Well, that’s the ideal. Sorting out accommodation falls to the young quaestor; he is quartered at the residence, so he has never slept at any of the run-down lodgings to which he sends people. He only knows of them because their fawning landlords have given him presents, probably something that comes in an amphora; he’s so inexperienced he can’t even tell if the free wine is any good. The quaestor is just twenty-five, in his first post, and has only ever been travelling before with his father, a bossy senator, who organised everything. He knows nothing about booking rooms.
Our guesthouse was called the Elephant. It could have been worse. It could have been much better. It had more rooms than the Camel up the street and, according to the manager, fewer mosquitoes than the Bay Mare. Nobody was leasing out cubicles to floozies on an hourly basis, but that was mainly because most of the rooms had desultory builders renovating them. Beds were stacked in the courtyard, so its fountain was turned off and breakfast had to be taken at the Bay Mare, where we interlopers from the Elephant were served last, after the honey had run out. At our rickety hostel, a pall of dust hung everywhere. Gaius had already fallen over a pile of tiles and gashed his leg. Luckily he liked looking scarred and bloodstained. A huge extension with premier grade rooms was being added at the back, but this was still unfinished. I could have accepted rooms that had no doors, but I felt that we needed a roof.
The afternoon sun was still pleasant. The builders had gone home, as builders do. We knew from experience they would return around midnight, to deliver heavy materials while the streets were quiet.
Helena and I brushed dust from a stone bench and sat down gingerly. Nux was asleep in a patch of sunlight, a relaxed bundle of mix-and-match fur colours, curled up so tightly I could not tell which end was her head. Albia had perched on a plasterer’s trestle, to watch Glaucus doing weight training. Apart from one of the smallest loincloths I had ever seen, he was naked. Albia gestured to him and exclaimed, ‘The beautiful boy!’ This was a phrase she had picked up from the pederasts at Olympia, who had it painted on vases they gave to young lovers. How pleasing to see travel had had an educational effect. And how nerve-racking, the way Albia gazed at him…
Glaucus ignored the compliment. Soon he stopped training and sat hunched against a pile of dismantled shutters. When a big strong man becomes unhappy, it is disconcerting.
‘What’s up, champion?’ I was afraid Albia’s attentions were too much for him. Teenage girls always hassle shy young men (well, the girls I had known on the Aventine hassled me) and Albia had not forgotten she grew up in Britain, where determined red-haired warrior queens were apt to seduce handsome spear-carriers the minute their husbands glanced away. It was not that, however. (Well, not yet.)
‘Falco, I am worried about what I did to Milo,’ Glaucus confessed, frowning.
‘Contact sports are always a risk; your father must have told you. Spectators are hoping for blood and death.’ My reassurance overlooked the fact that throwing the discus is not supposed to be a contact sport.
‘I had never hurt anyone before, Falco.’
Helena broke in. ‘Glaucus, don’t be concerned about this. We suspect Milo of Dodona was drugged and suffocated later - to silence him.’
‘In case he said something unwelcome?’
‘At this stage we don’t know,’ I said. ‘But you merely chipped him with the disk. He should have been up and grumbling in a few hours. It’s good to have a conscience, lad, but don’t waste it.’
Glaucus evaluated what I said. ‘Have you ever killed a man in this work of yours, Falco? My father gives the impression that you might have done.’
‘What we are doing here isn’t dangerous. Helena and I just met the people involved - and they seem as meek as lambs.’
Glaucus gave me a long look. ‘Never mind the people involved! I was wondering about you,’ he said.
I could not be offended; sometimes I wondered about myself.
Maybe it was late. Maybe we had indulged too much at lunchtime. I too felt introspective. Certainly Helena and I had just spent an afternoon talking to people I would normally avoid. I could never have endured long weeks or months of travel with a Seven Sights group. Perhaps one or more of them felt the same way. Perhaps they were murdering each other.
