In fact, after another crossroads, they emerged onto the Via Tusculana only a couple of blocks from Crispus’s house: when he looked up the road trying to get his bearings, he saw torches blazing in the iron dolphin holders, the only lights in the stretch of gray insulae which lined the road with dark and shuttered faces. He began hobbling eagerly toward those beacons.
“That your house?” asked the woman appreciatively. “That big one?”
“My friend’s house,” he corrected her. “I am his guest.”
“You lend him money, too?”
“No!” he said distractedly. “He is a businessman. We have investments in some of the same shipping syndicates. We’re guest-friends.”
This didn’t seem to impress her. “Huh!” she said again.
He limped at last to the door and beat on it as though the attackers were running up the street after him.
The window in the lodge opened instantly, and Kyon’s scarred face looked out. It creased, its expression rendered unintelligible by the burns, and then the door flew open. “Oh, sir!” cried Kyon, in what sounded almost like reproach, “Oh, sir, look at you! The master will be horrified!”
Hermogenes could think of no answer to that. He stumbled into the house, wanting only to get in out of the night. Kyon let him through, then moved to bar the passage of the woman following.
The woman drew herself up and declared fiercely, “Your guest owes me a hundred and fifty denarii!”
“I owe her my life,” Hermogenes told the doorkeeper. “Please. Let her in.”
Kyon stood aside to let her in, then closed and bolted the door behind her.
Titus Fiducius Crispus came running in through the atrium, alerted by the noise. He gave a cry of dismay. “My dear friend! Oh, gods and goddesses! What has he done to you?”
“Let me sit down,” Hermogenes begged him.
“Of course, of course. Stentor! Some wine. Oh, Jupiter, look at you!”
Hermogenes found himself escorted through into the dining room and deposited on a red-upholstered couch. His ankle was swollen, he noticed as he sat down, and there was blood over his leg from a scraped knee he had not even felt. He was filthy and bruised all over; his shoulder ached savagely where the attacker had wrenched it, and there was blood down his front. He touched his face and discovered that the stitches in his cheek had torn and that he had a nosebleed. Various members of the household crowded around, exclaiming in horror. He was aware of the red-haired woman standing silently at the side of the room, watching him as though she suspected he meant to slip away without paying her. In the bright lamplight he could see that she was about thirty, with a crooked nose, what looked like a sword-scar across one side of her face, and cold blue eyes. Her forearms were crisscrossed with knife cuts, and she was thin to the point of being gaunt. Her tunic was dirty, threadbare, and patched, and her heavy leather sandals had been repeatedly mended. She no longer had any resemblance to a goddess or a creature from the Underworld.
Hyakinthos hurried over and set a large cup of wine in his hands.
“Some for Menestor, too, please,” he said. “And for … for this woman here, whose name I do not know, but who saved my life.”
“Where’s Phormion?” asked Hyakinthos anxiously.
At that name, Menestor burst into tears. Hyakinthos at once looked as though he might do the same. Hermogenes remembered Phormion playing ball with the boy only a few days before—remembered the bodyguard’s evil grin as he made yet another goal, and the strength and vigor with which he ran and dodged. It seemed incredible that he was dead. He would still have been alive if it hadn’t been for his master.
“Dead,” Hermogenes admitted painfully. “He tried to protect me, and they killed him.”
“Rufus tried to kill you?” exclaimed Titus. “In his own house?”
“It was on the way back,” Hermogenes informed him. He took a gulp of the wine. “I think his people told some lie to the bearers that persuaded them to betray me. I don’t think it was just money. They tried to take me down into an alley where he had men waiting. It would have looked like robbers. Titus, I don’t think he has the money. I think he spent it all on land, and then borrowed from somebody important to improve the land, and if he tries to pay me, his other creditor will guess how things stand with him and he’s afraid of that. He means to kill me before I can expose him. I’m sorry.” He finished the cup of wine.
“He didn’t sign?” Titus said in bewilderment.
