HE LITTER Tros had hired had vanished when he left the courtroom. In its place was a sumptuous thing with gilded pomegranates at the corners of the curtained awning, borne by eight slaves in clean white uniform. An Alexandrian eunuch, who seemed to have enough authority to keep the crowd at bay, came forward, staff in hand, to greet Tros at the courthouse steps.
"My master the noble Pkauchios invites you," he said, bowing, gesturing toward the litter.
"Where is my own litter?" Tros demanded.
The eunuch smiled, bowing even more profoundly.
"My master would be ashamed that you should ride in such a hired thing to his house. I took the liberty in his name of dismissing it and paying the trifling charges."
Tros hesitated. He would have preferred to go first to Simon's house, supposing that the Jew had hurried home to wait for him, but as he glanced to left and right in search of Simon's litter the eunuch interpreted that thought.
"Simon the Jew is also my master's guest," he announced.
Tros disbelieved that. It was incredible that Simon should accept hospitality from a man whom he had so recently described as a vile magician. But the decurion in charge of the soldiers at the courthouse entrance nodded confirmation:
"Simon went to have his fatness charmed away," he suggested with a grin. "Pkauchios has a name for working miracles."
Reflecting that in any event he had better see Orwic as soon as possible, Tros rolled into the splendid litter. There was no sign of Chloe and he did not care to arouse comment by asking for her. He was borne away in haste, the soldiers shouting to the crowd to make way for the litter and, after a long ride through well swept but fetid smelling streets, he was set down at Pkauchios' front gate, where the eunuch ushered him into the marble house, not announcing him, not entering the incense smelling room with him, but drawing back the clashing curtains, motioning him through and closing them behind him.
He was greeted by Orwic's boyish laugh and by a gasp from Simon. The two were seated face to face on couches near the window, unable to converse since Simon knew hardly any Gaulish, and both of them as pleased to see Tros as if he were a meal produced by a miracle for hungry men. Orwic ran to greet him, threw an arm around him, trying to say everything at once in an excited whisper:
"A great wizard. This must be the man our Lord Druid might have sent you to if you had only listened—made me a proposal—slip the Eskualdenak ashore—he says he knows how to manage that—hide that—in a place he'll show me—kill Balbus tonight—lead an uprising against the Romans—carry the rebellion into Gaul—no need then to go to Rome—we'll keep the Romans' hands too full to invade Britain!"
Tros snorted. One sniff was enough. There was a woman smell on Orwic's clothes.
"Magic works many ways," he remarked, and then thought of the curtains behind him. "We will consider the proposal," he added in a somewhat louder voice.
He approached Simon, who appeared too exhausted to rise from the couch and, glimpsing through the open window his great ship at anchor in the distance, he paused a moment, thrilled by the sight, before he spoke in Aramaic, his lips hardly moving, in an undertone that Orwic hardly caught:
"Out of the teeth of danger we will snatch success, but you must trust me. We speak now for an unseen audience."
He could feel the espionage, although there was no sign of it. He leaned through the open window, but no eavesdroppers lurked within earshot. He strode back to the curtains through which he had entered, jerked them back suddenly, and found the hall empty. There was another door a few feet from the throne with the arms of gilded ivory. He jerked back its curtains, too, and found the next room vacant, silent, beautifully furnished but affording no hiding place. There was a lute left lying by a gilded chair and the same smell of scented women that he had noticed on Orwic's clothes, but the wearers of the scent had vanished.
Nevertheless, he was convinced he was being spied on. He could feel the nervous tension that an unseen eye produces, and he suspected the wall at the back of the ivory throne might be hollow; the corner behind the throne was not square but built out, forming two angles and a short, flat wall. The canopy over the throne cast shadow, and there was a deal of decoration there that might conceal a peep-hole. He signed to Orwic to sit down by the window and, standing so that his voice might carry straight toward that corner wall, himself full in the sunlight, stroking his chin with an air of great deliberation, he spoke in Gaulish: