Balefires

by David Drake

  "I can see why the old man wants to be Rutilianus's tame philosopher," Vettius said. "It's getting harder and harder to scrape up enough pupils freelance to keep him in bread, onions, and a sop of wine…"

  Dama nodded.

  "Thing is, I'm not quite clear whatyour part in the business might be, Citizen."

  This time the soldier's smile made Dama measure in his mind the distance between him and the hilt of the sword resting against the wall. Too far, almost certainly.

  And unnecessary. Almost certainly.

  "Menelaus was a friend of my father's," Dama said. "A good friend. Toward the last, my father's only friend. Menelaus is too proud to take charity from me directly-but he was glad to have me stand beside him while he sought this position in the Prefect's household."

  Vettius chuckled. "Stand beside him," he repeated ironically. "With a purse full of silver you hand out to anybody who might ease your buddy's road."

  "… speak of the River Tagus, red with the blood of the bandits you as Governor slaughtered there?"

  "He doesn't know that," snapped Dama.

  "But you do, merchant," the soldier said."You take your family duties pretty seriously, don't you?"

  "Yeah, I do," agreed Dama as simply as if he didn't know he was being mocked… and perhaps he was not being mocked. "Menelaus is my friend as well as my duty, but-I take all my duties seriously."

  The big man smiled; this time, for a change, it gave his face a pleasant cast. "Yeah," he said. "So do I."

  "I can see that," Dama agreed, feeling his body relax for the first time since his interview with this big, deadly man began. "And it's your duty to guard Rutilianus."

  "More a matter of keeping things from hitting the Prefect from somewhere he's not looking," Vettius said with a shrug."So I like to know the people who're getting close to him."

  He grinned. "Usually I don't much like what I learn. Usually."

  Dama nodded toward the office, where Menelaus's measured periods had broken up into the general babble of all those in the room."I think we'd better get back," he said. "I'm glad to have met you, Lucius Vettius."

  And meant it.

  The Prefect called, "Ah, Vettius," craning his neck to see over his shoulder as Dama and the soldier reentered the room. "We rather like Menelaus here, don't we, gentlemen?"

  Yes yes/Well-spoken indeed/Seems solid for a pagan "Well, being able to spout a set speech doesn't make him learned, sir," crabbed Vulco.

  He fixed Menelaus with a glare meant to be steely. Vulco's head was offset so that only one eye bore, making him look rather like an angry crow.

  "Tell me, sirrah," he demanded, "who was it that Thersites fed his sons to? Quick, now-no running around to sort through your books."

  The philosopher blinked in confusion. Dama thought for a moment that his friend had been caught out, but Menelaus said, "Good sir, Atreus it was who murdered the sons of his brother Thyestes and cooked them for their father."

  Dama suppressed a laugh. Menelaus had paused in order to find a way to answer the question without making his questioner looktoo much of a fool.

  Vulco blinked. "Well, that seems all right," he muttered, fixing his eyes on his hands and seeming to examine his manicure.

  "Yes, well," Rutilianus agreed. "But you, Lucius Vettius. What information doyou have for us?"

  Everyone else in the room looked at the tall soldier: Menelaus in surprise, the Prefect and his companions with a partially concealed avidity for scandal; Dama with a professionally blank expression, waiting to hear what was said before he decided how to deal with anything that needed to be countered.

  Vettius glanced at Dama. "I'd suggested to His Excellency," he said, "that he let me see what I could learn about the learned Menelaus."

  "Of course," Rutilianus agreed, raising his eyebrows. "After all, we need to be sure of the man who's going to be responsible for the moral training of my children."

  His companions bobbed and muttered approval.

  Vettius took a bi-fold notebook of waxed boards from the wallet in the bosom of his toga, but he didn't bother to open the document before he said, "Menelaus comes from Caesarea in Cappadocia where his father was one of the city councilors."

  Like Dama's father.

  "Was schooled in Gaza, then Athens. Returned home and taught there for most of his life. Moved to Rome about five years ago. Gives lessons in oratory and philosophy-"

  "Epicurean philosophy," the subject of the discussion broke in, before Dama could shush him.