I reflected some more on what Helvia and the two men had said about Turcianus Opimus. The more they had assured me his dying had been inevitable, the more I wondered. Ostensibly, it was ridiculous to think that a man who had a severe illness had met an unnatural death. Without going to Epidaurus there was no way I could check, however. Even if I did go, the medical staff who had pronounced him dead would cite his existing disease. Doctors have to look as if they know what they are doing - even though anyone who has ever been ill soon learns the value of that. At Epidaurus I would be dealing with one more hostile Greek temple, where the attendants only wanted to preserve their good name.
Suppose he was murdered. What would anyone gain by killing an invalid? Only if Opimus had possessed incriminating evidence would there be a motive. Nobody had suggested Opimus ever claimed to have such information. But if he had known something, I could never ask him now, so the killer was safe.
I thought about the others. Was anyone I had met so far a likely killer? The belligerent, foolish Sertorius, the misfit Volcasius, Marinus limping with his dog bite, Indus looking haunted? None of them had the air of a sexual predator - and they were all lean-bodied men, who lacked the brute strength of whoever had beaten Valeria with the jump weight.
Cleonymus and Amaranthus were both sturdy. Still, both had women with them - not that marriage or its equivalent ruled out becoming a frenetic killer. I had known murderers who battered female victims, yet who had devoted wives. Some of those wives endured a lifetime of domestic hell but even so, when an arrest was made, they refused to believe the facts and would not testify against their mad husbands. Surely neither Cleonyma nor Minucia fell into that category. They were social, intelligent women who would spot a guilty man if they shared their bed with him. However, I knew if it really had happened, even those hard women might provide cover-ups.
Well, maybe not Minucia, whose strong sense of justice had sent her marching to the quaestor. It was unlikely she would have risked incriminating her own lover - and I rather thought Cleonyma would have stopped Minucia if the culprit had been her husband.
I toyed with the idea that Turcianus Opimus was the killer, and that guilt made his health deteriorate. But he must have been far too unwell to make advances to Valeria, let alone overcome a fit young woman if she rejected him.
If Valeria’s killer came from this travelling group, that left either Phineus the guide - who had behaved suspiciously before, flitting suddenly back to Rome when Marcella Caesia disappeared - or, as Aquillius had believed at the time, the husband, Statianus. Having failed to meet either so far, I reserved judgement.
An alternative was that Valeria had been killed by an outsider, a stranger. It made it more likely that she and Marcella Caesia had met similar fates, three years apart but at the hands of the same man. My chances of identifying him were nil. No records were ever kept of who came and went to Olympia. With no sightings of Caesia going up the Hill of Cronus or of Valeria with her brutal companion, I was stuck. The only possibility I knew was Milo of Dodona; yet his behaviour the day after Valeria died convinced hard-headed witnesses he had no idea the crime had occurred. Anyway, he used the wrong colour athletic dust. He could have changed his usual colour, but that argued premeditation. The kind of frenzied attack Valeria suffered tends to be unplanned.
Another thing worked in his favour: people wanted me to think it had been Milo. So my choice was to eliminate him straight away.
I don’t shirk issues. I then wondered about the establishment at Olympia. If someone like that useless priest, Lacheses, preyed on women, it would explain why I was so promptly sent packing after I asked too many questions. I did not particularly suspect Lacheses, but he irritated me, so was an easy target f
or my suspicion. If it was Lacheses, or any other servant of that ancient sanctuary, then no Roman investigator would ever manage to make charges stick. My only hope was that by stirring up trouble I might have forced the locals to deal with their own mess.
There was no chance they would do anything about Megiste and her sleeping-draughts. Milo of Dodona would be lucky even to have a funeral - though I did wonder whether he would now gain his statue after all. Sometimes corrupt authorities atone for their bad actions with a public gesture.
Helena roused me from my reverie. Evening had drawn in. She was anxious about Gaius and Cornelius. With my mind still churning over problems, I whistled to Nux, who opened a lazy eye then closed it again. Helena jumped up more obediently, as if responding to my call. Together we went out to look for the lads.
