'But without Orontes?'
'Without Orontes.'
'And he bought?'
Laurentius smiled with resignation. 'That time he bought a Zeus.'
LVIII
Later the same day, for the first time in history, my father had himself brought over to Fountain Court. When he arrived Helena was wrapped in a blanket, reading, while I scrubbed a bucket of mussels. He expected her to vanish so we could enjoy a manly chat, as happens in normal households, but she waved to him graciously and stayed where she was. He then expected me to shove the bucket away shyly under the table, but I carried on.
'Gods! I'm killed by the stairs… She's got you hard at it then?'
'This is how we live. No one asked you to turn up and criticise.'
'Marcus is the cook,' said Helena. 'He likes to feel he's supervising my domestic education. But I would be allowed to make you some hot honey if you want?'
'Got any wine?'
'Only for those who are stopping to dinner,' I snapped. My father was incorrigible. 'We're nearly out. I can't feed casual inebriates; I want it for the sauce.'
'I can't stop. Expected at home. You're a hard-hearted host.'
'Have the honey. She does it with cinnamon. You'll have sweet breath, a pleasant temper, and it will ease your poor old chest after the stairs.'
'You're living with a bloody apothecary, girl!' Pa grumbled at Helena.
'Yes, isn't he wonderful? Like a human encyclopaedia,' she answered, with evil insincerity. 'I'm going to lease him to Marponius…' Then she smiled and made sensible drinks for all of us.
My father gazed slowly around our outer room, deduced there was another just as awful behind the curtain, dismissed the balcony as a disaster waiting to send us to an early death, and turned up his nose at our furniture. I had acquired a pine table. We liked the fact it had all four legs and very little woodworm, but by his standards it was plain and pitiful. Apart from that we owned the mean stool I was sitting on, the chair Helena gave up for him, another she fetched from the bedroom for herself, three beakers, two bowls, one stew-pot, some cheap lamps, and a mixed set of scrolls containing Greek plays and Latin poetry.
He was looking for ornaments; I realised that we had none. Perhaps he would send us a chestful next time he did a house clearance.
'Olympus! Is this it then?'
'Well in the next room there's the scallop-end bed you sold me, and a rather nice movable tripod Helena picked up from somewhere. Of course our summer villa at Baiae is a haven of unconfined luxury. We keep our glass collection and the peacocks there… So what do you think?'
'It's even worse than I feared! I admire your courage,' he said to Helena, visibly moved.
'I admire your son,' she answered quietly.
Pa still looked wounded. The horror of my living quarters seemed a personal affront to him. 'But this is awful! Can't you get him to do something?'
'He's trying his best.' Helena sounded terse.
I went out and peed off the balcony to avoid any need to contribute. An angry shout arose from the street below, cheering me up.
When I came back in, I told my father what I had learned from the centurion about the statue of Zeus. 'It makes things neat, anyway. First we have one statue and one ship-now there are two ships and two statues.'
'But it's not quite symmetrical,' Helena commented. 'One of the statues was lost in one of the ships, but the Zeus came ashore with Festus and presumably still exists somewhere.'
'That's good,' I said. 'This one is lost, but we can find it.'
'Are you going to try?'
'Of course.'
'You've had no luck so far!' remarked my father gloomily.
'I wasn't looking until now. I'll find the Zeus-and when I do find it, even if we repay the centurions' syndicate their share of the investment, there's still a chance for the rest of us to get rich. In addition to big brother's agreed percentage of the proceeds, we have four blocks of genuine Parian marble. We can do what Festus must have been planning, and have four copies made.'
'Oh surely you wouldn't sell fakes, Marcus!' Helena felt shocked. (At least I assume she did.) Pa gazed at me with a whimsical expression, waiting for me to answer her.
'Never entered my mind! Good copies can fetch a wonderful price in their own right.' It sounded almost sincere.
Helena smiled. 'Who would make your copies?'
