“Let me deliver your letter,” Cantabra told him eagerly. “I know how to go unseen. Give it to me, and the consul will suspect nothing, until you ruin him.”
Hermogenes hesitated, regarding her uncertainly. He had only just hired her: he might think she was honest, but how could he be sure? Suppose she took the letter to Rufus instead of to Pollio? The consul would probably pay her well for it.
On the other hand, who else could he send on such a delicate errand? He did not want to involve Titus’s people any more than he had to, and sending Menestor would have been out of the question even if the boy spoke Latin.
He recognized, grimly, how absurd it was to try to humble a Roman consul when all the resources he could draw upon were one fat timid businessman, one frightened slave, and one untried barbarian hireling. Undoubtedly it would be wiser to do what Menestor wanted him to do, and go home. It wasn’t as though the money, if he ever got it, would restore his father—or Phormion.
If he gave up, Rufus would win. Theft, robbery, and murder: Rufus would have subjected him to them all, and emerged triumphant and unscathed, the victor of Actium celebrating another Egyptian defeat. No. His own resources might be slight, but Pollio’s were undoubtedly more substantial, if he could enlist them. He thought the barbarian was honest. She certainly had reason to hate the Romans, and she seemed eager to help. He would trust her.
“Very well,” he told her. “I will write the letter now.”
MARCUS AELIUS HERMOGENES RESPECTFULLY GREETS PUBLIUS VEDIUS POLLIO.
Sir, you do not know me, but I am emboldened to write to you because I believe we may have a business interest in common. I have inherited the right to claim an outstanding debt from the consul L. Tarius Rufus, and I have come to believe that the same man may also have borrowed from you. If that is the case, may I apply for an appointment with you at your convenience to discuss matters of mutual interest?
If I am mistaken, please accept my apologies for troubling a gentleman of your distinction unnecessarily. I pray that the gods grant you health.
“What does it say?” Cantabra asked, leaning over his shoulder to frown at the letter.
He told her, tying and sealing it as he did so.
“You give away nothing,” she commented, frowning.
“Indeed,” Hermogenes agreed. “If he is not the man I want, I do not want to attract his interest, and perhaps have him interfere. If he is the man I want, I do not want him to know how hard I am being pressed, or he will expect me to sell him the debt for nothing.”
She nodded understanding. “He may ask to question the messenger who brings this. What should I say if he does? He should at least be warned not to send a messenger back to you openly.”
He hadn’t thought of that. Titus and Stentor had come in while he was writing the letter to inform him that there were men watching the house. Titus had been dismayed and Stentor, grim. He hoped he’d managed to convince them that it was a sign that Rufus had believed his letter and decided to watch and wait—a good sign!—but he understood their unhappiness. In this residential area it would have been hard for Rufus to have set up his watch discreetly, but it seemed as though he hadn’t even tried: he had four blond barbarians leaning against the wall of the insula opposite watching the house door. The blatant nature of the move was probably intended to intimidate, but it still seemed to Hermogenes very stupid. People would notice, and wonder why someone who could employ barbarian guardsmen was watching the house of a respectable middle-class businessman. It could even come to the attention of Rufus’s enemies, and cause the catastrophe the consul was trying to avoid. A part of his mind was still worrying at that, wondering whether Rufus really was that arrogant and short-sighted, or whether there was some aspect of the move which he had not grasped.
“If he questions you,” he said slowly, “tell him that you do not know what is in the letter, and that I only hired you after my own bodyguard was killed in a robbery. Say you think I have some disagreement with the consul, but try not to make too much of it. I agree, you must warn him not to send a messenger openly—but try to make it sound as though you might have got something wrong, so that he only takes the precaution in case. Offer to carry the reply yourself.”
She nodded again, then grinned. “I will be a stupid barbarian who thinks mostly about what to put in her stomach, who can be trusted to deliver a letter, but nothing more. I will give away no more than you do.”
He smiled back, pleased at this ready, rapid connivance, and handed her the letter. She stuffed it down the front of her tunic and tightened her belt. “The men watching will see that I leave the house with nothing in my hands or at my belt,” she explained. She hesitated, then pulled the pen case with the money he’d given her out of her belt and set it down on the table. “I will leave this here,” she told him, meeting his eyes.
