"Stop this talk!" I whispered. I glanced at Calpurnia, who was wringing her hands and muttering to herself.

"The poor woman's at her wits' end." Hieronymus clucked his tongue. "Married to the most powerful man in the world, and not able to enjoy a moment of it. Listening to soothsayers, crying on her uncle's shoulder, and hiring the likes of me to uncover the truth for her. Mind you, I did uncover the truth, and all on my own-which is more than I can say for you, Gordianus."

"If you found the truth, then why isn't it anywhere in your writings?"

"Didn't you read that passage in my journal? 'But I could be wrong. Consequences of a false accusation-unthinkable! Must be certain. Until then, not a word in any of my official reports to the lady and her soothsayer.' Well, as it turned out, my suspicion was correct." He sighed. "Which is why this happened."

I looked at him again, and saw a huge bloodstain on his breast, above his heart. His flesh had turned as pale as ivory, but his expression was as sardonic as ever. He saw my consternation, and laughed.

"But who did this to you, Hieronymus?"

"That is what you were supposed to find out, Gordianus!" He rolled his eyes.

I was stung by his sarcasm. "Help me!" I pleaded.

"I've already given you all the information you need."

"Nonsense! The material you left behind was worthless. Worse than worthless, because there was so much of it. Report after report, all written in that thorny, cryptic prose-nothing but words and more words, and nothing of substance for me to grasp!"

"Calm yourself, Gordianus. Emotion will lead you nowhere. Think!"

"You're not Hieronymus. You're a daemon, an evil spirit come to taunt me."

"No, Gordianus, I am Hieronymus-or at least, I'm the sum of all you ever knew about Hieronymus. All we can know of another human being is the image before our eyes and the voice in our ears. What you see and hear now, beside you, is as much as you ever knew of Hieronymus, as real as the man himself. Here I am!"

"Crazy Greek! You confuse me with philosophy!"

"Simpleminded Roman! Always so literal, so mired in facts and figures!"

"Tell me who killed you. Say it plainly!"

He sighed. "First of all, accept the proposition that Calpurnia is right. Someone is plotting to kill her husband. I figured out who that person was, and I discerned the motive as well. And because of what I deduced, I was killed."

I was distracted by the lowing of the ox. Uncle Gnaeus was about to cut the creature's throat. Facing the crowd, he raised the knife for all to see. The blade glittered in the sunlight, looking huge and very sharp. He struck the blow: metal sliced into flesh. The ox thrashed its bound limbs. Scarlet poured from the wound. Camilli rushed forward with their libation bowls to catch the spouting blood.

"Have you considered the suspicious behavior of Agapios, the door slave at the building where I lived?" said Hieronymus, watching the slaughter without emotion. He had never been squeamish.

"What do you mean?"

"Really, Gordianus! When a fellow that young flirts with a fellow your age, it can only be because he has an ulterior motive."

"Not necessarily. The vagaries of human nature-"

"Are reducible to the narrow parameters of self-interest. Young Agapios is a spy. In addition to his regular duties, he also kept an eye on me. He was always stopping me on the stairs to chat, especially when I'd come home a little drunk after a party. Who knows what information he got out of me? I suspect he also looked through my journal occasionally, despite my efforts to hide it."

"A spy for his mistress, you mean?" I looked sidelong at Calpurnia, who was watching her uncle perform the sacrifice. What sort of madwoman set a spy to watch her own spy?

Hieronymus shook his head. "Agapios is the property of Calpurnia, but he didn't report to her. He reported to Uncle Gnaeus. That's why the old priest was so angry when he found that Agapios had given you the key to my rooms without his knowledge."

The sacrifice was proceeding. Wielding the huge knife, his hands smeared with blood, Gnaeus Calpurnius was carving the ox, removing one organ after another. The camilli gathered around him with their libation bowls to receive the kidneys, the heart, the liver, and the rest. One at a time, with prayers and chants, these were offered to Venus, then placed upon a pyre. The organs popped and sizzled, transformed by the flames into divine sustenance for the goddess.

"I found your journal, Hieronymus. By now, I must have read every word of it, and so has Diana. We discovered nothing!"

"Untrue. You found the key! Don't you remember? 'To any seeker who finds these words and would unlock the truth, I shall leave a key-' "

"Yes, yes, I remember. 'Look all around! The truth is not found in the words, but the words may be found in the truth.' But where was this key? I never found it."

"The words themselves were the key. Where did you find them?"

"In your journal, of course!" I snapped, exasperated.

"But where did you find the journal? What was all around it?"

"The pages were inside a scroll."

"And what was that scroll?"

I tried to remember. I shook my head.

"Think, Gordianus! I was with you even then. I spoke inside your head. What did I say?"

I remembered now. I had found the journal because I saw my copy of Manius Calpurnius's Life of King Numa among the books on Hieronymus's shelf. I was peeved that he had taken it without my permission, so I reached for it, and inside it I found the pages of his private journal. I had sensed that Hieronymus was watching. I had imagined his voice in my head: How predictable you are, Gordianus! You saw your precious copy of Numa and felt compelled to check at once that I hadn't damaged it-you did exactly as I intended! You found my private notes, intended for my eyes only, while I lived. But now that I'm dead, I wanted you to find my journal, Gordianus, tucked inside your precious Numa…

The sight of the Numa had lured me to find the journal. But the Numa itself was the key-the truth within which the words were found. Its author was a Calpurnius, one of Numa's descendants, like Caesar's wife and her uncle. No one cared more about the legacy of Numa than Uncle Gnaeus, and Numa had left no greater legacy than his calendar, which was meant to fix for all time the sacred days and the manner of reckoning them…

"And what about my notations regarding celestial movements?" said Hieronymus. "Didn't you connect those to my interest in the calendar?"

"Yes, but where did you learn all that?"

"From Uncle Gnaeus, of course. It was when I saw how he ranted against Caesar's intention to change the calendar that I first became suspicious of him. After that, my continuing curiosity about the calendar made him suspicious of me."

"But I asked Uncle Gnaeus whether he instructed you about astronomy, and he denied it. He said he wouldn't waste his effort on his niece's foreign-born minion."

Hieronymus snorted. "And you believed him? That man would gladly lecture anyone who asked about the calendar-slave, freedman, foreigner, or even female-for hours on end!" He shook his head ruefully. "You used to appreciate a puzzle, Gordianus-the more baffling, the better. What's become of your powers of deduction? Gone to Hades, along with your powers of observation, I suppose."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"What a fuss Calpurnia made over you earlier. How did she put it? 'Others see but are blind, but when you see the truth, you know it!' Yet earlier today, at the triumph, it was what you did not see that mattered. But at the time, you took no notice, and now it's completely slipped your mind."

"What are you talking about?"

"Who was not in the procession who should have been?"

I shrugged. "Marc Antony?"