“No. The real point of the meeting was the ambush on the way back. I am sorry, Titus. I never intended to involve you in something like this.” He rubbed a filthy hand over his hair distractedly. “I think my best option is to find his other creditor and arrange to consolidate the debt, then get out. I … I will go to an inn, of course, while I do that.” It cost him some effort to say that: the thought of leaving this haven of light and friendliness and going out into the dark and dirty streets was almost unbearable. He had known all along, though, that Titus would not back him against a consul. He could even see that he should not: Titus lived in Rome, and would have to go on living there when Hermogenes went back to distant Alexandria.
“How can you suggest such a thing?” Titus asked reproachfully. “Look at you! You can barely walk: how could I possibly turn you out of my house? A Roman consul, and he does such a thing to a respectable citizen! A debtor, and he does it to his creditor!”
“You said the man who owed you money was a barbarian!” interrupted the woman.
Titus cast her a glance that wondered who she was and what she was doing in his house.
“Figuratively speaking,” Hermogenes said unhappily. “Factually speaking, however, he is a consul. General Lucius Tarius Rufus.” He could afford to say it, here: on the streets he had been too afraid.
Strangely enough, the woman seemed pleased rather than alarmed. She grinned, showing uneven white teeth. “A fine enemy you have, Greek!”
“Not by my choice. I told you that my name is Hermogenes, not Greek. Yours I do not know.”
Her smile disappeared. “Cantabra.”
There had been a small war, or series of wars, with a tribe of barbarians who lived in the wild mountains of Iberia … yes, they were called Cantabrians, and they were supposed to be savage and warlike in the extreme, which certainly fit. “That is a nationality, not a name,” he told the woman mildly. “Like Greek.”
“Maybe I like it,” replied the Cantabrian woman. “You owe me a hundred and fifty denarii.”
“And I will pay it gladly. Titus, this woman, Cantabra, came to help me when I was attacked. If it had not been for her, I would have died.” If it had not been for her, he admitted silently, I would be at the back of that alley now—and not dead, not for some time. They had wanted to know where he had put the documents, and they wouldn’t have killed him until he told them. They probably could not have broken him quickly or easily, but probably they could have done it.
Titus looked at the woman very dubiously, but said, “Then you are very welcome to my house.”
For the first time the barbarian seemed a bit unsure of herself. She looked down, straightened her ragged tunic, and adjusted the knife. Then she looked up again. “May I have some food, then?” she asked, her voice all at once hoarse and hesitant. “And a bed for the night? It’s late to find a place to sleep.”
“You are welcome to both,” Titus told her stiffly. “Stentor! See that this … this person … has what she needs.”
“My money first!” Cantabra insisted immediately, with a wary glance at Hermogenes.
She clearly expected him to try to cheat her. “By all means,” Hermogenes told her. “I will take it out of my strongbox now. Menestor, help me up.”
Menestor came over and helped him to his feet, and with the boy’s support he hobbled slowly out of the dining room and along the colonnade to the Nile Rooms, closely followed by Titus and the barbarian woman, who were followed in turn by most of the household.
He kne
lt beside the trunk, with everyone watching him, pulled out his key, unlocked it, dug in the trunk for the strongbox, unlocked that, and counted out a hundred and fifty denarii. It was most of his supply of coin, but he did not grudge it in the least. “Have you anything to put this in?” he asked the woman.
She seemed completely speechless at being given what he had promised and she had earned. She fumbled at a small leather strip twisted around her belt, the sort that could be used to hold a few small coins at most. Hermogenes shook his head. He rummaged in the trunk, found a spare pen case, and tipped the pens out. He scooped the coins into it and handed it to the barbarian. “Take this, then, and thank you,” he told her formally: some things ought to be said. “Your courage and resolution saved me from a wretched and shameful death. I am deeply grateful, and I pray that the gods favor you.”
She blushed, the color showing very clearly in her pale skin, and bobbed her head. Muttering something incomprehensible, she backed out of the room. Stentor gestured to her and led her off into the house.