“I will keep it safe,” he promised her immediately. “Here.” He maneuvered himself over to his trunk, unlocked it, and set the pen case inside. “That’s so that the household slaves will not be tempted by it,” he told her. “All hundred and fifty denarii will sit there to await your return.”
“It is a hundred and forty-five now,” she corrected him unsmilingly. “I have five here.” She touched the strip of leather at her belt, then started off with a long, confident stride.
He limped after her along the colonnade to the atrium. In the entranceway, she glanced at him, and said, “You should move away from the door, lord, in case they see you. You are supposed to be in bed with a broken ankle.”
He grinned. She was quick. “How do you intend to escape the attention of our friends across the road?”
“I do not. I will let them see me go down the road towards the forum, where I will buy some small things. I think probably that will satisfy them, but if they still follow me, it will be easy to lose them at a shop. Then I will go to the house of Pollio on the Esquiline, and wait to see if he wishes to send you a reply. Yes?”
“Perfect. Be careful.”
“I am a careful woman, lord. Move back from the door.”
When she had gone, he limped back into the atrium and sat down on the bench with his leg up, leaning against the crutch. He felt as drained and exhausted as if he’d been working without a pause for days—and it was still nearly an hour until noon.
The prolonged day was not over, however. Cantabra had scarcely departed when there was another knock on the door. A moment later, Kyon summoned Titus: a young man from the office of the aediles of the fourth region, to whom they’d reported the attack, had arrived to inquire about the robbery. With him came two public slaves, carrying a litter on which lay a shapeless bundle wrapped in a torn sheet.
Titus stared at it as it was carried into the atrium, and began to wring his hands. The young aedile—a self-important pimply youth no older than nineteen—informed the master of the house that he’d come about the reported robbery, and asked if this was his murdered slave?
“No, no!” protested Titus. “My guest’s!” He waved his arm toward Hermogenes, who was still sitting in the atrium. “Oh, Hercules, what a dreadful thing!”
The aedile stared at Hermogenes’ battered face and bandaged foot a moment, then asked intelligently, “I suppose it was you who was robbed, then? Is this your slave?”
Hermogenes agreed that he had been the one attacked, and asked if they could uncover the body.
It was, indeed, Phormion. He looked smaller in death. His familiar features were set in an expression of savagery and rage, and his shrunken eyes seemed to stare in mute accusation.
Hermogenes discovered that he could not bear that gaze. He hauled himself off the bench, struggled over to the body with the aid of the crutch, and knelt down to close the staring eyes.
They would not shut. The eyes had dried overnight, and the lids were glued open. Hermogenes found his hand shaking, and he drew it back. Some swollen dark emotion rose and pressed itself against his throat, and he found that he could not speak. He pressed the b
ack of his hand against his mouth, trying to swallow the sobs rising in his gorge like sickness.
Titus exclaimed. He hurried over and pressed his guest’s shoulder. “Oh, my poor friend!” he said; and, to the aedile, “Cover it quickly! You’ve upset him.”
The public slaves covered Phormion again, and Titus helped his guest back to the bench and sat him down. Hermogenes bent over double, trembling, remembering with a horrifying vividness how the attacker’s knife had gone into Phormion, and how he had screamed—remembering how he himself had been forced to the cobblestones, his arm twisted behind his back and the blows thudding into his ribs. All the self-possession he had clung to at the time seemed to have been ripped away, and he felt like a frightened child.
The aedile was talking officiously, describing how the body had been found in the square by the public fountain that morning. For a time the words simply washed over him without making sense—but suddenly he found himself alert again, realizing that Phormion’s was the only body that had been found in the square that morning. The corpses of the two attackers must have been removed.
He was relieved, even through the tide of memory. He had been reasonably confident that nobody could convict him or his new bodyguard of murdering those two—but trouble over it had certainly been a possibility. Presumably one of the two injured attackers had recovered sufficiently to report to his patron, who had sent men to remove the bodies before any authority could trace them back to the man who’d sent them.
