Arms of Nemesis (24 page)

'I let them see me and they came forward without hesitation. The blonde stepped forward and announced that she was Alethea, a slave, and asked if I was her master. I realized then that Vibius had sent them, knowing that I had not been with a woman since leaving Rome and wanting to be the best host he could to a young man of twenty-five. Alethea and Diona made the rest of those eight months far more pleasurable.'

'How did your sojourn end?' I asked.

'Word came that Cinna had been killed and Marius was vulnerable at last. I gathered up all the supporters I could find and went to join Sulla.'

'And the slave girls?' asked Fabius.

Crassus smiled. 'Some years later I bought them from Vibius. Their beauty had not yet faded, nor had my youth. We had a most amusing reunion. I found a place for them at my house in

Rome, and they have served me there ever since. I have made sure they are well provided for.'

'A charming episode in such a turbulent and fascinating life!' said Dionysius, clapping his hands together. 'How that story has always fascinated me, especially in recent days. There is something so lovely and elusive about its incongruous elements — the idea of a cave on the sea used for a hiding place, the image of a beautiful girl bringing sustenance to the fugitive, the beguiling improbability of it all. It's almost too much like a fable to have actually happened. Do you imagine that such a thing could ever take place again? That such a strange circumstance could be twisted a bit askew and occur in another place, another time?'

Dionysius was quite full of himself, purring like a cat in the delight of his own rhetoric, but I found myself looking instead at Olympias, who was visibly trembling, and at Iaia, who reached for her protegee's hand and squeezed it, not too gently to judge by the way the girl's flesh turned white in her grip.

'Are you posing some sort of conundrum?' asked Crassus, growing bored again.

'Perhaps,' said Dionysius. 'Or perhaps not. There are many peculiar things afoot in the world today, the alarming sorts of things that happen when the will of the gods is distorted and the line between slave and free becomes blurred. Amid such chaos, unnatural alliances are forged and wicked betrayals flourish. Thus we come to have a man like Gordianus in our midst. Is he not here to uncover truth and melt away our distrust? Tell me, Gordianus, would you object if I decided to pose as your rival in this quest for knowledge? The philosopher versus the Finder? What would you say to that, Crassus?'

Crassus looked at him darkly, trying, as I was, to fathom his purpose. 'If you mean that you can solve the mystery surrounding the murder of my cousin Lucius—'

'That is exactly what I mean. Along with Gordianus, parallel with him, you might say, I have been conducting my own investigation, though along somewhat different lines of inquiry. I have nothing to reveal at this moment, but I think that very soon I shall be able to answer all the questions that have arisen from this tragic event. I consider it my duty as a philosopher, and as your friend, Marcus Crassus.' He set his jaw in a rigid, mirthless smile and looked from face to face around the room. 'Ah, but the meal must now be over, for my concoction has arrived.'

Dionysius took the cup from the slave who stood silently waiting beside his couch. He sipped at the green froth. Beside him Olympias and Iaia squirmed as if their couches had been stuffed with tiny nettles. They were trying very hard, I thought, to conceal the quiet panic that had slowly crept over them, and they were failing miserably.

XV

'Not another bite until tomorrow evening. Imagine that!' Sergius Orata stood alone on the terrace outside the dining room. He looked over his shoulder at my arrival, then gazed wistfully toward the lights of Puteoli, as if he could smell the aroma of a late dinner being served across the bay. 'Fasting is bad enough, but to do it after such a dreary meal. My stomach will be growling all through the funeral orations. Lucius Licinius wouldn't have wanted it that way. With Lucius here, every night was a feast.'

Around us the treetops soughed in the breeze. Within the house the slaves were quietly gathering up the remains of the evening's repast with a muffled clatter of knives and spoons. Fitting the solemnity of the occasion, there had been no entertainment following the meal. As soon as Marcus Crassus had risen and excused himself, the other guests had dispersed like anxious children dismissed by their tutor. Eco, hardly able to keep his eyes open, had gone straight to bed. Only Orata and I remained. I imagined that he lingered close by the ghost of the dinner as a frustrated lover might linger about his beloved's empty bed, brooding over the smell and the memory of what he craved but could not have.

