"All you have to do is tell the truth," Frontinus pronounced.

I thought she now looked like a liar who was losing her nerve.

"Let us go through your story," said Hilaris. I had seen him in this situation before. For a quiet man, he had a terse and very effective interrogation style. "You are the only person-the only free citizen whose word counts legally-who claims that Pyro and Splice killed Verovolcus in the tavern well."

Flavia Fronta nodded unhappily.

"You say you heard the Roman called Florius order them to do it?" Another, even weaker nod. "And when Florius left the bar with his two associates, the Briton was dead?"

"He must have been."

"Oh, bull's balls! That's not good enough." Everybody looked at me. I stood up slowly. I paced closer to the woman. I had noted the new weakness in the way she told her story. Amicus was not the only professional involved here. Even when it is inconvenient, a good informer continues to test everything. "Pyro told us Verovolcus was still alive."

"You'd better ask Pyro about it then!" she jeered.

"Pyro is dead. The gang had him killed." I lowered my voice: "Before you think it lets you off, you have something very serious to explain."

I nodded to Hilaris. He produced the torque.

"Flavia Fronta, we believe you hid this at the bar."

"It's been planted!"

"Oh, I don't think so. Now, as the governor told you, we are going to go through your story. You can tell us now, or you can be sent back to the official torturer-who, believe me, has not even started on you yet. Let's begin: You say Florius told Pyro and Splice, Do it, lads! Then, you say, they shoved poor Verovolcus in the well. You described it; you told me his expression was horrible… You say Pyro and Splice held him down-but if they did that, how exactly were you able to see his expression?"

"Oh… it must have been while they were dunking him."

"I see." I pretended to accept it. The woman could tell I had not done so. "So he was there dead, and everybody fled in fear?"

"Yes. They all ran."

"What did the three men do? Florius, Pyro, and Splice?"

"They left too."

"Straightaway?"

"Yes."

"Someone told us they were laughing?"

"Yes."

"So behind them in the yard was Verovolcus in the well-where was the bar owner?"

"Inside the bar. Whenever there was trouble he found something else to do."

"Well, that's typical of a landlord, isn't it? And what about you? You went out into the yard to have a look? Then, let me guess-you stood there staring at Verovolcus and-am I right?-you told us next morning that his feet were waggling?"

On his magistrate's stool, Hilaris moved very slightly. He too remembered that the woman had mentioned this when we inspected the corpse.

Flavia Fronta made her mistake: she nodded.

I pierced her with a furious gaze. "And then you did-what?"

She faltered, unwilling to explain.

"You took his torque, didn't you?" I knew now "Pyro had not removed it, as people thought he must have done. You were alone with the Briton.

He was half drowned and at your mercy. You could see this beautiful, very costly torque around his neck. It was too much to resist."

Flavia Fronta nodded again. I cannot say she looked crestfallen. She was aggrieved that I had forced this out of her, and she seemed to believe that stealing the precious neck collar had been her right.

"Explain now how it happened. You must have pulled Verovolcus at least partially out of the well to get at it?"

"That's right." She was bolder now. We had the torque. Deception was pointless. Women are such realists.

"Verovolcus was still alive. He must have been heavy, and weakened perhaps. I daresay he was struggling. Pulling him out just enough must have taken some effort."

"I may be short but I'm strong," the waitress boasted. "I spend half my life shifting full barrels and amphorae. I dragged him up and hauled the torque off his neck."

"He was still alive. You admit that?"

"He damn well was. He made a big fuss about me wrenching off his gold."

I tried to moderate my distaste for her. "Verovolcus was meant to survive being dunked in the water. But you had stolen his torque and he saw you; so then-"

"I had no choice," responded the waitress, as if I were an idiot to ask. "I shoved him down the well again. And I held him there until he stopped kicking."

I turned to the governor and procurator. "Always a good feeling when you charge the right suspect with murder, don't you think?" They looked rueful.

Flavia Fronta's confession had destroyed our viable case against Florius. On murder we would have had him. Putting him before a jury on charges of racketeering would be messier, and with clever lawyers to confuse the issues, the outcome would be much more unpredictable.

"I suppose I should have hidden the torque better," the woman groaned.

"No, you should never have taken it. King Togidubnus gave that torque as a present to his retainer. The King will be pleased to have it returned. But I don't hold out much hope for your nice little wine shop in the south."

The waitress would go to the arena. The death of an unrepentant murderess in the jaws of bears or big wild cats would be a huge draw for an audience. She did not seem to have realized her fate. I left it for the governor and his staff to bring that home to her.

To Petronius Longus I broke the bitter news that we had solved a crime but lost his witness.

LX

There was one sad task remaining: Helena, Petronius, and I attended the funeral of Chloris. Maia, still shaky after her bout with Norbanus, refused to come with us. She had harsh words for all female fighters and worse for my old girlfriend. She even blamed Helena for attending.

"This is noble, Helena-but nobility stinks!"

"She died at my feet," Helena Justina reproved her quietly.

Gladiators are outcasts from society. Their infamy means their graves lie not just beyond the town, as happens with all adult interments, but outside the public cemetery too. Established and wealthy groups of fighters may buy their own tombs, but Londinium so far possessed no townships of elaborate mausoleums for the dead. So her friends chose to bury Chloris in open ground, with an antique and peculiarly northern ritual.

It was a familiar walk to the site. We went westward along the De-cumanus Maximus, crossing the central stream and then out past the arena and the bathhouse. Londinium had no walls and no formally plowed pomerium to mark its boundary, but we knew we were at the town limits. Beyond the military area, we reached a cemetery, one that contained some grand memorials. We walked through it, noticing a massive inscription, set up by his wife, to Julius Classicianus, the previous procurator of finance, from whom Hilaris had taken over after he died in service. Up and over the hill, we came to sloping ground that looked out across another tributary of the Thamesis. There, separate from the official tombs and monuments and facing the empty countryside, the funeral party met.

Chloris was the founder and leader of her group, cut down in unfair combat. It called for particular honor. Her body was brought at daybreak, the bier carried slowly by women. Her companions formed a somber ceremonial escort. Other mourners, mainly women also, had come from all parts of town. They included a priestess of Isis, to whose cult many gladiators are attached. There was a temple of the Egyptian goddess on the south bank of the river in Londinium, incongruously. I knew Chloris had barely honored her own Tripolitanian gods, but some of her companions found the attendance of the priestess appropriate. Anubis, the dog-headed Egyptian guide to the Underworld, equates to Rhadamanthus or Mercury, those messengers of the gods who officiate over deaths in the arena. So it was in a heavy fug of pine incense, and accompanied by the rattle of a sistrum, that the bier reached the burial site.