'Orontes-who else? We were clambering all over his stuff at the studio; he has a sure touch with replicas. It's my belief that was all Festus wanted to ask him the night he was looking for the bastard so urgently. Orontes was petrified that Festus wanted a fight with him, when in fact my het-up brother was quite innocent of the Carus fraud, and was just offering Orontes work. Festus had received his military orders. He had to go back to Judaea. It was his last chance to fix the deal.'
'And is Orontes really good?'
Pa and I consulted each other, remembering again what we had seen of his work at Capua. 'Yes; he's good.'
'And after the trick he pulled on Festus, he owes us a free commission or two!'
Helena tried it out: 'So Festus was simply wanting to say to him, "Come and look at this Phidias Zeus I've just brought home, and make me four more of them"…' She jumped in her seat. 'So Marcus, this means the original must have been somewhere it could be viewed! Somewhere Festus could have shown it to the sculptor that very night-somewhere here in Rome!'
She must be right. It was here. It was worth half a million, and as my brother's heir and executor, part of it belonged to me. It was here, and I would find it if it took me twenty years.
'If you can find it,' said Helena quietly, 'I have an idea how you two could get your own back on Cassius Carus and Ummidia Servia.'
Father and I pulled our seats closer, and gazed at her like attentive acolytes at a shrine.
'Tell us, my darling!'
'To make my idea work properly, you will have to pretend you believe they really did lose their money on the Poseidon. That means you will have to put together the half-million sesterces and actually pay over the cash-'
We both groaned. 'Must we?'
'Yes. You have to convince them that they've beaten you. You have to lull them into a false sense of security. Then when they are full of themselves for cheating you, we can make them over-reach and fall for this proposal of mine…'
That was when Helena, my father and I sat together around my table, and hatched the scheme that would give us our revenge. Father and I put forward some refinements, but the basic plan belonged to Helena.
'Isn't she bright?' I asked, hugging her with delight as she explained it.
'She's beautiful,' agreed my pa. 'If we bring this off, maybe you'll use the proceeds to let her live somewhere more appropriate.'
'We have to find the missing statue first.'
We were nearer to that than we thought, though it took a tragedy to bring us near enough.
It was a good afternoon. We were all friends together. We had schemed, and laughed, and congratulated ourselves on how clever we were and how skilfully we were planning to turn the tables on our opponents. I had given in over the wine, which we poured into beakers for toasting each other and our scheme of revenge. With it we ate winter pears, laughing again as the juice ran down our chins and wrists. When Helena took a fruit that was going brown, my father reached for a dinner knife and cut off the bruised portion for her. Watching him hold the fruit in one sturdy hand while he pared off the bad part, stopping the knife-blade against his blunt thumb, a pang of reminiscence took me back a quarter of a century to another table, with a group of small children clamouring to have their father peel their fruit.
I still did not know what we had done to drive him away from us. I would never know. He had never wanted to explain. For me that had always been the worst part. But perhaps he simply could not do it.
Helena touched my cheek, her eyes quiet and understanding.
Pa gave her the pear, cut in slices, popping the first piece into
her mouth as if she was a little girl.
'He's a demon with a blade!' I exclaimed. Then we laughed some more, as my father and I recalled how we had rampaged against the painters as the dangerous Didius boys.
It was a good afternoon. But you should never relax. Laughter is the first step on the road to betrayal.
After Father had gone, normality resumed. Life reasserted its usual grim messages.
I was lighting a lamp. I wanted to trim off the burnt wick. I was thinking about nothing as I tried to find the knife I normally used. It was missing.
Pa must have walked off with it.
Then I remembered the knife that had stabbed Censorinus. Suddenly I understood how a knife which had once been my mother's had arrived at the caupona. I knew how my mother, who was so careful, could have lost one of her tools. Why when Petronius Longus had asked her about it, she had chosen to seem so vague-and why when Helena tried to question members of the family, Ma had almost feigned disinterest. I had seen her being vague and unresponsive on the same subject scores of times. Ma knew exactly where that 'lost' knife had gone twenty years ago. Its discovery must have placed her in a terrible dilemma-wanting to protect me, and yet aware that the truth itself would not spare our family. She must have put the knife in my father's lunch-basket, on the day he left home. Either that, or he had simply picked it up for some job or other and carried it away with him the way he had mine today.
