A bad feeling was creeping over me. Both my father and I were very still. A man with more astuteness would have shut up rapidly. But Orontes lacked any sensitivity to atmosphere. He went straight on: 'I left Rome and kept right out of the way as long as I knew Festus was prowling about. When Manlius told me he had left, I hoped he had managed to sort something out about the cash, and I just tried not to think about it. So how do you imagine I felt when I heard what had happened to him, and realised it was all my fault?' His question was almost indignant. 'I knew Carus and Servia hate to be done down, and I realised their methods could be harsh. But I never thought,' Orontes wailed, 'Carus would put the frighteners out so badly that Festus would do what he did!'
'What did Festus do?' I demanded in a low voice.
Suddenly Orontes realised he had caused himself an unnecessary predicament. It was too late. The reply came dragging out of him irresistibly: 'I suppose he had come under so much pressure, he chose to die in battle so that he could get away from it!'
LIV
When I returned to the inn where we were currently staying, Helena was in bed. She stopped there, grumbling occasionally, while I spent half an hour trying to force the door-catch: my father's idea of keeping her safe had been to lock her in. Unfortunately, he had remained at the studio to keep an eye on Orontes. I had walked the four miles back to Capua, in the dark, getting more and more cold, footsore and miserable-only to find that my aggravating father still had the key to our room stuffed down his tunic somewhere.
My efforts to break in quietly failed dismally. In the end I abandoned caution and took a run at the door with my shoulder. The lock held, but the hinges gave. There was a terrible noise. It must have been obvious throughout the building that a Roman lady of status was having her room broken into, yet nobody came to investigate. Nice place, Capua. I could not wait to get out of it.
I squeezed inside. Unable to find a tinder-box, I bruised myself squeezing back out again to fetch a lamp from the corridor. Then I puffed my way back in a second time, cursing harshly.
Helena had eaten her own bowl of beans and all the side orders. I devoured my own cold portion, plus half of Father's, while I started to tell her what had happened. Cold beans can be fine in a salad in summer, though as a main course in winter they lack panache. Oil had gelled on them unpleasantly.
'Is there any bread?'
'You forgot to bring it. Too busy,' Helena informed me from beneath the blankets, 'ogling big-busted customers.'
I carried on talking, putting in all the details about Rubinia's unclothed bust.
Helena could always be won over by a story, especially if it featured me. At first barely the tip of her nose was visible above the bedcovers, but gradually more emerged as the tale of the silly antics and hard questioning caught her interest. By the time I had finished she was sitting up and holding out her arms for me.
I climbed into bed and we wrapped ourselves together for warmth.
'So what happens now, Marcus?'
'We've told Orontes he has to come back to Rome with us. He knows he is in real danger from either Carus or us, so he's happy to wilt under whichever option lets him return where he really wants to be. The man's an idiot!' I complained restlessly. 'He has no concept that there now has to be a confrontation-and that whatever happens, it will turn out unpleasantly for him. He's just happy to stop running.'
'But have you escaped paying all that money to Carus?'
I sighed. 'This is a problem. Carus does have written evidence that he paid Festus for the statue, whereas we ourselves have nothing to prove that Orontes handed the thing over to his representative in Tyre. Aristedon and the ship's crew drowned when the Pride of Perga sank. There are no other substantial witnesses.'
'And as for the bribe Carus subsequently paid to the sculptor, naturally an extortionist does not give a receipt to his collaborator?'
'No, love-so we cannot prove the fraud. It's Orontes's word against Carus's.'
'Orontes could appear as a witness, though?'
'Oh yes!' I agreed gloomily. 'He can appear. If we can keep him alive, sober, and willing to testify-which Carus will try to prevent. If we can keep him more frightened of us than he is of Carus, so that when we haul him into court he tells our story. And if we can make this limp, lying, unreliable character look believable to a jury!'