The aedile took out a set of wax tablets and asked him to describe what had happened. Hermogenes uttered a mixture of truth and falsehood: he had been on his way back from a business meeting on the Esquiline when he was attacked by robbers. (He described them honestly, as well as he could: it was easier than making it up, and probably just as little use to anyone who wanted to find the men.) The hired chair bearers had thrown down the chair and fled; no, he couldn’t remember their names, they were simply men he’d hired that afternoon. The fall had broken his ankle. (It seemed as well to be consistent about that.) Phormion had tried to defend him, and had struck one of the attackers, knocking him out; he and his other slave had thrown things and struggled with the others. When a woman of the neighborhood had come to help them, the attackers had fled.
“Well, I’m afraid that’s a common story,” said the aedile, shaking his head. “The Subura’s not safe after dark, and dusk is actually worse than later on at night. Later on you get the carts coming through, but at dusk there’s nobody to call on for help. You were lucky to find anyone in the neighborhood willing to answer you: mostly they’re wonderfully good at ignoring things. We find bodies four or five times a month—and who knows how many we don’t find, because they’ve been thrown into a sewer or taken to the Tiber and tipped in?”
“I was in the Subura?” he asked in surprise, remembering Gaius Rubrius listing it as one of the worst parts of Rome.
“Oh, yes!” replied the young man cheerfully. “I suppose a foreigner like you wouldn’t have known that. Your chair bearers certainly would have, though. I wonder if they were in league with the robbers? It’s a pity you don’t remember their names.” He closed his wax tablets. He did not seem to have made many notes. Obviously a robbery in the Subura didn’t merit much attention, not when the only person killed was a slave. It would have been the same in Alexandria.
“I’m sorry about your slave,” he added. “He was obviously a good man, and loyal to his master: there are plenty who would’ve just run away. You’ll look after the body?”
“Yes,” Hermogenes agreed guiltily.
“Good,” said the aedile, satisfied to have disposed of it.
He was just taking his leave when he frowned and turned back to Titus Fiducius. “There are some men outside watching your house,” he said. “Do you know why?”
“That’s to do with me,” Hermogenes said at once. “With the business that brought me to the Esquiline.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the aedile, startled. He stared at Hermogenes with sudden respect, obviously concluding that he must be richer and more important than he looked, to have business with a man who had now sent guards to protect him. “Pity they weren’t with you last night, then, eh? But better late than never, I suppose.”
He departed. Titus came over and looked at his guest with a mixture of admiration and reproach. “I never realized you were such a skilled liar,” he remarked. “You had no idea who the chair bearers were’!”
“I told Tarius Rufus that I would keep his name out of it,” Hermogenes replied. “I didn’t dare give the bearers to the magistrates.”
“And I suppose you were acting your distress over the body? Jupiter, you had me fooled!”
“That wasn’t acting.” He gazed soberly at the shrouded shape of Phormion. “Titus, he was in my household for more than ten years. He was always trustworthy and reliable when he was working, even if he did get into fights sometimes when he was drunk. He was a brave and honest man who trusted me. He deserved better of me than this.” He was glad that the staring eyes were hidden. He looked away and added heavily, “I must arrange a funeral.”
He wrote a letter to the priest of Mercury and Isis, explaining his need and sending it off with Tertia, then lay down on the bed in his cubicle to await a reply.
He woke when someone came into the room, and lay still for a moment, staring wide-eyed at the wall, trying to slow the pounding of his heart. Then he sat up.
Menestor was standing over him, with someone else in the dayroom behind him. The slave scowled when he saw that his master was awake. “I tried to tell her they should let you sleep,” he announced angrily. “But she doesn’t understand.”
Hermogenes ran a hand through his hair, feeling groggy and unspeakably depressed. By the light coming through the window it was late in the afternoon: he had slept for hours. He noticed that behind Menestor were Cantabra, looking angry and impatient, and Tertia, looking timid and apologetic. Menestor’s “she-they” resolved itself: they both wanted to see him, but only Cantabra had insisted on waking him up.
“You were right to wake me,” he told Menestor. “Cantabra, I am pleased to see you back safely. Tertia, is it about the funeral? Is it urgent?”
