Counting the Stars

by Helen Dunmore

  But did Philoctetes really say that, or is Catullus imagining it? His obsession with poison corrupts everything.

  He must find out more. He wants facts that will bleach away these filthy suspicions like the hard midday sun. Clodia is ignorant, innocent. Philoctetes must be wrong. Mushrooms, I think. That’s what he said, and then something about that gush of saliva from the dying man’s mouth. But what kind of mushrooms, and how could they have been put into the dish of one man alone? The same sauces were placed in front of everyone. People chose what they liked: their choices couldn’t be predicted. But only Metellus Celer had fallen ill.

  Relief sweeps over him. There could not have been a dish of poisoned mushrooms on the table: the risk was too great. If the poisoning didn’t take place at dinner, then when? Metellus Celer was not the type of man to eat a dish of mushrooms simply because it was brought to him. He took pride in living an old-fashioned Roman life where dinner was dinner and if you were hungry, you waited for the proper time. Metellus Celer wouldn’t titillate his appetite with savoury snacks.

  But Dr Philoctetes has no motive for diagnosing poison if there was none. He’s too good a doctor. Catullus wants to forget his words, but he can’t. His fear grows like the evening shadow of an umbrella pine, sprawling until it swallows a field. Dr Philoctetes wanted to warn him to keep out of it. Leave these noxious, nay threatening miasmas… In Rome we need our poets. Perhaps Philoctetes was afraid of what the family might do if they suspected that Catullus was implicated in Metellus Celer’s death. Philoctetes might believe that a clan as rich and powerful as the Metelli could lash out at anyone close to what he would no doubt call ‘the scene of the crime’. And it’s true that Catullus has slept with Metellus Celer’s wife… but that wouldn’t be enough. No one, looking at him, knowing him, could ever imagine him to be a poisoner. Surely?

  Or perhaps Philoctetes was afraid of someone else. Pretty Boy, possibly. He’s as good a candidate as anyone, if you’re looking for motives. Political motives, of course, Catullus says to himself quickly, stopping the thought that rises like some vile misshapen creature of the deep: He has cause to hate the man who sleeps with his sister as his lawful wife.

  He must stop thinking. All he’s got to do is find out what the poison was and how it came into Metellus Celer’s body. If there was a poison at all, he adds rapidly. He needs to talk to an expert.

  Asking around could be tricky. He’ll say that he’s writing a play, and needs to do some research. Bathhouse slaves know everything. He’ll start at the bathhouses, and then move on to the brothels.

  ‘Cynthia, you know everyone. I’m writing a play, and I need help with one of the scenes.’

  ‘A play! I thought you only wrote poetry.’

  ‘ “Only”?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sure you’d write wonderful drama.’

  ‘You must think I’m as vain as that idiot Volusius. “I’ve been turning my hand to, for want of a better word – ahem! – our great epic tradition.” That bastard is enough to make tradition cower like a slave before a beating.’

  ‘So are you really going to write a play?’

  ‘It’s a career option I’m considering.’

  She pulls a face. ‘Don’t talk like that. You sound like a politician. I get enough of them.’

  ‘It’s just to rile you… But maybe poets should be more like politicians. Practical… down to earth… self-confident, not to say self-satisfied –’

  ‘Not to say in love with themselves, at least the ones I get. And as for down to earth, they spend so much time plotting what if this and what if that – They end up with less idea of what’s real and what’s not than a six-year-old child. You can tell them any lie you like, and as long as it’s flattering enough they’ll swallow it.’

  ‘Mind you, that’s not completely untrue of men in general, now, is it, Cynthia?’

  ‘Don’t put words in my mouth. Tell me about the play. I’m always at the theatre, if I get the chance of a free afternoon. I don’t know if I ever told you, but when I was little I wanted to be a mime. I used to drive my mum and dad crazy, doing the death of Electra one day, and Iphigenia at Aulis the next. And dancing and acrobatics too – I don’t know what the people in the downstairs flat used to think. I learned how to do back-flips and cartwheels and I don’t know what else. But it’s hard to get proper training. You’ve got to have contacts, and it’s all kept in families. We didn’t know anyone.’

