A murder on the Appian way

The next morning I asked Diana to show me the note she had mentioned in her letter to Meto, the one that had arrived by anonymous courier addressed to her mother. It was just as she had transcribed it:

Do not fear for Gordianus and his son. They have not been harmed. They will be returned to you in time.

I showed it to Eco. "Does the handwriting look familiar to you?" "No."

"Nor to me. Still, it tells us something. The parchment is of good quality, as is the ink; it didn't come from a poor household. Moreover, the spelling is correct, and the letters are properly made, so we may assume that the writer is educated."

"Probably a slave, taking dictation."

"Do you think so? To send a message such as this, I imagine a man might actually write the note himself. I think it might profit us to look among my records and correspondence, to see if we can find another example of this handwriting."

"I don't have many such specimens, and neither do you, Papa. Most letters come on wax tablets, so that you can write over them and send them back."

"Yes, but we may find something-a bill, a receipt, anything. Do you see how he's made the letter G in my name? That's rather distinctive. If we could find the man who makes his Gs that way…"

"We'd find a man who must know something about our captivity."

"Exacdy."

Eco smiled. "I need to clean my study and sort through my correspondence, anyway. Shall we start here, or at my house on the Esquiline?"

"Here, I think. Unless of course you want to drop by your house just to have a look at it, since you've been away so long. Of course, we should report to the Great One, sooner or later -"

As if responding to a cue in a play, Davus appeared in the doorway.

"A caller, Master."

"Anyone I know?"

"I think you gave him a nickname. Something silly…" Davus looked thoughtful. "Oh, I remember: Baby Face!"

I turned to Eco. "It looks like we shall be seeing the Great One sooner then, not later. Should we take cloaks, Davus?"

"No, it's mild this morning, Master, and the sky is clear. Shall I… shall I come with you?"

"I doubt if there's any need, Davus, with Baby Face and his men to look after us. Stay here. You've done such a good job of looking after the women in our absence."

I thought this would cheer him up, but my words of praise only seemed to plunge Davus into a deeper gloom.

XXVIII

As consul, despite the fact that he retained command of his legions in Spain, Pompey was now legally able to enter the city and might have taken up residence in his old family house in the Carinae district. Instead he chose to remain in his villa out on the Pincian Hill, probably because it was more defensible, I thought, as we ascended through the terraced gardens ringed with soldiers keeping watch among the statuary. Was this how a king would live, if Rome had a king?

The Great One received us in the same room as before. He sat in a corner with a pile of documents on his lap, dictating to a secretary, but as we entered he put the documents aside and dismissed the secretary. He showed us onto the terrace, which was bright with morning sunlight. No columns of smoke marred the skyline of the city. Pompey had vowed to restore order, and so he had.

"You've been gone for a very long time, Finder. I must confess, I had almost given up on you. It was a pleasant surprise when I received news of your return yesterday. You both look well enough, if a bit thi

"Except that our captors didn't free us, Great One. We escaped."

"Really?" Pompey raised an appreciative eyebrow. "You've had an adventure, then. Here, sit. I could use a good story to distract me from my own affairs for a while. Begin at the begi

If Pompey preferred to call it a story rather than a report, I had no objection, though it was clear from his frequent questions that he wanted complete details of everything we had seen, heard and done on the Appian Way. He didn't call his secretary to take notes, apparently preferring to hold the relevant details in his head and to keep the information entirely to himself. I held very little back from him. We had struck a bargain, after all. The payment he had offered could never make up for the days I had lost in captivity, but he had fulfilled his guarantee to keep my family safe while I was gone.

About certain points, especially regarding the actual encounter between Milo and Clodius, he questioned us intently. Eco and I had gone over the evidence so many times in our captivity that we could have answered his questions in our sleep. Indeed, I was sick of talking and thinking about it, and Pompey apparently sensed this, for now and then he would sit back and fall into easy conversation for a while, asking if we had enjoyed the amenities of his Alban villa and the skills of his cook, before delving back into our discoveries along the Appian Way. The conversation assumed a certain rhythm, intense for a while and then relaxed, and before I realized it the entire morning had passed. Pompey was not a great orator, but he was a skilled interrogator. Long experience as a general had taught him how to brief and debrief his men. No wonder his judicial reforms had placed greater emphasis on questioning witnesses and less on rhetorical summations. If anything I reported startled or alarmed him, including the details of our incarceration, he had the control not to show it.

I ended my report with a brief account of our escape and a few words about our stay at Caesar's headquarters in Rave

"He said that I should convey to you his warmest regards," I said.

"Did he?" Pompey seemed vaguely amused. "Tell me, how did he treat Cicero?"

While I was considering how to answer this, Pompey noticed the smirk on Eco's face and nodded knowingly. "Pretty shabbily, then?"

"Caesar seemed to be very busy, and kept putting him off" I said carefully.

"Ha! You mean he did everything he could to make Cicero feel like an idiot. It's because I sent him, of course." "I beg your pardon, Great One?"

"Cicero was there to represent me. You didn't realize that, Finder? What, did he tell you he was acting all on his own?"

"Not exactly…"

"He fooled you, then. Admit it! Well, Cicero has fooled all of us at one time or another, so why not you, too? What a, fox he is. I'm sure he put on quite an air, acting the great saviour of the state who must dash here and there, making sense of all the strife and linking everything together. The fact is, I sent Cicero to Rave