knew of a man answering the description. He would come in now and then for a plate of sausage or a bowl of broth, the man said. He was an old geezer who walked with the aid of a stick. He didn’t say much but his accent was foreign. He never gave his name. The cook shop man took him for a Jew, but he might be anything. He never mixed with the other customers but ordered the serving girl around as if she were his slave and even slapped her once when she was clumsy. Altogether, a nasty old piece of goods. The cook shop man thought he lived in an insula on the corner.
And so here they were, creeping up on the four-story apartment building, its plaster walls patchy and grimy with age, in what was almost certainly a pointless exercise. Pliny could believe that this was the Barzanes that Arsames’ father had known. But could such a person be the mover behind a secret cult to which the likes of Balbus and Glaucon had belonged? They would feel like fools when he turned out to be nothing more than a surly old eccentric.
It wasn’t the worst tenement Pliny had ever been in—that had been in Rome years ago when he was searching for a runaway murderer— but it was bad enough: dark and smoky and verminous, like all such places.
There was nothing to do but knock on the door of the ground floor apartment. It opened a crack and a man’s face, double-chinned and shiny with oil, peered out. The odor of cabbage, burnt oil, and garum escaped from the interior, and the sound of a baby crying. The man’s eyes widened, seeing the unfamiliar figures of two well-dressed men.
Did an old man live in the building? Foreign accent? Unfriendly?
“Him? Third floor.”
A cat fled before them as Pliny and Suetonius mounted the sagging stairs.
There was no answer to Pliny’s knock. He put his ear to the door. Did he hear someone breathing? He was almost sure he did.
“Barzanes?”
No sound. Then an explosive, hacking cough.
Pliny put his shoulder to the door; the bolt came away easily from the rotted door jamb.
He was ancient. Bent-backed like the letter C. A nimbus of white hair surrounded a face that was withered and spotted like an old apple. But the forehead was broad and the nose large and strong like an eagle’s beak. He might have been handsome once, even kingly. He wore a long-sleeved tunic which hung to his shins; a threadbare shawl around his shoulders. He steadied himself with his left hand on the back of his chair. In his right hand, which shook visibly, was a butcher knife. He held it in front of him
“Who are you?”
“I am the governor of this province. I mean you no harm, Barzanes, put the knife down, please.”
The man made no move to obey.
Pliny took in the room with a glance: a table with the remains of a meal on it, one chair, a smoking brazier, a narrow cot with a plain spread, a small wooden chest, a bookshelf with a few scrolls, a cupboard with some plain crockery, a rush mat on the floor. Clean, neat. But so bare. Surely this is not the man who purchases property for three thousand drachmas. He was almost tempted to turn and leave. He took another step into the room, Suetonius coming in behind him.
“You own a piece of land on which there is a cave where the rites of Mithras are conducted. I need to know precisely where that cave is and who are the members this cult.”
The knife sliced the air. “Get out! I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no—” the words ended in a fit of coughing and the old man sank onto his chair. The knife clattered to the floor.
There was fear in those rheumy eyes, and understanding.
It is him. Pliny waited until the coughing fit ended.
“Two members of the cult, the Lion and Bridegroom, have been murdered, apparently by another member, the one called the Persian. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t deny it.”
He flung out an arm. “No one has been murdered. A riding accident, food poisoning.”
The shock was wearing off, the man gaining control of himself.
“You don’t believe that. Help me find this murderer. Or perhaps you already know, or can guess who it is. Maybe you should fear for your own life.”