  "Epicurean philosophy," Vettius continued, giving Dama-rather than Menelaus-a grin that was not entirely friendly. "In the Forum of Trajan; to about a dozen pupils at any one time. Doesn't get along particularly well with the other teachers who've set up in the same area. For the past three months, he's been attacking one Pyrrhus the Prophet in his lectures, but the two haven't met face to face."

  Dama was ready this time. His finger tapped Menelaus's shoulder firmly, even as the older man opened his mouth to violently-and needlessly-state his opinion of Pyrrhus.

  "Well, weknow he's a philosopher!" Caelius said. "What about his personal life?"

  "He doesn't have much personal life," Vettius said. He betrayed his annoyance with a thinning of tone so slight that only Dama, of those in the office, heard and understood it. "When he's a little ahead, he buys used books. When he's behind-"

  Menelaus winced and examined the floor.

  "-which is usually, and now, he pawns them. Stays out of wineshops. Every few months or so he visits a whore named Drome who works the alleys behind the Beef Market.

  "These aren't," Vettius added dryly, "expensive transactions."

  Dama looked at the philosopher in amazement. Menelaus met his gaze sidelong and muttered, "Ah, Dama, I-thought that when I grew older, some impediments to a calm mind would cease to intrude on my life. But I'm not as old as that yet. I'm ashamed to admit."

  Macer opened his mouth as if about to say something. Lucius Vettius turned toward the man and-tapped his notebook, Dama thought, with the index finger of his left hand.

  Dama thought the soldier's gesture might be only an idle tic; but Macer understood something by it. The councilor's eyes bulged, and his mouth shut with an audible clop.

  "Last year," Vettius continued calmly, "Menelaus moved out of his garret apartment at night, stiffing his landlord for the eight-days' rent."

  "Sir!" the philosopher blurted in outrage despite Dama's restraining hand. "When I moved there in the spring, I was told the roof tiles would be replaced in a few days. Nothing had been done by winter-and my books were drenched by the first heavy rains!"

  "The pair of Moors sharing the room now-" said Vettius.

  "If you want to believe-" Vulco began.

  "-say the landlord told them when they moved in that the roof tiles would be replaced in a few days," Vettius continued, slicing across the interruption like a sword cutting rope. "That was three months ago."

  He turned to the philosopher and said coldly, "Do you have anything to add tothat, Faustus Menelaus?"

  Menelaus blinked.

  Dama bowed low to the soldier and said, "My companion and I beg your pardon, sir. He did not realize that the life of an exceptionally decent and honorable man might contain, on close examination… incidents which look regrettable out of context."

  "Well, still…" Rutilianus said, frowning as he shifted on his couch. "What do you fellows think?"

  All four of his civilian companions opened their mouths to speak. Macer was fractionally ahead of the others, blurting, "Well, Severiana certainly won't be pleased if an opponent of Pyrrhus the Prophet enters your household!"

  "Didn't I tell you to leave my wife out of this?" Rutilianus snarled.

  Macer quailed as though he'd been slapped. The other civilians froze, unwilling to offer what might not be the words the aroused Prefect wanted to hear.

  Vettius looked at them with cool amusement, then back to Rutilianus. "If I may speak, sir?" he said.
/>   "Of course, of course, Lucius," Rutilianus said, wiping his forehead with a napkin. "What do you think I should do?"

  Dama squeezed Menelaus's shoulder very firmly, lest the old philosopher interrupt again-which Dama was quite sure would mean disaster. The soldier wasn't the sort of man whose warnings, voiced or implied, were to be ignored without cost.

  "I can't speak to the fellow's philosophy," Vettius said.

  He paused a half-beat, to see if Menelaus would break in on him; and smiled when the philosopher held his peace. "But for his life-Citizen Dama stated the situation correctly. The learned Menelaus is an exceptionally decent and honorable man, fit to enter your household, sir-"

  Vulco started to say something. Before the words came out, the soldier had turned and added, in a voice utterly without emotion, "-or your council. From a moral standpoint."

  Vulco blanched into silence.

  Dama expressionlessly watched the-almost-exchange. This Vettius could go far in the imperial bureaucracy, with his ability to gather information and his ruthless willingness to use what he had. But the way the soldier moved, his timing-thrusting before his target was expecting it, ending a controversy before it became two-sided-those were a swordsman's virtues, not a bureaucrat's.