Hermogenes remained where he was, kneeling on the floor by the trunk. It seemed too much effort to move.
“My dear fellow!” said Titus gently, coming over to clasp his shoulder. “Shall I call my doctor again?”
Hermogenes shook his head weakly. “Don’t send anyone out into the dark tonight. Tomorrow will be fine. Titus, I meant what I said about the inn. Tonight, I confess, I would be very glad to stay here, and I doubt very much that he’ll do anything more until day comes, but tomorrow—”
“Please don’t speak of it!” Titus told him in distress. “I’ll have the slaves bring you water here so you can wash, shall I?” He turned to Menestor, who was leaning shivering against the wall. “And for you as well, dear boy! Dear lad, you stayed faithfully by your master’s side through all of that horror, did you?”
Menestor wiped his eyes angrily with the back of his hand. “My master told me to run for help,” he whispered, “but I couldn’t. I was too scared. I would’ve been lost all on my own, and I don’t even speak Latin. I just couldn’t.”
“You’re a brave young man,” Titus said admiringly.
“No, I’m not,” whispered Menestor. “I was so scared. They killed Phormion. One of them put a knife at my throat, and I was afraid to move. They had my master down on the ground, and they were hitting him and twisting his arms, and he was screaming, but I didn’t dare move. I was sure we were going to die.” He started to cry again. “I pissed myself, I was so scared. Herakles! I’m a coward!”
“Dear boy!” protested Titus helplessly.
“You did very well,” Hermogenes told him, feeling equally helpless. “Calm down. You are not a coward. You tried to fight them. You stayed with me, and I leaned on you all the way back. You were brave and loyal, Menestor, and I am grateful.”
“I’ll tell them to fetch the water,” Titus muttered, and slipped out.
* * *
It was indescribably wonderful to be clean, to lie down on a bed in a bedroom in a quiet, peaceful house, with the savagery of the streets locked outside. Hermogenes fell asleep almost at once, and slept deeply.
He woke in darkness, his ankle throbbing and his face sore, certain that somebody was creeping into the room with a knife. He sat bolt upright in bed and listened.
There was no sound but the wind against the shutters, the muffled rumble of a cart on the road outside, and Menestor’s even breathing from the dayroom. Hermogenes lay down again and stared up into the darkness.
There were things which would have to be done when day came, and decisions which would have to be made. He would have to report the attack to a magistrate; he would have to claim Phormion’s body, and arrange for his funeral. He knew, suddenly, that he wanted the priest of Mercury and Isis to assist with the rite. He wanted Phormion to be washed with the water of the Nile, and sent to the gods with the touch and scent of home.
There was a more important decision to make first, though: what to do about the consul and his debt?
It seemed to him that he had three options. First, he could capitulate: send the consul the documents with a letter saying that he was writing off the debt and going home, and hope that that was enough to persuade the man to leave him alone. It might be the most reasonable course; it was undoubtedly the one his poor wretched slave wanted him to take. If he’d followed it before, Phormion would be alive, and he himself would be safely on his way back to his family—but it was no use considering it, because he knew already that he would not do it. Less so than ever, with Phormion dead and himself nearly murdered in the street. Rufus was going to pay every last sestertius of his debt.
Second, then, he could do what he’d threatened, and try to use Rufus’s political enemies. He could write to Scipio and get his protection while he summoned the consul to court. True, he had told Titus that he would do that only to defend his own life, but it now seemed it had indeed come to that.
He still felt, however, that it was a course fraught with incalculable risks. He did not understand Roman politics, but he knew that they were both secretive and violent. There was no reason to believe Scipio would respect him any more than did Rufus: he suspected, in fact, that a Roman aristocrat would regard an Alexandrian moneylender as a contemptible tool, to be used and then thrown away. There was, too, that looming absence from the Palatine. Rufus was a friend of the emperor; Scipio, though wealthy and assured of privilege, was a mere acquaintance. Trying to use Scipio to extract the money from Rufus might well be an incredibly stupid thing to do.