Central Corinth was no easy place to search. We were staying near the town gate on the road from Lechaion, the western port. A straight road almost thirty feet wide took us to the main piazza, where an absolutely massive arch led in beside the Peirene Fountain. As town fountains go, this ornate piece of drama was astounding. The forum beyond it was thoroughly well supplied with basilicas, shops, altars, and temples. It had at least three basilicas, by my count, so the populace must be grasping and litigious. An unusual central feature like the spine of a racing circus contained extra commercial buildings and a high spot for orators; this prevented us from seeing the opposite side of the forum as we searched.
Unlike many a provincial town, the main piazza was just the start of Corinth’s public areas. Further ornate squares had extra temples, some of them distinguished monuments. There were other markets. There was a leisure area with a very large theatre, dramatically carved out from a bowl of a hillside, with stunning sea views. A second auditorium was in process of being added.
Every god and goddess on Olympus seemed to have a magnificent sanctuary. There were other, stranger gods in Corinth, as we soon found out. Just as we gave up hope, we finally spotted the boys, looking sheepish and weary as they tried to remember the way home to the Elephant. They were clinging together, because they had attracted the attentions of a small bunch of street hustlers and were now surrounded, as if by beggars, against whose wiles we had given Gaius the usual training. Trust that vague boy to forget. Helena strode up, pushed through the bothering jostlers and repeated the advice. ‘Don’t look at them; don’t stop; don’t listen to their patter - it is designed to distract you, Gaius! And if they should try to grab you, push them away very forcefully.’
They were not beggars; well, not in the usual sense. They were Christians, who wanted not just my nephews’ money but their souls.
‘Shoo!’ cried Helena Justina, just as fiercely as when she had rejected Volcasius from our lunch table. She clapped her hands loudly, and flapped her arms with the gestures she used to make pigeons scram from our garden fountain. At home, she made me whang off pebbles with a catapult, but it did not come to that. The Christians could see they were beaten, so they slunk away. ‘There, there, Cornelius, don’t cry; they wouldn’t have hurt you. They just like to smile and tell you they have found the answer.’
‘The answer to what?’ Cornelius was easily baffled.
‘To the question,’ I told him obliquely. Helena and I gripped one of the lads each and began walking home to our lodgings. ‘Now you two, where in Hades have you been for hours, worrying us crazy?’
They had been up the acropolis, looking for the Temple of Aphrodite. They had climbed for two hours up the massive granite spur - and taken another two hours back. They had found that the temple existed all right, on the highest crag of all, and that it did harbour prostitutes, who were businesslike, extremely plain, and not the least interested in two Roman boys, since they had hardly any money.
‘We didn’t want to do anything,’ Gaius assured me. ‘We were just curious.’
‘So you had a healthy walk!’ Helena had been anxious, but knew how to avoid showing it. She had had enough practice with me. ‘I bet there is a wonderful view from up there.’ Gaius and Cornelius confirmed this. ‘So nice for the temple ladies to gaze upon glorious scenery, while they are waiting for new clients…’
We had found the boys. They were chastened. That would probably have been the end of it.
Then Cornelius stopped snivelling over being jostled by the Christians and got himself into more trouble by telling us about the sorceress.
XXIX
The sorceress story took a while to be let slip. By then, Cornelius was back among our group, devouring his dinner at a local eatery as if he had never been scared. I noticed that Gaius remained rather quiet, but he was old enough to know they were in disgrace, even though we were no longer carrying on at them. That was still a possibility, once the wine flowed some more. Gaius knew that all the Didius family would moan on for days, polishing up the argument with every sit-down meal until somebody snapped and threw pots at the wall. ‘Shut up; it was nothing,’ he ordered his younger cousin grumpily.
‘No, I know she was a sorceress! She had a conical hat.’
‘Well, that proves she was a witch,’ mocked Albia. ‘Was she casting spells behind a tomb?’
‘No, she was beside the road,’ muttered Gaius.
‘Vials of toad’s blood?’ queried Helena. ‘Purple fire? Dead men’s toenails?’
‘Jugs of water.’
‘We went up the hill for a long, long time,’ Cornelius complained. ‘We were tired out. We were desperate for a drink -‘
‘Climbing a steep hill, on a hot day. You took nothing with you?’ Glaucus asked laconically, laying his big palms flat on the table edge. He had been trying to teach them to look after their bodies. Both boys became shamefaced again.