  Dama's right palm tingled, remembering the feel of a swordhilt. In five years, he'd turned his father's modest legacy into real wealth by a willingness to go where the profits were as high as the risks. He knew swordsmen, knew killers…

  "Even with the…?" the Prefect was saying. His eyes looked inward for a moment. "But yes, I can see that anyone's life examined closely might look-"

  Rutilianus broke off abruptly as if in fear that his musings were about to enter territory he didn't care to explore.

  "Well, anyway, Menelaus," he resumed, "I think we'll give you-"

  "Gaius, dearie," called a silk-clad youth past the scowling nomenclator, "there's somebody here you justhave to see."

  Rutilianus looked up with a frown that softened when he saw the youth-the boy, really-who was speaking. "I'm busy, now, Ganymede. Can't it wait…?"

  "Not an eentsy minute," Ganymede said firmly, lifting his pert nose so that he looked down at the Prefect past chubby cheeks.

  "Oh, send him in, then," Rutilianus agreed with a sigh.

  The nomenclator, his voice pitched a half-step up with scandal and outrage, announced, "The honorable Gnaeus Aelius Acer…"he paused "… emissary of Pyrrhus the Prophet."

  "Thatcharlatan!" Menelaus snapped.

  "It ill behooves a pagan to criticize a Christian, you!" Macer retorted.

  "Pyrrhus is no Christian!" said Menelaus. "That's as much a sham as his claim to know the future and-"

  Dama laid a finger across his friend's lips.

  A young man whose dress and bearing marked his good family was being ushered in by the nomenclator.

  Rutilianus glanced from the newcomer to Menelaus and remarked in a distant tone, "A word of advice, good philosopher: my wife believes Pyrrhus to be a Christian. A belief in which I choose to concur."

  He turned to the newcomer and said, "Greetings, Gnaeus Acer. It's been too long since you or your father have graced us with your company."

  Instead of responding with a moment of small talk, Acer said, "Pyrrhus to Gaius Rutilianus, greetings. There is-"

  There was a glaze over the young man's eyes and his voice seemed leaden. He did not look at the Prefect as his tongue broke into singsong to continue:

  "-one before you

  "With whose beard he cloaks for boys his lust.

  "Cast him from you hastily

  "And spurn him in the dust."

  Pyrrhus's messenger fell silent. "I think there's a mistake-" Dama began while his mind raced, searching for a diplomatic way to deny the absurd accusation.

  Menelaus was neither interested in nor capable of diplomacy. "That's doggerel," he said, speaking directly to the Prefect. "And it's twaddle. I've never touched a boy carnally in my life."

  After a pause just too short for anyone else to interject a comment, the philosopher added, "I can't claim that as a virtue. Because frankly, I've never been tempted in that direction."

  "Vettius?" the Prefect asked, his eyes narrowing with supposition.

  The soldier shrugged. "I can't prove an absence," he said-his tone denying the possibility implicit in the words."But if the learned Menelaus had tastes in that direction, some neighbor or slave would surely have mentioned it."

  "In his wallet-" Acer broke in unexpectedly.

  "-the debaucher keeps

  "A letter to the boy with whom he sleeps."

  "That," shouted Menelaus, "is a lie as false and black as the heart of the charlatan whose words this poor deluded lad is speaking!"

  Vettius reached toward the bosom of the philosopher's toga.

  Menelaus raised a hand to fend off what he saw as an assault on his sense of propriety. Dama caught the philosopher's arm and said, "Let him search you now. That will demonstrate the lie to all these gentlemen."

  Vettius removed a cracked leather purse whose corners had been restitched so often that its capacity was reduced by a third. He thumbed up the flap-the tie-strings had rotted off a decade before-and emptied it, item by item, into his left palm.

  A stylus. A pair of onions.

  "I, ah," Menelaus muttered, "keep my lunch…"

  Dama patted him to silence.

  A half-crust of bread, chewed rather than torn from a larger piece. The lips of Rutilianus and his companions curled.

  A tablet, closed so that the two boards protected the writing on their waxed inner sides. All eyes turned to the philosopher.