'Was Lucius Licinius so extravagant?' I asked.

'Extravagant? Lucius?' Orata shrugged his round shoulders. 'Not by Baian standards. By Roman standards I suppose he might be the sort against whom the Senate is always threatening to pass

some punitive sumptuary law. Let us say he spent his money with relish.'

'Or spent Crassus's money?'

Orata wrinkled his brow. 'Stricdy speaking. And yet . . .'

I stood beside him and leaned against the stone railing,
After the first chill of evening the air seemed to have calmed and grown slightly warmer, as sometimes happens on the Cup. I studied the line of lights, as tiny as stars, that ringed the coastline. Areas of darkness alternated with clusters of muted fire, where the towns sparkled like jewels in the crystalline air.

'You were here the night Lucius was murdered, weren't you?' I said quiedy. 'It must have been a considerable shock to awaken the next morning and find—'

'A shock, indeed. And when I learned of the name scrawled at his feet, and the fact that his slaves were responsible — imagine, they might have murdered us all in our sleep! Such a thing actually happened only a few weeks ago down in Lucania, when Spartacus was fighting his way to Thurii. A wealthy family was massacred in the night, along with all their house guests. The women were raped; the children were made to watch their fathers beheaded. It makes the blood run cold.'

I nodded. 'Your visit here — it was strictly for pleasure?'

Orata smiled faintly. 'I seldom do anything strictly for pleasure. Even eating serves a vital purpose, does it not? I do a great deal of visiting around the Cup at all seasons of the year; I enjoy it immensely. But there's always time for business. To be utterly idle and to pursue pleasure for its own end is decadent. I must always be striving towards some object; I was born in Puteoli, but I think I follow the Roman virtues.'

'Then you had business with Lucius Licinius?' 'There were plans afoot.'

'You had already rebuilt his baths — a stunning piece of work.' He smiled at the compliment. 'What more was there to do? Build a fish pond?'

'To start with.'

'I was joking.'

'Do not joke about fish ponds here in Baiae. Here, great men weep tears of grief when their mullets die, and tears of joy when they spawn.'

'In Rome they say that the Baians have developed a positive mania for pisciculture.'

'They've turned it into a vice,' Orata confided with a laugh, 'the way the Parthians are said to turn simple horse racing into a vice. But it brings a tidy profit for the man who knows the secrets of the trade.'

'It's an expensive hobby?'

'It can be.'

'And Lucius was prepared to indulge in it? I don't understand. Was he wealthy or not? If he had so much money, why did he not own his own home?'

'Actually. . .' Orata paused and his face lengthened. 'You must understand, Gordianus, that after my ancestors and the gods there is nothing I respect so much as the confidentiality of another man's private finances. I'm not the sort to gossip about the source or extent of someone else's wealth. But since Lucius is dead . . .'

'Yes?'

'May his shade forgive me if I tell you that there was more than met the eye when it came to Lucius's finances.' 'I don't follow you.'

'Lucius had all sorts of improvements in mind for this villa. Expensive renovations and additions. That was why he asked me to the house for a few days, to discuss the feasibility and expense of some projects he had in mind.'

'But why would he spend so much to improve a house in which he was only a tenant?'

'Because he was planning to buy the house from Crassus, very soon.'

'Did Crassus know this?'

'I think not. Lucius told me he would be approaching Crassus with an offer within a month or so, and he seemed quite confident that Crassus would accept. Do you have any idea what a villa like this costs, especially when you consider the expenses of running the place?' Orata lowered his voice. 'He told me, very confidentially, that his chance to break away from Crassus had come at last. He suggested that he and I should launch a partnership; my business expertise matched with his capital, he said. He came up with some good ideas, I must admit.' 'But you were wary.'

'The word "partnership" always makes me wary. I learned early on always to make my own way.'