  ‘This play I’m writing has a poisoning in it.’

  ‘Is it about Medea? Just imagine playing that role. You wouldn’t dare go to sleep at night in case you killed yourself with your own wickedness.’

  ‘Medea’s been done to death. This is contemporary.’

  ‘I love the way you write. It’s so sharp and funny – just like real life. And the way it all fits together like a craftsman’s box. I wish I could speak lines like that – No, don’t start looking all embarrassed, my darling, I’m not after a part. In my dreams, that’s all. Maybe I’d have been no good, even if I’d had the chance. But if you haven’t, you can still hope – Maybe you’re better off not knowing.’

  ‘You’ll have seats in the front row, Cynthia, if I ever finish it. But I’m stuck on the research. I need to talk to someone who knows all about poisons and how they work. It’s the detail that makes the difference. If it’s not believable, people start throwing things.’

  ‘And you think I’m the right person to know about poison?’

  ‘No, of course not. But you do know a lot of people, Cynthia.’

  ‘Yes, I do, don’t I?’ She wrinkles her nose.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he says quickly.

  ‘I know.’

  Even a couple of years ago, Cynthia was still a golden girl. She’d been like that for ever, friends told him when he first came to Rome. One of those women whom time can’t touch. But suddenly, within a bare few months it seems, she’s changed. Her breasts and hips are spreading. Her hair, although beautifully dressed as always, is dry and lustreless. There are lines on her face that don’t go away when she stops smiling.

  She doesn’t smile as much now. It all dates back to the accident her boy had last year, when he was playing with friends, jumping off a high wall. He fell badly and broke his leg, high up where the thigh joins the hip. In spite of Cynthia pouring out money on doctors, the bones didn’t set right. The child limps badly now. Still, he’s good about doing his exercises, Cynthia says, and he goes to that physiotherapist your doctor friend recommended. There’s a big improvement. And he’s ever so bright, loves his studies. His private tutor thinks he’s very promising. Maybe he’ll be a lawyer one day.

  Cynthia fosters him out and rarely sees him; it’s better so. He’s getting old enough to notice what goes on. When he was a toddler he used to come here sometimes, and all the girls used to pet him and give him sweets.

  She works as hard as ever, but her price is going down. That means taking on more clients, and not such good ones. She’s done well in her time and she ought to have savings, but they’re melting away, what with the boy’s injury and his education.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Cynthia. I’ll ask around.’

  ‘No – wait. Listen. I do know someone – that is, I know of someone. But you’ll have to be careful. Really careful, I mean it. She has protection, and if they think you’re snooping around to inform on her, they’ll make sure you don’t live to do it.’

  ‘Bodyguards – seriously?’

  ‘There’s a lot of money in what she does. She’s right at the top. She can do anything, and they say she’s got a client list that would put us girls to shame.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  Cynthia glances around quickly, even though there are only the two of them in the room.

  ‘Gorgo,’ she says quietly.

  ‘She’s Greek, then?’ The name sounds and echoes in his head. One of Sappho’s rivals was called Gorgo –

  ‘She’s been h
ere in Rome for ever. I think she came from Lesbos originally, or her mother did.’

  ‘Lesbos!’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘How old is this woman?’ Hundreds of years, perhaps, he thinks, a woman from Sappho’s island with its apple branches, dappled shade, roses, dill and violets… ‘Have you ever met her?’

  A flush rises through Cynthia’s skin. ‘What do you mean? What are you accusing me of?’

  ‘Cynthia, please! It was an innocent question.’

  ‘Putting somebody out of the way, I would never do that. The gods forbid it, since our lives are theirs, and not our own.’ Sudden seriousness darkens her face. For a moment he seems to see into the core of her being, the incorruptible Cynthia. ‘It was for a different reason,’ she says, and, getting up, she begins to rearrange a vase of anemones, with her back to him.

