The Venus Throw

He pulled a small object from the folds of his toga. A few spectators in the front rows laughed out loud when they saw what it was. "For instance," he went on, holding up the object so that it glinted in the sunlight, "when one sees a simple little pyxis such as this, what does one assume that it contains? A medicinal unguent of some sort, or a cosmetic powder, or a perfume infused into wax, perhaps-the sort of thing that anybody might take along to the baths. Or so a reasonable person might assume. A person of a more morbid state of mind might guess that something else was in the box-poison, perhaps. Especially if that person was herself well acquainted with using poison." From my distant vantage, there was no way I could be sure of what the pyxis looked like. It must have been only my imagination that perceived it to be made of bronze, with little raised knobs and inlays of ivory that caught the sunlight-identical to the pyxis that Caelius's confederate Licinius had brought to the Senian baths, and that had been left, filled with something unspeakable, on Clodia's doorstep as she lay poisoned in her house.

More laughter spread through the crowd. I looked at Clodia. Her eyes were aflame and her jaw like granite.

"An imagination of a particularly lewd bent might imagine something even more outrageous in such an i

"Master!" Belbo tugged at my toga.

"Belbo, I'm trying to listen."

"But Master, he's here!"

I turned about, prepared to snap at him, then felt a surge of joy. Not far away, at the edge of the crowd, Eco stood on his toes peering into the sea of heads.

"Belbo, you sharp-eyed lookout! Come, he'll never spot us in this crowd. We'll go to him."

"You're not leaving, are you?" said Catullus.

"I'll be back."

"But the best is yet to come." "Memorize the jokes for me," I said.

We came upon Eco just as he was begi

"Papa! No, don't hug me, please. I'm filthy. And sore! I rode all night, knowing the trial must have already started. It's not over,

is it?"

"Not yet. Another full day of speeches-" "Good. Perhaps there's still time, then." "Time for what?" "To save Marcus Caelius."

"If he needs saving," I said, thinking Caelius was doing a pretty good job of defending himself. "If he deserves to be saved."

"I only know that he doesn't deserve to be punished for Dio's murder."

"What are you saying?"

"Caelius didn't kill Dio."

"You're certain?"

"Yes. I found the slave girl, Zotica, the one who was with Dio the night he died… "

"If it wasn't Caelius and Asicius, then who?"

"I brought the girl back with me…"

Eco suddenly looked very

tired.

"The girl killed Dio?" I frowned. We had considered and rejected that possibility already. "No."

"But she knows who did?"

"Not exactly." Why would Eco not look me in the eye? "All I can say is that your intuition was right, Papa. The girl was the key."

"Well? What did you find out?"

"I think you'd better talk to her yourself, Papa."

The crowd behind us laughed at something, then laughed again, louder. I looked over my shoulder. "Caelius is just getting to the heart of his speech. Then Crassus will speak, then Cicero -"

"Still, I think you'd better come, Papa. Quickly, before the trial gets any further along."

"Can't you just tell me what the girl told you?"

His face darkened. "I don't think that would be wise, Papa. It wouldn't be fair."

"To whom, the slave girl?"

"Please, Papa! Come with me." The look on his face convinced me. What terrible secret had so u

He had left the girl at his house in the Subura. We walked there as quickly as we could, threading our way through streets crowded with food vendors, acrobats and merry-makers.

"Where did you find her?" I asked, stepping out of the way of a drunken band of gladiators coming up the street. They snarled at Belbo as they passed.

"In one of the hill towns of the far side of Vesuvius, miles from Puteoli. It took some looking. First I had to find the brothel-keeper who'd bought the allotment of slaves that included Zotica. Do you have any idea how many establishments like that there are down on the bay? One after another told me he'd never seen Zotica, and they all wanted a bribe just to tell me that much, and even then they all seemed to be lying just to spite me. Finally I found the man who'd purchased her. But she'd been useless to him, he said. 'Worse than useless-nobody wants a girl with scars on her,' he told me, 'not even the mean ones.' Besides that, she'd turned wild." "Wild?"

"That's what he calls it. I suppose a man like that tends to see slaves in conditions that most of us don't, or not very often. Her mind isn't quite right. Maybe she was always a little addled; I don't know. I think she must have been treated well enough in Coponius's house at the begi

"If the girl told you what we needed to know, maybe you should have let her go."

Darkness shadowed his face again. "No, Papa. I couldn't just repeat her story to you. I had to bring her back to Rome, so you could hear her for yourself."

Menenia was waiting for us at the door, with folded arms and an uncharacteristically sour look on her face. I thought the look must be for Eco, for having brusquely rushed off to find me after dropping off the slave girl-young wives expect a bit more attention from husbands arriving home after a trip. But then I realized that the look was aimed at me. What had I done, except quarrel with my wife and not come home last night? Menenia couldn't possibly know about that already-or could she? Sometimes I think that the ground beneath the city must be honeycombed with tu