That left the third option—the one which, he found, he had already chosen: find Rufus’s other creditor or creditors, if they existed, and arrange for one of them to buy the debt. He could endure selling it on if that meant it was collected and he received at least a part of it—particularly if it meant financial ruin for Lucius Tarius Rufus. Once the debt had been transferred Rufus would have no motive to kill Hermogenes—apart from vengeance, which, though real, was probably not going to be as high a priority for the consul as keeping his own head above the waters of financial ruin.
The biggest difficulty with the third option was that the consul wanted to kill him. Somehow he would have to stay alive long enough to find another creditor and persuade him that he wanted to buy another piece of Lucius Tarius Rufus.
He opened the shutters as soon as the first gray light of dawn showed against them, then inspected his ankle. It was still swollen, but he could swivel it round in every direction, if at the cost of some pain, so he supposed that it was sprained rather than broken. He was not sure he wanted to see what his face looked like, but at least bruises wouldn’t impede him.
He got up, then stood on his left foot and gazed unhappily at the long distance of eight or nine paces out the door of the sleeping cubicle and over to the desk in the dayroom. He found that he definitely did not want to put his right foot onto the ground.
He dropped to hands and knees and crawled into the dayroom. He had gone to bed naked from his bath, and he had a sudden ridiculous image of what he must look like—the respectable Alexandrian financier Marcus Aelius Hermogenes, as battered and bruised as a boxer, crawling across that absurdly decorated Nile Room stark naked. He had to pause and stifle a laugh.
Menestor was still asleep. Trying not to wake him, he pulled himself up and sat down in the chair. A letter to Tarius Rufus, that was what he needed—one that would persuade the consul to leave him alone for perhaps ten days.
Pretend that the attack had terrified him so much he was going to write off the debt and go home? Would they believe that, after all his oaths and his defiance?
They might. They might say to themselves, “I knew that the Egyptian would give in once we squeezed him! All Egyptians are cowards at heart.” They would still want those vital documents, though—and he didn’t want to play the role of the coward.
He took out a sheet of papyrus, considered a moment longer, then picked up the pen and wrote:
M. AELIUS HERMOGENES TO
L. TARIUS RUFUS, CONSUL, AND TO HIS FREEDMAN TARIUS MACEDO.
Probably you are already aware what happened last night near the Julian Forum, and aware that it failed. I have considered going directly to Scipio, but the desperate nature of that attempt has convinced me that you are unable to pay your debt. I suspect that your lands are so encumbered that if you attempted to sell, you would risk financial catastrophe. Should such occur, I would find myself denied in favor of your Roman creditors, and would likely obtain nothing.
Seeing that this is the case, it seems to me that I must agree to write off the debt and go home empty-handed. I am certain, however, that you will not accept this course from me unless I also hand over to you the documents which prove your obligation. This is difficult, since your conduct toward me hitherto has made me fear that if those documents are in your hands, you will instantly order my death.
I therefore suggest the following compromise: I will send you the documents when I have secured my own departure from Rome. You will then be able to destroy them at your leisure, and your enemies will know nothing about the whole affair. If you make any move against me before then, however, I will turn to Scipio and his friends. I remind you, too, that there is a letter I have left to be sent to Scipio in the event of my death—and, I repeat, it is not at my friend’s house, nor does my friend know anything about it, so you will not find it by threatening him. I will reclaim it before I leave Rome, if I am able to do so safely, and send it to you with the documents you so desire. I intend to leave when I am sufficiently recovered from the events of last night. My ankle was broken, and I am currently unable to endure the stresses of travel, but I hope to be able to depart in about ten days.
I hope that this suggestion proves acceptable to you. As a token of good faith, I am reporting the events of last night as an attempted robbery, with no blame attaching to you at all and no mention of your debt.
I pray that the gods grant you all you deserve.
He read it through again, trying to be critical. Was that final line perhaps too heavy-handed?
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