  He remembers an evening long ago. Cynthia and he were drinking wine in her room. She had a carved couch covered with embroidered silk then, not this workaday little bed. The two of them lay there, warm and tired, gossiping like the old friends they were slowly becoming. He’d always liked her company. Considering her trade she was surprisingly – almost touchingly – unimaginative in bed, as if she’d never had any training at all. But with her warm soft skin and her beautiful breasts, the touch of stolidity in her didn’t matter at all. Cynthia had had a good room then, not this stuffy little cubicle. She never complained about the change, or even appeared to notice. Something fierce drove her on, and burned away any other feelings she might have had. He supposed it was the child.

  But to downgrade her like this is harsh. She won’t get good clients if her importance is so evidently diminished. She’ll get the ones with bad breath, or vile habits.

  And here he is, thinking he’s the gift of the gods, while she might feel that she’s drawn the short straw with him.

  He laughs softly.

  ‘It’s no laughing matter,’ says Cynthia angrily, ‘but I suppose you wouldn’t understand. It’s easy enough for you to walk away.’

  Anemone petals drop to the floor. She is pulling them apart: Cynthia, who loves flowers so much that he always brings her whatever is in season, ridiculous as it looks to enter a brothel like a suitor.

  ‘Don’t take it out on the anemones, Cynthia. I wasn’t laughing at you, but at myself.’

  ‘It’s no joke, when a girl gets into trouble. Especially not here.’

  That was for a different reason… Yes, of course. A mistress of poisons will know all about the drugs that women need.

  ‘One of the girls, one of the new ones, she panicked. If she’d come to me I could have helped her. At least, I could have told her where to go. About Gorgo, that is. But she kept it secret from us and went off to some quack who tells her that black hellebore will do the trick. Before we know anything about it she’s swallowed enough to kill an ox.’ She shudders. ‘That was a night, I can’t tell you. I’ve never forgotten it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She died, of course. Then there are all these other things the girls try. Gorgo’s expensive, and they don’t want to pay up until they have to. But these herbs and so on, you’ve got to know what you’re doing or they turn your guts inside out, you’re ill for days but at the end of it you’re still pregnant. Clyster’s all right: that works for some girls. The Greek girls all swear by silphium. But someone like Gorgo, she knows. She really knows. It’s not just having the right ingredients, you see, it’s how you mix them, and the quantities. It takes years to learn, and it’s all kept secret, they won’t tell you.’

  ‘Just like doctors,’ he says.

  ‘You’re right, it’s exactly the same, except for the end result. They say that Gorgo has medical training, although how she came by it, I wouldn’t know. The story is that she dressed as a man.’

  His curiosity quivers. ‘She sounds like the one I need to talk to.’

  ‘Yes, but be careful. Say what you want and why you want it. Don’t try any of your stories on her.’

  ‘But you love my stories, Cynthia.’

  She turns around to face him. ‘You won’t get any more flattery from me today. I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘I can see that. Listen, let’s have another drink.’

  She goes to the wine cooler, lifts the flagon, wipes it and then pours wine into their cups.

  ‘Don’t put so much water in mine. That stuff you drink – it’s water bewitched.’

  She tilts her cup, looks down into it. ‘Once you start letting yourself drink in here, really drink, not just a cup between clients to relax you, there’s no end to it. I’m not going down that road.’

  ‘How’s Titus doing?’

  She sighs, and comes to sit on the bed beside him. Her heavy, perfumed body rests against him, as comforting as the wine. If only he could rest like this, with Clodia, now. But Clodia has taken him too deep, into places he never dreamed of before he knew her. Sometimes they seem not to be in their bodies any more, but to be lifted out and beyond themselves as if at the point of death. And yet at the same time he’s so intensely conscious of her body that he can taste every drop of her sweat, feel each hair on her head, catch the double beat of her heart as if it’s his own.

  He must have sighed, too. Cynthia says, ‘You’re thinking about her again.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘I can always tell.’

  ‘Leave it, Cynthia. I was asking you about Titus.’

  ‘His thigh muscles need a lot of work. They’ve wasted, you see. The doctor says it’s muscle wastage that’s causing the limp to be so bad, as much as the break itself.’

