"Remarkable!" I said.

He smiled begrudgingly, pleased by the compliment. "There's a trick to it-painting cherries. I could paint cherries all day long." He laughed, as if at some private joke. Servilia laughed as well.

A chill ran up my spine. I looked from the face of Arcesislaus to the face of Apollo-his self-portrait, there could be no doubt, for man and god shared the same sardonic smile. I thought of how merciless, selfish, and cruel the god could be, in spite of his beauty.

I looked at the palette of pigmented wax. Not all paints were so thick. Other techniques called for paints that were quite thin, hardly more than colored water. With a thin liquid and a tiny horsehair brush, one could paint cherries-or paint cherries…

I backed out of the Apollo Room, onto the terrace, then turned and ran to the cherry orchard.

Lucullus was where I expected to find him, seated on a folding chair beneath the tree that bore the cherries called Most-Precious-of-All.

As I approached, I saw him reach up, pluck a cherry, gaze at it admiringly, and then lower it toward his open mouth. "No!" I shouted. "Don't eat it!"

He turned his head, but continued to lower the cherry toward his lips-until I knocked it from his hand.

"Gordianus! What in Hades do you think you're doing?"

"Saving your life, quite possibly. Or perhaps just your sanity."

"What are you talking about? This is outrageous!"

"What was it you said to me about these cherries? So fragile they can be eaten only beneath the tree-which gives them a more practical advantage, that they can't have been poisoned."

"Yes; they're the only things I ever eat without having a taster test them first."

"And yet, they could be poisoned, here on the tree."

"But how? No one could soak them, or cut them open, or… " He shook his head. "I didn't call on your services for the purpose of finding a poisoner, Gordianus. I require of you one single task, and that regards-"

"They could be painted," I said. "What if someone diluted a poison, and with a brush applied the solution to the cherries while they yet hang on the branch? You might consume only a little at a time, but eventually, considering how many of these cherries you've eaten-"

"But Gordianus, I have suffered no ill effects. My digestion is fine; my lungs are clear; my eyes are bright."

But your mind is deranged, I wanted to say-but how could one say such a thing to a man like Lucullus? I would have to find another way; I would have to go roundabout, perhaps approach Marcus and win him over, make him see that his older brother needed looking after. Yes, I thought, that was the answer, considering how famously close was the bond between the two brothers. A very public family tragedy had struck them early in life; sometimes such an event drives a wedge between siblings, but quite the opposite had occurred with the brothers Lucullus. Their father's self-destructive behavior had very nearly ruined them, but together they had regained the city's respect and made a name for themselves that exceeded anything their ancestors had achieved. One might even say that Lucullus owed his success to the failure of his father-that he owed everything to his father…

Then I saw, in a flash, that cherries had nothing to do with Lucullus's dilemma. The will, yes-but not the cherries…

A slave, hearing his master's voice raised, appeared and stood at a respectful distance, a quizzical look on his face.

"Go find your master's brother. Ask him to come here," I said.

The slave looked to Lucullus, who peered at me for a long moment, then nodded. "Do as this man requests. Bring Marcus only- no one else."

While we waited, neither of us spoke. Lucullus moved his eyes here and there, never meeting my gaze.

Marcus appeared. "What's this? The slave told me he heard raised voices, an argument, and then Gordianus asked for me."

"He seems to think that my beloved cherries have been poisoned somehow," muttered Lucullus.

"Yes, but that was a false notion," I said. "And realizing that it was false, I gave it up. If only you could do the same, Lucullus."

"This is about Motho, isn't it?" said Marcus, regarding his brother with a pained look.

"Call him by his true name-Varius!" cried Lucullus.

"Why did you recently decide to write a will?" I said. The two brothers both looked at me sharply, taken aback at the change of subject.

"What a peculiar question to ask!" said Lucullus.

"For many years you had no will. You were far from Rome, fighting battles, accumulating a vast fortune and repeatedly putting your life at risk. Yet you saw no cause to write a will then."

"Because I thought I'd live forever! Men cling to the illusion of immortality for as long as they can," said Lucullus. "I think Archias once wrote a poem on the subject. Shall I summon him to deliver an epigram?"

" 'The closer I cut to the bone, the more he laughs, denying all danger,'" I said, quoting Ennius. "How's that for a suitable epigram?"

"What are you talking about?" snapped Marcus. But the tremor in his voice gave him away; he was beginning to see the train of my thoughts.

"You encouraged him to write a will. Didn't you?" Marcus stared at me for a long moment, then lowered his eyes. "Yes. The time had come."

"Because of a change in Lucullus's health? Because of some other

threat to his life?"

"Not exactly." Marcus sighed. "Dear brother, he knows. There's no use hiding the truth from him."

"He knows nothing. There is nothing to know!" said Lucullus. "I have employed Gordianus for a single purpose: to prove to the world, and to you, Marcus, that I am not mistaken in what I know about Varius, or Motho, or whatever we should call him. I know what I know, and the world must be made to know it, too!"

"Did your father say things like that, after he was recalled from Sicily and made to stand trial?" I said, as gently as I could.

Marcus drew a deep breath. "Similar things, yes. He had strange notions; he fixated upon impossible ideas that no one could talk him out of. His emotions became inappropriate, his logic inexplicable, his behavior unpredictable. It began in a small way, but grew, until toward the end there was almost nothing left of the man we had known. There was only the slightest hint of the change before he left to take up the command in Sicily-so slight, no one really noticed it at the time, but only in retrospect. By the time he returned to Rome and stood trial, the change was obvious to those closest to him-our mother, our uncles. My brother and I were mere children, of course; we had no way of understanding. It was a very difficult time for everyone. We spoke of it only within the family. It became a source of shame to us, greater than the shame of my father's con-viction and exile."

"A family secret," I said. "Had such a thing happened before, in earlier generations?"

"Don't answer, Marcus!" said Lucullus. "He has no right to ask such a question."

Unheeding, Marcus nodded. "Something similar befell our father's father. An early dotage, a softening of the wits; we think it must be a kind of a malady that passes from father to son, a coiled serpent in the mind that waits to strike until a man is at the peak of his powers."

"All supposition!" snapped Lucullus. "Just as likely, it was the harassment of his enemies that drove our father to distraction, not some affliction from within."

"As you see, Gordianus, my brother has always preferred to deny the truth of this matter," said Marcus. "He denied it concerning our father. He denies it now, when it begins to concern himself."

"And yet," I said, "he acceded to writing a will when you urged him to-now, rather than later, when his faculties may have eroded to a greater degree. That indicates to me that at some level, Lucullus knows the truth of what's happening to him, even if he continues outwardly to deny it. Is that not so, Lucullus?"