Poseidon s Gold

LII

'Don't just stand there cracking witticisms,' I gasped. 'Lend me a hand!'

Pa sauntered across the studio, grinning like Festus would have done. 'Is this some new form of excitement, Marcus? Having your end away on a coffin lid?' Then he added, with glee, 'The high and mighty Helena Justina is not going to like this!'

'Helena's not going to know,' I said tersely-then I threw the naked model at him. He caught her and held on with rather more relish than necessary. 'Now you've got the problem, and I've got the scenery!'

'Cover your eyes, boy!' growled Geminus cheerfully. 'You're too young: ' He himself seemed to be coping, but I supposed he was used to fine art at close quarters. Holding Rubinia's wrists together and ignoring her passionate attempts to unman him, he catalogued her attractions with a deeply appreciative leer.

I fell prey to some tetchiness. 'How in Hades did you get here?'

'Helena,' he said, enjoying the emphasis, 'felt worried when she noticed you sloping off with that nasty smirk on your face. And now I see why!' he jibed. 'Does she know what you're like when you go off amusing yourself?'

I scowled. 'How did you find me?'

'Not difficult. I was fifteen yards behind you all the way.' That would teach me to congratulate myself on my expert tracking; all that time I was hoofing after Rubinia, so pleased with myself for doing it discreetly, someone had been tailing me. I was lucky the whole of Capua had not come to see the show. Father went on, 'When you sat down on the well-head for your watchdog session, I nipped up the road for a flagon-'

Now I was furious. 'You went off for a drink? And are you saying that even after the ostler incident you left Helena Justina all on her own at a lodging-house?'

'Well this is no place to bring her!' minced my pa, at his most annoying. 'She's a game girl, but believe me, son, she would not like this!' His eyes wandered salaciously over both of our naked companions, pausing on the coffined Orontes with a harder glare. 'I'm glad you've put that nasty piece of work in a suitable place! Now calm down, Marcus. With three bowls of beans inside her, Helena will be a match for anyone.'

'Let's get on with this!' My voice was clipped.

'Right. Release the corpse from the stoneware, and we'll tell the nice people why we've come visiting.'

I turned round, though still applying my full weight to the carved lid of the sarcophagus. It was a dreary thing to see an inch from your nose-all badly proportioned heroes, leaning askew as if they were marching up a ship's deck.

'I don't know about releasing him,' I mused, curling my lip at Orontes. 'He can hear us from where he's standing. I think I'll find out everything we want before I let him hop out of it:'

My father latched on to the idea eagerly. 'That's good! If he won't talk, we can leave him there permanently.'

'He won't last long in that thing!' I commented.

My father, whose lurid sense of humour was rapidly reasserting itself, dragged Rubinia to a statue of a particularly lewd satyr, and used his belt to tie her to its hairy hindquarters in a suggestive position.

'Ah Marcus, she's started crying!'

'She likes to make an effort. Take no notice. A girl who was prepared to kick me in the privates gets no sympathy from me.'

My father told her he was on her side-but she had to stay there. Rubinia demonstrated more of her vivid vocabulary. Next Geminus helped me wedge a large lump of stone against the coffin lid, so it was held fast, still half covering the opening, with Orontes peering out. I was leaning on a ladder that was tilted against a wall opposite, while Pa climbed up a large enthroned goddess and settled demurely in her lap.

I stared at Orontes, who had caused us so much trouble. He was, though I did not know it yet, to cause us rather more.

With his bald top and his great curly, bushy beard he had once been handsome and still had the dramatic authority of some old Greek philosopher. Wrap him in a blanket and sit him in a portico and folk might flock to hear him straining his brain. So far he had had nothing to say to us. I would have to cure that.

'Right!' I tried to sound menacing. 'I have had no dinner, I'm worried about my girlfriend, and even though your sultry model is a glad eyeful I'm in no mood to let this take all night.'

The sculptor finally found his voice. 'Go and jump in the Phlaegraean Marsh!' It was a deep, sombre voice, made raspy by drink and debauchery.

'Show some respect, cumin-breath!' Pa shouted down. I liked to proceed with dignity; he loved to lower the tone.

I carried on patiently. 'So you are Orontes Mediolanus-and you're a lying runt!'

'I'm not saying anything to you.' He braced himself against the inside of his stone prison, managed to shove one knee through the opening, and tried to grapple off the lid. Working with stone had given him muscle, but not enough.