'Carus will probably bribe the jury.' Helena kissed my ear. 'Orontes is a bad witness,' she added. 'He ignored your brother's instructions, then sold the receipt without a quiver. The opposing barrister only has to accuse him of perennial bad faith, and you've lost your case.'
By now I was ranting moodily. 'Orontes is completely flabby. Carus is rich and single-minded. In court he would come over as an honest citizen while our man would be quickly discredited… But we're not giving this to the barristers. Why pay fees on top, when you're already up to your nostrils in dung? Pa and I are determined to do something, however.'
'What can you do?' Her hands were wandering pleasantly in places that liked wandering hands.
'We haven't decided. But it has to be big.'
We both fell silent. Exacting revenge from the collectors needed time and careful thought. Tonight was not the moment. But even if my own ingenuity failed me, I half hoped to lure Helena into contributing some devious invention. Something had to be done. She would understand that. She hated injustice.
She had become completely still in my arms, though I could sense busy thoughts working in that needle brain.
Suddenly she exclaimed, 'Trust you to leave a gap in the story!' I started, afraid I had passed over something significant. 'The luscious nude model went missing from the scene halfway through!'
I laughed awkwardly. 'Oh her! She was there all the time. While the sculptor was unconscious we gave her the choice of shutting up and promising to stop kicking, or being tucked out of the way while we woke him up and questioned him. She preferred to stay volatile, so we penned her in the sarcophagus.'
'Dear gods, the poor thing! I hope Orontes will be allowed to let her out of it?'
'Hmm! I don't want to make sordid suggestions,' I mumbled, 'but I strongly suspect that when my ghastly parent gets bored with discussing theories of art, he will arrange that Orontes has enough wine to knock him senseless-then Geminus may surreptitiously let out the model himself.'
Helena pretended she had no idea what sordid suggestions I meant.
'So what next, Marcus?'
'Next,' I promised her with intense relief, 'you and I and my happy father, and the sculptor, and his luscious model if he wants to bring her, are all going home… I wonder if Smaractus will have bothered to fix the roof?'
Helena was silent again. Maybe she was contemplating sharing a trip home with Rubinia. Maybe she was worrying about our roof.
I had plenty to think about as well, and none of it was cheerful. Somehow I had to devise a scheme to punish Carus and Servia. Somehow I had to avoid us paying out to them half a million sesterces which we had never owed them anyway. To keep myself from exile I had to solve a murder that was beginning to look inexplicable. And somehow I had to explain to my mother that her beloved son the national hero may have been no more than a failed entrepreneur who took a long stride into oblivion simply because the pressure of his bungled business commitments was growing too much for him.
'What time is it?' asked Helena.
'Jupiter, I don't know! The middle of the night-tomorrow, probably.'
She smiled at me. It had nothing to do with anything we had been discussing. I knew that, even before she said gently, 'Happy birthday, then!'
My birthday.
I had known it was coming. I thought no one else here with me had realised. Ma would be thinking about me with her own scornful reverence, but she was in Rome, so I had escaped the nostalgia and damson cake. Pa had probably never known his children's anniversaries. And Helena… well. A year ago, Helena had been with me on my birthday. We had been strangers then, resisting any hint of attraction bet
ween us. All the same, I had given myself a brief birthday treat and kissed her, with unexpected results for both of us. From that moment I had wanted more of her; I had wanted it all. I had started the sequence that ended with me falling in love with her, while a small, dark, dangerous voice began whispering that it might be a challenge to make this unattainable creature love me.
It was a year since the first time I held her in my arms, assuming then that it would be the only occasion she ever let me come near her. A year since I saw that look in her eyes when I risked it. A year since I fled from her, stunned by my own feelings and misunderstanding hers, yet knowing that somehow I would have to hold this woman in my arms again.
'Remember?'
'I remember!'
I took a long slow breath against her hair, absorbing the sweet natural scent of her. Without moving, I enjoyed the now familiar shape of her body, cosseted against mine. Her fingers moved against my shoulder, tracing patterns that raised goose-pimples. 'Here we are in another stinking inn… I could never have dreamed I would still have you near me.'
