Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

In the end, for a generous fee plus the prospect of five hundred pieces of gold, I decided I could hold my nose.

Before I left the house I asked if there was a picture of the kidnapped boy that I could see. Quintus Fabius withdrew, leaving me in his wife’s charge. Valeria wiped her eyes and managed a weak smile as she showed me into another room.

“A woman artist named Iaia painted the family last year, when we were down at Baiae on holiday.” She smiled, obviously proud of the likenesses. The group portrait was done in encaustic wax on wood. Quintus Fabius stood on the left, looking stern. Valeria smiled sweetly on the right. Between them was a strikingly handsome hazel-haired young man with lively blue eyes who was unmistakably her son. The portrait stopped at his shoulders but showed that he was wearing a manly toga.

“The portrait was done to celebrate your son’s coming of age?”

“Yes.”

“Almost as beautiful as his mother,” I said, stating the matter as fact, not flattery.

“People often remark at the resemblance.”

“I suppose he might have a bit of his father about the mouth.”

She shook her head. “Spurius and my husband are not related by blood.”

“No?”

“My first husband died in the civil war. When Quintus married me, he adopted Spurius and made him his heir.”

“Are there any children in the household?”

“Only Spurius. Quintus wanted more children, but it never happened.” She shrugged uneasily. “But he loves Spurius as he would his own flesh, I’m sure of it, though he doesn’t always show it. It’s true they’ve had their differences; but what father and son don’t? Always fighting about money! Spurius can be extravagant, I’ll admit, and the Fabii are famous for stinginess. But the harsh words you heard him utter earlier — pay them no attention. This terrible ordeal has put us both on edge.”

Valeria turned back to the portrait of her son and smiled sadly, her lips trembling. “My little Caesar!” she whispered.

“Caesar?”

“Oh, you know who I mean — Marius’s nephew, the one who was captured by pirates last winter and got away. Oh, Spurius loved hearing that story! Young Caesar became his idol. Whenever he saw him in the Forum he would come home all breathless and say, ‘Mater, do you know who I saw today?’ I would laugh, knowing it could only be Caesar, to make him so excited.” Her lips trembled. “And now, by some jest of the gods, Spurius himself has been captured by pirates... well, that’s why I call him my little Caesar, knowing how brave he must be, and pray for the best.”

I left the next day for Ostia, accompanied by the armed force that Quintus Fabius had hired and outfitted for the occasion. The band was made up of army veterans and freed gladiators, men with no prospects who were willing to kill or risk being killed for a modest wage. There were fifty of us in all, jammed together in a narrow boat sailing down the Tiber. The men took turns rowing, sang old army songs, and bragged about their exploits on the battlefield or in the arena. If one were to believe all their boasting, taken together they had slaughtered the equivalent of several cities the size of Rome.

Their leader was an old Sullan centurion named Marcus, who had an ugly scar that ran from his right cheekbone down to his chin, cutting through both lips. Perhaps the old wound made it painful for him to speak; he could hardly have been more tight-lipped. When I tried to discover what sort of orders Quintus Fabius had given him, Marcus made it clear at once that I would learn no more and no less than he cared to tell me, which for the moment was nothing.

I was an outsider among these men. They looked away when I passed. Whenever I did manage to engage one of them in conversation, the man quickly found something more important to do and in short order I found myself talking to empty air.

But there was one among their number who took a liking to me. His name was Belbo. To some degree he was ostracized by the others as well, for he was not a free man but a slave owned by Quintus Fabius; he had been sent along to fill out the ranks on account of his great size and strength. A previous owner had trained him as a gladiator, but Quintus Fabius used him in his stables. The hair on Belbo’s head was like straw, while the hair on his chin and chest was a mixture of red and yellow. He was by far the largest man in the company. The others joked that if he moved too quickly from one side of the boat to the other he was likely to capsize it.

I expected that nothing would come of questioning him, but soon discovered that Belbo knew more than I thought. He confirmed that young Spurius was not on the best of terms with his father. “There’s always been a grudge between them. The mistress loves the boy, and the boy loves his mother, but the master has a hard spot for Spurius. Which is odd, because the boy is actually more like his father in most ways, even if he is adopted.”

“Really? He looks just like his mother.”