I went over and kicked the sarcophagus unexpectedly. 'You'll just tire yourself out, Orontes. Now be reasonable. I can lock you in the dark in this rather heavy sarcophagus and come once a day to ask if you've changed your mind yet-or if I decide you're not worth my trouble, I can lock you in there and just not bother to come back.' He stopped struggling. 'We've not met,' I went on, politely resuming the introductions as if we were lying on marble slabs in some elegant bathhouse. 'My name is Didius Falco. This is my father, Marcus Didius Favonius, also known as Geminus. You must recognise him. Another relation of ours was called Didius Festus; you knew him too.'

Rubinia emitted a high-pitched noise. It could be terror or annoyance. 'What's that squeak for?' growled my father, gazing down at her with salty curiosity. 'Hey, Marcus, do you think I should take her out the back and ask her some questions privately?' The innuendo was obvious.

'Wait a bit,' I restrained him. I hoped he was bluffing, though I was not entirely certain. Ma had always called him a womaniser. He certainly seemed to throw himself into any available form of fun.

'Let her brew, you mean:' I saw Father grin evilly at Orontes. Maybe the sculptor remembered Festus; anyway, he did not look keen to see his glamorous accomplice leaving with yet another rampant Didius.

'Think on,' I murmured to him. 'Rubinia looks like a girl who may be easily swayed!'

'Leave me out of it!' she caterwauled.

I pushed myself off the ladder and ambled over to where Rubinia was tied up. Beautiful eyes, brimful of malice, sparkled at me. 'But you're in it, sweetheart! Tell me, were you swayed by Didius Festus the night I saw you at the Circus?' Whether she remembered the occasion, she coloured slightly at my brother's name and my heavy innuendo. If nothing else, I was storing up domestic strife between Rubinia and Orontes when they reminisced about our visit after we had left. I turned back to the sculptor. 'Festus was madly trying to find you. Your girlfriend here passed him on to your friends Manlius and Varga and they bamboozled him nicely: Did he ever find you that night?'

Inside the sarcophagus Orontes shook his head.

'Pity,' said Pa, in a clipped voice. 'Festus had his methods with traitors!'

Orontes proved as great a coward as his friends the two painters had been. All the fight was going out of him before our eyes. He groaned, 'In the name of the gods, why don't you all just leave me alone! I never asked to get into this, and what happened was not my fault!'

'What did happen?' both Pa and I demanded simultaneously. I glared at my father angrily. This would never occur with my old pal Petronius; we had a well-established routine for doing a dual interrogation. (By which I mean Petro knew when to let me take the lead.)

But as it turned out, shouting at Orontes from two directions worked the required effect. He whimpered pathetically, 'Let me out of here; I can't stand confined spaces:'

'Shut the lid a bit more, Marcus!' commanded Pa. I strode towards the stone coffin, looking determined.

The sculptor screamed. His girlfriend yelled at him: 'Oh tell the bastards what they want and let's get back to bed!'

'A woman with the right priorities!' I commented quietly, a foot from her entombed lover. 'Are you ready to talk then?'

He nodded miserably. I let him out. Immediately he made a dash for freedom. Expecting it, Father had slid gracelessly down the front of the vast matron who was forming his armchair. He landed in front of Orontes and punched up the sculptor's chin with a mighty blow that knocked him out.

I caught him under the hot hairy armpits. 'Oh brilliant, Pa. Now he's unconscious! This way he'll tell us a lot!'

'Well what else did you want? To see the bastard escape?'

We got him laid neatly on the floor, then threw a jug of cold water over him. He came to, to find the pair of us lolling against the statuary while I complained to my father. 'You do have to overdo everything! Settle down, will you? We want him alive at least until he's talked

'I should have hit the girl harder,' mumbled Pa, like some demented thug who liked torturing people.

'Oh she's all right-so far.'

Orontes stared around wildly, looking for Rubinia. There was no sign of her in the studio. 'What have you done with her?'

'Not too much-yet,' smiled Father.

'Missed his vocation!' I commented. 'Don't worry; she's just a bit frightened. I've managed to hold him back so far, but I can't go on doing it. Now talk, Orontes, or you get a chisel somewhere you may not expect and Jupiter only knows what this maniac will inflict upon your bit of decorative womanhood!'

'I want to see Rubinia!'

I shrugged. Ignoring his frantic gaze, I carefully examined the statue I had chosen to lean on. It had the body of a Greek athlete in tiptop condition, but the head of a Roman countryman aged about sixty, with a lined face and very big ears. 'Ovonius Pulcher', according to its plinth. There were half a score of these monstrosities scattered through the studio, all with identical bodies but different heads. They were the latest craze; everyone who was anyone in Campania must have ordered one.

