He needn’t have declared every last thing he owned, just enough to prove his status and fitness for office. His City property alone should have been plenty for that. In any case, what we need to know now isn’t who owned which property when. It’s what the connection might be.”

  Hermes leaned with his elbow on the railing in front of the Tabulanum, his chin cupped in one palm, looking like one of the Greek gods pondering the fate of mortals. He had grown into a truly handsome young man.

  “It seems to me,” he began, “that the last few years everyone is for either Caesar or Pompey. Marcellus hates Caesar. But Octavius? Like you, he married Caesar’s niece. Then he gave his daughter in marriage to Marcellus.”

  “Octavia,” I said, “claims that she has cut her ties to the Julians, but she is lying. Why?”

  “Let’s consider it,” he said, “but let’s not think on empty stomachs.”

  “Excellent idea.”

  We went down to one of the little side streets off the Vicus Iugarius where one of our favorite food stalls was located. At the counter we got steaming bowls of fish stew laced with garum and cups of heated sour wine, heavily watered and lightly spiced. It was eye-opening food, guaranteed to leave you wide awake and ready to face the most tedious Senate meeting. Hermes and I took our breakfast outside and dished up the sour, vinegary stew with pieces of flat bread.

  “Are you serious about building a new tabularium?” Hermes asked, crumbs falling from his lips.

  “If I build anything, that’s what it will be. The City really doesn’t need a new temple. Pompey’s Theater will hold most of the population. We don’t need a new bridge. What we really need is an efficient way to store records. But I doubt I’ll ever be rich enough to do it.” I took a sip of wine and winced at its bite. “Actually, I think this whole practice has gotten out of hand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, great men go out and loot the world. Then they come back home and build great monuments to themselves and slather their names all over them and then bask in the honor of it all.”

  “Hasn’t it always been that way?”

  “Yes, and that’s the problem. We’re lords of the world, and we still act like the big frogs of little Greek city-states, putting up statues of ourselves and calling it immortality.”

&nbs
p; “But what else are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it’s wasteful. There ought to be something better we could do with our loot. As it is, what we end up with are cheap slaves and expensive monuments, the occasional spectacle, and public banquets.”

  “You like spectacles and public banquets.”

  “Doesn’t everybody? But they’re unproductive.”

  “Now you’re talking like a merchant. This isn’t helping to solve our problem.” He handed his now-empty bowl to a boy who added it to a stack of them he held nested in one arm.

  “Sometimes you have to get your mind off the problem if you’re ever going to get it solved.”

  “I’ve been considering something,” Hermes said, now handing his empty cup to a little girl who was gathering them.

  “Tell me.” I gave her my own crockery.

  “The day before yesterday, when we went on our little burglary expedition, we wondered why there were no slaves in the house. I said they’d probably belonged to whoever lent Fulvius the house.”

  “I remember.”

  “We now know that the house was owned in turn by Octavius and Caius Marcellus. They’ve probably gone back to their own households. Octavius is dead, so the slaves are unlikely to be his. I can go back to the house of Marcellus. I might be able to induce some of them to talk.”

  “Octavia impressed me as the sort of woman who keeps the household staff confined to the house and hard at work at all hours.”

  “There are ways,” he assured me. Having been a slave himself, he knew all about these things.

  “Then go there.” I divided my money with him for a bribe fund. “I am going to Callista’s. If I’m not there when you are done, look for me in the Forum. I’m to be tried tomorrow and the election is the day after, so I have to act like a defendant and a candidate, making friends and collecting votes.”

  I found Callista in her courtyard, surrounded by stacks of books and four or five assistants-and Julia. My wife seemed to have developed a special sense for detecting when I was about to call upon an attractive woman.

  “How goes the work?” I asked.

  “Wonderfully!” Callista said, with a flushed expression most women reserve for activities of a more intimate sort. “I’ve made a reliable interpretation of at least six of the Greek letters!”

  “Just six?”

  “With these, I’ll have the rest figured out in no time!” she cried happily.

  “No time is exactly what I have,” I told her.

  “Nonsense,” Julia said. “We have all day today, and tonight if need be. That’s plenty of time.”

  “So, what have we learned?”

  “I’ve conferred with a number of scholars here in Rome,” Callista said, “and several of them have lent me their relevant books.” She gestured to the heaps of papyrus leaves and scrolls that overloaded her desks and tables. She took up a tiny scroll and held it like a trophy. “This one proved to be extremely important.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s from the collection of Xenophanes of Thebes. He is the architect who designed Pompey’s theater complex on the Campus Martius. Being an architect, he is an avid scholar of geometry. This book is by a Pythagorean philosopher named Aristobulus.”

  “I’ve met Pythagoreans,” I told her. “There are even a few senators who follow that sect. They are very boring people, with all their talk of transmigration of souls and their stupid dietary practices.”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Decius,” Julia said. “Just listen.”

  “I apologize. Please go on.” I knew better than to ignore that tone of voice.

  “Aristobulus,” Callista continued, “is a scholar of the symbolic use of numbers and symbols. He is an advocate of a concept called the ‘unknown quantity.’ It is an extremely obscure and arcane field of study. Pythagoreans, with their mystical leanings, are about the only scholars who give it any serious attention. As far as I know, Aristobulus is the only one now working on the problem.”