'But if Lucius was offering the money—'

'That's just it: where did he get it? When I rebuilt the baths here, it was Crassus who signed the final contract, and Crassus always saw that I received my payments on time. But occasionally there were incidental expenses, little things about which Lucius hated to bother Crassus, so Lucius would pay for them himself. He always acted as if it were a great sacrifice just to come up with a few sesterces to buy a wagonload of lime.' Orata wrinkled his plump brow. 'I told you earlier that Lucius always served sumptuous dinners, but that was only in the last year or two. Before that, he always pretended to be better off than he was. You could see the brass beneath the gold, so to speak — the oysters might be fresh, but you could see that the slaves kept washing the same silver spoons to serve each new course because there weren't enough silver spoons to go around.'

'A subtle point, surely.'

'In my line of work one learns to observe the fine distinctions between true wealth and pretence. I hate being left with a bill I can't collect.'

'And in the last year or so Lucius had managed to buy all the silver spoons he needed?'

'Exactly, And he seemed to be in the market for more.'

'I suppose he must have been saving his stipend from Crassus for a long time.'

Orata shook his head glumly.

'Then what? Did he have some other source of income?'

'None that I know of. And there is very little that transpires on the Cup that I don't know about - very little of a legitimate, legal nature, that is.'

'Do you mean—'

'I only mean that Lucius's sudden wealth was an enigma to me.'

'And to Crassus?'

'I don't think Crassus knew about it.'

'But what could Lucius have done, without Crassus's even knowing? Are you suggesting some clandestine—'

'I suggest nothing,' Orata blandly insisted. He turned from the view of the bay and looked into the house. The last traces of the dinner had vanished; even the serving tables had been taken away. He sighed and suddenly seemed to lose all interest in our conversation. 'I think I shall go to my room now.'

'But, Sergius Orata, surely you have some ideas, some suspicions—'

He shrugged quite extravagandy, a well-practised gesture good for escaping unwanted investors and clients too small to bother with. 'I only know that one of Marcus Crassus's reasons for coming here was to have a careful look at Lucius's financial records, so that Crassus might assess his own resources on the Cup. If he looks long and hard enough, I suspect that Crassus may uncover some very unpleasant surprises.'

On my way to the library I avoided walking through the atrium where the remains ofLucius Licinius were displayed; if a part of my mission now included uncovering some embarrassing transactions or even criminal activity on his part, I did not care to encounter his shade in the middle of the night. I took a lamp to find my way through the unfamiliar halls, but hardly needed it; moonlight poured like liquid silver through the windows and skylights, flooding the halls and open spaces with a cold luminescence.

I hoped to find the library empty, but when I turned the corner I saw the same bodyguard who had attended the door the previous night. At my approach he turned his head with military precision and fixed me with a piercing gaze. His stare softened when he recognized me. The frigid mask of his face loosened; indeed, the closer I came the more chagrined he looked. When I was close enough to hear the voices from within, I understood his embarrassment.

They must have been speaking quite loudly for the sound to pass through the heavy oak door. Crassus's voice, with its oratorical training, penetrated more clearly; the other voice had a lower, rumbling timbre that was less easy to distinguish, but the bombastic tone unmistakably belonged to Marcus Mummius.

'For the last time, there will be no exceptions!' This came from Crassus. A rumbling retort from Mummius followed, too muffled for me to catch more than a few words — 'how many times . . . always loyal, even when . . . you owe me this favour . ..'

'No, Marcus, not even as a favour!' Crassus shouted. 'Stop dredging up the dead past. This is a matter of policy — there's nothing personal in it. If I allow even a single sentimental exception, there will be no end to it — Gelina will have me save them all! How do you think that would look in Rome? No, I won't be made a fool of because you lack the good sense to avoid this kind of petty attachment—'

This evoked angry shouting from Mummius; I was unable to make out the words, but there was no mistaking the note of anguish amid the fury. An instant later the door abruptly opened, so violently that the bodyguard started back and drew his sword.

Mummius emerged, red-faced, his eyes bulging, his jaw set hard enough to grind stones. He turned back towards the room and clenched his fists at his sides, making the veins in his thick forearms writhe like the one that pulsed across his forehead. 'If you and Lucius had allowed me to buy him for myself, this wouldn't be happening! You wouldn't be able to touch the boy! If Jupiter himself tried to harm a hair on his head, I would—'