Daily, Bethesda asked what progress I had made in getting Davus back from Pompey. I explained to her that staging a serious inquiry into the death of Numerius was virtually impossible. Both Caesar's and Pompey's partisans had left Rome to join their respective leaders. Anyone with reason enough to kill Numerius, or to know who did, was probably in one camp or the other, and miles from Rome.

Bethesda was not impressed. "Pompey won't give back Davus until you find his kinsman's killer. If you lack the energy, husband, why don't you ask Eco to do it?"

"It occurs to me, wife, that your job is to see that this household is kept warm and fed- which so far you have done brilliantly, in spite of the shortages and outrageous prices at the markets. Are those duties not enough to keep you busy, and out of my affairs?"

A chill settled between us in those first days of Februarius, making the house as cold inside as out. Around us the crisis wore on.

Despite my protests to Bethesda, I was not entirely idle. If Rome was a foundering ship from which captains, crew, and paying passengers had fled, the rats remained aboard- and rats have keen eyes and ears. I called upon old contacts and put out feelers among the lower orders of the city- petty thieves, poison-dealers, pimps, and tavernkeepers- seeking knowledge of Numerius's shady dealings.

The few scraps of information I was able to find- or more precisely, purchase, at prices as outrageously inflated as everything else for sale in the city- were piecemeal and second-hand, largely unreliable and mostly useless. Repeatedly, I was told what I already knew, that Numerius had spent most of his time running errands for Pompey, which meant that he had frequently been seen all over the Forum and on the doorsteps of senators and wealthy merchants. His contacts among the powerful ranged far and wide. But at least occasionally the Great One's favorite cousin had patronized far more humble surroundings; more than one of my contacts claimed to have seen Numerius entering or leaving a particularly notorious establishment in the seedy warehouse district between the Forum and the river. I knew the place from previous investigations: the Salacious Tavern.

I had not been to the tavern for a long time; it had been over two years since I last spent an afternoon there, with Tiro of all people, drowning our sorrows after the trial of Milo. On the chilly afternoon I decided to pay a visit I almost got lost in the maze of narrow streets surrounding it. Once I found the right alley, it was impossible to miss the familiar sign, an upright post surmounted by an erect marble phallus. A phallus-shaped lamp hung over the door, sputtering fitfully beneath the overcast sky. I knocked.

A peephole slid open, then shut. The door swung open to reveal a fleshy eunuch in a capacious white tunic, ostentatiously bedecked with glass jewelry. Rings glittered like little rainbows across his fingers. Baubles of faux topaz, amethyst, and emerald were strung around his neck and dangled from his elongated earlobes. The long, dimly lit room behind him exhaled the warm smell of moldering wood, oily smoke, and sour wine. To my eyes, unadapted to the dark, the place looked as black as a cave.

"Citizen!" The eunuch smiled. "Do I know you?"

"I think not. I don't know you. I take it the tavern is under new management?"

"Yes! Did you know it before?"

"I came here once or twice."

"Then you'll find it much improved. Come in!" He shut the door behind us.

"Funny, it smells the same." I wrinkled my nose. "Same rancid lamp oil, smoking up the place. Same foul wine, stinking up the floors."

The eunuch's smile wavered.

My eyes adjusted a bit to the dimness. Leaning against a wall a few feet behind the eunuch, I made out a bored-looking redhead. She, too, was familiar. Ipsithilla was already a fixture in the tavern the first time I stepped foot in the place, six years before, with the drunken poet Catullus. By the orange glow of a nearby lamp she still looked relatively young and fresh, testament to just how dim the lighting was. "Even the girls are the same!" I said.

The eunuch shrugged. "There are only so many pleasures to be had in this world, citizen. But you'll find them all here, I promise- for a price."

"What I really crave is a bit of information. Might I find that here, for a price?"

The eunuch raised an eyebrow.

I left the Salacious Tavern that day without having indulged a single vice, but with a few intriguing bits of information. Numerius Pompeius had indeed been a frequent patron; the eunuch knew him by sight, and had heard the news of his death. Numerius, the eunuch told me, always arrived at the tavern alone and left alone. He always sat in the same corner. Sometimes he met with others, but what they discussed, and who those others were, the eunuch couldn't say; it was his practice never to eavesdrop, and the men Numerius met with were strangers to the Salacious Tavern who never came again- except for one.

"Ah, yes," the eunuch told me, "I remember, one day Numerius shared his corner bench with that fellow Soscarides."

"Soscarides?"

"Odd name, isn't it? Greek, I suppose. From Alexandria. Swarthy little fellow with a beard. Been coming in for a couple of months now. A philosopher- rather famous, to hear him tell it. Perhaps you know him, citizen?"

"I'm sure I don't."

"Well, Numerius Pompeius did. They sat in the corner for a long time that day, he and Soscarides, talking and drinking, drinking and talking."

"Talking about what?"

"Alas, citizen, I never eavesdrop, and neither do my girls. A man's secrets are safe in the Salacious Tavern, even from the gods."

"When was this?"

"Oh, let me think- why, just before Pompey fled the city, so I suppose it must have been only a day or two before Numerius was murdered."

I nodded and mouthed the name Soscarides. I was sure I had never heard of him. A philosopher; a dark, swarthy little fellow with a beard…

The eunuch, fingering his already-swollen coin purse, was eager to be helpful. "As I said, Soscarides comes in here every so often. When I see him next, shall I tell him you're looking for him, citizen?"

I shook my head. "I was never here." I gave him another coin, to be sure he understood.

• • •

Several days of stormy weather followed my visit to the Salacious Tavern. The weather was so foul that no one went abroad in the city; even the Forum was deserted. I spent those days holed up in my study, reading philosophy. In rare moments when the rain broke I paced in the garden, gazing up to contemplate Minverva's inscrutable features. She was the only witness to everything that happened the day Numerius Pompeius died. She had heard his final words, had seen the face of his killer. "What shall I do next?" I asked her. She gave no indication of hearing.

The storm passed. Two days after the Ides of Februarius I made my way down to the Forum to catch the latest flock of rumors. At Bethesda's insistence, I took Mopsus and Androcles along with me, to give the boys a chance to use up some of their pent-up energy from being housebound by the storm. Going down the Ramp, they ran ahead of me and then back up to me over and over, making a game of it. Just watching them exhausted me.

The daily panic over an immediate occupation by Caesar receded. Reliable reports now placed him to the northeast, along the Adriatic coast. All of Picenum had surrendered to him. It was said that the people of the towns he passed through had welcomed him jubilantly, offering prayers as if he were a god. He had garrisoned strategic cities with troops, and now was heading south, where Pompey and the loyalist forces had occupied the region of Apulia, but were split in two. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus- who by the Senate's decree was supposed to have replaced Caesar as governor of Gaul at the first of the year- had occupied the central city of Corfinium, only seventy-five miles east of Rome, with thirty cohorts, eighteen thousand men. Pompey, in the meantime, had moved farther south. There seemed to be a tug of war between the two loyalist generals, Domitius wanting Pompey to reinforce him in Corfinium, Pompey demanding that Domitius abandon the city and join him.