  ‘Are you all right for money?’

  ‘I’m all right for now. I can pay the doctor’s bills because, look, I haven’t really got any living expenses.’

  ‘But what about your flat, Cynthia?’

  ‘I’ve given it up. I’m living here now.’

  There’s nothing to be said. Her light, pretty, flower-filled flat: he’s never seen it, she never takes a client there. She wants to keep her two lives quite separate. But she’s described it so often that he could walk around it blindfold. It is on the third floor, not too noisy, quite private. There’s a little balcony, and she keeps her pots there, with thyme, marjoram and parsley as well as flowers. She’s made her place lovely, over the years.

  ‘So you go to visit Titus, now? I mean, he doesn’t come home at all?’

  ‘He never did, much. It’s best not to disrupt his routine. You see, he’s got a life there – I don’t want to disturb it.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  She has given up the flat. She lives here all the time, with the coming and going of clients, the girls gossiping. Who’s coming up, who’s going down. And only this little room, stuffy and flowerless.

  ‘It’s nice to have time to chat,’ observes Cynthia. Her face remains smooth, but he thinks she sounds anxious. He is a good client. When he comes, he always pays for a full afternoon. Maybe she’s afraid that he too is going to give her up for someone younger.

  But he won’t. It’s no virtue in him: he likes to be with Cynthia more than he can imagine liking to be with any of the other girls. They go back a long way now, to the innocent days before he met Clodia, when he was new to Rome. And all he saw in blood-soaked, plot-ridden, power-broking, death-dealing Rome was poetry. There was no poison then… He was like a naked child playing around the dugs of a wolf. A proper little Romulus.

  But of course that isn’t entirely true. He came to Rome for a reason. He was on the make, like everyone else, although in a different way; he wanted to make himself as a poet. He wanted to know everything, feel everything. Long before he met Clodia, he wanted her. He wanted to feel as Sappho felt in the presence of her lover. He wanted cold fire to run over his body, transforming him.

  ‘Yes, it’s nice,’ he agrees, ‘I look forward to our afternoons.’

  ‘Have you got any new poems?’

  ‘I’ve got one. Pour me some m
ore wine and I’ll recite it to you.’

  She pours the wine, climbs back on to her couch and sits gracefully cross-legged in a pose she must have learned from one of the Egyptian girls.

  ‘Go on.’

  Cup-boy, pouring out the best Falernian,

  mix mine as strong as you can

  by the law of the lady of the house

  who is drunker than drunkenness itself;

  but you water nymphs who dilute everything

  and turn strong wine to piss

  bugger off and join the virtuous –

  here Bacchus mixes it with no one!

  ‘Did you compose that chez Lesbia?’ asks Cynthia sweetly. ‘It’s very good, of course, but I hear so many drinking songs that I get a bit sick of them.’

  ‘Cynthia, that’s uncharacteristically bitchy of you.’

  She gives him an innocent little smile. ‘I don’t like to watch a handsome young man turn into a purple-nosed old bore. I’ve seen it too often.’

  ‘Trouble with you, Cynthia, you’ve seen too much of everything. You’ve got a caution for every occasion.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s true,’ she says thoughtfully, then leans over and gives him a quick, apologetic kiss. ‘There’s nothing worse than a tart preaching virtue, is there?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I know you didn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t have kissed you. You have these little pockets of innocence in you – I love putting my hand in them.’

  ‘You don’t need to steal innocence.’

  To his amazement, her eyes fill with tears.

  ‘I think that’s the nicest thing anyone ever said to me,’ she says.

  They lapse into silence. She’s lost in private thoughts, and he doesn’t want to spoil the moment. He’d like to stay here for ever. Or at least, for a long series of afternoons, with just enough wine to make the hours slip by easily, like this…

  How has he got to this place? Not to Cynthia’s room, but to where he is now. Metellus Celer has died in agony, struggling to draw breath, shitting and pissing himself in a dark room. Clodia is hidden behind a veil of family mourning. He doesn’t see her or hear from her. Even if he did see her, it would be like staring into a mask that wears the face of the dead man.