My father had been in possession of the murder weapon.
Which meant that the main suspect for killing Censorinus would now appear to be Didius Geminus.
LIX
It was a wild idea. Those are the ones that always seem the most believable once they strike you.
This was one thing I could not say to Helena. Not wanting to let her see my face, I stepped on to the balcony threshold. Ten minutes ago, he had been here, joking with the two of us, more friendly than he and I had ever been. Now I knew this.
He could have lost that knife, or even thrown it away, a long time ago. I did not believe he had. Pa was famous for collecting cutlery. When he lived with us, the decreed system was that every day he was given a knife in his lunch-basket; he usually pinched the daily knife. It was one of the irritating habits by which he made his presence felt. He was always in trouble about it, one of the endless wrangles that colour family life. Sometimes he needed a sharp blade to prod a suspect piece of furniture, testing for worm. Sometimes he had to swipe through the cords tied around a bale of new stock. Sometimes he palmed an apple from a fruit stall in passing, then wanted to cut slices as he walked. We children bought him a fruit-knife for a Saturnalia present once; he just hung it on the wall of his office, and went on exasperating Mother by filching the picnic tools.
He must still do it. I would bet he was driving the redhead to distraction with the same little game-still on purpose, probably. And the day Censorinus died, maybe the knife in his pouch had been that old one.
So my father could have killed the soldier. Why? I could guess: Festus again. Rightly or wrongly, Geminus must have been trying to protect his precious boy.
I was still standing there, lost in desperate thoughts, when we had another visitor. It was so close to my father's departure, and Geminus was so much on my mind, that when I heard feet on the stairs I thought it must be him again, coming back for a forgotten cloak or hat.
They were old feet, but they belonged to someone lighter and more fragile than my hefty pa. I had just worked that out, with great relief, when the new arrival staggered in. Out of context, it took me a moment to recognise his troubled voice as he asked for me. As I came in from the balcony I saw Helena, who had been full of concern for the old man, grow suddenly still as she noticed my own frowning face. The light I had meant to attend to was flaming up madly; she strode across and blew it out.
'Oh it's Apollonius! Helena Justina, this is the man I was telling you about the other day; my old teacher. You look terrible, Apollonius. Whatever's wrong?'
'I'm not sure,' he gasped. It was a bad day for elderly folk at Fountain Court. First my father had arrived whey-faced and coughing. Now the six flights of stairs had nearly finished Apollonius as well. 'Can you come, Marcus Didius?'
'Get your breath! Come where?'
'Flora's. Something has happened at the caupona; I am sure of it. I sent a message to Petronius Longus, but he hasn't appeared, so I thought you might advise me what to do. You know about crises-'
Oh I knew about those! I was up to my neck in them.
Helena had already fetched my cloak from the bedroom. She stood holding it, staring hard at me but keeping her questions to herself.
'Stay calm, old friend.' I felt a strange, deep, gentle care for other people who were in trouble. 'Tell me what has disturbed you.'
'The place has been shuttered since just after lunch-time-' Flora's never closed in the afternoon. So long as there was a chance of extracting a copper from the public for a lukewarm stuffed vine leaf, Flora's never closed at all. 'There is no sign of life. The cat is scratching at the door, crying horribly. People have been beating on the shutters, then just walking away.' Apollonius himself probably had nowhere else to go. If he found the caupona unexpectedly closed he would just sit outside on his barrel hopefully. 'Oh please come, if you can, young Marcus. I feel something is dreadfully wrong at that place!'
I kissed Helena, grabbed my cloak and went with him. The old man could only go slowly, so when Helena decided not to be left out, she soon caught up with us.
