Departures

Both on the Rhine and as a vigil in Vesunna, Gaius Tero had seen the results of more violent deaths than he liked to remember. Yet the corpse in this quiet room shook him in a way none of the others, however grisly, ever had. He was in the presence of the unknown, and little fingers of ice crawled up his back as he viewed its handiwork.

Eprius’ body lay on its right side; its right hand still clutched a stick. Tero barely noticed, for his gaze was fixed in horrified fascination at the ruin that had been its head. There was a neat hole about the width of Tero’s little finger over the left eye. A small stream of blood ran down over Epirius’ face to join the pool beneath his head. Already flies were beginning to buzz about it.

Bad as that was, it was far from the worst. Whatever had drilled through Eprius’ forehead had smashed out through the back of his head, tearing his skull open: Much of the left rear quadrant of his head was a sickening soup of brain, pulverized bone, scalp, and hair. It was that which had stained the wall; blood cemented the gory fragments to the plaster.

The hobnails of Larcius Afer’s sandals clicked on mosaic tiles as he came up. Dread was on his face; his fingers writhed in a sign to avert evil. “It was Jupiter’s thunderbolt that slew him.” Afer said. “Two or three of the neighbors heard him cry out, and then the terrible roar of the thunderbolt itself-and not a cloud in the sky. His man Titus had the evening free and when he got home, he found this.”

Tero had never been one to fear the gods unduly, but he felt the little hairs on the back of his neck trying to rise as he listened to Afer. Surely nothing in his experience could have produced the ghastly wound he saw. To have Kleandros throw back his head and laugh was unbelievable. Tero wondered if the doctor had taken leave of his senses, and Afer stared at him indignantly.

“How many men has either of you known to be killed by the gods?” Kleandros demanded. “I’ve been a doctor for twenty years now, and I’ve never seen one yet.”

“There’s always a first time,” Afer said.

“I suppose so,” Kleandros conceded. “But Clodius Eprius? Good heavens, man, use your head for something more than a place to hang your hair. The worst thing Clodius Eprius did in his whole life was to drink so much wine friends had to carry him home. If the gods started killing everybody who did that, why, there wouldn’t be five men left alive in the empire by this time tomorrow. No, I’m afraid that if the gods left it to Nero to kill himself and soldiers to do away with Caligula, they wouldn’t have much interest in Clodius Eprius.

Afer was still far from convinced. “What did kill him then?” he demanded.

“I haven’t the slightest idea right now, but I intend to find out instead of moaning about Jupiter.”

The physician’s healthy skepticism gave Tero the heartening he needed to shake off his superstitious fear and begin thinking like a vigil once more. He quizzed Eprius’ neighbors, but learned nothing Afer had not already told him. There had been shouts and then a crash, but nobody had seen anyone fleeing Eprius’ home. Titus proved even less informative than the neighbors. He was grief-stricken and more than a little hung over. When Eprius had given him the night off, he had not questioned his master, but headed straight for the wine and girls of Aspasia’s lupanar, where he had roistered the night away. When he came back and found Eprius’ body, he rushed out to get Kleandros, and that was all he knew. Tero left him sitting with his head in his hands and went back to the dining room.

“Learn anything?” Kleandros asked.

“Nothing. Maybe Jupiter did kill him.”

Kleandros’ one-word reply was rude in the extreme. Tero managed an answering grin, but it was strained. His eyes kept going back to the blood-spattered wall. In the middle of the spatters was a ragged hole. “What’s this?” he said.

“How should I know?” Kleandros said. “Maybe Eprius used to keep a tapestry nailed there and was clumsy taking it down.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been here more than once, and I don’t remember any wall hangings.” Tero took a knife from his belt and chipped away at the plaster, enlarging the hole. At its bottom was a little button of metal. No, not a button, a flower, for as Tero dug it out he saw that little petals of lead had peeled back from a brass base. Never in all his years had he seen anything like it. He tossed it up and down, up and down, whistling tunelessly.

“Give me that!” Kleandros said, grabbing it out of the air. He examined it curiously. “What is it, anyway?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I couldn’t begin to, any more than I could begin to tell you what killed Eprius.”

Something almost clicked in Tero’s mind, but the thought would not come clear. “Say that again!” he demanded.

Kleandros repeated.

He had it. “Look,” he said, “where did we find this strange thing?”

“Is this your day to do Sokrates? Very well, best one, I’ll play along. We found this strange thing in a hole in the wall.”