The slave woman bobbed her head, then shook it. “No, sir. Just the priest says he can do it, and he’ll come this evening to help wash and lay out the body. He wants to know how you want it done, but”—she cast a wary look at the impatient barbarian—“it can wait, sir, until he arrives.”
“Thank you. Would you mind leaving me for now, then? Thank you.”
She went out, with another very distrustful glance at the barbarian. Cantabra pushed past Menestor and dropped to a relaxed squat against the wall. Menestor made a face and went resentfully back into the dayroom. The barbarian reached down the front of her tunic and pulled out a letter.
He took it. It had been written not on papyrus but on a very small pair of wax tablets with the edges sealed together; the seal was of a female figure holding a horn of plenty.
“He gave it to me himself,” said Cantabra. “But the mission did not go as smoothly as we wished, lord. I am sorry.”
He looked back at her sharply. “What happened?”
She shrugged guiltily. “First Pollio recognized me. He’d seen me fight, and he asked me, wasn’t I Cantabra the gladiatrix. I had to say I was. I acted the stupid barbarian, but I think he suspected at once that things were hotter than your letter made them seem. He sent me to wait in the barracks of his own bodyguards, he said ‘while he wrote a reply,’ but he took a long time about it, and I think he was trying to find out more about the situation. While I was waiting in the barracks I met a man I knew.” She grimaced. “Another gladiator, discharged the same time as me. He got smart with his mouth, and I told him to shut it. Then he thought he would show his friends what a big man he was by waving his cock at me, so I shoved it into his balls. Not enough to hurt him badly, just enough to stop him. His friends got angry, and there was nearly
a fight, but the chief bodyguard stopped it. When Pollio finally summoned me again, the chief bodyguard came along and complained about me.”
“I’m sorry,” Hermogenes told her, shocked.
She shrugged again. “I don’t think Pollio took much notice. He just said ‘Ajax should have known better.’ What does the letter say?”
He broke the seal and looked at it. It was in Greek, written with very small, very scratchy cursive letters. He tilted it at angles to the light until he found one where he could make the letters out, then glanced back at Cantabra. “It’s in Greek,” he warned her. “Let me read it first; I’ll translate when I’ve finished.” He turned his attention back to the letter.
P. VEDIUS POLLIO GREETS M. AELIUS HERMOGENES OF ALEXANDRIA.
It is a pleasure to receive a letter from a businessman of your spotless reputation. I believe I have had some investments in common with your father in the past—the syndicate of Philokrates of Rhodes, for one, and that of Nikomachos of Cyprus, who I believe was your kinsman, and whose penurious death last autumn you must greatly mourn.
I have indeed made a substantial loan to L. Tarius Rufus, and I would be very interested to hear of your concerns about him. I will expect you at my house on the Esquiline tomorrow at the fifth hour. I am aware that the house of your friend the excellent T. Fiducius is being watched, but I imagine that a gentleman of your resources will be able to elude the consul’s notice.
I pray that the gods grant you a speedy recovery from your injuries.
He stared at the letter in deep disquiet, wondering if he wouldn’t have done better to go to Scipio after all.
“So?” asked Cantabra impatiently.
He translated.
“He knows a lot about you,” she observed, instantly latching onto the thing that had disturbed him.
He closed the letter slowly. “Probably he simply checked his own records,” he said. “Most of his business has been in the East for years, and anyone who operates on the scale he does would have an archive full of notes on everyone else working in the same area.” He began to feel more confident. “All he needed to do was tell his secretary to check the archive. He would find my name linked to my father’s, and my father’s referenced to the syndicates of Philokrates and Nikomachos, where Pollio had money of his own. Do you notice that he calls Nikomachos my kinsman, not my uncle? Whoever made the note on the syndicate would have mentioned that my father was related to its head, but probably not bothered to find out exactly how. Nikomachos was important enough that someone would have sent Pollio a note about his death, and as soon as he looked at that in the context of my letter, he would know exactly what this was about. Then he probably sent someone down the hill to see why I didn’t want a messenger sent to the house. He isn’t quite as omniscient as he pretends to be.”
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