  She had lost me again, but I thought I understood her drift. “You think this has something to do with that-what did you call it? — that ‘symbol for nothing?’ ”

  “Aristobulus uses the delta as his shorthand symbol for the unknown quantity. It is only a short step from that to a symbol for nothing at all.”

  “This is making me dizzy,” I said, “but I trust your comprehensive knowledge of your field.”

  I took the little scroll from her hand. It was finely made, enclosed in a leather tube with an ivory tag depending from one of the terminals. Written on the ivory in tiny, precise Greek letters, was the name of the author: Aristobulus of Croton.

  My scalp prickled. Croton. Where had I heard that name spoken recently? Since this business had begun, my days had been so packed with events that I was beginning to lose track of who had told me what. To a Roman public man, educated to commit vast quantities of minutiae to memory, the sensation was disorienting.

  “Decius?” Julia said. “You’re getting that look again.”

  “What look?” Callista asked.

  “The hit-on-the-head-with-the-sacrificial-hammer look,” my wife elucidated.

  “I think he looks like a Dionysian reveler in a state of ektasis, the mind completely out of the body.”

  “Isn’t that something like enthousiasmos?” my loving Julia inquired.

  “No, that’s possession by the god. He’d be much more lively.”

  “Instead of talking about me as if I weren’t here,” I said, “you could give me some help. I’m trying to remember where I heard Croton spoken of recently.”

  “There was some question whether you were here,” Julia said. “And how can we help you remember? We weren’t there when it happened.”

  “Let’s consider how the subject might have arisen,” Callista said. “For what is the city of Croton famed? It was the home of Pythagoras, naturally.”

  “Let’s see”-Julia mused-“Croton? Athletes. Jewelers.”

  “That’s it! The day before yesterday, Hermes and I found a seal ring in Fulvius’s desk. The lapidary I consulted said that the carving on the stone was in the style of the Greek cities of southern Italy. He was pretty certain that it was from Croton.”

  “I love this sort of logic!” Callista said happily. “I know that applied logic is rather disreputable, but I find this exhilarating. But what is this about a ring?”

  So I told her about this minor theft. What with murder and burglary and conspiracy and intrigues of one sort or another, it occurred to me that the felonies were beginning to pile up.

  “If this conspiracy was hatched in Baiae as you think,” Callista said, “where originates the connection with Croton? The two towns are not close.”

  “Baiae is about midway between Rome and Croton,” Julia put in. “It’s a substantial trip in both directions.”

  “The conspirators,” I said, “wanted a code. As I’ve mentioned, certain senators follow the teachings of Pythagoras-not these men, of course, but one of them might have heard of Aristobulus in conversation. Or, who knows, one of them might have spent some time in Croton and studied with the man and knew of his theories. In any case, they probably hired him to devise this cipher for them. For a good fee, he would have been happy to go up to Baiae to confer with them.”

  “But why a ring from Croton?” Julia asked.

  “This business is full of little anomalies. But I doubt that it’s a coincidence. There are no coincidences in a conspiracy.”

  “That sounds like a quote from Euripides,” Callista said.

  “I don’t cadge from Greek playwrights,” I told her. “What do you know about this man Aristobulus other than what you’ve already told us?”

  “Virtually nothing. He’s quite obscure. He never taught at the Museum, or in the other schools of Alexandria, or I would have heard about it. I could make inquiries in the Greek community here.”

  “No, please, there’s no time for that. I’ll talk with A
sklepiodes. He travels all over Italy with Statilius’s troupe, and he loves to hobnob with the scholarly crowd wherever he goes. If he’s been to Croton he may know Aristobulus.”

  “Excellent idea,” Julia said. “Why don’t you go along and do just that so that we can work on this code.”

  I can take a hint.

  I found Asklepiodes in the kitchen of the Statilian school. Supervising the diet of the gladiators was one of his duties. Satisfied that all was in order, he led me to his spacious surgery, a room so draped with weapons that it looked more like a Temple of Mars than a medical facility.

  “More bodies to examine?” he asked me.

  “Not this time. Do your travels ever take you to Croton?”

  “Usually once each year. The city and its district are Greek, so there is not as much demand for gladiators as in Rome and Campania, but the city authorities sponsor a modest show each fall. What is your interest in Croton?”

  “In your travels there, did you ever meet a mathematician named Aristobulus?”

  His face, usually so maddeningly serene, showed genuine surprise. “Why, yes. Whenever I am in Croton, I attend the weekly dinner and symposium of the Greek Philosophical Club. Croton has a small but distinguished community of scholars, as you might expect of the home of Pythagoras. He was always there until-well, Croton is all the way down in Bruttium. How is it that you are investigating his case?”

  Now it was my turn to look astonished. “His case? What do you mean?”

  “He was murdered earlier this year. You mean you aren’t investigating? Since you always seem to be around wherever there is a murder, I supposed-”

  “Murdered? I first heard of the man less than an hour ago, in connection with the case in which I am embroiled, and now you tell me he was murdered! How-”

  Asklepiodes held up a hand for silence. “Let’s not confuse one another further.” He pointed to the chairs that flanked a table by a window. “Have a seat.” He clapped his hands and one of his silent Egyptians appeared. He said something incomprehensible to the man, then took the chair opposite mine. “I’ve sent him for some wine. My very best wine because I know you speak most easily with proper lubrication.”