'Oh Marcus, you were so angry with me.'
'I had to get angry before I dared touch you.'
She laughed. I could always make her laugh. 'You laughed me into adoring you!' she commented, as if I had spoken.
'Not that night! You locked yourself in your room, and refused to speak to me.'
'I was too terrified.'
'Of me?' I was amazed.
'Oh no! I knew that when you stopped playing iron-jawed demigods you would be a complete sweetheart… Of myself,' confessed Helena. 'Frightened of how much I wanted to be in your arms, how much I wanted you to go on kissing me, how much I wanted more than that-'
I could have kissed her then. Her dark eyes were soft and inviting; she was willing me to do it. But it was more fun to lean back so I could see her, and just think about it while she smiled at me.
No year of my life would ever bring me so much change. No trick of fate would ever give me anything so precious.
I put out the light so I could forget our dismal surroundings; then I ignored all the debts and disasters that were oppressing me. A man must have some comfort in his life. I said, 'I love you. I should have told you that right at the start a year ago-and this is what I should have done about it straight away…'
Then I let my thirty-first birthday begin with a celebration in the noblest Roman style.
LV
Our carriage-horse was still lame, so we hired a couple of litters, went across to the coast and took a ship home from Puteoli. I will pass over it briskly, though the journey seemed interminable. I spent most of it lying under a leather sail. The only times I poked my head out were when I needed to be ill.
That was often enough.
I believe the others found the weather fair, the sea air invigorating, and their various fellow passengers an enthralling mixture of types. Helena and my father got to know each other better, while they had the tact to keep the cheating sculptor and his blowzy mistress well away from me.
Even though I knew my taxes had paid for it, no sight was ever so welcome to me as the great lighthouse at Portus, the new complex at Ostia, unless it was the colossal statue of Neptune. When we sailed under Neptune's knees I knew our ship was inside the basin, and about to berth. We had to wait about before disembarking while the usual nautical business took precedence over passengers' eagerness to land. I managed to send a message ashore to the customs post, so the first sight that greeted us when our feet hit the quay was Gaius Baebius, my brother-in-law.
'You might have spared us!' muttered Father under his breath.
'I'm hoping to cadge a free ride home in official transport if we tag along with him.'
'Oh smart boy! Gaius Baebius! Just the man we were hoping to see…'
My brother-in-law was full of something-something and nothing, needless to say. He was reticent in front of strangers-and even before Helena, since a customs-clerks supervisor's attitude to women tends to be traditional, and Gaius Baebius had had seventeen years of living with my sister Junia to teach him to keep his mouth shut. Junia had the strong-willed woman's traditional attitude to men: she thought we were there to be told we were idiots and made to keep quiet.
Leaving Helena disconsolately guarding the baggage (which was our idea of what women were for), Father and I got Gaius on his own in a wine bar and set about grilling him. Freed from female supervision, out it poured: 'Listen, listen, I've had some luck!'
'Won at the races, Gaius?' Pa chivvied. 'Don't tell the wife then! Junia will whip it out of your hand before you can take breath.'
'Olympus, Marcus, he's worse than you for looking on the dark side… No. I've found something you were looking for-'
'Not a trace of the Hypericon?'
'No, not that. I'm sure she really sank.'
'Don't you keep a list of lost vessels?' Pa demanded.
'Why should we?' Gaius Baebius gave him a scornful look. 'There's no money for the state in seaweed and silt.'
'That's a pity,' Father carried on. 'I'd like to know for certain that the Pride of Perga really hit bottom-'
'So what have you discovered, Gaius?' I insisted, as patiently as I could while I was tossed between this squabbling pair.
'Festus!'
I felt a sickly qualm. I was not yet ready to talk to any member of the family on that subject. Even Pa fell silent.
Gaius Baebius noticed I had lost my appetite; he lunged eagerly to grab my bowl.
