Cornelia. I suspected it was she but wasn't sure of it. Don't give her
an inkling of what you know. Go with her to her apartment and watch her
dress; then make an excuse to keep her waiting in your room while you
go back and search hers. Have help if you need it; take two of my
eunuchs, but watch that they don't read the journal. Look under her
mattress. Look everywhere. If you can't find the journal, bring
Cornelia without it. I will soon make her tell us where it is."




VIII. NARCISSUS



"A gladiator's life is not so bad if he behaves himself, and while it
lasts," Narcissus said.

He was sitting beside Sextus, son of Maximus, in the ergastulum beneath
the training school of Bruttius Marius, which was well known to be the
emperor's establishment, although maintained in the name of a citizen.
There was a stone seat at the end where sunlight poured through a barred
window high up in the wall. To right and left facing a central corridor
were cells with doors of latticed iron. Each cell had its own barred
window, hardly a foot square, set high out of reach and the light,
piercing the latticed doors, made criss-cross patterns on the white wall
of the corridor. Narcissus got up, glanced into each cell and sat down
again beside Sextus.

"The trouble is, they don't," he went on. "If you let them out, they