Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (76 page)

‘Yes! Yes!’ Statilius cried, and held out his palms. The others handed over their coins.

I grabbed him by the collar of his tunic and pulled him squawking into the hall.

‘I should think you’re deeply enough in debt already,’ I said.

‘Quite the contrary!’ he protested, smiling broadly. His face was flushed and his forehead beaded with sweat, like a man with a fever.

‘Just how much
do
you owe Flavius the moneylender?’

‘A hundred thousand sesterces.’

‘A hundred thousand!’ My heart leaped into my throat.

‘But not any longer. You see, I’ll be able to pay him off now!’ He held up the coins in his hands. ‘I have two bags full of silver in the other room, where my slave’s looking after them. And – can you believe it? – a deed to a house on the Caelian Hill. I’ve won my way out of it, don’t you see?’

‘At the expense of another man’s life.’

His grin became sheepish. ‘So, you’ve figured that out. But who could have foreseen such a tragedy? Certainly not I. And when it happened, I didn’t rejoice in Panurgus’ death – you saw that. I didn’t hate him, not really. My jealousy was purely professional. But if the Fates decided better him than me, who am I to argue?’

‘You’re a worm, Statilius. Why didn’t you tell Roscius what you knew? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘What did I know, really? Someone completely unknown might have killed poor Panurgus. I didn’t witness the event.’

‘But you guessed the truth, all the same. That’s why you wanted me backstage, wasn’t it? You were afraid the assassin would come back for you. What was I, your bodyguard?’

‘Perhaps. After all, he didn’t come back, did he?’

‘Statilius, you’re a worm.’

‘You said that already.’ The smile dropped from his face like a discarded mask. He jerked his collar from my grasp.

‘You hid the truth from me,’ I said, ‘but why from Roscius?’

‘What, tell him I had run up an obscene gambling debt and had a notorious moneylender threatening to kill me?’

‘Perhaps he’d have loaned you the money to pay off the debt.’

‘Never! You don’t know Roscius. He thinks I’m lucky just to be in his troupe; believe me, he’s not the type to hand out loans to an underling in the amount of a hundred thousand sesterces. And if he knew Panurgus had mistakenly been murdered instead of me – oh, Roscius would have been furious! One Panurgus is worth ten Statilii, that’s his view. I
would
have been a dead man then, with Flavius on one side of me and Roscius on the other. The two of them would have torn me apart like a chicken bone!’ He stepped back and straightened his tunic. The smile flickered and returned to his lips. ‘You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?’

‘Statilius, do you ever stop acting?’ I averted my eyes to avoid his charm.

‘Well?’

‘Roscius is my client, not you.’

‘But I’m your friend, Gordianus.’

‘I made a promise to Panurgus.’

‘Panurgus didn’t hear you.’

‘The gods did.’

Finding the moneylender Flavius was a simpler matter – a few questions in the right ear, a few coins in the right hands. I learned that he ran his business from a wine shop in a portico near the Circus Flaminius, where he sold inferior vintages imported from his native Tarquinii. But on a festival day, my informants told me, I would be more likely to find him at the house of questionable repute across the street.

The place had a low ceiling and the musty smell of spilled wine and crowded humanity. Across the room I saw Flavius, holding court with a group of his peers – businessmen of middle age with crude country manners, dressed in expensive tunics and cloaks of a quality that contrasted sharply with their wearers’ crudeness.

Closer at hand, leaning against a wall (and looking strong enough to hold it up), was the moneylender’s bully. The blond giant was looking rather drunk, or else exceptionally stupid. He slowly blinked when I approached. A glimmer of recognition lit his bleary eyes and then faded.

‘Festival days are good drinking days,’ I said, raising my cup of wine. He looked at me without expression for a moment, then shrugged and nodded.

‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘do you know any of those spectacular beauties?’ I gestured to a group of four women who loitered at the far corner of the room, near the foot of the stairs.

The giant shook his head glumly.

‘Then you are a lucky man this day.’ I leaned close enough to smell the wine on his breath. ‘I was just talking to one of them. She tells me that she longs to meet you. It seems she has an appetite for men with sunny hair and big shoulders. She tells me that for a man such as you . . .’ I whispered in his ear.

The veil of lust across his face made him look even stupider. He squinted drunkenly. ‘Which one?’ he asked in a husky whisper.

‘The one in the blue gown,’ I said.

‘Ah . . .’ He nodded and burped, then pushed past me and stumbled towards the stairs. As I had expected, he ignored the woman in green, as well as the woman in coral and the one in brown. Instead he placed his hand squarely upon the hip of the woman in yellow, who turned and looked up at him with a surprised but not unfriendly gaze.

‘Quintus Roscius and his partner Chaerea were both duly impressed by my cleverness,’ I explained later that night to Bethesda. I was unable to resist the theatrical gesture of swinging the little bag of silver up in the air and onto the table, where it landed with a jingling thump. ‘Not a pot of gold, perhaps, but a fat enough fee to keep us all happy through the winter.’

Her eyes became as round and glittering as little coins. They grew even larger when I produced the veil from Ruso’s shop.

‘Oh! But what is it made of?’

‘Midnight and moths,’ I said. ‘Spiderwebs and silver.’ She tilted her head back and spread the translucent veil over her naked throat and arms. I blinked and swallowed hard, and decided that the purchase was well worth the price.