  All eyes save those of Gnaeus Acer, who stood as quietly as a resting sheep.

  "My notebook," explained Menelaus."I jot down ideas for my lectures. And sometimes appointments."

  Vettius dumped back the remainder of the wallet's contents and opened the tablet.

  "It's in Greek," he commented. He shifted so that light from the garden door threw shadows across the marks scored into the wax and made them legible.

  "Yes, I take my notes-" the philosopher began.

  " 'Menelaus to his beloved Kurnos,' " Vettius said, translating the lines rather than reading them in their original. " 'Kurnos, don't drive me under the yoke against my will-don't goad my love too much.'

  "

  "What!" said Dama.

  "Oh…!" murmured several of the others in the room.

  " 'I won't invite you to the party,' " the soldier continued, raising his voice to a level sufficient to bark commands across the battlefield," 'nor forbid you. When you're present, I'm distressed-but when you go away, I still love you.' "

  "Why, that's not my notebook!" Menelaus cried. "Nor my words. Why, it's just a quotation from the ancient poet Theognis!"

  Dama started to extend a hand to the notebook. He caught himself before he thought the gesture was visible, but the soldier had seen and understood. Vettius handed the tablet to Dama open.

  Pyrrhus's messenger should have been smiling-should have shownsome expression. Gnaeus Acer's face remained as soft and bland as butter. He turned to leave the office as emotionlessly as he'd arrived.

  Menelaus reached for Acer's arm. Dama blocked the older man with his body. "Control yourself!" he snarled under his breath.

  The message on the tablet couldn't have been written by the old philosopher… but the forgery was very good.

  Too good for Dama to see any difference between Menelaus's hand and that of the forger.

  "Lies don't change the truth!"Menelaus shouted to the back of Gnaeus Acer. "Tell your master! The truth will find him yet!"

  "Citizen Menelaus," the Prefect said through pursed lips, "you'd better-" his mind flashed him a series of pictures: Menelaus brawling with Pyrrhus's messenger in the waiting room "-step into the garden for a moment while we discuss matters. And your friend-"

  "Sir," Vettius interjected, "I think it might be desirable to have Citizen Dama present to hear
the discussions."

  "We don't owe an explanation to some itinerant pederast, surely?" said Caelius.

  Rutilianus looked at him."No," he said."I don't owe anyone an explanation, Caelius. But my friend Lucius is correct that sometimes giving an explanation can save later awkwardness-even in matters as trivial as these."

  For the first time, Dama could see that Rutilianus had reached high office for better reason than the fact that he had the right ancestors.

  A momentary tremor shook Menelaus's body. The philosopher straightened, calm but looking older than Dama had ever seen him before.

  He bowed to the Prefect and said, "Noble Rutilianus, your graciousness will overlook my outburst; but I assure you I will never forgive my own conduct, which was so unworthy of a philosopher and a guest in your house."

  Menelaus strode out the door to the garden, holding his head high as though he were unaware of Caelius's giggles and the smug certainty in the eyes of Vulco.

  "Citizen Dama, do you have anything to add?" the Prefect said-a judge now, rather than the head of a wealthy household.

  "There is no possibility that the accusation is true," Dama said, choosing his words and knowing that there were no words in any language that would achieve his aim. "I say that as a man who has known Menelaus since I was old enough to have memory."

  "And the letter he'd written?" Macer demanded. "I supposethat's innocent?"

  Dama looked at his accuser. "I can't explain the letter," he said. "Except to point out that Pyrrhus knew about it, even though Menelaus himself obviously had no idea what was written on the tablet."

  Caelius snickered again.

  "Lucius Vettius, what do you say?" Rutilianus asked from his couch. He wiped his face with a napkin, dabbing precisely instead of sweeping the cloth promiscuously over his skin.

  "In my opinion," the soldier said, "the old man didn't know what was on the tablet. And he isn't interested in boys. In my opinion."

  "So you would recommend that I employ the learned Menelaus to teach my sons proper morality?" Rutilianus said.

  For a moment, Dama thought-hoped-prayed The big soldier looked at Dama, not the Prefect, and said, "No, I can't recommend that. There're scores of philosophers in Rome who'd be glad of the position. There's no reason at all for you to take a needless risk."