'These are horrible!' I said frankly. 'Mass-produced muscle with entirely the wrong faces.'

'He does a good head,' Pa disagreed. 'And there are some nice reproductions around us here. He's a damn good copyist.'

'Where do the youthful torsos come from?'

'Greece,' croaked Orontes, trying to humour us. Pa and I turned to each other and exchanged a slow, significant glance.

'Greece! Really?'

'He goes to Greece,' my father informed me. 'Now I wonder if he used to go there and find things for our Festus to sell?'

I whistled through my teeth. 'Treasure-hunting! So this is the clod-brained agent Festus used to employ! The legendary man he met in Alexandria: Greece, eh? I bet he wishes he'd stayed there sunbathing on the Attic Plain!'

'I need a drink!' interrupted the sculptor desperately.

'Don't give him any,' snapped Pa. 'I know him of old. He's a drunken sot. He'll drain it and pass out on you.'

'Is that how you spent the bribe, Orontes?'

'I never had a bribe!'

'Don't lie! Somebody doled out a lot of money for you to do them a favour. Now you're going to tell us who paid you the money-and you're going to tell us why!'

'Bloody Cassius Carus paid the money!' my father suddenly shouted out. I knew he was guessing. I also realised he was probably right.

'That true, Orontes?' Orontes groaned in feeble assent. We had found some wine while he was unconscious. Pa nodded to me, and I offered the sculptor the wineskin, pulling it back after Orontes had taken one thirsty swig. 'Now tell us the full story.'

'I can't!' he wailed.

'You can. It's easy.'

'Where's Rubinia?' he tried again. He didn't care much about the girl; he was playing for time.

'Where she can't help you.' Actually we had shut her up somewhere to keep her quiet.

Pa swung closer and grasped the wineskin. 'Maybe he's frightened of the girl. Maybe she'll give him an earful if she finds out he's talked.' He took several deep swigs, then offered me a turn. I shook my head with distaste. 'Wise boy! For the heart of a wine-producing area this is dreadful vinegar. Orontes never drank for the flavour, just the effect.'

Orontes looked at his wineskin yearningly, but Pa held on to the dreadful prize. 'Tell us about the Phidias,' I urged. 'Tell us now-or Pa and I are going to hurt you much more than anyone else who's threatened you before!'

I must have sounded convincing, because to my surprise Orontes then confessed.

'I go to Greece whenever I can, looking out for bargains-' We groaned and sneered at his hybrid statues again, to show what we thought of that. 'Festus had an arrangement with me. I had heard where there might be this Phidias. I thought we could get hold of it. Some run-down temple on an island wanted to have a clear-out; I don't think they really appreciated what they were turfing on to the market. Even so, it wasn't cheap. Festus and some other people managed to put the money together, and he also lined up Carus and Servia as eventual purchasers. When his legion left Alexandria to fight in the Jewish Rebellion, Festus wangled himself a journey to Greece as an escort for some despatches; that was how he came with me to view the Phidias. He liked what he saw and bought it, but there was no time to make other arrangements so it had to go on with him to Tyre. After that he was stuck in Judaea with the army, so I was supposed to supervise bringing it back to Italy.'

'You were to escort it in person?' Pa queried. I guessed that was the usual system he and Festus had imposed to protect an item of large value. Either one of them, or an agent they really trusted, would have stuck with it every mile of its journey.

'That was what I promised Festus. He was sending a whole load of other stuff-nice goods, but minor quality by comparison-in a ship called the Hypericon.'

I poked him with the toe of my boot. The sculptor closed his eyes. 'Since the Hypericon sank while carrying the Phidias, and you're lying here annoying us, the rest is obvious. You broke your promise to Festus, and bunked off elsewhere!'

'That's about right,' he confessed uncertainly.

'I don't believe I'm hearing this! You let a statue worth half a million travel alone?' Pa was incredulous.

'Not exactly-'

'So what exactly?' menaced Pa.

Orontes groaned hopelessly and curled up, hugging his knees as if he was in some terrible pain. A bad conscience hurts some folk that way. 'The ship with the statue sank,' he whispered.

'We know that!' My father lost his temper. He hurled the wineskin at a Coy Nymph; it burst with a horrible squelching sound. Red wine trickled down her scanty drapes like blood. 'The Hypericon -'

'No, Geminus.' Orontes took a deep breath. Then he told us what we had come to find out: 'The Phidias that Festus bought was never on the Hypericon.'