Eco stood uncertainly in the doorway of his little room, where he had watched me enter and had listened to my hurried tale of the day’s events. He seemed to have recovered from his distemper of the morning, but his face was sombre. I held out my hand, and he cautiously approached. He took the red leather ball readily enough, but he still did not smile.

‘Only a small gift, I know. But I have a greater one for you . . .’

‘Still, I don’t understand,’ protested Bethesda. ‘You’ve said the blond giant was stupid, but how can anyone be so stupid as not to be able to tell one colour from another?’

‘Eco knows,’ I said, smiling ruefully down at him. ‘He figured it out last night and tried to tell me, but he didn’t know how. He remembered a passage from Plato that I read to him months ago; I had forgotten all about it. Here, I think I can find it now.’ I reached for the scroll, which still lay upon my sleeping couch.

‘ “One may observe,” ’ I read aloud, ‘ “that not all men perceive the same colours. Although they are rare, there are those who confuse the colours red and green, and likewise those who cannot tell yellow from blue; still others appear to have no perception of the various shades of green.” He goes on to offer an explanation of this, but I cannot follow it.’

‘Then the bodyguard could not tell blue from yellow?’ said Bethesda. ‘Even so . . .’

‘The moneylender came to the theatre yesterday intending to make good on his threat to murder Statilius. No wonder Flavius gave a start when I leaned over and said, “Today you’ll see
The Pot of Gold
” – for a moment he thought I was talking about the debt Statilius owed him! He sat in the audience long enough to see that Statilius was playing Megadorus, dressed in blue; no doubt he could recognize him by his voice. Then he sent the blond assassin backstage, knowing the alley behind the Temple of Jupiter would be virtually deserted, there to lie in wait for the actor
in the blue cloak.
Eco must have overheard snatches of his instructions, if only the word blue. He sensed that something was amiss even then, and tried to tell me at the time, but there was too much confusion, with the giant stepping on my toes and the audience howling around us. Am I right?’

Eco nodded, and slapped a fist against his palm: exactly right.

‘Unfortunately for poor Panurgus in his yellow cloak, the colour-blind assassin was also uncommonly stupid. He needed more information than the colour blue to make sure he murdered the right man, but he didn’t bother to ask for it; or if he did, Flavius would only have sneered at him and rushed him along, unable to understand his confusion. Catching Panurgus alone and vulnerable in his yellow cloak, which might as well have been blue, the assassin did his job – and bungled it.

‘Knowing Flavius was in the audience and out to kill him, learning that Panurgus had been stabbed, and seeing that the hired assassin was no longer in the audience, Statilius guessed the truth; no wonder he was so shaken by Panurgus’ death, knowing that he was the intended victim.’

‘So another slave is murdered, and by accident! And nothing will be done,’ Bethesda said moodily.

‘Not exactly. Panurgus was valuable property. The law allows his owners to sue the man responsible for his death for his full market value. I understand that Roscius and Chaerea are each demanding one hundred thousand sesterces from Flavius. If Flavius contests the action and loses, the amount will be doubled. Knowing his greed, I suspect he’ll tacitly admit his guilt and settle for the smaller figure.’

‘Small justice for a meaningless murder.’

I nodded. ‘And small recompense for the destruction of so much talent. But such is the only justice that Roman law allows, when a citizen kills a slave.’

A heavy silence descended on the garden. His insight vindicated, Eco turned his attention to the leather ball. He tossed it in the air, caught it, and nodded thoughtfully, pleased at the way it fitted his hand.

‘Ah, but Eco, as I was saying, there is another gift for you.’ He looked at me expectantly. ‘It’s here.’ I patted the sack of silver. ‘No longer shall I teach you in my own stumbling way how to read and write. You shall have a proper tutor, who will come every morning to teach you both Latin and Greek. He will be stern, and you will suffer, but when he is done you will read and write better than I do. A boy as clever as you deserves no less.’

Eco’s smile was radiant. I have never seen a boy toss a ball so high.

The story is almost done, except for one final outcome.

Much later that night, I lay in bed with Bethesda with nothing to separate us but that gossamer veil shot through with silver threads. For a few fleeting moments I was completely satisfied with life and the universe. In my relaxation, without meaning to, I mumbled aloud what I was thinking. ‘Perhaps I
should
adopt the boy . . .’

‘And why not?’ Bethesda demanded, imperious even when half asleep. ‘What more proof do you want from him? Eco could not be more like your son even if he were made of your own flesh and blood.’

And of course she was right.

THE TALE OF THE TREASURE HOUSE

‘Tell me a story, Bethesda.’

It was the hottest night of the hottest summer I could ever remember in Rome. I had pulled my sleeping couch out into the peristyle amid the yew trees and poppies so as to catch any breeze that might happen to pass over the Esquiline Hill. Overhead the sky was moonless and fall of stars. Still, sleep would not come.

Bethesda lay on her own divan nearby. We might have lain together, but it was simply too hot to press flesh against flesh. She sighed. ‘An hour ago you asked me to sing you a song, Master. An hour before that you asked me to wash your feet with a wet cloth.’

‘Yes, and the song was sweet and the cloth was cool. But I still can’t sleep. Neither can you. So tell me a story.’

She touched the back of her hand to her lips and yawned. Her black hair glistened in the starlight. Her linen sleeping gown clung like gossamer to the supple lines of her body. Even yawning, she was beautiful – far too beautiful a slave to be owned by a common man like myself, I’ve often thought. Fortune smiled on me when I found her in that Alexandrian slave market ten years ago. Was it I who selected Bethesda, or she who selected me?