'Give!' urged my father, trying not to sound subdued. 'What about Festus?' His eyes had fallen on a second spoon, with which he fought Gaius Baebius for what was left of my food.
'I found-' Gaius had his damned mouth too full of my snack to talk. We waited for him to masticate with the ponderous thoroughness that characterised his life. I could have kicked him. Rather than have to endure his pained reproach if I attacked him, I restrained myself, though the restraint was precarious. 'I found,' he let out meticulously after a long wait, 'the note of what Festus paid in excise dues when he came ashore.'
'When? On his last leave?'
'Exactly!'
My father's eyebrows, which had retained more blackness than his rampant hair, shot up his brow. He looked down that long, straight nose of his. 'Festus came home on a stretcher in a military supply ship!'
'Yes, he came home on a stretcher, but he damned soon hopped off it!' Gaius Baebius risked a slightly critical note. All my sisters' husbands had looked askance at my brother, as in fact they still did at me. Gaius Baebius would be full of himself if he ever found out that Festus had thrown himself into his heroic death in order to escape some bullying creditors-not to mention the messy detail that unknown to my brother the creditors were criminally fraudulent.
Having to face people like my brothers-in-law with this depressing tale was the main trial ahead.
'So Festus, despite being wounded, managed to bring something home with him on which duty was payable?' I sounded as pedantic as Gaius himself; it was the only way to squeeze sense from him.
'You're with me!' cried Gaius triumphantly. 'You're not so dumb!' The man was unbearable.
Father rescued me before I exploded. 'Come on, Gaius! Don't keep us in suspense. What was he importing?'
'Ballast,' said Gaius Baebius.
He sat back, satisfied that he had baffled us.
'Hardly seems to rate paying duty,' I commented.
'No. The tax was a small debit.'
'Sounds to me as if Festus may have made a payment to somebody at the customs post in order to get his item described as valueless!'
'That's a slur on the service!' said Gaius.
'But it makes sense,' answered Pa.
My father had a way of sounding sure of himself that could be intensely irritating. I only endured it because I thought he must be holding out on Gaius Baebius, who annoyed me even more. 'Father, we can't even guess what this import was-'
'I think we know.'
I assumed Ge
minus was bluffing, but he looked too calm. 'Pa, you've lost me-and Gaius Baebius is a thousand miles behind!'
'If this "ballast" is what I reckon it might be, then you've seen the stuff, Marcus.'
'I take it we don't mean a load of fancy gravel for rich people's garden paths?'
'Bigger,' said Father.
Another mystery that had long been lying at the back of my memory found its moment to rush to the fore. 'Not those blocks of stone I was shown in the store by drippy Uncle Junius?'
'I guess so.'
'Have you seen old Junius? How is he?' flapped Gaius Baebius, with his normal fine grasp of priorities.
'So what are these blocks?' I asked my father, ignoring the interruption.
'I have some ideas.'
That was all he would say, so I sprang the thrill for him: 'I'm not short of ideas myself. I bet the ship that Festus came home in discovered a sudden need to call at Paros, the Marble Isle.'
Pa chortled. He agreed with me. 'I wonder how our canny lad persuaded the captain to stop off for him?'
Gaius Baebius was squirming like a child left out of adult secrets. 'Are you talking about Festus? What would he want marble for?'
'Having something made, no doubt,' I replied offhandedly.
'Could have been anything,' Father murmured, smiling to himself. 'Copies of statues, for instance…'
My own thoughts exactly. Festus would reason, Why sell only one half-million Phidias, when a sculptor like Orontes could be making you quadruplets?
'Oh that reminds me!' uttered my sister's bright spark. 'The ballast was not all he had to pay duty on. I nearly forgot to mention-there was some sort of statue as well.'
LVI
We came up from Ostia by river. It was a cold, slow trip. We made a silent party, all lost in contemplating the mystery that Gaius Baebius had handed us.
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