The knife that had been with the body was gone too. There seemed to be no other evidence. Aelianus pushed his hand under the bottom edge of the tent; its side wall had once been pegged to the ground with wooden stays, but they were pulled out. It may have been an oversight; the side walls were probably looped up earlier that day to air the interior.
With some difficulty we dragged up the wall of the tent, finding that the cushions I had seen were piled just here. We shoved some of them aside. Moving the torch closer, I discovered that the grass inside the pavilion, under the cushions, was stained with the rusty red of blood.
“Believe me now?” Aelianus demanded defensively.
“Oh, I always believed you.”
“Whoever cleaned up outside failed to realize there was more work to be done inside the tent.”
“Yes. If it’s a coverup, they will have been in a rush. I am seeing what happened now. Looks like the fight started inside the pavilion. A good place to ambush somebody-it would have given the killer privacy. At the first assault, the victim may have fallen against the tent wall. Since it isn’t pegged, it gave way under his weight. He would have half fallen outside, then probably struggled right under the tent, trying to flee.”
I ducked under the flap myself going in. On the inner surface of the tenting there were more smears of blood, long marks like dragging, which had not soaked through to the outside. They could have been made by a man falling.
“The trouble started inside. The desperate victim somehow made it outside, probably got caught up in the guy ropes in his panic, and was finished off. Ceremonially, with the sacrificial knife-” We both winced. “The killer then pulled the tent wall down straight, piling the cushions up to cover the blood inside.”
“Why bother?”
“To delay discovery. You heard people, you said?”
“It sounded like attendants, clearing the interior.”
“Maybe the killer had also heard them coming. There was time for a few swift adjustments to make the scene look normal.” I wondered if the killer then walked out, passing the attendants, or ducked back under the tent wall again. Either way, an encounter with Aelianus must have been only narrowly avoided. “The corpse, behind the tent, could safely have been left.”
“Right, Falco. It might not have been discovered until the pavilion was taken down. That’s not going to happen until at least tomorrow-or even the day afterwards, when the festival formally ends.”
Thinking about this, Aelianus was staring at the area next to the throne where the assault must have begun. He gave a start. He had seen something glint under the cushions. Flinging the tasseled soft furnishings further aside, he retrieved a decorative holder of some sort. It was a flat tube, with one open end, the other closed in a curved shape. As a scabbard, it would be too short for a sword and too big for a dagger. It formed a distinctive, short, broad-bladed shape. We both knew what it was: a priest’s fancy holder for a sacrificial knife.
“Well, somebody committed sacrilege,” Aelianus exclaimed dryly. “ It is forbidden to bring any kind of blade into the Sacred Grove!”
X
DAWN OVER THE Arx.
Here, on the least high of the Seven Hills, stood the Temple of Juno Moneta. Juno the Admonisher. Juno of the Mint. Juno the Moneybags.
Before her temple stood M. Didius Falco. Falco the ex-informer. Falco the Procurator. Falco, dutifully working in his new post-and looking for a get-out clause.
Juno’s temple on the Arx possessed the now-pampered geese whose ancestors had once saved Rome from marauding Gauls by honking when the guard dogs failed to bark. (It said little for the military commanders of the time that they had failed to post sentries.) Now once a year hapless dogs were rounded up to be ritually crucified while the geese looked on from a litter with purple cushions. I had to ensure proper treatment was being meted out to the geese. I had no remit for dogs. And nobody ever had a remit for correcting military incompetence.
Crying birds caught my attention. Two swallows were wheeling, pursued by a predator-broad wings, distinctive tail, short bursts of flapping flight interspersed with hovering and quick fluttering displays: a sparrowhawk.
This was the place of augury. It was the most ancient heart of Rome. Between the two peaks lay the Saddle, which Romulus had decreed a place of refuge for fugitives-establishing from the very first that whatever austere old men in togas liked to think, Rome would succor social rejects and criminals. On the second peak, the Citadel, rose the huge new Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest, the largest temple ever built, and once it was completed in full decorative splendor with its statuary and gilding, the most magnificent in the Empire. There was a fine view of it from the Arx, and from there too another view looking eastwards to Mons Albanus, whence the augurs sought inspiration from the gods. Here, especially at dawn, a man with a religious soul could convince himself he was close to the chief divinities.
I did not have a religious soul. I had come to see the Sacred Chicks.
Alongside the Temple of Juno Moneta lay the Auguraculum. This was a consecrated platform which formed a practical, permanent augury site. I had always avoided the mystical lore of divination, but I knew broadly that an augur was supposed to mark out with a special curly stick the area of sky he intended to watch, then the area of ground from which he would operate and within which he pitched his observation tent. He sat inside from midnight to dawn, gazing out southwards or eastwards through the open doorway until he spied lightning or a significant flight of birds.
I wondered idly just how he was supposed to see birds before dawn, in the dark.
Today no auspice-taker was in action. Just as well, because I looked inside the booth to say hello-forgetting that any interruption would negate the whole night’s watch.
The Sacred Chickens had a different role from the Sacred Geese, but being used in augury they too lived on the Arx, and so it had seemed convenient to Vespasian to bundle them in with my main job. I found the chicken-keeper, one of the few people about. “You’re early, Falco.”
“Had a late night.”
Preferring to remain a man of mystery, I did not explain. Going to bed late after a crisis makes me stay awake, brooding over the excitement. Then it’s a choice of nodding off at dawn and feeling terrible when you wake up late, or getting up early and still feeling terrible but having time to do something. Anyway, Helena and I had stayed the night at the Camillus residence after I returned with her brother. I could not face breakfast being polite to people I hardly knew.
The keeper showed me the hen coops. They stood on legs to keep out vermin. Double doors with lattice fronts kept the hens in and gave protection from dogs, weasels, and raptors.
“I see you keep them good and clean.”
“I don’t want them dying on me. I’d get the blame.”
If I wanted to be pedantic, now that I was the procurator in charge of poultry management, it was my job to answer questions if too many of the precious pullets popped off, but I was not giving him an excuse to slack. “Plenty of water?” I had been in the army. I knew how to be irritating when people were doing a perfectly adequate job without my supervision.
“And plenty of food,” the keeper said patiently (he had met my type before). “Except when I’ve been tipped the wink.”
“The wink?”
“Well, you know how it works, Falco. When the augur wants to see the signs, we open the cage and feed the chicks with special dumplings. If they refuse to eat, or to come out of the coop-or if they come out and fly off-it’s a bad omen. But if they eat greedily, spilling crumbs on the ground, that’s good luck.”