We saw Petronius arrive at Flora's just ahead of us. I was glad of it, although I would have gone in on my own otherwise. But Apollonius was not alert to the sensitivities. I was still under suspicion for what had happened to Censorinus. If there was some new upset at the scene of his murder, it was better to have official company.
The caupona was as the old man had described. Both huge shutters had been drawn across the wide entrances in front of the counters; both were securely locked from inside. It looked as I had rarely seen it except at the dead of night. Standing in the street, Petronius and I tossed up pebbles at the two small windows in the upper rooms, but nobody responded.
Stringy was gnawing at one doorpost miserably. He rushed up to us, hoping we might give him some dinner. A caupona cat does not expect to find himself hungry; he was thoroughly indignant. Petronius picked him up and fussed him while he stared at the locked building thoughtfully.
Across the street at the Valerian there were more customers than usual. People, some of whom would normally have been wasting a few hours at Flora's, turned on their elbows to watch us, while eagerly discussing the unusual activity.
We told Apollonius to wait outside. He sat down on his barrel; Helena stopped with him. Petronius gave her the cat, but she put it down fairly swiftly. Even though the poor girl had fallen for an informer, she did have some principles.
Petro and I walked round to the back alley. There was the usual stink of kitchen rubbish; the usual seedy atmosphere. The stable door was locked-the first time I had ever seen that. It was of flimsy construction; the lower portion was weaker and gave way to a hard shove from Petronius. He reached in and fiddled with the bolts on the upper half, eventually giving up and simply ducking underneath. I followed. We emerged inside the kitchen area. Everywhere was completely still.
We stood, trying to see in the dark. We recognised that silence. We knew what we were looking for. Petronius always carried a tinder-box; after several attempts he struck sparks, then managed to find a lamp to light.
As he held up the little lamp he was standing ahead of me, his bulk blocking my view. His shadow, that great head and the raised arm, sprang up to the side of me, flickering alarmingly on the rough caupona wall.
'Oh shit, he's dead!'
I assumed it was another murder. Still locked in my own preoccupations, I thought drably, Geminus must have come here and killed the waiter just before he turned up at Fountain Court so full of concern for us, so full of laughter and fun…
But I was wrong. I had hardly begun to feel angry with my father when Petronius Longus moved aside for me.
I noticed another shadow. By the single flame of the feeble lamp, its slow motion attracted attention as a long, dark, slanted shape turned slightly with some changing air current.
In the well of the stairs was Epimandos. He had hanged himself.
LX
Petronius had the longer reach. He cut the body down, not even needing the stool Epimandos had used. We were far too late; the corpse was cold. We carried him into the deep dark of the interior, and laid him on a counter. I fetched the thin blanket from his bed and covered him. Petronius unlocked and partly pushed open a shutter. He called in the others.
'You were right, Apollonius. The waiter's topped himself. It's all right; don't be afraid to look. He's decent now.'
The old teacher came into the caupona, showing no excitement. He looked at the covered body with compassion. He shook his head. 'Saw it coming. Only a matter of time.'
'I must talk to you,' Petronius said. 'But first we all need a drink-'
We looked around, but then gave up. It seemed tactless to raid Flora's. We all went over to the Valerian. Petronius told the other customers to make themselves scarce, so they wandered across to Flora's and stood outside in huddles. Rumours had spread. A crowd collected, though there was nothing to see. We had locked up after us. Petronius, who had his soft side, even brought away the distressed cat.
The Valerian had a quiet atmosphere and quite good wine. The waiter allowed Petro to feed Stringy, which was sensible because Petronius was looking for an excuse to start a fight over nothing just to ease his feelings. He always hated unnatural death.
'This is a tragedy. What can you tell me?' Petro asked the teacher wearily. He was stroking the cat and sounded as if he was still looking for trouble. Apollonius blanched.
'I know a little about him. I'm at the caupona frequently…' Apollonius left a small, tactful pause. 'His name was Epimandos; he had been a waiter there for five or six years. Your brother,' he said, turning to me, 'arranged the job for him.'
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