‘Anyway, it was all right,’ Cornelius sounded virtuous. ‘We got some. We came on this strange old woman -‘
‘Really old?’ Helena checked with Gaius. He pulled a face, implying not necessarily. ‘And how strange exactly?’ Gaius saw that defining female strangeness might embarrass him, so he ripped up a loaf and stuffed it in his mouth. Helena and Albia exchanged a glance.
Cornelius rushed on with his tale. ‘This old woman was sitting cross-legged on a big ledge. She had water containers and some cups, and she offered us a drink. I was scared of her but we were so hot, I thought we would die if we didn’t have any.’
‘How much did it cost?’ I asked. They wriggled and managed to avoid telling me.
‘The thing was.’ Now Cornelius was indignant. ‘When we got just a little way further on, we came to a spring, which people told us was the upper fountain of Peirene. So we could have had a nice cold drink there for free. She cheated us.’
‘No doubt the upper fountain was where she filled her water pots… And that’s sorcery?’ Helena smiled at him. ‘Sounds as if she’s just a good businesswoman.’
Gaius cracked a clam shell, deliberately trying to break a tooth. He was mortified at being outwitted by some crone in a straw hat. I assured him the Corinthian drinks scam probably went back centuries. ‘You won’t be the first sweet-natured innocent who fell for it.’
‘She wasn’t local.’ Gaius spoke in a doom-laden voice. ‘Just an itinerant, passing through Corinth on her way to a new pitch. Uncle Marcus, we did talk to her; we tried to pick her brains like professionals. She goes to different places. She always sets up on hills. People flag, as they struggle with the climb, and are grateful she is there. She works at Olympia sometimes. She sits on the Hill of Cronus. So Cornelius and I think you should go up the acropolis here and talk to her.’
‘Well that’s it.’ I banged my spoon down on the table. ‘This is the last time you two are let out on your own. As a consequence of today’s ridiculous jaunt, I too am supposed to tire myself out and get heat stroke, in order to have some batty conversation with a gnarled old Greek granny who cheats little boys of their pocket money and calls it a public service.’
Nobody spoke for a few moments.
‘You could take a donkey,’ Helena s
uggested sweetly. After a second she added, ‘I’ll give you some pocket money, darling, so the sorceress can cheat you out of it.’
XXX
I was all set to scale the acropolis like an obedient informer. I would have gone mountaineering first thing next day. I got as far as preparing a portable breakfast, my hiking cloak and a staff to lean on. Then we had a visitor.
It was Aquillius. He had plenty of good manners, though little common sense. ‘How are you finding the Elephant?’ At last he looked around the courtyard of our lodging, and deigned to notice the building work. ‘So sorry, Falco; normally this is a very comfortable billet. Many people have recommended it. I don’t know why nobody told me there was renovation going on. I could move you…’ It was not a serious offer.
I brushed aside his platitudes. ‘I’ll move us myself, if the wife wants it.’ No chance to ask her. Helena had spotted the quaestor’s purple tunic bands as he wandered through the entrance arch; she had fled indoors. ‘What can I do for you?’
Aquillius handed me a scroll, another letter from Aulus. ‘This came for you!’ He seemed impressed that we were receiving correspondence.
‘Where from?’
‘On a boat from Athens. Somebody knows you are here, Falco?’
‘Lucky guess,’ I bluffed. ‘Wife’s brother; nice lad. We’ll have to try and get to see him; he’s supposed to be studying, bound to be homesick.’ Since we had been told yesterday by Volcasius that Aulus had made himself scarce with Statianus, I decided not to link Aulus with my enquiry unless I had to. Statianus might yet turn out to be his wife’s killer. If Aulus had allied himself with the bridegroom misguidedly, it could cause problems.
I was eager to read the letter - and to reply to it. Aulus needed to be warned off Statianus.
‘Couple of points, Falco. Do you mind if we talk about business?’ Aquillius was so used to treating his Greek post as a holiday, he seemed embarrassed to mention work. I waved him to a bench. Unwinding myself from my cloak, which he had apparently not noticed, I dumped my hiking stave and sat down with him.
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